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BOOMER eZINE
The Online Entrepreneur Magazine |
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BOOMER eZINE
The Online Entrepreneur Magazine |
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Please pass Boomer eZine on to a friend. They will thank you for it.
If
a friend passed this to you,
you can start your own subscription at www.boomer-ezine.com.
Complete the subscription form and you will receive
a free copy
of “How to Choose The Best Web Host for YOUR
Website”. Table of
Contents for this issue..... 2.
Q & A,
Suggestions and Comments 3.
Site
Build It 5.
Differences
in Search Engine Rankings 6.
Text
Email versus HTML Email 7.
Being
First is not Always Best
Happy
New Year! Christmas
has come and gone and so have all of our children, grandchildren and
their pets. Linda’s
mother
also came to visit. It
was a busy and joyous time for all of us.
Here is our family Christmas picture.
Q &
A, Suggestions and Comments If you have anything for this
section or you have a suggestion for a topic for an article,
please use this suggestion
form to give us your suggestions and/or your input.
With your help, we can improve the Boomer eZine.
This link will open a new page.
Close the page to return to Boomer eZine. Site Build
It The two-for-one Site Build It
special has been extended until If you want to make 2008 the new beginning of your retirement, take advantage of this special sale. I only make recommendations for products that I use and know work well. Site Build It is a product that I fully endorse. It will make a positive difference in your life like it has in mine. Our
Retirement Jobs Online.com site generates us a nice cash flow every
month. Our new
site,
the-best-gps.com had a great 2007 Christmas season and
promises to
be even better in 2008. The
income from these sites is a welcome addition to our projected income
from our retirement savings. Site
Build It has a 30 day money back guarantee.
Buy
it and try it. You
will
thank me for recommending it when it is working for you. Here
is your last chance to buy
two SBI sites for the price of one.
We
wrote a brief piece on Stumbleupon (SU) in our last issue and promised
more in this issue. Let’s
start our article with a definition from Wikipedia: “StumbleUpon
is a web browser plugin that allows its users to discover and rate
webpages, photos, videos, and news articles. These webpages are
typically presented when the user -- known within the community as a
Stumbler -- clicks the "Stumble!" button on the browser's
toolbar. StumbleUpon chooses which new webpage to display based on the
user's ratings of previous pages, ratings by his/her friends, and by
the
ratings of users with similar interests. i.e. it is a recommendation
system which uses peer and social networking principles. There is also
one-click blogging built in as well. Users can rate, or choose not to
rate, any webpage with a thumbs up or thumbs down, and clicking the
Stumble button resembles "channel-surfing" the web. Toolbar
versions exist for Firefox, Mozilla Application Suite and Internet
Explorer, but also works with some independent Mozilla-based
browsers.” eBay
bought Stumbleupon of in May 2007 for $75 million USD. You
know that we are very high on Site Build It (SBI) as a web host.
We have copied the following from a page in the HELP
section of
SBI since it is a very complete explanation about Stumbleupon and how
to
use it. This is
just one
example of the help that SBI provides to its user’s.
Do you know of any other web host that provides this
detail help
to make your site successful? The
following is quoted from Site Build It: Using StumbleUpon to Build TrafficStumbleUpon
(SU)
is a social bookmarking site that became popular enough for eBay to
purchase it. There are now (at the time of writing) over 3.7 million
"Stumblers" voting on and reviewing Web pages that they find.
(Editor’s note: On Once
you're a
Stumbler, if you find a Web page you like, you can vote for it (give it
a thumbs up) to add that page to the millions already available through
SU. Or you can "stumble thru" those millions to find pages
that interest you. You do both by adding a toolbar to Internet Explorer
or Firefox if you use Windows, or Firefox if you use a Mac (SU doesn't
work with Safari or IE on a Mac). SU
isn't just a
social bookmarking site, though. It's also a simple social networking
site. You create a page that lists your interests. The Web pages you
like in SU are added to a "blog" that anyone can view. And on
SU, if you like the pages that other Stumblers submit, you can become
friends with them. Then you'll always be notified when they submit new
pages, and they'll learn about yours. So
where is the
value for you in using StumbleUpon? Well, once you have the SU toolbar
installed in your browser, you can navigate to one of your own site's
pages and click on the "I like it!" thumbs up icon to add it
to the SU database.
Your
page is added
to the growing list of sites and pages available for all Stumblers to
view. And since the average number of pages viewed on a site found
through SU is 1.8, most people will look at least one more page on your
site. If they really like what they see, they may view more pages or
even become a customer. SU
has a feature
that makes it more likely that people will find your pages. All
Stumblers can select the topics they're interested in. If your pages
fall under one of those topics, Stumblers with that interest will see
your page sooner rather than later. Once
they land on
your page, they have the option of giving it the thumbs up, which helps
SU provide other pages similar to yours from its database (a thumbs
down
means they don't want to see more pages like that one). After
giving it
the thumbs up, they also have the option to write a review about your
page. Reviews are less common than votes for any page, so any review
your page or site receives carries weight with other Stumblers. If
others like
your page(s), you'll gain links to your site. Your link will appear on
the "blog" for each person who gave your page a thumbs up.
However, all links have the rel="nofollow"
attribute, so they won't help you gain Google PageRank. So
focus on using
SU for the traffic you'll receive and the relationships you'll build,
rather than for the links back to your site. Some
SBIers have
been having success with SU. See this forum thread... http://forums.sitesell.com/viewtopic.php?p=328447#328447 Editor’s
Note: You cannot
read the
this from the forum unless
you are a Site Build It affiliate or a Site Build It owner.
Joining the SBI affiliate program is free. Follow this link
to
join the Site
Build It 5 Pillar Affiliate Program. The link will
open a new
window. To return back here, close the window once you have
joined. Getting
Started
Before
you can add
the toolbar to your browser, you need to set up an account. This
process
is a bit confusing, so you'll have to pay attention to the details. Safari
users: Switch over to Firefox now to
complete the
registration process below. Go
to http://www.stumbleupon.com
and click on the large orange "Join StumbleUpon Today" button.
·
Choose
a username (letters and numbers only). Click on the Check
availability text link to see if your
username is
available. You'll see a red alert if the one you want is already taken.
If it's available, you'll see a small green circle with a checkmark.
On
the next page,
you can import your e-mail address list to see if anyone you know
already uses SU. Registration
also
logs you in automatically. Before
you do anything else, check your e-mail. SU
should have
sent you a message containing your username and system-generated
password. Without that password, you won't be able to get back into SU. Now
it's time to
install your browser's toolbar. In
that same
e-mail message, there's a link to get your toolbar. Click on the green
button (or the text link) to go to the installation page for your
default browser (IE or Firefox). (Safari users: if clicked URLs open
automatically in Safari, you'll have to Control-click to copy the link
in the e-mail, then paste it into Firefox). Install
the
toolbar and you're ready to start stumbling! The
toolbar has
one very nice feature: Log Out and Log In. The SU site has no log out
function unless you return to the Login page (http://www.stumbleupon.com/login.php)
and log out from there. To
avoid all that
extra work, you can either remain logged in, or log out using the
toolbar. If you log out, click on "Start Stumbling..." or
"Sign In" to log in again.
Enter
your
password and the toolbar expands.
You
can also
change your password using the toolbar. That will make it a bit easier
to log in every time. Stumbling
Now
that you have
your account and your toolbar is installed, it's time to find some
sites
you like. Do this before you add your own sites. Not only will you
appear less likely to be spamming SU; you'll get a sense of how the
system works. After
logging in,
scroll down the right side of the page, to Manage
your interests. Click on the link to see a
large list of
categories and subcategories. Choose those that interest you. For
example, if one of your interests is sewing or quilting, you'd click on
Hobbies, then add a check beside Sewing/Quilting. Once
you've made
your selections, click on the Save
Preferences button. You can always add more
later. You're
now ready
to Click
on the word
"Stumble!" and SU will show you a page related to one of your
topics. If you like it, click on the "thumbs up" icon. If you
don't like it, click on "thumbs down." Or don't choose. Click
on Stumble again to see the next page that fits one of your topics. Once
you have the
hang of it, instead of clicking on "Stumble," go to a page on
your own site. Click on the "thumbs up" icon and add the page
to the SU database. (If your site has been around for a while, one or
more of your pages may have already been added by another Stumbler.)
Now
that the page is in the database, other Stumblers with the same
interest
as you will eventually see your page. And a potential customer is born! For
more
information on StumbleUpon, see the official SU guide at... http://www.stumbleupon.com/guide.html There,
that is a pretty complete explanation about SU.
This is the detailed help that you get from SBI. If
you remember the article from last month about SU, it directed 93
visitors to Retirement Jobs Online.com (RJO) in November.
That traffic came from an experiment that a friend
did with SU
and the majority of it came in a 24 hour period after he posted a
rating
for RJO on SU. This
month (December 2007), SU has sent zero visitors to RJO so to really
make SU work, you need to stay active with it which I have not done due
to the rush of the Christmas season. To
learn the basics about SU go to the About page on SU at http://www.stumbleupon.com/about.html We
welcome comments about your experiences with SU.
Please send us your comments on it using our suggestion
form. Differences
in Search Engine Rankings One
of the most frustrating things about managing a website on the Net is
dealing with the whims of the search engines (SE’s).
If you want free traffic, you must learn to deal
with them. We
have worked hard with our Retirement Jobs Online.com (RJO) website and
with SBI’s guidance, we are in a solid number two position on Google
for the keyword “retirement jobs”.
As of this writing, here are the rankings for RJO by
the major
SE’s:
Why
is RJO not listed on Yahoo? We
have a saying in We
have followed all the suggestions about Yahoo from SBI and from other
sources on the Net. We
have
submitted the site to Yahoo. We
have a standard site map on RJO to help the SE’s.
So you can see what a site map looks like, the RJO
site map is
located at: http://www.retirement-jobs-online.com/gAe7FNB6.xml Another
plug for SBI, we do not have to maintain this site map.
SBI does it automatically and submits it to the SE’s
for each new page or each time a page is updated. Some
of the sites that are rated high on Yahoo for the keyword “retirement
jobs” are not rated high on Google or the other SE’s. Yahoo
has paid submission features. You
can submit your site to the Yahoo
Directory Submit Program for a $299 annual recurring fee. Another
option to make certain that your site has been reviewed by Yahoo for
inclusion in the search engine results is Search
Submit which costs $49 per URL per year.
I signed up the retirement-jobs-online.com site for
Search Submit
on December 11 to see if a little money would make any difference in
the
results position. So
far, it
has not. Here
are the top 10 Yahoo results for “retirement jobs”. retirementjobs.com
(2 listings) newretirement.com
(2 listings) – Directory Listing retiredbrains.com pppretirementplans.com goarmy.com
– Directory Listing retirementliving.com
(2 listings) – Directory Listing hotjobs.yahoo.com/retirement
– Yahoo commercial
site It
is interesting that newretirement.com has paid the $299 for a directory
listing and has two search results listings.
Also, goarmy.com and retirementliving.com have
directory
listings. The theme
of these
two sites does not really seem to focus on retirement jobs. The
pppretirementplans.com website is an SBI website run by a friendly
competitor, Dave Wright, who does a great job with his site.
He deserves to be listed in the top 10. I
will wait to see if our RJO website shows up on Yahoo any time soon.
Even though Yahoo says that listing in the Yahoo
Directory has no
bearing on the search results on Yahoo Search, I find it interesting
that Yahoo is so far out of step with the three other search engines
and
Yahoo Directory listed sites are ranked in the top 10. I
tried an experiment this month with HTML email that told me to stick
with text email in the future. Most
of you should have received a mid-month email about the “two for
one” sale on Site build It and about Amazon gift cards.
This email was sent in HTML format.
HTML has the advantage of being able to contain
pictures, bold
text, variable sized text, and overall, make the email much more
attractive. We
would really
like to be able to “dress up” the emails that we send each month
with information about the newest issue of Boomer eZine. The
downside to this is the red flag that an HTML email raises with the
SPAM
filters. We
use Aweber.com to manage our mailing lists and handle all our mailings
for Boomer eZine. It
is a
great autoresponder and we highly recommend it. As
an aside, Site Build It has a mailing list manager and autoresponder
built in as part of the annual fee. However, we started Boomer eZine on
Aweber.com before I discovered SBI so we have left our mailing list on
Aweber.com. Aweber.com
has a feature that checks your email message for items that will
trigger
SPAM filters. It
will give
you a numerical score of its evaluation as shown in this picture of the
score for the experimental email.
The
normal score that the monthly text format emails receive is 0.5 so this
is higher than the text format, but supposedly if the score is below
5.0, you are still OK. Aweber
has another feature that allows you to send your email to your own
email
address to test and view your message.
I sent this to myself and my own email filter
flagged it as SPAM
with a score of 2.1. Another
advantage of HTML format on Aweber is that Aweber will tell me how many
of the HTML emails were opened which is not available with text format.
The open percentage of this email was 26.7%.
Aweber also tells you if there were any clicks on
the links in
the message. This
figure was
8.0%. The
HTML format email is much more difficult to compose than the text
format. The
placement of the
graphics, the validation of the links, the text formatting, etc. all
add
up to much more work than a text format email. Bottom
line… This is the
reason
that we normally send the notice of the latest issue of Boomer eZine in
text format. ·
It
flies below the radar of the SPAM filters. ·
It
is easier to compose. ·
It
draws our readers to the Boomer eZine website where
the Boomer eZine is presented in HTML format. Think
hard about sending emails in HTML format.
It has its pros and cons.
You
will have to decide for yourself if it is worth the effort and the
challenges of getting past the SPAM filters. For more information about Aweber.com. Being
First is not Always Best That sounds
contradictory! First is always best.
Right? Well, my
experience with pay per click advertising says that is not necessarily
true. Let’s discuss
a case
study from my experience with MSN/Live search. Here is a picture
of the Live search results for a TomTom One GPS unit.
My ad is third in the first three ads which appear
in the light
gray box at the top of the page. You
would think that this would be a great location.
I found that this
very prominent location received many clicks from people surfing the
net
who were not really interested in purchasing a TomTom.
Each of these idle clicks cost me about $.50 USD. When I realized that the position was a problem, I lowered the bid price per click on 12/19 which moved the ad to the right column of Sponsored Sites.
I think positions 4 or 5 are
better positions.
The ad does
not get as
many clicks, but the reader who takes the time to read down to the
fourth or fifth ad is a serious buyer and not just a “clicker”.
Your net profit should be better since you should
pay a lower
price to get your sales. I lost money on
the TomTom campaign. I
sold
six TomTom One units for a commission of $44.48.
I paid AdCenter $131.35 for the keywords. I
learned an expensive lesson. Of the six units
sold, two were sold before 12/19 when I changed the position and four
were sold on or after that date. Fewer
clicks but more sales by serious shoppers. Now let’s look
at the campaign for the Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS.
This one was much more successful.
I sold 14 units for a $170.44 commission and paid
AdCenter $27.14.
The key difference was the position of the ad. Here is a picture
of the clicks and impressions by date in December 2007.
Notice the
upswing after Christmas. I
believe people were home and had time to get on the Net.
Also, some people could have been shopping to spend
the money
they were given at Christmas or to use a gift card. Here is the
telling graph. This
shows
the position versus the click through rate.
The position for this ad was in the 7 – 9 range most
of the
time.
If you are
running PPC campaigns, be aware that the number one position is not
always the best place to be. It
can cost you idle clicks without conversions. My Christmas
season was a good one and overall I made money with my campaigns.
I would have made more if I had not let the TomTom
campaign get
away from me. Lesson
learned. Linda and I
join to wish you and yours a very Happy New Year. That wraps up
this issue. Until
next
month, stay tuned. John and http://www.entrepreneur-ezine.com (http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Amazon_Page.htm)
Administrative
Details ……………. If you are changing email addresses in the future, put a note on your calendar to send us a blank email after you have changed your address. Send the blank email to: boomerezine001@aweber.com. We want you to remain a subscriber to our newsletter! It
is OK to go ahead and join our
subscriber list with more than one email address.
You never know when an
email will be blocked these days. The SPAM filters are
getting tighter and
tighter and are blocking many legitimate emails. |
Copyright 2009 John Howe, Inc.
Please visit the other Boomer sites
| www.frugal-senior.com | www.retirement-jobs-online.com |
| www.best-retirement-calculators.com | www.the-best-GPS.com |
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