Take Action Now

There are many things to learn for those who are just getting started in online marketing. Most people feel overwhelmed by the amount of information available, and spend months or years reading and learning without actually doing anything. It’s a good thing that you constantly learn new things and keep up with the trends, but it’s even more important to carry out the necessary tasks to build a profitable business. Stop waiting and take action!

Know When to Stop

Perfectionism can be a major problem for marketers and business owners. Not only it slows you down, but drains your energy away from more important tasks. Let’s take blogging as an example. Many business owners are not blogging because they haven’t found the perfect topic yet or haven’t completed all the research. Some have stopped blogging because it took too long to write perfect posts. While quality is important, perfection is a grand illusion at best. If you wait for the moment when everything is perfect, you will never begin.

Outsource Your Work

Outsourcing is easy and surprisingly inexpensive. If you hate Internet marketing or don’t have enough time for it, you can outsource the most time consuming tasks. Start by posting a description of the work you need done on outsourcing sites. Freelancers and companies from all over the world will reply to your ad. Review their work samples, test them, and then create your own team. Manage them as they work and spend your time on more productive tasks than those you’ve outsourced.

Prioritize Your Tasks

Start your day by figuring out which tasks require immediate attention. While this sounds simple, it’s always the unimportant tasks that kill your time. Review your to-do list and prioritize your tasks. Close any distracting websites and focus on your work. Start with the most important and time consuming tasks. Search for online tools and software designed to increase productivity and free your time.

Image credit: Boians Cho Joo Young

The ruling comes after appeals from Twitter failed in France to protect the identities of the people behind the Tweets.

The High Court in Paris told Twitter in January that they would have to give the names of the people who posted anti-Semitic posts to the french Union of Jewish Students and four other groups if they were requested to.

Twitter had already blocked the posts in France but had appealed against handing over the identities of those behind the Tweets following a complaint from the French Union of Jewish Students.

While the court has ruled that the names of the people must be handed over it is being reported that Twitter may well be considering appealing again against the ruling.

A spokesperson for Twitter said: “We are disappointed that the court has decided not to hear our appeal.  We are considering our options, including resubmitting the appeal.”

According to the court in Paris Twitter had not come up with a convincing reason as to why the identities of the people behind the racist tweets should be protected.  The court added that Twitter had also not set up an “easily accessible and visible” way for people to be able to let the site know about content that constituted crimes against humanity and incitement to racial hatred.

This case has been running since October 2012 when the french Union of Jewish Students asked Twitter to delete posts with the hashtag #unbonjuif (#agoodjew#).  The group claimed that the posts were in breach of French laws regarding racial hatred.

The posts in question were hidden from users in France to comply with the law but the members of the students union and four other groups want to have the identities of those who posted the Tweets revealed so they can then be prosecuted.

In March the French Union of Jewish Students also filed a $50 million law suit against Twitter claiming that the company had failed to respect the time frame imposed by the court to reveal names – this has been appealed by Twitter.

A spokesman from the French Union of Jewish Students said that twitter was “playing with the French legal system”.

He added: “Twitter has not made any progress in regards to respecting our country’s laws.

“The first step towards making any kind of progress could be finally listening to the court’s decision, and making sure that its social network is not a lawless place.”

My review posts where front page of Google for lots of different keywords relating to the product so on Clickbank I was still getting hops and they were converting well too. Not as well as they used to as a lot of people own the product and the hype has long gone.

So what I did was change the product in the review post and changed the ending with something like:

This product is no longer available but here is a fantastic new alternative for you.

And it works wonders and it is converting just as much as the original and my website will not lose any value at all.

But what about those that bought the name of the product domain name such as nameofproductreview.com?

They then have a website that was making lots of money and all of a sudden is worthless as you can hardly flip it on Flippa can they?

By having review posts on a general website instead of a product is pulled you can simply point them to a different product and its no big deal. You are not losing a website or endless revenue and its not worth worrying about.

Many people say that you must have the name of the product in the domain and I totally disagree as I have outranked many websites with totally different domain names and as long as the post that you point them to is SEO ready than there is reason why you wouldn’t rank for it.

So just think of that before you buy another review domain name.

Are you looking for new ways to increase productivity and boost your income online? Let’s face it. With all the memes, pictures, posts, and videos on the Internet, it sometimes takes nerves of steel to not open a new tab and get distracted. When you work online, distractions are easy to come by. Internet marketers spend hours reading their emails, chatting on Facebook, reading articles online, or checking website stats. In the end, they are left with very little time to accomplish their daily goals.

Here are some tips on how to become a more productive Internet marketer:

Schedule Everything

Plan everything ahead. Use Google Calendar or other program to map out your daily tasks. Determine the amount of time needed to complete each task. When you wake up in the morning, create a schedule for writing blog posts, reading emails, cooking, and spending time with friends. This will help you stay organized and focused.

Pinpoint Your Peak Productivity Time

You have approximately three peak productivity hours in your day. If you stay focused and stick to your schedule, you may be able to squeeze out four productive hours every day. Locate your peak hours and then focus on high priority tasks during these times. Figuring out your peak productivity time is the single most important thing you can do to improve your time management.

Organize Your Tasks

Before starting your work day, write down what you wish to accomplish. If you have a particularly difficult task, do it first thing in the morning. You may also break down your tasks into small pieces. It’s much easier to stay focused when you’ve got smaller tasks you can work on.

Hire a Virtual Assistant

A skilled virtual assistant can save you time and money. She can handle the most time consuming tasks involved in online marketing. You can hire a VA to post on forums, make travel arrangements, handle billing, send out information to your clients, and answer customer inquiries. A virtual assistant can also manage contact lists and customer spreadsheets, connect with prospects on social networks, and write articles for your site.

Identify Your Bad Habits

Do you spend too much time on Twitter or Facebook? Are you checking your email at least five times a day? Do you chat with your friends for hours? Communication is like oxygen for online marketers. However, this doesn’t mean that you should spend hours every day checking your email messages and social streams. Set aside certain times when you go online on social networks. Use Buffer, Twitterfeed and other online tools to automate your tasks and save time. Equipping yourself with the right email technology and social media tools can minimize distractions and increase your productivity.

Image credit: basketman

It’s having website after website built and not allowing any of them to go into profit before you start the next and the next and the next.

Then you come to someone like me and tell me that you have 30 websites and the costs of upkeep is crippling you and that you don’t see a way out.

I have seen this so many times and I don’t understand why people fall into this trap time and time again.

If you were an offline business like a department store you wouldn’t start with a chain of 30 shops so why do you do it with building of websites?

All I can assume is that it always comes down to bordem. You build one website and then you see another website for sale that you like the look of and then the cycle begins.

If you are easily bored what you should really be looking at is flipping sites and that way you can have endless websites and endless profits without running non-profit websites and hoping for the bnest-

And before you know it you have 30 of them flipped on Flippa instead.

Build Lasting Relationships

If you want to win the Internet marketing game, focus on building long term relationships with your audience. Rather than constantly hunting down new prospects, you should create a valued environment for your existing customers. Provide high quality content and products that offer value to your audience. Focus on your customers’ needs, over and above your own.

Surround Yourself with Other Successful Marketers

The Internet has made it easy for business owners to meet other successful people and industry influencers. Surround yourself with people who are successful in what they do. This will keep you motivated in your journey. Use social media to find other marketers in your niche. Follow them and try to determine why they are successful.

Stay Focused

It’s easy to spread your energy on too many things when you run a website. It’s important to focus on one thing and master it before moving on something else. Set your priorities and stop wasting time. Stick to your plan and leave out all the other tasks. For example, if your site needs more content, spend your day writing a few quality posts for the whole week instead of jumping on social media to get traffic or chatting with your friends. When you’re done, log in on Facebook or Twitter and start promoting your posts.

Write Powerful Content

Start with a killer headline that grabs attention. Create great content. Every once in a while, make a special offer that provides value to your prospects. Put yourself in the shoes of the person looking for your products. Use the language these people might use.

Think about the possible questions they may have. Your articles and blog posts should answer these questions. Delete unnecessary words and sentences. Keep it short and sweet. Don’t forget to include a call to action such as “Contact us,” “Click here for more information,” or “Subscribe to our newsletter.”

Image credit: Stuart Miles

Israeli newspaper reports have stated that the Israel based technology firm Waze have been in talks with Google in the last few days to finalise a deal worth at least one billion dollars.

The Haaretz daily newspaper reported that Google and Waze had been in talks on Sunday and that the two companies had finally come to a deal exceeding a billion dollars with some reports stating that the final amount for the purchase of Waze was in the region of $1.3 billion.

It has been reported that Google were not the only heavy weight company interested in Waze  with newspapers claiming that both Facebook and Apple also had put in bids to buy the company that created a GPS mobile navigation app for smartphones.

A source told Haaretz that the deal between Google and Waze would see Google paying the full amount agreed in the deal in cash while another clause from Waze would be to continue the development centre for Waze in Israel for the next three years.

According to Haaretz: “Waze will retain its independent identity both as a company and as a brand” with them then adding that Facebook had wanted the company to relocate to their headquarters in California.

Waze has become a sought after prize by the large internet companies because it has developed an app for smartphones that allows users to share information about traffic including where there are crashes, delays and roadworks.  The real time information allows other users to be able to navigate routes faster and more economically.

Currently Waze employs around 100 people in Israel and already has around 50 million users across the world using their software.

It is thought that the information that is uploaded by users could then be used by Google to develop other software and apps because the users allow the app to track their movements which could potentially allow Google to focus advertising to where these users are at the time in real time.

There have been no official comments from Google or Waze about the purchase of the company despite requests from several news agencies.

What you do is take a great product that you already own and on the download page of the product you offer private label rights. It has to be a product that is old enough to be past its original launch so that people using your private label rights version are not in competition with you.

But what you have to remember is that 95% of customers that buy private label rights will still be sat on the content six months later so you will not have a saturation in the market.

This system is also a great idea to offer it when the product is a year old and you can re-launch it with PLR.

You could also charge more for your private label rights licence by offering it to a limited number of people.

Another way to do it is also to have an extra payment button on the sales page where you offer private label rights.

So if you have a product that is six months old and is not selling at $27 as much as it used to. Then reduce the main price to $17 and then offer a private label rights version for $37 and before you know it you are selling the product for more than what you originally sold it for.

Just think of adding this upsell to your product or look at other upsells you can sell with your product to make the most out of them. And watch as you double your Clickbank sales.

Information Overload

There are millions of articles, books, and online tutorials on how to make money online and start a profitable business. However, these resources are not something you need right now (in the startup phase). They may be helpful to you later, but now they are just getting in the way. Keep testing new strategies and stop wasting time. Too much information leads to confusion and distraction.

Not Being Consistent

Many newbies are jumping from one strategy to another. Some try pay-per-click advertising for a month, lose thousands of dollars, and then say it doesn’t work. The next few weeks they try social media marketing or SEO. When they hit a road block, they simply give up. This mindset leads to failure. Regardless of what strategy you choose, wait at least six months to see results. Choose a technique and stick to it. Then add another strategy.

Lack of Experience

Knowing how to create an online marketing plan and set goals is extremely important. Like any other type of business, Internet marketing requires certain skills and knowledge. None of these skills are difficult to learn. The more you practice, the better you’ll get. Stay informed with the latest marketing trends, read online guides and tutorials designed for beginners, and join Internet marketing forums. Ask questions and connect with other marketers who can help you build a successful online business.

Not Using Social Media

Many small business owners don’t spend enough time promoting their sites on social networks, blogs and other online platforms. Social media is not only for fun. It’s actually a great business tool that can help you grow your business and increase your customer base. It’s not enough to simply have a presence on social networks – you also need to target the right audience, keep your fans engaged, and provide valuable content. These steps will increase your online exposure and help you build credibility and trust. Stay active on social networks and connect with your prospects at a deeper level.

Image source: Michal Marcol

For me when you are building a website in any niche you have three components that you must honour to make the website a huge success.

You start with a nicely designed website; you add amazing unique content and have your website ready for the public.

Then you add regular unique content to your website at the same time as building as much traffic to your website as possible. After all the more traffic the better. I bet even Facebook wants more!

Now this is the easy part. The hard part is getting people to follow these simple rules. You have to do both and you cant just cut costs by using re-hashed content to your website or not adding any new content at all.

So put a plan in place so that you are adding lots of new unique content to your website at the same time and you will see your website grow very quickly.

However many people online believe that if you add the content the traffic will come at the same time. Which is not true you have to work at both of these to make that a reality.

If you don’t work at your traffic you wont get any.

Simple!

So think about the way your website is set up. Are you one of many that has been affected by the latest Google update and are now left without any SEO positions because you failed to do this?

Well if that is the case. Its not too late you can look at the system you have right now and change it for the better.