Website Design & Optimization Service

Is your business listed on Google Local?  What about when people search for you on Yahoo or Bing?  Get your business listed for FREE by visiting getlisted.org.. it’s easy and free.

Did you know instead of using wordpress as a blog on a subdirectory of your site you can use it to power the entire thing?  You can literally use wordpress as a content management system just like you would joomla or anything else.  Once you realize how much search engines love blogs you’ll definetely want to consider using wordpress on your site.  Maybe you’re already using wordpress but are looking for a new real estate wordpress theme to give it a boost in traffic or even looks.

If you’ve been using wordpress or blogging regularly you’ve no doubt felt the positive affects of traffic to your site.  If you are then congrats!  You know something that a lot of other agents don’t know.  And you’re probably doing better because of it.  If you don’t know how blogging with wordpress, or even why powering your site with wordpress can boost your traffic then please contact me.  I can tell you all the reasons why using wordpress is a good thing for your business.

Confirmed opt-in as defined by SpamHaus, who is one of the most respected anti spam organizations in the world:

Known as “COI” in the legitimate bulk email industry, also known as “Confirmed Opt-in”, “Verified Opt-in” or sometimes “Double Opt-in”.With Closed-Loop Opt-in the Recipient has verifiably confirmed permission for the address to be included on the specific mailing list, by confirming (responding to) the list subscription request verification. This is the standard practice for all responsible Internet mailing lists, it ensures users are properly subscribed, from a working address, and with the address owner’s consent.

In the event of “spam” accusation:

The Bulk Email Sender is fully and legally protected because the reply to the Subscription Confirmation Request received back from the recipient proves that the recipient did in fact opt-in and grant verifiable consent for the mailings.

Source:Spamhaus Website

Numerous myths have circulated regarding confirmed opt-in and its effects. There are many misconceptions out there, and we’d like to help clear those up. (more…)

This info is provided by Aweber, the email marketing service I use.

Think you know the best day and time to send your email newsletter?

Ever wonder if your fellow email marketers are all sending at the same time you do?

Convinced your open rate is too low (or amazingly high)?

Some recent statistics pulled from all AWeber users may help you answer these questions:

What Kind of Open Rates Are People Getting?

If you’re sending HTML emails, you probably use your open rate to help gauge your success.

Even though it’s not a perfect measure of whether people are actually opening and reading your emails, it’s useful as a relative measure:

If it goes up over a short period of time, more people are probably reading

If it falls over a short period of time, it’s almost certain fewer people are reading.

Plus, all other things being equal, it can give you some motivation (if your open rates are lower than other senders’) or satisfaction (if your rates are higher).

So, here goes…

When Is/Was The Best Day To Send?

You’ll often hear (at least, I often hear) that Tuesday is the optimal day to send, because on Monday people are catching up from the weekend, and that on Tuesday morning you’ll have their undivided attention before they jump into their work for the upcoming week.

Do the numbers back up that theory? Let’s see.

The breakdown of open rates by day of the week:

Last month, Tuesday was actually the second-worst day to send, at least if you’re measuring by open rates.

(While we’re breaking assumptions, I should point out this, too: the hour of the day that got the best open rate was not 8-9AM, or 9-10AM, but in fact 2-3PM Eastern Time — email newsletters sent during that hour last month enjoyed a 19.1% open rate.)

Does This Mean I Should Switch My Campaigns To Thursdays?

In a word: No.

In both March and February, Thursday newsletters got the 3rd-worst opens vs. the rest of the week.

I hesitated a little to publish these stats, because I’m concerned that people might flock to sending their newsletters at the day or time that happened to get the best results lately.

Please, don’t drastically change your sending times/days just because you see that the average last month, or any month, happened to be higher on a different day or time.

Yes, you might eventually be able to shift your sending schedule, or split test some broadcasts, but if you up and move everything, you may throw off subscribers who are used to hearing from you at the usual time.

“It’s So Busy, Nobody Goes There Anymore”

To get at the other reason for not shifting your sending based on these stats, let’s paraphrase Yogi Berra (see above).

If everyone switches their sending schedule to send on say, Thursday, then recipients will start getting a ton of email that day, and start paying less attention to each individual email.

One possible reason for Thursday’s success last month may be that it wasn’t as popular as say, Tuesday or Wednesday for sending email:

Those higher-volume days mean more emails in readers’ inboxes, which might contribute to reduced open rates. Following that reasoning, some people may look at the low weekend volume (more email newsletters were sent on Tuesdays than on Saturdays and Sundays combined) and see an opportunity to get their audiences’ undivided attention.

My main point in showing these is to point out that our assumptions about what works are often quite wrong, and that you ultimately have to test for yourself to see what best suits your audience.

Some Inspiration… And Some Help

Are you getting better open rates than this?

If so, GREAT! Give yourself a pat on the back…

…but don’t get complacent. Open rates aren’t the be-all, end-all of email metrics. They don’t guarantee that people are reading your emails, only that they have images turned on and that they probably saw your email for at least a moment.

Plus, there’s always room for improvement, right?

Some ideas that can help you raise your open rates:

Ask people to add you to their address books. Some email programs will display images from senders who are in the recipient’s contact list.

If you are putting pictures in your emails, use the ALT text for those images to pique readers’ interest in what the picture is, so that they enable images. Or, just directly ask readers to turn on images!

Add a picture of yourself to your emails, near/next to your signature. People like seeing your smiling face, and if they see it in one of your emails, they may be more likely to turn on images to see it again later.

Ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to subscriber inboxes is an increasingly difficult battle in the age of spam filtering. Open and click thru response rates can be dramatically affected by as much as 20-30% due to incorrect spam filter classification.

Permission

Confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list is the number one step in the battle for deliverability. You should be using a process called confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request information. Before adding the person to your list they must click that unique link verifying that they are indeed the same person that owns the email address and requested to subscribe.

Subscriber Addresses

When requesting website visitors to opt-in ask for their “real” or “primary” email address instead of a free email address like Yahoo or Hotmail. Free emails tend to be throw away accounts and typically have a shorter lifetime than a primary ISP address. (more…)

I highly recommend HostGator as your web hosting provider. I run servers in the same datacenter as theirs and know firsthand that the quality is as high as it gets.

Their shared hosting plans are perfect for your new site and start at $6.95/mo. I personally recommend their “Hatchling” or “Baby” plans. These are both large enough to host your site and offer all the features you’ll probably ever need.

HostGator offers 24/7/365 phone support, 99.9% uptime, and have a 30 day money back guarantee. Your site will be on a top of the line Dual Xeon server that provides INSTANT backups of your site. Their control panel is one of the best in the industry, and has over 39 scripts that can be installed with a click of the mouse.

HostGator offers free site transfers and is one of the main reasons why I recommend them. If you don’t want to lose your site stats then it is crucial to choose them. During site transfer they can transfer all stats, email addresses etc.

The majority of newsletter subscribers opt to have their newsletter formatted in HTML so it’s good to send attractive emails filled with nice graphics and lots of pertinent info. Formatting newsletters in HTML doesn’t have to be a pain. If you are planning on offering a newsletter we recommend that you use a third party company to handle all of your email campaigns.

Aweber

Aweber Communications develops and manages online opt-in email newsletters, follow-up automation, and email deliverability services for small business customers around the world. You can access their website 24/7 to manage and send your newsletters to recipients who have specifically opted in on your website. Use can use their integrated Web Form Generator, with video tutorials, to create unblockable pop-ups or standard forms that are easily installed on your website without programming experience.

Configure unlimited follow up and newsletter messages with name personalization, click thru and open rate tracking, attachments, RSS, and split testing at no additional cost. Messages can include HTML using our 51+ pre-designed templates, or create your own with the integrated editor and images or plain text.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is the leading provider of web-based email marketing software for small to mid-sized businesses and organizations. With their easy-to-use wizard, over 100 eye-catching email templates, list management features, email tracking and reporting, and high deliverability, Constant Contact makes it easy for you to communicate with your customers and visitors – and keep them coming back!

TemplateZone

TemplateZone offers professional email templates so you can easily choose from hundreds of html email templates to customize and send out directly from your computer.

Need help with business and sales letters?

WriteExpress offers a suite of sales and business letter templates you can easily use if you are at a loss for words when writing an email sales letter. They offer 3,001 award-winning business, sales and personal letters, hundreds of additional sales and fundraising letters, plus free bonuses.

Newsletter Formatting Resources

• Aweber – Control all of your newsletter campaigns with Aweber. Also receive free HTML newsletter templates. Best Value
• Constant Contact – Do it yourself email marketing – customizable templates – reporting

Positioning is about creating unique products or services that stand out from the crowd. To win a customers business is to position your product or service in a way that it grabs them and makes them want to buy, even if they know another business offers the same thing.

Be Unique!

Being unique takes some creativity. Some ways you can help your product stand out are:

Pricing:

This is usually the first thing people think of when they want to offer an advantage. You can use price to create a difference. For instance you could undercut your competitors and offer the cheapest product of its kind in the market. Alternately, you can create an upmarket product and sell at a premium price. Check out this article on Pricing your product for more info.

Quality:

Quality is another way to distinguish what you sell from all the rest. You can give your customers assurance that your product is the best by listing features, testimonials, product comparisons, celebrity endorsements, warranties, refund policies etc. If you claim a certain quality standard then be willing to back that up. Packaging is another way you can show that your product is top notch.

Service:

Service is not just for service providers, but for products as well. Do you offer customer service and support? Often you need to help the customer through the buying process. And what about after-sales support? Training? People want great service and when they find a company who has great service they are more willing to return and refer their friends.

Distribution:

How do customers obtain your product or service? Do you offer on-site service or instantly downloadable digital goods? Or do customers have to come to you? The easier your product is to distribute the more likely customers will be willing to buy. If you sell digital goods offer instant delivery via download to give your customers immediate satisfaction.

Packaging:

Packaging makes a strong statement. Appropriate design is the key issue here – it must deliver the message you intend. A cruise down a supermarket aisle will illustrate this. You can tell the biscuit section at a glance because there is consistency in how biscuits are packaged. A closer inspection, however, reveals a myriad of different colours and configurations. The trick is to be “the same but different!” You could try to pack your cookies in a coffee jar, but will that be too radical for the average biscuit-buyer to accept?

Likewise those offering their services must “package” themselves: this can come down to how your office is decorated, what uniforms your staff wear, even how your business stationery looks. All must reflect the unique image you are trying to portray.

Above all, make sure all the information you need to convey is contained in your packaging: ingredients, warnings, instructions, contact details, special promotions etc. etc. etc.

Identify your Strengths

Positioning is your competitive strategy. What’s the one thing you do best? What’s unique about your product or service? Identify your strongest strength and use it to position your product.

Ultimately, you want to use positioning to make sure it is your product or service – not your competitor’s – that springs to mind when a customer wants/needs something.

Being first in mind equals ownership. And market ownership allows you to be a big fish in a small pond. When you’re a big fish, you can always increase the size of the pond… or create even more ponds.

Market Research Resources

• About.com’s 4 part article on Market Research
• Dobney.com’s Basics of Market Research
• Pricing Your Product

One of the most important things to a businesses success is a successful marketing campaign. It is no different for online businesses. Online marketing is sometimes overlooked or not paid enough attention to. Below is some information we have put together to make sure you have a marketing plan in place to see to it that your business grows and prospers.

Think about marketing as “inbound” and “outbound” marketing.

Inbound marketing includes researching to find out:

1. What specific groups of potential customers (markets) might have which specific needs
2. How those needs might be met for each group (or target market), which suggests how your product might be designed to meet the need
3. How each of the target markets might choose to access the product, etc. (”packaging”)
4. How much customers might be willing to pay and how (pricing analysis)
5. Who your competitors are (competitor analysis)
6. How to design and describe the product so that customers buy from your organization, rather than from your competitors (its unique value proposition)
7. How the product should be identified – its personality – to be most identifiable (naming and branding)

Outbound marketing includes:

1. Advertising and promotions (focused on the product)
2. Sales
3. Public and media relations (focused on your organization)
4. Customer service
5. Customer satisfaction

Too often, people jump right to the outbound marketing. As a result, they often end up trying to push products onto people who really don’t want them. Effective inbound marketing research often results in much more effective outbound marketing and sales.

Gaining Traffic

Traffic is the most important thing for any website. It’s your visitors that generate revenue by clicking on your adsense ads, by following your affiliate links to make a purchase or purchasing products from your website. It is very important to build up traffic to your site if you want it to generate any amount of money.

There are a lot of services around that web that guarantee increased traffic. I however steer clear of any paid services that claim to generate traffic because with a little work you can generate unlimited amounts of traffic yourself for free. I’m talking about what is known as SEO (search engine optimization) or what I like to call website publicity. Generating free organic traffic to your site doesn’t cost money, it just takes time and effort.

I’m not going to go into lengthy details on SEO. I’m just going to give you quick tips on what you can do to start generating traffic to your site in your spare time. Of course the more effort you put into it the more traffic you can generate. Just remember more traffic equals more revenue. (more…)