How about you put some strategies in place to start earning some income from your blog?

Here are four plugins that will help you achieve just that.

Datafeedr Random Ads

Datafeedr is a very simple and easy to use ad rotator. It’ll take your ad code from any ad network, such as Google AdWords, Amazon Affiliates, ClickBank, eBay Partner Program and so on and rotate them randomly.

You can place the code in either your page template, which would add the ads to your pages and/or posts, or you can add it to your widget sidebar, which would add the ads to the sidebar of ever page.

Here’s how to use Datafeedr Random Ads.

Step 1: Installation

Do a search for “Datafeedr.com” in the author field to locate the plugin. Because so many plugins use the keywords “random ads,” it’s hard to find it using its name. Make sure you install version 2.0 or higher if you’re using WordPress 2.8 or higher.

Step 2: Go to Settings

Once you’ve installed Datafeedr Random Ads, you’ll be taken to the plugins page. Click “Settings” to continue.

Step 3: Add a New Group

Ads in Datafeedr are grouped into AdGroups. Just put all the ads you want to rotate in one AdGroup and Datafeedr will rotate through them randomly.

Click “Create a new group” to get started.

Step 4: Name, Before & After

Pick a name for the AdGroup. This is for internal purposes only.

If you want any text or HTML to be inserted before or after the ad, just put that below the name box.

Step 5: Adding Your Ads

Insert your ad code from the ad network into the box.

If you want to add another ad, just click “Add Box” at the bottom. A new box will appear. Paste your second code into this box.

Click “Save Ad Group” once you’re done.

Step 6: Copy PHP Code 

Once you’ve saved your changes, you’ll be taken back to the home screen of Datafeedr. Copy the newly generated PHP code next to the ad group to your clipboard.

Step 7: Adding the Code to Template(s) 

If you want your ads to be displayed before or after every post and/or page, go into your template editor under “Appearance.”

Choose the template you want to edit. Note that page templates and post templates are different and often the home page has its own template as well. If you want your ads to appear in all three of these places, you’ll have to insert it in all three of these places.

Once you’re editing the template you want to change, paste the PHP code either before or after the content area. Usually the content area is labeled as “content,” but it could be something else depending on your theme.

If you’re unable to locate where to paste your code, just do a “View Source” on your website and see where the content starts. Look for the tag just before the beginning of your content. Go into templates and paste the code directly after that tag.

For example, in the Twenty Ten template, the content area is labeled as “content.” Just paste your code directly after it.

Step 8: Adding Ads to Widgets

If you want your ads to show up in the sidebar instead, go to “Widgets” under “Appearance.”

Create a new widget using the “Text / HTML” option. Paste in the PHP code.

That’s all there is to it. Using Datafeedr random ads, you can rotate ads from any ad network before your posts, after your posts, or on your entire site using widgets.

Cleeng Content Monetization

Cleeng is a WordPress plugin that allows you to “lock” your content. In order for users to unlock the content, they need to submit a payment. This is a great way to accept payments for music, for art or for exclusive content of any sort.

Setting up Cleeng is done in part in WordPress and in part through Cleeng’s internal system. Here’s how to use Cleeng.

Step 1: Install Cleeng

Go into WordPress’ plugins section and install Cleeng.

Step 2: Access the Settings 

Click “Settings” in the plugins menu.

Step 3: Create an Account

Click “Activate Account” in the right hand side.

Provide the requested personal information to create your account.

Finally, confirm that you want to link your WordPress site to your new account.

Step 4: Enter Payment Information

Once you have an account, click on “Your Settings” where the account signup screen used to be. You’ll be taken to a screen with an extremely long list of settings. Start by entering your payment information under “Your Payment Information.”

You can choose to get paid via PayPal or via bank transfer. Once you make your choice, you’ll be prompted for more details.

Step 5: Set Price

Set the default price for products on your site. You can change this later on a per-product basis.

Step 6: Locking Your Content

Go to the post or page where you have content you want to lock. Highlight the content you want to lock. Make sure that the content is selected, then click “Create Cleeng Content” in the right hand sidebar.

A popup box will appear. Enter a description for the item that you’re locking, as well as a price and whether or not you want a referral program.

Hit “Save Markers.” Then update or publish your post. Instead of seeing the content, you’ll see a “locked content” box with an option to pay to unlock. This is an example of what it looks like:

Using Cleeng, you can easily lock premium parts of your content and make it exclusively for paying customers. You can use it to lock music, video, text or any other kinds of media. The whole setup process takes less than 30 minutes.

Ad Injection

Ad Injection is a complex, robust and extremely in-depth plugin that allows you to place advertisements on your WordPress site. You can place ads just at the top, throughout the body at random and at the bottom of your page.

It supports a lot of customization. You can choose to only have ads at random, or only ads at the top, or only ads on the bottom or any combination. You can choose only to show ads on posts that are older than a certain amount of days. You can choose to only show ads to people who come from certain traffic sources, or exclude ads from those traffic sources.

Here’s how to install, customize and use Ad Injection.

Step 1: Install

Use the WordPress plugin search system to find “Ad Injection.” Click “Install Now” once you’ve found the plugin.

Step 2: Access the Settings

Click “Settings” once the plugin is activated.

Step 3: On Off Switch

Along the top, you can turn the ads either on or off. Or you can set it so that only you, the administrator, can see it while you’re testing the system.

Step 4: Disable Specific Ads

If you don’t want ads to show on specific pages or don’t want specific types of ads, turn them off by checking their respective box(s).

Step 5: Older Than

If you want to only show ads on older posts, select how old the posts need to be in order for ads to show up on them.

Step 6: Length Options

If you only want your ads to show on posts that are longer than a certain length, specify that here. Also, specify the maximum number of ads you want to show. Then choose where you want your ad to show up.

These settings only apply to the top ad.

Step 7: Random Ad Settings

Choose how many random ads you want on your pages. Choose whether or not the number of ads varies based on how long the post is.

Then choose where the random ads start and stop. You can also choose whether or not a random ad can show up in the last paragraph.

Step 8: Bottom Ad

Choose when the bottom ad shows up.

Step 9: Length Count Methods

Choose how you want the length to be counted, for the purposes how determining how many ads to show. You can choose to use words, viewable characters or total characters. Viewable characters are the characters people actually seen on screen, while total characters includes HTML markup.

Step 10: Insert Ad Code

Insert the actual code for the various ads you want to place. You can specify alignment and margins as well.

Step 11: Referrer and IP Filtering

If you only want to show ads to people who came from specific sources, you can do so using the referrer feature. Just type in the root domains of the site(s) that you want to target.

You can also exclude ads from showing up based on referrer or IP address. Again, just type in the exact domain, the root domain or just a portion of the domain to filter by referrer. Or you can type in an IP address or IP addresses.

Step 12: Ads by Category, Tags or Author

What if you wanted to choose whether or not ads show up based on category, tags or author? You can, using the filters system.

Just enter the keywords you want to filter for on the left, then choose what you’re filtering for on the right.

Step 13: Test Zone

To make sure the ads you’re placing will display correctly, you can copy and paste the ad code into the test zone to see what it’ll look like.

Step 14: Ad Rotation & Split Testing

If you want to rotate multiple ads or split test different ads to test the results, you can do so under the advanced section.

Simply paste in the code into one of the rotator’s code boxes, then select how often you want that ad to appear.

These are the most important features of Ad Injection. There are many ways you can tweak and adjust Ad Injection to create the perfect ad campaign for your website. This guide will help you get started. The next step is to install your own copy of Ad Injection and adjust it until it’s perfect.

Amazon Associate Filter

The Amazon Associate Filter is a great time saving tool for Amazon affiliates. It’s a very simple plugin. All it does is replace any links to Amazon with your affiliate link.

That means that you can link to Amazon products just as you would normally link to it. You don’t have to create the links yourself; the plugin will do it for you.

It’s done on page load, meaning the code in your pages and posts never change. If you want to disable the plugin or change your Amazon ID, you can do so with one click.

Here’s how to setup and use Amazon Associate Filter.

Step 1: Install

Using WordPress’ plugin search, find Amazon Associate Filter and install the plugin.

Step 2: Access the Settings

Go to the settings page by clicking on “Amazon Associate Config” under “Settings.”

Step 3: Enter Your ID

Enter your Amazon Associate ID.

Step 4: Create a Normal Link

In your post or page, create a normal link to an Amazon product just like you would if you weren’t an associate.

That’s all there is to it. Whenever someone loads your page, they’ll see a link that goes to your Amazon affiliate link instead.

For example, the link above which has no affiliate codes becomes the link below, with the affiliate ID we entered in the previous step:

Amazon Associate Filter isn’t a complex marketing plugin. Instead, it’s a time saving plugin that you can just let run in the background. It’ll help you make money using the Amazon Associate Program, without you having to do any extra work to insert affiliate links.

Enjoy!

Continue reading: 4 Plugins to Monetize WordPress

Sign Up for the Trial & Setting Up the Software

GoToWebinar is one of the most popular online conference programs available today. You can host a number of different speakers, send invitations, password protect your conferences and a whole lot more.

Here’s how to sign up for GoToWebinar and setup the software.

Step 1: Click Try it Free

Go to http://www.gotowebinar.com and click “Try it Free.”

Step 2: Create Your Account

Fill out the form to create your account.

Step 3: Enter Billing Details

Enter your billing details. Even if you’re signing up for a free trial, you need to enter your credit card details.

Step 4: Click

Click “Download GoToMeeting” to start the setup process.

Step 5: Setup the Software

Allow your browser to run the Java applet to install the software.

Give your computer permission to install the software.

Once the installation is complete, you’ll be asked to login to your account.

That’s how to create an account and setup the software for GoToWebinar. Once you’ve got this setup, you’re ready to create your first webinar.

Setting Up Your Webinar and Branding

GoToWebinar has a lot of different options for setting up your webinar. You can setup different interfaces for users, custom questions for people signing up for your seminar, create profiles for presenters and more.

Here’s how to setup and brand your webinar.

Step 1: Click Schedule

After signing up for your account, click “Schedule a Webinar” to get your first webinar started.

Step 2: Title and Description

Give your webinar a catchy title and description. The title and description will be shown on invitations and your registration page.

Step 3: Set the Time and Date for the Webinar

When do you want your webinar scheduled?

Step 4: Audio Settings

Choose the audio options for your conference. You can use the VoIP application, a call in phone number of both depending on what your audience wants to use.

You can also setup GoToWebinar with your own conferencing service.

Step 5: Password the Webinar

If you want to password protect your webinar, just click the checkbox.

Step 6: Give Your Webinar a Logo

To give your webinar an overall integrated feel, it often helps to upload your company logo. That’ll make it seem like the webinar is a part of your brand experience.

Step 7: Choose a Theme

Select your theme and upload a custom theme image if you so choose. Different themes tend to work better with different brands, so try out all the available themes to see which works best for you.

Step 8: Waiting Room Color

When your guests are waiting for you to arrive, what color do you want them to see? Again, the goal should be to create an integrated experience with your brand.

Step 9: Presenters

To give your presenters credibility and to prepare your guests for the webinar, it often helps to give a bit of information on who will be speaking.

Put your presenter’s name, title, organization and a headshot photo of them in the “List Presenters” section.

Step 10: Welcome Message

Write a warm welcome message that also “sells” users on staying in the seminar. This will help ensure that once people arrive at the webinar, they’ll actually carry through with staying on the seminar.

Step 11: Choose Registration Fields

Choose what fields someone needs to fill out in order to register for the webinar.

You can also create your own questions. Just fill in the “New Question” field, then fill out the possible answers to those questions.

Step 12: Approval

Do you want to automatically approve users who join your webinar, or do you want to approve them manually? Select this option at the bottom of the webinar creation screen.

Once you’ve filled out all the fields, hit save and you’re done! You’ve scheduled your first webinar.

Sending Out Invites

There are a few different ways you can send out invitations for webinars on GoToWebinar. It’s important to keep in mind that GoToWebinar is not an autoresponder system. That means that all your invites need to go through your own email system.

The three main ways you can invite people to a GoToWebinar meeting are:

Through forwarding GoToWebinar’s invitation.

Through creating your own GoToWebinar invitation.

Through using a mail client.

Let’s walk through the various ways you can send an invitation with GoToWebinar.

Step 1: Get a Copy of the Invitation

In order to be able to send other people invitations, you first need to get yourself a copy of the invitation.

Click on “My Webinars” on the left.

Then click “Email Me the Invitation.”

Step 2: Copy the Link

If you have your own autoresponder, just copy the link from your invitation and send that out to your users.

When they click on the link, they’ll be taken to the webinar registration page.

Step 3: Forward the Invitation

Another way to send invitations is to simply forward the first invitation to the people you want to invite.

This is a nice and simple way to do your invitations. It’s not highly professional, so you might not want to use this approach if you’re trying to build a major brand. For close followers and friends however, it works just fine.

Step 4: Invitations to an Instant Meeting

GoToWebinar has a feature called GoToMeeting. These are essentially instantaneous webinars, limited to 25 people.

To send an invitation for a GoToMeeting, open the GoToWebinar software. Expand the “Attendee List” menu.

Then click “Invite Others” to open the invitations window.

GoToWebinar will open up your email client. Enter their email addresses and hit send.

These are the main ways to send invitations with GoToWebinar. Though their system doesn’t allow you to send emails directly, there are many ways you can send invites through your own systems.

Running Your Webinar

Knowing your software inside and out is critical to being able to run a smooth webinar. Before you run your webinar, it’s a good to take your software for a test drive to get used to its various features.

Here’s a walkthrough of the most important features of GoToWebinar.

Step 1: Starting the Screencast

Click the “Show My” button to begin showing your screen.

Step 2: Choose What to Show

Click the “Screen” button to choose what window to show.

You can select a specific window, your entire screen or a cleaned up version of your screen. The cleaned up version will avoid your start menu and the top of your browser window.

Step 3: Recording

If you want to record your webinar, click the “Start Recording” button.

To change where your recordings go or how things are recorded, click “Settings.”

Step 4: Dashboard

Your webinar dashboard is where you can see the most important statistics for your webinar.

At a glance you can see how long your webinar has been running, how many people are on your webinar, how many people aren’t paying attention, how many questions have been asked and how many hands are raised.

Step 5: Audience View

Under audience view, you can see exactly what your screen looks like to your attendees.

Step 6: Audience List

In audience list, you can see all the people who are currently attending the webinar. You can invite others, mute everyone or put all the hands down as well.

Step 7: Audio

To see how well you’re being heard in bar form, go to the audio panel.

You can also change your audio settings by going to “Settings.”

Step 8: Polls

Polls make it easy to gather opinions and statistics from your audience.

To start a poll, click “Manage Polls.” The software will bring up the poll creation menu in your browser.

Step 9: Questions

The questions menu allows you to see what questions have been asked and what questions have been answered. You can also answer questions in this box, both publicly and privately.

Step 10: Chat

This is where you can chat in text with your participants.

Step 11: Drawing Tools 

Presenters often find it useful to be able to highlight things on the screen with various drawing tools.

To use drawing tools, just click the pen-like object in the small left panel. Then select the kind of tool you want to use.

These are the most important parts of GoToWebinar’s many features. Make sure you do a test run of your webinar to get familiar with all these features before you start.

Enjoy!

Continue reading: How to Host Professional Webinars

The following is the business model I use to make decent money every week with Clickbank.

I encourage you to read though the whole thing because this model works and has been proven over and over by myself and other affiliate marketers. While this model shows how to make money with Clickbank, the model can be applied to any other affiliate network or product (even a blog). I just happen to like Clickbank because information is one of the easiest products to promote and sell on the Internet.

Hit And Run Marketing Doesn’t Work

Most new affiliate marketers getting into the business do what I call hit and run affiliate marketing. It’s the model they’re all familiar with because it’s the one they hear about the most. The hit and run marketing steps goes something like this.

1. Select a Clickbank (or any affiliate) product to promote
2. Send traffic to the landing page with PPC/PPV
3. PROFIT!

I’m sure you’ve all heard stories of affiliate marketers spending $10K a day to make $20K? It sounds great doesn’t it? The only problem is there are not many affiliate marketers who can do that. Also, those who are making a profit using the hit and run model are leaving a ton of money on the table.

Spending money on advertising to get one customer that you will never see again is one of the dumbest business moves you can make. That’s like a big department store spending $50K on a front page ad in a major newspaper to have those customers buy one item and then never visit the store again. They would go under in less than six months if that’s the case!

Another problem with the hit and run model is it’s not very stable. You have to keep spending money on advertising or the sales stop. You risk the chance of Google slapping your landing page because of a low quality score, you may run out of money tweaking the ads/keywords/landing pages, competition can drive up bids to the point where you can’t make a profit, the advertiser may pull the offer, etc.

Real Businesses Are Built On Repeat Customers

Too many people think of Internet marketing as a game. It’s not. It’s a real business and real businesses are built on repeat customers. A restaurant can’t survive with first time customers only. The Apple Store, or any retail store, would go under in no time at all if their customers visit the store once and never visit again.

If someone buys one Apple product, then they are likely to buy another product from Apple. The same thing holds true for affiliate marketing. If someone buys a Clickbank product from you, they are likely to buy another one. But that will never happen if all you do is hit and run marketing because you’ll never see that person again.

Repeat business is the key. It’s a lot easier and cheaper to market to a repeat customer than it is to acquire a new one. In fact, the average business spends seven times more in marketing to get a new customers, than it does to keep an existing one. When you’re doing hit and run affiliate marketing, what you are in fact doing is spending that 7x more money to acquire a customer for SOMEONE ELSE! Can you see now why most hit and run affiliate marketers don’t make money?

A Clickbank Affiliate Model That Works

My Clickbank business model is more complex than the hit and run model. It will require more work on your part but unlike the hit and run model, you will make way more money with it. Here are the steps.

1. Choose a series of Clickbank products in the same niche to promote
2. Create a free eBook about the niche to give away
3. Create a squeeze page offering the free ebook
4. Send traffic to the squeeze page
5. Capture the lead coming to the squeeze page
6. Deploy email auto responders with the Clickbank products
7. Watch the money rack up in your Clickbank account

The main difference between my model and the hit and run model is I’m building a customer base. Instead of sending leads directly to the Clickbank landing page to buy the product and never see them again, I send them to my squeeze page to capture their emails so I can market products to them for weeks, months and years to come. This is a far more powerful marketing method.

The Money Is In The List

It has been said many times before that the money is in the list but it bears repeating. The money really is in the list. All the really big affiliate marketers have huge mailing lists. And because they have huge lists, they don’t have to spend hundreds of thousands per month on advertising.

If you want to become a big Clickbank affiliate marketer (or blogger), you absolutely need an email list. That is your customer base. Without one, you’ll just be another hit and run affiliate marketer working for peanuts. Stop building other people’s customer base and start building your own.

Step 1 – Choose a Series of Clickbank Products

The first step to making money from Clickbank is to decide on the niche you want to target. Ideally, the niche should be a niche that you have a knowledge of and a passion for. If that’s not the case, then you can still make money with it but you wouldn’t have as much fun and to me, having fun is even more important than making the money.

The Clickbank Marketplace lists thousands of products for you to promote. You can sort search results based on commission, sales, popularity and a bunch of other criteria. I like to get a copy of the product before deciding on whether to promote it. You can either email the advertiser for a copy, or buy it from them and then get a refund if you don’t want to promote it. All Clickbank products are covered by a 60 day money back policy.

Step 2 – Create a Free eBook

The best way to make people give you their email address is to offer them something they find valuable for free. This is where the eBook comes in. You can write it yourself or you can use a PLR eBook. Personally, I recommend you write it yourself or hire out the writing.

The free eBook doesn’t have to be very big, 20 to 60 pages should do, but it does need to cover the same niche as the Clickbank products you plan to promote. This is why I said you should have a knowledge of the niche you plan to deal in.

Step 3 – Create a Squeeze Page To Promote The eBook

A squeeze page is a special kind of landing page that is created solely to act as an opt-in for information – primarily email addresses – from potential subscribers. When people visit my blog, I want them to subscribe to my email list. However, because there is so much to see and read, the number of sign ups isn’t as high as it could be. By creating a separate squeeze page, the email sign up rate can skyrocket. While I can capture maybe 5% of people visiting my blog, I have seen squeeze pages with conversion rate has high as 60%!

The easiest way to create a squeeze page is with OptimizePress. OptimizePress is a WordPress theme and will allow you to create custom squeeze pages in minutes. It is the best squeeze page theme there is!

Step 4 – Send Traffic To The Squeeze Page

Once the squeeze page has been created, you need to send traffic to it. The quickest way to do that is to use pay per click or pay per view advertising. However, that’s also the most expensive way. There are tons of lower cost or free methods for traffic generation. A little creatively can go a long way.

Try to think outside the box when it comes to traffic building. Instead of using PPC to send traffic to a squeeze page, why not set up a contest to give away a prize? Signing up equals one entry.. referring a friend equals another entry, and so on.

Step 5 – Capture The Lead


Lead capturing is the most important part of affiliate marketing. Your business is built around your list. Anything you can do to increase its size means more money for you.

While a squeeze page maybe the best way to get someone to give you his email address, you still need a system to handle and host the list.

My recommended email service is Aweber.

I’ve been using them for years and they are by far the best in the business. Aweber works seamlessly with OptimizePress and its web interface allows you to access it from any computer, anywhere in the world.

Aweber offers a $1 trial account for all new customers. The account is just like a normal Aweber account and includes unlimited email campaigns, newsletter, broadcasts and follow ups. It’s a great way to test drive Aweber to see what it can do for you. Your satisfaction is guaranteed. If you find that email marketing is not for you, contact Aweber within 30 days and they’ll give you the $1 back.

Step 6 – Deploy Auto Responders

Auto responders are emails that go out at a set date and interval. When someone subscribe to my blog, they are sent a series of auto responder emails. These emails are design to do three things.

1. Build a relationship with the subscriber
2. Promote my blog and brand
3. Recommend products and services that help solve the reader’s problem

Setting up the auto responder is extremely easy and is no different than sending out a normal email. If you’re using Aweber, all you have to do is click “Follow Up” in the Message tab. This will allow you to create a follow up message to be sent to your new subscriber at a later date. Aweber allows you to set up an unlimited number of auto responders.

If you check the screen shot above, you’ll see that my first auto responder email goes out the instant someone signs up to my list. The second follow up email out goes out four days after the first, the next goes out  five days later, then one day after that.. and so on until there are no more follow ups.

This is also known as a sales funnel. The first few emails helps build your relationship with the subscriber. Later emails in the funnel are used to promote the Clickbank products. This setup works far better than any hit and run system. Research has shown that most prospect won’t buy on the first visit or email. They need to be hit over and over again. This is where the auto responder comes in. The sooner you set it up, the faster you’ll be in the money.

Step 7 – Watch The Money Rack Up In The Clickbank Account

This step is optional but I really enjoy it.

You now have the formula to a make massive amounts of money with Clickbank (or any other affiliate network). It takes more work than the hit and run model but the payoffs are much higher. I hope you enjoy this post and I hope it opened your eyes to what it really takes to make money with Clickbank.

Your comments are welcome.

(This post follows on from an earlier post of mine - Earning Money with Clickbank).

Continue reading: How to Really Make Money with Clickbank

Some you have to download and some cost money but what are the best free browser based Twitter tools out there?

Here are a list of four:

Twilert:

If you’re interested in who is tweeting about your product or website, or just want to know who is tweeting a specific word, Twilert is perfect for you.

This very simple but useful tool alerts you via email when that word or hashtag is used.

Twilert allows you to decide how often you want to receive these emails. So if you want to receive them every day at 5 pm, you will.

Twilert also has advanced options that allow you track by location, who sends/receives a tweet, and tweets containing a link.

TweetStats:

If you want to see stats about your tweets or someone else’s than TweetStats will provide them. All you have to do is type in a Twitter username, no login required!

This sites provide information such as: average tweets per day/month, what days and times the person tends to tweet, who they tend to reply to and retweet from, and what words they tweet the most.

If you’re trying to get in contact with someone on Twitter who gets a lot of @mentions than TweetStats can help you come up with a good time to try and contact them.

It’s also good to know if you’re tweeting too much on a certain day but not enough on another.

SocialOomph:

This site provides a lot of different features but my personal favourite is the ability to schedule tweets. Just type in your tweet and the date and time you want that tweet to be published and voilà, your tweets will be posted then.

You can also track keywords, view @mentions of multiple accounts in one place and delete all of your DM Inbox with one click.

SocialOomph has a lot of other interesting features such as: automatically following people who follow you, sending DMs to new followers, and the ability to filter out spammy twitter accounts. These features cost money but are definitely worth looking into if you don’t mind spending some cash.

Twitterfeed:

Keep your followers up-to-date by automatically tweeting about your latest blog post using Twitterfeed.

Options include: picking what site to shorten your link from, update frequency, and including a post prefix and subfix to your tweets.

Twitterfeed’s dashboard tells you how many times each link has been click. You can also automatically send blog updates to Linkedin and Facebook.

Conclusion:

What are some other good free Twitter tools out there? What are some tools that you wish existed but don’t?

Internet marketing services use Twitter tools because they help manage their Twitter accounts and play an important part in gaining followers and increasing interest in a business. By using these tools, you too can increase your Twitter presence.

Brittni Brown is an intern at WebpageFX, an Internet marketing company.

Continue reading: 4 Free Twitter Tools You Should Be Using

How many emails do you send per day?

Probably too many, like the rest of us. And how many emails have you seen with over-sized and unattractive email signatures that doing everything except get you to click on them?

Well, those days are over.

WiseStamp gives the average business owner, blogger, or online marketer the chance to have an attractive and high-performing email signature that not only catches the reader’s eye but also keeps everyone up to date on the company’s latest social updates.

WiseStamp integrates with all major Webmail services: Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL, and supports Firefox, Chrome, Thunderbird, Flock and Safari.

With WiseStamp, you can insert a quick link and/or icon to all of your social media hot-spots, embed your own rss feed, include your latest tweets, and the list goes on.

Completely customise your email signature with fonts, text sizes, colors, links, images, and icons in order to create the perfect closing to every email you send out.

Having a special sale? Edit your signature with a few clicks of the mouse and let everyone know about it. Free advertising.

WiseStamp also has a great installation guide in case you get a little lost, but I doubt that’s going to happen because this plugin is super easy to use and install.

Take a quick WiseStamp video tour:

WiseStamp Features List

WiseStamp includes many exciting and improved fetchers for your email such as:

Customize your Email signature

• design style
• font
• size
• colour
• images

Add Email Apps with updating dynamic content

• automatically share your latest blog posts
• tweets
• Facebook status
• Ebay items and more

Easily include your social services and profiles

• Facebook
• Twitter
• del.icio.us
• IM Services
• LinkedIn, and many more

Use multiple signatures

• Create business & personal signatures to insert in your emails

And more..

• Easy setup and configuration interface
• Automatically insert your signature to your webmail services
• Use multiple email signatures (Business and Personal)
• Add your personal feeds (rss) Get signature feed ideas new
• Add your logo or image to your signature
• Easily link to all of your Social profiles & Services + Icons (see list below) new
• Works with Gmail, Google App’s, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, AOL and more
• Option to treat each signature as HTML

Go grab WiseStamp now and start connecting with your current clients and leads.

Continue reading: How to Supercharge your Email Signature

Here is a simple one I would like to share..

If you are like me you have your regular “day job”.. and on-the-side you blog, or have a home/small business.

Personally, I would rather link to my Facebook Page (form my Profile) than to my “real employer”.. that is what LinkedIn is for.

And plus, rather than annoy my friends by continually asking them to Like my page.. I can link to it (my Page) and any of my friends who checkout my profile will see this link (to my Page).

Let me show you what I mean.

I have logged into Facebook and browsed to my Profile.. you will notice there is a link to my current employer (which I added in),

When I click on this link, I get directed to a non-maintained (claimed), general Page for this employer,

This is a wasted link.. I would rather have it point to my Facebook Page.

Here is how..

Go back to your Profile and click <Update Info>,

In the Work and education section, click on <Edit>,

And delete the employer (NB – I had previously added this in),

Now in the Where have you worked? field, start typing the name of of your Facebook Page,

When you have added this, click on <Add job>.. then <Finished editing>,

Now head back to your profile (you may need to refresh the page), and you will see the link you have just added to your Facebook Page,

Whenever a friend visits my profile the will see my Page (when they hover over the link),

And if they click on it, the will get re-directed to my Page,

To me, this option is much better than what I had before.. don’t you agree?

My profile is that little bit more optimised to allow for visitors (friends) to click through to my Facebook Page.

I hope you found this little tip useful, and if you are really looking at taking your Facebook marketing strategy to the next level I would certainly recommend FBinfluence!

Continue reading: How to Link your Facebook Profile to your Facebook Page

I recently bought myself a copy of FBinfluence and have so far found it to be one of the best investments I’ve made in a long while.

FBinfluence is the new wildly successful Facebook marketing and strategy videos by world renowned Facebook guru, Amy Porterfield.

Amy was instrumental in designing, building and growing Social Media Examiner’s Facebook Page to 69,000+ fans. Amy is the co-author of Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies and a Social Media Strategist for entrepreneurs and small businesses. Many consider Amy the go-to person for all things Facebook Marketing.

With 12+ years marketing experience Amy has worked with mega brands like Harley-Davidson Motorcycles, along with Tony Robbins International where she designed and managed his digital and social marketing campaigns. She currently consults with entrepreneurs, and small and large businesses on social media strategy.

You Can’t Afford to Ignore Facebook

As the internet and Social Media evolve one thing is clear – Facebook is king. Fast approaching 1,000,000,000 members (yes that’s ONE BILLION), Facebook is the site where everyone is spending time online!

• You already know Facebook is the Largest Social Network with over 800 million members. Your customers are using it!
• Every day Facebook users comment or press the “Like” button more than 2 billion times.
• Facebook users post 30 billion pieces of content every month. How much of it is about your product or service?
• A recent study by Forrester found that of U.S. adults who use social networking sites, 96% of them are on Facebook.
• Facebook reached one trillion page views in June 2011, making it the most-visited web site in the world!

Facebook is an incredible, unlimited source of hot leads.

Did you know that Facebook users spend over 700 BILLION minutes a month on Facebook? The potential to attract quality prospects is mind blowing.

The great news is that there is a huge source of leads right at your fingertips. The bad news is that most people are doing it all wrong and not capitalizing on its massive potential. It’s time you start leveraging the most powerful social media platform.

You already know to survive in business you must build a huge list of ravenous prospects. Amy is going to show you how to make list building A-B-C easy for you. You will generate mind-blowing leads.

About FBinfluence

FBinfluence is your COMPLETE roadmap for creating and leveraging Facebook to drive traffic and build your brand!

You will learn:

• How to get automated leads and SALES 24/7
• The little-known trick to attract highly-targeted prospects who WANT to do business with you
• A simple but powerful way to get your testimonials on autopilot day in and day out
• How to be instantly recognized as the most sought out leader in your industry
• The simple paragraph that creates a vibrant community of raving fans who happily spread the word about you, your products and services
• You already know it’s time to stop wasting your energy and make Facebook work for you.? This program will turn your Facebook fans into SUPER FANS, action-taking raving fans who are eager to buy what you are selling.

How You Can Turn Your Facebook Page Into a Traffic-Pulling Machine in FOUR Simple Steps

Step 1 will show you the simple foundational key to prepare you for Facebook success

These four simple steps will be easy for you to complete, but will create a magnetic pull literally dragging your ideal audience to your business.

You’ll sit back amazed by the fans clicking the like button and joining your Facebook community in record numbers.

In Step 2 you’ll discover the little-known secret to growing a lucrative fan base

You’re going to receive the FBinfluence Blueprint that will reveal this secret strategy Amy uses with her high-dollar clients to turn their Facebook Fan Pages into perpetual lead-generation machines.

This blueprint includes specific details on the most successful strategies used to attract quality fans, along with three little-known techniques that will drive your fans to action. You’ll learn to attract highly-targeted prospects who WANT to do business with you!

In Step 3 you’ll find the easy-as-pie way to create ongoing, massive engagement

This simple formula will create quality content specifically for your Facebook page, increase your engagement score, and give you the essential tools needed to master, monitor and track your Facebook success. You will receive proven, results-focused, advanced strategies you can’t afford to miss.

These are the same powerful tactics Amy has used to help people like Tony Robbins generate massive results.

In Step 4 you find the simple yet powerful technique you can use to turn your fans into Profitable Super Fans

This final step includes the highly-advanced, and unbelievably effective strategies we’ve used to move fans to take massive action. This one is so powerful it can change your life but so simple you’ll wonder why everyone isn’t doing it.

There is no doubt these strategies will instantly help you stand out in the most lucrative social media hot spot of them all.

Who is this program for?

The Entrepreneur

You’ve recently created your own business, or you’ve been at it for awhile, and are looking to increase your exposure, leads and sales. You want to know more about Facebook marketing so you can do it yourself, or at least know how to do it so you can then hand it over to someone on your team to execute.

The Marketer

You work for a business and are responsible for or involved with your company’s social media presence. You want to know what to do, how to do it and how to get results so you can increase your company’s bottom line (and show upper management that social media marketing is working for your programs and services).

The Business Owner

You own a business, you have some Facebook knowledge, but you know there is a bigger opportunity waiting for you on Facebook once you fully understand how your business can claim it’s place there. You might not do it all yourself, but you know you need to understand it first before you hand it off to someone else to manage.

Just Getting Started

You know Facebook is important, but you have no clue where to start or what to do. This program works for beginners and also works for those who have been using Facebook for awhile. Our baby-step instructions make it easy for anyone to succeed. You will instantly know what strategies to implement to get real results quickly!

Inside FBinfluence

FBinfluence Secret Facebook Group

After signing up, I was sent to a registration form where I created an account.. from here I logged in and was presented with the member dashboard.

(For a while now I have been investigating WordPress membership site software and immediately recognised that FBinfluence was using Wishlist Member. WLM is one of the top membership software tools in today’s market).

The first thing I did was request to join the secret Facebook group, for FBinfluence members only. This secret group is a fantastic resource for connecting with other entrepreneurs who have also purchased this course, and are applying the strategies to grow their business on Facebook.

My request to join this secret group was approved almost straight away,

I then headed over to my new group and said a few hello’s,

Home

Once you login to FBinfluence, the Home tab has a introductory video where Amy runs through where to find all the different resources within the member’s area.

The Home page also has links to,

• the training modules
• tools and resources
• bonus material that compliments the social media training

Navigation within the FBinfluence member’s area is very simple to use .

Modules

FBinfluence has 20 training videos, spread over 4 Modules.

Each Module contains:

• 5 Videos – averaging around 20 minutes each
• Summary of objectives to learn for each video
• Downloadable content

Module 1 – The Foundation for Facebook Success

Ask Yourself ..

What do you want from Facebook? Why are you marketing on Facebook?

To help you sort through the many layers of Facebook marketing, there are 9 core rules to consider as you create your Facebook Page.

• The 9 Core Facebook Marketing Rules (just #2 can mean the difference between success and failure.)
• The Basics of a Branded Facebook Page – 90% or more do this one wrong!
• How to Create a Facebook Welcome Tab – this can be the most important part of your page.
• Your Facebook Dashboard Overview Do you know what the most important part of your dashboard is? It’s not what you think.
• How to Find a Community Manager for Your Facebook Page The right choice can make you a hero–the wrong one can make you a zero.

Module 2 – Growing a Lucrative Fan Base

Here’s What You’ll Learn..

With more than almost a billion active users, more likely than not, your brand will find an audience on Facebook.

• Finding Your Ideal Audience Inside Facebook Do you know “where” they hang out? You will now!
• 5 Proven Strategies to Grow Your Fan Base Why reinvent the wheel? These are proven to work.
• How to Use Facebook Marketing to Get More Leads Leads are the fuel of your business–here’s where to get them.
• How to Get Into the News Feed of Your Fans This one is the key to explosive growth.
• Social Plugins & Share Buttons: Best Options for Your Business Use what works the first time.

Module 3 – Creating Massive Engagement

Engagement Is The Key

Learn how to develop a relationship with your audience.

• Facebook Content: What to Post and When to Post Almost everyone gets this wrong.
• Surefire Strategies to Create Engagement
• How to Promote Your Events on Facebook Load your next event with raving Super Fans!
• How to Create Your Own Personalized Facebook Experiences
• Monitoring Tools to Track Your Facebook Success The simple, powerful tools for success.

Module 4 – Fans Into SUPER FANS

Find your fans, keep your fans, and turn them into SUPER FANS with Module 4 of FBinfluence.

• How to Deliver Impeccable Customer Service on Facebook Imagine the power of doing your customer service on Facebook.
• Turn Your Facebook Page Photos into Free Facebook Ads This killer idea is so simple you’ll kick yourself for not thinking of it sooner.
• Tips and Strategies to Supercharge Your Facebook Ads Stop losing money and start raking it in.
• How to Build an Online Store for Your Facebook Page Make a store that flows with Facebook and your customers will love to send you their money.
• The Instant Action Plan: 5 Advanced Tips to Get Momentum Today In 24 hours you can change your business.

Downloadable Content

The Download Center is located at the very bottom of each Module page, where you can download content.

I have downloaded the content from all the Modules and put it on my iPhone and iPad.. a great way to learn while you are on the go!

Resources 

The Resources page contains a library of wealth pertaining to each Module.

For example, the Module 1 section (in the Resources page) contains the following topics:

• 9 Facebook Marketing Strategies to Build Super Fans
• 6 Daily Habits for Facebook Marketing Success
• Top 10 Facebook Pages and Why They’re Successful
• 7 Facebook Marketing Tips from World’s Top Pros
• Facebook Changes as of September 28, 2011
• Outsourcing for Your Facebook Page
• 15 FAQs about Facebook Pages
• Tutorial: Add an iFrame Application to your Facebook Fan Page – Fall 2012
• Valuable Facebook Resources

Each of these topics contains links to articles, case studies and tools, that further enhance and build upon the teachings provided in the videos.

Bonuses

There are five Bonuses that come with FBinfluence.

All of these Bonuses are designed to compliment the FBinfluence course and are fully downloadable.

Community

This tab links to the secret Facebook group.

This is a wonderful resource for networking with other like minded individuals and has over 1,200 members (at the time of writing).

A great place to ask questions and get your questions answered by your peers.

Support

This page contains support resources for any issues or problems including email and also has FAQs section.

Finally..

Keep an eye out for my upcoming reviews on each of the four modules and how they have helped my Facebook Page.

Continue reading: FBinfluence Review – Your All Inclusive Guide to Facebook Marketing

Are you looking for some social media tips to grow your small business?

We asked eight small business pros for their hottest social media tips.

Here’s their advice for you to take your business to the next level.

#1: Show Them the “Real You”

Use Facebook to show prospects, clients and customers the “real you.” Sure, provide the occasional business tip. Or link to your new blog post. But that’s what everyone else is doing. So why not show them you’re a real person by posting updates about things you’re passionate about?

I love to cook, so I’ve been known to post pictures of my grilled masterpieces. Or I’ll quote something one of my silly kids just said. Or I’ll pose a question, such as “How can we encourage more young entrepreneurs?” Either way, I try to keep it interesting, humorous and different. And always authentic.

Oh, and I know I’m going to ruffle a lot of feathers by saying this, but I really do believe that less is more. I get more engagement by updating five times per week than five times per day. Plus it fits my personality. Because offline, I would never call attention to myself that frequently.

Ed Gandia, founding partner, International Freelancers Academy.

#2: Pick One Thing and Do It Really Well

Small businesses are faced with having to prioritize their resources toward the activities that deliver the most impact. With social media, it’s easy to feel like you need to have a presence on every social media channel. It’s also easy to get lost in managing too many networks.

Being on 5 social networks and giving all of them half-effort will not generate results. Therefore, I recommend that small businesses first find which network has the highest concentration of their audience using tools like Follower Wonk, Facebook’s free advertising platform and LinkedIn’s search features.

Once you’ve found which social media network actually has a concentration of your target audience, develop a strategy to engage them. Rather than spreading your energy across multiple channels, put 100% of your “social focus” on the best channel for your audience and do it exceptionally well. If you’re successful, you’ll have a much easier time justifying the additional investment to replicate your success on another social media network.

Nichole Kelly, founder of Full Frontal ROI.

#3: Turn Your Facebook Page Into a Lead-Generating Machine

One necessary component of a thriving business is a strong list of qualified leads. Collecting names and emails is essential to any small business because you can communicate with your ideal audience on a regular basis. Some business experts say that without a list, you don’t really have a business!

There are many ways to grow your list and one of the smartest marketing moves is to create an opt-in strategy on your Facebook page. To keep it simple, use iFrames to create a custom welcome tab. On this tab you can create a 2-step process called a “reveal tab.”

Step #1: Include a call to action to encourage non-fans to click Like and become a fan.

Step #2: Once you get the Like, offer a valuable giveaway in exchange for name and email.

With this model, you are increasing your fan base and growing your lead list at the same time. It’s a double whammy for your business.

Liz DiAlto, a NYC personal trainer, created a 2-step process on her Facebook page to grow her community and her lead list.

Amy Porterfield, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies.

#4: Invest in a Great Twitter Design

If your business or brand is geared toward a particular niche market, make sure that you go all out when designing your Twitter profile. For an example, see @HungerGamesPod. Make sure that it shows how serious you are about your niche and that by looking at your profile, people will see valuable content that they could get if they were following you on Twitter.

Next, go find other Twitter IDs that market to your exact niche market. For my Hunger Games brand, I did this with @TheHungerGames, which has over 76,000 followers. These 76,000 people are obviously interested in The Hunger Games niche and therefore might find my podcast on the subject interesting and want to follow.

Go through and follow that account’s followers. Most will get an email notification from Twitter, because they never turned off email notifications, telling them that you just followed them. Many will click through to your Twitter profile, check it out and if they’re interested, they’ll follow you back.

This is how I added over 4,000 followers to my Hunger Games Twitter account in less than a month.

Cliff invested in a great design for the @HungerGamesPod Twitter backgound.

Cliff Ravenscraft, founder of PodcastAnswerMan.com.

#5: Bring Your Company Onto Video

Without question, the hottest and most effective use of social media today is VIDEO. With all the recent changes in how Google and other search engines index web pages, adding short videos is the #1 way to get into the top of search results.

Creating a custom channel on YouTube is very easy. Creating a series of short instructional videos around your product or service and using testimonials from happy clients/customers are great ways to add credibility to your company and dramatically increase the chances of a viewer going to your website.

Use humor and graphics to get your key messages across. Remember, shorter is better—no more than 3 minutes.

Michael Crosson, founder of the second-largest LinkedIn group, “the Social Media Marketing Group,” with over 230,000 members.

#6: Learn How to Master Video Marketing

My hottest tip for small businesses to take their business to the next level is to learn how video content—when tagged, titled and published correctly—can increase your exposure in search results.

Video thumbnails in search results attract the eye more than text and can get your content seen over traditional text delivery. Plus, video can really highlight your company’s personality!

Flyte New Media uses YouTube marketing to develop their business.

Gregory Ng, an advertising executive by day and the host of a popular webshow by night.

#7: Monitor Your Clients and Prospects

Create alerts for all of your important clients, add their blogs to your RSS reader, create a Twitter List and add it to a tool like TweetDeck. Explore whether your CRM tool allows you to add the social connections for your clients (BatchBook, Highrise or ACT!all have this function and the Rapporative plugin for Gmail can do this as well).

Monitor what your clients and prospects are doing and saying in social networks to anticipate and serve their needs and build relationships much faster. Next you can do the same with key journalists and strategic partners.

This step alone will make your social media efforts pay off immediately.

It’s easy to find Duct Tape consultants thanks to this Twitter list.

John Jantsch, a marketing consultant and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine and the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.

#8: Give Away the Secret Sauce

In other words, start developing content about those industry secrets or how-to tips that no other competitor of yours would dare touch. This can be your competitive advantage. By creating the kind of content that really solves your customers’ problems, you’ll be linked to and shared. Your content will rise in the search rankings and be actively shared on Twitter and Facebook.

How do you get started? Write down all of the most interesting and hard-to-answer customer questions and create online content from each question.

Do this every day for six months and you’ll see a significant difference in your business.

Joe Pulizzi, author of Managing Content Marketing and co-author of Get Content, Get Customers.

Want more social media marketing ideas for your small business?

If you’re not fully leveraging the power of social media for your business, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Most businesses still haven’t figured it out.

There’s one easy way to take your social media marketing to the next level. By attending the web’s largest online social media conference for people like you: Small Business Success Summit. You’ll become empowered to use social media to gain more exposure and grow your revenues.

The great part is you’ll be learning from more than 25 small business social media experts (including the eight mentioned in this article).

It’s the web’s largest online social media marketing conference for small businesses. Go here for a free sample (see upper yellow box) and to learn more.

What do you think? What’s your hottest social media tip for small businesses? Please share your questions and comments in the box below.

Continue reading: 8 Small Business Social Media Tips From the Pros

Website Selling Checklist

The process of selling a website has many moving parts. Getting just one part wrong or missing a step can often mean a lower final closing price, or possibly not even making a sale.

Selling a website is usually the culmination of months and months of work. Getting it right is your chance for a “big bang” payday.

Here’s a checklist to help you make sure you have all your bases covered when you list your website for sale.

Systematize & Remove Yourself from the Equation

The first and most important step you need to take to prepare a website for sale is to remove yourself from the equation.

Website buyers aren’t interested in buying a website if you’re a key component of its operations. If the site will fall apart when you leave, your website is essentially unsellable.

This problem can come in a couple forms.

First of all, if you’re the primary or only content creator, that’s a big problem. Start moving your content production to other writers as soon as you can. Establish a system of generating content rather than doing it all yourself.

Any other tasks that you perform yourself should either be outsourced or clearly documented. Simple tasks like approving comments can simply be documented and passed to the new owner.

Complex tasks that require special skills however can make selling your site tricky. Try to have all such tasks outsourced to someone competent in that area. That way you can just pass on the outsourcer relationship to the new buyer, instead of having to train the buyer in complex new skills (or losing the buyer altogether.)

In short, remove yourself from the equation wherever possible.

Website Statistics

There are a few different sources of website statistics you can publish.

The most ideal source is Google Analytics data. Google Analytics is the most trusted data source for website buyers. Flippa also allows you to send Google Analytics data directly to their servers to have it verified. That also increases trust.

Another source of data you can use are server logs. This is traffic data pulled straight from your cPanel, usually sorted with a program like AWStats that turns the raw information into readable form.

Generally, website buyers are rather suspicious of stats generated by systems they’re not familiar with. If you can use Google Analytics, you’ll be much better off.

Try to have at least 60 days of data before trying to put your website up for sale.

Proof of Revenue

Another critical aspect of selling your website is being able to prove every cent you claim to earn.

Remember: If you can’t prove it, they won’t believe you have it.

The two easiest sources to prove are Google AdSense and Amazon Affiliates revenue. Most website buyers are familiar with both of these sources (especially Google AdSense) and know how their interfaces work.

If you have custom revenue streams, such as sales in your shopping cart system or private advertisement deals, that can be a lot tougher to prove. Take screenshots of the payments to your account and do everything you can to document your revenue.

Try to upload month by month revenue, rather than just a snapshot of your website’s revenue to date.

Research Comparable Multiples

What should you price your website at? What should your BIN price be?

The only way to find out for sure is to research comparable prices.

Researching comparables for online websites is a bit tricky. A lot of people assume that “comparables” means “comparable multiples for the industry you’re in,” but that’s often not true.

A solar panel website that makes money via AdSense and is 6 months old has more in common with another young AdSense website than an established 3 year old solar panel website.

Look at websites that share these characteristics with yours; in this order of importance:

1) The amount of revenue per month.

2) Method of monetization.

3) The type of traffic that comes to the site.

4) The amount of maintenance the site needs.

5) Age of the site.

6) Stability of the industry or topic.

7) The actual industry or topic.

Often you won’t be able to find direct comparables; instead you’ll have to look at 5-10 similar sales to get a sense for where the market is at for a site like yours.

Describe the Maintenance Process

One of the most common questions buyers will ask sellers is “how much maintenance does this site need?”

Here are a few things you should make sure to address when you’re selling your website.

• How much time you personally need to put into the business every month. Naturally, a business that requires 1 hour a month to maintain is much more attractive than a business that takes 40 hours to maintain.

• Any special skills required to maintain the business. If the new owner needs to understand database programming to run the site, that’s something they’ll want to know about.

• Where the content comes from. Are you writing the content yourself? If so, you can expect a steep discount from your site’s price. If you’re outsourcing the content, describe the outsourcing process. What are you paying? Will you pass on the contact info of the outsource?

• What’s the relationship between your business and your advertisers like? Is there any risk of them losing advertising revenue when you leave the business? Is the business relationship a relationship with you or with your business? Address this concern upfront.

Put your buyer’s mind at ease by making sure they know they’ll be able to run the business even after you’re gone.

Describe the Technology Used

Some of your buyers will be technically savvy, some won’t. In either case, your buyer is going to want to know exactly what drives your site and what kind of skills they need to maintain it.

If you’re running a non-standard system, which means just about any CMS other than WordPress or direct HTML, you need to talk about that upfront. For example, if you’re running Drupal or Joomla, it may be a good idea to put in a short paragraph about how the system is maintained and what (if any) technological skills they need to maintain the system.

If you’re using any limited-license plugins, you should disclose that as well. Once a CMS system is transferred from one web host to another webhost on a new installation, that usually requires a new license. A buyer needs to know that upfront.

For example, if you’re using a paid content scraper for WordPress, the moment you transfer the site to the buyer’s web host, your old license may become invalid. They’ll have to pay for the new license and potentially go through a complex installation process.

Make sure you explain exactly what technology is used in every part of your business. The main goal of this is to make sure your buyer is comfortable with the systems they’ll need to run if they buy your business. If you don’t describe this clearly, you’ll lose most of your non-techie buyers simply because they’re afraid of touching your systems.

The Traffic Sources & Types

Make sure you give a clear description of where all your traffic comes from. This is especially important if you have any unusual sources of traffic coming in.

If your traffic is mostly from SEO, letting your buyers know that will usually suffice. Make sure you have proof of SEO traffic in your traffic stats.

On the other hand, if you get a lot of traffic from other sites, you need to carefully describe how you get that traffic and how the system is run. You need to reassure the site buyer that the traffic will continue to flow in even after the sale is completed.

Buyers can be very wary with traffic systems they don’t understand. Ease their fears as much as you can with clear descriptions.

Describe the Transfer Process

There are two main steps to transferring a website: The financial aspects of the transfer and the technical aspects of the transfer. Your site description should clearly describe how the transfer process will work on both ends.

The financial transfer usually falls into one of two categories: With escrow or without escrow.

If the sale amount is under $1,000 and the buyer has a fair amount of “reputation points” on the auction site, you can usually just use a half upfront and half after approach. There’s a chance of getting ripped off, but it’s very rare.

Amounts above $1,000 should almost always be handled with escrow.

An escrow service will take the money from the buyer and the domain, along with all files from the seller. Once the buyer has verified that he has everything he needs to run the site, the funds are released to the seller.

This protects both sides from fraud or misunderstanding. Escrow fees vary from transaction to transaction and your site description should address who pays the fees. Often the fees are split 50/50 between buyer and seller.

The technical process of transferring a website should also be addressed.

Who will do the installation? You, the buyer, or a third party? Who’s responsible for the installation?

If you’re using plain HTML, the transfer process is very simple. You just zip up the files and mail it over.

If you’re using WordPress, the process is a bit more complex. You need to send all the files, along with the database information and the buyer needs to know how to install a WordPress setup from a database. If you know how to do this, it often helps to put in your sales letter that you’re willing to do it for the buyer.

If you’re using a third party system, the setup process can get extremely complex.

Make sure you outline the transfer process and who’s responsible for the transfer in your sales letter.

Wrapping Up

These are the most important things you need to cover when you’re selling your website. Remember: The more you tell, the more you sell.

A skimmer might not read through all the information you provide. But a serious buyer who’s considering putting real money into your website is going to want all the information they can get. The more information you provide, the higher the price you’ll eventually get.

Research Tools for Buying Websites

Doing your research is perhaps the most important part of the website buying process.

When you’re buying a website, you need to make sure that you’re actually getting what you’re paying for in terms of traffic and revenue. In addition, you should also do as much research as you can into how much the site can potentially make in the future.

Here are a few of the most powerful research tools you have at your disposal when researching a potential website buy.

Analysing Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the most common type of statistics program used by webmasters. It’s also one of the most common types of reports you’ll see when you’re researching sites to buy.

Here are a few of the most important things you should look for in a Google Analytics report.

Overall Health

The first thing to look at is the overall health of the website. You can get a sense for how much people like this site by looking at stats like the pages per visit, the bounce rate, the average time on site and the percent of new visits.

Traffic Sources

Another important thing to understand is exactly where all your traffic comes from. There is a huge difference between running a forum that’s mostly recurring traffic and a website that gets mostly new traffic from SEO.

Keyword Analysis

The keywords that people type in to get to your website can tell you a lot about the kind of people that end up on the website. It can tell you whether they’re buyers or browsers and what kind of information they’re looking for when they end up on your site.

Breakdown by Countries

One big mistake buyers make is not checking the countries that traffic comes from. It’s not uncommon to see a site listed that gets a lot of traffic – Only to later discover that the majority of the traffic comes from third world countries.

It’s possible to make money from third world traffic, but it’s important that you know where your traffic is coming from before you buy.

Detecting Link Types

Many of the sites you’re considering buying will get most of their traffic from search engines. Link building is the most important component of search engine optimization – Unfortunately, a lot of people take shortcuts.

When you’re buying a website that gets traffic from search engines, it’s important to do at least a basic analysis of its link structure. This will give you a good idea of how links were built to your site and what the risk of losing your rankings is.

If you’re buying a website with a lot of spammy links, there is a real danger of being delisted. On the other hand, if you’re buying a website with strong, relevant backlinks, you can afford to pay a bit more as the rankings will likely improve in the future.

Two tools you can use to analyse the backlink structure of any given website are Open Site Explorer and Majestic SEO. These two tools both use their own web spider engines to build an index of the web on their own servers. They can then use this index to find backlinks back to a specific website.

Here’s an example of what an Open Site Explorer search result looks like:

Here’s an example of what a Majestic SEO search looks like:

Generally, Majestic SEO will give you more results than Open Site Explorer.

However, Open Site Explorer has a unique feature called domain or page authority. This figure is designed to mimic PageRank. It takes into a large number of factors and gives you a number on how authoritative a specific domain or page is.

This figure is logarithmic. That means it’s much easier to go from 30 to 40 than from 70 to 80. This number is usually a lot more useful than PageRank, because it’s constantly updated while Google only updates PageRank a few times a year.

Other backlink checking tools include Yahoo’s Site Explorer (very outdated,) Google’s backlink checker search (very few results) and Bing’s Webmaster Tools (jury is still out – the system is very new.)

Overall what you want to look for are legitimate backlinks to your website from other sites in related industries. Try to avoid sites that are linked to from many spammy, low quality, unrelated sites.

Is the Industry Trending Up or Down?

When you’re buying a site, you need to evaluate the industry it’s in. Avoid buying sites in dying industries or topics and invest in sites that are on the up and up.

One good way to demonstrate this is with the iPhone 3G. When the iPhone 3G was released, the very quickly got a lot of hype. People built sites around the iPhone 3G, and some buyers even paid as much as 30x the monthly income for those sites.

Of course, the iPhone 3G’s hype quickly died down over time to be replaced by the iPhone 4. You don’t want to be buying a 3G website based on the peak’s traffic, hoping it’ll continue to rise.

As you can see, the traffic in 2011 is about one fourth of where it was in 2008 when the iPhone 3G was unveiled.

Point “B” would be a great time to sell a website but a terrible time to buy.

Using Google Trends, you can easily identify whether an industry or topic is picking up or going down. If you’re in a dying industry or a short-term industry (as shown above,) you probably shouldn’t invest.

Predicting AdSense Income

If you’re buying a website that you plan on monetizing with Google AdSense, it can often help to try and predict how much you’ll earn by placing AdSense on a website.

First, take a look at the types of ads that might show up on your site after you put AdSense on it. You can do so using the AdSense Sandbox Tool.

Just type in the keyword or URL you want to check potential ads for.

To get an estimate of how much you might earn per click from Google AdSense, use the Google Traffic Estimator. To access this tool, you need a Google AdWords account.

Log into your Google AdWords interface, click “Tools” then “Traffic Estimator.”

Type in the keyword(s) you think people who’re targeting your site might type in. The resulting CPCs will give you a ballpark of whether your site will get high CPCs or low CPCs.

Keep in mind that these estimates are for Google AdWords, not Google AdSense. There isn’t a tool that can accurately tell you how much you can get per click from AdSense. Instead, using the AdWords Traffic Estimator, you can just get a sense for whether you’re in a high paying or low paying category.

If you really want specific numbers, you can use 30% of the Google AdWords bids as a rough guesstimate of your CPC. If the CPC is $1, expect to earn about $.30 cents per click on AdSense.

These are a few of the tools you might want to use to evaluate both the validity of the website’s traffic stats, as well as the earning potential of the website in the future.

Flippa

Flippa is the largest small to mid price range website marketplace on the internet. If you’re selling or buying a website that’s worth between $100 and $50,000, chances are Flippa is a good place to do it.

If you’re looking above the $50,000 price range, you should probably talk to a business broker who specializes in online websites. For most flippers however, there is plenty of fish in the sea on Flippa.

Let’s take a look at Flippa from both the buyer’s side and the seller’s side.

Buying on Flippa

The first step to buying a website on Flippa is finding your ideal auction. There are a number of pre-sorted ways you can browse Flippa auctions that you can easily access on the left hand side.

You can also click on “Advanced” to sort your search results by a number of more sophisticated parameters.

Each listing in the search results will have a number of important things displayed.

These are some of the most important things you can see at a glance in a search result:

• The date the site was established

• The amount of visits per month

• The site’s PageRank

• The revenue the site generates

• The seller’s positive rating percentage

• How much money the seller has transacted on Flippa

• The time left in the auction

• The number of bids

• The number of comments

• The price and BIN price

Browse through the various listings and open up the ones that meet the criteria you’re looking for.

When you open up a site profile, you’ll be presented with the basic stats along the top.

You’ll also be able to see claimed traffic and claimed revenue stats on the right.

The most important thing to pay attention to is the auction’s attachments. Here is where you’ll find proof of traffic, revenue and other details.

As a rule of thumb, it’s much, much safer to only buy from sites that have verified Google Analytics data.

Make sure that for whatever auction you’re considering, you read thoroughly read through the entire description, all the comments and browse through the site to see what you’re actually getting.

Selling on Flippa

Flippa is one of the best ways to sell a small to mid sized website. You have literally a horde of qualified buyers, all vying to give you the best price for your website. Instead of having to decide yourself how much you think your website will sell for, you can simply let the marketplace and the auction system decide how much your website is truly worth.

You start the selling process by going to https://flippa.com/sell and typing in your site URL.

Flippa will present you with a list of required steps and recommended steps for selling your website.

Simply click on each of these steps to setup your site auction. For example, if you click “Site Age,” the age box will popup. Fill out the date your site was created and the information will be added to your auction.

Rinse and repeat for every step.

Adding verified Google Analytics data is an optional step, but is highly critical to a successful sale.

Start by clicking on the “Add Verified Google Analytics Stats”

Get the code provided by Flippa.

Then follow the on-screen instructions to have Google email a copy of the analytics to Flippa.

Once you’ve filled out all the required information and launched your auction, all you need to do is sit back and wait. If you get questions from your potential buyers, make sure to answer them in a timely and efficient manner.

That’s how to use Flippa to buy and sell websites. If you’re looking for a massive marketplace to both buy and sell websites, there’s no better place than Flippa.

DigitalPoint

DigitalPoint is one of the largest online marketplaces for buying and selling websites online. It’s kind of a wild wild west of online marketplaces: You’ll find a very wide range of websites for sale, from total junk to hidden gems.

The trick to making money on DigitalPoint is to be able to find the bargain deals, as well as get top dollar for your own websites.

Here’s how to use DigitalPoint. The main section you want to be in is the Buy Sell Trade (Sites) section at: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=52

Buying on DigitalPoint

Start by going all the way down to the bottom and clicking “Prefix.” Click “WTS,” which stands for “Want to Sell.” This will sort all the threads so you’re only seeing listings of websites for sale.

You’ll then be presented with page after page of websites for sale. This is an example of what the forum might look like:

To learn more about any specific site, just click the thread title.

Once you’re in a specific listing, you’ll be presented with the site’s description. Sometimes you’ll have a lot of information, including proof of traffic and earnings data, while at other times listings will have scarcely any information at all.

To make a bid for the site, type the amount you’re willing to pay in the Bid Amount. You can also setup an auto-bid at the same time.

If you’d rather just snatch up the website then and there, you can use the “Buy it Now” feature right under the “Sale Data” segment.

Those are the basic mechanics of buying a site on DigitalPoint. The challenge in DigitalPoint is that you have to go through many, many listings to find a good deal. That said, there are definitely good deals to be found at bargain prices.

Selling on DigitalPoint

To sell on DigitalPoint, click the “Post New Thread” button.

Select “WTS” for the prefix and choose an attention catching title.

Select when you want the sale to end. You can also choose whether you want buyers to pay instantly after the sale.

Setup the pricing for your auction. Set your starting bid, reserve price, bid increments and BIN price.

Put in a few additional details about your site, such as the unique visitors, page views, revenue and whether or not the content is unique.

Answer a few basic technical questions, such as where your domain is registered, your Alexa ranking and the number of backlinks you have.

Finally and most importantly give a detailed description of your website. Make a strong case for why your site is a good business.

Attach as much proof of traffic and revenues as you possibly can.

That’s how to use DigitalPoint to buy and sell websites. DigitalPoint is not as streamlined as Flippa, but there are definitely diamonds to be found in the rough.

Enjoy!

Continue reading: Website Flipping – How to Buy and Sell Websites

This post looks at four tools to help you manage your online reputation.

Me On the Web

Me On the Web is Google’s way of helping people manage their online brands. Using Me On the Web, you can create a profile to put your best foot forward, setup alerts to help you figure out when people are talking about you and attempt to remove negative items related to your brand.

Here’s how to use Me On the Web.

Step 1: Accessing Me On the Web

You can access Me On the Web in your Google dashboard.

Step 2: Update Your Profile

Google recommends keeping a profile updated so people who’re searching for you will be able to find precisely the information you want them to find.

To change your profile, click “Edit profile” in your dashboard.

Then just click an area to edit your profile.

Step 3: Setting Up Alerts

One of the main features of Me On the Web is the ability to alert you when something changes with the results that come up when you search your name.

Click “Set Up Search Alerts for Your Data” under “Me On the Web” in your Google Dashboard to set these up.

A new screen will pop up where you can choose what you want to be alerted for. Typically Google will alert you whenever the results for your name or email address change.

If you want to setup custom alerts, for example to if you wanted Google to alert you whenever your business name was mentioned, just click “Add Alert.” You can add as many custom alerts as you want.

Step 4: Removing Content from Google

Let’s say that you used Google’s Me On the Web features and found a negative piece of content about you on the web. How can you remove it?

The first step is to get the webmaster to remove that piece of content. Google won’t do it for you. Google’s company policy is that they simply will not change search results to cater to individual people. They even refused their own CEO, Eric Schmidt’s request to do so when something negative about him came up.

To get an item removed, you need to first contact that website’s owner to get them to change it. After they’ve made the change, the negative result will still show up in Google for some time until they update their index.

If you’ve removed a negative item and need Google’s index to reflect that immediately, you can go through Google’s removal procedures to have that item taken out of the index. Here’s how.

Start by going to the removal request page.

Click “New Removal Request.”

Enter the URL you want removed.

Finally, select the reason you want it removed and hit the Request button.

These are the three main ways Me On the Web helps you manage your identity. It helps inform you when you’re mentioned online with Google Alerts, it helps you choose what information is displayed to the public with Google Profile and Google gives you an avenue to expedite the removal of negative items with their Google Remove interface.

Majestic SEO

One of the most important things to track when it comes to reputation management is the people who link to you. When people are talking about you, endorsing you, criticizing you or just mentioning you, generally you want to know.

In the past, search engine backlink checking services were provided primarily by the search engines themselves. Yahoo had a free service called Yahoo Site Explorer that told you who linked to a domain. Google can also show you backlinks using their link search feature.

Unfortunately, Yahoo Site Explorer has long since stopped being updated. Google’s service deliberately hides data to prevent people from figuring out their search algorithm. In short, figuring out who’s linking to you has become a lot more difficult.

Fortunately, there are other services that can help. Majestic SEO is one of the top backlink search engines in the field. They’ve actually created their own web “spider” much like Google and have indexed much of the web all on their own servers. Using their own search engine index, they’ll be able to tell you exactly who’s linking to you.

Majestic SEO provides the bare essential services for free. For more comprehensive results, you need to sign up for a payment plan.

Here’s how to use Majestic SEO.

Step 1: Register

In order to use most of Majestic SEO’s features, you need to register. Creating an account takes a couple minutes and there’s no charge.

Step 2: Search

Type in the domain you want to search. If you’re researching your own domain, just type your own domain in.

Step 3: Select the Index

Choose whether you want to just use the freshest data, or all the historical data combined. The “Use Fresh Index” option uses data pulled from the last 30 days.

Step 4: Link Breakdown Overview

When you type in your domain, the first thing you’ll see is a breakdown of all the links coming to your site.

Majestic SEO will tell you how many total backlinks you have, how many come from different domains, how many come from images, how many come from nofollows, how many are educational or governmental and more.

Step 5: See When Links Were Generated

Were there times when you suddenly got popular? Are you an active discussion on the web now, or has talk faded off?

Majestic SEO can graph out exactly when various links were indexed, giving you a rough picture of when your site was being talked about.

Step 6: Top Backlinks

Click the “Top Backlinks” tab along the top to see specific backlinks to your site.

The top backlinks report looks like this.

Each backlink is accompanied by the source, the target URL and the anchor text.

Step 7: Linking Root Domains

Many people believe that the number of linking root domains is more important than the number of backlinks. In other words, it’s better to have one link from 50 different websites than 100 links from just one website.

Click “Referring Domains” to access the linking root domain results.

You can sort the linking root domains by Alexa rank, country, number of backlinks and more.

Step 8: Top Pages

You can view the top pages on your website to see exactly how many people are linking to those pages.

Step 9: Exporting a Report

If you own the website you’re researching, you can export a report on your own website for free. To export reports on your competitors requires a paid subscription.

These are the most important features Majestic SEO has to offer. Using Majestic SEO you can see exactly who’s linking to you, identify different types of backlinks, see what they said when they linked to you and more.

Omgili

One of the most difficult places to manage your reputation is in internet forums. Sure, other services can help you scan news sources for mentions or changes in your Google results – But few services can accurately help you figure out what people are saying about you on internet forums.

Yet that’s where many communities are formed. It’s where a lot of people go to get advice and is often where people get their impressions of brands from.

Omgili makes it easy for you to figure out exactly what people are saying about you. You can easily identify the forum and the thread where you’re being talked about and can even actively participate if you choose.

Step 1: Type in Your Brand

Start by typing in your brand’s name. If you’re researching yourself, you can type in your own name instead.

Step 2: Using the Advanced Search

If you’re not getting the results you want right off the bat, you can use the advanced search to narrow it down. Just click the “Advanced Search” button under the normal search bar.

You’ll be given a wide number of different ways you can configure your search.

Step 3: Narrow by Activity

Once you get your results, you can narrow them down by time frame, minimum number of replies and minimum number of discussing users. Just drag the sliders to change these numbers.

Step 4: Table of Contents

Once you’ve performed your search and have refined your search, you’ll be presented with the table of contents. You can click on any of these results to learn more.

You can also scroll down to learn more about each entry.

Step 5: Discussion Results

Omgili will pull up all the different results from various internet forums. This is what one result might look like:

Each result will give you a snippet of the discussion. To read more of the discussion, just click the link to the full thread. You can also click one button to start a discussion on Facebook with your friends.

Under each result will be a sampling of the various answers other people have posted in the discussion thread. Again, you can click the “read full thread” link to read all the answers.

Step 6: More Searches

Once you’ve browsed your search results, if you want to learn more still, you can click one of the many “related searches” to see what else people are talking about.

You can also narrow your searches down to only posts with images.

Omgili is a powerful tool for figuring out what exactly people are saying about you on discussion forums all over the internet. You can use a very powerful search platform to create highly specific searches, narrow the results down by their level of activity and recency, preview them and find the original thread all within a few seconds.

Naymz

Naymz is an online reputation management software that also doubles as a social network. Though the social network is small, their reputation management tools can be extremely useful for tracking changes in how you’re perceived online.

Here’s how to use Naymz.

Step 1: Select Login Method

There are four ways you can login to Naymz: Through LinkedIn, through Facebook, through Twitter and through just a plain old signup.

Start by selecting your login method.

Give Naymz approval to access your account(s).

Step 2: Import Data

For Naymz to properly monitor your online reputation, you need to import your profile data.

Make sure you uncheck “Post an invitation as your status” if you don’t want Naymz to make a status post.

Step 3: Edit Your Profile

To setup and edit your Naymz profile, click “edit” under “profile” in the left sidebar.

Step 4: Using Naymz as a Social Network

In addition to using Naymz as a reputation management tool, you can also use it as a social networking tool.

To use Naymz’s social networking features, use the “Exchange” and “Network” tabs. Here you’ll be able to post to your feed, view your feed, edit your contacts and more.

Step 5: Visitor Tracking

Want to know who has Googled you? Want to know who’s viewed your profile? Naymz can give you all this and more.

Click “Visitor Tracking” under “Tools” to access this data.

You can also setup Naymz so that it tells you whenever someone accesses your profile. When they do, you’ll get an email like this.

Step 6: Reputation Intercept

Reputation intercept is one of the most useful features of Naymz. What it does it monitor your Google results for your brand (E.g. your name) and email you whenever something changes.

You can also view your search results all in one easy to access location.

Step 7: Personal Branding / Advertising

Want to improve your brand even more? You can do so with Naymz’s simple advertising interface.

All you need to do is write your ad and Naymz will place an advertisement in Google for you. To access this page, click “Personal Branding.”

From there, all you need to do is fill out what you want your ad to look like and Naymz will do the rest.

Step 8: Other Tracking Features

There are three other features of Naymz that you can take advantage of. They really only apply if you’re using Naymz as a social network.

The first is RepScore, which increases as you use Naymz more and fill out a more complete profile. The network profile activity and network web activity panels allow you to see what your network is up to on Naymz.

These are the most important features of Naymz. Using Naymz, you can track your online reputation and even have Naymz send you alerts when something changes. You can create a profile or an advertisement and have Naymz email you when someone looks you up. You can also use Naymz as a social network.

Enjoy!

Continue reading: Online Reputation Management