I am as guilty as anyone that may be reading this. Guilty of what you may be asking yourself? Reading any number of my articles/blog posts and you will see that I put a lot of focus on business, business growth, marketing and ultimately generating new leads and prospects. All of those things are very important and key to gaining new customers.

Let me put this another way: Website Design, Blogging, Search Engine Optimization, Facebook, Twitter, Social Media as a whole and having a Marketing Strategy are all VERY important. However, if you forget the very simply and undeniable fact that your customers are people first, you will never have the success you deserve. I am willing to bet that I could ask any number of you reading this article: How much you care about your customers and I would get a resounding series of positive responses.

If that is truly the case, when was the last time that you really listened to your customers?

Every business owner in the world will actually listen to their customers to some extent and least the ones that are still in business. However, the point that I want to drive home today is that really listening to your customers is not as easy as you may think. The reasoning behind that last statement is that if you are really listening to your customers you are going to hear what is being said and what’s not being said. That’s right as business owners we need to hear what they don’t say, which ultimately is more important than what they actually say.

As I stated earlier I am as guilty as the next business owner, because let’s face it good listening skills are hard to come by. One of the biggest challenges with taking time to hear what our customers are saying is that there are times that we are going to hear the things that we don’t want to hear. Human nature is such that we all naturally gravitate toward the pleasant, complementary feedback that we receive, but that negative feedback is a little harder to swallow. Let me ask you this:

If you never receive any negative feedback, how are you ever going to improve on the things that you aren’t doing so well?

The truth of the matter is that while hearing the good things is nice, from the simple fact that you now know what you are doing well. Negative feedback will help us correct the things that we aren’t doing so well. And, ultimately if our customers don’t like the way things are going we need to correct them.

Let’s put this in terms that are more central to my typical writing. If you have a marketing campaign that you are spending good money on that is not generating the results you expected are you going to make a change? Let’s say that you have decided to use Google Pay-per-Click ads to drive more traffic to your site. You have your ads setup and you are getting new traffic to your site on a daily basis, but very little of that traffic is being converted into new business. Do you keep your ads the way they are or do you start making adjustments? Every one of us would be quick to make the required changes to improve the conversion rate associated with our Pay-per-Click ads.

Why would we not take into account what our current customers are thinking?

Monitoring our Analytics for our website and the results we are seeing as related to our Pay-per-Click Google ads is much easier to deal with, because we are dealing with lot of data and statistics. Ah, now switch gears and start thinking about taking the time to truly care about what our current customers, what, need and expect from us. Not so easy, is it?

That little thing called human interaction when it comes to relationships is something that many of us struggle with in all areas of our lives. I have a high level of confidence that there are few business owners that have not heard the cost comparisons of obtaining new customers verses keeping the existing customers, yet way too many of us spend a large portion of our efforts on obtaining new customers. All the while, we are barely if at all taking the time to listen to our current customers to find out what they need.

Ultimately, our customers are people first. They have needs, wants, desires, pains, and that ugly word “expectations”. Take the time to learn the skills required, to improve your relationships, both in business and your personal life and you will go further than you have ever dreamed. Be bold enough to care about what your customers need, what is causing them pain and how you can improve the products and services that you provide. If you are willing to be vulnerable and open yourself and your business to their feedback and criticisms, along with the praise, I can promise that you will not be disappointed.

Find your customers pain and provide the solution that best fits their needs and you will have a customer for life. Take care of your customers as people first and they will be loyal to you, provided you with referrals, more business and ultimately drive down your marketing costs.

In conclusion here are a few ideas that you may want to implement:

*Take the time to thank your customers for their business
*Send them a card to say thanks, wish them a happy birthday, or anniversary
*Take them to lunch and let them know you are trying to improve your business and that you value their input
*Feature some of your best customers in your newsletter, website, etc.
*Give them referrals for their business

These are just a few ideas. Be creative and think of different ways to show your appreciation for your customers. Do you have strategies that have worked for you? If you have other ideas for showing customer appreciation I would love to hear them.

To Your Success!

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Closely related to my last article on search engine optimization, “Search Engine Optimization, Keywords, Meta Tags & the quick fix”, strategies to increase blog traffic is a very popular topic when talking with clients and colleagues.

If you have a blog, have thought about blogging or wondered if blogging is right for you then this is the article for you. With that said, let me set the stage before diving in.

The amount of content that could be written about blogging, driving traffic to your blog and any topic that you may think of related to blogging would fill countless books. Needless to say my goal here is to to cover what I consider some of the most important strategies you will want to consider. If after reading you have some other words of wisdom that you can share I would highly encourage your comments.

Hosting Your Blog
One of the biggest mistakes that I see made on a regular basis is the simple decision with regards to hosting of your blog. Hosting your blog on your own domain with your primary website will search engine rankings, trust, links, publicity and ultimately your business. All too often I see sharp business owners that decide to host their blog on a hosted solution like Blogspot, Blogger, Blog.com or WordPress.com. This is the worst decision that you can make.

While there are a number of blogging software solutions that you can choose from, WordPress is by far my favorite. WordPress is easy to install, has a very well documented system for creating your own custom design, there are countless templates to choose from and WordPress is highly extensible.

Continually Monitor Your Analytics
Visitor tracking software like Google Analytics will tell you which posts your audience likes best, which posts aren’t being viewed and ultimately how your visitors are finding you on the search engines.

Additionally, you will want to know the average number of pages viewed, the time spent on your site, where your best quality visitors are coming from and the list goes on. Google Analytics and all that is provides is worth a lot more space than I have here, so come back soon as I will spend the time to give you the additional information that you will need.

An often overlook strategy is that by watching your analytics you identify posts that get search traffic for keywords that are not necessarily used very effectively in your post, paragraph titles, post title or tags. When these posts are generating large amounts of traffic for these keywords, this presents an opportunity for you to spend a few minutes updating the post to make more effective use of these keywords. Think about it this way: Your post is generating good traffic without having been optimized for these keywords and with a little time spent on search engine optimization you can significantly improve your traffic.

Tag Your Content
Tagging content is very valuable when it comes to moving your site toward getting traffic from big sites like Reddit, Digg & StumbleUpon. While it is not smart  to submit every post that you create to these sites learning how to properly make use of this strategy can be huge when it comes to generating traffic to your site. Technorati is a great place where you can begin tagging posts. There are a large number of people that would recommend having the tags right on your page, pointing to the Technorati searches that you’re targeting. Some of the other sites that you will want to consider are  del.icio.us and Flickr and Blogmarks just to name a few.

Start solving problems
You visitors will become regular readers of your blog when you start providing content that is wanted, needed and highly valued. The majority of your readers are going to be reading your blog to find answers to problems they are having, genuinely search out new information about their chosen profession/hobby, are searching for additional training on a particular subject or pure entertainment. As such avoiding off-topic posts like what your pet cat is up to today, will go a long way towards building repeat traffic and the great part is that it doesn’t take any extra time on your part. Time spent writing is time spent writing, so use your time effectively.

Effective Linking
There are a couple of different topics to cover here with linking. Creating smart and effective links between various posts within you site can create a number of benefits. By linking from some of your less viewed posts, with keywords as anchor text, to your more popular posts you can actually increase your overall site ranking on Google for those keywords. Additionally, you give your readers a reason to spend more time on your site thereby increasing the average time spent on your site by your visitors.

Secondly, when linking out of your blog posts to other sites be sure that you are aware how these links serve to improve the content of your post. You don’t necessarily need to link out from every post that you create. However, I personally tend to be overly generous with especially when I know that there are good quality articles posted by other bloggers that will be of benefit to my readers. By all means if you chose to quote, mention or otherwise make use of other online resources it is considered rude to not provide a link to their work.

In closing remember to host your blog on your primary domain, spend the time required to leverage the information provided by your analytics, make use of effective linking, content tagging and always strive to solve problems for your readers. None of the things that I have mentioned here can be considered the magic bullet that is going to make your site an over night sensation, but used consistently over time your site will pull in large amounts of consistent traffic.

Have some great tips that you use to build traffic on your blog, please take a moment to share by leaving a comment.

Have a question that you need some help with? Please let me know by leaving a comment.

If you like what I have shared here, please take a moment to pass along via your favorite social media site. Your participation is GREATLY appreciated.

To Your Success!

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Inevitably one of the first things that comes up in discussion when talking to a prospect regarding their website, their website traffic (or lack of) and search engine optimization is Meta Tags. Unfortunately, if that is all there was to this daunting task of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) then my guess is that they would not be talking to me.

With major search engines such as Google, their database basically houses every page on the Internet that they know about. Furthermore, considering the fact that every website owner has their own agenda the major search engines like Google can’t simply trust that the Meta Tags of any give site are a objective representation of the content of that site. In short search engines like Google are primarily interested in having pages that are most relevant to any given keyword show up in their search results regardless of who may own that site.

Secondly Search Engine Optimization is not something that ever stops – Never! That is correct if you expect that your site will dive any substantial amount of traffic on a continual basis, then the task of Search Engine Optimization will never cease.  While it is often approached as a quick fix you should approach your search engine optimization as a long-term investment for your site.

Here are some things to consider:

* Make sure your Title tags, Meta Tags, Link anchor text and Alt tags all match with the visible content of the page.

* Ensure that your site is overly graphics based, as graphics cannot be read by the search engines. A common mistake that I see is a website that has been created with graphics that are nothing more than a graphical representation of text.

*Pay close attention to the keyword density of your website and be certain that you use clearly understood language and phrases that will get your website ranked well with the search engines.

* Thoroughly researched keywords and keyword phrases are worth their weight in gold and the key to Search Engine Optimization.

*Monitor your Analytics on an ongoing basis to understand what is working, what’s not working, where your traffic is coming from, how they found your website, your bounce rate, conversion rates and all that tells you if what you are doing is paying off.

* Be patient! More often than not it is going to be a good 9 months before you start seeing substantial traffic from Google’s organic search results.

Think about the simple fact that there are literally thousands upon thousands of new sites added to the internet on a daily basis. On the flip side of that coin there are literally thousands of websites that cease to exist on a daily basis. Then we have to contend with the fact that there is countless amounts of new information added to the internet each day. As a direct result of this activity the search engines like Google are constantly updating their databases and you guessed it: They are ordering that data in searches according to relevance.

The Importance of Keywords
Take a moment to think about the importance of keywords for example. There will always be new keywords and niches for you to find, optimize for and or monetize. Your SEO strategy should focus on and prioritize for the most lucrative target keywords for your website, products and services. However, with an active SEO strategy you will be continually making adjustments in your priorities based on factors such as: response rates, marketing material, prices, product ranges, stock levels and industry changes. With each shift in priority you will need to complete additional keyword research to find appropriate target keywords.

How about those all important Back Links?
First and foremost if you are hung up on link popularity – STOP. Let’s take a novel approach to this subject and think about your target audience and what it is going to take to get them to your site. What we are talking about here is really nothing more than good old fashion marketing – plain and simple. You have a business that you happen to be marketing via the internet and your website. Additionally, we are going to assume that you are better than your competition, but it needs to be marketed and yes that may cost money.

If you have been sold on the idea of simply obtaining back links to your website for the explicit purpose of SEO, then you are approaching the task from the wrong angle. While an effective Search Engine Strategy is going to take some time to work there are a number of things that can be done to drive traffic while your SEO has time to take effect. Today more and more Social Media (blogging, Twitter, Facebook, Forums, etc) websites are playing a more prominent role in driving traffic. However, don’t forget the tried and true methods of newspaper, magazine, TV ads and other forms of advertising that mention your website.

End the end, the more visibility that can be created for your website, the more traffic your site will receive. With the correct planning and traffic being driven from sources where your target market can be found the better the quality of traffic, the lower your bounce rate will be and the higher your conversion rate.

Don’t forget that even PPC ads such as those offered by Google can help, because they put your site in front of people looking for what you offer. The primary objective is to get your website in front of your target market as often as you can, but regardless of how you market your site, don’t expect your website to become an overnight sensation.

A Quick Note on Social Media
There is little doubt that Social media marketing (SMM) on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon and Digg has exploded in the past year. But what exactly is it? And what’s in it for you? How does it work?

Here is an example of what can happen:
Someone making use of a social media discovers your story, likes it and then decide to share with their friends.  This simple act can cause your story and your site to ‘go viral’ and be shared with even more people. This is how sites will quickly receive hundreds of thousands of visitors, countless inbound links and launch a website or new product overnight.  Those inbound links will directly bring your site visits and indirectly help your SEO.

If you are planning to use social media marketing the overall quality of your content is critical, the better your content the more likely the chances of it being passed along.  However, please keep in mind that even the most brilliant content will need a push to get going, the bigger your network on these social media sites the better. You really need your network to help you give your content that initial push, thereby increasing the odds of your content going viral. Please, Please, Please remember that people do not want to be sold to, and that your initial social media marketing should be more of a conversation than the sale.

What has been your experience with Search Engine Optimization?
Having success with Social Media Marketing, take time to share with us what is working for you.

To Your Success!

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For years I knew that networking, more specifically business networking was a much better way to do business, but at best I was inconsistent in leveraging my network of contacts. Sure if you have been in business for any length of time you know that networking is all about leveraging your business and personal connections to bring you a regular supply of new business.

Do you really know and understand just how important word-of-mouth marketing can be for your business? Did you know that word-of-mouth marketing has been known to turn a business around from failure to success overnight?

Simple concept – right? Well like I started out saying: If you have been in business for any length of time you also know that networking to create referrals and ultimately more business is not so simple. Why? One of the most important aspects of the whole process, which is often overlooked, is that it involves relationship building.

The most commonly understood version of Word-of-Mouth marketing, Business Networking and generating Referrals is often associated with being a member of Referral Club, Word-of-Mouth marketing is actually much bigger than that.

And you will be happy to know that you don’t have to take my word for it. According to Wikipedia.org:

“Word-of-mouth marketing, which encompasses a variety of subcategories, including buzz, blog, viral, grassroots, cause influencers and social media marketing, as well as ambassador programs, work with consumer-generated media and more, can be highly valued by product marketers.

Because of the personal nature of the communications between individuals, it is believed that product information communicated in this way has an added layer of credibility. Research points to individuals being more inclined to believe WOMM than more formal forms of promotion methods; the receiver of word-of-mouth referrals tends to believe that the communicator is speaking honestly and is unlikely to have an ulterior motive.”

Wow! So, do I have your attention now?

This is no secret, we hear all the time that word-of-mouth marketing is the best marketing because it comes with credibility, creates customers that stick with you and costs you little to nothing. Any time I tell someone that they scratch their head and get that serious contemplative look and there is no mystery to what they are thinking: “How do I generate word-of-mouth buzz for my business?”

Word-of-mouth marketing can be generated, and very effectively so, but you must do things right in order to make it happen. What if you had a way that you could learn all of the best techniques, strategies and secrets of Word-of-Mouth marketing thereby enabling you to generate a higher quantity and quality of referrals?

Additionally, what if you were learning to leverage the internet, technology and social media to increase your business and the number of referrals that you could pass on to your referrals partners?

Enter The Prospection Network: http://bit.ly/8AQR47

So what is the Prospection Network? The Prospection Network was started by Steve Lawson as a way of making professionals more successful by economically providing the knowledge, tools, and connections to grow their business.

If you are an advisor, salesperson, or entrepreneur, then there is no mystery to the fact that you face a lot of challenges in growing a successful and profitable business.  The Prospection Network addresses those challenges by providing solutions that:

*Generate a non-stop flow of prospects
* Improve the quality of prospects you meet
*Build your credibility
*Differentiate you from your competition
*Provide an Advisory Board that maximizes your success
*Keep you on track performing the tasks that make you most profitable

While I could write a small book about Steve’s success in helping small business owners grow their business I would simply recommend that you take some time to check out the Prospection Network website as everything you could want to know will be found there.

If you are an advisor, salesperson, entrepreneur, or small business owner of any kind I would highly recommend learning all that you can from Steve and the Prospection Network. Check it out: http://bit.ly/8AQR47

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All to often I am talking with small business owners and entrepreneurs that know they need to start leveraging the power of email marketing, but find it to be a daunting task. Many times they already have a large database of contacts in their favorite CRM database and don’t want the hassle of having to import their contacts into a separate database just for the email marketing campaigns.

Well a great solution that I have used and find to be a very powerful and useful tool for managing my email marketing campaigns is Swiftpage. The really unique thing about Swiftpage is that it works with many of the more popular CRM tools allowing you the ability to manage your email marketing right from the comfort of your favorite contact manager. For those of you using Mircrosoft Outlook or ACT you will find it a snap to use.

In short, SwiftPage is a revolutionary email marketing service that allows anyone from a small business owner to an fortune 500 sales, marketing team to work more effectively.

SwiftPage integrates right into ACT! by Sage, Sage CRM, SalesLogix, or Microsoft Outlook so you do not need to import or export your list to the SwiftPage system each time. Send from 1 to 100,000 emails without using your ISP or tying up your own network through SwiftPage’s powerful and reliable servers.

With Swiftpage Email Marketing solutions you can view immediate results with graphical and detailed Open-Click reporting. They also include reports for unopened, opted-out, unsent, duplicate emails.

If you want to get real creative, create a SwiftPage Call List by bringing your open, click and score data back into each contact’s history within ACT! or SalesLogix. Based on a recipient’s level of interest, the most active person is at the top of the list allowing sales to click down through the list, access all of the contact data as necessary allowing increased efficiency and closing rate.

Swiftpage also provides an integrated survey feature with enhanced branding that allows users to create and edit surveys that match your marketing material, include custom HTML backgrounds and your choice of fonts and colors. SalesLogix users can bring survey data into the SalesLogix database for individual contacts and view the survey answers as a whole.

Worried about staying compliant with all of the SPAM regulations that exist. No worries: Swiftpage takes care of the heavy lifting so that you stay compliant with the CAN-SPAM laws and automatic suppression of email addresses that have opted-out (account wide).

What’s the point of spending a lot of time with your email marketing if you can’t brand yourself and/or your company. With the Swiftpage Email Templates being pre-populated into each account you can find a template that is right for you. Already have your own HTML emails, import your own HTML emails then make use of the Mail Merge fields to personalize, share your templates with other users in the account.

For those that have a sales/marketing team that may be using Swiftpage the account reporting compares open and click data across marketing and sales (all users) to give an overall view of a campaign ROI.

Revolutionize Your Marketing Efforts with Swiftpage. Swiftpage’s email marketing solutions give you and your team the tools to create, send and track email blasts to your contacts directly from your CRM database.

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How often is the outcome of your day dictated within the first hour or so of the day’s start?

How often do you let your week’s results get defined with the first day of the week?

How often are the results of your MLM business not what you had envisioned this month?

While I can’t speak for anyone else I can certainly attest to the fact that I have had my days that were a complete waste before the day had even had a chance to get started. My attitude about how the remainder of the day was going to go was set within the first hour of the day. I woke-up late, stubbed my toe, got to my car to discover that I had a flat, got caught in traffic making my late, or any number of other things happened within the first hour causing the remainder of the day to be a spiral out of control.

How about the new associate that you just sponsored into your business that has the ability to really create a huge business? With the promise of great things to come, you begin working with this individual only to discover that things are not going to workout the way you had expected.

If none of these rings true for you – congratulations! You are truly in a very unique group of people that have their act together even in the worst of times. However, this was written for the remainder of us mere mortals that have to work at keeping a GREAT attitude when faced with the challenges that life is sure to throw our way from time to time.

There are more than a few of us that have heard how important a positive attitude is when it comes to winning in life. More times than not someone is more than willing to tell us to simply keep a positive attitude and things will get better. Right! Life that is exactly what I want to hear when I am mad at the world, not happy with the things that life is throwing at me and then there are the poor results that I am experiencing as a result of not being on top of my game.

What we could be doing that would have a tremendous impact on our day, our week and more importantly our life, is keeping in mind that life has a way meeting us exactly the way that we show up in life.

Think about this:

How do you respond when you meet someone that is pissed off at the world, having a serious pity party for themselves or they just have a rotten attitude?

If you are like most people you avoid them like they have the plague. For the unfortunate of us that get trapped by them your kind and tell them that things will get better and then you run for the door. Well maybe not that drastic, but I am willing to bet that you will find that you have some pressing business that you must get back to complete.

Carrying around an optimistic, positive outlook on life has no negative impact on the people that we meet. Your positive attitude has a way of causing everyone and everything to respond to you in a positive way.

How do you want to experience life?

What would you like your MLM business to look like a year from now? Six months from now? One month from now?

Sure anyone at any given time can find an excuse or two to simply be mad at the world. Our attitude and how we meet life is our choice. I can promise you that the choice to hangout in the land of excuses and poor attitudes is not going to serve you well. In essence this choice does nothing more than create an environment whereby we create a series of self limiting beliefs that keep us from creating the success that we are all more than capable of creating in our lives.

There are numerous benefits to keeping a positive attitude:

*Achieving your goals
*Increased Energy
*Increased Happiness
*People gravitate towards you
*Increased motivation for yourself and others
*Fewer challenges in life and business

A positive attitude and the benefits that it brings will lead to increased success in your life and certainly in your MLM business. In short, adopting an “attitude of gratitude” by being thankful for what you currently have in life will create an overall positive change in your whole life. Learn to look at the bright side of life, focus on the positive things that are happening in your MLM business and you will achieve the goals and dreams of your heart. The best part is that it becomes contagious and your entire team will begin to mirror your attitude and success.

To Your Success!

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Considering that I was just writing about the “Affiliate Marketing Mistakes, Misconceptions & Pitfalls” that many affiliate marketers make on an ongoing basis I felt that the information below was quite timely in nature:

——————————————————————————–

News Flash from Dr. Glenn Livingston of RocketClicks:

I got word from several affiliate marketers that Google dropped the hammer today on affiliate review pages.   Many pages went from quality scores of 10 —> 1 overnight.

And these were NOT skinny sites, rather well build out, consistently updated blogs with good navigation above the fold, xml site maps, high click through, hyper-relevant keyword mapping, low bounce rates, long average time on page  … everything else Google loves.

When we analyzed which pages survived, and we take it in combination with other information, it seems pretty clear they’ve added code which screens for affiliate links on the landing pages.

At the moment it seems cloaking and PHP redirects are untouched, … but I can’t imagine these are far behind.  (I’m guessing they’re just avoiding this in order to decrease their server burden … takes some CPU cycles to visit every link on the page and evaluate for affiliate code)

I’d say it’s safe to conclude Google’s on the war path against affiliate review sites, and we should be advising clients towards a different business model… at minimum it seems necessary to avoid placing affiliate links on landing pages, but ideally, I think people need to move towards a deeper list building/relationship building strategy and/or a strong e-commerce model.

Time to stop “building on sand”.

Glenn

——————————————————————————–

As I talked discussed in my article “Affiliate Marketing Mistakes, Misconceptions & Pitfalls” there are a large number of affiliate marketers that take shortcuts in hopes of making big dollars fast. The problem is that while you may be able to get away with it for a short period of time, they are typically experiencing short term success.

Many affiliates do not own the products they are marketing and are simply in the game to make a quick dollar. All too often these affiliates are creating their marketing centered on product review sites. The one saving grace is that most internet surfers are now savvy enough to recognize these sites for what they are. However, there are still a large number of affiliate marketers trying to make the big dollars quickly via shortcuts and no real substance.

As a result, Google is now on a quest to stop the many affiliate marketers on the web that have no substance to their web presence.

The end result is that quality sites with professional affiliate marketers are going to benefit in a big way. If you have taken the time to build your brand, are providing quality (fresh) content to your site visitors and have take the time to build a solid reputation, you are in great shape.

If this statement does not describe your current status, I would highly recommend that you get busy changing that and changing it fast. As I have said time and time again there are no get rich quick schemes. Yes, there is the occasional person that for whatever reason gets catapulted to what seems to be overnight success, but often times there is more to the story than what the general public knows.

What you are more likely to find with anything related to a get rich quick scheme is that you may make good money for a short time only to lose all of your income without notice. I guess if you like roller coaster rides that involve your income that might just be alright, but personally, I like a little bit more stability in my cash flow.

For those who are willing to put in the time, effort and energy required, affiliate marketing has tremendous potential. Keep in mind that Google, along with your site visitors all appreciate and expect good quality content. Build your brand supported by a content rich website, good quality follow up (personal & autoresponders) and you are likely to reap the rewards of substantial passive income for years to come.

For more incredible information for online marketing solutions from Dr. Glenn Livingston I would highly recommend checking out his site:
RocketClicks

If you happen to be looking for an incredible affiliate program checkout what he has to offer:
RocketClicks Affiliate Program

To Your Success!

Be sure to pass this along to anyone you know trying to make it in affiliate marketing.

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If you have spent any time searching the internet, building an online business or a network marketing business you probably have a pretty good idea of the purpose behind a lead capture page. Even if you are new to affiliate marketing or network marketing you probably have at least heard of lead capture pages.

The real questions are:

*Do you currently use lead capture pages?

*Do you know the importance of a lead capture page in building your business?

*Do you know how to properly setup your lead capture pages to be as effective as possible?

As a matter of providing a little background information on lead capture pages let me start with a few of the basics. Lead capture pages are simply one page websites that are designed to point out the important key factors of your product or service, maybe some testimonials on your product or service and then most importantly to move your lead to enter their contact information in the form on your page.  At this point you now have a good quality lead that you will want to follow up with as soon as possible. By taking the time review your lead capture page followed by a demonstrated interest in learning more about what you have to offer makes this person a highly qualified lead.

If you have been in business for yourself for any given amount of time, I am sure that you’ll agree that in order to succeed with any network marketing or MLM business you are going to need a steady supply of fresh targeted leads who are anxious to get started in a home based business opportunity. New to the industry; No problem, but you need to understand that new leads are the life blood of your business. Without them you don’t have a business.

Ask any lead vendor that you can and you will quickly find out that they all know the importance of leads to your business. That little piece of information is exactly why there are a large number of lead vendors and why they charge the prices they do for their leads.

Having a visitor to your lead capture page is great, but they will expect an immediate response once they have filled out your request for information. One of the most important components to your lead capture page is an autoresponder. The importance of having a good autoresponder is that now you have the ability to automatically follow up with someone who has requested information regardless of where you may be at the moment. While there are many autoresponder services available for you to choose from the two that most marketers use are Aweber and GetResponse. Personally I use Aweber for a number of reasons, but the important thing is that you have them available to you.

A few of the important characteristics that you will want to note about your newly generated leads from your lead capture page are:

*Quality – the overall quality of the leads that you generate verses the leads purchased from a lead vendor will be of a much higher quality.

*Cost – the total cost of generating your own leads will be substantially less than the cost of leads purchased from a vendor.

*Responsive – as a general rule leads that you capture yourself are much more responsive to your marketing efforts.

*Real Time – one of the things that lead vendors want to charge large sums of money for are fresh leads. When generating your own leads they are about as real time as you will ever get.

We have already addressed the importance of an autoresponder, but there are a couple of other components required to round out your lead capture page, so that it will be as effective as possible.

Ever heard the term “Content is King”?

Well, when it comes to your lead capture pages this phrase couldn’t be more applicable. However, not only must you have the content available, you must be sure that you are appealing to your target market. Understanding your target marketing, capturing their attention, getting them to understand exactly why they need your products or service and finally moving them to the point of providing you with their contact information is no minor task.

This is where having the ability to write good marketing and sales copy is a must. If you are not gifted with these skills you must either learn them or have access to someone that can provide this service for you.

Next you need to have an incentive that will entice people to fill out your lead capture form. What will be your incentive or bonus for filling out your lead capture form today?

Getting a visitor to your site to understand why they need your product or service and then moving them to the point of actually telling you that they want more information and would like a follow up call/email is the ultimate goal. However, for the largest majority of the people to visit your site, you will need to offer them something of value to fill out your form. And, as you can imagine people expect that they will receive that offer immediately or within a very reasonable amount of time.

About now many of you are looking at this information and agreeing that you need a system for generating leads, but to be honest the task seems to be a bit overwhelming. The GREAT news is that you don’t have to do it all by yourself.

What if I told you that you could accomplish all of the above and a lot more by simply leveraging the use of existing systems?

Would that make this task seem just a little easier to tackle? Well, you are in luck because that is exactly what I have done. While I was blessed to have been able to setup my own systems in years past they were not nearly as effective as I wanted. Imagine my surprise when I found that there was a way in which I could bypass all of the hassles, have a much more effective system in place and generate large numbers of leads daily.

If this is something that you missing in your business and would like more information on how you too can leverage the power of the internet to grow your network marketing or online business through lead capture pages, please feel free to contact me or check out this link to get more information: http://www.mlmbizmadeeasy.com/

To Your Success

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Because affiliate marketing is one of the most effective and quickest ways of earning money online many people assume that affiliate marketing is going to earn them huge sums of money overnight. While it is a fact that affiliate marketing is very profitable, those that have put in the time, energy and worked through the challenges to success actually reap the rewards.

With affiliate marketing programs being so easy to join, implement and paying commissions on a regular basis, more and more people are jumping on board. However, keep in mind that like all businesses, there are pitfalls that can quickly destroy your chances of making a living through online marketing.

There are a few simple facts that you must keep in mind:

First and foremost Affiliate Marketing has to do with promotion, and promotion via the Internet is largely a function of driving traffic to your site. And as you may have guessed by now one of the best ways to drive traffic to your site is a direct result of making the search engines your friend. While there is not nearly enough space here to go into the many layers of search engine optimization every online marketer should have a basic understanding of SEO or be able to outsource that task to a credible vendor.

The second fact is that many people start off wrong by simply picking the wrong affiliate program before they have even started. As you can imagine most people want to start earning money as fast as possible and as such they run out and think that they must partner with the most popular product they find. As I tell people with Network Marketing: Find something that you are passionate about!

If you are promoting a business opportunity or a product online that you are passionate about and have a genuine interest in, there is a much higher probability that you will be able to sell others on the idea.  Choose a product or opportunity that you have little to no real interest in and chances are you have failed before you even get started.

Another common mistake made by marketing affiliates is filling their website with so many advertisements that people are overwhelmed by all the ads, don’t have enough information to make an informed decision on any of the products and end up leaving their site not having purchased anything.

If you are going to have ads on your site regarding an affiliate product be sure to provide decent written content along with those advertisements. It is important for customers to know and understand the features of a product, and good content will be able to help them understand that objective. And just in case you were wondering that it is no mistake that the search engines like content. Hint. Hint.

Closely related to the above issue is that many new affiliates join every affiliate program that they come across. Since affiliate programs are so easy to join, you might be tempted to join every affiliate program that you come across. However, while it is good to be promoting a multiple products in order to build multiple streams of income be sure to make wise choices regarding which programs you join. It is far better to focus on a select few products and put all of your efforts into them.

Now once you have established a good baseline with the products that you are currently marketing, have a nice stream of income showing up regularly you may want to begin the process of searching for the next affiliate program that you may want to add to your growing business.

At the opposite end of the spectrum from time to time I will see affiliates that simply offer a single product. While this is not typically the case, if this describes you, don’t do it. While your customers don’t want to be overwhelmed with products they do want to have choices. By offering a single product your website visitor will feel that they have no choices, nothing to compare against and in many cases will move on to your competitors site where they will have choices.

As an affiliate, your primary focus is to convincingly promote a product or service to your customers. Not having actually used the product or service yourself will make it a bit of a challenge to effectively market a given product or service. I would HIGHLY recommend that you try the product or service personally first before you sign up as an affiliate to see if the product really delivers what is promised. This will give you much more credibility with your customers if you can honestly describe your experiences with a particular product or service.

There are many misconceptions concerning affiliate marketing but with a little homework, some time, energy and the effort required to build a successful business affiliate marketing offers many rewards that could never be achieved through a typical 9 to 5 job.

Overall, affiliates which are doomed to fall in this online business are those that don’t exert enough effort to learn what is involved in achieving true success in the online marketing industry. Having a complete understanding of what it takes to succeed, taking the time to effectively search out the affiliate programs that are a great fit for you and today’s market will pay huge commissions and be sure that you don’t expect success overnight.

To Your Success!

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I am departing from my typical writings to pass along some information from a dear friend of mind that is promoting a very worth cause. While there are a lot more people doing things to help our soldiers and sailors, in my humble opinion I don’t think that we could ever fully pay them back for all they have given us. We have the freedom to live our lives according to our choosing and often we take that for granted.

Please take a moment to read Trish’s letter below.
Thank You and God Bless!

—————————————————————

Good Day Fellow Americans….

I am writing this to you today in hopes that you would be willing to help with a mission that I currently have. It is called “Operation Sunscreen”. During the month of June I am looking for individuals and Business owners who would be like to support our Military troops by purchasing a Special Mary Kay Sunscreen Set valued at $55 (total of $58.85 with tax) to donate to our troops. Each Set includes 2 Sunscreens SpF 30, 2 lip balms with SpF 15 and 1 After sun replenishing gel. Each Set takes care of 2 soldiers. This gives our troops the much needed protection from the sun and provides a way for local business owners and individuals to show their support. It is a great way that we can help PROTECT our troops as they PROTECT us!!

I personally (and along with my Unit) want to make a Big Difference. I am matching what one person donates by purchasing 2 sunscreen sets from Mary Kay. My personal goal to have 110 sets donated. Each individual and Business owner will be provided Fed tax ID # so that you can write off this donation on your taxes. And in addition, each person or business owners who purchases a Sunscreen Set will be entered into a drawing for a FREE set for themselves. Multiple sets get multiple entries. Deadline is June 28th. I can accept personal checks, cash or Visa, Master card or Discover.

Thank you in advance for your donation and for purchasing a set or multiple sets. YOU are helping make “Operation Sunscreen” a huge success. Let’s give something back to the brave men and women of our military!!!

If you would like to help me find even more willing participants to donate and purchase sets, please feel free to do so. All you need is to collect $58.85 per set, their name and phone number. You will receive an extra chance at the drawing for every set that you collect for me as and they get entered as well.

To purchase a set or multiple sets, please email me at trishmeier0329@yahoo.com or call 812-343-0873.

Thank you in advance for helping with this important mission. May God richly Bless your day today and always,

Trish Meier
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1367278284