SEO Blog and Web Hosting News

Archive for September, 2010

Automating your online business is one of the most important steps you can take to insure your success on the internet.

If you have been on the internet for any time at all, you know that there are just too many tasks to do each day to be really efficient and productive with them all.

Learning to delegate some of those routine, daily activities is one way to insure your site’s success and to give you much more time in the day for the most important task which is that of promotion and marketing your site.

HERE ARE 5 SIMPLE WAYS TO AUTOMATE TODAY:

1) USE AUTO-RESPONDERS:

Probably one of the best-known and popular ways to handle routine messages to inquirers is the use of auto-responders.

It is simple and easy to set up your messages which usually involve several follow-up messages to remind your visitors what you are offering and how to find your site again.

Here are some free ones:

http://www.freeautobot.com/ (ad free also.)

http://www.getresponse.com/

http://www.sendfree.com/’

http://www.sendthisfree.com/

2) MAILING LIST MANAGEMENT:

If you are trying to run your own newsletter, handling the process by yourself can eat up a lot of valuable time. In the beginning this may be possible, but as your list grows and the tasks involved keep multiplying, your time demands will increase also.

There are lots of ways to manage a mailing list including installing your own scripts and purchasing your own software. Weigh the pros and cons, but be sure and check out the possibility of *farming out* the responsibility to a mailing list service.

Here are some to consider:

http://www.ezinedirector.com/

http://www.mail-list.com/

http://www.zinester.com/ (free and paid versions)

Free ones include:

http://groups.yahoo.com/

http://www.topica.com/

3) USE SOFTWARE:

There are many software options available depending upon your work online. Here are some possible software applications available. Just do a search online.

~Creating links to your site and others.
~HTML editors
~Ad swaps
~Promotion
~Subscription management
~Survey forms

4) PAYMENT SYSTEMS:

Well, this is just a no-brainer. It is just too simple not to do this one.

Having an automated payment system that allows you to accept credit card payments for your products or services and is something that everyone has to have to be successful online.

Here are a couple of third-party ones that I use and recommend:

ClickBank– http://www.ClickBank.com/
PayPal– http://www.PayPal.com/

5) AD TRACKING SYSTEM:

If you are going to advertise your products and/or services online, then it is critical that you track your results.

Knowing how many hits you got to your site is nice, but it won’t take care of your questions like, “Where did my traffic and sales come from?”

Here are some ad tracking systems. (Some offer free versions.)

http://www.BusiToolz.com/

http://www.hypertracker.com/

http://www.adminder.com/

Implementing these five time-saving helpers is a very important benchmark in moving your business into a phase that will free up some time to insure your success online.

Best of luck with your promotional efforts.

Larry Johnson, author

This article may be published in your newsletter or on your website by simply including the resource box below.

You’ve just finished putting in all kinds of effort towards getting your website online. You’re ready to take orders and make sales. The only problem is… No one can find your website! You need to get listed in the major search engines in order to get visitors to visit your website. What can you do? Follow these 3 steps and the search engines will know about your site in no time at all.

1. Write an article related to the main topic of your website.

Not sure if you know enough about writing to write an article? Don’t worry about being perfect. Write about what you know. Keep the article short, between 300-600 words long. When you write the article, give out general information that anyone would gladly post on their site as valuable content. Don’t try to sell your product or service in this article.

Remember the goal of the article is for you to get a valuable link back to your website, not to make a sale. In fact, if you try to make a sale in the article, most webmasters will not want to publish your article on their site. The whole goal of writing articles is to get your articles on as many websites as possible with a link pointing back to your site.

2. Include a resource box at the end of the article with your website link in it.

If you’ve created a good general information article that is relevant to the topic of your website, you are ready to create your resource box. Keep in mind here to get to the point quickly. It is usually considered fine to promote your product or service in this resource box but it is necessary to keep it short. You should remember that the main point of including this resource box is to get a link going back to your website. The secondary purpose of the resource box is to get readers of your article to click through and visit your website.

When including a link in your resource box, make sure that one of your links includes the main keywords of your home page. Keywords are a fancy term for the phrase or words a visitor will type in to find your website. Make the keyword the clickable portion of the link instead of your web address. Put this keyword text in between your html anchor link.

3. Submit your article to the major article directories.

Once you’ve created your article, submit it to the major article directories to get the article distributed on as many websites as possible. Some major article directories include EzineArticles, ArticleCity, ZapContent.com and Isnare. Some services like Isnare will even distribute your article for you for a fee.

Do these three steps and search engines will find, crawl, then list your website in their listings. It’s as simple as that!