StomperNet’s new SEO competitive intelligence tool, “Stomper Site Seer” is going to be released THIS FRIDAY, May 16.
And it will cost you NOTHING.
That’s right. You will be able to submit *your* site and get a complete StomperNet diagnostic report! It’s as if you had their entire faculty of seasoned, hands-on SEO and internet marketing experts looking right over your shoulder.
Get a sneak peek demonstration of this groundbreaking tool narrated by StomperNet faculty Jerry West and Howie Schwartz.
Not only do they reveal how this helpful little robot can put you on the path to profit and success - they’ll ALSO tell you how to avoid the worst SEO accidents that would keep your site out of the Search Engine Results *you* want.
Listen, if you think it’s all hype, just go check out the page and read the comments from folks who have already watched.
There’s nothing to lose, and they aren’t asking anything at all from you.
Watch the preview, and if you like what you see, subscribe on that page to get the early-bird notice tomorrow when “Site Seer” comes online.
That’s it! I know you’ll love it!
Deborah
P.S. My sources are saying there will be delays in getting all the analysis reports processed if they are bombarded tomorrow. I have a feeling they WILL be. If you want to be FIRST IN LINE to get started on fixing up your site for SEO domination… Opt-in right away. It’s first come, first served. Don’t hesitate.
One of the things I love best about the work that I do is trying to find the right service for each client. Each client presents a unique set of criteria and needs and I’m at my best when I can look at their business and ensure that we customize their online business plan to work for their business.
This week, I had the pleasure of working with two different services - one that I had used long ago and one that was completely new to me - in order to be able to answer the question “Can you recommend a free autoresponder service?” and “Can you recommend some options to the listbaby service?“
Let’s get crackin’ :
Get Response: GetResponse is among the first autoresponder services I used. In fact, my experience with setting up campaigns and understanding how autoresponders work is a direct result of having used the system back in 2004.
Not much has changed in that time other than the interface and the addition of HTML templates for you to choose from. Seems everyone wanted to capture a piece of the Constant Contact pie and they quickly built the functionality into their services.
Like many other autoresponder services, they track metrics now too. Yet unlike most other services (only one other that I know of offers the same feature) they allow you to attach files to your autoresponder messages. I’m of mixed feelings on this - while it does make it easy for you to deliver PDF files like your eBooks and other attachments, I believe they have a greater chance of being caught by spam filters or being directed to your junk mail folders. But it is a feature in the Get Response service and can be an interesting way for you to delliver your digitial content without having to go the route of a full-fledged shopping cart.
A new service is their Free Autoresponder account, which is the service I implemented last week for a client who had no money to dedicate to their email marketing.
As with other free services there are limitations, this time in the number of campaigns you can set up and the number of automated messages you can include. A campaign is basically a segment of your mailing list or a different autoresponder sequence. Let’s say you wanted to build a list of subscribers for your ezine and also wanted to build a list of people who have purchased one of your products or services. That would require you to set up two campaigns in Get Response. One for your ezine opt-in and one for your sales to clients.
With the free service, you can only set up one campaign. You would need to upgrade to their paid services but if you only need one mailing list then Get Response is a good option because they do not limit the size of your mailing list.
The only drawback to the free service is that they do limit your broadcast capabilities. You cannot send a mailing to your list other than the five autoresponder messages that are attached to your campaign. So if you’re hoping to send a weekly newsletter, GetResponse is not the option for you. If you’re just hoping to build a mailing list by having people opt-in to receive a special report, then GetResponse is a good fit for you. To see it in action, visit http://www.cartsmartbookkeeping.com.
Good fit for:
start up entrepreneurs with no email marketing budget
email marketers who do not want to send a weekly newsletter or broadcast
marketers wanting to quickly build a mailing list by tracking opt-ins to a special report or audio file.
Groupie Corral: First a disclaimer: I only just discovered this service yesterday and have not done much with it other than poke around inside their free account and read the marketing materials on the website. Special thanks to James at http://www.jamesjones.ca/ for turning me on to the service. The interface is cute - lots of pretty buttons that should appeal to the artistic types. Even if you’re not artsy, this could be a great service for you because their prices seem extremely reasonable. You can add your own custom header at the top of your mailing and play around with the fonts and colors which will give you a bit of freedom to match the look and feel of your other marketing materials.
It seems fairly intuitive and you can quickly add articles to your ezine but if you’re looking for WYSIWYG functionality, then you need to opt for something like Constant Contact or GetResponse.
Their lowest cost service is a bargoon at $54 / year which is great for artists or business owners with small bugets. It limits you to 1500 emails monthly which is more than enough for starter entreprenuers and you’re limited to one campaign (called list in this service). What I like about it as compared to GetResponse is that their free service allows you to send broadcasts but you’re not able to create autoresponder messages so it’s comparable to Constant Contact in that respect.
Constant Contact has greater functionality, better template choices and as I learned this week more commitment to ensuring that they toe the line when it comes to CAN-SPAM compliance and blacklist monitoring issues. But if you’re a musician, their Local Hero package can’t be beat!
Good fit for:
start up entrepreneurs and musicians with small email marketing budget
email marketers who have less than 1500 readers and do not require autoresponder capabilities
someone with HTML coding skills if you want to send an HTML newsletter
Coming next week: We’ll discover one of the most popular autoresponder services used by many successful online entrepreneurs.
Get It Now!: The Ultimate Step-by-Step Internet Business Builder
Interactive web business builder walks you through ever step of getting a succcessful website online - and gives you all the tools to make it happen!
You’ll get:
an easy-to-use niche finder
a “fill-in-the-blanks”wizard-supported salesletter writer that’ll help you write winning copy
a simple “point-and-click” website builder that will help you create your own unique, professional looking website
a fully-integrated payment system to accept online payments
full domain registration and hosting services - so you don’t have to waste time trying to find these services
I’ve been evaluating the service for a few weeks now and it gets my highest recommendation. If you’re stuck on the technical aspects of getting your business online, BeBiz is the solution for you!
Special launch promotion:Savings of $50 available NOW! Click here now.
WANT TO ADD THESE ARTICLES IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this blurb with it: Deborah Carraro is a succcessful online entrepreneur who got her start in the Inner Circle of many of the top Online Entrepreneurs today and is now sharing their business blueprints & online secrets with you. You can get a free subscription to her “Partner for Profits ” ezine by visiting www.myvirtualpartner.com
Okay - I’ve been buried in a mountain of work lately and have JUST found out about this amazing series of videos on Social Marketing.
Watch how you can drive more traffic, get better search rankings and improve your conversion in just minutes. I’ve just downloaded the guide and am clearing some time this afternoon to watch the videos.
Mark Joyner is running a rather controversial experiment that has already sent the marketing experts into a tizzy.
You’ve probably heard of his book “The Irresistible Offer” - it’s what some call “one of the top 5 marketing books ever written” and has been one of the best-selling marketing books of the last 3 years week after week.
Mark thinks that by giving it away in ebook form he is actually going to boost sales of the book:
Only time will tell, but he makes some really good arguments - even if they seem to fly in the face of what many people have been saying over the last few years about the relationship between digital downloads and print media.
I’ll be watching this one closely, and so should you.
Meanwhile, you should also definitely grab the download.
Dr. Joe Vitale said that the book is “the first breakthrough in over 50 years” and it seems the entire pantheon of marketing gods are in agreement.
It’s a deceptively simple read, but well, that’s what Mark is famous for
One of the questions that is often on the minds of online entrepreneurs is “What are the best services for my online business?”
I’m regularly asked for my input and my recommendation to one client is inevitably different from another. It would be easy to recommend only one service but I tend to shy away from blanket solutions and prefer to consider the unique needs of each client and their specific business.
As a result, I’ve been exposed to several different autoresponder / shopping cart services and can help you choose the right one for you.
If you’re just starting your online business, chances are that you have little to no funds to allocate to your email marketing initiatives. While you may be tempted to skip this all together and focus on other aspects of building your business, the truth is that you need to start building your mailing list from DAY 1 of your online business.
There are several low budget (or no budget) options but my experience has been that the services listed below are by far the best. Let’s review them together:
Ezine Director: One of my first clients was looking for a cost-effective solution to start launch her newsletter. Her budget: $0.00. As she had no mailing list at all, Ezine Director was the perfect solution for her. It allowed us to set up free account which had many of the same features as the paid service but limited the number of active subscriptions to 249 subscribers.
I was able to design an HTML template to use with the service and incorporating the sign-up form into her website was extremely easy. What I like best about the service is that it offers many of the tracking features that are commonly unavailable with free accounts. I’m sure you’ve heard me mention before that metrics are key to your ability to improve services and offerings so having the tracking stats available helped us quickly grow our subscriber base.
Good fit for:
start up entrepreneurs with no email marketing budget
email marketers who have less than 249 readers
someone with HTML coding skills if you want to send an HTML newsletter
Constant Contact:Constant Contact: Another option if you have no budget for email marketing services is Constant Contact. They have a 60-day trial but they limit your trial account size to 100 subscribers. Once the trial is over, the pricing is more expensive than Ezine Director but they offer a few features that the former does not offer.
New to the service is a survey feature which is a separate charge from the email marketing service but that’s not what makes them stand apart from Ezine Director.
Constant Contact is one of the first services that offered built-in newsletter templates. You didn’t need to have a special template designed or have any special knowledge of HTML coding. You simply selected a template and started typing. Quite a few of my clients used (and still use) Constant Contact simply for the ease of use in sending out a newsletter.
The metrics are comparable if not better than Ezine Director so it will allow you to track valuable information that will help you grow your business.
If you’re on a limited budget, however, this service is appealing because it can be mastered by even the most non-technical entrepreneur - so there’s no need to hire someone to manage your newsletter requirements.
The only drawback to the service (and I’ll add a disclaimer here to state that it’s been about four years since I last used the service and things may have changed in the interim) is that it’s notorious for being blacklisted. I had one client who could not even receive her own newsletter because it was blacklisted by her ISP! Recent changes in Can-Spam legislation hopefully helped Constant Contact resolve many of their listing issues but again, I cannot be certain as it has admittedly been several years since I’ve used the service.
Good fit for:
start up entrepreneurs with no email marketing budget
email marketers who have less than 100 readers
marketers wanting to keep their newsletter production in-house rather than outsourcing to a virtual assistant
Coming next week: We’ll discover one of the most popular autoresponder services used by many successful online entrepreneurs.
Get It Now!: The Ultimate Step-by-Step Internet Business Builder
Interactive web business builder walks you through ever step of getting a succcessful website online - and gives you all the tools to make it happen!
You’ll get:
an easy-to-use niche finder
a “fill-in-the-blanks”wizard-supported salesletter writer that’ll help you write winning copy
a simple “point-and-click” website builder that will help you create your own unique, professional looking website
a fully-integrated payment system to accept online payments
full domain registration and hosting services - so you don’t have to waste time trying to find these services
I’ve been evaluating the service for a few weeks now and it gets my highest recommendation. If you’re stuck on the technical aspects of getting your business online, BeBiz is the solution for you!
Special launch promotion:Savings of $50 available NOW! Click here now.
WANT TO ADD THESE ARTICLES IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this blurb with it: Deborah Carraro is a succcessful online entrepreneur who got her start in the Inner Circle of many of the top Online Entrepreneurs today and is now sharing their business blueprints & online secrets with you. You can get a free subscription to her “Partner for Profits ” ezine by visiting www.myvirtualpartner.com
The Irresistible Offer is an identity-building offer central to a product, service, or company where the believable return on investment is communicated so clearly and efficiently that it’s immediately apparent you’d have to be a fool to pass it up.
It’s from Mark Joyner’s book “The Irresistible Offer.” I review it periodically when I’m looking for the right words to help me impart the importance of starting your sales copy by first crafting your offer. In fact, you could even go so far as creating the offer before you start developing your product.
One of the recent product launches I did for a client started this way. He created his offer and salesletter before he began writing one word of his product. It was a very successful launch and the product has been receiving rave reviews - mainly because it delivers exactly what the salesletter promised.
Give this strategy a try the next time you’re beginning a new development cycle. If you can’t write the entire sales page, then at least think about your irresistible offer. Make it the starting point of your next project.
Outregeous marketing is the latest buzz word in Internet Marketing (a derivation of authentic marketing).
How can you cut through the clutter and get noticed? Make sure your marketing is not boring or bland - if you’re outrageous, your marketing should be too. Your goal is not to offend the masses but to have that extra little sparkle that let’s you stand out from the rest.
Here are three things you can do to make your marketing more memorable:
1. Send your message in a hard to ignore format. One of the most successful mailers I’ve ever received was a “message in a bottle”. Yup - someone stuffed an ad for a local courier service in a bottle. The Nashville Predators had couriers dressed in full hockey gear deliver hockey sticks to their corporate accounts. I know these are offline marketing tips - but the next time you send an e-mail, think about how to make it different from the thousands of e-mails that will hit my inbox today (maybe an audio or video postcard)
2. Make an incredibly inticing offer. Gevalia coffee will send you a free coffee maker just for trying 2 lbs of coffee. One of my clients will donate $50 to your favorite charity just for meeting with him. If you are not willing to make an offer in your marketing campaign — much less an irresistible one — don’t waste your time or money on it.
3. Make an outrageous claim and then back it up. Dare a competitor to offer a better guarantee or service. I’ve had clients give away two free hours of computer support to new prospective clients.
Many businesses will not try outrageous marketing but they’re shooting themselves in the foot if they don’t try. Professional, corporate marketing is boring and blends in with every single competitor. If you don’t stretch your imagination and look for new ways to stand out more, command attention, and present your ideas in a more dynamic way, you’re losing customers to someone who is.
“Your eZine Blueprint”
“Finally! A Complete & Easy Guide That Teaches You Step-By-Step How to Publish A Profitable eZine!”
Eliminate the pain, frustration, aggravation, and agony you feel when you’re unable to communicate with the people who most need your help.
Conquer the fear that knocks you over when learning the technologies you need to design and deliver a profitable ezine.
Get rid of the blame, shame, and guilt that come when you meet other solo-entrepreneurs and compare their successes to your own.
This one is similar to the Lend A Helping Hand strategy. Yahoo Groups offer a range of topics from groups on growing your small business, writing books, finding your passion, even underwater basket weaving. I challenge you to find one that isn’t right for what you’re promoting. When you do find the right group, join and participate as you can! But remember, you need to add value to the group or you will be seen as a spamer or someone who doesn’t care about the community and is only pursuing their own financial goals.
I’m a fingerstyle guitar enthusiast! So much so that I volunteer to write the Toronto Fingerstyle Guitar weekly newsletter. I’ll post my articles here for your musical pleasure. Be sure to check us out online at http://www.torontofingerstyleguitar.com.
Saturday night “The Breshman” came to town. And he brought his friends along for the show. Anyone at the Hugh’s Room for the performance not only got to see Thom Bresh but also Rodney Dangerfield, Jack Nicholson, Ronald Regan, Chet Atkins, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Bill Clinton, John Anderson, Waylon Jennings, Jerry Reed and Elvis. I’m amazed they all fit up there on the stage! But Thom Bresh slips in and out of each character so easily that sometimes it is hard to remember that it’s a one-man show.
Bresh grew up around legends and his performance is littered with stories about them. He told stories about his father, Merle Travis, and how Chet Atkins would always request that Bresh play “that song that I wrote that you play so well” even though Bresh was anxious to play others. The stories were integral to his performance and made the legends real, especially when he’d slip into an impersonation of them.
Though the evening was filled with fast pickin’ there were two slow ballads in the show. Even when Bresh slows down the tempo, the songs touch you to the core. They’re played with such an intensity of emotion that you’re left hovering on the brink of tears. A song about Time was raw and honest. But he picks up the pace again and breaks the mood with the banter he’s famous for.
Even though Bresh grew up around the greatest pickers of our time, he’s a genuine and down-to-earth performer. No ego. No conceit. After the show, he hopped off the stage and shook hands with anyone who wanted to meet him. He had time and a kind word for everyone. That’s partly the venue, Hugh’s Room, which lends itself to an intimacy that is felt by the performer as much as the audience, and partly the man - a man who grew up playing music for as long as he can remember.
It’s been 30 years since the last time Bresh performed in Toronto. Hopefully it won’t be another 30 before he returns. Be sure to catch him next time he’s in town.
Today is my birthday! My inbox is filled to the brim with birthday greetings and best wishes from family, friends and even clients. One of the eCards, however, stood out above the rest and it’s a strategy that makes someone feel special. Most of my clients become my friends so the message may be a little too personal for your business but the idea is a great one and I suggest you incorporate it into your online business plan. Remember the special events and occassions in the lives of your own clients goes a long way to making them feel special and that their presence in your life is valued for more than just the financial exchange between you.
GetResponse is among the first autoresponder services I used. In fact, my experience with setting up campaigns and understanding how autoresponders work is a direct result of having used the system back in 2004.
