Learn Internet Marketing: “What Do I Send My List?”

Learn Internet Marketing: “What Do I Send My List?”: "

I received a question from one of my readers that I’d like to answer today.

Andre Arnett said:

“Hi Melissa, One of the biggest problems I have is when I get people through my squeeze pages setting up emails to send out. Any suggestions on what to send them. I use your Special Report emails but there are only 5 in there so what do I send out after they are used up? Thanks, Andre Arnett.”

This is something that we all struggle with at one time or another, and it’s completely normal to feel like you just don’t have anything to say. With that said, sending an email to your list once or twice a week is really important in order to maintain your relationship with them. Even if it’s just a quick note letting them know what you’re up to.

Think of your subscribers as friends. The more you stay in touch with them, the more your relationship grows. But when contact with your friend slows, or stops altogether then you grow apart and your friend moves on. And sometimes, after an extended period, they no longer welcome your contact because they just don’t know you anymore.

Treat your reader as you would a good friend. In how you write your emails, how often you send them, to the products you recommend to them. Do that, and the whole process becomes easy. This should be you thinking -> “Hey, I just wrote a great blog post. I’ll email my friend about it”.

Now, of course I couldn’t end this blog post without giving you some ideas on what to send your subscribers Andre, so here you go…

Stuff You Can Send Out:

-> Articles: You can put articles inside your email or link to articles on your website. For monetization, your articles can include links to relevant products, bylines can include promotional links and if you send readers to a website to read the article, you can include Adsense ads and other possible monetization.

-> Blog Posts: If you’ve made an interesting or helpful blog post, invite your subscribers to read it, leave commentary and ask questions. I like to send readers to my blog to engage them in discussions that benefit all my readers and to make my subscribers feel like they’re involved. You can monetize blog posts much the same way you do articles.

-> Reports / Ebooks – Not everything has to be for sale. In fact, giving away free and helpful information can be an incredible sales tool. You can include product promos at the beginning of your report/ebook, at the end and definitely in context, where appropriate.

It doesn’t matter if you sell info products, consumer products or are an affiliate marketer, informing and teaching people is an excellent sales tool.

For example, if you sell cameras and camera accessories, you can giveaway a guide on digital photography. You can talk about different camera features, make recommendations for certain types of photography. If your guide includes information on editing, talk about software recommendations. Be sure to recommend printers and paper as well, if applicable.

-> Workbooks/Worksheets – Provide your readers something useful and practical like a workbook. For example, if you provide homeschool lessons, add a practical workbook to boost the value. You could also offer a workbook as a bonus to anyone who purchases a course/information product through your affiliate link. It’s just something relatively easy to make and taking the time can produce great results.

You can promote other products at the beginning of the workbook (as an introduction), in the page footers and at the end of the workbook. In addition, if product links are appropriate with certain sections/questions, put them in.

-> Checklists: Checklists are not only handy for your readers, but they’re something they’ll print out and use frequently if they find them valuable. Make a useful checklist with a product/website promo, so they’ll see it each time they refer to your checklist.

For example, if you sell a environmentally-friendly cleaning supplies, make a household cleaning checklist.

-> Audios / Podcasts: Audios are a great way for your readers to take your info and marketing messages on the go. Many will listen right on their computer, but others will load it to their iPod or even burn it to aCD. Encourage your readers to consume the content in the way they are most comfortable.

Audios and podcasts can be entertaining, informative or a combination of both. The best part is they can be used to recommend/sell a variety of products. Be sure to use memorable URLs as your listeners will have to type them in and give them a downloadable info sheet that includes any URLs mentioned.

-> Live Teleseminars / Webinars: Much like a recorded audio, live telseminars are also very useful. Being live also often makes it easier to build up excitement and get your listeners to take immediate action on an offer. An element of interactivity is also added if you allow listeners to ask questions.

-> Live Streaming or Recorded Video: With increasing broadband speeds, video is much more accessible than it was a few years ago. It’s a great way to add a visual element to what was previously limited to audio. You can use various software programs to get video onto your website or you can use services like YouTube.com to post recorded video or Justin.TV to stream live. You can talk about products in your video, include a watermark on your videos for promotion, etc.

-> Screen Capture Video: A little different than live-action video, screen capture video allows you to demonstrate things on a computer. Whether it’s to show how to use a particular website, some software or demonstrate a membership site, there are many possibilities for screen capture video.

-> Transcripts: Realize that not all your readers will be able to or will want to watch video or listen to audio. You can provide transcripts or notes on the broadcasts to people who prefer to read.

-> Comment on news / blog posts: Instead of completely coming up with your own topics and content, you can piggy-back on what’s going on in the news or on other blogs and share your own viewpoints and commentary. Your readers will appreciate your perspective.

-> Patterns, Flowcharts, Spreadsheets: Provide all kinds of practical tools for your readers. What you provide will depend on your topic and products you’re promoting, but do think outside the box.

I hope that helps!

P.S. If you have a question you would like me to answer, I would love to hear it! Submit Your Question.

"

Have you Ever Thought This about StumbleUpon?

Have you Ever Thought This about StumbleUpon?: "

Have you ever heard or even thought about these statements before?

StumbleUpon.com just doesn’t get me any traffic.

StumbleUpon.com is a waste of time.

I don’t have time to use sites like StumbleUpon.com.

What’s StumbleUpon.com?

Do you have any idea what StumbleUpon.com can do for your online business?

Have you ever heard of “Social Media Marketing”?

I know for many of you these questions may be a bit rhetorical, but you’d be surprised at how many big businesses have NO IDEA what I’m talking about right now.

I’ve been a “Member since Aug 06, 2007“ and StumbleUpon.com (SU) has treated me really well. If an online business isn’t using tools like StumbleUpon.com, now is the time to “get off the bench!”

5 Ways Every Business Should Use StumbleUpon.com

1. SOCIALIZE: Make friends with SU users who aren’t new to the SU scene. One of the reasons this will help you get your “foot in the social media door” is because, chances are, these users have lots of subscribers, lots of connections, and can really help you “push content virally”.
   

   Going Viral is one of the overall goals I see with social media, to get your name out there in as many valid places as possible. Find stumblers who are already discovering articles, websites, and pages related to what you are all about. Don’t just add all the top stumblers – see what they have in their favorites, compare it to what you plan to favorite, and make sure it’s a fairly reasonable “good fit”.



2. Build Business Relationships: How? – stumble blog posts other SU users create, discover their stuff. Send them message via the SU email letting them know you appreciate what they share.
   

   Just beware: If I got a ton of friend requests and messages from newbies, I’d probably just ignore them until they got their feet wet a bit. StumbleUpon has a function which makes it even easier to see how close you “match up” with other Stumblers:
   
   



3. Be an Active Member: This is what SU and all the other “social networks” are all about – activity! Once you add friends with common interests, don’t be afraid to chat with them, send them a message via the SU message box, ask them to Thumb Up and review something, etc.People will say no, you’ll be ignored, and once in a great while one of them will actually do something to help you. This will probably happen more than you expect if you’re persistent and personalize your message.


4. Do Unto Others: Don’t just book mark your own stuff! I know, to most of you this is a “no-brainer” but come on – if you just add your own stuff you will be tagged as a first class SPAMMER! Besides that, the “important” SUers will ignore everything you do and you may get banned from SU.
   

   To avoid this beginners mistake, find stuff you like that’s related to your website and add it to your favorites: become a part of your industries community! If you don’t know where to look, go to the SU search bar in the top right corner of the SU screen and type in one of the keywords that relates to your industry.Don’t be too specific in your keyword search, and you’ll find other sites that will actually provide you with great stuff you can write about for your own blog.



5. Plan to Succeed! “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail!” Yep, that’s right, if you don’t have a social media marketing plan of attack, you’ll waste a lot of time and, just as the complaints at the top of this post say, SU (or any other social media site) won’t do anything for you.

If, after you implement this advice, you are still echoing the same sentiments found at the top of this post, you probably haven’t put each step in to practice fully Happy Stumbling!

The Power of Stumbleupon Links

One of the articles I wrote awhile back was about why to-do lists are essential to entrepreneur success. Because of StumbleUpon, this article CONTINUES to get views and links (written in May of 09).

Entrepreneur Success

How do YOU plan to use StumbleUpon.com in your online marketing strategy?

This is a guest post by Nate Moller. Nate has consulted with thousands of clients from all over the world, helping them build and effectively market their online businesses. He specializes in social media consulting and search engine optimization. Follow him on Twitter (@mollermarketing). Contact him today for a free consultation.

"

Marketing on Squidoo

Marketing on Squidoo: "

Since I have not done much with Squidoo as a marketing tool myself, I asked my friend Jackie to step in and share some Squidoo tips with us… Enjoy! ~Lynn

Jackie Lee is a work at home mom who breaks internet marketing strategies into simple steps so people can overcome overwhelm and take action to move their business to a new level.

3 Simple Ways to Use Squidoo in Your Internet Marketing Strategy

While it can be easy to dismiss Squidoo as an integral part of your promotion strategies, I would caution you to give it a second thought. It is a very flexible and powerful site, and well worth the minimal time it will take to add it to your list of promotion possibilities. There are many ways you can use Squidoo in your promotion strategies, but let’s take a look at three…

1. Affiliate marketing

If you are new to the game of affiliate marketing, a little short on money but long on time, Squidoo is a fantastic place to start. Find a product you’d like to promote, do a little keyword research and get started. You can put a new lens up in less than an hour with the easy to use wizard.

Use your basic on page SEO techniques to optimize your page and then build some links to it. You may be surprised how quickly it will rank in the search engines, and how quickly and easily you can drive traffic and make sales. Once ranked these lenses can continue to bring you traffic and make sales for months, even years to come.

2. Link Building

If you already have a website or blog, Squidoo is a fantastic way to build backlinks from an authority site. Find a keyword that is more informational than promotional and create some content. Within your content create a link back to your blog or website using your targeted keyword. This is a great way to do deep linking and create links to your internal pages.

You can also use the RSS module from within Squidoo. This will show people the last 5 posts from your blog and allow them to click through. While they will not count as links they will help drive traffic back to your site.

3. Creating Authority

It’s always nice to take up the whole first page of Google with your stuff! Squidoo is a fantastic way to do this. Create lenses on topics that will help you build authority in your niche. Here’s a few ideas to help build authority using Squidoo:

• Use it for an FAQ area for your site, answer questions that people ask you frequently.


• Use it to give great content for a specific topic in your niche. The more valuable content you can provide the more you will be seen as an authority in your niche.


• Use it for a services page or an about page


• Use it to tell your story and connect with your readers

Squidoo is great for getting ranked, but it is also a very active community. Not only can you get traffic and build authority using Squidoo in combination with Google, but also from the Squidoo community itself.

If you’ve never built a Squidoo lens I encourage you to give it a try. You can follow my step by step how to squidoo tutorials to get started.

- – - – - – - – - –

Thank you, Jackie!

Have comments or questions about marketing on Squidoo?

Leave a comment below

"

Free Download: 2010 Binder Planning Sheets

Free Download: 2010 Binder Planning Sheets: "

Each year, I plan for my business in advance. And this year, I’ve put together a package of downloadable planning sheets you can use for your own business. Or feel free to take the ideas and adapt them into your own personal planning style. There is no right or wrong on how to plan…but effective planning is always right.

Here’s what you’ll find in this download:

=> Affiliate planning sheets and 5 checklists

=> Article marketing planning sheets, article writing checklists, article directories list

=> Blog post planning sheets

=> Monthly increase goals planning sheet

=> Yearly calendar

Plus, a copy of my 2010 Business Outlook report to help you give your business butt kickin’.

Click here to download your 2010 Binder Planning Sheets (zip folder – 987 KB)

If you want additional help in your business, be sure to check out the Sweetie Saturday Report Club.

"

Top 50 Content Items from 2009

Top 50 Content Items from 2009: "
Website Magazine has had a tremendous year - one full of growth, in both revenue and respect from our community and for that we extend our most gracious thanks.

The sheer amount of content we've developed this year is impressive in both scope and depth - from the website and our print magazine.

We'd like to share with you the...



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