Why Do Marketers Lie in their Emails?
June 22, 2008
Coming as I do from a direct response and direct mail background, I’m familiar with the various copy lines used to encourage people to open envelopes.
A teaser line. An offer. A time limited deal. There are numerous ways to increase the open rate of an offline direct mail piece. Some are straightforward, some are compelling, others are plain feeble.
But I don’t recall ever having received a piece of direct mail that had an outright lie printed on the envelope.
And I don’t expect to. Why would a company do that? If the lie is revealed the moment I open the envelope, then the cat is out of the bag. The company can’t be trusted. I would never buy from them.
In my experience, companies in the offline world are smart enough not to put their brand and reputation at risk by over-stepping the mark with their ‘come hither’ copy lines.
But this doesn’t seem to be the case in the online world.
A colleague of mine recently received a B2B email with the subject line:
Fw: Please help - unable to reach your IT person
Cisco CCNA / CCNP Exam Tutorial: Five Debugs You Must Know
June 21, 2008
Cisco CCNA / CCNP Exam Tutorial: Five Debugs You Must Know
by: Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
To pass the BSCI exam and move one step closer to CCNP certification success, you’ve got to know how and when to use debug commands to troubleshoot and verify network operations. While you should never practice debug commands on a production network, it’s important to get some hands-on experience with them and not rely on “router simulators” and books to learn about them.
When it comes to RIP, “debug ip rip” is the primary debug to use. This debug will show you the contents of the routing update packets, and is vital in diagnosing RIP version mismatches and routing update authentication issues.
You know how to use the variance command to configure unequal-cost load-sharing with IGRP, but IGRP has no topology table that will give you the feasible successor metrics you need. With IGRP, you need to use the “debug ip igrp transactions” command to get these vital metrics.
Several factors are considered by OSPF-enabled routers when it comes to forming adjacencies, including hello and dead timer settings. If an adjacency doesn’t form when you think it should, run “debug ip ospf adj”. The reason the adjacency isn’t forming is usually seen quickly with this command’s output.
Selecting a Web Content Management Product
June 20, 2008
So you want to take a look at a real Web Content Management (WCM) product. How do you go about evaluating all the different products and vendors? What should you be looking for in a WCM package? Is it better to build your own, buy or use Open Source?
The best way to answer this question is to compare the products on an apples to apples basis. You can do this objectively by building a product evaluation matrix based upon your specific needs. The first column can list out the functionality categories (e.g. Security). The second column can be the specific needs (e.g. integrates with Active Directory for roles and authorization) under each of the categories. The next columns would be your products, one per column for each product you want to consider. For each product then you would give a rating (1 to 10 scale) on each specific need.
You can then add a column for weighting each specific need, or do this at the topic level. For example, flexible workflow may be much more important to you than your ability to customize the presentation. You can then add some more columns to calculate the weighting against the rating to arrive at a realistic assessment number for each product on each of your organization’s specific needs. Sum these all up per product to arrive at a total product assessment score.
Link Building Services
June 19, 2008
In today scenario when we talk about Search Engine Optimization, we also talk about one of the most important aspect of SEO, which is Link Building. But there are different types, aspects and limitations of Link Building, which would be discussed now under
1.Types of Link Building: I would be explaining this factor in a more understandable manner with giving some examples with Site1, Site2 and Site3.
a)One Way Linking: One Way Linking is a type of Link Building where a site links to another site without getting a link back
Example: Site1 links to Site2 One of the best ways of generating One Way Links is Directory Submissions
You can submit your site in different free directories like Dmoz, Yahoo Directory (Paid Also) and many others
Limitations of One-Way Linking
One of the most desired limitations of One-Way linking is time Consuming process and the confirmation of getting listed in Directories is not fixed
b)Two Way Linking: Mostly known as Reciprocal Linking, this is one of the most effective and fast method of creating quality incoming links towards your site. Two Way Linking is process of exchanging links between 2 sites of similar theme. (As per latest Google Semantic Indexing)
(3) Three Traffic Boosting Strategies for Your Website!
June 18, 2008
Every day, on line marketers are dreaming up new ways to gain targeted traffic to their websites; and, almost every beginning marketer will take any kind of traffic to their website because the sign of traffic helps build confidence in the practice of learning to market products, goods, or services over the Internet. Be it SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to boost the ranking of a website, trading reciprocal links with complimentary websites for link popularity, or compiling opt-in email safe lists for direct marketing, the Internet marketer is sure to succeed when following in the footsteps of those that possess the tools and techniques of money making websites.
Now, when one implements a complete marketing plan that entails all three of these strategies: SEO, Links, and eMail, ‘What must one do to stand above the other marketers and really hit pay dirt?’
In strategy one, SEO, there is not much to do once you’ve optimized your site with the proper description and keyword list entered as Meta tags. You set it up and submit it to as many search engines as possible. You can submit it one-by-one by yourself, multiple submits through a submission site, or use PPC (pay-per-click) inclusion by paying for keywords that consumers may use to find your website. This strategy only takes minimal time and effort to maintain or edit, leaving you time to concentrate on swapping links and email (direct) marketing.
Internet Marketing and Your Old Age
June 18, 2008
Everybody wants to learn how to make money on the Internet. What about saving money for retirement and your future? If you don’t do it, who will? Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, recently confronted the U.S. Congress about the cost of future retirement benefits.
You may recall the 1999 Tom Hanks film, “The Green Mile”. This film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel provides just a couple of comparisons to current economics and Alan Greenspan. Greenspan’s comments before Congress sometimes equal the length of “The Green Mile” (3 hours), but his testimony won’t evoke tears unless you’re a baby boomer, soon to be a Social Security beneficiary.
In “The Green Mile”, Hanks plays a prison guard charged with the care of death row inmates. He treats each “death row” convict with care and Southern civility. In order to avoid stretching parallels to the movie, I will observe only that Mr. Greenspan, born in New York City (March 6, 1926; send him a card) is civil when Congressional Committees question his opinions.
“The Green Mile” ends at the hot seat for convicts. Alan Greenspan’s February 25, 2004 testimony leads to an economic, political, and social hot seat: Social Security benefits. I suggest you read the full text of his testimony found at: http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/testimony/2004/20040225/
Advanced Link Checks
June 17, 2008
Advanced Link Checks
by: James Mahony
You should be able to find several indispensable facts about SEO in the following paragraphs. If there’s at least one fact you didn’t know before, imagine the difference it might make.
View the source of each and every page: is there JavaScript and CSS on the page? Remember that spiders may not index pages that have more than 10k or so of JavaScript or CSS embedded in them. Spiders don’t enjoy getting tangled up in JavaScript. So as a general rule you should avoid putting out prompts and alerts using JavaScript every time that a page loads. Because of this rule, it is also wise to avoid link partners who do so on the pages that they link to you from. If anything looks fishy, it probably is.
How to Double Your Online Sales Without Spending Another Dime on Advertising
June 16, 2008
Learning how to convert visitors to your web site into buyers, is the single most important factor affecting the success of your online business. If you don’t have paying customers, your business will fail.
FACT: “50% of Visitors are LOST because visitors can’t
easily find content” - Gartner Group
FACT: “40% of Repeat Visitors are LOST from negative
experience” - Zona Research
FACT: “85% of Visitors ABANDON a new site due to
poor design” - cPulse
FACT: 70% of people who are ready, willing and able to
buy online - don’t complete the sale.
Just imagine, if you can improve your web site’s conversion rate, you have the potential to increase your sales by over 233%. And you can do it without spending any more on advertising, or bringing any more traffic to your site.
Knowing how to increase your site’s conversion of visitors into buyers can skyrocket your sales with the same exact amount of traffic you have now.
So how do you convert more of the visitors to your site into buyers? One of the most important ways to increase your site’s conversion rate is to improve your site’s copy.
All About Google
June 15, 2008
If you read The Search Engine Showdown, you know Google is my favourite search engine. Why? Google always offers the most results for any given search (they currently have over 8 billion pages indexed), it’s faster than the Audi Quattro we test drove this morning, and 9 times out of ten, in my experience, all the front page results are relevant to my search. In fact, I usually find what I’m looking for within the first few sites listed. I also really respect the fact that two college kids started it (kinda like Abalone Designs!) and that those two college kids seem not to have forgotten where they came from. If you check out the images at Google’s press center (http:// www.google.com/press/images.html) and scroll down to the Everyday Life Inside Google section, you’ll get a feeling that life at Google is fun.
Google is the most used search engine on the web. In May, 2004, 36.8% of all searches on the web were done using Google. Also during that month, Google powered 54% of all searches done on the web (Read more about these figures here).
Web Design for the Professional Magician Part I - Selecting the Perfect Domain Name
June 14, 2008
Selecting the Perfect Domain Name
The first issue I have with magician web sites is the improper use of domain names. Examine the following list of URLs and select the most professional one:
- www.freewebspace.com/users/losers/reallosers/Hire-me.html (Example 1)
- http://www.Kooool-Magic-2day4U2.tv/ (Example 2)
- http://www.WebToastyHosty.com/234asdkjfd/No-hire-me.html (Example 3)
- http://www.TikiMagic.com (Example 4)
Example 1
Unfortunately the first site is too common today. It is too long to be remembered. It is also too long to be accurately typed. Who knows what site your potential visitor may end up loading into their browser. More importantly it is unprofessional. With the low cost to register domain names and host web sites, there is no longer any reason to use this type of web site as a professional magician.
These URLs are usually found on business cards with perforations around the edges. If this applies to you, then please listen to this simple advice. Please spend the small amount of money it takes to look like a professional or don’t pretend that you are one. Your potential clients are not impressed. They will not hire you. This advice applies to both the web sites and the business cards. Let’s review the pros and cons.
www.freewebspace.com/users/losers/reallosers/Hire-me.html
