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Blitz
Ezine # 232 December 1st, 2003
Six ways to increase your web business revenue
Note:
This is an archived issue. Some links and/or content
may be outdated
The Blitz-Promotions News Letter
Issue no. 232, December 1, 2003
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Blitz Comments
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Next
month we'll be talking about creating and optimizing
a pay per click campaign.
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In this Issue
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-
Snippets from the past.
- Google Dances - Florida
- Increasing your profits
- Fun for the holidays.
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Food for thought
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"Perhaps
the most valuable result of all education is the ability
to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it
ought to be done, whether you like it or not." -- Walter
Bagehot
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Building Your Business
Best of Blitz - Useful snips from past issues
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Increasing
sales - Oct 2002.
You've
been there before. You're nearing the checkout at your
local grocery store with your kids and both sides of
the checkout lane are filled to the brim with all the
stuff you don't want your kids to have. Do you ever
wonder why they do that? Because it works, and nobody
says that you can't do it as well. Some things that
you can include in your check out program are:
1. Giftwrapping.
2. Buying options - buy 2 get 1 free etc.
3. Similar products / add ons - example batteries for
an electronic toy, frames for a painting.
4. Gift certificates at a reduced price.
There
are many more ways / things you can do. A few things
to keep in mind though -
1. Make sure that the offer is non intrusive.
2. Make sure that it doesn't run them off.
3. The more the offer is related to what they're purchasing
the better.
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Promoting
your site - Open your mouth -
This
one may seem pretty obvious, but many times I think
we forget about it. Talk about your business to anyone
and everyone that will listen. They may not need your
product or service, but if you talk about it with a
great deal of passion, they will remember you.
A good example happened a week or two ago. When I still
worked as a nurse, everyone was curious about what I
was doing and I would tell them about it. Three years
or so ago, I had a conversation with one of the night
shift clerks. He had a candle business and was asking
me about building a website (the only reason he asked
me about it was because I had told someone, who had
told him). Although he didn't buy a site off me that
night he did remember.
Early
in March of this year I got a call from a local Doctor
that wants a huge project done.... how did he find out
about us... the clerk, who now works for him. So the
lesson is plant the seeds, they may not come up today,
tomorrow, or even this year... but they could.
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Building
your business - Part 3
6.
Learn from your mistakes. If you run your own business,
you will make mistakes. The important thing is to learn
from them so you won't make them again. Here's a simple
process to do just that.
- Describe the incident in detail.
- What was the outcome?
- What could have been done to prevent the goof?
- List the steps needed to implement the prevention.
- Do step 1 today.
7.
Plan for the worst. I know we've mentioned this before
in this lesson. Make your plan, then work your plan.
8.
Know your numbers. Do you know how many visitors you
get on a daily basis? Do you know where they come from?
Do you know which pages they view and how they click
thru the site? This is important information that you
need to know. We'll be talking about using these numbers
later this Summer, but for now you need to work on getting
access to these numbers. Some other numbers you should
start tracking. Sales Profits Expenses Some more details
on stats and your site - see the article below.
http://www.sagerock.com/web-log-analysis.html
9.
Take care of your customers. Some good ways to tell
your customers you care can be found at the links below.
http://www.blitzpromotions.com/blitz187.htm
http://www.blitzpromotions.com/blitz188.htm
10.
Take care of yourself. All work and no play will put
a tremendous amount of stress on you and your business.
When you plan your week, make sure that you include
some time for fun (and your family as well).
There
are many, many more useful tips in our archives. Check
them out here.
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Search Engine News
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Big
News -
For
many months Google has done what is called a 'rolling
update'. Instead of dancing once a month they were continually
updating their listings. That changed on Friday / Saturday
Nov. 14th and 15th. Update Florida changed the algo
they used... we're talking major changes. So what changed?
Research is still going on but some thoughts are below.
It
seems that changes weren't made to all the listings,
but just select ones. Some conspiracy theorists think
this may be keywords that are most active with adwords
campaigns. I tend to disagree with this though.
For
those keywords that were affected, it seems some penalties
were given for 'over' optimization. Things included
- title tags, density, inbound link text, link text
within the site, etc. It also seems that some penalty
may have been given for having the keywords within the
domain.
So
what to do -
Googles
whole business is based around providing good search
results. If they don't provide good results then people
will go elsewhere to search. I think in a week or two
they will revert back to their old algo - or closer
to it. But I also think that some of the things in this
algo will return in the near future. As hard as it may
be the best thing to do would be to wait till the next
update, otherwise you'll be like a dog chasing it's
tail.
A
good tool to compare new / old listings.
http://www.scroogle.org
Google Ad changes make some folks raw...
Details
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Quick fixes
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CSS can make your life a whole lot easier when designing
your site. The url below can help make setting up the
CSS a breeze.
http://www.csscreator.com/version1/index.php
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Guest Articles
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6
Changes You Can Make to Increase Business Profits
by Marcia Yudkin
I
read once that something like 30 percent of all drinkable
water gets wasted on the way to the consumer by leaky
pipes. Likewise, your business may be letting potential
revenue drip away, to be lost forever, all over the
place. Use this checklist to make sure you are taking
best advantage of all the opportunities for earnings
that would be arriving safely if you only plugged up
those holes.
1.
Improve your followup.
According to the National Sales Executive Association,
only about two percent of sales occur on the first contact.
Eighty percent of sales require at least five contacts
before the transaction occurs. That means that if you
put out your sales message just once or twice, you're
barely out of the gate. Those who might eventually buy
are hardly even beginning to pay attention. You must
repeat that message again and again before it wakes
up busy people to what you are offering.
2.
Put your marketing activities on schedule with a
plan.
I see a lot of businesses bedeviled by the "feast or
famine" syndrome, where they stop marketing when times
are good and therefore have no pipeline in place bringing
them new leads when the economy slows down. They get
busy marketing, but there's a time lag before new business
comes in, and when it does, they stop marketing once
more, keeping the cycle going. Instead, invest time
or money in creating a marketing plan that tells you
what to do each week or month to keep business continually
flowing in. If it's too much for you to handle, hire
assistants or outsource it to hungry but competent colleagues.
3.
Increase your personal productivity by working at your
most creative times.
Once I incited a firestorm of criticism on CompuServe's
PR Forum by revealing that I hardly ever spend more
than one hour writing a press release. Other PR professionals
opined that I couldn't possibly create decent work that
quickly. Well, I do, and here's my secret: following
a process that creativity researchers will tell you
is used by top scientists and inventors, I absorb all
the facts and define the challenge for myself, then
go to sleep, take a walk or step into the shower. Within
a day, my unconscious mind brings me a "Eureka" experience
with a terrific headline. The rest of the press release
pours out right after the headline. Had I sat down to
try, try, try to write that document, it would take
triple the time and not reach the same quality.
4. Stop unproductive marketing activities, boosting
your profits.
Advertising pros know that most advertising doesn't
work, but they continue to spend like crazy because
part of it does. If you can identify which marketing
efforts of yours are not giving you a return, and stop
spending money and energy on those, you'll be earning
more from what you spend. Admittedly, it can be difficult
sometimes to pinpoint what actually brings in customers
and clients. However, if you begin asking each new buyer
how they heard about you and keep track of the answers,
patterns almost always emerge. One graphic artist learned
through this kind of research that nearly all her clientele
came from word of mouth and none from her ads in the
local business journal. Of course, the opposite discovery
could have happened, too. Don't assume, find out!
5.
Market more often to your customer base - much more
often.
Hardly anyone stays in touch with existing and past
customers often enough. They think they might be "bothering"
their clientele by letting them know about new products,
opportunities to buy before a price increase, success
stories of other customers like them, and so on. Nope,
it's not so. On the contrary, staying in touch ensures
that you stay in the awareness of people who have done
business with you before, so that when they need you
again, they come to you rather than go to your competitors.
6.
Hire help for mechanical tasks or a virtual assistant
to help manage communications.
Feeling overwhelmed? If you can make, let's say, $100
an hour doing what you do best, you should not be spending
too much energy on routine things like stuffing envelopes,
doing errands like going to the bank and the copy shop
or putting together slides for your upcoming lecture.
Instead, pay someone $25 an hour to get those to-do's
accomplished and free you up to get more high-paid work
accomplished. An exception to this principle is when
you do the repetitive tasks as a break or rest from
money-making activities that tire you out. Increasing
your productivity means increasing the income from your
business without spending more hours working.
Get
started on at least one of the above today! Marcia Yudkin
is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity and 10 other
books. She runs a private member site, MarketingforMore.com,
which supports business owners who are growing their
businesses.
Learn how to avoid the most common pricing mistakes
in her free report, "Charge More & Get It," available
from http://www.marketingformore.com/survey.htm
.
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Links you can use -
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If
your computer crashes often for now reason, you may
want to try out this tiny program.
Bug
Toaster
A
list of over 100 web editors - from the least expensive
to most. Find one that will fit your budget and your
needs.
Web
Editors
You
still have time to get organized by Christmas.
http://www.christmasorganizing.com/
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Fun and Games
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Christmas
is coming up - below you'll find some nice places to
explore.
A
ton of great holiday tales -
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/christmas.html
Track
Santa's progress on his trip to your house -
http://www.noradsanta.org/
Now
listen to some nice Holiday Tunes -
http://www.merry-christmas.com/music.htm
Forgot the words, you can find the lyrics here -
http://www.santaland.com/songs.html
Help
your kid find out if they've been naughty or nice -
make sure you visit the site before you take your kids,
that makes certain that their name is in the database.
http://www.santaslistofgoodlittleboysandgirls.com
More
links and fun -
http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/Holidays/Christmas/
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Reviews
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Gets
my vote for the time waster of the month :o)
The
angry penguins have stolen the Christmas presents and
now the mighty elf has to rescue them. Don't visit the
site unless you have some time to waste.
http://www.lockergnome.com/arcade/
Just
click on Adventure Elf.
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Classified Ads
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Make
sure to visit our sponsors.
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Want
your ad in this spot for $25.00 for 12 issues. Send
me a note and I'll send you the details. Email
Us.
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Useful links to our site
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Find
more useful promotion and design articles here -
http://www.blitzpromotions.com/articleindex.htm
Check
out our archives for issues you may have missed.
http://www.blitzpromotions.com/ezinearchives.htm
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Next Issues
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Jan. - Optimizing your pay per clicks.
Feb. - Taxes and building your business.
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Final Thoughts
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During
this holiday time we hope you...
-
take some time off from your family.
- buy yourself a present.
Tim
and Lisa Hamblin
Tisa Enterprises
PO Box 221
Hazard KY 41702
http://www.blitzpromotions.com
http://www.crochetnmore.com
http://www.webpageplanner.com
http://www.ineedlinks.com
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