Welcome back! Staying active in the blog and community has been the key to success for many ProfitMart members.

Search Engine Optimization is the process of choosing the most appropriate targeted keyword phrases related to your site and ensuring that these keywords rank your site highly in search engines so that when someone searches for specific phrases it returns your site on tops.

It basically involves fine tuning the content of your site along with the HTML and Meta tags and also involves appropriate link building process.

The most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, AOL and Ask Jeeves. Search engines keep their methods and ranking algorithms secret, to get credit for finding the most valuable search-results and to deter spam pages from clogging those results. A search engine may use hundreds of factors while ranking the listings where the factors themselves and the weight each carries may change continually.  

Algorithms can differ so widely that a webpage that ranks #1 in a particular search engine could rank #200 in another search engine. New sites need not be “submitted” to search engines to be listed. A simple link from a well established site will get the search engines to visit the new site and begin to spider its contents. It can take a few days to even weeks from the referring of a link from such an established site for all the main search engine spiders to commence visiting and indexing the new site. 

If you are unable to research and choose keywords and work on your own search engine ranking, you may want to hire someone to work with you on these issues. Search engine marketing and promotion companies, will look at the plan for your site and make recommendations to increase your search engine ranking and website traffic. If you wish, they will also provide ongoing consultation and reporting to monitor your website and make recommendations for editing and improvements to keep your site traffic flow and your search engine ranking high.

Normally your search engine optimization experts work with your web designer to build an integrated plan right away so that all aspects of design are considered at the same time. 

“Dammit Jim, I’m an Affiliate Marketer, Not a Webmaster!” 

Ok, so maybe I’m dating myself a little here, but the semi-prophetic words of Star Trek’s beloved Scotty ring as true today as they did when they fell on my ears thirty years ago. Let’s face it, not everybody is cut out to do 100% of the tasks we do as affiliate marketers to a 100% perfect degree. 

Fact of the matter is, we have to decide which things need to be 100% from the get-go, and which ones just need to come into “being”, and can be improved on as you go along.  I believe one of the sayings a prof I know used to say is fundamentally flawed. The fabled saying should have been:

“Anything worth doing, is worth doing badly”

Why? Because the fact of the matter is that DOING the thing is ALWAYS more productive and profitable than NOT DOING the thing because you maybe feel you are not good enough at it yet.  This applies very well here at ProfitMart, and with the building of any affiliate website, really.

I think people are often putting off the publishing and advertising of their sites because they feel the site is “not quite ready yet”.  Well, for those people I have some alarming news…IT WILL NEVER BE 100% READY in your eyes, that’s just human nature.

Consequently, some fiddle about, changing fonts, aligning paras, adding and changing banners, all the sundry tasks that can and do get in the way of the actual purpose of the site. The purpose of the site, the sole reason it even exists is to reward you somehow, probably in the form of sales that in turn produce revenue.  Money. Moolah. The tangible little goody that can improve your quality of life. 

To get to the “sales” you MUST publish and advertise the site, SO DO IT! Don’t get hung up adding every baubble and gizmo on the planet to your site, JUST PUBLISH IT! You can tweak the heck out of it as you go aling later.

An awful lot of businesses fail because the person running the business gets too wrapped up in”managing”, and spends too little time on “selling”. Now managing is important, but without sales, there is really nothing to manage, is there?

So, when you join ProfitMart, everything has been done for you. All the dirty work. Just add a little default content, and publish! You can always modify and customize as you go along… a web site is an evolving creature.

Remember, anything worth doing, is worth doing badly!

Engage warp drive, Mr Zulu, and promote your site!

One of the great things about ProfitMart is that it is ideal for “newbies” that are just starting out in business on the web. With this in mind, the old saying a picture is worth a thousand words goes a long way around here, and as such we make it a point to provide excellent training materials in a number forms including videos, audio Podcasts, slide shows, PDF documents, this blog, and the Community Forum, to mention the main ones.

The fact that Rick and I were both involved in the devleopment of military training systems in the Air Force previously really gives us an unfair advantage in this area over other systems.

As I have received a number of requests in the last while for a new video on copying and pasting in affiliate and bannner codes to the different content areas, there is now a new video for just that. Look under “Training Videos” in the ProfitMart Control Panel for details.

Cheers,

Ron Davies

One-Time-Offer is a term used to refer to a process that helps increase the total sales revenue from any individual sale by offering the buyer a chance to buy additional products or services after the thank-you page for the original purchase.

Sound shifty? Really it isn’t. Research has shown that customer loyalty and confidence in you increases with every purchase they make from you, including these piggy-back type sales.

 It isn’t really a new idea. If you have a department store credit card, you probably receive all sorts of piggy-back offers in the monthly credit card bill they send you. 

 Why call it a one-time-offer script? Well, because it builds anticipation, exclusivity, and urgency because we can use browser “cookies” to make sure we show them the special offer one time only.  This is yet another motivation for them to purchase now…instead of putting it off ’til later.

Now, to help ProfitMart members capitalize on this same idea, we have created a “Jump Page Maker”, which is accessable through the Affiliate Toolbar when you click “Start Here” to open the Control Panel.

 Essentially, it allows you to promote two programs with a single ad or link.

How does it work? Well, there are instructions in the set-up wizard there, but really it works like this;

1. you enter the URL of a product or service that you intend to promote that IS NOT a ProfitMart;
2. enter your ProfitMart affiliate ID number;
3. click the submit button; and
4. a new URL is produced.

Simply promote this new URL, instead of the original product URL. When someone goes to this URL, it shows your first product. When they close the ad from the first product, a new page is produced using your ProfitMart affiliate information, and Voila!  a second sales opportunity for a different product is produced.

 Many users of this system see anywhere from a 25% to a 55% increase in revenue, and for no cost.

Certainly worth testing the theory, isn’t it? :>)

 Ron Davies
ProfitMart Admin