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Online Marketing For Technophobes

By Dr Jane on Friday, August 20th, 2010 | No Comments

I have recently been asked to help develop online marketing strategies for a couple of technophobes.  In every case, what my clients wanted was some kind of guide to the questions they can ask developers, and the things they need to include in a developers’ brief.

Trust seems to be a big issue – understandably so, since many online marketing experts are only a page ahead in the manual from where their clients are!  I recently attended a great seminar on using Google AdWords with Brittany Lynch.  Brittany’s material was pretty eyeopening -as were the comments of some of the other delegates about their experiences of using ‘experts’ to place google ads for them, and doing it really badly.  By the end of the seminar, the delegates knew more about AdWords than their online experts!

So it is with online marketing generally.  If someone claims they are an SEO expert, how long do you give them before you decide they are (or aren’t) the expert for you?  A friend recently contacted me because the website she had had designed wasn’t generating any income, after 3 months.  Her question was, had she been taken for a ride by her developer?  The answer in that case was, probably not.  The developer had created a great site, and incorporated some good strategies for generating traffic and – potentially – revenue.

What the developer hadn’t done was to clarify just how long it might take before her client could expect to see real revenue coming in.  She had also let her client think that once the site was up, it could be left alone for months or even years, and like a beautiful little machine it would produce money all by itself.  Optimistic!

If you are a technophobe, or new to internet marketing, firstly insist on getting a proposal from your  developer/internet marketing expert.  Get them to state clearly what they expect the revenue profile to look like, and what guarantees they offer.  Get them to teach you how to use the various tools (such as Google Analytics) for monitoring your site – and then use the tools.  If you can log in to a google account, you can use Analytics.

It’s like monitoring your bank account.  If you want to have an online business, you have to be prepared to act like a business person.


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How To Make Money Online Cheaply And Easily

By Dr Jane on Sunday, May 30th, 2010 | 2 Comments

Eben Pagan has just posted his third Gurublueprint video – all about how to make money online cheaply and easily.

Actually it’s not just cheap – it’s about as near to free as you can get.

In this video, he shows you how to make an online presentation (including video) in the space of about 10 minutes.  True, he’s using Screencaster, which is a bit of $97 software.  If you’re willing to keep your information soundbites down to under 10 minutes you can do what he did totally for free by using Jing – although you’re more likely to use short soundbites for advertising, rather than sellable product.

Of course, Eben is preparing for a big launch on June 1st, which is why he is giving away so much information. But it’s really good quality information for anyone with an interest in building an online business.  He’ll probably take the videos down soon after the launch – so go take a look now.

Meantime I am about to experiment with Google Website Optimiser.  An interesting tool that allows you to test different looks and feels and content. It’s been around a while, and I had forgotten I had access to it!  We’ll see….


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Brendon Burchard’s hot simple tips for building a list

By Dr Jane on Thursday, April 8th, 2010 | 1 Comment

One of the challenges most internet marketers face is how to build a list.  I’ve just been watching a video by Brendon Burchard which tells you exactly how to do this starting with a very small list, which may just be your friends and relations.

He calls it ‘collaborative compounding’.  The idea is that you get together with a group of people – maybe friends, maybe people you’ve met at seminars – who also have small lists, and you all promote one another.  It’s an extraordinarily quick way to double, treble, quadruple the number of people you talk to about whatever it is you are offering.  The only technology bit is that you have to create a squeeze/opt-in page for people to go to.

The snag is, that this particular hot tip comes near the end of the video, but to be honest, the rest of the video is well worth a watch (and no, I am not an affiliate, so I am not making money here!).  It’s just over an hour long, and full of realy useful information about how to position yourself as an expert in your field. More importantly, it’s how to position yourself as an expert that other people want to listen to.

The video was originally created as part of a promotion to sell a course from his Experts Academy, so I don’t know how long he’ll leave it up, and he is definitely someone worth listening to.


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Internet marketing – the importance of how you think

By Dr Jane on Friday, March 5th, 2010 | No Comments

Many internet newbies imagine that internet marketing is all about tekkie stuff. Get some products, buy some get-rich-quick scheme form a guru (or not so guru) and bang! That’s it.

Not true. And the best gurus, people like Rich Schefren or Frank Kern, know this. (And yes, those are affiliate links – I really respect what these guys have to say.)

Before you ever get into the technical or product-selling side (whether you’re doing it as an affiliate, or using Adwords, or creating your own) you have to learn to think like a business.

Basic things like how much am I spending on all this, and how much money is coming in. If you’re spending more than you have coming in, you have a loss (or possibly a hobby). If you’re spending less than you have coming in, you have a profit. Celebrate! And then think about whether you have costed in your time.

If you want to start thinking in a business like way, but you haven’t a clue where to start, then try Nicola Cairncross’ book ‘The Money Gym’. Updated for 2010.

It isn’t just about Internet Marketing: it’s all about achieving financial freedom in a way that works for you. But first you have to start treating yourself as a business.

And think about what YOUR dreams are. As Frank would say, how do you come from your core self? Because when you come from your core self, the people have a reason to buy for you. Check out Frank’s video – it’s long ,and there’s a slow build, but the punch line is worth having.

Meantime, I’m off to Hawaii to pursue my studies of Hawaiian Huna – the ancient psychological and spiritual teachings of the Hawaiians. See you on the other side of the world!


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Setting up a WordPress Blog

By Dr Jane on Saturday, February 27th, 2010 | 2 Comments

Having just set up this WordPress blog, it’s all very fresh in my mind.  It doesn’t take that long to set one up, until you get to the plugins!

The basics are fairly straightforward, providing you are methodical about it.  You need to sort out the appearance (obviously) but it’s surprising how little you need to do in that department in order to be up and running.  Choosing a theme can take ages, or no time at all, while using the widgets to change the lay-out of the columns is fairly quick, depending how fussy you are.

It’s useful to make sure you’ve taken a look at the ‘users’ set-up, even if just to decide whether you want to be known as ‘admin’.

The settings are important too.  They affect what people see at the very top of the page.  For instance I have changed the default ’just another wordpress blog’ to Janeplewis Online.

But it’s uploading and configuring the plug-ins that take time.

It’s a while since I set up a blog from scratch, and some of the plug-ins I used originally are no more. There are also some amazing new ones, like the Viddlercomments one, which allows people to post a comment using video vai their webcam.

Currnetly I have about 12 ‘essential’ plug-ins uploaded and activated.  Akismet and One Click Installer are essential (and by the way, if you are using Akismet, it’s worth setting up an email account dedicated to this blog.  Gmail will do.)

Then there are plugins to manage your SEO, Feedburner links (that one took a bit more time than most), something to generate a sitemap and let Google know when you post (essential for rankings) and something to link your blog to Twitter.  My personal favourite is Twitter Tools.

If anyone knows a way to upload plugins in bulk, I’d love to know about it!

Because after you’ve gone through the work of uploading them, one by one, you then have to configure them.  Well, some of them at least.  So it’s back to the Settings tab, to work your way through what is sometimes real gobblydegook.

And then there’s Twittollower, to start building the traffic.  You need to be blogging and tweeting to keep your followers satisfied, though.  Martin Avis, publisher of the ezine Kickstart, reckons a minimum of 5 tweets a day.   (And if you haven’t subscribed to Kickstart yet, it’s a great read even if you have no interest at all in Internet Marketing.)

And the great things about Twitter Tools is, you automatically create a Tweet from a blog post.  And you can even create blog posts from you Tweets, if you want to.


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Welcome!

By Dr Jane on Saturday, February 27th, 2010 | No Comments

Welome to the Janeplewisonline blog.  This is a blog for internet marketers of all kinds.

We’ll be bringing you hints, tips, ideas and recommendations to improve your online business, as well as thoughts on life, the universe and everything.

The blog is designed to inform and entertain, so as we get going, let us know what you think.

Happy reading!


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