Helping Offline Businesses Use The Net Effectively

Let me take a minute to introduce my self. I am Mike Paetzold and will be visiting here this week as part of my Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour. During this I am stopping at various blogs for a week at a time to guest blog.

This week I am really excited as after discussing list building, affiliate marketing and blogging the last 3 stops here we will talk about helping offline business use the internet to supplement their brick and mortar business.This is an area that can be a perfect win – win for the offline business owner and the person who can supply what they need to take advantage of the net.

Earl has written about this topic quite extensively and we will not look at it from an off line business perspective but from a consultant perspective as most internet marketers have skills that can be of considerable value to the offline business owner.

Most of my offline business customers do not have the time or the inclination to learn what is needed to effectively use the web for their business. They do understand the power but taking their time to go through the learning curve will hurt their current business model. This creates a huge opportunity for those that are interested in helping them.

Businesses are quickly learning that a lot of the old ways of generating customers like the Yellow Pages are becoming obsolete. When a customer is looking for something they are much more likely to start at Google then they are the Yellow Pages.

The increase in local rating sites for various service businesses has made it a necessity for a business to be following what is being said about them.

All of these things are opportunities if you can show an off line business how it can benefit their bottom line.

Over the next 4 days I will discuss the following here –

  • Protecting your online reputation
  • Website mistakes
  • Easiest way to get good SEO
  • Making Google your friend

See you tomorrow.

About the author

align=left Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and works with offline businesses through Coal Region Web Services. Currently you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends.

You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy.

Follow Mike on Twitter

Muscle Your Way to Profits

I was going to write the third of my planned three part series on free traffic tools I’ve been experimenting with today, but I will save that for after Thanksgiving.

Because, today Doug Champigny just released another of his famous PLR 3 packs.  The fitness niche is huge with a lot of people spending big bucks to bulk up and get fit.  As such, it is a natural niche for you to spend a little money and some time on. And with this package from Doug, it couldn’t be easier.

Each of the three packages comes with the product, a ready made sales letter and 25 articles you can use as part of a follow up email campaign or rewrite and set up on the article directories to drive traffic and backlinks to your new site.

Fitness PLR Pack

The topics are…

  • Mixed Martial Arts
  • 6 Pack Abs
  • Gaining Wright 101

To be most effective in using these products you want to…

1. Do some quick keyword research to find terms that have at least 500 searches in a month, but less than 50-100,000 results when you search for the keyword in parenthesis: “keyword”  These are the keywords you will have the best chance at getting traffic from fast.

2. Pick a couple of the best of these, and search for a good domain name. Now sometimes I cheat and just add it to my www.askearlabout.com/keyword site, but you will get better results if you spend $10 and get a niche specific url.

3.  Decide if you are going to sell the eBook or give it away.  If you already have a list in the area, I would consider selling it.  If you are just starting in the niche, offer it as a freebie to start building a fitness niche list you can sell to for years to come.

4. Review the eBook and make any edits you want and add links to it to other products you have, and/or to affiliate products. This is how you make money even when you give the books away.

5. Load the sales page to your site, and make any changes or edits you wish, although the sales page provided is great as it is.

6. Add a blog to support the project. You can use the 25 articles as content over time.

7. Alternatively, you can use some of included articles as a series of follow-up emails to keep in touch with your new list, and build loyalty and trust with them, or rewrite some of them articles and submit them to the article directories.  I usually, put these in my blog first and then upload them to the directories. That allows them to do double duty, and gets my blog the initial credit in Google’s eyes.

8. Now that you’ve finished the first of the three packages, repeat of the rest.  If you decided to give away the first eBook to build a list, consider selling the other two to the list you have built. The choice is yours. But with three eBooks on closely related topics, you have the makings for a nice niche that you can grow and develop over time. Or consider offer one or two of the ebooks as a bonus when people buy one.

So now it’s time to take action.  This package will save you countless hours compared to creating your own similar products, and could easily be the core of a great new profit center for your online enterprise.

Go grab Fitness PLR Pack and put some muscle into your online profits.

By the way any one of the products in this package is well worth what Doug is charging for all 3.

Leads Leap – A Free Traffic Source

In my last blog posting I discussed one of the Free Traffic resources I have been testing.  Today I want to mention another. It’s called Leads Leap.

Leads Leap is a type of Viral Blog, that allows you to place free ads on it.

If you look in the bottom of the far right sidebar, you will see a widget that I have installed on this blog which lists recent blog posts from Leads Leap.

These are well written high quality posts, that are well worth reading. Every time someone clicks on one of the posts there I earn an advertising credit. Since I have multiple blogs, I have put this widget on a couple of them, and earn ad credits on auto pilot as a result.

In addition to using the widget, you can post links to individual blog posts that your like to your list.

For example:

http://www.leadsleap.com/blog/how-to-come-out-with-innovative-ideas-that-sell/?r=earlnetwal

Again, every time someone clicks on that link, I will get a credit.  So in addition to getting credits, I can share useful information with my blog readers.

Leads Leap also rewards you for recruiting others.

Once you have recruited 20 other Leads Leap members, you get 500 Free Ad credits per month, and this number builds as you recruit more.

You get credits for the actions of the people you recruit and the people they recruit up to 10 levels deep. This is ultimately very significant, but as with all such programs it takes a while to get established. But once you have built the specific gravity, it grows rapidly.

How to use your free ads?  I tend to focus on free offers that have strong appeal and a back end that pays off.  Just like a paid Google Ad, you need to start with an attractive offer that gets people to click, leading to a landing page that inspires people to opt in, and then a follow-up that makes it all worth your while.

Another thing to understand about Leads Leap, is that it’s not a flaky newbie to the scene. It has an Alexa ranking of 23,212 last time I checked which puts it pretty high in the Alexa Universe and should help to give you a sense of how big a deal this is, and could be for you.

I recommend you check out Leads Leap yourself.

Free Traffic Resources

When I first started to learn my way around internet marketing, I came across a variety of Free Traffic Resources.  Since I had little money I was willing to risk online, I tried a couple of traffic exchange programs where I would spend 1/2 hour to a couple of hours looking at other people’s ads to build credits so they would look at my ads.

I did my level best not to buy anything from the ads I looked at and for the most part my fellow travelers largely did the same.  Now since then I have come to learn that these exchanges actually can work, when an effective  back end process is paired to an enticing free offer.

But personally, I didn’t have the patience to waste time scrolling through offers, even when I got things set up to do five different traffic exchanges at the same time.  So I pretty much gave up on the entire genre some years back.

Now I know some people who swear by the traffic exchanges, but they generally have developed front and back end offers that work and they buy the clicks rather than earn the free credits.  Once you have a handle on how many views it takes to convert into a purchase, it makes sense to do so – as long as the combo turns a profit.

Recently, I have been experimenting with three different systems and my opinions of free traffic generation is going through a reappraisal.

Most recently, I took part in the launch of the newest system out there called the Perfect Traffic Storm.  Now I haven’t made a lot of money yet, as it is only a few days old, but I have made my first sales, so I can say I am in the chips.

Perfect Traffic Storm is free to join, and is actually pretty exciting.  Here is an example of how it works.

I am actively promoting the 100% Giveaway that opened today.  I created a new link in Perfect Traffic Storm by inserting my affiliate link for the Giveaway into the form on the perfect traffic storm page.

Then I used the new url they generated to serve as my hyperlink for the Giveaway.  When someone clicks on the hyper link, they are taken to the Giveaway, but at the bottom of the page viewers will see another ad from one of the other advertisers who has an ad in the Giveaway category. This last about 10 seconds at the bottom of the page and is clearly visible but not too obstructive, and then just fades away.

Every time someone clicks on one of my links, I get credits to show my ads on other people’s pages.  Like I said, I had my first payoffs already even though I have been using the site for only a couple of days.

To see what the ads look like, click on my link for the 100% Giveaway.  Then come back and click on my link for the Perfect Traffic Storm and join it.

I was able to send a twitter broadcast today using the Perfect Traffic Storm link to the Giveaway and got 56 hits that went to the Giveaway which was a good way to promote the Giveaway and Got 168 credits for ads on the Perfect Storm site.

I am pretty sure I will be using these links on a regular basis for my twitter posts, and possible much wider as well.  I think you should consider doing so as well.

A Visitor is Coming!

Mike Paetzold is conducting a Blog Tour where he will be sitting in as a contributor on a number of blogs including the MicroBusinessSpecialist.

Mike got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy.

After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably.

Over the past year, I have learned a lot from Mike. A good portion of which has been wordpress specific.  His Word Press Made Easy blog is one of a handful that I monitor regularly.

But while Word Press and Blogging are his major focus, I am constantly amazed at how much work he produces on a regular basis.  I have been pleased to offer a number of his eBooks and reports over the past year.

In addition to his word press blogs, he has one on PLR and many other niche topics. One is even based on his Turtle tank, where he spins little parables about internet marketing based on the antics of his family’s pet turtles.

He  refers to himself as the Old Bald Guy, and it’s true that he appears to be folically challenged, but he is a no slouch. He believes in taking massive action and isn’t afraid to do some work to get things done.

We haven’t set the exact date and framework for his Blog visit, but I expect it to be in two or three weeks.

If you have any questions regarding Word Press, plug ins, themes, etc. in particular feel free to forward them to me, or save them up for when he visits.

He is also an expert in niche marketing and traffic exchanges.

The idea of a Blog Tour is pretty new (to me at least).  I am hoping that you will join me in welcoming him when he comes by participating and commenting on his posts.

Session 2 of Extraordinary Minds Was Great!

Have you been listening in?

Last night was the second session of the League of Extraordinary Minds, and what a great two hours it was.

I think of myself as a pretty rational fellow, but after last night I can clearly see why some of my marketing materials built around that rational approach are not doing as well as I would like.

Because as we all know people are not rational, they are primarily emotional. And more importantly they buy emotionally.

I learned a lot and took a lot of notes. Too many to duplicate here, and frankly I don’t think I could do justice to all the material.

If you haven’t been on the calls, let me tell you gently – you’re loosing out.  These conversations are being turned into paid products, and they will be avidly sought after, because of the caliber of the insights delivered.

Now last night I picked up on a couple of threads that really will make a difference to me, once I wrestle them into action in my efforts. You may have walked away with completely different insights, appropriate to your situation.

That’s what so wonderful about this exercise. So much is communicated, from so many different sources everyone listening is likely to find different aspects specific to their individual situation.

Last night I got a great tip on bullet points in a sales letter.  I now understand that the most important point goes in the first bullet, and the most provocative or curiosity inducing point goes in the last bullet.

Nice tidbit I will apply to my next sales letter. But if you don’t write sales letters you may have been more impressed with the idea that loss is more powerful than gain. And that you will get more action if failing to act will cost a prospect $20 vs another offer where the prospect stands to gain the very same $20.

Or that it is better to focus on three main points in greater detail in a presentation, than on four or more points in less detail.

But while all of these are useful to me, I am sure other people took away many other ideas relevant to their situation.

There are 7 more sessions left in the series, with the next this coming Thursday at 8PM your time no matter where you are in the world.  If you sign up at League of Extraordinary Minds, you can get the link for each of the coming sessions.

Now once they are done, these sessions will be sold, so there are no replays allowed.  If you want to get it on the cheap you really need to register, and then show up on the calls.  I promise you, it’s been well worth the time and effort.

The tools, tactics and concepts presented apply to all types of businesses, not just online.  So make a point of taking advantage of this valuable freebie.  You won’t regret it.

By the way, the first session was ranked number 8 on Alexa during the first broadcast last week.  I haven’t heard about last nights but it was probably equally high. What that means to you, is that not only are a lot of people listening in world wide, it’s quite possible that you main competitors were as well.

Be sure you don’t miss out on the rest of the series.   Register now at League of Extraordinary Minds.