Archive for October, 2008
SightSpeed
SightSpeed is the award-winning provider of Internet video chat and voice calling for friends and family, and video conferencing solutions for businesses. We make it easy to install and set up so you can…
- Connect with everyone in your network, face to face, anyplace
- Save time, hassle, and money spent on travel
- Help save our environment by minimizing your carbon footprint!
Our patented video technology ensures you get the best possible video and sound quality every time, unlike other online video services. SightSpeed offers the highest-quality, full-motion 30 frames per second video with clear audio and no annoying delay.
On top of that, you can easily send video email which is much more personal than the traditional email – and text chat endlessly with our integrated instant messaging (IM) service. SightSpeed also offers low-rate worldwide phone calling. And don’t forget, SightSpeed works great on both PCs and Macs!
The Faith Spot
Posted by cherished in Social Media on October 2nd, 2008
FAITHSPOT LIVE GALLERY, BLOGS, FORUM, POLLS, GROUPS, MUSIC, VIDEOS, CLASIFIEDS, QUIZZES, EVENTS, ARTISTS, CHURCHES and PRAYERS. thefaithspot.com
SubscriptionRocket.com
Posted by cherished in Marketing, Software/Tools on October 2nd, 2008
Use the most powerful opt-in list generating system that delivers highly responsive targeted subscribers in less than 48 hours, for free!
This was sent to me my a friend who does Internet marketing. The service is being reconstructed, but you can still get on the list to be the first to know when it relaunches.
Leveraging LinkedIn’s Networking Power
Posted by cherished in Marketing, Social Media on October 2nd, 2008
by Cherish Flieder
I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.”
You may have been sent an e-mail with this exact request on more than one occasion by a friend or colleague. If you have dismissed this invitation as just another one of those time wasting, friend collecting sites, then you may be at a considerable disadvantage.
So, if it’s that important, what exactly is LinkedIn you ask . . . and that’s a great question!
LinkedIn, found online at http://www.linkedin.com, is by far the largest and most professional, business-oriented, social media, networking site on the World Wide Web. Although it has only been around since 2002, it has over 25 million participants worldwide and grows at the rate of over 130,000 members each week!
LinkedIn is easy to use and opens the doors of opportunity to develop meaningful relationships with key players of the human race, in a new and effective way. The basic concept of how it works beckons back to the theory of “six degrees of separation.” On LinkedIn it will only show you up to three degrees of separation, but that alone will connect you to millions of professionals once you start linking up with other users. Your network will consist of your connections (1st), your connections’ connections (2nd), and then the connections to which they are connected (3rd). This dynamic function will start to make more sense as you begin see it in action.
It’s a good idea to create and maintain a professional LinkedIn profile page if you want:
- a beneficial way to promote your art brand, products and/or services online
- to meet key players in your areas of expertise
- to discover new business or job opportunities
- to learn about a new industry in which you hope to expand
- to reconnect with colleagues, classmates and clients
5 Things I Love About LinkedIn
- LinkedIn helps me to “stay in touch” and “touch base” with people that are important to me. Often, we get so busy that we never follow up on important connections and we loose out in the long run. LinkedIn is a superior tool for keeping you cognizant of your important connections and gives you an easy way to contact with them when the time is right.
- LinkedIn gives you a visual reference of your network, helping you readily discover commonalities. You can find someone with a skill you desire. You can post jobs or even apply for them online. When you are looking to join or serve with a new company, you can use LinkedIn to conduct preparatory research. LinkedIn makes it easy to discover which connections you have working with that company or who is associated with it, even before you have your first interview.
- LinkedIn is a great way to learn about any industry. You can see what other people are up to, see how they are promoting themselves and view their notable accomplishments.
- LinkedIn manages my database of connections for me. I don’t have to go and look up an e-mail for anyone that is connected to me or even open up my e-mail composer to send out a message. It gives me an instant connection to their e-mail in-box from their profile page.
- LinkedIn makes it simple for each member to keep their own information current for the benefit of the community. This feature helps users quickly access updated job summaries, aspirations, interests, status, website links, and more.
One last thing about social media sites . . . there are so many of them out there. If you are using them for your business you will need to carefully select the ones that help you best maintain professional connections and ultimately keep your brand in front of your clients. Professionally, I use Plaxo, Facebook and Twitter, in addition to LinkedIn. MySpace can be good too, if you approach it with a professional touch. But, if you only choose one, I urge you to go with LinkedIn, as it will give you the most professional online presence and effective online networking available.
10 Tips to Making the Most of Your LinkedIn Profile
> > > > > Wait, there’s more! < < < < <
Get the rest of this article “Leveraging LinkedIn’s Networking Power” including the “10 Tips to Making the Most of Your LinkedIn Profile” when you sign up for my e-zine.
These complementary LinkedIn profile tips and information on how to use them will dynamically shift the way you use LinkedIn. Get ready to turbo-charge your online networking activities and reach out to your industry!
You will also get links to LinkedIn groups for the areas of:
- Art Licensing (Licensees & Licensors)
- Publishing (for Authors & Children’s Book Illustrators)
Also, when you sign up for my “Something to Cherish Souvenirs E-zine” for occasional art and info updates, you can also gain exclusive access to the Cherish COLOR” Trends Toolbar. If you are inspired by colors, you will appreciate having this little tool in your back pocket as you use the internet, giving you access to color trend and color mixing information from all of the leading sites on color.
Twitters to Cherish
Posted by cherished in Blogging, Social Media on October 2nd, 2008
I have been reading article after article lately on how Twitter can help promote and manage a business. At first I thought to myself, “how can anyone REALLY be doing anything when they have to type everything they do on Twitter?” The point of this micro-blogging site is to keep each other updated on a play-by-play level, am I right? Who has time for that?
But, after a few more articles, webinars and seeing Twitter links on many of my artist’s friends sites, I threw caution to the wind and I decided to give it a try.
It didn’t take me long to realize that if I said I was “working on a painting of xyz,” someone might ask about it later. So, in my warped, task achieving, type ‘A’ personality mind, Twitter transformed itself into this this really cool accountability for the tasks I need to get done And at the SAME TIME it keep me updated, on task while sharing with my “followers” stuff from my life. I don’t write most things on there, that WOULD be overkill, and I really wouldn’t accomplish anything, but I do try to include some highlight of the day and interact with other Twittters, too!
I am finding that everyone has their own approach to the types of entries that they share. The best thing for me, is that I can see what other artists around the world, friends, family member, and successful professionals are doing. My art licensing friend, Tara Reed, who wrote an excellent free e-book on Twitter, refers to Twitter as her “virtual office.” What a great way to stay in touch! I am realizing that we all lead the most interesting lives which further fuels the fire for what we do.
I don’t know if it has helped business yet, but I realize that building a brand takes a long time, so until I find out I guess I will be posting about it one tweet at a time.
You can follow me @cherishart on Twitter.
What You MUST Understand About Your Web Numbers
Posted by cherished in Marketing, Web Design on October 2nd, 2008
By Alexandria K. Brown
Six years ago, when I first started selling online, I focused on doing what I did best: generating useful content that people would want to pay for. But I quickly learned that selling a product online required me to have to learn about …
…my Web statistics.
“Yuck!”
“Why should I have to do this?” I thought. “I’m not a numbers person. Such small details! I want to spend time on big ideas.”
Then after a few months of poor sales, I realized I needed to learn more about my numbers so I could learn how to improve my results. (You can’t improve something that you can’t measure.) After getting acquainted with my stats, I not only realized that this information would help me immensely, but I was relieved that it wasn’t so hard after all. It had just been something unfamiliar.
There are four types of basic “Web numbers” I want you to understand. Don’t worry — if I can handle this, you can too!
1. Sales
HOW MANY SALES are you making? This should be easy to determine on your end.
2. Unique Visitors
HOW MANY PEOPLE are visiting your sales page? To know this, you’ll need to know your number of unique visitors for that specific page.
Do NOT confuse unique visitors with “hits,” which refers to number of graphics downloaded.
Your Web host may already provide some stats you can access, but many of these programs are hard to understand and only track hits. If this is the case, it’s well worth it to use a low-cost outside tracking service such as WebSTAT that will show you your number of unique visitors. (I use them and love their service.)
3. Sales Conversion Rate
Here’s where we start with some math. Take your number of sales during a given time, and divide it by your number of visitors during that time. We’ll walk through this in a minute.
4. Value per Visitor
This tells you how much each visitor is worth to you. It’s basically your selling price times your conversion rate.
Let’s Walk Through It Together
Say Suzy Q runs a site that sells a special report on how to teach your dog to do a back flip. The report sells for $20.
Last month she had 50 online sales. Her Web stats show that during that month she had 1,500 unique visitors.
First let’s figure her sales conversion rate — sales divided by visitors.
50 / 1,500 = .0333. We’ll round it down to .03. (If we’re talking about percentages, that’s about 3%. Or 3 sales for every 100 visitors.)
Now, let’s determine her value per visitor.
The report sells for $20, and we now know that her sales conversion rate is .03.
So .03 x $20 = $0.60.
That means each visitor is worth 60 cents to Suzy, whether they buy or not.
(Here’s a longer way of doing this, but it may make more sense to you: Based on Suzy’s current conversion rate, she makes an average of 3 sales per 100 visitors. 3 x $20 = $60. So for every 100 visitors she makes an average of $60. $60 / 100 visitors = $0.60 per visitor.)
This number tells Suzy how much it’s worth spending to get a visitor to her site. For example, if she decides to advertise via a pay-per-click search engine (such as Google AdWords), she knows that $0.60 is the maximum she’d want to bid.
Want My FREE Calculations Template?
Would you like a free fill-in-the-blanks template to help you make the calculations above? I’ve put one together for you! Send a blank e-mail to
ali-39796@autocontactor.com and you should receive it automatically.
What to DO With Your Numbers
First of all, look at your unique visitors. If your numbers aren’t as high as you’d like, work on attracting more prospects to your site via your e-zine, search engine listings, advertisements, articles, etc.
Then look at your sales conversion rate. The average for information products is actually around only 1%, according to both my testing and that of my colleagues. (So don’t get upset if that’s where you’re at!) Often my conversion rate is a lot higher, but it depends on who’s visiting that sales page. My conversion rate will be a lot higher if I’m sending my own subscribers there (people who already know, like, and trust me) versus strangers who found me from a search engine or other website. Make sense?
Aim to continually improve your sales page to boost your results.
Keep a log of what changes you make and when you make them so you can see which factors help or hinder your sales. (There’s a place for these notes in that template I created for you.)
You should also do simple “split tests”, but I’ll go into that another time.
Don’t Wait Any Longer!
Remember, you can’t improve something you can’t measure. Take a few minutes and start tracking these things. I guarantee that once you do, you’ll actually enjoy this process, because it gives you the power to continually IMPROVE. : )
© 2005-2008 Alexandria Brown International Inc.
Online entrepreneur Alexandria K. Brown publishes the award-winning ‘Highlights on Marketing & Success’ weekly ezine with 36,000+ subscribers. If you’re ready to jump-start your marketing, make more money, and have more fun in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.AlexandriaBrown.com
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