In years past, creating a professional blog design required internet marketers to hire a professional. This was often a costly and laborious endeavor – most good blog designers charge $1000 or more for a unique design. Then, there’s the problem of going through several “drafts” to obtain the look and feel you need to attract readers and keep them coming back.

Today, the process is much easier (and less expensive). There are several premium Wordpress themes you can use to create your blog’s look and feel. These themes are fully customizable, so it takes just a few minutes to build a blog that is different from the thousands of other sites out there.

For the beginning blogger, FlexxThemeis a good choice. The setup is pretty straightforward. Plus, Flexxtheme offers 2056 unique configurations, so you can create a unique design on the fly, even if you have no programming knowledge. It’s easy to add featured posts, affiliate banners, and direct advertising to monetize your site – the theme’s widget-based platform does most of the work for you.   

If you’re primarily interested in affiliate marketing, Affiliate Themeis a good investment. This theme is designed with affiliate marketers in mind, so you can showcase affiliate products without the headaches of coding. These sites aren’t quite as extensive as traditional content blogs, but they’re great for jumpstarting your affiliate marketing efforts.

If you’re willing to put a little more time into your site, Thesis offers the greatest level of customization. You can build a static website with a blog, or put your blog posts front and center. Because Thesis offers so many options, it comes with a bit steeper learning curve… but if you want a truly unique site that fits your vision, this theme will give you all the tools you need.

Each of these themes cost less than $100. In my years of experience, I’ve found that they are more than adequate for creating professional, unique sites that will impress first-time visitors and subscribers alike. And they’ll save you from countless late nights that you would otherwise spend hunkering over a keyboard, trying to figure out how to get your design “just right.”

Lee

Twitter: @JJMbuzz

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Your site has a very short window of opportunity to work its magic – to establish credibility, build interest, and present an indispensable solution to a problem – in less time than it takes to change a light bulb. If all of the elements aren’t there (in the right combination), you will lose sales.

In coming posts, we’ll look at they ways your site can make a great first impression, so you can retain visitors and turn them into paying customers.

First, though, I want you to start with a much simpler exercise. Find a friend, family member, or complete stranger who knows nothing about your business, and show him your website. Even if he can’t specifically tell you what’s wrong, you’ll know by his reaction whether or not you’re hitting the mark. Many times, you’ll get varying degrees of feedback, which can point you in the right direction.

This test is very important to the success of your online business, because as a business owner, you’ve probably spent hours staring at your site. After a while, you develop a sort of “blindness”to what is working and what is not working. Eventually, even the obvious problems seem to disappear… but they’re glaringly apparent to your visitors.

Stay tuned (ahem, subscribe), and in the coming days, we’ll look at some of the ways you can tweak (or completely overhaul) your site to make a stronger first impression.

Lee

Twitter: @JJMbuzz

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For many internet marketers, there comes a point when they must consider outsourcing some of their tasks. Usually, this involves hiring freelancers to handle website creation and design, content, and administrative functions.

Hiring a freelancer involves an element of uncertainty and anxiety – you’ve never met the freelancer before, and he or she knows very little about your business. So it can be difficult to trust a freelancer with your marketing functions. What if it doesn’t work out? What if the freelancer performs below your expectations?

Fortunately, there are several steps you can take to ensure that your outsourcing dollars are well spent. It’s easy to assume that your freelancer should automatically know how to produce exactly what you want – after all, they are professionals. But you wouldn’t just tell a contractor, “Build a deck for my house”, without taking steps to make sure that the end result is consistent with your vision. The same applies to freelancing work.

Freelancers deal with myriad clients, each with their own visions and expectations. While they are professionals, they are also businesspeople, and require the same type of co-creation as a home improvement contractor, landscaper, or any other service professional. 

Here are some tips for getting the most out out of your outsourcing:

• Write clear, detailed explanations. Tell your freelancer how you envision the end product, how it will be used as part of your business building efforts, and how you arrived at your vision. If you can provide examples – flagship content that appears on competing sites, examples of blog or site designs, etc., it will give your freelancer a clearer picture of what you want. The more information you provide, the fewer revisons you will need to ask for.
• Decide what you want before you start contacting freelancers. For a freelancer, few things are more frustrating than taking on a client that only has a vague sense of what he or he wants. If you know you want “great content” to build your online business, but you’re not sure about the structure, style, tone, or keywords you want to see, log out of your email and put pen to paper.  The half-hour you spend refining your objectives will save you countless hours of frustration down the road.
• Don’t just hire the cheapest outsourcing help you can find. Like any other service niche, freelancing has its share of shining stars and scoundrels. It’s worth paying more for proven talent – in the end, it can increase your profits a thousandfold.
• Respect your freelancer’s other commitments. Successful freelancers juggle numerous projects at once… and every one of your freelancer’s other clients want their projects to be completed right away too. Pressing your freelancer to put your project first will result in lackluster performance. Freelancers worth their salt aren’t waiting around for projects – they’re busy carrying a full time workload (or more), so if you want to get the most out of your investment, it’s a good idea to let your freelancer provide a realistic timeframe for the completion of your project.
• Listen to your freelancer’s feedback. Your freelancer has probably done similar past projects, and may well be able to offer valuable insights that will help your business. A good freelancer has to make a living, or course, but he or she is also keenly interested in your success. If your freelancer offers suggestions or other feedback, you’re getting far more value than you’re paying for.
• Stick to your requirements.If a freelancer disregards directions, misses deadlines, or delivers shoddy work, don’t be afraid to look elsewhere. It’s a headache to “train” a new freelancer, but sometimes it is necessary to keep your project rolling along on schedule.

These tips will help ensure that your outsourcing endeavors go smoothly. They will also help you find and retain top freelancing talent that you can use again and again to help you build your business.

Some marketers assume that, because subscribers have opted in, they will be receptive to endless sales pitches. This is one of the most common email marketing mistakes, but it is also one that will quickly erode your credibility. Turning every email into a product pitch will do nothing but drive your “unsubscribe” rate through the roof. What good is spending hours every day building your email list if you’re losing subscribers as fast as you’re gaining new ones?

So what should you offer subscribers via your email messages? Here are a few ideas that will keep your subscribers loyal, while building both trust and profits:

• Update bulletins. If you’ve written a particularly useful article or blog post, let your subscribers know about it. Some internet marketers even send out a weekly update, highlighting the core concepts of each article posted in the previous week. This is great for people who don’t have time to visit your site every day, and want to find relevant content quickly.
• Newsletters. These emails focus on new developments that will be of direct interest to your subscribers. They can also highlight new product offerings, giving you an opportunity to introduce readers to your products without “pitching” them.
• Links to audio/video podcasts. These simple emails boast impressive click-through rates, and they only take a few minutes to write. Just format your content as an audio or video download, and alert your email subscribers. Visitors can download and listen to podcasts at their leisure, so they’re a great tool for staying in front of your audience, whether they’re parked at their PCs or not.
• “Mastermind” tips. Really, these can be called anything – I’ve just adopted the “mastermind” term from working with professionals like Yaro Starak and John Chow. These are bits of semi-exclusive, in-depth information that go beyond what you offer on your website or blog. Because you don’t provide these informational pearls to the general internet-surfing public, subscribers perceive them as being highly valuable – and they learn to look to you as the authority in your niche market.
• Contests. Sure, it seems a bit dastardly to “bribe” your subscribers into loyalty, but the truth is, if you don’t do it… someone else probably will. Promoting the occasional contest, be it for a free t-shirt, the newest web-enabled gadget, or a complementary product or service, will do wonders for building subscriber loyalty.
• Personal insights. Many internet marketers frown on this tactic, but our clients have found that the occasional foray into personal emails builds the relationship side of internet marketing. While this might not produce immediate results, it lays the foundation for long-term business success.

These are just a few of the strategies you can use to increase loyalty, establish yourself as an authority, and increase your business revenues. Use these ideas as a springboard to launch your own unique email marketing campaign, and you will quickly position yourself ahead of 99% of the other marketers in your niche.

It’s easy to assume that, just because you provide an opt in form on your site, visitors will be eager to join your mailing list. Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple. After all, many people receive hundreds of emails every day, and they know that opting in to your list will add even more emails for them to wade through.

So it’s critical that you give visitors an incentive to join. They need to know that they’re going to receive something of value in exchange for giving you their contact information.

Here are some ideas for improving your opt in rate, and building your subscriber list more quickly:

• If you will be emailing a newsletter, let prospective subscribers know what kinds of information the newsletters will contain. If you’re running a site that sells wine making supplies, for example, you could tell visitors that your newsletter will give them tips for better tasting wine, “insider” access to special varietals, discounts on wine making and bottling equipment, and advice from veteran wine makers.
• Offering a free ebook or report is a great way to get people to subscribe to your list. Using the wine making example, you could offer a report such as “30 Days to Better Tasting Wine”, “7 Essential Tips for Choosing a Wine Kit”, or the like. Just make sure that the report or ebook offers valuable, actionable information, or people will likely unsubscribe the first time you send out an email.
• An email mini-course is also an effective offering. With many of the email marketing services, it is easy to write a batch of emails, and then schedule each one to be sent a certain number of days after the visitor subscribes to your list. It’s a lot like writing a report, except you send it to the subscriber in daily installments, instead of placing the information in a PDF file. The advantage of using this technique is that you stay in front of your subscribers – they look forward to receiving each installment of your mini-course.
• If you use a membership service such as Amember, you can offer access to restricted pages on your site. These pages can contain “premium” content that is not available to regular visitors. This content can provide advanced tips, insider information, or other content that visitors perceive as having a high value.
• Offer access to a video series. Typically, the videos will be instructional, showing subscribers how to accomplish a certain task. Internet users love videos, because they offer more in-depth, “hands on” information than articles or blog posts. 

Next time, we’ll look at ways to communicate to your email list members to build trust, gain loyalty, and increase sales.

Lee

Twitter: @JJMbuzz

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Suddenly, the phone rings. It’s your boss, and he wants to call an emergency meeting. You drop everything, grab your laptop, and head off to the meeting… you’ll just have to come back to the site afterward.

When the meeting is over, though, you come back to your desk to find a stack of papers marked “Urgent”. It’s a rush project that a client needs to have finished before the end of the day. You know this client is very demanding, and would have no problem taking her business elsewhere if the deadline isn’t met. So you delve into the project, working feverishly to complete it before 5:00.

During the commute home, you think about the site… you’re pretty sure you remember the address. But when you get home, you remember that your daughter has ballet practice. So it’s back in the car.

A few hours later, you finally have a few minutes of your own… but you can’t remember the website address. You try a few Google searches, to no avail. You might be able to check your browser history in the morning… if there are no emergency meetings waiting for you when you get to the office.

If this has never happened to you, you must have a more tranquil life than most of us. For many people, this is a daily event.

Now, let’s look at the flip side of this scenario. From a marketer’s standpoint, you’ve lost a potential customer. It doesn’t matter how compelling your content is or how great your products are… if a visitor becomes distracted and can’t find your site again, your marketing efforts have been for nothing.

This is why it is critical to build a  mailing list. If a visitor likes your content, he will want to “opt in” to your newsletter, so he can find your site again.

Building a mailing list is accomplished through the use of an “opt in” form. This is a simple script that you place on your site which asks for the visitor’s name and email address (and sometimes other info, such as mailing address and telephone number). Once a visitor enters his contact info, he receives a confirmation email. He must click on a link in the email to indicate that he really does want to receive email from you.

After the visitor has confirmed the subscription, you are free to send emails – newsletters, product reviews, updates, etc. – to keep your visitor thinking about your business. Of course,  you’ll want to include a link to your site in each email, so your subscribers can easily find your site.

There are several companies online that offer email marketing services, such as Aweber, GetResponse, and Vertical Response. These sites make it easy to create opt in forms, manage your lists, and send emails.

Next time, we’ll look at ways to encourage more visitors to subscribe to your email list.

Lee

Twitter: @JJMbuzz

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Although this strategy may generate short term sales, it can make running a business very difficult. The most obvious reason for this is that you will realize smaller profits from each sale, so you will have to sell more products or services to generate a sufficient income.

The less obvious problem with underpricing your products or services, though, is that it creates the perception that what you offer has less value than what your competitors offer. Customers are more likely to take advantage of businesspeople who offer what they perceive as “inferior” products. This means that you’ll likely be dealing with more refunds, “special requests”, and in the case of services, changes in scope.

All of these things add hours of administrative work to your day. Instead of spending your time working on growing your business, you’ll spend that time answering countless emails, listing to customer complaints, and issuing refunds.

I see this all the time in the field of copywriting. Copywriters often attract clients by competing on price. The larger the project, the more willing they are to offer discounted rates.

The result is unsurprising. Clients who buy content based on price are typically not well versed in marketing, so they aren’t quite sure of what they are looking for. Most copywriters would rather not think about the number of clients who completely change the scope and direction of a project after it’s well underway.

Also, the lower the price per page, the more demanding the clients tend to be. Copywriters get video conferencing requests nearly every day, even on weekends, to discuss the progress of a project. And since many copywriters work with clients that are based overseas, the conferences are scheduled during hours that are convenient for the clients, but not for the copywriters. After a few 3AM conferences, it’s pretty easy to feel like you’re being taken advantage of.

By properly pricing their services, instead of trying to compete on competition, copywriters can not only increase their profits dramatically; they can eliminate quite a few of the administrative headaches as well.

To give a more “real world” example… think about how many times you have sat in your car at a McDonalds drive-thru, watching the guy ahead of you argue with the cashier about his order. Maybe he was mad because the price of a Big Mac rocketed from $2.79 to $2.89. Perhaps he was upset because the manager wouldn’t allow burgers to be cooked medium-rare. Or, he could have been angry because he had to pay an additional 69 cents for extra bacon. Whatever the reason, it’s a scene that most of us have witnessed more than once.

Now, think about the last time you saw a similar scene in a five-star restaurant. Chances are, you haven’t. That’s because (among other things) the perception of value is much higher. Expensive restaurants hire gourmet chefs who know their stuff, and there’s little room for argument. You tell the waiter that everything was fantastic, pay the check, and go on about your way.

If you’re currently underpricing your products or services, it’s time to take a step back and look at what your time is really worth.

In a future post, we’ll take a look at premium pricing – a model that can significantly increase both your sales and your profits.

Potential advertisers will look at, in part, the number of daily page views your blog receives. This will determine whether they want to advertise on your blog, and how much they are willing to pay. More page views makes your blog more valuable to advertisers. And the best way to increase page views is to keep visitors engaged, compelling them to read more of your posts and pages.

Here are 5 WordPress plugins that will help you increase your daily page views:

1) Similar Posts

The Similar Posts plugin displays a customized list of related posts at the end of each entry. The plugin automatically chooses posts with similar content; however, you can configure the plugin to factor in tags and titles as well. Before you can use this plugin, you’ll need to install the Post Plugin Library (this plugin doesn’t do anything on its own, but it facilitates the use of several other plugins).

Why it helps: The Similar Posts plugin offers recommendations based on the post a visitor has just read. Readers don’t need to search for related information – this plugin tells them where to go next.

2) Popular Posts

Like the Similar Posts plugin, Popular Posts is designed to help visitors navigate your blog. This plugin calculates which posts have received the most page views, and displays a list of the most frequently visited posts. This plugin also requires the Post Plugin Library plugin.

Why it helps: Visitors want to know why other people like your blog. The Popular Post plugin shows the posts that others find the most interesting… these are the posts that define your blog. This strategy is based on the concept that readers like to be led, rather than spending hours searching for the most valuable content on their own.

3) Most Commented

Like the Popular Posts plugin, the Most Commented plugin automatically uses site statistics to create a module for your sidebar. This module shows the posts that have received the most comments.

Why it helps: Again, new visitors to your blog want to go straight to the information other readers have found the most valuable. This plugin gives visitors a way to quickly access the posts which have generated the most discussion. Because the posts shown in the Most Commented module have raised the interest of your current readers and subscribers, new visitors will want to read them, too. 

4) What Would Seth Godin Do?

This plugin uses cookies to differentiate first-time visitors from repeat visitors. It allows you to create separate welcome messages for new and repeat visitors – these messages can be shown before or after the first post on the front page of your blog.

Why it helps: The new visitor welcome message can be used to point readers to the most important posts on your blog, or to encourage them to subscribe to your RSS feed and/or email newsletter. Getting visitors to subscribe right away increases the chance that they’ll be back to read more of your posts.

Not everyone uses the “return visitor” message feature, but even a simple “Welcome back! Glad to see you again” sort of message can help returning visitors feel special – like they’re part of an “insider’s circle”.

5) Post Teaser

The Post Teaser plugin lets you show only a paragraph or two of each post on the front page, and provides links to the full posts. The teasers can be any length you choose - after a bit of experimenting, I found that 100 word teasers work best for me.

Why it works: This plugin doesn’t need a great deal of explanation - the visitor has to click on the “Read Full Post” link below the teaser to read the full post, so you get at least an extra page view per visitor (assuming the visitor lands on your home page first).

I certainly don’t mean to put off those of you who are using another blogging platform, but since many of my readers have been asking questions about WordPress over on one of my other blogs, Blogger’s Workshop, I thought it was time to provide some nuts-and-bolts info about blogging on this platform.

Lee

Twitter: @JJMbuzz

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Here are 5 quick ways to get traffic to your website or blog without blowing your online advertising budget:

1. Blog commenting. There are quite a few internet marketers who have dismissed this technique as slow and cumbersome, but it remains one of the best ways to get quick traffic. All you need to do is find blogs in related niches, and write meaningful comments. One caution about this technique: “Meaningful” is the key term here. Don’t resort to “trash” comments like, “I agree with what you said. Nice blog!” These comments will almost always get deleted, and will do nothing to build good will with the blog owner. A good rule of thumb: If you can’t add to the discussion, don’t say anything.
2. Forum posting. Again, this is not a “push button” technique. It takes quite a bit of time and effort. However, it be a solid strategy for driving traffic. Find discussion forums related to your niche market, and actively participate in the discussions. You won’t be able to promote your site in your post content, but most forums allow you to place site links in your “signature”, which will appear below every forum post you write.
3. Pay per click ads. I hesitate to include this technique, because I tend to favor the “slow and steady” approach to traffic building. Plus, you can end up spending a ton of money on pay per click ads if you don’t monitor your results. Used correctly, though, pay per click ads can be an effective way to attract quick traffic.
4. Guest posting. This technique involves developing relationships with bloggers in related niches, and offering to write guest posts to help them build blog content. This is a win-win approach, because the blog owner gets “free” content (and can offer your unique insights to his or her readers), and you get high quality links to your site. You’ ll also have the benefit of gaining the attention of the blogger’s entire audience - if you guest on a popular blog, you could quickly see a dramatic increase in traffic.
5. Video marketing. Videos give you the chance to engage potential customers in a way that text cannot. Plus, there are numerous video search engines (most notably, YouTube), where you can upload your videos to attract a large number of visitors.

These ideas are simply ways to jumpstart your site’s traffic flow… in future posts, we’ll look at ways you can build long-term traffic.

Lee

Twitter: @JJMbuzz

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As it turns out, Twitter is also an excellent marketing tool. Businesses ranging from Kansas based iThemes to large corporations like Ford and Morningstar Farms are using Twitter to engage potential customers, build brand loyalty, and increase their demographic reach.

What can you really say in 140 characters?

As it turns out, quite a lot. Savvy business owners know that the way to grow a business today is by engaging customers. Gone are the days when companies could simply rely on talking “at” a customer, rather than “to” him or her. That approach still works to a degree, but it is no longer sufficient for sustained growth and continued business viability.

There are several reasons for this:

• Customers are no longer forced to sit through television advertisements, thanks to the power of digital video recording (DVR). With the push of a button, television viewers can skip through commercial segments, stripping you of the power to reach them… no matter how much money you’ve spent or how clever your ads are.
• Customers today have greater access to information than ever. For example, I recently saw an infomercial for  a new exercise video series. A decade ago, I would been forced to make my purchase decision based on the (rather biased) information presented in the commercial. Today, I just picked up the laptop and began looking for feedback and reviews about the product.
• The sheer array of consumer choices available, both online and offline, means that you’re probably not the only game in town. The companies that work the hardest to engage customers and encourage brand loyalty are the ones that prosper.

Twitter gives you a unique opportunity to approach your customers as people, rather than simply as revenue sources. It also gives you the chance to show the human side of your company, which will do more for attracting and retaining customers than any slick advertising campaign ever could.

For more information about Twitter, including tips for maximizing your use of this powerful media tool, visit my Twitter  Tips post on Blogger’s Workshop.

Lee

Twitter: @JJMbuzz

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