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Table of Contents for this issue.....
1.
Authors
Comments
2.
Q & A,
Suggestions and Comments
3.
You
Really Don’t Want a Website
4.
More
About eBay Classifieds
5.
A
Pleasant Surprise
Author's
Comments
Linda
is still tending to her mother who is recovering from a knee operation.
We had a long visit on the phone tonight, and I can hardly wait
for her to get home.
This
house is lonely with just Boo, our black cat, to keep me company.
I have a kennel of dogs in the back yard, but they are not inside
pets to keep me company.
Linda
is supposed to be home on Tuesday, and I am ready to see her smile again.
Q & A,
Suggestions and Comments
If you have anything for this
section or you have a suggestion for a topic for an article,
please send us an email with your suggestions or your input.
With your help, we can improve the Boomer Video eZine.
You Really
Don
’t
Want a Website
As
much as I have discussed websites in the past, I bet you never thought
you would ever see these words come from my fingers into print.
Let me tell you a
story.
A man walked into
a hardware store and asked for a ¼ inch drill bit.
Did the man really want a drill bit?
No,
what he really wanted was a ¼ inch hole drilled in something.
If he could have found someone with a drill and a ¼ inch bit to
drill the hole for him, he would not have gone to the hardware store.
Now let’s shift
our reference to the Internet.
When
someone is searching for a web host so he/she can build a website, what
that person really wants is to start an online business.
The website is merely the necessary medium to reach customers on
the Internet.
When
we get on the Net, we automatically switch into “geek” mode and
think we have to become technical.
We tend to lose site of the fact that the reason we are creating
a website is to make MONEY ($$$). That is called business.
We should
approach building a website from the standpoint that we want to spend as
little time with the technical as we can and as much time in the
business as we can. The
technical is a means to an end. The
end is to run a good business and make money.
I will give you
three guesses (the first two guesses don’t count) which web host I
recommend for helping you minimize your technical time and allowing you
to run your business.
Site
Build It (SBI) is the answer to minimizing your technical burden.
It automatically performs many of the mundane technical tasks
necessary to manage a great website.
It helps the site rise in the search engine ratings.
And it keeps the site at the top of its keyword niche.
Don
’t
take my word for it. Do your
own research and see for yourself.
To get you
started right, I am sending you to my other site, The
Best Web Host.com where I have SBI
Television set up. There
you can watch a three minute video by Ken Evoy, President of Site Sell,
Inc. Ken is the genius who
invented SBI.
When you get
there, click on the TV screen to start the video.
Watch
SBI Television now.
Just remember to
come back here when you are finished.
More
About eBAy
As you
know from prior issues, I have been experimenting with eBay classified
ads for the last month.
On June
24, I set up a classified ad for 30 days to attract traffic to Boomer
eZine and to get subscribers for the eZine.
This is what the ad summary looks like.
I
selected the following options and prices.
This ad
was a waste of money. I did
not set up a hit counter on the site so I do not know how many views it
received. In 27 days, I
received two new subscribers. To
you who signed up, I thank you for doing so.
I
really wanted to use the Pro Pack ad package which included Featured
Plus, but eBay requires that you have 10 positive feedbacks before you
can use this feature.
When I
received the required feedback, I set up an ad using the Pro Pack
package. I remembered to set
up the hit counter. I
selected the hit counter Hidden feature.
On the auction detail page, the text shows “Thanks for
Looking” where the counter normally goes.
Hit
counters are something to consider when you set up an eBay auction.
If you think you will get good traffic to the page, you might
want to set up a counter that the public can see.
If your traffic will be light, I would make it hidden.
My personal feeling when I see an auction that has a very low hit
count, is it is a bad item since not many people looked at it.
You may feel differently so make you own decision.
Here is
where you set up the hit counter.
When you
view the page from your “My eBay” section, you can see the visits
that page has had. See the picture below.
Also,
I wrote last week about finding the link to click to revise an ad.
Well, notice the links in the upper left.
You can also click there to revise your ad.
The
resulting ad
looks like this.
The
pricing for the ad is:
You
might say this is a lot of money for an ad.
Yes it is, but it is $1.35 per day.
It gets much better exposure than the $16.80 ad.
And it is getting results.
The ad
started on July 18. I have
had four new subscribers (Thank you).
I have had 32 page views (I might have caused some of those
myself). This gives me a one
in eight conversion ratio or 12.5%.
This is a phenomenal ratio.
If I compute the cost per subscriber, the first ad was $8.40 per
subscriber. So far, the new
ad has been $10.10 per subscriber, but the ad has 26 days more to go.
I predict that it will attract many more subscribers before it
terminates and the cost per subscriber will be much lower than the first
ad.
I
misunderstood how the Featured Plus option works.
I thought I would get top position on any search for the keywords
“hosting” or “web hosting”.
When I did not see my ad on eBay every time I searched, I reread
the fine print.
Here is
what eBay says:
How Featured Plus! works in Search:
Search results can be organized by the listing end date, price, or other
options. There are 50 results per page. Your Featured Plus! item will
display at the top of the
page it naturally falls on in the search results list.
To make the listing come to the
top, I had to search on the keywords and then sort by "Price:
lowest first”. Since the
price on the classified ad is $.01, it sorts to the top. I hope
others are like I am. I usually sort a search lowest price first
to see the low end price for the search group.
I wish I could claim genius on
this, but it was due to the fact that I started trying to put zero cost
in the ad. eBay would not
allow it so I put in $.01.
I will let this ad run for 30 days
and see how many new subscribers it attracts.
I will report on this experiment in
future issues.
A
Pleasant Surprise
This last week I
received an email from the man who is the Affiliate Manager for Mike Enos'
PlatinumPowerSeller.com site. Anyone
who has been around eBay knows that Mike is one of the heavyweights in
the eBay world.
The
email asked me if I would be interested in participating in a new
membership site that Mike is building called www.auctionTNT.com.
The man asked if I would be interested in contributing a free
bonus item to the site.
He
found my name from my participation with
Jim Cockrum
on his www.silent-team.com
site.
I
was flattered to be asked, and I jumped at the opportunity.
I will donate my recent ebook “How to Choose The Best Web Host
for YOUR Website” as a bonus. This
produces two results from the donation. First,
the person must subscribe to Boomer eZine to download the book.
This will drive traffic to Boomer eZine.
Second, the book contains affiliate links to web hosts and
especially to Site Build It so there is the potential for earning
commissions from the book.
How
did the affiliate manager find me?
As
I said earlier, he saw my bonus on
Jim Cockrum
’s site
and contacted me. How did my
bonus get on Jim’s site? I
met Jim at a weekend seminar that he and
Tim Knox
taught. Jim
is a nice, sincere person. We
struck it off well, and he mentored me on some early projects.
He became a subscriber to Boomer eZine and liked its content.
When
Jim started his Silent Team site, he asked me to participate which I
did.
The
Internet is like any other business.
It involves networking with people.
You know the old saying, “It is not what you know.
It is who you know”. This
saying applies on the Net just like it does in the offline world.
I
encourage you to attend a class where you can personally meet some of
the major movers on the Net. Pick
a class that does not have a horde of thousands in the audience so you
can have personal interaction with the instructors.
Be genuine and get to get to know them.
If they offer personal mentoring, seriously consider paying the
price. You will learn a lot
and you will gain a mentor who can help you in the future.
That wraps up our
issue for this week. Until
next week, stay tuned.
John and
Linda Howe
www.boomer-ezine.com
http://www.entrepreneur-ezine.com
www.boomer-guru.com
www.boomer-entrepreneur.com
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