Ok, so I kind of trailed off in the middle of my 5 biggest secrets web designers don’t know about making money on the Internet series.

Christmas was one reason, too much work was another.

But the main reason is I wanted to separate it out as an article you must read. So that’s exactly what I’ve done by revamping my website and adding an articles and videos section.

So head on over to check it out, and read in full, The 5 Biggest Secrets your Web Designer doesn’t know about Making Money on the Internet

And when you’re done, come on back to the blog and let me know what you think or ask any questions you may have.

Talk soon.

 

 The five biggest secrets your web designer doesn't know about making money on the internet: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The internet is full of websites that fail to live up to their potential. The main reason is small business owners don’t understand the potential for their website. However, most web designers don’t either!

Over the next two weeks, you’ll be light years ahead of other businesses on the internet as we discuss the five most important facts your web designer doesn’t know about making money.

We’ll be covering:

1. Why a pretty website does not make you money
2. Why salespeople are a dying breed, especially on the internet
3. How to structure your website to retain your visitors
4. The problem with marketing online, no one knows how to do it!
5. The real story on search engines

I hope you tune in and put this knowledge to good use in your business. As always, let me know your thoughts and comments below.

 

 A strong website foundation: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Today I was asked about some of my marketing strategies for websites. To be honest, at first, I was a little stumped on how to answer it. Not because I don’t have lots of strategies to market a website, but I simply don’t have the results to back myself up right now.

I know I have great ideas, and I know what will work and won’t work for my clients. So what’s the problem? We simply haven’t been able to implement any marketing strategies yet!

Everyone potential client I talk to generally has a bad website. I know you think you’re different and your website is great…but let me review it and I’ll let you see what you’re missing. In order to get a website functioning correctly, we first need to build a strong foundation. There’s no point driving traffic to a website that will have visitors leaving after a few minutes. And trust me, that’s what your website is doing now unless you’re one of the very lucky ones.

So I always build a strong foundation. I’m still not happy with my own website and will be rewriting it again in the next week or so. I’m also still waiting on my graphic designer to finish it off. Not because she’s lazy, she’s just had to focus on our clients first.

That is frustratingly apparent in our own marketing too. I’m actually not marketing myself at all in the old fashioned sense and still have a steady stream of customers. Part of that is the social marketing approach I’m using, the other part is the impression we make on all our current clients. Trust me, when I get some new people trained, you’ll be seeing some great marketing (and free information for you) coming out of this website!

The moral of the story is, if you’re looking for a way to market your website, how about first looking at your current websites performance. You’re a lot better off to be impressing every single visitor than having millions and only capturing a few. Increase your conversion rates through better website design and content first. That’s the way to build a great website that grows your business.

 

 The future of marketing: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

What is the future of marketing? I’ve posted before about my beliefs that internet advertising is dead and marketing as we know it will soon be going the same way.

The problem is what people think of when they think of marketing. Marketing is usually linked directly to advertising, to newspaper, tv, or radio ads, and these methods are definitely in trouble. The concept of marketing as pushing product information at your customer is dead. With the internet, the entire paradigm is shifting, and many businesses will be left behind.

If you look at marketing courses in university, or the huge majority of marketing books out there, you’ll see all the traditional forms of marketing and how to put them into practice. The problem is, they don’t work anymore!

These days, advertising is everywhere, and every corner we turn, someone is trying to sell us something. We’re being marketed to constantly and have taught ourselves just to switch off.

As business owners, what do we do about this? Marketing is one of the key aspects of a successful business and if the traditional methods aren’t working, aren’t we all in a lot of trouble?

No. People like us aren’t in trouble, we’re in a position to benefit the most from these changes! The people that aren’t prepared to change, to seek out new ideas, to constantly improve…they are the ones in trouble.

So get excited, we’re going to start talking about the new form of marketing, that has been named ‘Social Marketing’ by the experts. I have faith that you’re probably doing some of this marketing already. You just may not be aware of it, or just not taking full advantage of it yet.

It’s time to start creating the future of marketing ourselves, and take our businesses to the next level.

 

 How to get ripped off for web design: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

So you’re looking to get ripped off for the design of your new website? No problem! Here’s my easy guide to help you out:

Step 1. Decide you want a website.

Step 2. Approach a web design company.

And that’s it folks. This is a sure fire method for leaving you poor and with a complete waste of a website.

Oh? So now you want to know how not to get ripped off? Interesting, but ok…I’ll try to help. How about getting involved in the web design process. How about finding a company that actually approaches your website as a marketing tool rather than just a pretty…or not so pretty…brochure? How about reading a little about what makes a website successful? How about getting many opinions on what you need?

Even if your web design company promises everything it should…and most do…it doesn’t mean they will actually deliver on their promises. It’s easy to promise something when the buyer doesn’t know what a good result will look like anyway.

How do you know your web design company is giving you the right advice? See how closely they work with you to provide the result you want. Then maybe, just maybe, we’ll start to see less rip offs in the web design industry. And maybe your website will start making you money, instead of just costing you money.

 

 Your internet marketing strategy: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Do you have an Internet marketing strategy? Or did you just put up a website and expect traffic and sales to start flowing in. If you’re like most people, you’re in the later category.

The truth of the matter is you need to have a consistent internet marketing strategy to be successful on the internet. Consistent doesn’t mean it doesn’t change. It means you head towards the same objective and don’t get sucked in to every little fad that comes your way.

To get results in anything, you need to be prepared to stick with it for the long haul and actually do some work on the way. The same applies for your internet marketing strategy.

You set your objectives, turn them into quantifiable goals, and then make your action plan. For example:

• Your objective is to increase sales over the website
• Your goal is sales of $30,000 per month
• Your action plan contains all the tasks you will complete to obtain it, e.g. viral marketing campaign, search engine optimisation, etc

To help you in developing your own strategy, download my free internet marketing strategy ebook. No gimmicks, no signups, completely free because I like your style.

In it I talk about:

• How to see things from your customer’s point of view
• Discovering what benefits you’re selling them
• How to set objectives and goals for your website
• What you should be measuring to obtain those goals
• How customers find you
• How to make them buy from you when they do
• A quick and painless One Page Online Marketing Plan template to use
• Why you need to take action and continuously improve

As you read and complete the short exercises, you will step through the process of creating a meaningful, measurable, and effective internet marketing strategy.

Internet advertising doesn’t work! Bold statement, I know, but I’m willing to back it up.

First, let’s get clear about what I mean when I say ‘Internet advertising’. I’m talking about those annoying banner ad type things that destroy too many good sites. I’m not talking about Pay per Click as served by Google. That’s a whole different article for the future.

Now we’re clear, I’m basically talking Internet advertising in the form of banner ads. They can be static, they can be dynamic, and they can pop-up when you visit a site, but they can’t give you a good return on investment. I think of these as being Internet advertising because they follow the same rules as offline advertising. You put something in front of a potential customer and hope they respond to it.

The problem with this form of advertising is there’s simply too much of it. How much do you actually pay attention to this old fashioned form of advertising now? Sometimes a TV ad will catch your eye but does that mean you know what the product is or you will actually buy it. Cast your mind back to earlier this year with the Bruce Lee “be like water my friend” ad. What was it selling? From my quick investigation about 10% of people get it right, despite everyone knowing the ad.

So take this phenomenon of ignored advertising and apply it to the Internet. You’ll find even more people ignore your Internet advertising campaign over other channels. The Internet is user driven, and users never wanted to sit through endless advertising. Hence, when they have control, they simply ignore it all together.

The way you pay for these ads is by how many times they are served on pages i.e. how many users they are displayed in front of. So if your ad is shown to 1000 people, and everyone ignores it, how many sales do you get?

The solution, stop paying for this type of Internet advertising! Invest your hard earned money in new generation marketing and advertising techniques. Pay per Click (PPC) advertising is currently the trend on the Internet and I’ll be talking about that more in the future. But don’t dismiss the other, more time consuming techniques, such as Search Engine Optimization and Viral Marketing campaigns. If done correctly, these can pay off big for some initial investment and continue to pay off long after you opened your wallet.

So remember, Internet advertising is dead! So look for other methods of driving traffic to your website. And don’t forget to do something with it when it’s there!

And by the way, the Bruce Lee commercial was for BMW…in case you were wondering.

There is a lot more than development and maintenance for your online web site to be successful. If you’re currently looking for a web site designer, you need to consider some very important aspects right from the outset. A web site needs careful planning and strategy to succeed so you need to start off on the right foot. That’s the big questions, what aspects does your web site need?

Great design
There are many talented web designers ready to make your web site successful. As long as you’ve spent some time on the internet and know what looks good and what doesn’t, you’d think it’d be hard to go wrong on this aspect. Though it’s surprisingly easy to get wrong. I know some very smart people that have stumbled on this first step and wasted a lot of money. However, the biggest mistake is trying to do it yourself and creating an amateurish looking web site that no one looks at.

Usability
Making your web site usable is not always as easy as it seems. It involves the correct positioning of items on a web page so the user can follow a logical flow to the result you want. If you want a sale, you need to lead the customer there. If you want them to contact you, you need to lead them there. But most importantly, you don’t want customers to get frustrated and leave your web site.

Findability
So now you have a professional looking web site that’s usable and all you have to do is attract some visitors. What’s the best way to get traffic? Search engines of course. We call this Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and it involves making your pages just right for the search engines. Your customers type in keywords to find your web site. The trick is to rank well on the keywords they are typing in. And yes it can be a trick, a weaving of art and magic to do well in the search engines. But those in the know can do it consistently to ensure your web site gets exposure.

Combined with this are the many other marketing techniques that go along with your web site development. A web site is nothing if no one sees it, so you need an online marketing plan to make sure your web site is getting the attention it deserves. This should be the most important aspect of your web site maintenance contract. Your web site development company needs to keep marketing your company once the web site is up and running.

Functionality
You are developing your web site for a purpose and it is important to keep that purpose in mind throughout the entire development process. You’d be surprised how many people set out to design an online shop or ecommerce web site and end up forgetting to check if their web site actually sells products. With a web site, you have very little time to attract a visitors attention, wow them with your proposition, and collect their money. You need compelling sales writing to do this and like all of the above, you need to leave it in the hands of a professional.

The internet is the most competitive marketplace in the world. It’s not like a physical store where a customer has to travel to find your competition, a competitor is literally seconds away. You need to make sure all aspects of your web site work together to achieve your goal or you will find yourself another unsuccessful internet entrepreneur.

A final word of advice, it’s difficult to find a company that can handle the full spectrum of these skills and offer you the web site development abilities and online marketing you require. When I work with my clients, I take care of the search engine and functionality aspects and team up with a web site graphic designer to combine all our knowledge in to making the web site a success. And we’re always getting other input to make sure the web site we deliver is of excellent quality.

So be careful out there, the web site development industry is littered with false promises and propaganda. People that say the can do it all and fail miserably. Be smart with your money and your business’ future.

Who would have thought you could get all your website design, optimisation, and promotion needs met from Spain. And in English as well. I tried London, but couldn’t stand the weather and so now I operate out of Madrid. Sure, it still gets cold in winter, but at least there’s daylight!

That’s one of my favourite things about working with the internet, you can do it from anywhere. And if you create a successful business, you should be able to run it from anywhere as well. If you want to live on a tropical island and have your office overlook the beach, it’s within your grasp. I’m not one of these ‘internet marketing gurus’ that claims it’s easy. It’s just like starting any other business and making it successful, but with more potential customers.

Anyway, back to what you came here for, some quick tips.

Your website design: keep it simple and usable.

Your website optimisation: focus each page on a particular keyword phrase and fill in the title, meta, h1, alt, p, and b tags for a start.

Your website promotion: submit articles, comment on blogs, post in forums. Then get creative and do something different!

There’s the world’s shortest guide to website design, optimisation, and promotion. Keep digging round my blog for more detailed information, it’s all over the place.

I recently started working with a client in a very competitive industry. As I started to examine the competition, I realised something amazing: all the competitors were the same! Every single one of their websites had exactly the same links, the same boring information, and they were promoting on the same competitive advantage.

If your business markets itself like everyone else, how does it plan to get business? The answer seems to be luck. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t sleep very well at night if my entire business’ future rested on luck to attract customers.

The world is changing, business is changing, and you need to be changing too. Gone are the days when you can just throw out some marketing and hope it sticks. And soon doing the same marketing as your competitors will sink you as well.

It’s time to make a plan, it’s time to make your marketing different, it’s time to make your website stand out!