Digital Marketer, AI Consultant, Published Author, ClickFunnels and Kit Specialist

Promote Your Digital Product and Fatten Your Wallet With ClickBank

August 21, 2010

Looking for a way to promote your product or promote the product of others?  Want to make money while you’re at it?  With ClickBank you can promote your own products or promote the products of others and make money.  ClickBank is based in Boise, Idaho and started back in 1998.  There are thousands of digital product vendors on ClickBank and over 110,000 active affiliate marketers. You only need to create an account to get started and can either sell your own product or promote someone else’s product and get paid. Sell Digital Products Online “I earned about $250,000 during my senior year in college and within a year of graduation had crossed the million dollar mark.” Russell Brunson, Idaho, USA Do you have an e-Book you’ve written?  How about computer software or a how-to guide?  With ClickBank you can promote your product without a lot of overhead.  The company will process orders for you via a secured and fraud proof system.  You choose the price you want to sell your product for and pay them a one-time activation fee.  All you have to do is create a landing page(web page) promoting your product and create some banner ads for affiliates.  Affiliates are other people who are willing to promote your product for you by placing a hop link or banner ad on their website.  Affiliates get a cut of your profits in the form of a commission when you make a sell. You can find lots of helpful information on selling basics here: ClickBank Selling Basics Promote Products in the ClickBank Marketplace “For anyone wanting to get started in affiliate marketing, ClickBank is the place to go. There are thousands of products to choose from and commission can be as high as 75%; you just won’t find that anywhere else.” Byron Walker, Colorado, USA If you don’t have product to sell but have a blog or a website you can still make money with ClickBank.  Affiliate Marketing has been around for years and a great way to supplement your income.  Once you have a ClickBank account you can promote any product in the ClickBank Marketplace.  There’s thousands of products to choose from and something for everyone.  Just find the product you like and generate a hop link to add to your blog or website.  The hop link is coded so ClickBank knows who to pay commission if product is sold.  Now you can share product with your Facebook friends using SocialPromote.  Just click the “Like” button and ClickBank will create a hop and add it to your Facebook Stream.  Make sure you are always signed in to your account when generating links or sharing out to Facebook.  You can search the marketplace for products that will complement your blog or website. If you have a WordPress blog there are ClickBank plug-ins available that let you add ClickBank product to your blog with ease. Ready to get your feet wet with affiliate marketing or selling your own digital product?  Head over to the ClickBank website and get your account ad get started today.  Already using ClickBank?  Feel free to comment below and share your thoughts with others. Sign Up for ClickBank CJM Marketing Specialties Content By Dennis J. Smith

Aksel Paris Launches Facebook Store (Who’ll Be Next?)

August 19, 2010

Content By SF Indie Fashion Here’s something we predict you’ll see more and more of very quickly: local fashion brands with Facebook stores.  The first we’ve run across comes from Aksel Paris (don’t let the name fool you, the company’s actually based in SoMa). The menswear line recently launched the shop with six men’s shirts ($79-$89) from its Paris collection, and in true Facebook fashion, we hear the store will be offering special discounts just for fans. I wanted to share the short article above so my readers can see how others are using social media to sell product on sites like Facebook. Do you know of any other companies with Facebook stores?  How are you using social media to promote your products or goods?

Promote Your Business With Effective Web Design 101

August 18, 2010

Web Design 101 for Business Your Virtual Storefront I’ve been creating website for over 15 years now, back when Netscape was the top browser.  I’d like to share some of my tips regarding effective website creation and design. I come across poor website design all the time when surfing the net and there’s no shortage.  When you first create a website you should think about layout and how others will navigate around your site. Do your research and find out what others are doing before you just toss together a site. Think of a website like a storefront in your local shopping mall. Your home page is much like a storefront because it’s the first thing your visitor will see.  If its eye catching and always up-to-date then visitors will stay and view your site. If you walk by a store with a bad window display or the same as your last visit, what are the chances you are going to check things out?  So you can see the importance of designing a functional home page. Keep it Clean with Relevant Content Don’t overwhelm someone with a lot of information on your home page.  I recommend a mix of 70/30 depending on the type of site. Give your users about 70 percent content mixed with 30 percent graphics/images/ads to compliment your content.  Ever had a hard time finding your keys in a cluttered room?  Keep your visitors engaged in your content to keep them coming back.  Make sure your content is relevant and optimized for search engines.  Relevant content will keep the visitor on your website and hopefully purchasing your product or service.  If someone walked into an electronic store and found books they would turn around and leave. Easy Navigation One of my favorite sites is DynamicDrive.com which offers lots of free cool stuff for web designers.  Stuff that helps make your website stand out from others in the crowd.  I mainly use the navigation tools they provide on my websites.  Both SpreadViralVideo.com and MyVolunteer.com used navigation menus that I found on DynamicDrive.com.  I’ve also used code that disables the “Submit” button after its been clicked.  That way the user cannot click it a 2nd time, preventing duplicate information when they submit a form.  There are lots of other resources out there to make your site look like a pro did the work. Research Other Sites While you want your creativity to be your own it’s a great idea to see what others are doing.  I often check out the design of other websites to see what others are doing.  I did this years ago when I first started creating web pages to learn the art of HTML.  When I started I didn’t have the luxury of books or even classes on how to code HTML, JavaScript and other coding languages of the web.  Now there are tons of books, online classes, software and online resources to make the task easier. Web Design Tools of the Trade I want to finish up with briefly talking about some of the tools of the trade.  I have hard coded(straight HTML) websites in the past however I mostly use WYSIWYG(What You See Is What You Get) software when developing my current websites.  I don’t know about you but I don’t have a lot of free time, so I used FrontPage which became Expression 4 and is no longer available from Microsoft.  I’m not part of a website team so I’m on my own when it comes to developing my websites. Therefore I use web design software that lets me crank out pages and a fast pace with a professional look.  Besides Expression 4 other editors on the market were Adobe® Dreamweaver CS5 and Adobe® Creative Suite 5 to name a few.  Most of these allow you to use a simple “Compose” mode to create your web pages. These editors make it easy for you to add images, navigation, links, create tables and other aspects of a web pages quickly.  Those who know how to code can switch to the HTML mode to have more control of the design. Update 05/11/16 – Microsoft has ceased development on its Expression Web product. However they still offer free downloads Expression Web 4 but offer no support. It is possible some of the information in this post has become outdated and some products might not be available. I have since moved on to using WordPress as my choice for website creation. More web design software applications can be found on CNet’s site Download.com and are either free or try and buy trials.  Most of the above software can usually be downloaded and tried out for 30 days or more before you buy.  Give them a spin today and see what types of creations you can come up with. Do you have any tips to share with others?  Have a favorite HTML editor?  Feel free to comment below. By Dennis J. Smith

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Payvment Expands Toolset For Power Facebook Sellers

August 17, 2010

Payvment, a leading e-commerce solution for Facebook Page administrators, has just introduced a number of new features including the ability for Etsy users to import their entire Etsy product catalog. Additionally, the company is releasing a suite of enterprise APIs for Facebook Stores. That means developers can now take advantage of the new IPN service, an Order Management API, a Shopping Cart API, and more, to automate the entire Facebook shopping experience. For those who are less aware of what Payvment is, they provide Facebook Page administrators with a full-fledged e-commerce solution which supports shopping and payments on the site. Right now the service is free to set up. The company’s business model has enabled them to reach tens of thousands of Facebook Pages with very little promotion aside from a small footer on each shopping tab which says “Launch your free store on Facebook” and links back to Payvment. While the volume of e-commerce transactions on Facebook is not known, many companies have been taking new steps to offer on-Facebook transaction support. Delta, for example, just announced that they would begin accepting purchases directly within their Facebook Page.   Whether or not these tests have proven to be successful is unknown, however there’s no harm in enabling buyers to make purchases anywhere they happen to be online, even if that location is Facebook. While we’re still waiting to hear more about the transaction volume of sales on Facebook, Payvment is currently the leading company in bringing e-commerce to Facebook. If you are interested in learning more about the company you can do so by visiting their website. Article by Neil O’Neill of AllFacebook.com Read more about Payvment for Facebook in my August 2010 article.

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Create a Payvment storefront on Facebook in under 15 minutes

August 12, 2010

Please note: Since this article was written Payvment was sold and the links below might no longer be valid. I have left the article up for reference. Are you the crafty type and thought about selling product on Facebook?  What if I told you all you need is a Facebook and PayPal account to get started?  There are over 500 million customers waiting for you to set-up shop on Facebook. We’ve all heard of EBay, Amazon.com and some maybe have even heard of ETSY as places to sell and purchase product online.  But with the explosive growth of social media the new player in town for e-commerce is Facebook.  Payvment is a Facebook application that is free and easy for anyone to set-up.  It connects to your PayPal personal or business account to process payments using PayPal and any major credit card.  Right now the application is free while in beta and Payvment says that any Payvment Facebook store will remain free even after the public beta ends. Okay, so it might take a little more than 15 minutes to roll out a store but most will be up in running in less than an hour.  I would say the most time consuming isn’t setting up the store, but taking photos of your product to display in the store.  But setting up the customizations and adding product is a pretty simple process. Here’s what a typical Payvment storefront on Facebook looks like.  Notice the shopping cart above the product as the customers adds product to the cart.  Payvment lets you add product from any store on Facebook that use the Payvment application.  Payments are processed via PayPal accordingly with all shipping and tax calculated at checkout. When a customer clicks on an item they get a more detailed description of the item.  Notice the Fan Discount for those who are a fan of the page.  You can give fans of your page an instant discount on your products.  You don’t have to offer a discount but this is a pretty effective way to get others to “Like” your business and hopefully purchase product.  Payvment reports that a Forbes study shows that Facebook Fans are 41% more likely to recommend a brand and 28% more likely to continue using them.  They also state that a Facebook Fan is worth $136.38 on average and spends $71.84 more each year compared to non fans.  Could you imagine what that might translate into if you had 1000 fans? Those who are fans of your page can also “Share” a product they like which will post that item to their wall.  That gives store owners even more potential for new fans and sells.  Here’s an item I posted to my wall by sharing it from the ELytes Facebook store. Here’s what the Payvment product page looks like showing the price, price after fan discount, quantity, size, color and product description depending on the product you sell. Real-world Use of Payvment for Facebook Motivational speaker and author Johnna Johnson is using Facebook and Payvment to promote and sell her books, e-Book and workbooks.  With Payvment you can designate specific product as Featured Items.  If you know HTML you can also control the look of your storefront homepage.  Check out the list of Payvment stores below and see what others are doing for ideas.   Small business owner and single mom Rachel Dobbs uses the application on her fan page Pioneer Soap Works to sell her homemade natural candles, soaps, bath bombs and more from the comforts of her home.  I first met Rachel through Facebook when I was doing research for my book.  She started out selling her product to friends and family and then a local gift shop and a Saturday Market.  Now a majority of her business comes right from her Facebook Fan page after adding the Payvment storefront.  I asked Rachel her thoughts on using Payvment as a shopping cart solution.  She told me that it was extremely easy to install and having a little html knowledge helped.  It was about $100 a month for a shopping cart on her website and she only had 2 sales for the entire year.  With Payvment it easy for her to add new product to her store.  Rachel also likes that there aren’t any fees, monthly charges or percentage of your sales with Payvment.  It’s 100 percent free!  Within the first week of using the application her sales increased 40 percent. See sample Payvment stores on Facebook This is only a sampling of the over 30,000 and growing small/medium size businesses, major brands, and retailers using Payvment to build user engagement and revenue on Facebook. Yes to Carrots (Selling in U.S. Dollars) Elytes (Selling in U.S. Dollars) Johnna Johnson & Co. (Selling in U.S. Dollars) Grayce by Molly Sims (Selling in U.S. Dollars) Orglamix Cosmetics (Selling in U.S. Dollars) Vanity Shoes (Selling in Euros) Game Intern (Selling in U.S. Dollars) Claire’s Bowtique (Selling in U.S. Dollars) Athehof (Taiwan) (Selling in Taiwan New Dollars) Payvment Administration Payvment has lots of features including the ability to put your store in suspend mode.  This is useful for those who take a vacation and need to suspend business while away.  Managing your store is done though backend administration which is shown below.  New products are added here, product images, product descriptions, store categories, shipping information and modification of current store product.  Tax rates can be set-up for both domestic and international customers.   Video tutorials to help you get started quickly How to Quickly Launch a Storefront on Facebook How to Add Products to Your Facebook Storefront How to Set Up Facebook “Fan” Discount Pricing How to Set Up Inventory Controls How to Set Up Dynamic Rate Shipping and Sales Tax Are you selling on Facebook or online?  What do you use for a shopping cart?  Feel free to leave a comment below along with a link to you Payvment store. Build Your Store – Launch a Payvment Store…
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Windows Live Writer makes blogging a breeze

August 9, 2010

Are you thinking about starting your own blog but scared off by technology?  It might not be as hard as you think when it comes to starting a blog.  If you know Microsoft Office you’re already halfway there.  If you don’t its still easy when you have tools that simplify the process.  Windows Live Writer from Microsoft is one of those must have tools for bloggers. Windows Live Writer lets you manage your blog regardless of where its hosted or the format you are using.  I use it to update all my WordPress blogs and an older blog I have on Blogger.  But it can be used with LiveJournal, TypePad, Windows Live Spaces, SharePoint and others.  Plug-ins are available that give Live Writer even more functionality.  Visit the Live Gallery to find out what’s available and to install plug-ins you find beneficial. The toolbar across the top of Windows Live Writer lets you control aspects of the font, text alignment, adding images, tables and inserting other items into your post.  You can also cut, paste and undo changes if you aren’t satisfied.  The side bar to the right duplicates editing tools such as current drafts, recently posted articles and inserts into your article.  It’s really easy to get around the application to create the perfect blog post. The edit mode tab allows you to create your article much like you would create a Word document(add images, hyperlinks, tables and more).  Preview mode loads the theme of your blog and gives you a sneak preview of what your readers will see.  It might not display a perfect rendition since it depends on the theme you use.  The bottom area of the application lets you assign categories, tags, the author, future publish date and more. Those who have a little more knowledge of HTML can click on the Source tab and use HTML code to customize a post before going live.  Here’s a great resource for those interested in learning more about HTML. If you have a blog have you used Windows Live Writer?  Another blogging tool?  Give it and try and see what you think and share some of the articles you’ve written with Windows Live Writer.  Please feel free to leave your comments below. Download Windows Live Writer Windows Live Writer Plugin Gallery By Dennis J. Smith

Promote Your Business or Cause Offline

July 29, 2010

Besides promoting your business or cause online using social media, you still have to use some traditional offline marketing.  The internet has made it easier to use those traditional ways for marketing and keep the cost down.  In promoting a few of my business endeavors I came across VistaPrint.com.  I took the advice of a friend and picked up a copy of a local business journal.  From that I was able to gather the names of new businesses and their addresses.  I then created a database using a contact database template I downloaded for free from Microsoft.  I was able to add the information to the database and then use Word to print labels for the postcards I designed.  The postcards were easy to create online and keep the look and feel of my book.  I slapped on the labels and a $.28 cent postcard stamp.  The 100 postcards were free thought VistaPrint (special promotion) and I only paid for shipping plus for a few modifications I had made. Besides postcards there are many ways to catch the eye of a potential customer.  You could create a t-shirt with your businesses logo and web address and give it away as a prize.  With websites like VistaPrint you can even get your first t-shirt free plus shipping.  There are tons of ways you can promote your business or cause offline and bring those new customers to your online endeavors. Since I am promoting a book I used Overnight Prints and created a bookmark that I handout to potential customers.  The bookmark is something they can use and is always reminding others on where they can buy my book or join the Facebook fan page.  Make sure you add all important information such as Facebook page, Twitter User Name, blog address or website URL.  Keep your theme the same for all promotional items to make your brand stand out.  Notice how the postcard above has the same look at the bookmark to the left.  Both have the same look as the cover of my book. Have fun with your promotion and feel free to post a comment with link to your offline promotional designs.

Start tracking Website and Blog visitors with Google Analytics

July 25, 2010

Analyzing with Google Analytics – The Basics There are many ways to keep track of website statistics like unique visitors, user browser preferences, location and other valuable information.  If you already have an account with Google it’s really simple to get started with Google Analytics.  Provide information regarding your websites and then simply paste the tracking code into your site, have Google verify that the code is correct and the rest is done automatically.  Best thing is that it’s free and has all the tools you need to discover the various trends of your website. Overview of your websites and blogs    The opening screen is going to give you an overview of all your websites using Analytics which gives you a quick breakdown of current trends. Below you see some of my websites and what the trends are for the current week and comparing it with the previous week. You can also compare to the previous day, month and year depending on how long you’ve been analyzing your sites. Information at hand can be sorted by visits, average time on site, bounce rate, percent of change and website name. The information is valuable in knowing what kind of changes you might make on a site to keep visitors longer or where your traffic is coming from. By clicking on "View report" you’ll get that more detailed information such as the type of browser one is using to view your site or what state, city or even country they are visiting from. More Detailed Information Right after clicking on "View report" the Dashboard for your site stats gets displayed with more valuable information. By default the date range is the same as the main Overview page and now gives you a graphical display and breakdowns of key site stats. The first stat you see is the amount of visits for each day in the date range and below that are the site usage information, visitor overview, map layout, traffic sources overview and content overview. By clicking on the down arrow on the Visits tab you can change the type of stat you want displayed here. You can choose from Visits, Pageviews, Page/Visit, Average Time on Site, Bounce Rate or the percentage of visits that are new. You can find description of each of these by visit http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics What to look for What kind of trends should you be looking for? Well that depends on what kind of goals you have in mind. If all you care about is getting visitors to your website then look for the Absolute Unique Visitors. But many of those visitors might have incorrectly made it to your site due to a bad search. The one trend I look at is the "Bounce Rate". The higher the bounce rate the more likely someone came to your site on accident such as bad search results. However if this number is low then chances are good search results got them to your site/landing page and they stayed and browsed. If they stay on your site then the next trend to check out would be "Average Time on Site" and "Pageviews". Those will give you a good indication of the quality of your website by showing you how long a visitor sticks around and how much stuff they checkout. It’s most important to have great content that’s relative to the visitor than just getting someone to visit your site. It’s also great when people are coming back to your site so it’s important to keep your content fresh and unique. Something noteworthy in the screen shot below is how many people are using Firefox, Safari and Chrome for their web browser. IE market share has been slipping and therefore it is important to keep this in mind when developing your website. I get frustrated when I can’t browse a site correctly when I’m using Firefox. Firefox is one of the most respected browsers in the industry and I’m going to assume that Chrome is going to gain market share quickly. What’s your browser of choice? 1-month view for one of my websites Stay tuned Next time we’ll take a look at some of the other aspects of Google Analytics and how you can use those to increase the type of visitors you are looking for. Resources: Google Analytic Product Tour Google Analytic App Gallery

10 must have WordPress Plugins

July 22, 2010

Being the most popular blogging platform in the world has its advantages.  There are millions of individuals and businesses that are using a WordPress blog.  Those blogs are the stepping stones to promoting a business or a cause.  Plugins make those blogs even more powerful and there are over 10,000 to choose from.  The best thing is they are all free and install in just minutes! We’ll cover some of the best plugins out there that make your blog more attractive to search engines, one that let you send a newsletter and others that will keep your readers on your site longer and some get you “Liked” on Facebook. All in One SEO Pack If you don’t have this plugin installed you should download it today.  It is the most downloaded plugin for WordPress blogs.  This plugin is used to assist in the search engine optimization of your WordPress blog.  Installation only takes a moment and set-up is fairly simple.  Find more information here on how to use it once you have the plugin installed. Akismet This plugin prevents spam from being posted to the comments section of your post.  The plugin checks your comments against the Akismet server to see if they look like spam.  The “Comments”" admin screen lets you review spam comments before they display below your post. Contact Form 7 Those looking for a way to gather customer information need to look no further.  The plugin Contact Form 7 uses CAPTCHA in order to prevent non-humans from submitting a form.  This plugin even uses Akismet to filter out any spam.  It can help you manage multiple contact forms and is customizable for those with a little more experience with code. Contextual Related Posts Keep your readers around longer with a plugin that displays related stories.  This plugin will display a list of related post at the end of the post the reader is viewing.  The plugin looks at the tags or the current article to match it with similar post the reader might like.  Therefore keeping them around longer on your site instead of reading one article and moving on. fbLikeButton Let your readers “Recommend” or “Like” your blog post and share them with one-click to their Facebook friends.  The plugin is customizable in look and feel depending on your blogs theme.  The button can be displayed before or after your post.  This is a great way to draw traffic to your blog from Facebook. Google Analytics for WordPress This plugin bills itself as the most complete Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.  Track where your readers are coming from, how long they are staying around on your blog and more.  The newest version promises to be faster when loading the tracking code. Newsletter Keep your readers coming back to your blog with a newsletter you compose.  It can be sent out on whatever frequency you like.  Your readers can opt-in to your newsletter with just a name and email address.  This is a very powerful plugin and you can read more information here. WP-DB-Backup Must have plugin to give you piece of mind that your hard work is protected.  This plugin is able to backup your core WordPress database on a schedule or when ever you need.  You can save it to the server, your PC or have it sent via email to protect your blog post.  It also allows you to backup other tables that are related to your WordPress blog. WP Google-buzz Facebook and Twitter still reign when it comes to social media sites.  Google might be the powerful search giant but its entry into social media with Google Buzz kind of fizzled.  However there is rumor that Google has something new coming down the pipeline. WPtouch iPhone Theme Give your blog that iPhone look and feel for your readers on the go.  WPtouch gives your WordPress blog an iPod/iPhone app look.  The admin controls for the plug-in give you lots of customization.  Viewer can toggle to the normal view for your blog with a flip of a switch. More information”¦ More Resources: WordPress Plugin Directory Affordable WordPress Hosting from GreenHostUSA ““ Starting at less than $10 a month!

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