If you are a freelance writer or someone who is offering a service online, one of the free platforms you can use to promote your services online is Squidoo.

Squidoo is ranked relatively high in the search engines and by having a link from a Squidoo lens to your main website, you will also be benefiting your website’s search engine rankings.

The good thing about having a Squidoo lens is that it is easy to update and you can capture a lot of visitors which you can re-direct to your own website. I have 2 Squidoo lenses which I capture the visitor’s email address by offering a free report.

With the list I can send re-direct them to my website and tell them of any promotions I have.

Here are some tips on how to use Squidoo for maximum benefit.

1. Choose a good keyword for your lens. If the name is taken, add a word next to it. But it is important that you have the keywords in your lens.

For example, I wanted the lens freelancewriter but it was taken. So I chose freelancewriterarticle which you can see at freelance writer.

2. Update your Squidoo lens regularly. The more you update your lens with good articles, the higher your lens will rank in Squidoo and in the search engines.

3. Have a form right at the top to capture your visitor’s emails. Give them a free report or gift in exchange for their email address.

4. Place pictures and videos in your lens to make it look more interesting and make the reader stay on your lens longer. Just having text will bore your visitors.

5. Have a poll, in your lens. This will give you some good information as to what your market wants.

6. Link to your Squidoo lens. Write articles and have links to your lens in your resource box. This will help the lens in search engine rankings.

7. Post your blog’s rss feed on your Squidoo lens. Whenever you update your blog, it will appear on your lens. This will keep the Squidoo lens updated with fresh information.

Follow these tips and you’ll have a valuable Squidoo lens bringing you targeted traffic for free.

Instead of selling cheap ebooks for $27 – $47, business owners should focus more on creating and selling information products that they can charge for hundreds of dollars for.

Selling 20 copies of a $297 information product translates to $5,940 in sales. Selling 100 copies of a $27 ebook will only get you $2,700 in sales. So it makes sense spending time in selling information products for hundreds of dollars.

In this video, I will show you 7 steps on how you can create a $297 product which you can sell. Enjoy!

I have started to explore LinkedIn which is a social website that hasn’t gotten much attention if you compare it to other social websites such as FaceBook and Twitter.

Although still in my research phase, I’ve found LinkedIn to be very valuable in finding business. Here is what I’ve found to be exciting:

- nearly everyone there are business owners or professionals. They have money to spend.
- there is a question and answer section which you can use to show your expertise
- search engines rank the LinkedIn web pages very well – you’ll get search engine traffic
- you are seen as a professional on LinkedIn – someone who is serious with their business.

Now one of the most useful features I’ve come across is LinkedIn Recommendations.

You can give a professional a recommendation if you have worked with them in the past. If your recommendation is good, they will display it in their profile. This means it acts like an ad for you.

In addition, giving recommendations show that you are a nice person and someone who should be good to work with. The key is to give a quality recommendation and not just bullshit “‘Yeah, he was cool. Excellent service”.

If you get a lot of recommendations for your business, then it’s just the same as showing testimonials on your website.

But these recommendations are more valuable! People will check up on the person recommending you and see if they are genuine or not.

As I have said, I have yet to fully use LinkedIn but at the moment, it seems like a social website well worth looking in to. Stay tuned to see how I develop my profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/alanylcheng

Ping my blog

If you have some internet marketing knowledge, then you’ll know that there are an endless number of traffic generation techniques you can use. Some are effective and some are like a spark.

In today’s video, I show you a 4 hour internet marketing plan which you can use every day for your online business. In time, the effect of these tasks will build up and give you a mass amount of targeted traffic.

These tasks in the video are proven to work. If you continue to stick to the plan, traffic generation will not be your concern.

Enjoy.

People working in their online businesses always think about the possibility of outsourcing. Apart from the small jobs such as outsourcing to freelance writers to write articles, and outsourcing their website to designers, not many people fully utilize outsourcing to actually run their business.

In today’s video, I go through the steps for outsourcing. How to prepare your business for outsourcing, how to hire an freelancer that is right for your business and how to work with your outsource team.

If you’re still on the fence with outsourcing, this video will help you decide. Enjoy.

At the very start when you’re planning your website, you need to think about search engine optimization. This is important because sooner or later, you would want your web pages to be shown on the first page of search results for your keywords so that you can get free targeted traffic. Here are some essential SEO tips for the small online business owners.

1. Your URL

Your website’s domain name is important for ranking in the search engines. If you want to target for the words “coffee mugs” then it would be ideal if your domain contains these words.

With every web page you create, put the keywords as the file name for your web page. For example, /coffeemugs.html, /coffeemugsandcups.html

You will see that the names of your web pages helps your search engine rankings.

2. Title Tags

Title tags are what appears in your browser’s window title right at the top. Don’t put your company name in the title tag. Instead put your keywords and try to make sense of them. e.g. Coffee Mugs | Coffee Cups

The keywords in the title tags will be seen as important by the search engines to rank your web page.

3. Links

Have links to other quality websites on your web pages. These help because they tell Google that you are providing good information to visitors and not just promoting your own website.

4. Quality Content (Text)

Have good content on your web pages that are focused with your keywords. The more text you have, the better it will do in the search results.

The internet is about information. People search for content that they are interested in. This is why in order for search engine optimization to be effective, your website must have a lot of content and targeted to your niche.

5. Images

If you have images on your website, you can turn them into keywords that will be noticed by the search engines. You do this by assigning tags to them. Basically you describe what the images are about.

So don’t just put pretty pictures on your website. Make them help with your search engine optimization.

6. Anchor Text

The search engines will love your website if you have many other related websites linking to you.

To get ranked high for your keywords, you need other websites to link to yours with an anchor text. The anchor text will contain your keywords.

The more anchor text you have linked to your website, the more credit you will get from the search engines. At the end of the day, it is the number of links you get to your website which will make you win the search engine war.

With these search engine optimization tips, you should use them as soon as you start building your website. The reason is because search engine optimization takes a long time. You can’t expect instant results.

The website that will rank at the top, is the one with the most quality content and the most amount of links from other authority websites. If you do get to rank as the top 3 for a competitive keyword, you will get an avalanche of free targeted traffic.

There are other techniques that will help you with your SEO such as writing press releases and articles. You need to do some further reading to understand them. For now, the 6 SEO tips mentioned in this article will help you get off to a good start.

Check out the press release and article writing services at freelance writing services to put your SEO campaign on full throttle.

No matter if you’re in the online business selling ebooks, audio/video tutorials, software or in the servicing business, you will get emails or phone calls with questions from prospects.

Pay attention, because in today’s video, I talk about the biggest mistake business owners make when they answer their prospects’ questions. A lot of sales are lost because the prospect was not served the way the wanted.

I made this same mistake with my own ghostwriting business. I realized that after understanding this mistake I made and changed how I treated my prospects, I got a lot more sales.

Watch the video and see if you’re doing this mistake in your business.

If you’re not split-testing your web pages, you’re insane. Instead of throwing money at marketing such as pay per clicks, solo-ads, banner ads etc…spend time to split test your website. You’ll find hidden gems which will put your profits on full throttle.

Not many internet marketers or online business owners test their websites. The majority on focusing too much on creating more products, marketing more and contacting more JV partners. While they are important, one can achieve a lot more if they tested their websites to see that it’s performing at its maximum.

After all, if you’re driving 10,000 visitors to your website to get 100 buyers, why not increase your website’s conversions so that you get 150 buyers? There is really no excuse for not split-testing your website.

In today’s video, I will discuss why it’s important to split-test your web pages and also how to do it using Google’s Website Optimizer tool which is free.

If you’re making a lot of sales with your online business currently, then congratulations. You’re doing a fine job with marketing your products and services. But are you sure that you can’t do better to improve things?

A slight adjustment to your website could improve sales and leads. This compound improvement could increase your sales by more than 10% – 20% without you spending more money on marketing.

If you’re struggling with selling online, but think that there’s nothing wrong with your product, it could be that your website doesn’t have the right headline, offer, sales copy or price.

You would never know if you don’t test.

This is what every internet marketing expert preaches – you need to test your website to see if it converts well. What works with other people, may not work well on your website. The reason is because your prospects and market are different.

With so many things to test, it would take you a long time to test several elements of your website. Don’t forget that you need to generate traffic to your website to confirm each tests. So we don’t have all the time in the world just for testing.

We need results and we need them fast.

Here are 5 elements which you need to test in order of importance to gain the maximum benefit in terms of sales and lead generation.

1. Your Offer
The first thing to test is your offer. If you are selling an ebook teaching people how to play the guitar, change the offer to teaching people how to play rock guitar.

You may find that playing the guitar is too general and therefore it doesn’t attract buyers. So change your offer a little and see if it makes a difference to sales.

If no one wants your product, no marketing in the world can sell it.

2. Price
Increase the price of your product or service. See if it increases sales or not. You would want to increase the price up to a point that you gain maximum profit from your marketing.

3. Your Headline
Change your headline which you are using to attract the visitors to read your website. The headline is very important. It determines who your website is targeted to and what you’re about.

Changing simple phrases in headlines has increased responses by more than 100% in some cases. It’s that important.

4. Sales Copy
The next thing you would want to test is your sales copy. Change a few words and maybe focus on some benefits. See which changes give you the better response.

If sales has been poor but you’re getting a lot of traffic, it may be better to re-write your sales copy from scratch.

If you are getting sales then try to improve each element on your sales copy and see if some benefits increases sales.

5. Design
Finally, test your design. Change the images of your graphic header or change the ecover image of your information product.

People tend to buy from websites which give a professional look.

By going through these testing in order, you will be able to split test your website’s most important selling elements. Design is listed last because it is the least effective element in getting you a sale, compared to the other 4.

You can use Google’s website optimizer tool at www.google.com/websiteoptimizer to do your split testing. The results you get are guaranteed to make your website sell more efficiently. Always start testing your website as soon as you can. Don’t waste your effort in driving traffic.

It is so easy to write and sell ebooks. Just gather your thoughts and information, throw it into a pdf file, stick a sales letter on a website and sell it using Paypal. But the million dollar question is, will your ebook sell? Here are 4 steps that will determine the success of your ebook and it is a process which Elite Ghostwriters use for our own clients’ projects.

1. The Title

This is perhaps the most important part of your ebook – the title. When people shop for books, the first thing they look at is obviously the title.

If you can come up with a title that will stimulate the reader’s emotions, you’ve won half the sale already.

For example, if a person is looking for improving his confidence, an ebook title such as “10 Guaranteed Steps To Improving Your Self Confidence” will appeal to him.

Many ebooks have failed to sell because their title is not attractive enough. It doesn’t give a promise to the reader that it will solve their problems.

An ebook title that is specific to helping the reader solve this problem, will sell copies just by itself.

This is also one of the reasons why “How To Win Friends and Influence People” have sold so many copies. If it was entitled “Guide To Meeting Friends In Different Places”, its success maybe a very different story.

2. Entertaining

If your ebook contains excellent information but is written in a tone of voice that will even bore a librarian to sleep, it will fail.

People read books to learn but they also want to be entertained in the process. If you present the ebook in an entertaining way with illustrations and some humor, they will enjoy your book more and tell others about it.

3. Conclusion

After you have explained your concepts with your ebook, write some pages to summarize what you have taught and how the reader can follow your advice and change their life.

After reading your conclusion, the last thing the reader will remember is the list of advice which you have delivered to them and how they can now start to apply the knowledge.

Never, end an ebook without summarizing what they have learned and how they have benefited from reading your ebook. End the ebook making your readers feel pleased and satisfied with information.

4. Sales Message

When you market your ebook on your website, sell the benefits to your prospects. Explain how the ebook will improve their lives and the especially the end result. Don’t focus on the features of your ebook such as the number of pages.

If your ebook is on building self confidence, focus on how the reader will be able to make speeches in front of crowds, improve their performance in work and get the promotion they deserve.

People will buy your ebook because they want to achieve something. So make sure you tell them exactly what they will achieve. Glorify the outcome and sell them the dream they’re after.

It is sad that many quality ebooks don’t sell well because of the sales copy and title. It is all part of marketing. So the next time you launch an ebook, make sure that you follow theses 4 steps to sell more copies.