That’s why I’ve written a special report;

————————————————————————————- 6 Hidden Traps that Kill Online Business and Why Most Web Designers Don’t Want You to Know About Them ————————————————————————————- The information in my report is honest and really good advice if you are looking to buy a website.

You probably put up your website without knowing exactly what to do. Or you hired a designer that was focused more on graphics than the sales copy. The sad fact is few website designers know how to build a site that sells.

Web designers seem to think that your sales message is less important than logos and pretty pictures. They love high-tech things like animations, little intro movies and fancy navigation menus. Well, fancy animations don’t generate income… except for the web designer. In fact, they frequently drive visitors away.

Clearly, people online are in a BIG hurry. More than likely, they didn’t get online to go shopping. They came to your website seeking information or a solution to a problem.

You have a tiny amount of time to convince visitors that your product or service is the solution they need. If your website doesn’t demonstrate that solution, FAST, they’re gone. That’s why fancy animations and graphics just get in the way.

If you would like to read my special report you can download it here and you can get $261 worth of FREE Bonuses too, no really! Go get yours now!;

6 Hidden Traps that Kill Online Business

Presonalization seems to be a pretty big buzzword right now, but is it as important as everyone is saying?

I recently heard from a friend who has implemented personalization in his landing pages that he has improved conversion rates by anywhere from 15-20%. Now that’s got to be worth a look.

So what is personalization? Its where you take a prospect’s name or some other piece of information you know about them and use it in a mass-marketing promotion. At least thats one form of it. We’ve all been doing this for years in our mailing right? Mail merge the persons first name into the salutation of our mailing so it starts ‘Dear firstname’.

But could just a simple first name improve response and increase conversion? and by how much?

The answer is a resounding YES! The REASON?

Read the rest of this entry »

If you don’t know who Mike Filsaime is I suggest you check him out, you will learn a lot from him about internet marketing and marketing in general. He is a true inovator on the web and mentored by none other than Mark Joyner…

The video below is for his new Butterfly Marketing 2.0 system, which he is giving away, FREE. He is giving away the manuscript, which he sold for 97 dollars and I purchased a while back now, as a download for registering.

Just FYI but Mike Filsaimes first Butterfly Marketing launch was the first launch I saw as I was just getting interested in marketing. I think he was selling it for $1,997 and I thought he was a crook and out of his mind. He sold 1 million dollars worth in a few days and has become an internet marketing legend. Anyway, history lesson over, the video below is for his launch.

Please note he is using Brightcove http://www.brightcove.com/ for video streaming services and social media tools. Also, look at the twitter graphic below the video. That’s how to use twitter for full effect! Click on that image link and login to Twitter, then look at the update ready to be posted to see what I mean.

This is a link to the video

Go here to get Mike Filsaimes Butterfly Marketing: http://butterflymarketing.com/free/

If you’re not already using twitter signup right now…

** Get over to Twitter and sign up with your name, company name, or the generic description of what you do (example: SkinDoctor, MarketingConsultant, DogExpert, etc.). It’s free, and even if you aren’t going to participate right away, you’ll want to lock in a good name.

** Search for people you know at http://search.twitter.com and follow them, as well as look at who they are following to build a list you are personally interested in. It’s likely a large number of your followees will follow you back.

** Start posting and participating in the community and providing value to your followers. Remember, you are limited to 140 characters, so it won’t take you more than a few minutes to get going, plus it’s fun.

** Follow me at http://twitter.com/SteveTickner for details on what I’m up to.

Apparently the average age of Twitter users is 31, so this isn’t just something the “kids” are doing, it’s a serious business tool. Get started now!!

Glenn Livingston is a genius at analysing a market. His information product How To Double Your Business is an amazing resource, I know first hand because I bought it.

The statisical analysis that he teaches is quiet in depth and really shows you how to zone in to a markets needs and wants. The great news is though that you can do far less than he teaches in his course and still do far better than 98% of most marketers. Its simple really…

The following video is a 90 minute in-depth overview of Glenn Livingston’s methods for evaluating a market and developing a comprehensive strategic blueprint of it’s wants, needs, and the language most motivating to its purchasers. Great for niche marketers … even better for people with existing, profitable businesses. Find the true points of difference in your market, not just the “price of entry” benefits which most people expect to find for free. Enjoy

Well, they probably don’t get any slower than this do they?

My good friend and business associate Paul Da Costa and I have just started a joint venture with Rev. Keith Lyndon, Certified Exchange Consultant and the man behind the Academy of Creative Real Estate.

His property exchange training manual, 1031 ways to make money in slow real estate markets is now available online for a bargain price!

You can find it here; 1031 ways to make money in slow real estate markets

On Friday 02/06/2009 siteBOSS, TRS Technology’s Internet Marketing Website system, was tested by Microsoft and successfully passed!

That’s quite a mouthful, so what does it mean?

Well, it means a couple things;

1. siteBOSS is built to recognized development standards. This means that the system architecture is correct for a hosted solution, as determined by Microsoft. If you want to find out exactly what that means look at the test guidelines. Go on, I dare you…
2. It means that TRS Technology Group Inc is now a Microsoft Certified Partner.

Of course the system architecture is correct! I’ve been doing this for a long time and with a certain amount of flair. Let me tell you though, it aint easy! Many people think that development is now a fairly simple task, requiring low level skills and the ability to point a mouse and click. Not so my friends. I don’t think it’s gotten any easier, just different.

I also get to brandish a new partner logo, which I’m ok with. I’ve been a Microsoft Certified Professional for years now, so a new designation is cool.

Here is mine and Microsofts, yep, I’m a Microsoft shop and I think Bill Gates is a genius and have nothing but total respect for the man.

I wanted to let you know about this really cool free brand new keyword research tool that runs inside Firefox browser.

Not only is it free to download but it is an nlm opportunity with a twist! We are going to see a lot more services like this coming out.

Its been developed by Brad Callen, the guy behind SEO Elite, Keyword Elite and a number of other research tools. Check out the videos at the link below, its a usefull tool if you’re doing PPC!!

Follow this link and get the free version now! Free Keyword Research Tool

I’ve been using YouTube for some time now and have had no problems at all when posting videos, uploading etc. The only real restriction is the 10 minute time limit for video length, which isn’t very long when you’re doing business related training etc (plenty long enough when watching Tiffany dance in her bedroom )

The only possible downsides with YouTube in my humble opinion are;

1. Length restricted to 10 minutes; you have to chop up your videos into shorter segments
2. Private videos; if you want to have private videos they can be viewable by up to 25 people and these people need to be added to your contact list. This is a pain if you want video content to be for private members or list members. I suppose YouTube is really for public consumption though…

Because of these restrictions I started looking at Google video. I was very pleased to see a NEW feature which allows you to upload your video as UNLISTED, so your video will not be included in the search results. This is a handy feature, as you could post a private video and not have it found by the general public. Pretty neat, or so I thought…

I downloaded the Google Video Uploader utility, which lets you upload multiple files with bigger than 100MB. If your video file size is less than 100MB you can use the web based form to upload.

I uploaded one video using the web form and one using the uploader. That was 2 days ago. Since then, I haven’t been able to login using the Google Video Uploader and if I try using the web form I get an error.

It seems that this has been an ongoing problem for a while, you can follow the link at the end of this post to see a recent Google groups discussion about the problem.

I wonder if Google video is still viable as an option? As Google own YouTube, for which they paid around $1.6 billion! Do you think they care much about Google video? If YouTube had these problems over an extended period of time it would be in serious trouble, no doubt…

Here’s the post; http://groups.google.com/group/google-video-general/browse_thread/thread/3fd7d33a2ab1bd13/ad9c33706b2f1a74

I’ve been looking at a variety of options for allowing a simple email notification from WordPress when a post is made. Although we are still heavily entrenched in email marketing and it doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon, email marketing is still a big pain in the butt! It’s a pain to send email and a pain to recieve email, so I’m opting for a lightweight email notification system and hoping that RSS will be a big help in getting my messages out to my clients and subscribers.

The first thing I had to do was add SMTP email capability to WordPress. It seems that the standard email function is a slack old send function expecting an open relay (tsk tsk). So I had to put in the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) plugin to enable me to send via SMTP with a username and password.

I used WP-Mail-SMTP. It was simple to install, i.e. point and click and simple to configure. There is even a test button so you can check it works on the config form. Nice. Thank you!

Then, after looking at a couple different post notification plugins I ended up selecting http://subscribe2.wordpress.com/. This is a bigger plugin, with a few config pages. Install was a snap. I still have to configure the messages, under settings>subscribe2 but the good news is you can easily create any message you want for your subscibers, optins and reminders.

You simple add a new page (easy in Worpress 2.5) to put the subscribe / unsubscribe form on and away you go.

I also noticed that Feedburner (now owned by Google) were offering email updates as a service, plus a ton of tracking options in the feedburner PRO version, which I believe is free. It would probably be the easiest option to go for if you didn’t have your own web design, development and hosting company! http://www.feedburner.com

I found this script in the root of my WordPress blog the other day. It’s a script that generates links to a web server in Germany. The links point to advertizing pages etc. It’s a nasty pain in the ass and you should delete it and block the server ip etc. I have no idea how it got there yet, but I’ve been trying a lot of different plugins lately so who knows…

Details: Filename:ph.php Location: blog root Server: http://km20725.keymachine.de IP: 62.141.48.94

If I find anything more out about this I’ll post it here. You can see the full details of the domain here http://whois.domaintools.com/keymachine.de