Up Selling Your Products And Services For More Cash!

Many Internet businesses have sometimes overlooked the obvious profit strategies within their business. I know I have and only the other day was I reminded by Brendan Nichols to include up sells on my website before a customer finalises their order. If you want to increase your profits without having to look for new customers add this one strategy correctly and I can guarantee you that you will have more money in your bank at the end of the month.

I Don’t Know What Up Selling Is..

To define what up selling is, lets have a look at the definition from Wikipedia:

Up-selling usually involves marketing more profitable services or products, but up-selling can also be simply exposing the customer to other options he or she may not have considered previously. Up-selling can imply selling something additional, or selling something that is more profitable or otherwise preferable for the seller instead of the original sale.

In the context of an Internet business we can apply up selling on your website just before a customer finalises an order or at any thank you page. It is quite simple to do and sometimes very easy to overlook and it provides the opportunity to increase your profits with minimal or almost no effort.

How To Use An Upsell In Your Business?

Let’s start with an example to understand where up selling can fit into your Internet business. I am sure you have heard of McDonalds? Next time you buy a burger from them pay attention to how the 15 year old asks you for an up sell. Here is what happens. You order a Big Mac, French Fries and a drink, and it gets processed, then the cashier asks you, “Would you like to upgrade your drink and French Fries to a large for an extra fifty cents?”. You don’t hesitate and answer yes, since it’s only an extra fifty cents and you get more of what you wanted. Bargain isn’t it? Well, McDonalds already had the sale and by adding one little thing into their marketing they immediately increase their profits. This is up selling at McDonalds.

How can we apply up selling to your Internet business and increase your profits? Try it on your order pages or thank you pages. For example, “Buy this product, and get one year free technical support. Check this box to get lifetime support for an additional $29.95.” This allows you the opportunity to make almost an extra $30 from each sale. It is very easy to add to your processes and can make a huge difference on your profits. It is even easier once it is automated which is made possible from an Internet business.

Another way to increase your profits with up selling is to include sales sheets with the packaging of your physical products. Include an offer for free bonuses, which will drive traffic back to your website to take up the offer. Once they are on your website you can offer them one-time offers or repeat the up sell process again on other items. See how easy it is to include this simple strategy?

It’s Easy Cash, Why Don’t More Internet Businesses Use It?

The reason is that most business owners are either not aware of this strategy or have put it off and chased after other opportunities to look for new customers. If you have a database of customers who are not currently purchasing from you at least once a year, then you have an excellent opportunity to up sell your products and services. Take action and don’t let procrastination overtake you. This one strategy can can be your most profitable marketing tool for your business.

On the flip side if you already have implemented this into your Internet business, I commend you! If you want to read other strategies available check out my series on Spreading The Word: Turbocharge Your Traffic.

Tyrone Shum
Up Selling For Profit

The Importance Of A Sitemap For Your Internet Business

Over the last few days I have been helping my clients submit their sitemaps to Google, Yahoo and MSN to inform search engines to crawl through their websites. What I have noticed is that sitemap submission is a much faster way for websites to be found in search engines rather than using the search engine submission tool provided. After speaking to a few people and my clients I have noticed that people are not aware of this process because it is not shared. I personally think that it does help and is a must do for any Internet business as part of their search engine optimisation strategy.

What Is A Sitemap?

I want to share with you the two types of Sitemaps. For the more technical terminology and detailed definition please read Google’s About Sitemap.

1. Sitemap For Your Website
   This is what Wikipedia defines the term Sitemap as:

   A site map (or sitemap) is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for web design, or a web page that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site.

   Additionally having a sitemap for your website will help any visitor browse through all sections at just one page, rather than clicking through to different parts of the website. You can see my sitemap and get an idea of what it looks like.

2. Sitemap For Search Engines
   There is a term that web developers refer to when creating sitemaps and it is called XML Sitemaps. Google introduced this term and it helps web developers publish lists of links from across their sites. Basically it is a simple version for search engines to use when they are crawling through any website. Currently Google, MSN, Yahoo and Ask now jointly support this. You can view my Sitemap XML to see how it looks like. Since MSN, Yahoo, Ask, and Google use the XML Sitemap, it is wise to have one on your website in your parent directory. Though, the search engines do not guarantee all links will be crawled, and being crawled does not guarantee being indexed, it is still the best insurance for getting a search engine to find your website. Also, XML sitemaps have replaced the older method of “submitting to search engines” by filling out a form on the search engine’s submission page. Most web developers submit a sitemap directly, or wait for search engines to find it.

The Importance Of A Sitemap

Easy Navigation
A sitemap literally acts as a map of your site. If your visitors browses your site and gets lost between the thousands of pages on your site, they can always refer to your sitemap to see where they are, and navigate through your pages with the utmost ease.

Having A Consistent Site Theme
When your visitors load up your sitemap, they will get the gist of your site within a very short amount of time. There is no need to get the “big picture” of your site by reading through each page, and by doing that you will be saving your visitors’ time.

Search Engine Optimisation
When you create a sitemap, you are actually creating a single page which contains links to every single page on your site. Imagine what happens when search engine robots hit this page — they will follow the links on the sitemap and naturally every single page of your site gets indexed by search engines! It is also for this purpose that a link to the sitemap has to be placed prominently on the front page of your website.

Organisation And Relevance
A sitemap enables you to have a complete bird’s eye view of your site structure, and whenever you need to add new content or new sections, you will be able to take the existing hierarchy into consideration just by glancing at the sitemap. As a result, you will have a perfectly organised site with everything sorted according to their relevance.

This is why it is most important to implement a sitemap for website projects with a considerable size. Through this way, you will be able to keep your website easily accessible and neatly organised for everyone who uses your website.

For further information about sitemaps, visit sitemap.org

Tyrone Shum
Sitemapping My Websites

Building A Successful Ecommerce Business: Creating Content – Part 2

If you have not read part 1 of this series on how to find a profitable niche market for your ecommerce business, I would suggest starting at the beginning and reading it first.

In this post, I am going to explain to you why you need content and how it has a significant impact on your ecommerce business. Have you heard the term “content is the king”? If you have, then you will already know the significance it has on any website. This is what Wikipedia describes it as:

The phrase can be interpreted to mean that – without original and desirable content, or consideration for the rights and commercial interests of content creators – any media venture is likely to fail through lack of appealing content, regardless of other design factors.

Content can mean any creative work, such as text, graphics, images or video.

“Content is King” is a current meme when organizing or building a website. Text content is particularly important for search engine placement. Without original text content, most search engines will be unable to match search terms to the content of a site.

Why Do You Need Powerful Content For Your Ecommerce Business?

The Internet is a huge web of words linked to each other in an amazing way that allows visitors to search information that they require. To sell your products or services online you need powerful content that will be easily found by consumers. Each time a consumer searches for a product or service, they want to find a reliable website that will provide the relevant information and accessibility. The different types of powerful content that can be provided are:

• A report describing the product’s or service’s benefits and advantages
• An article or review giving a biased opinion of the product or service
• A podcast of an interview done with an industry expert about the product or services.

These are some of the ways you can create powerful content that will attract a consumer to our website. This is why it is crucial to provide good quality content.

Leveraging Blogs On Ecommerce Websites

Since the introduction of blogs, the search engines have leaned towards indexing their content more frequently than ecommerce websites. Most blogs are updated daily and provide unique content for search engines, which makes it very competitive to achieve higher rankings. Therefore for your website to stand out amongst the crowd, you should be integrating a blog within your ecommerce business and writing unique content. If you would like find out how to integrate a blog with your website, read: e-Commerce With Integrated Blog (e-Blogging).

You can have unique content on your blog by writing to:

• inform consumers about new products you are reviewing
• what you are adding to your range in the near future
• interviews you conduct with industry experts
• new reports on how to use your products and services
• launch dates for your products and services
• what ideas and opinions you have certain products and services

These are just some of the ways you can utilise a blog. The beautiful thing about having a blog integrated in your ecommerce business is that search engines will love indexing your content and will move your website’s ranking higher much quicker.

In the next post of this 5 part series I will show you the different methods to write unique and fresh quality content that will drive lots of traffic to your ecommerce business.

Tyrone Shum
Creating Powerful Content

Backlinking Your Internet Business To Success

Recently, one of my readers commented and asked me to write an article about backlinks. Rather than just give you a definition of what backlinks are, I wanted to share with you how to use backlinks to promote your Internet business and how it will benefit you over the long-term. Additionally backlinking is another SEO strategy you can add to your list of activities and it does require consistent effort. If you can outsource this to someone, I would recommend it and you can focus on the dollar productive activities.

What Are Backlinks?
Wikipedia defines backlinks as:

“Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page. In the search engine optimization (SEO) world, the number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page (though other measures, such as PageRank, are likely to be more important). Outside of SEO, the backlinks of a webpage may be of significant personal, cultural or semantic interest: they indicate who is paying attention to that page.”

Simply it is a link from another website linking back to your website with a keyword.

How Does Backlinking Help Your Internet Business?
Backlinking and SEO go hand in hand when it comes to promoting your Internet business. The more backlinks you have to your website, the higher chances your website will be displayed on the first page of a search engine (such as Google). An important thing to note is how you go about getting quality backlinks. It is possible to get a lot of backlinks to your website, but if it is not relevant then your efforts are being wasted. Therefore, when getting a quality backlink to your website, make sure the word or phrase is relevant to the link. Let me give you an example, if you have a website based on nutrition and you write an article on women’s health, make sure that your linking keywords are “women’s health” and not nutrition. Google awards you for relevant phrases linked to relevant websites by ranking you higher.

Where Can I Find Out How Many Backlinks My Site Has?
All search engines offer a backlink look-up tool that you use to find out how many backlinks your website has. All you have to do is type in link:www.yourdomain.com into the search form. Just replace yourdomain with the URL of your website or webpage.

How Do You Get MORE Backlinks To Your Internet Business?
There are many ways to get more backlinks and it comes down to how much time and effort you are willing to put in to building them. I would allocate no more than an hour each day on these activities as it is a long-term process and will not happen immediately. These are just some of the methods I currently use build backlinks to Internet Business Path:

• Submitting your link/site to article and blog directories
• Do link exchanges with other sites and blogs
• Comment on blogs related to your topic or industry (Remember to contribute to the conversation and not just one line comments that will SPAM the blog)
• Sending a press release with your website link into publicity channels
• Post in forums (make sure to include your signature with a link to your website)
• Write guest articles or reviews for people and include your website link
• Build more websites and link them altogether

If you consistently apply all the methods above, you will build up a huge network of backlinks. Remember to contribute your thoughts and not to simply post a one line comment with a website link. You will not only build your reputation but also link to lots of new people online.

Tyrone Shum
Hunting for more backlinks

Social Bookmarking Will Help Grow Your Internet Business

Social bookmarking is a very powerful strategy to help drive free traffic to your website, particularly when your Internet business is brand new or has been laying dormant for quite sometime. Combine this strategy with other traffic generation tactic discussed about at Spreading The Word: Turbocharge Your Traffic and this will definitely boost your website on search engines.

What Is Social Bookmarking?
Rather than redefine this term, here is a definition taken directly from Wikipedia:

“Social bookmarking is a way for Internet users to store, organize, share and search bookmarks of web pages. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share.

These bookmarks are usually public, but depending on the service’s features, may be saved privately, shared only with specific people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, via a search engine, or even randomly.”

How You Can Use Social Bookmarking To Get More Free Traffic?
For your website to rank top positions on search engines you need a high amount of incoming links with the combination of keywords. Social bookmarking can help you achieve more incoming links very easily. When you submit to multiple social bookmarking sites it will automatically create incoming links to your website. This give you more results of your website on search engines.

Let’s take for example, I submit the following post Farming Your Crop Of Clients to 20 social bookmarking sites. This post can show up as 20 “unique” results on the search engines. Therefore, instead ranking only once on a search engine, it can be ranked 20 times. As you can see, it is 20 times more effective and gives you a higher chance for your website to be found.

I previously mentioned for social bookmarking to work properly, the combination of incoming links and keywords are needed. It boils down to selecting the proper keywords that are targeted to your article or product. The more targeted your keyword phrases are the higher chances that your website will be ranked higher. For example, if you have a highly competitive product like the “Apple iPod”, then you will need choose more specific keywords including model numbers and specifications like the “iPod Nano 4GB Black”. This way it will help you capture those keywords and help you rank higher.

Use SocialMarker.com To Leverage Your Social Bookmarking Promotions
So how do submit to 20+ social bookmarking sites as I mentioned above? It’s easier than you think, and you won’t have to sit there clicking through hundreds of social bookmarking sites as well. There is a website called SocialMarker.com which will help you submit to over 20 social bookmarking sites. When you visit this site, you will see a list of the top Social Bookmarking sites available such as propeller.com, technorati.com, twitter.com, and so forth.

The idea is to submit an article or blog post you wish to rank high in the search engines to as many of the social bookmarking sites as possible. If you want your whole website to rank well then you will need to submit as many articles or posts to the social bookmarking sites.

Social Bookmarking “How To Tips”
Search engines are very intelligent to pick up on automated promotions and we need to make our social bookmarking promotions seem natural. Here are some handy tips to help you:

1. Run your social bookmarking promotions slowly over time. Send a few today, a few next week and a few next month.
2. Register multiple accounts for each of the social bookmarking sites. Start out with at least 10 unique accounts
   • use different usernames within one social bookmarking site
   • use free email accounts from Yahoo, Gmail, MSN to open up your accounts
   • repeat the process with the 20+ social bookmarking sites (should take no more than 15 minutes for each registration)
   • use roboform.com to remember all your passwords.
3. Rotate the accounts you use with social bookmarking sites for each post you submit.
4. Add new social bookmarking accounts to your promotions on a regular basis.
5. Include other people’s articles and post within your social bookmarking promotion. This shows randomness within your promotions.
6. Do not social bookmark every single post you write as it will be considered spam, so please social bookmark wisely.

Just like any type of traffic generation strategy, you will need to allocate time to work the process. Focus on a few strategies, test them and monitor the process. Give it at least a month to see the results and continue the process if it works for you. Remember don’t spend all day on this one process as social bookmarking should only be used to help “jumpstart” your traffic from search engines.

Tyrone Shum
Social Bookmarker

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