Tag Archives: online presence

Everyone can do it (with expert help)

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This is a guest post from my biggest and best client (she’s also my wife, but read it anyway). She told me, “You can’t tell people what it’s like not to know anything about online marketing, because you already know. I’ll write a post for you and you just publish it and show it to anyone who is non-technical like me”. So here goes. Enjoy.

Ronit BarasAs a blogger with tens of thousands of readers every month, I am often asked, “How did you do it?” usually with admiration for this . I usually feel uncomfortable answering (my parents always told me to be modest), but I am going to stretch myself this time and answer everyone once and for all, without being shy about it.

Whether you know me from Family Matters, Be Happy in LIFE or The Motivational Speaker, you know how strongly I am into the “You can do it!” attitude. I am a life coach and an educator and ever since I started my first business at the age of 25, this has been my motto – I can do it! Everyone can!

I often use the quote “If you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right” as one of my life coaching favorites. I am in the business of happiness and my slogan is “Happiness is a choice!”

Even success on the Internet is a choice, isn’t it?

If you have a business and want to open it to the Internet, if you want to get more business online, if you want to have tens of thousands of readers or a stream of buyers, if you want to know how to be successful at , sit tight and enjoy the ride.

A free event for suckers

[I know the word "suckers" is strong, but it is not my choice. This is what people ultimately call themselves when they realize what has happened to them. I have heard it enough times to know]

clip_image003Wealth seminarThe first time I came into the Internet world was when Gal and I did our life coaching course. While everyone was working on establishing a practice, Gal, who had been an IT manager, was focusing on our . By the end of my course, we were the only people, out of about 50 coaches, who had a site and a business card to give potential clients. After a while, our roles became clearer – I was an educator with over 20 years of experience and knew nothing about computer technology and Internet, and Gal was an IT professional with over 20 years experience and knew a lot about it. So I did the offline work and Gal did the online work.

The first thing you learn about starting a business on the Internet is that everyone can do it. I remember the first seminar I attended. You may have had the same experience yourself. It is a free event that makes hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales in one day. The food, the venue and the free gifts are nothing compared to how many suckers come to those events for the promise of sitting on the beach in a swimsuit with a laptop, sipping cool drinks and watching the dollars appearing on the screen every day and every hour.

The suckers’ slogans

Gal and I went to our first event as life coaches. It was an awesome weekend. It was a great seminar and I learned a lot. For 2 days, they promised the world “Be your own boss! Work 3 hours a day! Money will be coming out of your ears!” and … “Everyone can do it!”

I have to say I almost believed them. I wanted to believe them with all my heart, but because our life coaching course had promised exactly the same thing, I had the suspicion there was a pattern there. Luckily for us, it was not a test of our trust. We just did not have $10,000 to buy the product on offer. We were shocked that our fellow coaches spent so much money just weeks after they had spent thousands of dollars on the life coaching course.

If you have ever heard these slogans about trying to build a business on the Internet, be warned, someone is convinced you are a sucker and might be taking you for a ride.

Seminars that teach you have a system to convince you that everyone can do it. They show a woman who could hardly type and has a family to support in order to attract parents who want to make some quick cash and say she did it within 3 months in her spare time, in-between doing her daytime job, taking the kids from one activity to another, doing housework and oh, I almost forgot, a huge debt she was trying to pay. Or, they show you a group of teens without any capital who came up with a brilliant idea that became a hit overnight. Those events are like a magic show – you know there is a trick, but it is done so beautifully that you just accept it. You buy into the illusion.

Business seminar posterWhat kills me every time is hearing the presenter say, “I’m a successful person and I’m here to teach you how to make money effortlessly, have lots of time off and have all the luxury you want”. I especially hate the word “effortlessly”. The harder life is for you, the louder you hear how effortlessly it can be done.

I always have the same question to those speakers – “If your system can make you a millionaire overnight, why would you spend your time sleeping away from your wife and kids, sleep in a different hotel every night for 200 days in a year to convince us, suckers, to buy your product? Why aren’t you on the beach next to some amazingly blue water working an hour each day and drinking tequila? Isn’t it because you are too busy running workshops?”

I never ask it out loud, because I know the answer. I have 30,000 readers a month because I understood that not everyone can do it. I certainly could not!

Overnight success

I swear to you I have tried. I spent hours studying the same course with Gal. The Internet marketing guru said to us, “You need $90 to buy a website and hosting and an hour a day. Everyone can do it.” I sat 4 and sometimes 5 hours a day, watching videos, reading, summarizing and trying to implement, but pretty quickly, I realized that our Internet marketing guru’s “overnight success” had taken about 8 years and the reason he was successful was that he sold Internet marketing products to aspiring Internet marketers. It was a closed market – people who were making money by convincing others they could make money using their own products. They even have affiliates that sell to the same people. It is like a feeding frenzy. There was so much dishonesty there (MLM, or “direct marketing”, is the same).

My product was a coaching service. I did not want to tell my client they could make a fortune from my coaching, because it was just not true. Every time I watched Gal programming something, I freaked out. I wanted a business, not a course in HTML, PHP, CSS or any other strange acronym. I wanted to work with my clients, do my workshops and sell my books, not to sit in front of the computer all day long.

So many readers come to my site because I decided to give up trying to prove that everyone can do it by doing it myself. Instead, I focus on what I do best and allow the Internet marketer in the family to do what he does so well. Coaching and doing Internet marketing are two different skills and focusing on one leaves much less time for the other.

All my life coaching buddies wanted a website and spent months learning something that Gal did in 2 weeks. In the meantime, they neglected their life coaching practice and got nowhere in both areas.

The reason I feel uncomfortable when people ask, “How did you do it?” is because I did not do it, at least not on my own. Someone had to take my parenting advice, my books and my coaching services and publish them so that many people would actually get to see them.

Get Business Online logoMy message to you is that the online world is big and keeps expanding. Yes, at some stage every business will have a site, even if only for presence. If you want a business online, if you want buyers online, if you want a website even just as an online brochure with your contact details, stick to what you do best and let those who know Internet marketing do the rest for you.

The same applies to any business service and even to family and parenting services, such as accounting, public relations, gardening, construction and architecture. In the same way you would not reinvent a smart phone and prefer to buy one that has been developed by experts, using expert services can produce better results (perhaps more expensive upfront, but cheaper over time) and allow you to concentrate on what you do well and enjoy doing.

You just have to let go of the illusion.

Life is much better this way.

Happy days,
Ronit

My Site Has a PR5!

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C H E C K   T H I S   O U T !

I was showing someone this site as an example and quickly checked my Google PageRank (PR). It was 5!

In the past, whenever someone offered me services, the first thing I did was check the PR of their site, their keyword density and so on to get an impression of what they have been able to do for themselves. More often than not, the site looks good, but has a PR3 or lower. That, of course, made me wonder what potential clients might think of my own site, if they discovered its PR.

I worry no more, for my site is in with the best of them.

Life is good,
Gal

P.S. If you ever want a PR5 for your site…

What will compel you to buy?

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This is a question that was posted on LinkedIn:

Will you make a purchase from a stand-alone Landing Page that you’re visiting for the first time?

Sales pageTo elaborate, lets take a sample scenario. You’re surfing around, looking for some particular service vendor (products are much easier to sell online, I believe). You click on a sponsored result, and come to a page – a stand-alone landing page that lists their package offerings, with a call-to-action to buy. Lets assume that the page is of decent quality, and you are kind of inclining towards these guys.

Signing up for a newsletter, filling out a form – a typical visitor would probably do that. But would you actually spend money and buy something from this page? What would impress you enough to go “wow” and immediately start subscribing to their services?

Here is my answer.

Personally, I look for the feeling of safety when I buy, which is made up of several components:

  1. The identity of the seller must be clear, preferably verifiable, and there must be a way to communicate with him/her offline
  2. There must be conditions under which I can get my money back and a clear method of doing that. If a third party is involved (like Clickbank or PayPal), that’s even better, because I will feel protected
  3. It must be absolutely clear what I am buying through the content, the images, any videos, testimonials and so on. For some things, the only thing that will make me buy is a demo, but screen captures come pretty close in most cases
  4. The testimonials must appear to be from real people, who have gotten actual value out of the product/service and who describe their personal experience in sufficient detail to inspire my trust. Any website link and the testimonial is disqualified as biased. People who have just finished a workshop have not done anything with their new knowledge, so they are heavily discounted. Real, personal, raw life experience = trust
  5. The way things are laid out and the style/tone of the text give me a feeling. If the writer is confident, I will buy. If the writer tries to sell too hard, I will not buy. Good things are easy to sell, because their value is readily apparent. If the seller is not convinced he/she can sell without an effort, there must be something wrong with their offer
  6. I HATE pop-ups. If anything pops up, that’s the end for me
Although the question was about standalone sales pages, my answer is just as relevant for anything you do online. Tricks don’t work! At least, they don’t work for long. Search engines, engines and website visitors are quick to learn and will always find out the frauds.

The more real value you provide, the easier it will be to present it. Your feelings about your product, your service, your company and yourself as a person shine through your website pages and you can’t fake them.

As a life coach, I believe deeply that the world is our reflection and that by working on our inner peace will give us better results than trying to manipulate anybody or anything else. It’s the same when trying to sell something online. Love your product with all your heart. Truly feel you would buy it yourself and the sales will follow.

This is why I am an ethical Internet marketer.

Happy ,
Gal

The Truth Will Set You Free

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Woman in jail This is one of the reasons I love doing business on the Internet. In Cyberspace, you can be yourself and there will always be enough people who will think you’re pretty cool and, if you’re selling something, will buy from you and say “Thank you”.

Most of my clients have an offline marketing mindset when they venture online for the first time. Offline marketing is all about branding and creating an image for your company, or so they think, because they’ve seen all those TV ads for “big money” companies.

By is very different.

According to the world population clock, there are 6,860,146,847 people in the world today. Let’s say that only 10% of them have Internet access. That’s 686,014,685 potential customers.

Can you ever hope to service them all? Nope.

Could you keep in touch with all of them, even if you have a large team? Not likely.

Is it possible that out of these people, 1 in 1,000 will love what you offer and want to buy it? Yep.

That leaves us a nice group of 686,014 people. For a small operator, even that’s a big undertaking and it’s probably best if they don’t all take out their wallet or sign up on the same day.

So why not be yourself? Why pretend and work so hard to create a false image? After all, once people actually come to your business, they will quickly find out what you are really like and, if it’s not as advertised, they might just go away.

The main purpose of having a website is to have yourself represented online 24×7 and for as many prospects as possible to find out more about you, learn to trust you, buy from you and then tell all your friends about how wonderful you are, so that they too come and visit your website, except they will jump straight to the buying step.

This is why I always tell my clients to find ways of being present on their website – through the text style, through the images, through audio strips and video clips – so that website visitors will quickly discover who you really are and get excited from your personality. Attracting lots of with promises you can’t fulfill is pointless. Attracting a continuous stream of visitors who will feel at home with you, buy and refer others is very much to the point and will create an endless for you.

So be yourself online, because you’re worth it!

Gal

Get Your Site Listed

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Google Search How long does it take to get your site listed?

One of my clients recently found out that, with my help, it can take as little as 6 hours!

I met this young man at a networking function and he told me his website had been launched 4 months before, yet there was no trace of it in Google Search results. In fact, if anyone typed the full site URL into the Google Search box, Google would tell them it didn’t know about the site.

When you try to offer your products or services to people and you tell them you have a website, one of the first things they do to check you out is search for your website. This man had given business cards, sent out emails and used various other ways to let people know about his site and he was embarrassed it was not indexed by Google.

“Leave it to me”, I said to him, “I’m going to do some thing real quick and your site should get picked up by the crawlers a lot faster than it would otherwise”.

I didn’t want to commit to a timeframe, because nobody controls ol’ Googlebot, but I had a good feeling about it.

So I went back home and spent about an hour creating some inbound links to my client’s website. No big deal, right? But by putting those links in places frequented by Googlebot, including sites, some magic soon took place.

After 24 hours, I searched for my client’s site and saw 6 results listed. “Not bad”, I thought, “Not bad at all”.

When I rang him to let him know, he said, “Are you kidding? I got up and checked first thing in the morning and already saw 3 results then. This is such a relief, man! Thanks”.

But actually, one of these search results had been labeled “18 hours ago”, which means it was picked up only about 6 hours after I did my work.

At the time of posting, there are 23 search results for my client’s site, including some PDFs.

Is you site not getting listed? Contact me

2 More Clients, Anyone?

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How would you like just 2 more client per month? How about just 2 more clients per week? Per day? Per hour? How would that affect your bottom line? Your life?

Too many business owners, when they consider taking their business online, can only think about costs and risks. They ask for detailed quotes and specific explanations of how each piece of work will be done.

What they normally fail to see are the benefits.

But realizing the benefits of an is really easy and, once you know what’s in it for you, it’s also easy to justify any cost that will leave you enough of a margin.

So how can you tell what good will come out of your new website or campaign or paid ads?

The first thing you need to work out is how much money you make from an average client. This may seem like a simple question, but for most of the business owners I meet, it’s really hard, especially when their business is new.

Online shoppingBasically, you need to take all your business profits and divide them by the number of clients who have generated that profit for you. If you have more than one line of business or group of products/services, you will probably separate them online, so work out each one of them separately. This will also help you decide what is most likely to be profitable online, so you’ll do that first.

If your business is fairly young, use conservative estimates based on what’s going during the past year of a few months, because that’s the closest you’ve got to the future.

It’s important to take into account any additional value brought to you by your clients, such as joint ventures, referrals, barters, etc, because those are worth money too, although they may be indirect. However, if you want to stay conservative, you can just count cash.

Now you know your client lifetime value.

With this figure, most businesses can quickly see that getting just 2 clients – not per hour, not per day, not per week and not per month, just 2 clients – pays for a lot of . The implication of this is huge:

By taking your business online and getting just a small number of new clients that would otherwise not find you, your Internet-based business pays for itself over and over again!

Of course, every business is different, which is why I encourage you to do the math for your own business and see for yourself, but even if it takes 5 clients to pay for your Internet marketing and even if it takes 2 months to get them, you are going to earn back all your investment in 2 months and then again and again and again every 2 months afterward.

What would this do to your life? Could you take some time off? Could you relax? Could you take the family out to a nice place? Could you fix the deck or upgrade your car?

Come on, what are you waiting for? Contact me

Protect Your Email Address

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This is just a quick post to share something too many people don’t know: how to protect your email address so that bots can’t harvest it and you won’t start receiving tons of spam.

You see, when you put your email address on your website, it’s very simple to read it, add it to a list and then bombard it with unsolicited email. It’s annoying, but it’s easy to fix in two steps.

Step 1: Convert your address into an image

To do this, visit http://services.nexodyne.com/email/ if you use a web-based service (like Gmail) or http://services.nexodyne.com/email/index_custom.php if you email  account is in your own domain.

Pick colors for text, background and border, choose a font and click Generate. Then, save the generated image to your computer. When you do, use a file name that nobody would link with email addresses, such as nospam.png.

Finally, upload the image to your website. I will use images/nospam.png as an example.

Alternatively, run any image editor, type your email address in as text, (crop, re-size and make any other modifications until you’re happy with what you get) and save the image.

Step 2: Cloak your email address image

In your contact page code, include the following snippet of JavaScript code, which opens up a new message window on the site visitor’s, to be sent to your email address.

Note that in the code below, I have not used terms like “send”, “email” or “address” and I am breaking various items up (like the parts of the email address or the word “subject”) to make it as difficult as possible for bots to guess what’s going on. It’s not bullet proof, but every counter measure reduces more spam.

Replace “[your email ID]” with your real email ID and “[your email domain]” with your real email domain. Your email address is email-id@email-domain, e.g. example@microsoft.com.

<script type="text/javascript">
function useImage(){
var part1 = "[your real email ID]";
var part2 = "[your real email domain]";
var title = "Website inquiry";
var everything = 'm'+'ailt'+'o:'+part1+'@'+part2+'?s'+'ubject='+title;
win = window.open(everything,'anotherWindow');
if (win && win.open &&!win.closed) win.close();
}
</script>

To use your image, all you have to do now is include the code below:

<a onclick="useImage();" href="#">
 <img src="images/nospam.png" border="0"
  alt="I hate spam" align="absmiddle" />
</a>

This will look like a valid email address to a human being, but complete gibberish to an automatic robot.

Final note: bots are getting smarter all the time, so you may choose to do some more editing to your image or use another image generating site to make the image harder to decipher.

That’s it! You’re protected, but your clients can contact you by email.

Gal

Services

Depending on where you are on your or journey, Get Business Onlineplease choose from the list below:

  1. “I’m still thinking about putting my business online”
  2. “I want to have a website”
  3. “I already have a website, and I want it to do better”
  4. “I’m happy with my website, but I need more traffic”
  5. “Why should I choose you to do Internet marketing for my online business?”

“I’m still thinking about putting my business online”

Free, no obligation consultation

  • I will answer any questions you may have about taking your business online, show you examples of Internet successes.
  • At the end of this step, you will be comfortable making a decision whether to take your business online.

Contact me to request your free consultation, get great value from me and pay nothing. When you’re happy to continue, consider doing more with me.

“I want to have a website”

Internet market research and recommendations report

  • I will understand your business goals for going online and then perform a thorough analysis of the online marketplace to identify Internet niches in which your business can do well.
  • This includes competitive analysis, search volume checks, keyword phrase generation and other areas, as your business requires.
  • At the end of this step, you will have a detailed report, which your web designer can use to build a powerful website, which will attract search engines and convert visitors to clients (or leads).

Contact me to arrange our initial discussion, spend about 1 hour with me discussing your business performance indicators and Internet goals and invest $595.

“I already have a website, and I want it to do better”

Option 1: Quick website review (FREE)

  • I will take a quick look at your website.
  • I will email you my general impression and some key points on improving the site’s performance as a business tool for you.
  • I will give you my honest opinion about your market potential, market positioning and optimization.
  • You will be able to make an informed decision on the value of my paid service and start using my feedback to get more business (if you know how).

Contact me to request your free quick website review. With no risk and so much to gain, this should be an easy decision.

Option 2: Website review, Internet marketing research and online business recommendations report

  • I will understand your online business goals, review your website thoroughly and recommend ways to make the website perform better and bring you more profits.
  • This includes a review of the design (look & feel), navigation, functionality and performance statistics, as well as online market research, competitive analysis and generation of ideas tailored to your business.
  • At the end of this step, you will have a detailed report, which your web designer can use to update your website, so it will receive more and generate more sales (or leads). Often, having someone else look at your website results in massive value.

Contact me to arrange our initial discussion, spend about 1 hour with me discussing your business performance indicators and Internet goals and invest $595.

“I’m happy with my website, but I need more traffic”

, link building, article marketing, social bookmarking and other website promotion methods

  • I will understand your online marketing parameters, agree the best online marketing strategy with you and drive more traffic to your website.
  • This service can be delivered based on time, budget, method or performance.
  • Through this service, you will get targeted traffic to your website, which you will be able to link with more sales, more leads and more business profits.

Contact me to arrange our initial discussion, spend about 1 hour with me discussing your business performance indicators and Internet goals, agree the scope of work and budget.

“Why should I choose you as my Internet marketer?”

You will find it easy to choose me for your Internet marketing:

  • My aim is to give you more business. I don’t sell design, I don’t sell hosting, I don’t sell domains and I don’t sell traffic. What’s good for you is good for me, because when you’re happy, you’ll want more websites and you’ll send your friends my way too.
  • I’m not some kid, so your business is safe with me. I’ve been in professional IT services for many years, I’m a parent of 3, still with the same woman for 30 years and you can trust me with your business.
  • If it ain’t gonna work, I’ll let you know. No point wasting your time or mine chasing red herrings if we can both do something useful instead.
  • I have proof that my methods work. I have succeeded in tough markets by doing what I do best. See my Internet marketing results for yourself.
  • I structure my charges so that most of them will come out of your new online profits. You can book as much of my time as you like and ensure you get value all along the way.
  • Making profits online will add to your business’ value and credibility. You may want to check your business credit information and keep track of what your business is worth as your online profits grow.

handshake Get business online Today

#1 in Google Search

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The other day, I typed “be happy in life” (without the quotes) into my Google Toolbar search box and, lo and behold, my very own life coaching website appeared in the first position, followed by links to its subpages and then another entry, pointing to the free inspiration articles on my site.

Google AU search for "be happy in life"

Google AU search for"be happy in life"

See for yourself.

“But this may be only in Australia”, I said to myself and checked on the main Google site. Be Happy in LIFE was showing in the first and second positions there too.

See for yourself.

“This is too good to be true!”, I thought in excitement, “I wonder what’s happening on the other major search engines”.

Well, in MSN/Live Search, Be Happy in LIFE appears first and my contact page appears second.

See for yourself.

If this isn’t amazing enough, Yahoo! Australia agrees with Google.com, showing the Be Happy in LIFE home page first and the free inspiration articles second.

See for yourself.

The only one that rained lightly on my parade was Yahoo! global/USA, listing Be Happy in LIFE in the 5th place and the free inspiration articles page 6th. I decided this was OK and my day was still great.

Of course, I share the secrets of how I’ve done this with my clients, so that they can get the same for their business. Would you like your business to top the search engines too?

Who Needs Internet Marketing (part 3)?

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By now, you know that the Internet is great for , as well as for offline products with a global appeal. So far, so good. But not every business sells standard products. Some businesses make their products to suit their clients’ needs. What about them?

Well, businesses that offer custom-made products can derive great benefits from using the Internet. You see, the Internet makes communication a whole lot easier than any other alternative, and a whole lot cheaper.

Say your company offers a product with many options: color, finish, size, embossed logo, etc. You could employ an army of specialized sales people, who could walk each new customer through the decision-making process in person or over the phone, or you could build a web site, which includes pictures, descriptive text, videos and even interactively-generated visual product images, which allow your prospects to try a few options, work out what’s best for them and then order or request a quotation without employing a single person on an ongoing basis.

Couple this with the ability to keep in touch with your clients via rich emails and informing them whenever you start offering more colors, bigger sizes and so on, and you will see that the Internet can give your business a huge boost in productivity and profitability.

It is true that sometimes, human interaction is required, because the client may need some expert advice in order to get it just right, but your website will screen those who would not buy, and would just waste your time and money, because they will quickly (and at no cost to you) find out what you cannot do for them. Those who choose to contact you can now receive your full attention, because by the time you contact them, you will already have a very good idea of what they need.

To summarize, if your business can benefit from getting complex custom-order inquiries, screening those who are unlikely to buy and saving a lot of time in your selling process, which you can translate to a much smaller sales team, look seriously into your online options and contact an Internet marketer as soon as you can.