Source: http://www.legalsearchmarketing.com/mobile-for-lawyers/benefits-of-a-mobile-site-for-lawyers/
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Benefits of a Mobile Site for Lawyers
Benefits of a Mobile Site for a lawyer As an attorney in a high-tech world, increasing the business potential of your practice can be challenging. Game-changing technology is constantly emerging and it really is a matter of embracing the changes and working them to your advantage. It is true that this takes time, money and [...]
The SEO Path to Becoming a Great Funnel Owner
Posted by searchbrat
This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
There has recently been a lot of great discussion around the role of an SEO and how SEO strategies are evolving to include more tactics (PR, Social, Content, CRO, etc.). In my opinion, the role of an SEO hasn’t changed much as the focus is still on driving more organic traffic to their client’s sites. If SEO consultants want to own more of the funnel, their title will need to change to support a more expansive role that includes multiple channels, rather than changing what the term "SEO" itself means.
A background in SEO definitely provides a solid foundation to take ownership of integrated marketing campaigns that encompass a lot more of this:
For this post, I am going to focus on two key areas of SEO from a presentation I recently gave. They are:
- Beyond keywords
- Content that works
My main goal for this post is to show how strong SEO’s have the skills to become great funnel owners, without having to change the term SEO. Let's get started!
1. Beyond keywords
What good SEOs already do:
Model search behavior across the funnel
Good SEO’s are already skilled in the art of modeling user search behavior across a search buying cycle. They look to identify what language prospects are using relevant to their business. How they refine their search at each stage of the cycle and what the potential competition is for each of their target phrases. This helps identify what keywords a business can complete for (taking budget and resources into account), what content should be developed for each phrase, and what are the target keywords for their link building strategy.
Good SEO’s will:
1. Use PPC data
SEO’s will create exact match Adwords campaigns for the keywords they've identified for a business. This gives them an estimation of potential traffic and conversions (whatever that may be for a given site). This would only be an estimate as there are big differences between PPC and Organic click through rates.
2. Measure head vs long tail
They use advanced segments in Google Analytics to split this traffic out by keyword length (get advanced segments for keyword lengths here). This allows SEO’s to bucket keywords into head, body, and tail, adding competition stats and potential ROI.
3. Track top of funnel keywords
They pay close attention to data from sources like Google Trends and Google Instant (UberSugget.org) to look for top of funnel keywords that are not mapped against commercial intent, but instead whose sole purpose is to attract people in the awareness stage and begin to grow the brand online.
4. Create keyword funnels
Good SEOs will map keywords across the buying cycle of a business, including lots of extra information about those keywords. In this example, we have simply added the potential revenue from that keyword and keyword difficulty from the SEOmoz tool of the same name. The keyword marked green is one whose search volume is rising fast (data from Google Trends).
5. Create content maps
The great SEO will take all this data and either map it against existing content, or create new content suitable for the target key phrase.
The smartest SEO may even start thinking about why certain pages will attract links and build this into the design.
If you need more information on keyword research, you can check out:
- ViperChills Keyword Research Guide
- KissMetrics Guide to Keyword Research
- SEOmoz Guide to Keyword Research
I want more of that funnel
What great funnel owners do:
Model the whole customer
Likely due to my background in software development, I am obsessed with persona modeling; I’ve talked about this previously on SEOmoz here and here.
Persona modeling is nothing new, and smart marketers have been using them to help with brand marketing, website design, and UI for years. In fact, SEOmoz did a great whiteboard Friday on the topic back in 2008 with Ian Lurie and Rand Fishkin sporting some very groovy hair!
Persona modeling is a critical task conducted by great funnel owners, and SEO’s can definitely apply their skills to provide this function.
In today’s data driven world, there are so many places to acquire data about your potential customers:
I’ve labeled these strategies either easy or hard to implement based on my experiences. What type of data you get back is heavily dependent on the market you are in. (Note that I put a question mark against psychographic data in Facebook as this is something I’ve only recently begun to look at, thanks to all the great information from @aimclear in sources like this post, this post, and his MozCon session.)
As Ian mentioned in the video above, a lot of persona modeling will still rely on gut instinct. With all this data, you can start to validate your guesswork and pivot much quicker. For example, if we use the seven steps Ian gave in the Whiteboard Friday video (see below), we can see where our data can be applied to help validate our guess work (think how much more data we have for our prospects since that video was made):
Bonus Tip: When at step one (brainstorming), I highly recommend Simon Sineks Ted Talk, Start With Why. This talk helps focus your mind on the type of people you are trying to attract. You define why your company exists and what your vision is, and outline how to find people who share that vision. For example, SEOmoz is famous for TAGFEE. They believe in being totally transparent, over delivering on everything they do, and building a world-class community of smart SEOs. You can see how that influences the type of marketing they execute. If SEOmoz started with the “What?” e.g. "We build great inbound marketing tools, come and get them," they may not have been as successful as they are now or attract the type of customers they currently do. Starting with "why" will help you tremendously.
How do well thought-out personas help great funnel owners?
Glad you asked. Well constructed personas help develop many different tactics, including:
- Content that resonates
- Community that engages
- Display/retargeting ads that get clicked
- Emails that get opened
2. Content that works
What good SEOs already do:
Audit sites to make the engines (and user’s) happier
Good SEOs are a technical bunch and know how to ensure your site is ready to take on the search engines and win. Better yet, since good on-site optimizations follow good UI principles, the people visiting your site will be just as happy. Hopefully this will lead to them becoming customers and spending money buying products from your site or signing up for the offers you have.
Good SEO’s will:
1. Make accessibility and indexability a must for your site
Good SEOs will crawl your full site with tools like Screaming Frog (or similar) to ensure the following:
- Your site is accessible to the search engines
- All of the pages you expect to be indexed are indexed
- The indexed pages are loading in a respectable time.
2. Check all key areas of your site in order to:
- Make sure your page titles and meta descriptions are optimized for key pages
- Ensure your content is relevant for the keyword it’s targeting
- Make sure your content is worthy of the keyword it’s targeting
- Resolve any duplicate content issues that may be causing issues for your site
- Implement schema.org tags where necessary
3. Conduct a competitor analysis
A good SEO will look at your core competitors to see what are they doing better both onsite and offsite (to attract links), discover what are their weaknesses, and divise a plan for you to leverage them.
If you need more information on site audits, you can check out:
I want more of that funnel
What great funnel owners do:
Audit content to build a strategy to amaze prospects
The number of businesses who are going to place content marketing at the center of their marketing strategy will, undoubtedly, grow over the next few years. Great funnel owners can audit their content strategy for insights on what they could be doing better, develop a content strategy that is layered across their funnel, and provide benchmarks tied to business goals.
Therea are three key tasks to complete to help you create the right content strategy for your business:
1. Determine your "sweet spot"
Doug Kessler best summed up the sweet spot of your content in this post over on Econsultancy:
“Your sweet spot is the exact area of your company’s expertise. It’s the thing you are uniquely positioned to talk about”.
You must figure out what content area your company should own and, once it's decided, make sure you can allocate the resources to do it.
2. Conduct a TOFU content audit
What content is delivering against my top of funnel metrics?
You can build custom reports in Google Analytics to look at your content performance in terms of top of funnel metrics to see what content is delivering. Even better, you can categorize by topics to identify those working best for your company after identifying your sweet spot.
Looking just at top of funnel metrics in Google Analytics, your report may look something like this (I've excluded Page Title so you can see the metrics):
You can then extract this data and add the links and shares each piece has attracted, which is important for top of funnel metrics, but is not the sole objective of every top of funnel content piece (read more on that here). Kevin Gibbons wrote a great article around the subject of content auditing for further explanation.
What’s really interesting is when you start to break your content out into topics. This called topic modeling: deciphering which topics are driving metrics across your funnel. For an example of topic modeling, here is a chart showing what topics are generating top of funnel metrics for Marketo (this is obviously a condensed version with only two metrics on display).
The data can start to tell you two important things:
- There might be topics you are writing a lot about, but aren’t bringing in much inbound traffic. Maybe the topic isn't even important for top of funnel metrics, or maybe it’s critical once a user is in the funnel, in which case, this should become evident in your mid of funnel audit.
- There might be topics that are important to your brand, but aren’t getting very much attention. You may need to make changes in your editorial calendar to ensure these topics get more focus.
I want to know what content is getting shared, but also what content has the highest social CTR?
Finding data to support what content is being shared is important, but better yet, I want to know the social CTR of that content. This is not an easy task, but when you have the awesome guys from DataSift helping you, it makes things a lot easier.
Let's use SEOmoz as an example.
I was lucky enough to get a preview of an upcoming release of DataSift that provides an insight into social clickstream traffic. By filtering and analyzing these immense volumes of social click data, it provides a view into both how we share social content, and what content we are engaging with.
This view is much more informative than simply knowing what’s being shared. I now know what percentage of people are clicking on each link based on the total social reach of the content on Twitter vs the click-data.
For SEOmoz, I looked at five of the most recent pieces of content from the blog. Below are the URLs with total shares:
This tells me what content got the most shares over whatever time period I chose. If I had taken a bigger sample, I could group the shares around topics.
Taking the example above, I can look at my social CTR for each post:
More people are clicking on the post around link building than the post on Facebook resources, which got a lot more shares. Is this because of the headline? Is it dependent on the audience sharing it (more people might be interested in link building vs Facebook) and what content their follower’s love? I can now start to answer these questions with data-driven hypotheses.
I can also see the Share: View ratio. This ratio is the total reach (sum of followers) that my content may be seen by, and the number of clicks throughs it’s actually getting:
This kind of data can help me figure out how to get more users sharing my content on social platforms and, better yet, clicking on the links.
More and more companies are going to be using content as a way to grow their top of funnel, and you need to be all over your metrics to ensure the strategy you have in place will keep you top of the pile.
3. Conduct a MOFU content audit
Content driving traffic and shares is no good if it’s not delivering on actual business metrics. Going back to Marketo as an example (you can do a version of this for B2C), I can look at the performance of topics for new names (Leads), First Touch Pipe created, and Multi Touch Pipe created (where a piece of content wasn’t the first touch, but was consumed during the sale).
For example, if I look at new names (which are form completes by people we don’t currently have in our database), I can see that content on social media is generating a high amount of new names for this time period (the data is a skewed due to the time period I chose):
You can start to match this up against your top of funnel audit and identify any topics delivering lots of traffic but no names. What’s missing? Wrong topics? Not strong enough call to actions for those topics? Content assets not strong enough to move prospects to the next stage, such as filling out a form?
I am then interested in what topics are creating the most in First Touch Pipeline e.g. the first asset a prospect consumed on their path to becoming a customer:
Again, this data is heavily skewed by the time period when I looked at, but if I compare this against multi touch, you can see why it’s so important to compare the two:
After comparing the charts, we can see that email is generating some good traffic for us in the top of funnel audit and that it's also generating some good first touch pipeline, but it’s a really important topic once users are in our funnel. It’s created 18% more when we look at it as a multi touch topic. We want to ensure that email assets are readily available to prospects once they are in the funnel, including in the lead nurture track we add them to.
In Marketo, we also do this by asset type, including eBook, whitepaper, checklist, video, etc. You can then start to figure out the right mix of topics and asset types for your business, like where to allocate resources and budget.
Once completed, you can then layer the right content mix by topic and asset type across your funnel (B2B or B2C).
How does a well-planned content strategy help great funnel owners?
Glad you asked. A well-planned content strategy helps open up many new doors for funnel owners, including:
- Thought leadership in your market
- Free visits, links, and shares
- Reduced bounce rate
- Increased engagement metrics
- Improved CRO results
- More money!
So what do you think about an SEO's ability to become a great funnel owner? Are we going to see many former SEOs become CMOs in the future? Would love to hear from you in the comments.
Until next time (another signature cheesy sign off :) ) …..
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/ZEFg_poQjHs/the-seo-path-to-becoming-a-great-funnel-owner
Social Media Contessa Chat 3
Welcome to the Social Media Contessas Chat with Kelly Noble of Stellar Media Marketing & Chadney Barcus of Socially Elevated. This live streaming chat will go live here on Monday at Noon Mountain Time. We hope you will join the live stream as we discuss social media hot topics and news. This season will be recorded and [...]
Source: http://www.stellarmediamarketing.com/social-media/social-media-contessa-chat-3/
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Page Quality, Local & Ranking Changes Top List of 65 Latest Google Search Updates
Google’s most recent installment of their search quality highlights is out, listing more than 65 changes to the search algorithm from August and September. Most are decidedly minor, a few stand out, and a couple major changes we know about seem to be missing entirely. Specifically, there is nary a word about the exact match domain update Google [...]
Pretty Yoga Wear and Attend Classes for Free (Nationwide)
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post I’ve recently re-taken up Yoga but with that decision a little problem has arisen – I own no sportswear. I’m not a huge fan of sportswear in general but I don’t think pretty skirts and dresses are suitable attire for performing Yoga. So the hunt has begun for some comfortable but stylish Yogawear. During my extensive online search the Yoga wear that has most appealed to me is the collection by ladies sportswear brand… [Continue Reading]
The post Pretty Yoga Wear and Attend Classes for Free (Nationwide) appeared first on Girl Does Geek.
How to Press Release: Cheap Alternatives to Writing Yourself
As I’ve mentioned before, press releases are key for proper SEO – so this is a how to press release guide on how to find someone else to do the dirty work for you (or at least most of it)! Google and the other search engines love them, they’re expected to be keyword-rich with anchor [...]
Source: http://www.netchunks.com/how-to-press-release-cheap-alternatives-to-writing-yourself/
Monday, October 29, 2012
Review Of Easy Builder Wpplugin Build Sales Pages, Video Pages, Landing Pages, And Much More …..
Easy Builder Wpplugin Review Build Sales Pages, Video Pages, Landing Pages, And Much More ….. I just picked this wpplugin up the other day and I am having a lot of fun playing with this plugin. I am going to make a few internet marketing campaigns using it and release a product ( More than [...]
Five Easy Ways to Increase Followers
Your company has Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social media accounts – but how do you get people to follow you? Whether you are new to social media, or you have established accounts which have stagnated when it comes to new followers, below are five easy strategies you can use to help boost your numbers. [...]
Source: http://www.stellarmediamarketing.com/social-media/five-easy-ways-to-increase-followers/
Google Launches Disavow Links Tool
Google has launched a new and widely anticipated “disavow links” tool. The tool was announced by the head of Google’s web spam team Matt Cutts, when speaking during a keynote at the Pubcon conference today. The tool is live and can be found here. It has been beta tested by some selected SEOs already for the past few weeks. About [...]
Source: http://www.legalsearchmarketing.com/google-search-engine/google-launches-disavow-links-tool/
Sunday, October 28, 2012
How to Find a Profitable Niche to Boost your Holiday Sales
Welcome to step one of our 5 Step Method for Mega Sales This Holiday Season. If you missed our intro to this series, check it out here. In this instalment of the 5 part series, I’ll show you how to find hot niche items that you can sell this holiday season and beyond!
I’m also going to show you my very own list of 4 quick checks I run to test whether a product will be profitable to sell. I’ve never shared this formula before – it’s one I use in my own personal business ventures – so keep reading as I unravel it!
How to find a niche that produces profits!
Niches are like diamonds; they are rare and if everyone could easily find them, they simply wouldn’t be as precious as they really are!
There is one big mistake that many new sellers make when they sit down to decide what to sell and that is selling whatever first comes to mind. This is usually electronic gadgets like iPhones, laptops or other popular items such as designer handbags or shoes.
These are actually the worst items you could attempt to sell – they have very low profit margins and very high competition from thousands of other sellers who offer the same items.
These products also require a very large initial investment. To give you an idea, Apple requires you to have an annual turnover of at least US$100,000 in most cases before they will approve you as a licensed reseller.
So instead of attempting to sell those kinds of items, what myself and all the SaleHoo team recommend is finding deep niche items to sell.
There are two steps for finding these profitable deep-niches:
1. Gathering ideas for items to potentially sell
2. Testing those ideas and separating the duds from the promising ones. This is where my list of 4 quick tests comes in, more about this soon.
Both of these steps are easy, but it can take time, so set yourself aside an evening, or a block of time that suits you, to sit down and do this. Try and do it in the next couple of days if you can, that way when I move on to the second installment in this series, you can follow along with me. If you can’t get around to it this week, don’t worry, just work at your own pace but remember, Christmas will come faster than you think
Step 1: Come up with niche ideas (the easy way)
This part of finding a niche is super easy. Essentially, all you need to do is write down a big list of products you can potentially sell. At this stage, you can go crazy and write down as many as you like.
You will make this task a lot easier on yourself if you create a spreadsheet in either Microsoft Excel or using Google Docs (sign up for Google Docs free here). The reason a spreadsheet is helpful is because later, when we actually test these ideas for viability, you can compare sale prices, sell-through rates and all those important numbers and pinpoint the best niche items.
You might find this task really easy, and you might already have a big list of potential niches in your mind. If you already have a big list of ideas, you can skip to my list of 4 tests and test them for their viability.
If you are stuck and want some tips on how to find niches, this information is crucial for you:
To build up your list of potential niche ideas, one of the first places you can look is eBay Pulse. If you don’t sell on eBay, don’t worry, the information I’m providing is still relevant to you, and the tools and data on eBay are a good indication of how well an item might sell on another marketplaces so what we are about to talk about definitely still applies to you!
How to find a niche with eBay Pulse
eBay Pulse is a tool that you can use to get ideas for products to sell: It tells you which products are popular and which are too over-saturated to make them profitable for you.
Click play on the video below to see how I use eBay Pulse to gather up some ideas.
The key thing is to make a substantial list of potential ideas and note them down (preferably in a spreadsheet, as I’ve touched on).
Once your list is complete, it's time to test those products and determine whether they are worth selling!
Is your idea viable? Put it through my 4 niche-finder tests!
Niches are items which appeal to a specific market. This is the first thing I check when I’m considering a new product, and it’s number one on my list of tests for finding a new niche.
Niche-finder test #1: Who would want this item?
If you want to know if an item is a niche, one of the first tests is to ask yourself “who would want this item?” if the answer is “everyone would” then it's NOT a niche item. If the answer is more specific like “women with sensitive skin” then you are probably looking at a niche!
Another example is if you sell a niche item such as organic cotton baby clothing, which is a really specific item, you will be appealing to a very specific market who want that line of products which is exactly what we want!
Right let’s move onto testing items for viability.
Niche-finder test #2: Check the sell-through rate
The sell-through rate of a product sells us how successful the item is, or how often it sells. Essentially, it tells us if there is too much competition, not enough demand, or if there is room to make a lot of sales selling the item!
This part of your market research is really important: What we are looking for is items that have a good sell-through rate and sell at a price that still earns you good profits. And without doing this testing part, you could easily wind up trying to sell items at a price that no one wants to buy!
One of the best ways to determine whether an item is viable is by checking the sell-through rate on eBay. The SaleHoo Research Lab is the easiest way to get this number:
If you are a SaleHoo member, your access to the SaleHoo Research Lab is free so just go to http://www.salehoo.com/labs and enter the name of the product you are researching.
Then view the sell through rate that the Research Lab generates. As I explain in the video below, a sell-through rate of above 50% is what we are looking for, so it looks as though ‘cloth diapers’ could be a good little niche!
If you are not a member of SaleHoo, you can check the sell-through rate by using eBay's Completed Listings data which shows you all the listings that ended in the past 14 days, and which ones sold, and which ones didn't.
Click play to watch the video and let me show you what I mean.
Important Note: Although I am doing this series to help you this Christmas, don’t feel like you have to sell items that are Christmas related such as tree decorations or even things that are likely to be sold as gifts. Across the board, sales increase around Christmas and the holidays so even if you are selling something like mops, or my example above of cloth diapers, you can be confident that you will see an increase in sales leading up to the holidays. Around November and December, shoppers are in spending mode!
OK, once you have found the items that have a sell-through rate of above 50%, you can delete all the products on your list that don’t make the cut.
Now you are left with a list of items that are potentially great niches, but there are still a couple of steps you need to take to be positive that you are going to sell the right item, which brings us to the third test that all niches must surpass before I will consider selling them.
Niche-finder test #3: Determine the correct make and model
Now you know which items are looking as though they will sell well, but to really be sure, we need to dive a little deeper and look into makes, models and any other specifications that the items you are researching might have.
If you skip this step, you could overlook some crucial details about your chosen item. Here’s an example: Using my cloth diaper example from earlier, in the image below, you can see that blue cloth diapers have a much less lower sell through rate than “Grovia cloth diapers” (Grovia is a brand on cloth diapers). Knowing this, I can accurately pinpoint the brand of cloth diapers that buyers are looking for.
Most products have a lot of variations that you need to take into account and do a quick bit of research on in order to know exactly which type sells best. It’s all about being as specific as possible when you do your research. For example, if you are looking into selling lawn mowers, you might find that lawn movers have a sell through rate of over 70%. But, if you dig a little deeper, you might find that regular lawn mowers only have a sell-through rate of 35%, but ride-on lawn mowers have a much higher sell-through rate. Or perhaps John Deere mowers have a higher sell-through rate than Husqvarna. The point is that you need to determine exactly what it is that shoppers are purchasing.
The SaleHoo Research Lab makes this a lot easier, but if you don’t have access to the Lab, just use eBay Completed listings to drill down and determine the exact products you need.
As with the previous step, note down the specified products with good sell through rates and delete the ones that aren’t as profitable.
Niche-finder test #4: Find a supplier with the right price!
Here comes the 4th and final crucial test: Can you find a supplier that can sell you the products at a price that still allows you to make a profit?
Sometimes, you visit a wholesale website, get a price for a product, then compare it to how much the product sells for on eBay and the numbers just don’t add up: How can an eBay seller undercut a wholesaler? Well, sometimes they can!
There are a couple of reasons why this happens:
1. The eBay seller IS the wholesale supplier. This doesn’t happen often, but sometimes wholesalers sell their items direct to the public via eBay, as well as in bulk orders to retailers. It pays to ask your supplier whether they sell direct to the public because it is virtually impossible to undercut your supplier and still make a profit.
2. The eBay seller has purchased in very large quantities or is a preferred reseller. Plenty of eBay businesses aren’t just your typical mom-and-pop -home-businesses. Many of them are medium to large companies with huge buying power. This means they can afford to spend $50,000-$100,000 per order from their wholesaler which earns them some very competitive prices on items. These sellers are always difficult to compete with.
3. By far the most common reason you see lower prices on eBay compared to on a supplier’s website is because suppliers don’t usually display bulk buying prices on their website. You often need to login to their website or request a price direct from them in order to see how much you can purchase items for.
Here’s how to run this 4th and final test on your product:
Use the SaleHoo Research Lab or eBay Completed listings to find the average sale price of any item. Using the SaleHoo Research Lab is the easiest way, just search the name of the product and look for the median end price.
Using eBay Completed Listings, you need to run a search as I showed in the video above and add up all the ending prices that are shown in green.
Count up 50-100 Completed Listings sale prices, then find the average. You find the average by adding up all the sale prices, then dividing that number by the number of individual number of sale prices. Finding the average shouldn’t be difficult, but if my explanation on how to find the average is confusing, try this.
Once you have the average selling price of the item, you need to compare that to what your supplier can sell it to you for. Make sure you take eBay and PayPal fees, or any other costs associated with selling the products such as website hosting, into consideration when finalising the price point.
So what now? After you have followed along with this method, you will have at least one niche item that passed all of the 4 tests I outlined above.
Next up, you need to find a supplier! Furthermore, you need to find a supplier that has good prices that allow you to make a profit. I’ll show you the best way to do this in my next instalment of this 5 part series. Even if you are not a SaleHoo member with access to our Wholesale Supplier Directory, we have solutions for you, too. Keep an eye out on your inbox.
In the meantime, get to work on finding new niches to sell this Christmas (and beyond!)
Quick action steps to get you started based on what we covered in today's post:
1. Open a Google Docs or Excel spreadsheet and fill it with ideas for potential products to sell
2. Get product ideas from eBay Pulse, Pinterest, the SaleHoo Directory, or just by flicking through magazines
3. Test those ideas for their viability using my list of 4 tests that items must pass before I consider them niche-worthy! Be patient and persistent during this process and remeber what I said at the beginning: Niches are like diamonds; they are rare and if everyone could easily find them easily, they simply wouldn't be as precious as they really are!
Next up: Find a supplier that can supply you with these products (at a price that still allows you to make a profit. I'll cover this in the next installment of this series. Keep an eye on out on your email inbox - I will let you know when it's ready.
P.S. Want to know the best way to undercut other drop shippers and make more profits? By selling on your very own website! Break away from eBay fees and constant policy updates and enjoy the freedom of your very own SaleHoo Store!
Get Ready for Christmas Profits with a SaleHoo Store
Open your own store for just $27 per month!
- No hidden fees or contracts. Cancel at any time
- FREE SaleHoo Wholesale Supplier Directory access worth $67
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Official Factory Unlocked iPhone 5 Price & Availability
Apple will start selling factory unlocked iPhone 5 from their online US store very soon. Its better to buy unlocked iPhone 5 than waiting for unlock methods
Read full article here > Official Factory Unlocked iPhone 5 Price & Availability written by Tushar Tajane
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techzoom/kzCz/~3/MbZtXme8oVk/
eBay Apps That Make you a More Productive Seller
If you made $20 from 7 minutes work, you would feel pretty happy about it, right? However if it took you an hour to make that $20, your business simply wouldn't be as profitable. Profit margins on eBay can be tight. One way to help increase how profitable your selling ventures are is to really streamline your systems and make each transaction as fast for you to process as possible. Time is money, people!
Using eBay apps are a great way to speed up the process of listing, managing and fulfilling orders. eBay apps are verified by eBay, but most are created by third parties. Here are some of the most popular apps (as voted by users) that will help make you a more productive (and profitable) seller.
Cross Sell
Cross Sell lets you maximize sales by showing buyers your other listings, dramatically increasing your exposure and your chances of making additional sales. This free app is a favorite among eBay sellers because it helps overcome one of the biggest pains of selling on eBay: Standing out from your competitors and getting products in front of customers.
Average user rating: 4.5/5 (based on 2637 ratings)
Cost: Free
Want it? Get it here
ShipSaver Insurance
Buy discounted shipping insurance to ensure that your buyers get their items safely. Shipping insurance is essential on eBay but it can really eat into your profit margins. Using ShipSaver allows you to keep more money in your pocket! Everything is done online which saves you a trip to the post office... and therefore makes each sale more profitable.
Average user rating: 4.5/5 (based on 449 ratings)
Cost: Free
Want it? Get it here
Outright
Do you have trouble staying on top of your finances? If you want to streamline how to manage your money, and make preparing for taxes easier, Outright is for you! Ever since the IRS required PayPal to report your online sales, online retailers have been more weary of keeping an eye on what comes in and out of their accounts, and what you owe in tax. This app automates a lot of the leg work, saving you time.
Average user rating: 4.5/5 (based on 1736 ratings)
Cost: Free
Want it? Get it here
eBay Listing Analytics
I've put this app at the bottom of my list because it has mixed reviews and it seems as though the app has not been working for the past couple of months (have you been affected? Leave a comment below). I decided to include it on my list anyway because it's likely that eBay will fix the issues soon and also because it has a high average rating from users. You might already be using this but just in case you haven't heard of Listing Analytics, it gives you insight to how many clicks, views and sales your listings are making. Knowing these stats allows you to weed out any products in your range that aren't selling, and focus on your top performers.
Average user rating: 4/5 (based on 3515 ratings)
Cost: Free
Want it? Get it here
Have you used any of these apps? What was your experience?
Love apps? Check out the free SaleHoo iPhone App and take SaleHoo with you wherever you go!
Source: http://www.salehoo.com/blog/ebay-apps-that-make-you-a-more-productive-seller
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Blogging Isn’t a Numbers Game: It’s a People Game
Last month I had the privilege of attending one of the biggest events in Australia—the AFL (Australian Football League) Grand Final. For those of you outside Australia, it’s kind of like the Superbowl of Aussie football (without all the cool ads and wardrobe malfunctions…). Anyway, I was a guest (with my wife “V”) at the [...]
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Blogging Isn’t a Numbers Game: It’s a People Game
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney/~3/ReR3BKRSymI/
8 Effective Tips for Driving Traffic
8 Effective Tips for Driving Traffic Marketing your blog for getting traffic and prospective customers is crucial for a successful blog. This isn’t very difficult if you employ right strategies from the beginning. To get huge number of admirers in order to generate sales, you should do the following practices. 1. Keyword Research: Keyword research [...]
Source: http://jaysonlinereviews.com/8-effective-tips-for-driving-traffic/
How Boys Google vs How Girls Google
Maybe males and females do relate to computers and the internet differently, as the image above jokes about.
Guy Googles: "PC overheated solutions".
Gal Googles: "My PC is overheated how do I get it to cool down because this PC is my life!"
Guy Googles: "PC overheated solutions".
Gal Googles: "My PC is overheated how do I get it to cool down because this PC is my life!"
How do you like my new computer?
Guy: "Nice."
Gal: "OMG, that is the cutest, most adorable computer I have even seen!"
Pin It
Source: http://pluperfecter.blogspot.com/2012/09/how-boys-google-vs-how-girls-google.html
Friday, October 26, 2012
Review Youtube Hijack – Learn How To Make Money On Youtube Videos
Review The Youtube Hijack Will It Make You More Money With Your Video Marketing? I just purchased a course the other day that had to do with making more money by submitting Youtube video’s. How to get your youtube video’s ranked on the first page of Google in a matter of days? and tons of [...]
Source: http://jaysonlinereviews.com/review-youtube-hijack-learn-money-youtube-videos/
Search Engine Optimization Classes And A Few SEO Lessons For Newbies
SEO courses, SEO training, Seo classes, and search engine optimization lessons. meet Sean Donahue the king of internet marketing and seo here. If your new to blogging, and ranking well in the popular search engines like Google , Yahoo, and Bing then pay attention to these free seo tips to get you going in the [...]
Source: http://jaysonlinereviews.com/search-engine-optimization-classes-seo-tips-newbies/
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Exploring the World of SEO after Panda and Penguin Updates
Exploring the World of SEO after Panda and Penguin Updates As per observations and analysis, the SEO industry is completely an ever-changing mode. In the years to come, handling various online properties and fully optimized sites will be highly challenging. Presently, every webmaster is striving to gain natural links along with quality content. Every professional [...]
Source: http://jaysonlinereviews.com/exploring-the-world-of-seo-after-panda-and-penguin-updates/
How To Blog For Money In 2012 Killer Tips | How To Make Money From Your Blog
How To Blog For Money In 2012 Killer Tips | How To Make Money From Your Blog 2012 is fast approaching, and the conclusion of 2011 is near. 2011 has been a great year for me, and my internet marketing business in general. But 2012 should be much, much, better. In terms of revenue, [...]
Source: http://jaysonlinereviews.com/blog-money-2012-killer-tips-money-blog/
List Of Useful Sites To Drive More Blog, Or Website Traffic ( Updated For 2012 )
List Of Useful Sites To Drive More Blog, Or Website Traffic ( Updated For 2012 ) Traffic equals money online. The more targeted traffic you send to your website, or blog the more money you are going to make for your online business period! I am not going to rattle on about how important [...]
Source: http://jaysonlinereviews.com/list-sites-drive-blog-website-traffic-updated-2012/
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Ideas And Suggestions To Engage Your Followers On Twitter
Ideas And Suggestions To Engage Your Followers On Twitter Personally, I rarely use Twitter unless I am in the office. Once home I sincerely try my hardest not to log into my private account because I know that if I do I will waste literally hours looking through what my favorite comedians, brands, and even [...]
Source: http://jaysonlinereviews.com/ideas-and-suggestions-to-engage-your-followers-on-twitter/
Eight Tips To Increase Your Email CTR
Looking to launch an email marketing campaign that will have higher open and response rates (email CTR)? Here’s the information you could use. New horizons According to a recent study by digital advertising company MediaMind, the click-through rate for an online video is 27.4 times as effective as the CTR for a standard banner ad. [...]
Source: http://www.netchunks.com/eight-tips-to-increase-your-email-ctr/
Get Valuable Work Done
I run my own business, but I've just completed a short stint working on-site at another company.
And after a few months working for another company, I realized that, at my own company, I had fallen into routines and work habits not all of which could be considered productive.
Procrastination, which some argue can be beneficial, can also be a problem when we really need to get things done. So, it was refreshing to see how other people organize their work, and an opportunity to reflect upon, and improve, my own work approach.
In short, I really needed a way of getting more valuable stuff done each day.
How Often Do We Produce Business Value?
Do you sometimes find that you’ve been working all day, but end with a sneaking suspicion you didn’t create a lot of actual value? Are you sometimes busy for the sake of being busy?
That was true in my case.
But now I organize my work to ensure I deliver something of real value - every day.
I discovered a method of working that has been around for a while, called Agile. Agile is a software development process incorporating a number of elegant concepts that can help skyrocket personal productivity. It is used by companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo and Salesforce.
Agile is a huge topic, and there are many flavors of Agile, but I’ve picked out the one key feature that can be very effective for individuals and small companies working in areas beyond software development.
But first, let’s talk about how a bunch of amateurs built a supercar in under three months.
Really?
Really.
Wikispeed are a group of part-time volunteers. They built a 0-60mph-in-under-five-seconds supercar, that can do 100mpg, and they did so in under three months. What is more astonishing is that the people building the car often weren’t in the same room, city or even country.
But with very little money, no factories, and little formal car-building experience they built something astonishing in a very short space of time. Currently, they’re building a full production car suitable for the mass market, and if you want to help build it, well, you can!
That's quite some feat in terms of both organisation and personal productivity.
Some people would be forgiven for assuming that the process must have been meticulously planned in advance, laying out precise complex technical and procedural detail, but that wasn’t the case. The project was broken down into very simple concepts even a child could understand
The work was broken down into stories
What Is A Story?
In Agile, a “story” is short, simple description of a feature told from the perspective of the person who will use the capability being created. It also defines the business value.
Here's a template for a story:
As a (type of user), I want (some goal) so that (some reason).
An example might be:
As a marketer, I want a report that shows the number of links coming to my site from Twitter so that I can measure if my Twitter experiment resulted in over 1000 links
We then create a list of tasks needed to accomplish the story.
For example:
- Investigate software solutions for Twitter link measurement
- Implement software solution
- Run report
We then create success criteria to measure if the story has been completed i.e. what output of business value is created?
I can see a report that shows how many links are coming into my site from Twitter
Simple.
Ensure You’re Focused On Delivering Value
On a Monday, I write a set of stories about what I’m going to do that week. I estimate how long each story will take, and then I arrange them in a hierarchy. The order of the hierarchy is determined by which stories produce the most business value.
Next, I count up the hours involved, and if the hours involved exceed the number of hours I have available, the story gets put on the backburner for consideration next week.
I define tasks for each story, and then systematically work through them. It’s like a to-do list, but richer and more valuable because each story forces me to think in terms of delivering something of measurable, business value relative to each other unit of work I need to do. Needless to say, engaging with Facebook doesn't appear often in my stories.
Big projects, such as entire search marketing campaigns, can be broken down into multiple stories, spread over multiple weeks, chunked into tasks, and then timeboxed as a means of project management. In plain, simple language, everyone can see what needs to be done.
If you have trouble determining the business value of a chunk of work you’re doing, chances are it isn’t producing much value, so you should ditch it and find something that does. In this way, you fill your day with the things that matter most.
Satisfaction In a Job Well Done
There are, of course, many ways to manage projects, and many different ways to use Agile. Most companies adopt different flavours of Agile, or use only bits and pieces as it suits.
Personally, I have little use in my own business for the numerous meetings and the often tedious ritualistic activity Agile can involve. I’m also wary of over-hyped--latest-greatest-thing-since-sliced-bread work systems, but I do find stories a great way of deciding what work is most valuable to do at any given time.
I use this chart tool, called LeanKit, to align the story tasks into pre-set columns of “defined” (meaning I've written the story and estimated how long it will take), “in-progress” (meaning "I'm working on it") and “done” (yay!). You can also use sticky notes on a board if you prefer a more tactile approach
I work on one story at a time (the most important first), see it through to "done" status before I start the next one. If I underestimated how long the stories would take, then at least I can be assured I've done the most important work first. If time runs out, the low priority stories simply drop off the end for reconsideration next week.
Click the image for slideshow:
The chart, called a Kanban, is a nice visual representation of how work is progressing, and if other people need to see what I'm working on, and where I'm up to, they can do so at a glance.
As a bonus, it feels very satisfying to move each task across into the done “column”.
Do you use any systems to help ensure you get valuable work done? Please tell us about them in the comments!
PS: I’ve barely touched on Agile, and its many, many variants - a lot of it is more applicable to production processes rather than marketing - but if you want to read more, see the links below.
Further reading:
Categories:
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Is Free PR Distribution Viable in the Age of Blogging?
Previous to Google’s latest Penguin update, Internet marketers were able to use free article directories and free PR distribution sites as accessible ways of promoting their brand. The search engine giant’s evolution has changed the boundaries of Internet marketing, however, and marginalized lower quality links such as those included on article syndication. The issue surrounding [...]
Source: http://www.netchunks.com/is-free-pr-distribution-viable-in-the-age-of-blogging/
An Inside Scoop on the Future of SEO after the Panda and Penguin Updates
An Inside Scoop on the Future of SEO after the Panda and Penguin Updates The panic and havoc after every major algorithm update by Google is almost a norm. “SEO is dead,” “Panda and Penguin attacks render webmasters helpless” are the highlights that are soon seen floating around in blogosphere. While it seems okay when [...]
Source: http://jaysonlinereviews.com/seopandapenguinupdatestips/
JV Zoo Affiliate Program Review Instant Affiliate Commissions ( No Waiting For Your Money )
This is going to be a quick review of the J.V. Zoo affiliate network I recently signed up for J.V. Zoo and I have been going through some of the features of this instant commission affiliate network that is really starting to gain a lot of popularity these days. Alexa rank of J.V. Zoo 3,046 in [...]
Monday, October 22, 2012
Samsung Galaxy NOTE N8000 with new features Launched in INDIA
Samsung Galaxy NOTE 800 (GT-N8000) with really good features launched in INDIA. New NOTE is very useful for Fashion Designers, Photographers & Artists
Read full article here > Samsung Galaxy NOTE N8000 with new features Launched in INDIA written by Tushar Tajane
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techzoom/kzCz/~3/fgqh_MfPYrU/
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