Steve Wagenheim’s Home Business Blog

A lot of people think that SEO is one massive push to Normandy and a take no prisoners attitude. While mass marketing can certainly take you places, I have found that it’s the little things that make the biggest differences. Truth is, many people don’t even bother to pay attention to those little things. While I can’t possibly go over all of them in the space of one article, I’m going to point out a few simple examples where those little things can make all the difference in the world.

Why don’t we start with the header of your page, whatever kind of page it is. I know that a lot of you folks love the fancy graphical headers with all the bells and whistles, but did you know that a simple text header with a nice H1 tag will actually help your site rank much better. The search engines really don’t do a great job or ranking pages based on graphics…at least that has been my experience. So while the flashy might look better, that H1 title right up there at the top will really work wonders with placement.

What about your links? Lots of people are just too plain lazy to create anchor text. That’s where the link you click on has some kind of description instead of just a URL. I mean why bother doing all that extra work just for a link, right? Well, that extra work, especially if you target just the right keywords for that link, might very well mean the difference between a page that gets ranked high in the SERPs or not at all. Besides that, don’t you think your visitors would appreciate a more user friendly experience? After all, ultimately, THAT is what the search engines are looking for. Don’t ever forget that. It’s about the USER…not your ego or lack thereof.

How about photos? So many people just slap them up there without any alt tags. I mean, why bother, right? People can see the photos so why do they need an alt tag? Well, actually, they might. For one thing, what if the photo doesn’t load? In that case, the visitor is left staring at…nothing. For another, remember what I said about graphical headers? Well, the same thing is true with photos. They just don’t rank well without the alt tags. And a great alt tag will REALLY get your photo ranked well, especially with Google Images, which, in my experience, can bring you MORE traffic than the regular search engine listings. Yes…photos kill.

Point is, these, and so many other little things, when added together, turn your so-so web page into one that can destroy the competition simply because most people don’t put the effort into the little details. They’re too busy trying to get backlinks and doing all other kinds of shenanigans to try to pump their site up the ranks.

Maybe if they paid more attention to the LITTLE things, they wouldn’t have to work so hard.

It’s just a thought.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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Look, we all try to get a handle on what we can expect from our marketing efforts, so we look to find what’s “normal” when we do a specific activity. The problem with finding what’s “normal” is that external factors may drastically change your results depending on when and where you do your marketing. This article is going to try to explain, in simple English, why it’s not always so easy to find what’s “normal” when it comes to marketing online.

Let’s take for example the guy who starts a CPA campaign in the middle of December, just before the big Christmas holiday in a niche where buying is normally down at this time of the year. He pulls all the right keywords, designs his site properly and gets all the traffic he can, even going as far as buying media buys. Then he takes a look at his results and sees that he’s making a pitiful $100 a day when everybody who told him to get into this said he’d easily make $500 to $600 each day with this tactic. What is he supposed to think?

Conversely, somebody else can start the exact same campaign during the busiest time of the year for this niche and start cranking out $800 to $1,000 per day. They think they’ve hit a gold mine. Then, December rolls around and their income sinks to $100 a day. What are they going to think? They’re going to think that the world has just come to and end.

Now, somebody who has been doing this for a few years KNOWS that there are seasonal fluctuations for this particular niche. They know that when December comes, they have to have saved a few bucks from the months preceding so that they have enough money to live on. It’s called budgeting. After being in the auto industry for 10 years, I have seen the same thing year after year. The summer time was horrible. But as soon as the new models came out around October, sales started to skyrocket.

Sure, there are some niches that are “normal” pretty much all the time. You know what you can expect and know that you can expect it year round. However, I have found that to be the exception rather than the rule. Very few things really stay constant over time.

So, when you ask somebody what’s “normal” for a particular niche, please take their answer with a grain of salt. There are way too many factors involved to set anything in stone.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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Okay, so you’re about to setup your home business and create your first site. You know what product or service you’re going to sell, and that’s fine. But what platform are you going to use for your site? Have you given it any thought? If not, this article is going to give some advice based on a few common models. The one you choose, at least I hope, will be the best fit for the model of YOUR particular business. Keep reading to find out more.

Back in the stone ages, the common platform was a static HTML site that you either coded yourself in some WYSIWYG editor or paid a web designer oodles of money to do. Trust me, those folks still charge a fortune, even though it HAS become a lot easier to get your own sites up and running. But it’s not so much the doing that is the problem. It’s the deciding. With so many choices today, one doesn’t have to settle for a static site. But maybe a static site is the best solution. If all you’re putting up is a single sales page, then maybe it is. On the other extreme, if you’re going to be doing a lot of modifying to the site in terms of look, content and so on, maybe a static platform is still the best solution. Why do I say that?

To answer the question, we turn to another solution…CMS sites. CMS stands for Content Management Site or Solution. Probably the most popular are WordPress and Joomla, though there are plenty of others. Why would you want to use a platform like WordPress for your home business? Well, one very good reason would be if you wanted your prospects to interact with you by leaving comments on your pages. Now sure, you can still do this with a static site. Remember the old guestbook function of years ago? Problem is, this does require some coding knowledge and many home business startup folks don’t have the skills. So they have to outsource the site creation. With WordPress, it’s all part of the platform. You just install and it’s done.

Then of course there is the membership model. What if you decide that you want to run a membership site? Well, while you can do this with something like WordPress, it is a lot easier to do with a platform like Amember, which is specifically designed for memberships. If you don’t like the high cost, you can always go with DLGuard. The difference is with DLGuard, you have to do a little more coding for your member pages whereas Amember gives you some nice templates. But DLGuard is the cheaper solution. Point is, for membership sites, a static site or a WordPress site might not be your best option.

So you see, you need to look at your business model and then, depending on what it is, decide which platform will be best for you. I’ve given you a few examples that are the most common. From these, you should be able to make your decision.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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Okay, another major rant is coming. Maybe I’m just in a bad mood today, but it absolutely drives me crazy when people come to forums and ask the members there what they earn. I don’t know about you, but where I was brought up, you didn’t ask people what they made. It just wasn’t polite. But aside from that, what’s the point? This article is going to explain why asking people what they earn serves absolutely no useful purpose whatsoever. If you don’t like reading rants, go read something else. I won’t be offended.

For starters, as I said, it’s rude to ask people how much they earn for a living. Yes, I know…in some cultures this is a common thing to do. However, you have to understand something. When you come to a forum, you are dealing with people from many cultures and not all of them conform to your way of thinking. So you have to shift your mindset to one of dealing with many types of people. Common sense dictates that you default to the forum protocol, whatever it might be.

In addition to that, what does is matter what somebody else earns? See, a lot of people think, and I understand this, that if somebody says that they make X number of dollars a day, that THEY will be able to do the same. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work this way. My ability to make X number of dollars per day does not mean that you can do the same…even if you totally copy my business model. Why? Because we don’t have the same skills. We don’t have the same capital to fund our business. We probably aren’t going to even sell the same products or work the same number of hours. You can’t completely duplicate somebody’s business.

Some say they want to get an “idea” of what’s “possible.” Anything is possible if you put your mind to it. There is no limit to what you can earn. As successful as I may be, there are people out there with 100 times my success. People who look for benchmarks are actually putting limits on themselves. What if everybody at the forum answered that they only made $100 per day. You would think that this was all that was possible and that would be a terrible thing to do.

Instead of asking people what they earn, concentrate on your OWN business and how you can build it to earn the kind of money that you WANT to earn.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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If you’re into SEO, you know that anchor text is an important part of optimizing your page. Nobody wants to go through a long URL to figure out what the heck it is you’re selling. A keyword optimized anchor text is the best way to get the click. But does your anchor text suck? Not sure? Well, you might want to read this article to find out. I have seen all types of anchor text and let me tell you… some of the stuff out there is crap.

I am going to start out with one of my biggest pet peeves. How many people do you know use the anchor text “click here”? Come on, be honest. If you go to Google and look up the keyword phrase “click here” do you know what the number one site is? It’s Adobe. Why? Because everybody and their grandmother uses “click here” to direct people to Adobe’s PDF reader so that they can read their equally crappy ebook. Okay, so when you’re creating anchor text to your site PLEASE don’t use “click here”.

Okay, now that we’ve gotten THAT out of the way, what SHOULD you use? Well, you want to go through the relevant keywords to whatever it is you’re promoting. If your site is a blog on home business tips and your name is John Doe, you might want to say something like, visit my site at, and then use the following as anchor text…”John Doe’s Home Business Tips.” Make sense? I mean THAT’S the main focus of your site, so why would you want to use anything else?

But what if you’re sending people to a sales page that is promising some kind of a solution to a problem? In that case, you DON’T want to use the name of the sales page as your anchor text. What you want to do is use a benefit of going there and getting the product. Something along the lines of “Cure Your Warts In 3 Days” or whatever it is you’re promising as the benefit. You want the prospect to see the immediate benefit of clicking on that link in the link itself.

What if it’s a toss up between the two, a descriptive site OR a benefit? In that case, you have to look at the purpose of WHY you’re sending the prospect there. Is it to get the immediate benefit or solution to the problem they’re having or is it to get more information? If it’s to get more information, use the site name. If it’s to get the immediate benefit, use the benefit anchor text. Be consistent with this depending on what your purpose is.

Okay, got it? Don’t use “click here”, don’t use long URLs if you can help it and decide between the name of your site and the benefit depending on the purpose of why you’re sending the prospect to the page in the first place. If you follow these simple tips, you will come up with anchor text that not only doesn’t suck, but actually gets the job done in spades.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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You really need to stop by some of the copywriting forums. There’s a lot more floating around in them besides witty copy. Truth is, copywriters are pretty smart cookies. One of the discussions we had just recently was about belief in ones self. It was then that I realized that part of the reason for my success is because I DO believe in myself. In my opinion, that is half the battle. This article explains.

One of the biggest problems beginning copywriters have is not so much learning how to write a sales letter. I could train a monkey to do that. No, an even bigger problem is confidence. Think about it. You’ve just learned your craft and you’re looking for your first client. You have absolutely NO track record and no samples to even show a prospect. It’s not a lot to work with. Well, there are some things you can do to get over this hurdle.

At the top of the list, create a fictional product. Create some features and benefits for it and then write up a mock sales page. Just because it’s not an actual sales page for a real product doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have validity. It certainly shows off your skills as a writer. Then, take the sales letter and include it in your portfolio. That way, if somebody wants to see samples of your work, you can show them. You can even say, “These are sales letters that I have written for myself.” You’d be absolutely telling the truth. The prospect can then decide if they think your writing is a good fit. But get something down on paper.

After you’ve done that, the next step is to actually read your work and compare it to what’s out there. Does it stack up? Is it as good? If it’s not, work on it. But if it IS, then understand and realize that you have JUST made it to the level of copywriter who can confidently charge people for your services. The key here is you MUST believe in yourself. You have to present yourself to the prospect with confidence. You have to assure him that you can do a professional job.

Here is the bottom line. If you don’t believe in yourself, why should anybody else? I’m not saying you have to lie to people. You can even tell them that you’re just starting out. But through the samples you give them you can assure your prospects that you are more than capable of doing the job. And then, after you have finished the job, and hopefully it produced a successful campaign, you can then build on that confidence and approach other prospects. Success builds on itself. All you need to do is just get it started.

If this sounds easier said than done, it’s not. We are all just people. Nobody is any better as a person than anybody else. If you remember that, you’ll realize that you’re just as capable of taking on that copywriting job as anybody else.

Don’t you EVER forget that.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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As an Internet marketer who also builds his own list, I too am on the lists of other marketers. I do this to find out what they’re doing. I want to see what tactics they’re using, what they’re promoting and yes, even pick up a product that I might find useful. This article is a major rant against a practice that I see way too often. If you are guilty of this, shame on you. If you don’t like rants, don’t read this article. You’ve been warned.

This is a true story. As we’re winding down to the end of this year, I realized that there were a few lists that I really had no use for anymore. So I scrolled down to the bottom of the page and clicked on the unsubscribe button. I clicked it and it took me to a page where I was able to change my subscription options. At that point, I unsubscribed from each list. I was even sent a confirmation email telling me that I had unsubscribed from the list.

Well, wouldn’t you know it…about a week later, I get an email from this very same list that I had unsubscribed from. Now I know I executed the process correctly. I even got the email saying I was off the list. And yet, here I am…still on it. In other words, the opt out process either wasn’t working or, and this is the more likely scenario, was just a smoke screen to appease the FTC since you need to have an opt out link at the end of your email. Bottom line is this…I am still on that blasted list and will probably never get off of it.

If you use a reputable autoresponder service like Aweber or GetResponse, you will NOT have this problem. I personally use Aweber and have never had anybody complain that they couldn’t get off my list. Oddly, the list I was trying to get off of was for some autoresponder that I had never heard of. Dollars to donuts that it’s a shoddy in house script that doesn’t work. Wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

So let me put this to you as plainly and as simply as I can. If you are building a list, do one of two things. Either use an autoresponder service that will handle the opting out process for you OR if you use your own in house script, make sure that you honor EVERY opt out request.

The marketer whose list I can’t get off of (no names will be mentioned) is one I used to have a lot of respect for…but no more. Now, according to law, this person is nothing more than a spammer as I am now receiving unsolicited email.

I don’t know how important YOUR reputation is to you, but if you value it at all…don’t do what this person did.

End of rant.

Take it for what it’s worth to you.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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SEO is a numbers game…plain and simple. Way too many people overcomplicate it. But in the long run, he who has the most real estate with the most relevant information… wins. Okay, this all sounds so simple, and in fact, it is. However, there are some tricks to getting those numbers. I’m going to share a couple with you in this article. This is nothing earth shattering, but it just might be something that you haven’t thought of.

As I said at the start, SEO is a numbers game. He who has the most real estate and can get it up the SERPs wins the war. There are many ways to do this. Problem is, most people go after the victory the hard way. They’ll take one piece of content, maybe a long article, and place it on their blog or site and call it a day. Instead of taking one long piece of content, why not break it up into tiny pieces?

For example, let’s say you have a very long article about cats. The article covers types of cats, feeding and care, training and other things. Instead of placing the whole article on one page, why not break it up into several pieces covering each sub topic separately? Then, what you do is take each separate piece and put it on a separate page on your site. You then pull out the individual keywords that apply to each section of the article and optimize the page for those keywords and also include the main keywords for the article in its entirety.

Then, the next thing you do is link each article part to the other article parts. This way, a visitor can access any of the other sub topics that they might be interested in. Make this as easy to do as possible using anchor text within the article and then links at the bottom of the article to the other sections.

This way, what happens is that the SERPs will index each individual page for the long tail keywords as well as the main keywords for the niche in general. Everything comes together in one nice, neat, big package.

You’ve just taken one piece of content and turned it into a number of pages, thus the numbers game that I’m talking about. Imagine doing this with 50 different articles. You could end up with hundreds of individual pages.

Like I said, SEO is a numbers game.

Just make sure you’re on the long end of those numbers.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to get your site to the top of the SERPs? Pick up Kurt Melvin’s Think Links. You can read my complete review of the product at http://stevewagenheim.com/blog/internet-marketing/review-of-think-links-for-seo.html

Okay, here’s the scenario. You’re marketing a product. It could be your own or one you’re promoting as an affiliate. It doesn’t matter. You’re looking for feedback on your promotional methods. You go to a forum and ask for advice. Who do you listen to, a respected guru or your target market? Think very carefully before you answer that question. In fact, you might want to read my opinion on this subject before you do.

As marketers, we truly believe that the gurus have all the answers. After all, they’ve been at this game for a long time and they’ve made countless sums of money. So why wouldn’t we listen to them? Well, there could be several reasons for not listening to your local guru.

At the top of the list, they may not have any experience with YOUR target market. For example, let’s say you’re selling products to people who are into golf. Guru X may have absolutely no experience selling to that market. Thus, he’d have no tangible advice that he could give to you that’s applicable to THAT market. Sure, he could give you some general advice for copy such as “have a headline with a strong benefit” or something similar, but as far as specifics…he has no first hand experience.

Another reason that you might not want to listen to guru X is because his particular skills may not mesh with your ad campaign. Not every guru, no matter how successful, is an expert at every little thing. Some are great at list building while others are fantastic copywriters. Still others may be great at putting together a pay per click campaign. Many of these gurus have other people do the work for them that they’re not particularly good at. Therefore, you never know what advice you’re getting is good and what advice is just plain bad.

On the other hand, your target market KNOWS what it wants. If an avid golfer sees your sales letter and says that he’s not getting the real benefit out of buying your product, you better darn well believe that there is something missing. And if he tells you EXACTLY what it is he wants to see, you better darn well put it in there because HE is your target market and HE knows EXACTLY what he wants.

This is not to say that guru X can’t offer some good general advice. Naturally, if your sales letter is total trash, you could learn a lot from some general info such as headlines, bullet points, testimonials, guarantees and so on. But when it comes to the bottom line of what your target market REALLY wants, the only place to get that kind of feedback is from them.

So listen to both, but pay close attention to what the guy with the credit card on the other end is saying.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim
Sick and tired of spinning your wheels trying to make a buck online? Visit the products page of my blog at http://stevewagenheim.com/blog/products and get a 6 figure education for pennies.

If you’re into SEO, you know, or at least you should know, that getting backlinks is an important part of getting your site up the ranks. But in regard to speed, how fast is too fast? Does it matter? Well, there are a lot of theories and a lot of misinformation floating around when it comes to this subject. Hopefully, in this article, by using a little bit of logic and common sense, I’ll get you on the right track when it comes to your backlinking strategies. Ultimately, it WILL come down to testing and seeing what works best for YOU.

First off, when we talk about backlinking and getting our site up the ranks of the search engines, we are predominantly speaking about Google because they are the king of the SERPs, getting about 50% of the total search engine traffic. Why does this matter? It matters because Google, unlike other search engines, seriously takes into consideration how many backlinks you get in what period of time. In other words, if they see that you have a brand new site on January 1 and on January 2 you’ve got 1,000 backlinks, they’re going to probably toss you in the sandbox so fast it will make your head spin.

Now, I know a lot of people say to me that this is a load of horse manure, that they’ve had sites get hundreds of backlinks overnight and have had no problem at all. Well, this is actually quite true. However, what these people fail to tell you is that these backlinks were gotten naturally. What do I mean by naturally? Just this. There are certain topics, especially if they are hot trends or current news events that go viral so quickly because of their stunning impact (think Michael Jackson’s death) that a strategically placed blog article along with a little promotion via social bookmarking and networking, can get hundreds, if not thousands of sites link to you…literally in minutes.

But…this is the exception and NOT the rule. If you have some site on how to treat warts, it is highly doubtful that you are going to get people to come flocking to link to your content UNLESS it is suddenly discovered that warts can kill you if left untreated. Point is, the subject matter that you are dealing with has a lot to do with how Google will react to the influx of backlinks.

Therefore, it is not written in stone that you can’t get backlinks quickly. However, if you artificially go about getting them (I won’t go into the ways here because we all know what they are) then there is a very good chance that you’re going to end up paying the price for it. Take this warning for what it’s worth to you.

Besides, backlinking in itself is not going to drive your site up the ranks. Backlinks on PR 0 sites (even though PR isn’t as important as it used to be) isn’t going to do squat for you. And most of the garbage sites we get our backlinks from when using those less than ethical means are just that…garbage. And we all know what happens if you PAY for them. I won’t even go there.

In short, slow and steady wins this race. Go about getting one or two backlinks a day. Let things happen naturally. The wait will be more than worth it.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to get your site to the top of the SERPs? Want the real skinny on backlinking and other SEO strategies? Pick up Kurt Melvin’s Think Links. You can read my complete review of the product at http://stevewagenheim.com/blog/internet-marketing/review-of-think-links-for-seo.html