Print On Demand Book Creation

Do you want to Create a real book?

I hope everyone had an enjoyable Christmas. Mine was spent with family and friends which for me is the best way.

One of my friends uses the Internet in a different way to make her income. Lorina Stephens has been a writer and artist for many years. She has published several "hard" books through mainstream publishers. From conversations with her she has had numerous road blocks and hassles with publishing community.

She decided to take a different route with her last book "Recipes of a Dumb House Wife". The title is tongue in cheek as she is a brilliant lady and she goes on to explain the title in the book. I have the book and have enjoyed many wonderful recipes.

But what is the difference? This is published through a print on demand printer. This is a small publishing/printing house that will print very small runs of books once they have all your information. This means that you can create a specialised publication at very little cost and have it printed in a book format. With small additional costs the company will provide it to the larger book stores.

For costs we are talking in the neighborhood of a couple hundred dollars investment for a far greater return.

So Lorina is providing a hard product, that is advertised on her website as well as through her publisher/printer. She did the original work of creating the recipes and writing the book. She also packages and ships from her office, but all the print work is done by her print on demand company. It is a great system. She will soon be releasing a new book too!

Graciously Lorina agreed to write an article for my website. You can read in her own words what she discovered about Print on Demand Revolution.

Finally a Report Worth Much More than You Pay for It!

I came accross this new ebook for $9.00!
What do you get for 9 bucks these days. Well Affiliate Rescue is worth the money. I always cringe when I go to the payment page and click Pay This Amount. Have I just lost my money? Is it going to be the same old information? Could I have saved myself the money by rereading the books I have?

All valid questions and some times I have been stung. I was pleasantly surprised when I downloaded this ebook. Good solid information and a price I can't say no to.

Essentially the fellow selling the ebook is using it as a lost leader to increase the members on his list. A valid tactic (remember though you can unsubscribe from the list at any time) The information in the Affiliate Rescue is good solid information. He does suggest using some techniques that I am not completely comfortable with (Gray Hat) but you could easily re-work them to be completely above board.

He details
Getting Your Finances In Order
Redirecting Through Your Affiliate Link
Email Marketing
Free Traffic Generation
Plus a series of bonuses directed to Niche Marketing and Forum Traffic Generation.

The Affiliate Rescue Ebook is 67 pages long and well worth the $9.00 price tag.
You can get more information at Affiliate Rescue.

My Philosophy On Internet Marketing

Are you tired of always being "Sold" something?

Yes it is true you can make money on the Internet. You can barrage people with constant advertising using a shot gun approach hopefully catching someone.

Think of how frustrated you have been trying to find a little bit of information and having to sort through many pages of sales letters just to find the little piece of truth. The more information that all of us put up on the web the more the search engines have to sort through this.

The search engines are getting very good at this and are constantly evolving. When you set up your web pages always try to give some information of value. So many web sales pages I have seen just repeat over and over how good the particular product is. Yes it is important concentrate on the benefits of the products, but think of offering the person a snippet of the actual information in the ebook or product in the sales page.

Yes you are giving information away for free, but you are making your sales page worth more to a person. If you are selling something you believe in you should be able to provide a little insight into how good it actually is.

Provide the best quality information, and products that you can. Avoid things that dilute the quality of the Internet. New information, and solid information are very important. Many people are looking for the basics in what ever Field they are searching. The basics are often "tried and true" methods or foundations. Provide these first then move to more advanced information.

Google has implemented a quality score for AdWords. I expect web pages will soon be assigned quality score (this is the simplest forms) dependant on the actual information provided on the page. This will mean that simple sales pages will not rank well. The old saying "Content is King" the new saying will be "Quality Content is King".

Your website will evolve as you learn and educate yourself. Keep working at making it better and better and more people will respect you and your information and will want to buy from you.

My philosophy on Internet Marketing in a nut shell!

Traffic, Traffic, Traffic Everywhere!

More Information on Getting Free Traffic.

It has been said that traffic is the life blood of your website. This is true. If people don't see your website you have no way of letting them know about all your excellent information and products.

The best traffic is not always free but it is a great place to start. So how do you get your website known and start getting free traffic?

Article Marketing.

One of the best ways to get free traffic is to write articles and post them to article directories. This does several things.

First it allows you to show case your knowledge and talent on sites that already have high traffic. This puts you in front of many more people quickly. Publishers are consistently looking for GOOD content to place on their websites and in their newsletters.

If you look through many of the article directories you will find only a handful of well written informative articles. These are the type you should concentrate on writing as this will give you the most chance of getting picked up. The rest are simply return links to your site.

The return links are important as this will boost your sites popularity in the search engines. Note return links should only be placed in the signature of the article. The Meat of the article should have few or no links in it. This is not a sales pitch but useful information.

The more article directories you submit to (if they take your article) the more links back to your target page you get. Now if I was creating search engine algorithms I would rate these links as lower value that a link from a non-article directory, so you would need to make up with volume.

Once a website picks up your article then all their visitors can read it as well and click through to your website for more information. Once they get to your website then you can sell them or get them to sign up for your newsletter etc.

Many many people could see your information once you submit it to an article directory. Remember to always follow the guidelines or terms of service on each article directory.

You should research and write one article a week and place it on as many directories as you can. Some will take it others will not. Obviously if you are writing in a popular content area the directories are looking for new or informative information.

Less popular or more niche targeted areas stand a better chance to be picked up. Spend time researching your material. It is helpful if you are already an expert on a subject and can write off the top of your head. You may not always be able to do this so spend time researching.

If you create 1 article a week for a year on the same theme, after a year you will have 52 chapters to that ebook you always wanted to write and sell. Just package them together clean them up, make it flow and you have your book.

Your article should be 500 to 1000 words and I suggest creating it with no html except in the signature. Many of the sites I have submitted to with html in the write up I have had to go back in and clean every thing up again. Waste of time.

Spelling and Grammar are important check thoroughly. Remember this will be the first introduction to you and your website that many people will get. Make a good first impression.

I started learning about article writing almost a year ago. I bought an ebook called Turn Words Into Traffic by Jim Edwards, it worked and I started generating more traffic to my websites. Simple, easy to do. It does require a certain amount of discipline to sit down and write and sometimes you will have blocks but in all it is an excellent way of directing traffic to your website.

For article directories just Google "article directory" and start writing and you will start generating traffic.

Why is Content So Important?

What is meant by "Content is King"?

Content is the information found on websites and blogs. Primarily in text format but content can be pictures, audio, and video. Mostly the search engines are looking for text.

Search engines are trying to provide their users with the most relevant information to the searches. So the better the engines can understand your content and the more content you have, the better they can deliver to their users.

So the more you write about a topic and the more in depth you write about a topic the more information the search engines can index from your site. So the better chance your site will be returned in a given search.

The catch is that the search engines want your website to written for people not for search engines. They will also penalise you for having duplicate content as many other websites.

Pictures can not be understood by search engines. So the old adage that a picture is worth a 1000 words doesn't hold true for search engines. Use alt tags in your html to tell the search engines what the picture is about. Then it will count as content. You should also have a caption that your readers can see describing the picture.

Audio and video are a bit more problematic. Again a descriptive paragraph about each will help your content.

Content should be original and ideally written by you. New information is important. You should keep updating your content as you learn new things. Fresh content keeps the search engines coming back often to see what is new. This will keep you up dated in the rankings.

Without the actual content that people can sink their teeth into you get a web page that reads as "buy this product" over and over again. Not useful to people.

In part this is where social book marking comes in. The more people like your content the more readily they will bookmark your site. Sales pages rarely get book marked except by the sellers.

Research your niche area in depth and provide real information which translates into quality content for people to use.

List Building: The Foundation of Internet Marketing

Is the Money in the List?

I am sure you have heard "The money is in the list" over and over again.When I started Internet marketing I didn't really understand this concept. What was a list? How do I make one? How do I use it? All questions I had.

I was making some income from people coming to my website and learning things then clicking to my products and buying one of them that they were interested in. It seemed simple. What was this list business.

Well if we step back a moment and think how we use the web. I use it for gathering information. I visit many websites in a day just to find a nugget of information on a particular topic. Most often I may have to go through dozens of sites until I find what I am after. I have no intention of ever going back to those websites since I didn't find what I wanted (that is not to say they didn't have what I wanted, I just did not find it).

These websites have no way to get in touch with me and tell me that they actually have what I want. I am a lost customer to them.

Now a few websites will give me enough information about a topic that I know they know what they are talking about. Then they hint that they have more hidden material that they will give me access to if I give them my email address.

I don't like giving out my email address and possibly be sent tons of spam. If it is a topic I am interested in and I am pretty sure I will learn what I need I will grudgingly give my email address, after all it is free to join!

Gotch Ya!

I am now on that websites list. This means that they can now email me with information that they think I would like. Some of the information (hopefully not all) will be products that I can buy that they think might help me. Admittedly I am a little sick of marketers only ever emailing me a list of products sometimes without descriptions that they think I should buy.

Instead include a piece of useful information with the email and then slip in the description of the product that you are trying to sell.

Once your name and email is on a list a website can use an Auto Responder to send you emails every couple of days. In its crudest form each day can be a sales pitch on their product with a different angle. The idea is to give a little more information each day to break down my resistance to buying the product.

Give the potential customer more and more information to convince them to buy. People usually handle small bites of information better than a huge long sales letter. It allows them to digest the information.

So the list allows me to keep in touch with my potential customers. I can send them information about products they are interested in. I can let them know about sales. I can let them know about new products I develop etc. It becomes more of a conversation instead of people reading endless sales letters.

So I started list building with a free auto responder. Trying to save money. Have you ever bought the cheapest tool to do a job and have been so frustrated with it when it broke, or stopped working, or when it just feel apart? That is how I felt with the free auto responder and list building tool.

Admittedly I was starting out and I tend to make a lot of mistakes when I start something. I ended up with a paid list building service and auto responder. The difference is night and day.
So now I can capture people's email and names and send them my newsletter, or updates, or suggestions for products. Very easily, I can tailor my broadcasts to all or part of my list depending on their interests.

If you set up an information capture and intend to market to your list remember to:

• Give information first, market second.
• Don't barrage people everyday with an email
• Don't hype things beyond belief.
• Do give a description of the product that you want me to click to for more information.
• Treat your list with respect. these people have given you a piece of their personal information their emaill address.

They really only want the information that they signed up for. If you try to sell to them too often it is like crying wolf. Eventually people just say oh its another offer from so and so. I'll just ignore it. If you add useful content to each email people will actually open them to see what you have to say.
So the paid auto responders that I recommend are:

• aweber.com
• getresponse.com

My List building service is getresponse.com and I have been very satisfied. The cost is minimal compared to the service I have. Take a minute and check them out as they have some very good tutorials on what an auto responder can do for you.

Getting Traffic To Your Website

Traffic is the key to the success of your website.

If you are trying to sell something you need people to sell it to. This is the traffic or visitors to your website.

In general the more traffic you get the more sales you stand a chance to make. For the reality on the numbers See The Sad Truth About The Numbers an article I wrote some time back on my website.

How do you get hoards of people to your site? Which is different from getting people to buy once they are there. First you need to have your website indexed by the search engines. Most search engines have a submit new website section on their front page.

The search engines will find you if you have links directing to your website from other places on the web. The more inbound links you have the better. The search engines think your site is more important if many other sites connect to it.

You can advertise in classified ads with your website linked in the ad. Make sure you read the terms of service for each classified ad site. Seach for "online classified ads".

Adding your comments in forums with a link back to your website in the signature area of the post will boost your links back to your website.

Writing articles with links in the signature portion of the article boosts your links back and creates an opportunity for people to copy your article to their website. The link in the article directory counts as one link back. If many people pick up your article and print it on their websites these links count again and again in your search engine rankings.

Now articles themselves also drive traffic to your site. When someone reads your article with your signature and link and have been captivated by your knowledge they will click to your site to learn more. Again the more people that pick up your article the more people will see it and the more traffic you will get.

A couple of the article directories that I like are

• http://www.goarticles.com/ulogin.html,
• http://www.articlealley.com/
• http://searchwarp.com/

There are tons of others just search for "article directories" again read the terms of service.

Another way that is driving alot of traffic to websites is social book marking. Digg, Delicious, and Stumble Upon etc. These sites let you put a button on your site that helps people bookmark your site if they like it or find it useful. Buttons should be near the top (perhaps bottom as well) of each page.

You can start to see why it is important to be able to modify your website with a bit of html by your self. Each button the code is provided but you need to know where to place it on your website and how.

Another traffic source is from video. So far the main ways to drive traffic from videos is to put a link in the description of the video and put the address of your website as a water mark on the video itself. YouTube works well for this. There are other video sharing sites. Again just do a search.

The last way of driving traffic to your website is with pay per click (ppc) advertising, such as google adwords. These are the ads that you see at the right hand side of the screen when you do a search in Google. Every time someone clicks on one of those links the advertiser is charged a fee. Usually between $.06 and $3.00. This is very easy to set up. Google leads you through step by step. This technique is much more art than science. The science is all the steps that you go through to set up your campaign. The art is setting it up so that you don't go broke paying for each click.

To use Pay Per Click advertising I strongly reccomend reading some of the ebooks written on that topic.

Two Minute Profits and Google Adwords Secrets Revealed orSuper Affiliate Marketer's Secret Weapon

Getting traffic to your website and landing pages is really an art. You will have to try several different approaches at the same time to see what works. Internet Marketing is very much not putting all your eggs in one basket.