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The Easiest Way To Make a Squeeze Page

written by John Chow on May 17, 2013

For my current promotion of the Home Business Summit, I’m using a great service call LeadPages to generate all the sales and landing pages. This is by far the easiest way to create a squeeze page, landing page, sales page, email capture page, etc. With Lead Pages, you can have a page up and running and less than five minutes. It really is that simple to use.

LeadPages is a SAAS (Software As A Service) product. They can host the pages for you, or you can publish them on your own site. LeadPages integrates fully with WordPress. What I’ve been doing is having LeadPages host the landing page and then sending traffic to it via a masked redirect.

The above email capture page for the Home Business Summit was created in about three minutes. The LeadPages interface makes it super easy to add custom titles, headlines, copy, and video. The system integrates with all major email marketing providers, like Aweber. LeadPages has a ton of professional looking templates to choose from. From a simple squeeze page to a long sales page, LeadPages has a template for it.

With LeadPages, I’ve been able to create new landing pages pretty much on the fly. This has allowed me to test and tweak multiple landing pages to find the high converting one. The video below shows how easy LeadPages is to use.

Integrating Facebook with LeadPages

Want to put a landing page inside your Facebook fan page? LeadPages can do that too!

LeadPages cost $37 per month, and it’s worth every penny. The hot deal is the Pro plan at $197 a year. That saves you over 50% off the monthly price, and gives you access to a really good landing page course. If you wish to test out LeadPages, they offer a 30 day money back guarantee.

For serious Internet marketers, LeadPages is a must have tool.

Lead Pages – The Easiest Way To Make a High Converting Landing Page

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OC Metro 40 Under 40 Awards Reception

written by John Chow on May 17, 2013

Last night the movers and shakers of Orange County came out to honor the recipients of the 2013 OC Metro 40 Under 40 Awards. As you can guess by the name, this award is given to 40 people who are under the age of 40.

The event was held at Newport Lexus in Newport Beach, California. This has got to be the biggest Lexus dealership in the world. The place is massive. It’s just down the road from the biggest Mercedes-Benz dealership in the world (where I picked up my SL550).

Like most Newport Beach events, the 40 Under 40 is very upscale, and filled with beautiful people. Unlike the last black tie Newport event, where I showed up wearing a T-shirt, I put on a suit and pink tie (pink is the new black) to fit right in with the 40 under 40 crowd.

Congrats to all the winners of the 40 Under 40 Awards. Let’s go change the world. Or take it over in my case.

John Chow 40 Under 40

OC Metro 40 Under 40

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Why Technical Know-How Is Now Mandatory in Online Marketing

written by Anna Johansson on May 16, 2013

What’s your technical IQ when it comes to e-Commerce marketing? It had better be high, or you’re unlikely to achieve success, or at least the kind of success you probably dream of. These days, the field of e-Commerce technology is developing so rapidly that you can’t really sell your products effectively without constant re-education.

It’s a challenge even to keep up with the names and acronyms of all the newly evolving phenomena, and Googling a list of acronyms may not help unless the one you find has been posted within the past year, or more likely within the past few months.

The field of e-Commerce technology is changing so rapidly that you must update constantly.

How does SEO fit into Online Marketing?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) used to be enough to drive website traffic, but now the wide range of techniques under the umbrella of online marketing is required, including Analytics (monitoring the hits you get, and also the “click throughs,” and the “conversions” or sales), social media, and even proper server hosting.

Keywords must be not only placed in your meta tags, but must also populate your site strategically for the search engines to take notice of your site. Saturation (the number of pages at your site that are cataloged by a search engine) and backlinks are crucial for driving traffic. Fortunately, a host of SEM agencies can take care of these complicated details for you.

How is this affecting marketing strategies? First, it is narrowing the range of e-Commerce entrepreneurs. Individuals without the technical skill or knowledge to take advantage of commercial opportunities on the web are simply being left out when it come to the rewards of those opportunities. Along with that comes the growth of the burgeoning industry of SEM agencies.

A few decades ago, the Internet seemed a wonderland where everyone could expand personal opportunities almost without limit. Now limitations have appeared and they are technical in nature. Learn or die has become the normative rule in e-Commerce.

Fortunately, a host of learning programs have appeared, of course. This is e-Commerce, after all, so a demand results in someone showing up to supply it. Adam Smith was right, even in a cyber world context. Are you ready to take advantage of the most up to date changes in the world of web marketing? Well, if not, it’s easy enough to change that!

Understanding The Technical Intricacies of Social Media

Of course, the biggest change in the past few years has been the growth in importance of social media marketing as a tool for selling online and driving website traffic, while also building your brand. Most major sellers have networking sites, and hire professionals to spend time directing and managing that side of their marketing efforts.

Facebook is the largest, so of course at this stage it has the highest volume of users. But it does not offer live help. In fact, it’s rather difficult to get answers from Facebook. One has to sift through page after page of “Knowledge bases,” or wait an eternity for a submitted question to be answered. You may never get an answer.

Some of the other sites may have live help of a chat room or phone variety, but those sites are more likely to charge a fee for your site (as opposed to Facebook, where it’s free), since it’s expensive to staff a help desk in real time, or even an e-mail response capability. Furthermore, those other sites don’t have the gargantuan customer base that Facebook possesses. So most folks go with Facebook, despite the frustrations of using it.

Twitter is becoming an essential tool for the e-Commerce marketer, and it’s easier to use. The site is exceptionally user friendly, and all you really need to know is how to make a tiny URL, and you should also learn how to distill your message to 140 characters. A challenge, but hey, brevity is the soul of wit, so maybe it’s worth it.

Other sites abound, Pinterest, for instance, and with its more business-oriented clientele, LinkedIn. Sometimes it seems that a new social networking site appears every month or so. But these sites are technically easy. They don’t pose the challenges so widespread on the technological side of the e-Commerce field generally.

The appearance of the Smart Phone several years ago has had a tremendous impact on e-Commerce. At this point, a significant proportion of online customers are accessing e-Commerce sites not on their computers, but through mobile devices. This makes a big difference, and a marketer who is not up to date on smart phone technology stands at a great disadvantage.

The profusion of “apps” in recent years has added to the complexity of the field. It is possible to enhance your sales potential with the introduction of an app, but it involves some savvy about the world of apps, or else some financial outlay to hire experts on the matter.

Other essentials include online transaction processing and electronic funds transfer, both now essentials for e-Commerce success.

Another obvious process is internationalization. In a word, China. The Chinese have gotten into the act during the past decade or so, perhaps belatedly, but with genuine force. Chinese marketers are not to be ignored in the equations of the future, not just in terms of corporate entities, but in terms of workers willing to free lance for low remuneration levels.

The same is true of India, which is flooding the markets for technological services with cheap labor. It is now essential, not just to understand technologies, but to understand the technological workforce, in all of its current changes.

Technology is a two-edged sword. It offers tremendous benefits, but only for those with the expertise to understand and employ those benefits. Technology today, more than ever before, is changing rapidly, at a pace that is daunting even for the most energetic of entrepreneurs. Are you up to the task? If you are, the rewards can be superlative!

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How To Set A Deadline In An Email Auto Responder

written by John Chow on May 15, 2013

Most Internet marketers know that putting a deadline on an affiliate offer increases the conversion rate. When people know that an offer is about to expire, they take action instead of putting it in the back burner.

A Hard Date Is Better Than “Expiring Soon”

When using an auto responder sales funnel, most marketers use the “count down” method. Let’s say the sales funnel is seven days long. The first email would say the offers expires in seven days. The next day’s email will say the offer expires in six days, and so on. It doesn’t matter when a person sign up to the list. They will think the offer will expire in x number of days.

The downside of this method is most can tell it’s an automated setup, and the call to the action is not very strong. A count down is not as effective as stating a hard date. “This offer expires at midnight May 22″ is a lot more effective than “this offers expires in 7 days”. What most email marketers don’t know is there is a way to put a hard date inside an auto responder that auto updates with each new day. Here’s how.

The Aweber {!date} Variable

If your auto responder sales funnel is powered by Aweber, then you can take advantage of the {!date} Variable feature to auto insert a hard date into your emails. So, instead of saying “this offer expires in 7 days” you can say “this offer expires {!date long+7}” and Aweber will auto insert the date seven days from now. You have multiple options for displaying the date (see above).

Taking our example of a 7-day sales funnel, the first email would have an expire date of {!date long+7}, and the next day’s email will have an expire date of {!date long+6}, then {!date long+5}, until it hits {!date long+0}. This way, it doesn’t matter when subscribers sign up to the list. The will get all get a custom hard deadline date that is way more effective than “expiring in x days.”

Pretty cool, right? You can become a member of IM John Chow to find out more email marketing tricks like the above. The {!date} trick is just scratching the surface.

Try Aweber for Only $1.00

My mailing list is the number one reason the blog makes the income that it does. Aweber is my recommend email service provider. Their feature set is beyond anything else in the industry and they’re the best at getting pass the spam filters.

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 your blog. 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.

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3 Ways to Do SEO and Improve Your Organic Traffic

written by Michael Chibuzor on May 14, 2013

SEO might sound scary to many bloggers whose sites were penalized by Google Panda or other updates.

But does it mean that SEO is dead?

The debate has been going on; a set of website owners said that they were fed up with search engine optimization and would rather use social media to reach their audience. Hmm!

While the other set of site owners still believe that organic traffic is superior to social and hands-free once you set it up. And to you, what’s your take on this? Let me know on the comment box.

It doesn’t matter what your opinion is at this point. This post is going to show you how thinking out of the box could generate more passive traffic to you.

Search engine traffic is passive

The success of a website lies in its ability to generate passive traffic, income, community and survive the test of time. SE traffic is passive when it’s properly done, but social media requires continuous tweaking.

If all you do is optimize for active traffic like tweeting your latest posts, the chances of your blog becoming a go-to resource in its niche are small.

So don’t be tired of doing SEO.

It’s still alive and if you follow the three tips below, you’ll not only attract free targeted traffic, but you’ll also boost your search rankings in the process – without employing any complicated SEO techniques. So, without much ado, let’s get started…

1. Define your specialty

Have you defined your specialty yet?

The problem many bloggers have with SEO is their inability to target a specific niche.

Of course, you could still build a profitable blog been a jack-of-all trade but it’s going to take a lot of time – which you don’t have.

The simple formula to position your web pages higher in Google homepage is to narrow your niche.

Then start dominating the niche, by adding rich, valuable and helpful content. When I ask bloggers what they do online, and the responses I get are usually similar. “I’m a blogger!” One of them answered.

Yes you’re a blogger because you update regularly and you also use WordPress CMS, but that’s too generic of a title.

You can’t drive organic traffic by being a blogger, but when you clearly define your role – that’s where the right optimization can take place.

If you’re a business coach, produce and publish more content in that field and begin to build a following. If you know how to create YouTube videos so well, use it as your edge – and beat the stiff competition.

2. Evoke curiosity with titles

Did you know that the title is the most important element in any piece of content? It doesn’t matter whether it’s a video on YouTube or podcast on iTunes.

Learn how to create titles that persuades. Let it inspire and spontaneously cause an ideal customer to click just once. That’s all you need to establish a connection.

I’ve come to understand that Google rewards catchy headlines, not because Google spider has eyes to see or intellect to detect your creativity, but because people actually loved and clicked on such titles.

Google spider is like the toddler that needs to be spoon-fed and guided – in other words, whatever people do with your title would determine what Google would make of it.

In this post-panda age, you don’t need hundreds of links to outrank other competing web pages. You only need powerful and valuable titles that evoke curiosity.

Don’t deceive people with your titles, but don’t write generic titles ideas either. Learn from titles that went viral and see what they had in common.

3. Build a social influence

To get fresh visitors from Google, you need a social influence. You can’t hide under your shell and expect a miracle to happen.

Building a social influence has got nothing to do with Facebook page and wasting time there. Also, it’s got nothing to do with spending 4 hours on twitter – sharing gossips about Lady Gaga.

On the other hand, being social begins with your uniqueness. How you treat others and what inspires you to lend a helping hand to your target audience & readers.

Yes, facebook, linkedin, twitter and all those social media networks are great platforms to put your social lifestyle to work, but it begins with your blog.

Who says a blog is not a social network? Actually, you could use your blog to build a strong community online, and even take it offline like Darren Rowse has been doing.

When you’re a social and loving person, it’d be revealed in your content. You just can’t fake it any longer; especially now that quality content is the permanent secretary of Google. Lol!

Why is SEO so hard?

Have you ever asked such a question before? And to be honest with you, search engine optimization isn’t and will never be hard. If you think it’s hard, I think you should look at the keywords you’re targeting.

If the competition is high, you may conclude that SEO is hard.

But if you become savvy and target local keywords as well as geo-specific key terms – then picking up targeted traffic from Google will be your second nature. Sounds easy…huh?

What challenges do you’ve with search engine optimization? Could you please share your comment in the box below and be explicit – I’ll address the issue in subsequent posts. See you ahead!

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