The Temporary Download Link

For people who wish to sell products online, there are easier ways to go about doing this than either building a site from scratch or even using a prebuilt e-commerce site.

Uploadandsell.com is a site that permits vendors to sell info products online with a self-expiring download link. This is pretty important as you wouldn't want someone to post the download link to something you're selling online and have the world obtain it for free.  Although I have not used this site yet, I have seen it was mentioned in USA Today and I have not seen any derogatory post online. Best of all, the site is free to use.

For WordPress users, there are a number of plugins. After trying some free plugins which crashed my entire system, I purchased WP eStore from Tips & Tricks HQ.  The plugin was well worth paying for and permits me to sell info products out of WordPress using an encrypted download link where your buyers receive an automatic, expiring download link. The whole flow is fully automated and designed to run unattended using PayPal IPN integration. There is no shopping cart or complicated e-commerce setup.

Although I haven't set it up yet, I also noticed this plugin comes with a squeeze page type form in a post, page or sidebar to offer a free product to build email list for internet marketing purpose (view details).

In conclusion, there are some free tools and modestly priced ones out there that are absolutely necessary for the e-entreprenures  who want to start selling things online quickly without using a third party portal, middleman or complex set-up.

Autoresponders — A Key to Online Success

It's amazing how ignorant business people are to the powerful online tools that are available to everyone for pennies a day.  One of those tools is the autoresponder. People tend to think an autoresponder is some kind of e-mail script you turn on when you go on vacation to let people know you're out of the office. Actually, an autoresponder is a catch-all term for an online program which collects information about who is visiting your site and initiates a subsequent action. This can be used to send follow-up e-mails to customers, visitors to your site, or to act like an usher at a movie theatre, where a name and e-mail is collected before granting access to a download or promotion.  Aweber is probably the undisputed leader in the autoresponder world.

Youtube is full of great tutorials on how to use aweber's tools and strategies on how to use an autoresponder in your site. Even the aweber.com site is full of great information on what works and what doesn't in online marketing.  The strategy I am currently looking at is to place the autoresponder between visitors and a free download promotion as well as the check-out page for paid downloads.  The idea is that even if you don't get a click-though (online sale) by getting visitors to opt-in for future freebies, you'll eventually sell them on something in the future. Remember, it's all about reach and frequency, and the autoresponder is the most amazing tool ever invented for reaching qualified leads cheaply and easily.

Facebook's version of the autoresponder is the fan page. When you create a new commercial page on Facebook, you can ask people to "like" your page in order to grant them access to the fan page. The fan page can contain coupons, information or any type of intellectual property. Collecting "likes" is very much the same as building a list using an autoresponder. Fan pages can also have autoresponders added to build lists and get visitors to take advantage of further offers made on your fan page.

As I see it, the new culture of advertising and marketing seems to be evolving into a breadcrumb strategy; offer people free stuff to get their attention and up-sell them incrementally in easy stages until they discover they are utterly broke. Seriously, this is not far from the truth, and when done properly is neither offensive nor sneaky. In fact, a good marketing plan attached to a good product will always use an autoresponder and in the end, will make both seller and buyer very happy campers.

Build Traffic Using LSI Keywording

Latent Semantic Indexing is part of the algorithm used by Google to determine the relevance of a web page and ultimately to determine how it ranks. 

If you own an auto detailing business and want to drive traffic to your site, to use LSI keywording, you would want to pepper your web pages with keywords that are synonymous and also closely related to your trade.

Such keywords would include: waxing, car wax, buffing, shine, vacuuming, cars, auto, detailing, auto detailing, car cleaning, car wash, carwash, paint, scratches, finish, Amoral, upholstery, tires, wheels, rims, undercarriage, new car smell, and so on.

The point is to not only make sure you have all the obvious keywords, but keywords that are also associated with the main keywords of your business.

Make Your Blog Your Website

I'm in the process of doing the stuff everyone knows they need to do in order to stay relevant in the ever changing world of technology. The first thing is to get the blog going. Obviously, I've just started, so don't pass judgement yet. 

Since search engines have a love-affair with blogs due to the fresh, new content that flows into them, I've made the decision to make  my blog my primary site and use the nav bar to link to the other more static sites I control. More on that later.

Blogging is just one way to monetize your time and market yourself or your product. Everyone talks about things like "social media", "affiliate marketing", "auto-responders", "ad words" and "info marketing", yet how many people know enough about these things to actually make money? Well, I'm a man on a mission and my blog will be my expedition log into my quest to do just that.

I've been successful over the years selling stock photos and in a very short period of time, became one of the top 30 producers of stock photo content in the world. There are problems with this industry, not the least of which is theft, and in a nutshell, it has become less profitable over time. Nevertheless, I have not given up my quest to turn the net into a vending machine as I would much prefer to make something once and sell it a million times than to make something a million times and sell it once each time.

To that end, please joint me as I share my discoveries on my expedition to unlock the secrets of monetizing the web. 

Cheers

Jamie