I hope you don’t mind listening while I admit to this.

As an internet marketer, I’ve worn a lot of hats. I’ve coded. I’ve optimized for search engine traffic. I’ve made sites more usable. I’ve networked and socialized and monitored and analyzed and adjusted and … well, you get the picture. I’ve learned a lot over the years. But not all of that learning has been fun. In fact, some of it has been a royal pain in the patooty.

So today, I decided to confess.

I Hate Dealing With PPC Advertising.

Whew! There, I’ve said it. I’ve gotten that off of my chest and it feels great!

Here’s the thing. I can’t stand running PPC ad campaigns. I can’t tolerate the tedium of the process. People who love PPC would balk at my description of it as tedious. To them, it’s an exciting challenge. To me, it’s a mind-numbing bore, mixed in with a jumble of number crunching that makes me want to scream. I want to throw my laptop through a window when I start looking at the endless reports and numbers and charts and whatever else is thrown into those dashboards. I no more want to analyze how well a thousand ads are doing than I want to swim through a giant pool of hot lava. I really despise the entire process of PPC advertising.

So there you go. I’ve confessed. Don’t hate me for it. Instead, embrace the thought that you don’t have to love every aspect of this thing we call internet marketing. In fact, not only do you not have to love it all, you can choose to let others handle those aspects for you, if those activities are really essential to your success.

I do like being a one-woman business. But I’m not foolish enough to think that I don’t need to call on the help of others from time to time. I don’t have to do it all, and neither do you. I know my limits and I’ll often partner up with those who love doing the things I don’t. What about you? Do you hate some parts of the job you need to do? Do you partner up with anyone who loves what you hate? If not, why not?

Thanks for listening.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2011. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet Marketing
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Want to know my most successful online marketing strategy? The one that has consistently generated more income than anything else I’ve ever tried? No? You don’t want to know? Ok, never mind, then.

Oh, wait, you were saying yes, not no. Well that’s different then. Good because I have the entire strategy outlined for you in a step-by-step post that I’ll link to after you read this.

Just kidding. I’m not going to send you elsewhere or have you download anything. I was just messing with you. So, kidding aside, let’s just get to the meat of this post.

You want to know what my most successful online strategy is. You want to know which strategy has consistently generated more income than any other strategy I’ve ever tried. So come closer and I’ll whisper it to you now.

… Leave them wanting more …

That’s the four simple words that work best for me. Of course, as with anything “simple”, I want to make sure you understand the concept as it is intended. Lots of people could easily misunderstand what I mean by “leave them wanting more”, and do it all wrong, so please bear with me as I explain what I mean when I use those words.

Essentially, every chance you get, give your users every bit of information they “need”, but don’t give them any more than that – at that moment. Allow me to demonstrate by equating your site’s information to that of a restaurant’s food.

When your hungry user arrives, you don’t want to hand a bowl of tasteless dirt to him. You want to give him a nice hot bowl of information soup. You want him to be happy with what you’ve given him.

However, if you satisfy his immediate need with one tasty and satisfying information dish, and then let him know that there’s more he could have that is just as good, or even better, you’ve established the proper hook. You now have a user who likes what you’ve served him, and he has every reason to believe that any other information you serve him will be at least as good if not better. The chances are high that he will want to taste every item you offer to him.

On the other hand, if you give him every dish available, all in the first course, he’ll be completely full, and have no need to engage in your site any longer.

Use This For Every Monetization Method

Allow yourself to imagine using this same strategy no matter what form of monetization you might employ on your site.

Selling Products: If you have various products that you sell, use this method to either upsell customers to more feature-rich products, or use this method to get them to add more items to their cart than they originally intended to do.

Consulting: If you do consulting work, this strategy works very well. You can fully answer one common question that typical clients face, and then list other common problems you’ve helped solve for clients who’ve hired you in the past. Using summary teasers for each problem listed goes a long way. Since you’ve already shown completely and fully how you solved one problem, the teasers for the other problems will be enough to make them wonder what the rest of your solution was.

Affiliate Marketing: If you are an affiliate marketer, use this “wanting more” strategy to fully explain why a product you endorse will help someone who has one particular problem. Then lead him elsewhere to find out what else this product can help with, or guide him towards other similar products that may solve slightly different or bigger issues.

Advertising: If you rely on contextual advertising, such as Adsense, you have slightly less control, unfortunately, since you don’t control which ads will show up on your page. However, you can still use this strategy. Always imply that there is more information that can be learned about the subject. Of course, that’s very likely to be true, since information is virtually endless on any topic. But by purposely bringing this fact to the user’s attention, you’ve implanted the idea in his head that there’s more he should know. Yes, you’ve provided enough quality information to make him happy, but you’ve subtly encouraged him to extend his knowlege. By implanting that suggestion in his mind, he’ll be more inclined to look at the related ads and click through to find additional coverage on the topic.

Obviously, you don’t want to actually encourage him to click on the ads, as that is often against the TOS of the ad network. It’s certainly against the TOS of Google Adsense, so never ever encourage clicks on ads if you are running Adsense.

The key with monetizing via ads is not to tell him what to do, but to just give him the slightest subtle thought that there’s always more great info he could find, if only he didn’t stop here.

Don’t Forget The Bowl Of Dirt / Soup

It’s easy to get this strategy wrong if you forget to give your user a great dish that makes him happy. Yes, you want to leave him wanting more, but you must first make him feel like what he did get was fantastic! You want him to think that the bowl of information you served him was the best he’d ever had. Only then will he truly want to follow your directions (explicit or subtly implied) as he moves on to the next course. If you’ve served him an information bowl of dirt instead of a nice, warm bowl of tasty soup, he’ll simply click on his Back button and be done with you.

If you remember to serve your user well, and THEN leave him wanting more, you’ll have mastered my most successful online strategy.

Good luck! If you’re ever interested in seeing how I can help you succeed in your specific journey, check out my ebusiness coaching site.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet Marketing, online marketing strategy
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Unless I specifically say that a post is “for bloggers”, you can assume it is for anyone who is involved in conducting business online.

I blog, yes. I guess that automatically entitles me to wear the BLOGGER hat, but I wear lots more hats. My biggest hat, let’s call it my sombrero (since they tend to be pretty big hats), is that of ONLINE ENTREPRENEUR. I think that is a nice all-around, all-encompassing title. Some comparable terms might be SOLO ENTREPRENEUR (although that doesn’t imply an online business) or INTERNET MARKETER. When I speak of online business ventures, I often just shorten it and call it EBUSINESS.

I’m pretty sure that of the hundreds of times that I’ve been asked “what do you do”, I’ve never once said, “I’m a blogger”. That’s just not how I think of myself. Blogging is merely one piece of a whole online business pie for me. And frankly, when I think of blogging, I think of WordPress, and when I think of WordPress, I think of CMS, and when I think of CMS, I think of merely a tool used to create content.

I do agree that blogging tends to be more casual than stodgy, and more time-sensitive than evergreen – but that is merely how it is used most frequently. Blogging can be stodgy and it can be evergreen, if one so chooses to make it so.

Why do I feel the need to explain this at all? Because I don’t want anyone to place limitations on me or themselves. My goal in my work is not to be a blogger. My goal is to make a living online. I can make that living in many ways, but the basics are:

• Create good content.
• Monetize that content in some way.

Of course, there are a lot of details left out of that process, but those are the broad aspects. That can be accomplished in many ways, and blogging is only one way.

I don’t limit myself to only achieving my goals with just one method. If just one method works for you, that’s great, but I don’t want to only share information targeted at people who only use that one method. I want to reach anyone who is trying to make a living online, whether they choose to do so via blogging, or anything else. I have nothing against blogging. I love blogging. But I also love all the hats I wear, and the blogger hat isn’t even close to being the biggest of the bunch.

So please don’t read my posts thinking that they are directed only at bloggers. Unless the post says that, then it is probably directed at anyone who uses any method of making a living online.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blogging, ebusiness, Internet Marketing, online entrepreneur
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Affiliate marketing sounds like something that should be relatively easy to do. Sign up for an affiliate program, paste some links and banners around on the Internet, and start earning money. But is it really that easy to learn and to do, and create the multi digit incomes that everyone says you can earn in just a few days?

How to be honest in your customers eyes

Regardless of what you are trying to sell, your customers need to believe what you are telling them and that you are being honest about the product. If you already have a website that is up and running with quite a few subscribers, you need to stay true to the site. For instance, if you are selling pet supplies, and then you start to promote feminine health products, you could lose the trust of many of your customers, especially if they are a male. If you choose to get into some affiliate products that are very different, it is best to create a new blog/website/method of marketing.

Promote benefits, not features

Make sure that you are able to promote the items instead of just advertising them. How likely are you to buy a product that someone comes to you and says, please buy this from me? But if they came up to you and said ‘You know what? I tried this product, and it’s awesome. I can clean my house in half the time, and there are no streaks on my mirrors!’ Chances are you are more likely to buy the product and try it out.

Choose affiliate programs wisely

There are many different affiliate programs out there, so make sure you find a program that works for you. It is likely best to find a company that has been out there for a while and has a good reputation behind it. This way you know you will be paid for your efforts, and that people will be able to get the product that they paid for. It is best to do some research before deciding on a program, as it needs to be something you can promote and support.

Before signing up with an affiliate program, you want to make sure that they pay out and that what they pay is worth your time. A good rule of thumb is to find programs that pay at least a 20% commission level. There may be some times when you choose to join a program that pays less for whatever reason, which is not necessarily bad. Beware that having too many of these will actually lower your earnings. Two tiered affiliates are a great way to go as you earn money from your sales, as well as those made by those below you.

It costs nothing to say thanks

Whenever someone new signs up as a customer or as an affiliate through you, make sure that you send them a personal message thanking them. Help your affiliates learn and as a result, they will make money and you potentially will as well. They could also sign up with other opportunities you have due to the relationship that you have established.

Setting up an affiliate business does not have to be difficult, but it is not the easiest thing to learn how to, as there are many components and steps you need to look into and investigate before making a decision on how to handle them. Affiliate marketing does take some time to learn, but can be a great income resource.

Lena Morrish and Dima Nikolayenko who own Bridge to Success Co can help you establish your residual income business on the Internet. Learn the tools and methods of the trade on their website.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Affiliate marketing, Dima Nikolayenko, Internet Marketing, Lena Morrish
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

I also won’t “out” the guy, because I’ve long been a proponent of not outing anyone’s tactics, unless those tactics were illegal. Since, as far as I know, this guy’s tactic isn’t illegal, I’ll stick by my “no outing” policy. I will, however, tell you just enough about this tactic to hopefully prevent you from falling for it yourself in the future.

If you see an ad that doesn’t clearly spell out exactly who the advertiser is, and you are prompted to subsequently fill out a form or submit an application as a response to that ad, be cautious! You may very well be on the receiving end of a bait and switch lead generation tactic. The ad “implied” one thing, but once you fill out the form, you’ve just voluntarily opted into someone’s mailing list, and you’ll now be guided through a funnel of marketing messages designed to sell you something that has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the ad you responded to in the first place.

I believe this tactic probably doesn’t cross over into illegal territory, because the ad itself is worded in such a way that outright fraud doesn’t come into play. Nevertheless, the intent is to fool people into believing one thing, thus getting them to sign up for marketing messages they didn’t intend to sign up for. It may not be illegal, but it’s just flat out wrong, so be wary when you respond to ads that are vague enough to be questionable.

No company name in the ad that can be checked out and verified as legit? Hmmm….might not be what you think it is.

Does the ad lead you to fill out a form, which might be disguised as an application of some sort, but there’s STILL no verifiable company attached to it? Think twice about filling it out.

Just to note: When I first started watching the video, it seemed like it might have some interesting and useful information to share. It wasn’t until I got quite a bit farther into it (days later, when I finally got around to watching the entire thing) that I realized what type of tactic it was really explaining. Yuck. That’s the best I can say about it. And no, I won’t give too many specifics, because I’d rather not give unethical folks enough information to have them use this tactic themselves.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bait and switch, ethics, Internet Marketing
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Keep in mind when I use the phrase, “customer base”, I am not merely referring to a group of people who have bought product from you. You may not sell products. You may be a blogger who monetizes a site via Adsense, for example. In that case, “customer base” might refer to the blog readers who have subscribed to your RSS feed, or anyone who has actively connected with you in some way. Purchasing products, joining your mailing list, subscribing to your RSS feed, etc. all qualify to fit into the general phrase “customer base”.

Ever been irritated because someone offered a free report, ebook, or whitepaper, only to find out that in order to get it, you had to supply a name and email address? And then, for the rest of your life, and that of all your children’s lives, grandchildren’s lives, and forever after, you received marketing offers via email from the guru who used your email address to help build his list! That guru knew that he stood a much better chance of making a sale to you because you were willing to give him your contact information in return for his freebie.

I hate getting that constant stream of marketing offers as much as you do, but I do understand the importance of marketing to your current customer base. I’ll never be one of those gurus I guess, and I suppose I’ll never show you a photo of me driving a Bugatti (or whatever the latest status symbol car is these days), because I refuse to market as aggressively as those gurus do. Yes, I have a mailing list. Yes, I try to send valuable information to that list once in a while (definitely not often). But I always give way more than I ask in return, because that’s just the way I do things. I don’t want to annoy the people who have kindly signed up to my list; I’d rather help them instead. Still, that doesn’t mean I can’t benefit from an existing customer base without annoying them in the process.

Here are some ideas to help you benefit from your existing customer base without becoming a major annoyance to them. I’ll try not to judge those who choose to market like the big “gurus”, but for those who prefer a less aggressive method, read on.

If you sell and ship products, include a little paper insert with each shipment. If you don’t ship products, include a “digital insert”, or simply a special marketing message, with whatever form of communication you have with your customer base. From here on out, any time I refer to an “insert”, you substitute either “paper” or “digital” in front of the word, depending upon your situation.

This insert doesn’t have to be fancy. Just a simple message printed right onto your normal inkjet printer paper works well, or a clearly marked message in an email is fine. Do include product pictures on this insert, however, as a picture is worth 1000 words, as they say.

What do you include on these inserts? Here are 5 creative ways you can market to your existing customer/user base without annoying them – all within a simple insert.

1) The Special Deal Just For Valued Customers/Users

Let your customers know that because they are valued customers, they can get special deals that aren’t offered to anyone else. Include links to special, SECRET, product pages on your site that only current customers know about. These special product pages might be specially-priced products, or might be specially-bundled groups of products. The point is that these pages aren’t shown to just anyone. Only your valued current customers know about them. And only they get the special price on those pages, or the special bundled group of products at a savings. Use your imagination when thinking about what YOU can offer THEM that will mean increased sales for YOU and special deals for THEM.

2) The Helpful Tip and Related Offer

Don’t just market to your customer base on these inserts. Offer tips and information as well. If you’ve sold them a product, you may want to include usage tips or ideas for creatively using the product. Whatever types of tips you include (whether they are geared towards a purchased product or not), be sure to include a special deal on a product (see #1 above) that would complement the tip in some way. If the tip is about using a purchased product in some way, then a special deal might be offered on an accessory product that would complement the main product (like the old idea of selling razor blades for razors). If you don’t sell products, but do promote affiliate products, then a tip on how to do something your customer base is interested in, followed by a marketing message about a related affiliate product would make sense.

3) Ask For A Favor

Don’t be shy. Ask for something from your customer base. Ask for a testimonial – either of your products, your services, or just your blog posts. Ask for a link! Ask for word-of-mouth recommendations. Ask your customer base to share your site with their social networks, by tweeting about it, or linking to it on Facebook. All of these kinds of things can easily be placed into an insert, without you having to put anyone on the spot. You’ve asked. They can take action or not, without anyone feeling pressured to do so. While you may not get a large response, ANY response is better than none – which is what you’ll likely get if you don’t ask!

4) Trade Favors

Ask for one thing in return for giving another. This is one of my favorites. A friend of mine often says, “You wouldn’t believe what some peoople will do for a free t-shirt”. And she’s absolutely right. Everyone loves to get a freebie, so give one away in return for your customers giving something of value to you. What kind of value can they give you? Here’s where you get to be creative. I’ll offer a possible suggestion, but you should take this as an idea-starter and come up with your own ideas geared towards your needs.

Ask your customer base to create a video that is relevant to your site in some way, and in return, you’ll give them a freebie (t-shirt, product, etc). If you sell widgets, then ask your customers to create a video showing how easy/fun it is to use your widget, or how they use your widget in a non-traditional, creative way. If you blog about climbing widgets, or cooking widgets, or making widgets, ask your customer base to create videos that show them climbing widgets, cooking widgets, or making widgets. The point is to get user-generated content that is difficult for you to always create. Let your users take the time to create videos, and you will have awesome content to share, and possibly convert lots more sales because you’re showing actual customers enjoying the product! Again, these are just generic ideas, but if you can get customers to create videos for your site, you’ll reap the benefits in many ways – which may include better search engine rankings (Google loves video) and more conversions on your site.

5) Point Out Important Sections Of Your Site

Finally, it’s always a good idea to include a link or two to some important sections of your site on your inserts, that your users might not be aware of. This might be a link to your FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page, or a link to your community forum, etc. The key here is to keep the user engaged with your site, either by answering questions she may have, or by involving her in portions of the site she may not have noticed before. If you can remind users to return to your site for reasons beyond the purchasing act, you have a chance of converting them again when they do.

Summary

The key is to not make a nuisance of yourself. These “inserts” are only included as part of another correspondence that isn’t annoying. If you ship products, including a slip of paper with this kind of information on it isn’t annoying. The customer is happy to receive her order, and won’t mind the little insert in the box. If you send out informative newsletters, the user won’t mind a marketing message inserted at the bottom of the email, because you’ve just supplied her with engaging, interesting content that she asked for previously. Aggressive marketing gurus believe the marketing IS the message. That’s not the Insert way at all. With inserts, the product or the useful information is the message – the insert is merely supplemental, and therefore much less annoying.

I may never get the nearly $2,000,000 Bugatti shown below with the “insert” method, but I won’t be despised as a slick marketing “guru” either. That’s the way I prefer to do business.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet Marketing, List Building, Marketing
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The Two Most Important Content Marketing Success Factors

Brands think that content marketing is about the clever usage of text, video and other channels to attract prospects to you. It has to be about something more than this. It has to be about solving your customers’ pain points

>> Follow Joe Pulizzi

Marketing Content Must Reach Beyond Two-Way Dialogue – Marketing Interactions

Your ideas and expertise can be shared by your prospects with their buying committees if your content is designed to inspire conversations.

>> Follow Ardath Albee

SXSW Live Blogging Tips for Content Marketing – Online Marketing Blog

A big part of my “mission” for SXSXi is to create content after all. I have several other goals like networking (reconnecting and especially new contacts), competitive research, recruiting and potential client prospecting. But content marketing is our bread and butter. It can be an effective tactic for you too, especially if you can learn to be highly efficient at liveblogging conferences.

>> Follow Lee Odden

I plan to delve more into this subject over the next few months. It’s a subject I feel strongly about, so it’s worth spending extra time on it. And as always, when I come across good advice from other smart people ’round the web, I’ll be sure to pass their words along to you as well. For now, I’ll just leave you with this simple message.

Create Great Content, Then Market It!

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ardath Albee, Content marketing, Internet Marketing, Joe Pulizzi, Lee Odden
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Good Content = opportunties to:

1. rank in search engines
2. draw links from other sites
3. convert

More Good Content = More opportunties to do the above

Good Content = Hard work

More Good Content = More hard work

Based on those assumptions, many site owners decide to take shortcuts to increase the content on their site, without putting hard work into the process. Some of those shortcuts might work, especially if it simply involves outsourcing the work. In such a case, the hard work is still being performed, but it’s just been allocated to someone else. Outsourcing is a great idea, if the site owner can afford it, but that is not always the case for startup entrepreneurs working on a tight budget. When outsourcing isn’t an option, the shortcuts often involved cutting out the hard work completely from the process, and that’s usually when problems arise.

In most cases, removing “Hard work” completely from the equation turns this:

Good Content = Hard work

into this:

Lousy Content = Shortcuts

which results in this:

Lousy Content = opportunities to:

1. lose rankings in search engines
2. never obtain links from other sites
3. never convert

That’s not at all desirable, so now our site owner has to find a middle ground that will reduce the amount of hard work required to produce content, without hurting the quality of the content itself. Ask 100 successful site owners how they accomplish that, and you’ll probably get at least 50 different answers. Most will utilize several methods. Today’s post will focus on one of my favorite ways of coming up with new content without working harder than necessary.

PLR Content – Modify and Improve

PLR content is any content that is created and sold to multiple people, allowing each buyer to claim the content as her own, with the right to modify the content as she wishes. (PLR stands for Private Label Rights)

Don’t Do This With PLR Content

Some people will purchase PLR content and place it verbatim on their site. That’s definitely not the way to use PLR content, as that will produce the Lousy Content equation above. Why? Because many people are purchasing this content, and many of those people are placing that same content, verbatim, on their sites. Search engines don’t want to rank your tired, used-up, already done content, so don’t even bother trying. In addition, PLR content is often poorly written, which reflects badly upon you, and is unlikely to attract links from other sites, or convert well for you.

How To Turn PLR Content Into Good Content

1. Purchase the best quality content you can find. All PLR content is affordable; some is even free; all are easy to find just by doing a simple search like this one [plr content]. I’ve yet to find any that aren’t cheap enough for even the most modest of budgets, so cost really shouldn’t be much of a factor here. The goal then, is to focus on quality. You may be able to see samples for free, or you may have to spend a couple of dollars to buy a sample, but you should be able to test quality fairly quickly and without much cost. Once you find a good quality source, bookmark it. You’ll want to come back to it often.

   One of my favorite sources is EasyPLR*. The content is well-written, so I can focus on modifying it to suit my style, rather than modifying it to “fix the problems”.

2. If the content you purchase is a “pack” that consists of multiple pieces of content, read them all and then divide them up into three groups. Place the best content in a folder named “Use”; place the “ok” content in a folder named “Inspiration”, and delete the completely useless, lousy content.
3. The good content in the “Use” folder will be the content that you’ll modify and improve. My favorite way to turn PLR content into really good content for my sites is to illustrate it. Here’s an example. Let’s say you’ve found a decent “how to” article that focuses on how to accomplish some task in your niche. Your goal is to carry out that how-to’s instructions, documenting the steps you take along the way, either by taking screenshots, photos, or video of the process. Once you’ve followed the how-to steps, and have media to document each step, you can turn that good PLR content into an outstanding media-filled article for your site. Of course, the text itself should be re-written in your own style, and while this entire process does require work, it isn’t nearly as hard as starting from scratch. Rewriting text is relatively easy in comparison.
4. The “ok” content in the “Inspiration” folder will be used strictly as a source of inspiration whenever you have writer’s block. These articles might be poorly written or even boring, but they may have awesome titles, or just great concepts to jumpstart your thoughts. Sometimes, the content just needs to be fleshed out and expanded upon.
5. Use content from either folder to create Top 10 lists or “Best Of” lists. Cherry-pick the best sentences from different articles, and compile those into one list-type article, rewriting the sentences so they flow well together.

Of course, you may find lots of other uses for PLR content, but the gist of this is that you’ll be taking some shortcuts without sacrificing quality. You’ll save time and money, but you’ll still end up with this equation:

Good Content = opportunties to:

1. rank in search engines
2. draw links from other sites
3. convert

Bottom line: Be smart. Use quality PLR content* and use it wisely. Let it create shortcuts for your content creation process, but don’t take the lazy path. Modify it and improve upon it. You’ll reduce the hard work, but you’ll still end up with good content.

*

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2009. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet Marketing, Private label rights
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What is the SEO Dojo? It is a closed door, gated community which gives search professionals and those wanting to learn more about search engines a safe haven to study and collaborate.

There’s some serious educational material within the walls of the community (really, I kid you not, there’s lots of stuff there to fill your mind with). And of course, there’s a strong community of Seriously Obsessed Search Geeks (SOSG) discussing search issues.

The SEO Dojo is ideal for:

• Individuals who want to increase their SEO knowledge
• Professional SEOs looking for a quality community
• Webmasters and site owners seeking advice from top professionals
• Finding cross-site (and vertical) promotions and opportunities
• SEOs who want to learn more about how search engines work
• Anyone that needs to learn MORE about the world of search marketing
• Search geeks looking to interact with other SEO addicts

I recommend reading more about it here. It not only outlines more about the community itself, but it also tells you about all the extras you get – including free access to awesome tools (like Raven SEO tools, for example, plus tons more).

Another cool thing is that I’ve been given a special code that you can use to get 25% off of the price of membership (which is already reasonable) for the first 25 DD readers who choose to use it. Dave (the dojo leader) assigned my code to be “DonnaRocks”, so just use that coupon code to get your 25% discount. (Dave likes to embarrass me, I think).

If you are at all interested in search marketing, you should check it out. Dave’s done a bangup job of making a great community.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet Marketing, Search engine marketing, Search engine optimization, search engines, search marketing, search professionals, SEOs
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I actually started looking at this one a couple of weeks ago, but I had to make an emergency out of town trip last week, so I’m only just now getting around to telling you about it. Sorry about that. So, what is this product?

This is Lance Jepsen’s ebook, Internet Marketing: Profits That Lie Hidden In Your Website – How To Triple Your Web Sales In 25 Days, plus several bonuses that are pretty nice addons (we’ll get to those in a bit).* Why do I like this particular ebook out of all the ones I’ve read and rejected? Lance includes specific examples that really help to explain each day’s lesson. This book really brings together a lot of general marketing principles and then shows how to apply them to your web site to increase your profits. Most of us haven’t had formal marketing training, nor have we been exposed to the psychological and emotional reasons for people’s purchasing decisions. Much of that training has been condensed nicely in this 180 page ebook, so that by the time you get to day 25 of this plan, you have a much better idea of how to wring the most juice (profits) from your existing web site.

Unlike many ebooks, this one isn’t just a bunch of hype that leads you to wanting more (and buying more). It gives down and dirty information and when you’re done reading it, you’ve had a wealth of education, and I’ll bet quite a few mind-blowing A-HA moments. (I know I had a few of them!)

Ok, so, I really like the ebook. But I also liked the bonuses, especially the learning exercises. There’s no better way to really learn something, than to be tested on it! And self-tests that don’t have someone grading you are even better. That’s when it’s all about learning – without the stress! I also liked the landing page templates, and well, I’ll let you take a look at the rest on your own. I don’t want to overhype anything either. This is just a straightforward review. Bottom line: It’s a good ebook with information that will really help you learn some online marketing techniques that can wring more money out of your sites – along with some nice bonuses to go along with it. Check it out and see what you think. Internet Marketing: Profits That Lie Hidden In Your Website – How To Triple Your Web Sales In 25 Days

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© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: general marketing principles, Internet Marketing, Lance Jepsen, online marketing techniques, them to your web site, Web Sales, Web Sales In
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.