Conquer The Net Ezine - Issue 3

Oct.01, 2007 in Newsletter Archive

Hi,

Welcome to another issue of “Conquer The Net“.

This issue includes…

1) “The Real Truth About Creating an Online Business”

2) “Marketing Freebies”

3) “Why You Must Start Your Ezine Today”

4) “Finding Highly Motivated Website Traffic”

5) “This Issue’s Writing Tip” - New Feature

6) “Tell Me What You Think!”

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The Real Truth About Creating an Online Business
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OK… you’ve searched the net, checked out heaps of different opportunities and were very impressed with what you saw.

In fact you were so impressed you decided to start an internet business so you can join in and make some money online.

Excellent choice!

But be warned. Starting an online business doesn’t come without pitfalls or hard work.

Yes that’s right!

Regardless of what you’ve read on the net, creating an online business is not a short-cut to wealth.

Making money online is not a simple matter of putting up a turnkey site and then
waiting for the cash to start rolling in.

If you believe that you can make your fortune instantly with no money, no time and no effort, then you need to stop dreaming.

WAKE UP and smell the coffee.

You’re going to be very disappointed (and a little poorer) when you find out the truth.

The truth is, creating a profitable online business can be a very time consuming and frustrating task.

But if you’re prepared to work hard, put in the effort and have the right frame of mind BEFORE you start your business, i.e. knowing that it will take time and patience to be successful, you CAN make a substantial online income.

The internet can provide tremendous wealth opportunities and can give you the chance to earn a very generous income that will give you the chance to spend more time with your family and allow you to literally live your dreams.

But before you decide to start an online business, you need to be aware that apart from your customers, time is your most important asset.

So to ensure your success it is imperative you engage the services of professional and ethical service providers to free up as much of your time as possible.

It is very important that you do this as it will allow you to build a solid foundation that will stand the test of time.

No if’s… No but’s… No maybe’s!

Once you have done this you will be safe in the knowledge that if you do run into any
problems you have the support base to help you get back up and running with a minimum of fuss and downtime.

The last thing you need is to be wasting your most valuable resource - your time - on
non-income producing issues.

If you do this you just won’t have the time or energy to focus on what should be your #1 priority - creating a successful business.

This translates to happier customers and greater profits!

There are a number of quality companies that provide all the professional services you
need to succeed online. Just do a search on Google or your favorite search engine and
check out what’s around.

However, there are only a limited few who also provide an extremely high level of service and timely support to back up their products or services.

As a rule of thumb these can only be found by either trial and error or by the quality and volume of website testimonials, i.e. word of mouth.

Take the time to look at the testimonials on the website you find and visit the sites of the people who provided the testimonials and contact them to see if they’re still happy
with the product or services.

This way you’ll get a clearer picture of the quality of service, which should be your highest priority.

But above all remember… you get exactly what you pay for!

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>>>>> Marketing Freebie <<<<<
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As you may know, search engines LOVE new new content. So if you’re looking for fresh, changing, relevant content to keep the search engines happy, then here’s an excellent resource:

HIGHBEAM

This is a free service where you can get RSS feeds for just about any subject you can imagine and is a perfect resource to insert fresh content not only in your blog, but also in your website pages.

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Here are 3 of my most popular freebies in case you missed them in the previous issues:

1. Here’s an awesome resource! It’s a series of videos (36 of them) that document individual case studies of normal everyday people that used the Going Natural search engine techniques to grow their businesses to make a combined $32 Mil plus per year.

You can view the free videos at…

==> FREE VIDEO CASE STUDIES

2. Most of the ‘Butterfly’ sites you see nowadays offer pretty crappy stuff that really isn’t of much value, but this one is WAY different - big time…

==> RICHES RESOURCE

You get private access to a fantastic resource where you will learn how some of the biggest names on the net turned their lives around and finally made it big - and you can do the same!

3. It’s a well known fact that there’s only ONE thing you really need to focus on to ‘make it’ online and live the internet lifestyle.

In fact, this so-called ’secret’ can get you more money than you could ever spend in two lifetimes.

And the great thing about it is it’s completely free…

==> WRITING FOR EASY PROFITS

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>>>>> Featured Article <<<<<
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Why You Must Start Your Ezine Today!

Why is it that 95% of online business owners fail to make any money online?

Because they don’t take any action.

They sit back and take a passive approach to marketing, waiting for their customers to
come to their site and purchase their products.

Smart marketers know that to be successful you have to be aggressive. They build
an opt-in subscriber list so that they can develop an ongoing relationship with their subscribers.

By providing quality information to their list, they turn subscribers into potential customers who, in time, become buyers.

The most effective method of building a huge opt-in email list and providing high quality
information is with an ezine!

An ezine is a newsletter which is emailed to a list of subscribers. It is usually free and
contains various articles and tips on your chosen subject.

Almost all of the top internet marketers have and promote their own ezine.

Just think about that.

Do you think they would continue to produce their own ezines if there wasn’t something in it for them?

Ezines are a virtual goldmine for everyone involved. The writers can create well written, informative articles and email them to 1,000s of opt-in subscribers.

The readers can receive this high quality, actionable information right in their email almost instantly.

But, I’ll be honest with you. Providing original content can be a lot of work.

However, it’s well worth the effort. Not only will it provide your readers with unique content… it will also enable you to build your credibility and gain your readers’ trust by sharing your expertise.

And obviously, you can then archive your ezine issues on your blog - like this one is - and continue to expose your material (and offers) to thousands or even millions of additional people over time.

The key to keeping your opt-in email list subscribers is to provide quality articles that teach or inform your readers about your subject matter.

If you’ve already started your ezine and you’re looking for articles, here are some sites that offer quality, free/kinda free articles on a variety of subjects:

Ezine Articles
One of the biggest article sources on the net.

InfoGoRound
Private Label Rights articles. Write and submit an acceptable article per month and
your membership won’t cost you a thing.

Success Doctor
Famous copywriter Michel Fortin’s site.

You will be absolutely creamed by your competition if you don’t publish an ezine.

Having your own ezine is almost a necessity to succeed online. If you truly want to become successful on the internet, you must publish your own ezine!

You now have virtually no excuse to start your own ezine.

Do you want to be one of the 95%, or would you rather be part of the 5%?…

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>>>>> Effective Marketing Strategies <<<<<
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Finding Highly Motivated Website Traffic

If you’re relatively new to the net and aren’t yet receiving a constant flow of traffic to your website, then you need a method of promoting your products to the world so that you can start to show some profits.

One of the quickest and most cost effective forms of online advertising is placing solo ads in ezines.

Using this method you can instantly drive targeted traffic to your website as opposed to other longer term methods.

If you’re unsure what a solo ad is, it’s an advertisement that promotes a single product by email to a list of ezine subscribers.

It is normally sent to an opt-in subscriber list with no other competing advertisements or promotion contained in the email.

You can purchase solo ads for as little as $10 per issue and if you have an effective ad copy for the appropriate audience, they can often produce astonishing results.

If you select a high quality ezine that has a responsive list, is highly targeted to your product and your ad is personally endorsed by the owner of the ezine, the pulling power of the ad can increase up to 10 times the normal response rate.

There just isn’t anywhere else that you can get this kind of bang for your buck when it comes to spending money on your marketing.

By testing and tracking your ads and expanding into different ezines on a progressive basis you could quickly start reaching thousands of people weekly and earning an income to match.

So which ezines should you place your solo ad in?

Unfortunately, due to the thousands of different markets online there is no easy answer to this question.

However, I will outline the following tips to help you decide which ezine is the best suited to your niche to advertise in from a money and marketing point of view.

First of all let me tell you something that is fairly obvious, yet I see it happen day after day after day.

It is pointless to advertise your product or service in an ezine that is totally unrelated to your product!

For example… you should not place your ad promoting a stockmarket program in an ezine about dog grooming.

Sure you might get some replies. You may even receive an order.

But if you want value for money this is not a good place to advertise. It’s just not targeted to your potential customers!

The best thing to do is to find ezines that focus on a similar niche to that of the products or services you are selling.

If you were promoting a membership site, your potential customers are people who are
either looking for home based opportunities, wanting to start an online business owners
or are existing internet business owners.

So the most obvious place to start is to search for ezines that focus on these niches.

Of course the best place to advertise is where the competition is! If your competition is promoting their products in an ezine, you can bet that it is targeted to their (and your) niche.

So do your homework.

What results should you expect from running a solo ad?

There’s no set figure as to the type of response you should receive with solo ads. It’s just too hard to predict because of other variables that influence your results, such as a poorly written ad, type of products being advertised, timing, email deliverability, etc.

But a general rule of thumb is that if you can get at least 5% of subscribers to click through to your site to view your product, then this is acceptable.

So if an ezine has a list of 10,000 subscribers you should be aiming for a response rate of at least 500 visits to your website.

I have known some marketing campaigns to achieve as high as a 60% response rate.

So if you have crafted good ad copy and marketed to a responsive ezine list you can obtain tremendous results.

A handy tip is to ask the ezine owner for the details of other website owners who have advertised with them. Then you can send them a quick email politely asking them if they were happy with the results of the solo ad they placed with this ezine and whether they would recommend you use them.

Another key factor on the success of your campaign will be determined by how targeted the email list is. In other words, how did the list owner attract their subscribers.

Do they have an opt in email list or did they simply purchase bulk subscribers from a third party?

If most of these people did not ask to be placed on the list, do they really care about reading the ezine when it is sent to them or do they simply hit the delete button when it arrives. These people will never see your ad.

So it is important to find out how different ezines get their subscribers!

Another important factor to consider is how many issues do they send out each week and what content do they provide.

If the ezine owner sends out 5 issues a week and all it contains is ezine advertising you can bet your bottom dollar that very few people will actually read the ezine.

More than likely they delete it as soon as it hits their inbox.

I recommend you actually subscribe to the ezine so you can view the contents and get a feel for the ezine to see if it really does cater to your market.

If you wouldn’t read the ezine yourself, then there’s a good chance your potential customers won’t either.

Whichever ezine you choose to advertise in, it is imperative that you track and monitor your results.

Very rarely do you get it right the first time.

You must continually test and tweak your ad to get the maximum benefit from your advertising dollar.

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>>>>> This Issue’s Writing Tip <<<<<
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This is a new feature I’ve added because of all the poorly written material I’ve seen out there.

Since writing is one the most profitable skills you can develop in your web biz, I hope these tips will be of value to you.

After all, if you write to earn your living, how well you write will determine how people judge you and how profitable your writing will be…

Let’s start this new feature with two tips:

1. There should be two (2) spaces after a period in all written correspondence.

So many people miss this simple rule of writing I felt it needed mentioning.

Of course online, there are exceptions to this rule. The most common exception would be when writing ads.

In those cases, when characters and spaces are limited or counted as part of the fee (as in Adwords, for example), a single space is just fine.

Also, some softwares like Wordpress seem to automatically save space by excluding the second space after a period. Not much you can do about that.

But for overall readability, try to space between sentences according to the age old rule of writing - two spaces.

2. Proper use of “Your” and “You’re”:

“Your” means: Belonging To You
“You’re” means: You Are

A BIG difference between the two, but an error I commonly see - even in multiple sales letters!

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>>>>> Tell Me What You Think <<<<<
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This is your chance to speak out.

Comment on articles I’ve run in the ezine, give me your thoughts on changes or your ad testing results or questions relating to your business, etc.

In other words, just talk to me about what you think I need to do to improve the ezine.

Be sure to include your website address if you have one, because if I use your comments in a future issue, I’ll thank you by posting your address so that you can get additional free traffic to your site!

Simply click on the About Me link and a form will open that you can use to privately contact me.

Of course, if you don’t need privacy, you can also post your comments and questions right here on the blog, right below this issue.

Be sure to include your website address too, because your comment post could very well drive traffic to your site.

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>>>>> That’s a Wrap for this Issue <<<<<
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Be sure to stop by frequently and also consider subscribing to my RSS feed (big orange button) so that you can keep up to date on all the latest happenings.

Especially since email delivery rates continue to decline…

Be well,

Russ Guthrie
Gu3 Virtual Marketing
Publisher, “Conquer The Net” ezine
http://russguthrie.com

Recommend “Conquer The Net” ezine to your friends. Subscription requests should be sent to:

http://russguthrie.com/HelpsYou/ConquerTheNet