If You Are Not Growing You Are Failing

Posted on 2009.03.7 by Extreme Information

Last month I asked ‘What Blog Promotion Steps Do You Take?‘. We had some interesting responses and some great ideas. Several of our sites, including this one, seem to have leveled off with very little growth. We loose as many subscribers, customers, or members as we gain. At first glance it seems ok because we’re not losing business, right? I say wrong, without steady growth we are dying.

If all of your marketing efforts are designed to keep your online business from shrinking then you are loosing ground. We can see examples of this in every size online business in every niche. I’ll offer a couple recent big ones…

Right now there is a lot of debate on why myspace.com was just recently passed by facebook.com in traffic. We can discuss why one site suddenly outperforms the other but I would like to use it as an example. The chart below by compete.com clearly shows myspace.com holding steady and maintaining it’s traffic. That’s not good enough, is it? facebook.com is growing while myspace.com flat lines.

Another example is mybloglog.com and blogcatalog.com. I have accounts with both and everyone has their own opinions but we see the same scenario. blogcatalog.com grew 162.5% while mybloglog.com pretty much stayed level with a negative 3.9% in unique visitors. Within just a couple of months that growth shot blogcatalog.com way past mybloglog.com.

The reasons for the traffic shift of those two examples are really irrelevant for most of us. We don’t face the same challenges or have the resources of any of those four giants. What we can gain from are the results. For whatever reason one site is growing and the other isn’t. We need to find the ‘growth button’ for our niche and our business.

Marketing is much more than advertising and selling goods or services. The Marketing Mix (The four Ps) Product, Price, Place, and Promotion covers all of the basics of general marketing. Our marketing mix incorporates market research, pricing, customer service, promotion, terms, branding, exposure, message, distribution, selling and much more. It is all about influencing new consumers to buy our product while convincing current customers to stay with our brand.

We don’t have to have huge marketing budgets for steady growth. It’s not even necessary to have a traditional product. If you are a blogger your website is your product. Optimizing our specific marketing mix for growth along with retention is imperative.

The Extreme Ezine is going to kick it up a notch. How about you? Is your online business growing? Are you gaining unique visitors to your site each month? Are your profits increasing each month. What are you doing to grow your business?

Posted in Old Archives | Tagged Marketing | 44 Comments

Ten Steps To A Responsive Email List

Posted on 2009.02.28 by Extreme Information

How ‘clean‘ is your email list? Do you get a lot of unsubscribes? If you do then good job! A clean and responsive list is the only list worth having – no matter how big it is. You would much rather have a thousand subscribers that read what you send than fifty thousand emails that are never noticed.

An unresponsive list will lower both your open and click rates and even get you into spam reporting troubles. When you are paying a list management company more for a large list and very few even bother opening the email you have essentially failed at list building. You are throwing money away and wasting valuable time.

Inexperienced email marketers may feel the urge to let such a problem slide because the numbers look good but quickly learn a valuable lesson. A clean and active list is the only list worth having. Many marketers boasting their huge list sizes are the ones that didn’t learn. Hint: If a newsletter or ezine’s primary source of income comes from selling email ads be very cautious. If they are selling solo ads then run away as quickly as possible. Oh yeah, that’s going to upset a lot of people – lol. Angry solo-ad selling email marketers feel free to state your case below if you dare. (I’m referring to email lists here, not safelists and such).

Ok, so how do we keep our lists clean?

First, don’t be afraid of unsubscribes and make this step easy and safe for your subscribers. The last thing you want are for subscribers to unsubscribe by hitting the ‘spam’ button or changing their email to a ‘trash’ email.
“Unsubscribe Please – It’s Truly Safe“

Did you know many subscribers are afraid to unsubscribe? It’s true. Look what peewhy said on WebmasterWorld, “I’m convinced that the moment you click on the fatal ‘unsubscribe’ link, they simply sell your email address on to others“.

See: How to Know When Unsubscribing Isn’t Safe[over 950 diggs]

Don’t be in such a hurry - Take your time and built it right. Build a strong and legitimate list. Never ever buy a list.
Free bribes - One effective method of building a list is by offering something free to subscribers. This can be a good practice but it shouldn’t be your only or even primary list building tactic, especially if you plan on selling anything using your list.
Be honest - We see a lot of ‘tricks’ to build a list but we want to be careful. Tricking people to subscribe to your list is non-productive and will hurt your reputation and overall objective. Have you ever signed up for an email course just to learn you are now on every list that marketer has? Have you ever made an online purchase and somehow magically become a newsletter subscriber?
If you want to offer a free ebook, for example, to build your list then just be honest. Let subscribers know they will receive your newsletter or future offers. Better yet, give them a choice from the start. We do run such list building campaigns at the Extreme Ezine but we always include a statement such as this:

* By submitting this form you will be subscribed to the Extreme Ezine. You will receive our newsletter and emails from ExtremeEzine.com including important updates, tips and occasional special offers. Your email address and other information is confidential and will never be shared or sold. You can SAFELY unsubscribe at anytime.
Good content - Here’s something that we see being abused by many mega-marketers or email marketing gurus. Everything you get from them is a offer of theirs or one of their partners or affiliates. Nothing of substance. They are far too busy working on the next big send to worry about offering any real content with substance. That’s fine if that’s what your list is about but if it’s a newsletter your subscribers are expecting more.
Sample - One way to help new subscribers make an informed decision is by showing past issues. Making archives available for potential subscribers is a sure fire way to build a relevant and responsive list.
Respect - Show respect to your subscribers. Don’t assume they are interested in every offer you have or that comes to your inbox. Limit your mailing to once a day, once a week, several times a week – whatever you have established. Don’t send three a day because you ran across some article you like. Save that for your friends and treat your subscribers with a little respect. Your subscribers have other interests and tasks other than your continuos emails.
Assurance - Assure your subscribers by including a simple statement at your opt-in form like:

“Your email is safe with us. We respect your privacy and do not share your information with anyone – even if you unsubscribe!”
Relevancy - Are your E-mail marketing messages relevant to your list? If your newsletter in about woodworking then stick to woodworking related issues. Expanding too far beyond your main niche’s interests are going to hurt your list’s effectiveness.

List Management - This is a big one and most of us figure this out after we have already invested time and money into the wrong solution. By the time we figure it out we find ourselves starting at the beginning again. There are many reasons to use a reputable list management and autoresponder service. You gain instant trust by many because they know the list management company is going to keep you honest.

Important - Compliance – Last but certainly not least is staying in compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act and all laws dealing with email marketing.

The CAN-SPAM Act: Requirements for Commercial Emailers FTC – SPAM – for Business Page

Posted in Old Archives | Tagged E-mail Marketing, Ezine, Ezine Marketing | 96 Comments

Flickr Follows

Posted on 2009.02.15 by Extreme Information

I was working on my personal photo blog recently and I decided to start copying photos over to my Flickr account. I setup a separate set (group) called ‘Passionate Photo‘ hoping to drive a little Flicker traffic to the site. I made sure I had a good title, description and tags. I also added the following terms in the description of each photo:

“Feel free to use this photo for your website or blog as long as the complete watermark stays visible and readable. If you need to crop out the watermark or it becomes unreadable please link to http://passionatephoto.com/ with photo credit.“

I was pleasantly surprised to see that my blog URLs on the main pages does not have the rel="nofollow" tag included. I noticed this when I received a Google Alert and clicked the link. (I use the SeoQuake Firefox plugin that helps me quickly see the do-follow links.)

Flickr.com has a Google PageRank of 09/10 and is rated 32 by Alexa.

Posted in Old Archives | Tagged SEO | 38 Comments

What Blog Promotion Steps Do You Take?

Posted on 2009.02.4 by Extreme Information

This post is all about blog post promotion questions and your answers. The answers will come from your comments. I want to know your immediate routine after posting to your blog. Answer as much or as little as you like. Your answers will help others promote their blog content and together we can increase our blogging success.

What steps do you take after posting to your blog?
How do you promote your blog posts?
Do you submit it to social networking sites? Which ones? (Feel free to link to your profile or page in your comments)
Do you hit the bookmarking sites? Which ones? (Feel free to link to your profile or page in your comments)
Do you start commenting on other blogs? What are you looking for when choosing which blogs? Friends, CommentLuv, Sez-Who, Top Commentators widget, Do-Follow, Page Rank?
Do you Digg it? Tweet it? Stumble It?
Do you shoot your friends an email?
Do you log into a chat room to discuss it?
Do you post it on forums?
Do you send the link to your list?

Ok, I think you get the idea. Please list every and any form of blog post promotion method you use. Don’t worry if it’s already been mentioned, list it again. That will add more weight to the tactic. Explain why you take these steps if you like.

Again, feel free to add a link to your profile pages in your comments.

Posted in Old Archives | Tagged Answers, Blogging | 60 Comments

Entrecard Widget No More

Posted on 2009.02.1 by Extreme Information

I’m not an Entrecard basher but I have removed the Entrecard widget from every blog with the exception of my personal blog. I just couldn’t see any real benefit to it. There may have been a little traffic from Entrecard but what really increased was the amount of visits under one minute (Visits duration 0-30 seconds 57.1 %). I don’t see the benefit in traffic that stays for mere seconds just to click off onto the next site.

To be fair I really wasn’t working the Entrecard system the way it was intended. I didn’t have time to click on the widgets the way it was designed. It was pretty fun at first just from finding all the cool blogs.

I’m not going to say Entrecard is on the same track as BlogRush but clearly they are facing some problems. I had to move their widget to the bottom of the sites a while back because they were causing page load delays. That’s common with any third party content but they are very slow at customer service as well. I submitted a help desk ticket last week and it took five days to get a response.

I have a little over five thousand Entrecard credits with my personal blog and it looks like I may have to say goodbye to those as well. I haven’t been able to log into my Entrecard account all week. I’ll wait another five days to see if my account has been deleted for some reason. No hard feelings, I just don’t see the benefit in displaying their widget right now. I do wish Graham Langdon and Entrecard luck and hope the service continues to grow.

What do you think? Still using Entrecard?

Posted in Old Archives | Tagged Entrecard | 80 Comments

Put Your Business On The Map

Posted on 2009.01.25 by Extreme Information

This morning I woke up and grabbed my latest issue of Website Magazine [see our post The Extreme Ezine Recommends Website Magazine] and found a great tip on adding more free exposure for our business.

The article, Get Listed Locally at GetListed.org features a new site, GetListed.org, that helps small businesses get listed in search engines like Google Maps and Yahoo! Local. It’s a free service and, truthfully, you can do it without GetListed.org but there’s no reason. Like I said, it’s free.

So I made one of my first tasks to include our parent company in the listings. Adding our business to the listings was simple, easy and hopefully will increase our exposure.

The first listing I tackled was Google Maps. It was easy and my business was on the map in about twenty minutes. Our URL is also listed in the details and as far as I can tell it isn’t using the no-follow tag.

I also added our business to the other search engine listings without a problem. They take a little longer for approval.

TIP: Since the Google Map listing is geared more toward a physical address and they allow a small picture (about 90px × 50px) I decided to create a simple graphic showing our website address.

Posted in Old Archives | Tagged Exposure | Leave a comment

Mixing Business And Pleasure (Blogs)

Posted on 2009.01.24 by Extreme Information

It’s been said for years that we shouldn’t mix business and pleasure. That old adage has also been ignored for many years. How many business deals have been made on the golf course or informal functions?

That leads me to wonder about our online blogs. Do we hurt our brand when we publish a personal blog? What about allowing too much personality to show in our posts and comments? If you are like John Chow then I guess the question doesn’t apply because you are your brand but it is something to consider for the rest of us.

My personal views can be considered extreme, arrogant, self-righteous, opinionated and a whole bunch of other adjectives. I used to run a blog ThatsRightISaidIt.com (now off line) and those posts were designed to get people going. Some of that controversial attitude spills into my personal blog posts. I would never apologize for my opinions but I wonder if it’s bad for business. What do you think?

Posted in Old Archives | Tagged Blogging | 19 Comments

Pack Your Feed’s Bags, We’re Moving In With Google

Posted on 2009.01.23 by Extreme Information

Google is requiring all FeedBurner accounts to be transferred to Google Accounts. All of your FeedBurner accounts must be moved by February 28, 2009 or they will cease to work returning a “404 Not Found” response.

There has been a lot of debate about FeedBurner’s fate when Google acquired it back June of 2007 for somewhere around $100 million.

Personally, I think it’s a little early to start throwing stones. I was looking around Feedburner.com trying to find away to backup my subscriber details when I ran across this explanation that may answer many of our concerns:

Will I lose all my subscribers in this process?

“You should not lose any readers of your feed during this transition process. All feeds.feedburner.com URLs will redirect your readers to feeds hosted by Google. Your readers will continue to receive your feeds. However, the reporting and analytics may take up to a week to adjust to internet traffic changes, so the number of subscribers you see in analytics reports may be lower for a short period of time.“

I can certainly understand the concerns of those blogs fortunate enough to service large feeds. A large part of their livelihood depends on the feeds going out. I’m a little nervous myself about the transfer but we really have little choice. I hope it is just a matter of ‘what we see‘ and not a database disaster. I guess time will tell. I’ll probably make the transfer this weekend unless I hear more bad news on the project. What do you think about the transfer? Is it just getting all googled up into another mess or do you think it’s an improvement?

Three Days Of Silence

Posted on 2009.01.15 by Extreme Information

If you have tried to comment on our blog in the past three days I have to apologize. Over the weekend I was working on our theme trying to get CommentLuv and our upgraded version of the WordPress Dream Theme to work together. Somehow I broke the theme causing it ignore comments.

After a couple of days with no comments I thought it was awfully quiet but I was distracted with other things. Thankfully I received a message from our friend Sheryl asking what was going on with the site. Thank you Sheryl. I have changed the theme and will have to decide the best action from here. I like this theme so perhaps we’ll just keep it. What do you think?

Posted in Old Archives | Tagged site design | 24 Comments

100 Dollar Domains – Special Offer

Posted on 2009.01.8 by Extreme Information

Sorry, This offer has expired

I don’t know how long I’ll keep this offer up so don’t wait too long to take advantage of this incredible deal. I have almost a hundred premium domains listed below that I plan to sell. I started to put them on a domain auction site until I decided give our subscribers and site visitors first pick at an incredible discount.

I will promote this offer for just a while and see how it goes. Then I’ll put them up for auction and make a lot more money.

Each domain listed is for sale for $100 USD! The only exception are the few bundles and those are $100 USD for the entire bundle.

I feel the domains will be put to good use by our subscribers and I think it would be cool to watch them develop.

All sales are final once transfer is initiated. All sales are first come first serve.

How To Make Your Purchase

Go to this page to check the comments and then be the first to claim your pick/picks by leaving your own comment. Once verified I will send you to the PayPal button so you can make the purchase. See the complete purchase terms below.

Sorry, This offer has expired

Ads/Advertising Domains: Just $100 Each

AllProAds.com PowerPipe.com 2/17/2009 Great for a text or banner ad service.
AlmostFullPageAds.com GoDaddy.com 12/18/2009
BigDogAds.com PowerPipe.com 1/29/2009
FullOfAds.com Yahoo.com 12/16/2009 Classified ad site?
iFreeAds.com PowerPipe.com 5/14/2009
LoadedWithAds.com GoDaddy.com 12/25/2009 How about a word cloud text ad site?
MasterAdBlaster.com Yahoo.com 05/18/2009

Blogging Domains: Just $100 Each

BlogDownloads.com GoDaddy.com 2/22/2009
ExpriredBlog.com GoDaddy.com 2/19/2009
WordPressClass.com PowerPipe.com 5/3/2010 Caution: WordPress doesn’t want other sites to use the term WordPress

Business/Idea Domains: Just $100 Each

eFileSpace.com PowerPipe.com 2/26/2009 A file sharing or hosting site?
eMailSecretTips.com PowerPipe.com 6/9/2009
eNicheDomains.com PowerPipe.com 2/18/2009
FlagAlert.mobi GoDaddy.com 5/25/2010 with FlagAlerts.mobi Setup a flag edicate service alerting users when to lower their flags.
ForFAQ.com PowerPipe.com 10/5/2009 Product idea: Frequently Asked Question script or service.
GetYourBoard.com PowerPipe.com 6/3/2009 Have an Ad Board?
GoodBusinessTips.com PowerPipe.com 2/17/2009 A blog with daily business tips newsletter?
GuestBookPro.com PowerPipe.com 2/17/2009 Product idea: Guest book script or service.
HotHolidayOffers.com PowerPipe.com 6/9/2009 Product idea: Affiliate search or weekly specials.
MustReadEbooks.com GoDaddy.com 1/8/2010 We used this to add a few thousand new subscribers by offering these classic ebooks. I’ll throw in the site we used as a bonus.
PowerSellingTips.com PowerPipe.com 6/9/2009 Cash in on eBays high rollers.
RatingHotties.com PowerPipe.com 2/17/2009
ReviewSwap.com PowerPipe.com 9/18/2009
SiteSwapping.com PowerPipe.com 10/30/2009
TurnkeyRights.com PowerPipe.com 4/15/2009 Great resale product domain.
VeryNiceGifts.com PowerPipe.com 2/17/2009
WholesaleRights.com PowerPipe.com 2/12/2009 Great resale product domain.

Credit/Money Domains: Just $100 Each

HomeEquityFacts.com GoDaddy.com 1/13/2010
NewCreditHope.com GoDaddy.com 10/4/2009
SubPrimeRepair101.com GoDaddy.com 10/4/2009

Forum/Chat Domains: Just $100 Each

BabbleGab.com PowerPipe.com 6/10/2009
LoveGab.com PowerPipe.com 2/17/2009
WorldWideBackYard.com GoDaddy.com 1/10/2010
xDrunk.com GoDaddy.com 4/14/2009 with exDrunk.com PowerPipe.com 4/20/2009

Gas Price Domains: Just $100 Each

GasConflict.com GoDaddy.com 5/9/2009
GasStruggle.com GoDaddy.com 5/9/2009 INCLUDES: GasStruggle.info GasStruggle.net GasStruggle.org

Joke/Funny Domains: Just $100 Each

CupOfFunny.com PowerPipe.com 2/17/2010
ThatsFunnyStuff.com PowerPipe.com 2/17/2009
WeLoveJokes.com PowerPipe.com 10/31/2009

Niche Domains: Just $100 Each

BestGolfNow.com GoDaddy.com 1/7/2010
CanineTips.com PowerPipe.com 2/16/2009
CatFurniture101.com PowerPipe.com 4/15/2009
DaycareFacts.com PowerPipe.com 4/15/2009
EatHealthyGuide.com PowerPipe.com 4/15/2009
GiftwareCards.com PowerPipe.com 2/12/2009
GoGetDSL.com PowerPipe.com 10/24/2009 The perfect PPA domain!
GoOutFree.com PowerPipe.com 10/24/2009 The perfect PPA domain!
HotMoneyTips.com GoDaddy.com 4/21/2009 Wow, This would make a great finance blog!
HotRednecks.com GoDaddy.com 4/13/2009
Judo4u.com PowerPipe.com 2/17/2009
LawnTipsPlus.com PowerPipe.com 2/11/2009
MetroUsedAuto.com PowerPipe.com 2/9/2009
PublicRecipe.com PowerPipe.com 2/17/2009
SafeDetroit.com PowerPipe.com 10/24/2009
SafeSexFacts.com GoDaddy.com 4/17/2009
ShopMagicKids.com Yahoo.com 06/23/2009 Perfect for an affiliate of Magic Kids USA
USGG.org GoDaddy.com 8/23/2009 United States Government Grants?
YourSpiceGarden.com PowerPipe.com 4/15/2009

Photo/Picture Domains: Just $100 Each

CreativePhotoGuide.com GoDaddy.com 4/27/2009
ImageCourse.com PowerPipe.com 11/22/2009
ImageEcourse.com PowerPipe.com 11/22/2009

Recession Domains: Just $100 Each

PostBailout.com GoDaddy.com 10/4/2009
Recessionsafe.com GoDaddy.com 1/15/2009

Social/Web2.0 Domains: Just $100 Each

LinkSorb.com PowerPipe.com 6/10/2009
LinkZorb.com PowerPipe.com 6/10/2009 Social networking site with link sharing?
SocialChronicle.com PowerPipe.com 4/25/2009
SocialDispatch.com PowerPipe.com 4/25/2009
SocialExaminer.com PowerPipe.com 4/25/2009

Traffic Domains: Just $100 Each pair

Road2Clicks.com PowerPipe.com 5/12/2009 with RoadToClicks.com
Road2Hits.com PowerPipe.com 5/12/2009 with RoadToHits.com
Road2Traffic.com PowerPipe.com 5/12/2009 with RoadToTraffic.com

Unique Domains: Just $100 Each

4ezu.com PowerPipe.com 2/17/2009
4uba.com PowerPipe.com 2/17/2009
AskHowHigh.com PowerPipe.com 2/17/2009
CorpB.com GoDaddy.com 4/11/2009
ez9s.com PowerPipe.com 2/17/2009
FY69.com GoDaddy.com 5/4/2009
iSentYou.com PowerPipe.com 3/17/2009 Great referral domain with subdomains like: Yes.iSentYou.com and TellThem.iSentYou.com
LowLifeSpammer.com GoDaddy.com 12/30/2009
ParkingWhore.com PowerPipe.com 3/26/2010
ThatsRightIsaidIt.com Yahoo.com 06/01/2009
TheyAreAllWrong.com GoDaddy.com 1/1/2010

Purchase Terms:

All sales are final once transfer is initiated.
All sales are first come first serve.
You must agree to accept the sale once transaction has been make. No refunds or charge-backs.
Once payment is complete we well request ‘Who Is’ information so we can update the registration with you as the new owner. Domains registered
by GoDaddy will need a free GoDaddy.com account so we can push the domain to you.
You must be an adult, eighteen or older and legally eligible to own a domain.
Any typos and/or mistakes are the responsibility of the buyer.
Domains are ‘as is’ and include no content, graphics or hosting.
Buyer is responsible for domain registration fees after the sale is complete. We take no responsibility for domains lost due to non-payment.
All payments are to be made via PayPal.
No negotiations or trades please.
Payment must be made within twenty four hours of our email confirmation or you loose the claim.
A bad email, contact information or any failure to answer our confirmation attempts will disqualify your claim/s.

Posted in Old Archives | Tagged Domains | 34 Comments