4 Easy Steps to Automate Your Online Sales Process

So you’ve got your blog up and running, you’re starting to gain a following, and you want to capitalize on your growing popularity.  One of the best ways to do that is by creating products around whatever your expertise is.  Your followers obviously like what you have to offer, so whether it’s through e-books, audio programs, webinars, or video workshops, creating products to deliver what they want is a no-brainer.  Once you’ve created products to offer on your site, one of the greatest things about the Internet comes into play: you can automate the entire process.  Sure, you have to do the work upfront to create the products and the process, but once it’s in place, it takes very little attention beyond tracking your progress and making necessary adjustments.  This is a great thing, because it frees you up to create more quality content, and more products.  So, how do you automate your sales process?  Here are four easy steps to make it happen:

1. Get ‘em on the list. The first step to the automated online sales process is to get your site’s visitors on your email list.  Your list will become the biggest asset you have, so this step is critical to your success.  To entice people to sign up for your emails, there are two critical factors you must nail down.  First and foremost, your free content (your blog) must be high quality and compelling.  If you’re not delivering value to your visitors, there’s no way they’ll sign up to hear more of what you have to say via email.  Secondly, you’ll want to offer a valuable incentive for people who sign up for your emails.  Value is the key.  While you’re not going to give away the farm in a single swoop, the offer you create must have real, valuable content, or the subscribers you do get will promptly unsubscribe.  The point is, you shouldn’t be trying to trick anyone into signing up.  They’ll detect it immediately, and no one wins.

2. Send out the emails. The next step in the process is to decide what you’ll send out once a person subscribes to your list.  Obviously you’ll be sending a welcome email with a link to the free product you promised.  But then what?  One of the greatest tools in the email marketing toolbox is the sequential autoresponder.  Whatever email marketing provider you sign up with, they should have the ability to set up sequential autoresponders to each new subscriber.  These autoresponders might even serve as the free product offer the subscriber signed up for.  For example, you might offer a “Free 7 Day E-Course on How to Make Money with Affiliate Links.”  Then, each day for the next seven days, your subscriber will receive an email with another part of the course.  If you follow this path, it’s a good idea to just provide the content without selling anything in these emails.  Even if you’re giving value, that value is diminished when you turn it into a sales pitch.  This brings up another good point: When setting up your sequential autoresponders, make sure you’re not selling in every one.  People get a ton of email, and if they know they’re in for a sales pitch whenever they open one of your emails, they won’t be on your list for long.  You want people to look forward to your communications, and then when you do present an offer, it’s far more likely to be acted upon.

3. Accept online payments. So someone has signed up on your list, they’ve received some great value from your emails, and now they want to buy the video course you just offered.  This is the coolest part of selling on the Internet.  It used to be that you had to be present to sell something to someone.  Now, you can do it in your sleep!  Whether you use a service like PayPal, Google Checkout, Amazon Payments, or your own merchant account, it will be easy for you to sell your products on your site.  The nice thing about the ready-made services (PayPal, Google, Amazon, etc.) is that you don’t have to purchase shopping cart software to use them.  You’ll be able to create “buy now” buttons and easily incorporate those into your page.  The down-side is that you pay a little more in fees, and you have less creative and functionality control.  In either case, you’ll have access to comprehensive sales reports, so you can…

4. Track and measure. As your online sales get underway, and for as long as you sell online, you’ll want to know how you’re doing - not just in terms of sales, but with marketing and conversion rates as well.  You want to know how many people are visiting your site, how many of those are signing up for your email list, and how many email subscribers are clicking back through to your site and/or ordering products.  Using your site analytics, coupled with the stats provided by your email marketing company and your e-commerce provider, you’ll have easy access to all this information.  These statistics are very important, because they will paint a picture of how your content and your marketing are working to convert browsers into customers.  Using this information, you’ll be able to make necessary changes to improve your click-through and conversion rates.  Of all the steps, this is probably the least “easy” but it’s really not hard once you get used to looking at the numbers.  Then just make small adjustments and see what changes.  There’s no fool-proof formula that works for everyone, so you get to build your own!

Bonus step! This isn’t as much a step as it is a suggestion.  Provide outstanding service at every turn, and whatever products you create from your expertise, always offer a money-back, “risk-free” guarantee.  Few people, if any, will take you up on it, and it just makes people feel better about spending money on your products.  For those who do ask for their money back, don’t hesitate to return it, no-questions-asked.  Then try to get some feedback, but don’t count on it.  Sometimes you just have to move forward and focus on those who love you and your stuff!

The Internet has given us the ability to make money using automated systems, and we’d be crazy not to take full advantage of that.  So follow the steps above and get your cash-flow on autopilot.

8 Really Cool Web-Based Tools for Bloggers

Looking for cool applications to help you make your blog or site all it can be?  We’ve found some good ones!  From ways to make sure your site looks good no matter who’s looking at it, to protecting your privacy and your content, these tools are all easy to use and either free or very low-priced.  And they’re all web-based, so no downloading to your computer necessary.

tynt insight - tynt.com is a tool you can use to keep track of what’s being copied from your site, ensuring proper credit is given while capitalizing on the copying you want.  This tool not only helps you track down content thieves, it helps to improve your SEO and traffic by generating more links back to your site and providing automatic attribution links.  You’ll download this software to your server, but not to your computer. Cost: Free

TestSize - As you probably know, your screen resolution is not the same as that of all your visitors.  So even if your site looks spectacular on your computer, it might look funky on someone else’s.  Want to see exactly what it looks like in various resolutions? That’s what TestSize.com is for.  Just enter your URL and choose which size you want to see, and you’ll get a view of your site from that resolution.  It’s a great way to put yourself in your site visitors’ shoes.  Cost: Free

Stribe - This is a great way to take your blog or site to the next level.  You have followers, readers, and subscribers now, but have your really created a community?  Stribe lets you do that.  It’s an easy way to instantly create a social network on any website.  Stribe is an easy plug-and-play solution that allows you to customize its features and build your blog into a community of users, all connected with each other - and with you.  Cost: Free (while in beta)

ShrinkTheWeb - This simple tool does exactly what the name says.  It takes any web page (home page only, unless you upgrade to pro) and creates screenshots that can be used in blog posts or other content areas on your site.  With one click, you get six different sizes of screenshots, from 320×240 down to a 75×56 thumbnail.  Cost: Basic = Free; Pro = $34.95/mo

iPadPeek - With over a million iPads sold so far and growing, you can bet some of your readers are looking at your site on one.  So how do you make sure your site looks good on the iPad if you don’t own one yourself?  Easy - just click over to iPadPeek.  You enter any web address at the top of the virtual iPad, and the site appears below just as it looks on the real thing.  Pretty slick! Cost: Free

IMG4Me - Want to display your email address on your contact page without getting a ton of spam?  You could do something like “myname [at] mysite.com” which is pretty common, but not as cool as what IMG4Me lets you do.  With this txt to img service, you can put your email address in the text box, choose your parameters, like text color, font, and font size, and the app will generate an image of your text.  And they’ll even host the resulting image for you.  Cost: Free

fivesecondtest - Want to know what people see when they first look at your site?  That’s what Five Second Tests do for you.  You earn “karma” by looking at other people’s sites and giving feedback on them, which allows you to upgrade your own tests when you’re having your site looked at.  There are some pretty cool options for tests, and you get results fast.  Ad agencies charge thousands of dollars to conduct this kind of research, so this can be a very valuable tool!  Cost: Free (unless you want premium features)

Browsera - There are a lot of browser options these days, and you can’t assume that just because you prefer Firefox, Safari, or Chrome all your site’s visitors have the same preference.  Believe it or not, some people still use IE!  In any case, just as with screen resolutions, your site might look very different from one browser to the next, and while it might look really good in your browser, it might be completely messed up in another (not to mention the various versions of all the browsers).  Browsera not only allows you to see what your site looks like in various browsers and their many versions, but it points out potential problems, like layout issues, JavaScript errors, and more. Cost: Free (with limited options - $39-$99/mo for more options)

There you go!  Some cool tools to make your site the best it can be.  We’re always looking for new, innovative solutions to improve the look, feel and functionality of websites, so if you have other nifty solutions, don’t hesitate to share in the comments!

5 Tips to Finally Get Your Blog Making Money

It seems everyone has a blog these days, and that is in no way a bad thing.  After all, you need one.  Whether it’s connected to your product or service business or your blog itself is your primary source of income, there isn’t anyone who can’t benefit from blogging.  For those who are trying to make a living blogging, there are a lot of things you can do to get your blog making money.  What we’re focusing on today aren’t sources of income, like affiliate programs or selling e-books.  Instead, we’re presenting steps you can take to make sure those sources pay off for you.  No matter what you’re doing to make money with your blog, these are five things you’d be wise to do to optimize those efforts:

1. Don’t quit. This is the first rule of success, and it’s the first rule for being successful with your blog.  If you browse the web looking for interesting blogs, you’ll be amazed at the number of decent blogs with good design and solid content with no posts for the past six months or more.  These are undoubtedly the blogs of people who had great intentions starting out and didn’t see results as quickly as they had hoped, so they quit.  Chances are, these bloggers had unrealistic expectations about how long it takes to see results from a blog.  Sure, there are sites out there telling you that it’s possible to make $100k a year starting next week, but the truth is it takes consistent, steady effort over a considerable period of time to really make a good living blogging.  So if you aren’t willing to put in the work, don’t start.  But if you are, then keep at it.  The last thing you want to do is quit just before you hit the tipping point and your blog really takes off!

2. Collaborate. Trying to be a “one-man show” isn’t always a good idea.  Chances are you’re really good at one or two things and not as good at others.  So rather than having a blog with outstanding design and lame content, or great content that no one ever sees because you don’t know how to market, why not team up with one or more other bloggers?  True, a collaborative effort means sharing the profits, but your profits will be many-fold greater if your blog is at its best.  So consider collaborating and make your blog - and your bank account - all it can be!

3. Don’t get all weird. Creativity is great, and sometimes out-of-the-box thinking is commendable.  But when it comes to optimizing your blog earnings, keep in mind what your readers are used to.  No one wants to have to learn a new way of weeding through your information.  For the most part, people want your logo in the top left, and your sidebar on the right, and when it comes to buying your product or supporting your sponsors, they want a smooth, easy, simple transaction.  So keep it simple and as close to normal as possible, and save the creativity for your content.  You’ll keep your readers happy and reap the rewards!

4. Market like it’s your job. When it comes to marketing, there’s no such thing as too much.  To monetize your blog, you need traffic, and you won’t get that traffic without marketing.  Utilize Twitter, Facebook, and other Social Media outlets, make sure your SEO is ship-shape, and spend as much as you can afford on PPC.  A word of advice first though: Educate yourself on these tools!  This is especially important for anything that’s costing you money.  Losing money on a failed PPC campaign can lead to wanting to do what point #1 above warns against!  Once you learn the right way to do it (and learn it fast so you don’t waste all your time learning and not doing), pretend marketing is your job.  Treat it like your living depends on it.  Because it does!

5. Begin! So many people say they want to start a blog and go on and on researching but never actually do it.  Whatever’s holding you back, get over it and start your blog.  If you’ve started but haven’t taken the steps to monetize, get off your butt and take those steps now.  The very worst that can happen is you “fail” and end up learning in the process.  Entrepreneurship, whether it’s a blog, a product or service site, or a brick and mortar business, is not without risk.  But the rewards are so fantastic that they far outweigh any perceived risk.  So in the words of Nike, “Just Do It!”

6 Tips for Blogging Noobs

When you’re first getting started with blogging or thinking about starting a blog, that’s the time to learn how to do it right.  You don’t want to try and reinvent the wheel only to find out there was a much easier way.  The following tips cover a wide range of topics and will help you get your blog going right, avoiding a lot of frustration in the future.

1.  Be the blog. Write about a topic that’s true to who you are.  Don’t try to pretend you’re something you’re not.  Not only will you enjoy what you’re doing more, but your audience will appreciate it.  People can sniff out a fake from a mile away.  There are so called “gurus” out there who will tell you to “fake it till you make it” and to present yourself as already successful even though you’re just starting out.  You might be an expert in your chosen field, but if you’ve just started your business, don’t be afraid to tell it like it is.  You’ll feel better about what you’re writing, and you’ll inspire others who are interested in starting their own businesses.

2.  Back up your blog. This is definitely not a lesson you want to learn the hard way.  From the very beginning, and for as long as you have a blog, duplicate the files on your server in at least one other location.  It’s a good idea to have a duplicate directory on your desktop as well as on a portable device, like a flash drive.  It only takes one loss of your valuable information due to a server crash or human error to wish you had heeded this advice.  Speaking of which…

3.  Find a great hosting provider. Hosting providers are a dime a dozen, and many are priced as such.  In some cases, their service and performance are good, despite their low prices.  In other cases, you’re sacrificing what’s most important for a low price.  So how do you know which provider is best for you?  Research.  Look at online reviews, and ask around.  Ask other bloggers and site owners who they use and trust.  Which brings us to our next tip…

4.  Ask for help and advice from other bloggers. Don’t be bashful or intimidated (or too proud) when it comes to asking for advice.  Put yourself in the shoes of a blogger you admire.  What would you think of someone new in your industry coming to you for advice?  Would you think you’re too important to be bothered?  Hopefully you wouldn’t.  In fact if you became a popular blogger, it wouldn’t be because you had that kind of an attitude.  Of course, you’re not going to get in-depth personal coaching for free, but asking a question is perfectly reasonable.  So get help and advice.  It’s a great way to shorten the learning curve, and you’ll make some great connections in the process.

5. Follow and comment on other blogs. Showing your support for other bloggers by leaving meaningful, thoughtful comments is important for a lot of reasons.  First, you learn a lot by reading other blogs, and the comments that go with them.  Secondly, it’s a great marketing technique.  You get to link to your blog when you leave a comment, so you’ll get some traffic from it.  And third, the bloggers you’re commenting on are more likely to check out your blog and return the favor.  For more information on comment marketing, see our recent post on the topic.

6.  Know your audience, and provide them with outstanding content. More than any other tip or trick you can learn, this is ultimately what will make the difference between a successful blog and one that never takes off.  It’s the same if you own a restaurant, sell software, or write a blog:  If you give people what they want, they keep coming back.  So stay connected with your audience though social media, the comments on your blog and by participating in forums and comments on other blogs.  Listen to what people are saying and address their wants and needs in a way that’s thoughtful, entertaining, and most of all, true to your style.

Of course, above all else, it’s important to just get started.  If you wait until you feel like everything is just right, you’ll never make anything happen.  So get going with your blog and tweak as you go.  And as you do, follow these tips, and you’ll be a blogging superstar before you know it!

How to Import Your Blog to Your Facebook Page

There’s little doubt that social media is important to most businesses’ marketing efforts these days. But the time it takes to maintain your social media presence is sometimes hard to find, so anything you can automate makes life much easier. Facebook is of course right at the top of the list of social media sites you need to keep up with on a regular basis, and it can be automated in several ways. One such way is to feed your blog posts right to your Facebook page. Here’s how:

Step 1: In the “Account” dropdown on the top menu bar, click “Application Settings”. This will bring up a page with a list of your applications.

Step 2: On the resulting page, click “Notes”. Don’t click on “Edit Settings” or “Profile”. Just click the word “Notes”.

Step 3: The following page will bring up your current notes or state that you don’t have any. On the right side of the page is a box where you will click on “Import a blog”.

Steps 4-6: On the next page, enter the URL for your blog’s feed. Then click the checkbox to accept Facebook’s terms (basically saying that you’re entering your own blog), and hit “Start Importing”.

Important: Facebook is often glitchy at this step.  If you get an error, and you’re sure you’ve entered the right URL, keep trying. You might even have to close out of the process and go back in, but eventually it will work. (Hopefully Facebook is working on this.)

Note: If your entire site is a blog (rather than a page on your site), you can enter the primary URL here too. In other words, we could enter “http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogtrepreneur” or just “http://www.blogtrepreneur.com”.

Step 7: If all goes well with the URL you entered, you’ll be taken to a page showing a preview of your blog posts. Don’t worry that they’re not in order here. It’s because they all show as being loaded on the same day. From this point forward, new posts will show up at the top as you post them. If all looks good, click “Confirm Import”.

Once you’ve confirmed your import, you can view the feed in the “My Notes” tab. That’s it! Your blog posts will now update your Notes page in your Facebook account automatically.

If you have a Fan Page

You can easily accomplish the same thing on your Facebook Fan Page. Everything is the same as a regular Facebook page, except the first step. On your settings page, where all your settings are listed, click “Edit” under “Notes”. From there, everything looks the same as above.

If you have a blog (and everyone should) and you have a Facebook page (and everyone should), this will help you combine those tools to improve your marketing, enhance your SEO efforts, and connect with more readers and customers. All in about 5 minutes of your valuable time!

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