Today I am going to talk about a fantastic way to build your list - Free Giveaway Events.
Free Giveaway events work like this:
Stage One - A free giveaway event launches and if you are a list owner you can sign up as a "JV Partner" and offer a free report, free Ebook or another free gift in return for an optin. It costs nothing to do this and if you don't have anything to give away, don't worry - I have a solution for that!
Stage Two - The giveaway event opens and everyone invites people to register for free and download gifts. If someone wants to download your gift they need to register for your list first.
The last giveaway event I participated in resulted in over 200 new subscribers for me over the course of a week. Not too bad for something that took me less than an hour to set up!
If this sounds like a good idea to you here are some step by step instructions to help you do exactly the same:
1) First you need to register for a current giveaway event. At the time of writing this post I recommend the Home Business Giveaway. Register with this giveaway for free and follow the instructions to set up your account.
2) Next you need to find something to giveaway. If you want you can use Dotcomology, but it is better to find something different to give away. I recommend opening a free account at Sure Fire Wealth as they provide hundreds of free downloads.
3) Once you have found something to giveaway, upload it to your website. You can do this by going to http://www.yoursite.com/menu (where yoursite.com is your domain name) then click on "File Manager". Upload your file, which will probably be either a .PDF file or a .zip file. The download link to your item will be http://www.yoursite.com/yourfile.pdf (where yoursite.com is your domain name and yourfile.pdf is the name of your giveaway file that you just uploaded.
4) All of the above steps are free and you should find that you get some signups to your newsletter if you offer a decent gift. If you want to increase your subscribers even more you can also consider promoting the giveaway using the affiliate link that they give you and/or upgrading to get more exposure for your offer.
Hopefully all of the above won't take you any longer than an hour and the result will be new subscribers to your list who could potentially go on to sign up for something or purchase something from your website!
So why not signup for the Home Business Giveaway now... I'd also love to know how you get on with this.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Using Traffic Exchanges to Promote Your Website
Have you considered using traffic exchanges to advertise your website, the Plug-In Profit Site opportunity or to build your list? Traffic exchanges are a free and easy way to promote your site and it doesn't take much time to get started.
You can get good results using traffic exchanges, but most people go about it the WRONG way.
If you are advertising a long sales page, your home page or an expensive product in the traffic exchanges it is unlikely that you will get good results. The reason for this is that most traffic exchange users are surfing to earn credits, not to buy. They don't have time to read long pages.
To use traffic exchanges effectively you need to:
1) Make sure your offer grabs the attention of the surfer. It should be short, snappy and interesting
2) Capture the visitor's email address. Ideally entice people to sign up to your list, perhaps in exchange for a free report or EBook.
3) Track your results. If you are not getting a response do something different e.g. advertise a different page instead. Don't just keep on advertising the same page aimlessly!
4) Surf at least 5 traffic exchanges at the same time using tabbed browsing. This will earn you credits 5 times faster!
5) Build your downline. All traffic exchanges will give you benefits such as additional credits when you refer someone, which means that you won’t have to spend as much time surfing.
Ok, so now that's out of the way, here is a PLAN OF ACTION for you to build a big downline from the traffic exchanges AND get some signups to your list :-) This plan will take around 1-2 hours to follow through initially and then 20-30 minutes per day. There is nothing to buy.
ACTION STEP 1:
If you don’t know what a traffic exchange is take a quick read of my short Introduction to Traffic Exchanges.
ACTION STEP 2:
Join Traffic Hoopla. This is a downline builder for traffic exchanges and it is FREE to join. This will show you the current top traffic exchanges.
ACTION STEP 3:
Login to your Traffic Hoopla account and click on "1st Join". This will show you the current TOP 5 traffic exchanges. Join each of these (they are all free) and put your referral ID in the spaces provided by Traffic Hoopla. You may want to consider joining the "2nd Join" as well, but leave that for another day - you don't want to overwhelm yourself!
ACTION STEP 4:
The next step is a little bit more time consuming and will probably take you about 1-2 hours. You need to learn a little bit about each of the 5 traffic exchanges that you have joined. By this I mean learn how to add your site, how to surf and how many credits you will get for surfing and referring.
You will need to enter a website URL to promote for each traffic exchange and you will normally have to surf around 10-20 pages to activate your account.
For the website, you need to choose something that is going to work well in a traffic exchanges. The choice is yours but here are some suggestions.
1) Promote a lead capture page. I currently promote this lead capture page and this one and I receive regular optins to my lists. If you don't have a lead capture page you may want to consider my lead capture page service OR use one of the standard PIPS optin pages. The address for the PIPS page is http://www.pluginprofitsite.com/main-4231/pop1.html (replace 4231 with your own PIPS ID and use anything from pop1.html up to pop11.html)
2) Promote Traffic Hoopla. This will help you to build your downline in the traffic exchanges. Traffic Hoopla have a few different splash pages for use in the traffic exchanges. To find the splash pages login to Traffic Hoopla and click the link on the home page that says “you may also use these pages”
3) Promote a free business opportunity. My favorite free business opportunity is Cash Crate. You can see the Cash Crate splash page that I use here and I can create one like this for you free of charge. Another program you could promote is SFI.
ACTION STEP 5:
On a daily basis, open 6 tabs inside a browser and spend about 20-30 minutes surfing all 5 of these traffic exchanges at one time. Move between each of the tabs, clicking the next button to view the next page. This will earn you credits and as you earn credits your own websites will be shown.
Repeat step 5 as often as possible. Your credits will grow and you will get more exposure. At the same time your downline should grow and you will be able to surf less as you will earn credits from your downline.
Traffic exchanges were one of the first advertising methods that I used when I started internet marketing back in 2004. As a result I have hundreds of people in my downlines for these exchanges and I never need to surf myself. If you work on this you can easily find yourself in the same situation!
If you have a question feel free to post it in the comments below!
You can get good results using traffic exchanges, but most people go about it the WRONG way.
If you are advertising a long sales page, your home page or an expensive product in the traffic exchanges it is unlikely that you will get good results. The reason for this is that most traffic exchange users are surfing to earn credits, not to buy. They don't have time to read long pages.
To use traffic exchanges effectively you need to:
1) Make sure your offer grabs the attention of the surfer. It should be short, snappy and interesting
2) Capture the visitor's email address. Ideally entice people to sign up to your list, perhaps in exchange for a free report or EBook.
3) Track your results. If you are not getting a response do something different e.g. advertise a different page instead. Don't just keep on advertising the same page aimlessly!
4) Surf at least 5 traffic exchanges at the same time using tabbed browsing. This will earn you credits 5 times faster!
5) Build your downline. All traffic exchanges will give you benefits such as additional credits when you refer someone, which means that you won’t have to spend as much time surfing.
Ok, so now that's out of the way, here is a PLAN OF ACTION for you to build a big downline from the traffic exchanges AND get some signups to your list :-) This plan will take around 1-2 hours to follow through initially and then 20-30 minutes per day. There is nothing to buy.
ACTION STEP 1:
If you don’t know what a traffic exchange is take a quick read of my short Introduction to Traffic Exchanges.
ACTION STEP 2:
Join Traffic Hoopla. This is a downline builder for traffic exchanges and it is FREE to join. This will show you the current top traffic exchanges.
ACTION STEP 3:
Login to your Traffic Hoopla account and click on "1st Join". This will show you the current TOP 5 traffic exchanges. Join each of these (they are all free) and put your referral ID in the spaces provided by Traffic Hoopla. You may want to consider joining the "2nd Join" as well, but leave that for another day - you don't want to overwhelm yourself!
ACTION STEP 4:
The next step is a little bit more time consuming and will probably take you about 1-2 hours. You need to learn a little bit about each of the 5 traffic exchanges that you have joined. By this I mean learn how to add your site, how to surf and how many credits you will get for surfing and referring.
You will need to enter a website URL to promote for each traffic exchange and you will normally have to surf around 10-20 pages to activate your account.
For the website, you need to choose something that is going to work well in a traffic exchanges. The choice is yours but here are some suggestions.
1) Promote a lead capture page. I currently promote this lead capture page and this one and I receive regular optins to my lists. If you don't have a lead capture page you may want to consider my lead capture page service OR use one of the standard PIPS optin pages. The address for the PIPS page is http://www.pluginprofitsite.com/main-4231/pop1.html (replace 4231 with your own PIPS ID and use anything from pop1.html up to pop11.html)
2) Promote Traffic Hoopla. This will help you to build your downline in the traffic exchanges. Traffic Hoopla have a few different splash pages for use in the traffic exchanges. To find the splash pages login to Traffic Hoopla and click the link on the home page that says “you may also use these pages”
3) Promote a free business opportunity. My favorite free business opportunity is Cash Crate. You can see the Cash Crate splash page that I use here and I can create one like this for you free of charge. Another program you could promote is SFI.
ACTION STEP 5:
On a daily basis, open 6 tabs inside a browser and spend about 20-30 minutes surfing all 5 of these traffic exchanges at one time. Move between each of the tabs, clicking the next button to view the next page. This will earn you credits and as you earn credits your own websites will be shown.
Repeat step 5 as often as possible. Your credits will grow and you will get more exposure. At the same time your downline should grow and you will be able to surf less as you will earn credits from your downline.
Traffic exchanges were one of the first advertising methods that I used when I started internet marketing back in 2004. As a result I have hundreds of people in my downlines for these exchanges and I never need to surf myself. If you work on this you can easily find yourself in the same situation!
If you have a question feel free to post it in the comments below!
Monday, October 12, 2009
7 Ways to Reduce Your Plug-In Profit Site Expenses
The basic expenses for a Plug-In Profit Site are $24.95 per month for Host4Profit hosting and $15 per year for your domain name.
$24.95 per month is a pretty reasonable cost for running your home based business, but it is very easy with the Plug-In Profit Site to spend much more than that.
If you decide to sign up for Empowerism, GDI and Lawn Chair Millionaire you will add on another $60 per month. Subscribe to the IAHBE to guarantee an EA status in SFI and that's another $30 per month. Add an upgrade in GetResponse to that and you are looking at another $18 per month.
So if you sign up for all the above you now have business expenses of over $130 per month. Take a walk through Stone's 30 Days to Success Training and you can easily rack up another few hundred dollars.
BUT... the important things to remember are:
7) Consider mentoring. A mentor who has been there and done it before you can be very effective at making your business successful and helping you to save money. Mentoring does cost money, but it can save you time and help you get into profit a lot more quickly. The PIPS Power Group specialize in helping members to suceed with the Plug-In Profit Site.
Do you have any tips for reducing your Plug-In Profit Site expenses? If so, why not post them below.
Or read more about running your Plug-In Profit Site on a budget.
$24.95 per month is a pretty reasonable cost for running your home based business, but it is very easy with the Plug-In Profit Site to spend much more than that.
If you decide to sign up for Empowerism, GDI and Lawn Chair Millionaire you will add on another $60 per month. Subscribe to the IAHBE to guarantee an EA status in SFI and that's another $30 per month. Add an upgrade in GetResponse to that and you are looking at another $18 per month.
So if you sign up for all the above you now have business expenses of over $130 per month. Take a walk through Stone's 30 Days to Success Training and you can easily rack up another few hundred dollars.
BUT... the important things to remember are:
- You are in control of your budget and how much you spend
- All of the above expenses are OPTIONAL for the Plug-In Profit Site apart from your hosting and your domain name.
- There are plenty of very effective FREE ways to promote your website so you do not need to pay for expensive advertising
With that in mind here are some ways that you can reduce your Plug-In Profit Site expenses:
1) If there are certain programs that you are not making money from, consider temporarily dropping these programs to save on your monthly fees. You can easily sign up for these in the future when you are getting regularl Plug-In Profit Site signups.
2) If you are trying a form of paid advertising, try it for the minimum amount of time possible. E.g. if the advertising has a monthly, quarterly or yearly option, choose the monthly one. Check your results after one month and if it doesn't work, drop it! Don't blindly sign up for something for a year if you have never tried it before. Many people have made this mistake with the PIPS co-op - signed up for a whole year, discovered after a month that it is not an effective way to get signups and been unable to get a refund.
3) Set a monthly advertising budget and stick to it. Whether you have a zero advertising budget or a $100 budget, make sure you stick to it. Decide what you can afford on a monthly basis and only increase that if your situation changes (e.g. when you start making a profit or you have more money available to invest in your business).
4) Remember business expenses are tax deductable. This will vary from country to country, but usually anything that you spend on your business is tax deductable. Speak to your accountant to find our more about this.
5) Become an expert in Free Advertising Methods. There are so many effective free methods of advertising. Article Marketing, Blogging, SEO, Free Classifieds, Press releases, forum marketing, directory submission, social marketing and more. Become an expert in one or two of these free methods. Learn as much as possible about them, take action and make them work for you.
6) Consider changing to a less expensive web host. Host4Profit is expensive at $25 per month. If you have been with Host4Profit for at least 3 months, you can change hosts and still promote the Host4Profit affiliate program. My #1 recommended host is Hostgator - they charge less than $10 a month for hosting for unlimited disk space, bandwidth and domain names. Sign up with Hostgator and if you are a new customer they will also transfer your site over for free. At the time of writing they also have a 20% off coupon code "AUTUMN"7) Consider mentoring. A mentor who has been there and done it before you can be very effective at making your business successful and helping you to save money. Mentoring does cost money, but it can save you time and help you get into profit a lot more quickly. The PIPS Power Group specialize in helping members to suceed with the Plug-In Profit Site.
Do you have any tips for reducing your Plug-In Profit Site expenses? If so, why not post them below.
Or read more about running your Plug-In Profit Site on a budget.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
PIPS Power Group Summer Contest Winners
The PIPS Power Group Summer Content just came to an end last week and we have now announced the winners over in the PPG forum.
1st Place: Lyle Holmes
2nd Place: Michelle Jayes
3rd Place: John McRae
4th Place: Truby Johnson
5th Place: Damodar Kakule
6th Place: Mal Tindle
7th Place: Charles Chege
I just want to say a big congratulations to all of these hard working Plug-In Profit Site owners and PPG members.
More than 30 members took part in the competition and the majority of them managed to increase the traffic to their websites and help their businesses. It was hard for us to judge the competition because so many people did well.
If you like the idea of entering a competition while improving your business at the same time you may want to consider joining the PIPS Power Group. We have plans for more competitions in the future.
1st Place: Lyle Holmes
2nd Place: Michelle Jayes
3rd Place: John McRae
4th Place: Truby Johnson
5th Place: Damodar Kakule
6th Place: Mal Tindle
7th Place: Charles Chege
I just want to say a big congratulations to all of these hard working Plug-In Profit Site owners and PPG members.
More than 30 members took part in the competition and the majority of them managed to increase the traffic to their websites and help their businesses. It was hard for us to judge the competition because so many people did well.
If you like the idea of entering a competition while improving your business at the same time you may want to consider joining the PIPS Power Group. We have plans for more competitions in the future.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Use IMReportCard to get some backlinks and earn cash
I recently came across a nice website called IM Report Card which is dedicated to providing honest reviews of internet marketing products and services.
IM Report Card is free to join and you will find it useful in a few different ways:
1) If you are thinking of purchasing a product or a service you can read unbiased reviews and comments.
2) You can leave your own comments and get paid for doing so! They are currently paying 50 cents or more per comment that you leave. You will also receive 10c for rating a product and bonus credits for referring other people.
3) You can create an online profile and get backlinks to your website. Every time you leave a comment a "signature" is left at the end of the comment with a link to your profile and the text and links of your choice.
So if you have positive or negative experience of any internet marketing products or services why not leave your comments and get paid for it!
If you search for "Stone Evans" you will find a review of Stone and the Plug-In Profit Site so this would be a good place to start. You can also recommend a product or service that is not already listed and receive 75 cents for your suggestion.
The only downside is that certain countries are not accepted. For example if you are in India you cannot join because they have received a very high amount of spammy comments from people in India.
You can join IM Report Card for Free here.
IM Report Card is free to join and you will find it useful in a few different ways:
1) If you are thinking of purchasing a product or a service you can read unbiased reviews and comments.
2) You can leave your own comments and get paid for doing so! They are currently paying 50 cents or more per comment that you leave. You will also receive 10c for rating a product and bonus credits for referring other people.
3) You can create an online profile and get backlinks to your website. Every time you leave a comment a "signature" is left at the end of the comment with a link to your profile and the text and links of your choice.
So if you have positive or negative experience of any internet marketing products or services why not leave your comments and get paid for it!
If you search for "Stone Evans" you will find a review of Stone and the Plug-In Profit Site so this would be a good place to start. You can also recommend a product or service that is not already listed and receive 75 cents for your suggestion.
The only downside is that certain countries are not accepted. For example if you are in India you cannot join because they have received a very high amount of spammy comments from people in India.
You can join IM Report Card for Free here.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Make Some Extra Cash with TipDrop
TipDrop is a new social networking site with a difference!
It is free to join and once you have signed up their are various benefits for you, including:
1) You can add your Google Adsense ID and receive a share of Adsense revenue from the site.
2) You can add a profile with up to 8 links. This allows you to get free backlinks for up to 8 of your websites and blogs.
Once you have signed up to TipDrop you can get more exposure by adding a Tip sheet or adding tips to existing tip sheets. There are tips on a whole variety of different topics including internet marketing and home business, weight loss, travel, health, home and garden, dining out and more.
Like Twitter, you can also follow people on TipDrop. If you'd like to follow me, just signup at TipDrop then login and visit my TipDrop page - http://tipdrop.com/SuzanneMorrison and click the "follow" link under my profile.
Tips are limited to 255 characters, so it shouldn't take you long to sign up and add a few tips of your own.
It is free to join and once you have signed up their are various benefits for you, including:
1) You can add your Google Adsense ID and receive a share of Adsense revenue from the site.
2) You can add a profile with up to 8 links. This allows you to get free backlinks for up to 8 of your websites and blogs.
Once you have signed up to TipDrop you can get more exposure by adding a Tip sheet or adding tips to existing tip sheets. There are tips on a whole variety of different topics including internet marketing and home business, weight loss, travel, health, home and garden, dining out and more.
Like Twitter, you can also follow people on TipDrop. If you'd like to follow me, just signup at TipDrop then login and visit my TipDrop page - http://tipdrop.com/SuzanneMorrison and click the "follow" link under my profile.
Tips are limited to 255 characters, so it shouldn't take you long to sign up and add a few tips of your own.
Monday, July 27, 2009
My Blog Gets a Makeover with a Premium Blogger Template
You may notice that my blog has had a makeover. It is looking a bit sexier... A bit more professional... Not quite as boring. I've just installed a premium blogger template and it has made a huge difference.
I was having a bit of a dilemma as I set this blog up back in 2005, before I knew anything about WordPress. I much prefer WordPress to Blogger - more flexibity, so many great themes and plugins and it is so search engine friendly.
Whenever I set up a new blog these days I always use WordPress, without a doubt. However, I decided to keep this blog as a blogger blog because I get a decent amount of daily traffic to the individual blog posts and I didn't want to risk losing that (changing to WordPress would have changed all the URLs aka permalinks).
If you haven't been on my PIPS blog before you can click here to see a screenshot of what it looked like before I changed it.
I had a hunt on the internet for something similar to WordPress Revolution themes - something a bit wider and more professional looking. I came across eBlog Templates who have a section selling premium blogger templates and found a WordPress Church theme that had been converted to Blogger.
$20 and about two hours later I had everything setup! I've not perfected everything yet, but I think it is a great improvement on the previous look. The template was easy to setup, no techie stuff required and they had step by step videos explaining how to do it.
So if you are looking for a premium blogger template I'd highly recommend eBlog Templates. The only downside is that you can't use them if you are FTP publishing to your website (since the FTP publishing doesn't support Blogger Layouts).
I was having a bit of a dilemma as I set this blog up back in 2005, before I knew anything about WordPress. I much prefer WordPress to Blogger - more flexibity, so many great themes and plugins and it is so search engine friendly.
Whenever I set up a new blog these days I always use WordPress, without a doubt. However, I decided to keep this blog as a blogger blog because I get a decent amount of daily traffic to the individual blog posts and I didn't want to risk losing that (changing to WordPress would have changed all the URLs aka permalinks).
If you haven't been on my PIPS blog before you can click here to see a screenshot of what it looked like before I changed it.
I had a hunt on the internet for something similar to WordPress Revolution themes - something a bit wider and more professional looking. I came across eBlog Templates who have a section selling premium blogger templates and found a WordPress Church theme that had been converted to Blogger.
$20 and about two hours later I had everything setup! I've not perfected everything yet, but I think it is a great improvement on the previous look. The template was easy to setup, no techie stuff required and they had step by step videos explaining how to do it.
So if you are looking for a premium blogger template I'd highly recommend eBlog Templates. The only downside is that you can't use them if you are FTP publishing to your website (since the FTP publishing doesn't support Blogger Layouts).
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