As they always say do good and talk about it. So I thought I might just say that since I have started using Zen-Cart, which is since March 2006 I have setup a subscription payment of US $10.00 a month to Zen-Cart. I know this is only small and will only buy those guys there a coffee however since I started this has now added up to US  $350.00, so that sound a little better doesn’t it.

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Find out what the Pretty Link Plugin can do for your Internet Marketing efforts.

This is just a fantastic plugin. One of the the really important things we need to know in our Internet Marketing efforts is what works and what doesn’t. The basic thing it does is to redirect from our custom URL to an external URL. Eg we might have a external URL http://secure.hosting.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/id=QWNERTY, which is our ugly affiliate link and it also tells the visitor aha he’s an affiliate. Pretty links now allow us to setup a custom URL http://yourdomain.com/hosting, cool isn’t it? So when someone clicks our custom link it redirect them via the external link to the relevant page and records their click in our database so we have a record of how many people clicked a certain link and we get some more info like what browser they were using their domain name etc. Pretty Links allows us to:

1. To have shorter URLs
   eg instead of http://yourdomain.com/yourcategory/article-name/ we can have http://yourdomain.com/rbt
   which is useful for Twitter or for promotions
2. Keep stats about clicks
3. Hides the external URLS and shows our custom URLs instead
4. We can group links to get combined stats for them
5. Market Samurai uses Pretty Links to integrate with WordPress
6. We can find out who we are sending traffic to and start talking to them to encourage them to send traffic to us

This plugin is so good that I’m now making it part of our Content Ready Website product. To find out what the Content Ready Website is all about hit this now.

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To be successful you will want to get into the blogging habit, which is “A POST A DAY”. Every working day without fail you need to make a post. Your aim of every post is that you use it together with a call to action to get people to read a sales page. So remember that your sales funnel is:

1. Write a post that attracts readers
2. Ask the visitor to read a sales page
3. Convince the visitor on your sales page to take the action you want them to take, eg to buy your widget.

You will also want to get into the habit of collecting relevant material for your posts. If you are like me you are reading all kinds mags online and off-line that are relevant to your target market. Whenever you come across something that interests you it’s also most likely that your blog readers will be interested. The trick is to gather this relevant information. Well since you now know the categories what you need to do is to create a manilla folder for each category and every time tou read something in a mag of interest rip it out and place in the relevant folder like wise create a folder for each category in your email client and copy relevant emails to it and of course have a folder per category in your documents folder on your PC. Not only is it painless to gather information but you ensure it’s relevant when you file it, because if it doesn’t fit into one of your categories then most likely it’s not relevant to your target market!

Think this is good, then find out more about our Content Ready Website here.

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If you are only selling individual electronic products and you are using only PayPal as your payment processor then here is a very quick an easy way to get going.

1. Create a Premier or Business account with PayPal
   this will open in a new window, so complete that and come back here.
2. Link your PayPal account to your bank account
   This is how you will be able to transfer your funds into your own account
3. Create a Buy Now button
   Click Merchant Services tab > Website Payments Standard > on the Payments Button tab click Create one now, once completed click Create Button
4. Copy and paste the HTML code into your sales page
   Open your sales page > click HTML at top right > goto bottom of page and paste code.
5. Publish your page and test that it works

You will usually want your customer to be returned to your site where you display a Thank you note etc. To do this you need to specify the return URL and let PayPal know to call it:

1. Create the return URL (this is typically where you will provide a link to download what they have purchased)
2. Log into PayPal > My Account tab > Profile > Website Payment Preferences (listed under Selling Prefernces)
3. Click the On to enable Auto Return.
4. Enter the Return URL you created in step 1.

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Interview participants

Topics covered in this interview

• Membership site advice from the trenches
• must have membership software
• wordpress plugins for membership sites
• pricing strategies
• the “bikini concept” and how to use it
• and much more

Click Here To See What Chris Garrett Is Using For His Membership Sites

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After some feedback and discussions I have re-visited my previous post:
Do you know the 15 aspects of your web presence (website) that you must address to be successful?
to structure it in categories that make it easier to decide which category you want to DIY or outsource.
The aspects of your Internet Marketing IM) Strategy are:

1. Market Research (what “burning” problem are you resolving, what keywords will people use to find you, what products or services will you sell)
2. Website (domain name and hosting, WordPress or Joomla, site appearance and how will customers buy and pay eg payment gateway, shopping cart etc.)
3. Content and sales strategy (posts and pages that need to contain text, audio and video and user generated content such as FAQs, testimonials, blog comments etc)
4. Build you customer list and keep in touch (name capture, auto responder, newsletter and adding value to every communication)
5. Monetise your website (sales pages, affiliate sales, paid consulting, paid forums or member only content,)
6. Get Traffic (SEO, PPC, social media, feeds, forums, affiliates, book marking, ping, mirror, directories and ezines)
7. Testing, a saying of James Schramko is: “Unless you test it’s all BS!” (website analytics, conversion rates, onsite visitor behaviour, landing pages, PPC ads and keywords, split testing of different calls to action etc.)

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Technically speaking Joomla is a website Content Management System (CMS) and WordPress a blog CMS, however the lines are blurring as Joomla is starting to offer more blo support and WordPress more website support.

Both WordPress and Joomla are:

• Are stable, reliable and powerful frameworks for which you need no knowledge of HTML, PHP, SQL etc (however a bit of HTML knowledeg is often helpful)
• Opensource CMS which means they are free and allow easy custom coding
• have large communities – good for getting help
• there are 1000’s of extensions (free and paid) for them
• there are 1000’s of people and companies that can help you with either
• templates are available galore
• many commercial providers support these opensource products (payment gate ways, shopping sites etc)

A blog built on WordPress has these advantages:

• your site will be indexed faster because content is changing daily (your post, comments on them etc)
• Pinging allows you to tell others that you have posted new content
• worpress allows posts and pages, pages being the more permanent content eg sales pages and posts that show your quick changing content
• I think it is fair to say that Google loves blogs
• blogs tend to build links quicker – this means more traffic -> more income
• some of the biggest Internet Marketing earners use WordPress
• Wordpress can indeed be yor website and blog at the same time and this is how many people use it now
• It’s more light weight and will load quiker then Joomla

When is Joomla better:
Generally speaking more powerful as a website but steeper learning curve and limited blogging features (however it is getting better ar blogging)

• You are not planning to add content frequently, eg post daily – it might be a brochure website
• Your site is going to be a portal site
• Your are developing a corporate website that will have a lot of pages (1000’s) and will provide support to your customers in the way of driver downloads or similar
• In some cases the combination might be required, Joomla for your website and WordPress for your blog and you link from one to the other. This is only for large projects since there is a lot more work required.

So bottom line for Internet Markete’s is that WordPress deliveries advantages in being listed in search engines, ease of usage, the combination of posts and pages as well as support available by other Internet Marketers make this the better choice for us.

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Posted by Tom Kulzer (AWeber CEO)

Ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to subscriber inboxes is an increasingly difficult battle in the age of spam filtering. Open and click thru response rates can be dramatically affected by as much as 20-30% due to incorrect spam filter classification.

Permission

Confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list is the number one step in the battle for deliverability. You should be using a process called confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request information. Before adding the person to your list they must click that unique link verifying that they are indeed the same person that owns the email address and requested to subscribe.

Subscriber Addresses

When requesting website visitors to opt-in ask for their “real” or “primary” email address instead of a free email address like Yahoo or Hotmail. Free emails tend to be throw away accounts and typically have a shorter lifetime than a primary ISP address.

List Maintenance

Always promptly remove undeliverable addresses that bounce when sending email to them. An address that bounces with a permanent error 2-3 times in a 30 day period should be removed from the list. ISP’s track what percentage of your newsletters bounce and will block them if you attempt to continually deliver messages to closed subscriber mailboxes.

Message Format

Usage of HTML messages to allow for text formatting, multiple columns, images, and brand recognition is growing in popularity and is widely supported by most email client software. Most spam is also HTML formatted and thus differentiating between requested email and spam HTML messages can be difficult. A 2004 study by AWeber .com shows that plain text messages are undeliverable 1.15% of the time and HTML only messages were undeliverable 2.3%. If sending HTML it is important to always send a plain text alternative message, also called text/HTML multi-part mime format.

Content

Many ISP’s filter based on the content that appears within the message text.

Website URL:Research potential newsletter advertisers before allowing them to place ads in your newsletter issues. If they have used their website URL to send spam, just having their URL appear in your newsletter could cause the entire message to be filtered.

Words/phrases:

Choose your language carefully when crafting messages. Avoid hot button topics often found in spam such as medication, mortgages, making money, and pornography. If you do need to use words that might be filtered, don’t attempt to obfuscate words with extra characters or odd spelling, you’ll just make your messages appear more spam like.

Images:

Avoid creating messages that are entirely images. Use images sparingly, if at all. Commonly used open rate tracking technology uses images to calculate opens. You may choose to disable open rate tracking to avoid being filtered based on image content.

Attachments:

With viruses running rampant and spreading thru the usage of malicious email attachments many users are wary of attached documents. It’s often better to link to files via a website URL to reduce recipient fear of attachments and reduce the overall message size.

CAN-SPAM Compliance

The January 2004 Federal CAN-SPAM law introduced a number of rules regarding the delivery of email. It’s important you have your legal counsel review your practices and ensure you are in compliance. The two most important rules include having a valid postal mail address listed in all commercial messages and a working unsubscribe link that is promptly honored to remove the subscriber from future messages.

Reputation

Reputation services are often used by large ISP’s as a way to vet email senders regarding their email practices and policies. Businesses listed with these services are then given less stringent filtering or no filtering at all. Several reputation services are:

• http://www.isipp.com/iadb.php
• http://www.bondedsender.com
• http://www.habeas.com

Relationships & Whitelisting

Contact with major ISP’s and email providers is essential in letting them know about your requested subscriber email. Many large providers such as AOL and Yahoo have specific whitelisting programs and postmaster website areas to ensure your email is delivered as long as you meet their policies and procedures in handling your opt-in list.

Email deliverability is about ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to the intended recipient. While no single tip will enable you to get 100% of your email delivered each one utilized as a group can go a long way to reaching that goal.

My comments to this are that getting emails to wehere they need to go can be very frustrating indeed. The other day I received an email from a customer of having received the wrong product. After investigating I found out that the customer had actually received what they ordered but they had order the wrong item, so I sent an email explaining what had happened and a couple of days later I get another email complaining about the same issue so I sent them another email. Finally we had phone contact and it turns out that I was getting the customer’s emails but they were not getting mine.

Aweber really has one of the best auto responder services out there and for the first month you can subscribe for $1.00, so click here to give it a go now.

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