Steve Wagenheim’s Home Business Blog

Let’s face it, SEO is a complicated mess. Anybody who says otherwise is seriously kidding themselves. With all the variables involved, can you believe that title and description probably cause more arguments than just about anything else? It’s true. Everybody has their two cents on which is more important. Well, this marketer is going to give you his two cents on the subject. Take it for what it’s worth to you.

There is no question that the title of your site is important. After all, if you’re fortunate enough to get listed (not always a given) that is going to be the first thing that people see. So granted, you need a title that clearly defines what people are going to see there. So for example, let’s say you have a site that is on Internet Marketing Tips. You’re going to want THAT to be your title. That way, if people see it in the SERPs, they’ll know that going there HOPEFULLY will give them tips on THAT subject.

However, because there are so many sites with the same darn titles (go do a search if you think I’m kidding) what happens is that searchers develop a blindness to them. Think about it. If you did a search for Internet Marketing Tips and the first 20 results in the SERPs all had the same title, what do you think would happen? You’d probably just glaze over all of them OR…and this is where the description comes in…you’d look to see who had the BEST description.

Okay, but what IS the best description? That is something that is impossible to qualify for any site no matter what the niche is. The reason is because now we’re really getting into the area of copywriting. Simply changing your description and waiting for the SERPs to index your page with the new one can literally mean the difference between 1,000 visitors a month and 10,000 visitors a month.

But now I’m going to throw another monkey wrench into the fire, which is why you can’t say for certain that description is more important than title. See, Google, in all their infinite wisdom, does not always print your description tag as is. They will sometimes print a description based on certain content from your page that they feel is most relevant to the prospect. If you think I’m kidding, go check out a few web pages and see how they’re listed. It’s almost laughable.

Therefore, since there is no fool proof way to insure that your description is going to appear the way YOU want it, I can’t give that meta tag a clear win over title.

So for those of you who pick one over the other, the truth is, it’s a crap shoot between the two. But at least the title, you have complete control over. So while it may not help much, should there be 20 pages with the same title, it is at least one variable that you don’t have to worry about being messed with by the SERPs.

Yeah, and you thought SEO was simple.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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The grass is always greener on the other side. If that isn’t one of the biggest cliches in the world, I’ll eat my hat. Truth is, there is a lot to that cliche. When it comes to copywriting or doing other things, more than you realize. So the question I’m asking in this article is a simple one. Are you SURE you want to be a copywriter? No, this isn’t a trick question. After you are done reading this article, you’ll understand why I’m asking it.

What you probably don’t know about me is that I am also a marketer. In fact, I was a marketer before I become a copywriter, at least professionally. Oh yes, I always wrote my own copy, but never offered my services to others until recently. And when I did, I discovered something absolutely amazing. In fact, it was so fascinating that it made me wonder why I do this copywriting thing at all. Let me explain.

I can sit down and crank out a limited run product at 100 units in about 8 hours and make about $3,000 from it. That comes out to close to $400 per hour of work, which isn’t too shabby. Now, I’m not a high end copywriter by any stretch of the imagination as far as price goes. But when I calculate how long it takes me to go over a product, in order to write the copy for it, and then actually write the copy, I figured out that I’m making about $50 for an hour of work.

Do you see the problem here? Naturally, if you’re not a marketer and writing is all you can do, you’ll take it and gladly. But think about it. There are easier ways to make a buck online. I can think of many jobs that pay more than $50 per hour of work. And with some copywriting jobs, the amount of work, because of extra bonuses to go over, brings your hourly pay down to that of a McDonald’s fry cook. Think I’m kidding? I’m not.

Point is, while being a copywriter is certainly a glamorous profession, and while there is a certain excitement about seeing your sales letter rake in the sales for somebody, if you’re thinking this is an easy way to riches, you might want to reconsider this as a choice…not that I’m trying to discourage you. I just want you to realize that all is not roses on this side of the fence.

As I am quickly finding out.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to write copy just like the pros? Visit my site at http://www.bcipe.com/ and discover killer copywriting tips that have allowed me to write my own copy for years and earn myself a 6 figure a year income selling my own products.

If you’re marketing in the make money online niche, you know that showing proof of income is one of the most important things to closing the deal. Like it or not, prospects want to see that you’ve actually made money doing what you’re doing. Unfortunately, because of the advances in graphics technology, income proof is about as reliable as a 100 year old TV starting up after having an axe taken to its insides. This article explains why this is so and what we can do about it.

Let’s start with why we have such a big problem these days. Well, one of the biggest problems is a little document-write function in JavaScript that actually allows you to edit a page and place whatever dollar values you want on it. I’ve seen videos of marketers actually demonstrating how this works and it’s downright scary. You don’t even need Photoshop or any graphics program to do this. So income proof can be totally doctored without anybody being the wiser.

The bigger problem is that word of this has gotten around. It’s not like this is some deep dark secret. After all, as you were reading this, you were probably saying to yourself, “Yeah, I already knew this”, which proves my point. Almost everybody knows that income can be faked and faked well. In fact, most of my latest sales pages don’t even have income proof on them. What’s the point since nobody believes that stuff anymore anyway?

Okay, so how do we solve this problem? We solve it through something more powerful than any income proof ever was. We solve it through the kind of social proof that works like gangbusters…and that’s having people actually rave about your product. I’m not talking about your cronies who send you their testimonials because they owed you a favor. I’m talking about people who have actually used the product and were pleased with the results.

What’s that you say? Can’t sell the product without the income proof or the social proof first? Yes, that is a catch 22. So what you do is give a few copies away. Tell the person that IF they liked it and wanted to give a testimonial, you’d appreciate it. But DON’T make it a condition because paid for testimonials are against the law. In fact, you should fully disclose in your copy that you let a few people try your product and this is what they had to say. Be up front. Your prospects will appreciate it.

Income proof may not be dead yet. Certainly video, while it can be faked, is still more reliable. And yes, there are some people who don’t know about all the faked screen prints. But even if it’s not dead yet, it is certainly on life support and going fast.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of spinning your wheels trying to get your marketing off the ground? Haven’t got a clue what you’re doing and sick of being dead broke? Why not get some solid mentoring from somebody who has been EXACTLY where you are today? Check out my mentoring program at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/mentoring/mentoring.html and finally get yourself the one on one education that can FINALLY give you the success that you’ve been looking for.

Who is your inspiration in Internet marketing? If you’re not sure or think that you may have made the wrong choice, you might want to read this article. If nothing else, I think it will give you a lot to think about. Who knows, you might even discover that I’m the last person you should be following around the Internet. Did I just get your curiosity? Good, then keep reading.

Probably the biggest mistake that brand new marketers make is following somebody JUST because they are a big name. They figure that if the big name marketer made it, all THEY have to do is just follow their lead and THEY’LL make it too. In theory, this sounds reasonable. However, there are some holes in this theory. I’m going to explain them now.

For starters, many marketers achieve their success through investing. In other words, they spend money on ads, on outsourcing, on salescopy, on articles, and whatever else needs to be done. They don’t actually do anything themselves. They just know what has to be done and they go out and spend the money to get it done. Some of their expenses are in the tens of thousands of dollars per month…or more. For somebody just starting out, who may be jobless to boot, this isn’t an option.

So what do you think happens when you try to follow a blueprint of somebody who is spending money that you don’t have? Do you think you’re going to see their success, if any at all? Most likely you’re going to end up frustrated because you can’t actually do the things that they do.

Then there is another problem with following certain people. I like to use articles to get my traffic for me because I can write fairly well and enjoy doing it. It works for me. What do you think would happen if somebody who hated to write tried to follow my marketing model? They’d fail…miserably. Just because somebody has success doing something doesn’t mean that you’re going to have that same success.

What you want to do is follow somebody whose skills and monetary outlay are similar to what you can and are willing to do. If you have no money, follow somebody who markets for free. If you can write, follow somebody who writes well. Try to find somebody who is in fact YOU…just a little further along the success line.

If you follow this very simple tip, you will find that duplicating somebody’s success is a lot easier than you imagined.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of spinning your wheels trying to get your marketing off the ground? Haven’t got a clue what you’re doing and sick of being dead broke? Why not get some solid mentoring from somebody who has been EXACTLY where you are today? Check out my mentoring program at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/mentoring/mentoring.html and finally get yourself the one on one education that can FINALLY give you the success that you’ve been looking for.

Do you know what amazes me? People who complain about how much money they’re making and then you look at their marketing model and you wonder how they’re even making that much. There is an old joke about getting 10 pounds of ham out of a 5 pound bag. It can’t be done. Well, the same thing is true about Internet marketing. This article is going to explain why and what you need to do if you want more ham.

Naturally, as with anything, there are going to be exceptions to what I am about to share. I concede that much. However, what follows is what I have found to be the case most of the time. Your mileage may vary, but don’t expect miracles. Best way to explain what I am talking about is with an example.

A friend of mine wanted to make a modest $2,000 a month side income in addition to his regular job. He wasn’t looking to make Internet marketing a full time gig. That’s fine. IM isn’t for everybody as a be all and end all. Anyway, he decided to put together a plan for marketing some affiliate products that he thought would give him the results he was looking for.

Anyway, one day he emails me and tells me that he’s not doing as well a he would have liked. I asked him how much he was making and he said about $200 a month, which was about 10% of what he wanted to make. So I asked him what he was doing. I then took at look at his marketing model.

My jaw dropped to the floor.

His marketing model consisted of writing two articles a week and submitting them to one article directory with a resource box leading to a brief landing page with a product pitch.

That’s it. That’s all he was doing. And he was expecting that to generate a $2,000 a month income. Forget that each article was only getting about 30 to 50 views and maybe a 20% CTR. Even at a 100% CTR I doubt he could have gotten to his goal as he would have had to increase his sales by 10 times.

This is a classic case of trying to get 10 pounds of ham out of a 5 pound bag. You are only going to get so much production out of the amount of work you do. Now, as I said, there are exceptions. Some niches, you can write one article and, if there is enough demand and little enough competition, make out like a bandit. But that is the exception and not the rule.

My point is this. When you make a marketing plan, you need to make some realistic projections. How many views can you expect for each article? How high a CTR can you expect? What kind of conversion do you think you’re going to get on the sales page you’re sending people to? Pie in the sky thinking is going to get you in trouble. Your projections MUST be based on reality.

In other words, if you want more money to come in, you have to do more than what you’re doing if THAT effort isn’t bringing it in. No amount of wishing and hoping is going to make it so.

And if you can’t get more out of the niche you’re in, then you need to branch out into other niches. It’s that simple.

Get realistic about your expectations and you won’t be scratching your head wondering why you can’t get 10 pounds of ham out of a 5 pound bag.

To YOUR Success

Steven Wagenheim

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Have you ever heard that some people are so good at selling that they can sell igloos to Eskimos? Well, it’s true. So the question is, how would you like to be one of those people? Think it’s not possible? I say it is. And if you read this article, you’ll know exactly how it’s done and will be able to do it yourself.

Okay, let’s be honest, Eskimos don’t need igloos. They already have them. But there is something that they’d be open to. Know what that is? It’s a better igloo. Since the beginning of time, mankind has always tried to better itself. We’ve never been satisfied with what we’ve had. We’ve always wanted more. That’s why we have all the advances that we do today.

So, if you have a better igloo, you can sell it. Ah, but the question is, how do you show the Eskimo that his igloo isn’t as good as it can be and that YOU have a better one? Well, it’s actually quite easy. It comes down to two steps.

Step one is to thoroughly research the igloo in question. Go over it from top to bottom. Find out what its strengths and weaknesses are. You don’t need to remind the Eskimo of the strengths. What you want to do is make him aware of the weaknesses. Once people realize that the home they’re living in isn’t as good as they thought, they’ll be open to improvements. So the first step is to point out the weaknesses.

Step two is to present your product and address how the weaknesses of their igloo have been addresses. Explain how YOURS is better. Don’t leave out any detail. Your ad has to cover every single weakness and how it has been improved on. This is how you overcome any objections the prospect might have to buying YOUR igloo. If you’re good at what you do, two out of 10 times (2% conversion) you’re going to get the sale.

Naturally, the above process applies to any product and not just igloos. Point is, even if a prospect doesn’t need your product, if you can show them that what you have to offer is better than what they already have, you have a very good chance at closing the deal.

So yes, you CAN sell igloos to Eskimos if you know how.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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There is a reason why God gave us two ears and only one mouth. Sadly, many home business owners don’t understand that reason and that’s why they fail with their home business. Well, in this article, I’m going to explain to you why this is true so that hopefully, after you’re done reading, you won’t make the same fool mistakes that 97% of the people online who run their own business make.

Okay, I probably don’t really have to explain to you that the reason we have two ears and one mouth is so that we listen more than we speak. A wise man once said that you can’t learn anything when you’re mouth is always jabbering. Think about it…anything that comes out of your mouth, you already know. So you’re learning absolutely nothing. It’s only when you listen to others that you become educated. Ah, but who should you be listening to? That’s the key.

As a home business owner, you should be listening to two groups of people. The first group is other home business owners who are already having success. This is especially true if you’re first starting out as your knowledge of running your business is pretty limited. By listening to those who have done this for a while and have shown that they’ve achieved success, you’ll learn what to do and what not to do. This can save you a lot of time in reaching your ultimate goal…running a successful business.

But you should also be listening to another group of people. And this is where so many drop the ball. I’m talking about listening to your customers, or potential customers. They’re going to tell you what they like and don’t like about your business. If they think your product is overpriced or shoddy, they’ll let you know. If they think your customer service is poor, they’ll let you know that too. And if there is no market for your product, they’ll let you know that too with their pocketbooks.

You can’t possibly grow your business if you lock yourself up in your own little world and listen to nothing but your own thoughts. You need the input of others…those who know how to run a business and those who know what they want in a product or service. Only then can you really reach your potential as a home business owner.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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If you’re wondering where this article on video marketing is coming from, it goes back to a forum post where a member was complaining about an aspect of some videos that I happen to agree with. It has always been my opinion that you want to make it as easy as possible for your prospects to make their buying decisions. This particular video tactic does anything but. This article explains.

Okay, so what’s the tactic I’m talking about? It’s creating these incredibly long videos (anywhere from 20 to 60 minutes or more) with no way for the viewer of the video to either pause it or fast forward ahead. In other words, they have to sit through the whole video from start to finish. The controls are purposely taken away to achieve this.

Not only did this one person at the forum complain about this, but so did many other members as well, including myself. I’m not going to sit through a 60 minute video, especially if 10 minutes into it, I decide that I actually want the product and just want to be given the URL so I can buy it. By taking the control out of my hands, I can’t do that. Ultimately, I will shut the page down, which is the only way to stop the video.

Having said this, I’m now going to tell you something that is going to totally shock you. Are you ready?

Test this for yourself. If you find that making videos with no controls increases conversions for YOUR target market, then do them. Ultimately, that’s the bottom line.

See, the “gurus” who use these tactics certainly have been doing this long enough to test these things themselves and wouldn’t use them if they didn’t work…for THEM. That doesn’t mean that the same tactic is going to work for YOU…and that is where people make their mistakes.

Every market is going to react differently to this tactic. Plus, the video itself is going to have a lot to do with whether or not somebody is going to want to sit through the whole thing. A video of somebody sitting behind a desk and talking for 30 minutes straight is likely to bore the heck out of most people, whereas a video of some demonstration of a cool new product will probably keep most people glued.

So you need to know your market, your product and understand that certain videos are more conducive to a long sit through than others.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to find out how to create killer videos like my friend Kevin Riley and rake in a 6 figure income like he and I do? Check out my review of his dynamite product at my blog at http://stevenwagenheim.blogspot.com/2008/06/kevin-rileys-recipe-for-success.html

Just the other day, over at the Warrior Forum, one of the members posted a video of a woman who stood out in the snow in a bikini. I don’t know whether it was a marketing stunt or not, but it got me to thinking. How outrageous are YOU willing to get to market your products? But more importantly, will getting outrageous help or hurt you? The answer to that depends a lot on your target market. This article explains.

Do you know why people like entertainment? It’s because their everyday lives are so dull. So they turn on the TV at the end of the work day hoping that MAYBE there will be something on the tube that will make them forget that their regular day to day activities are nothing to write home about. That’s why you see crazy reality shows like Survivor.

What does this have to do with Internet marketing? Everything. See, you can go about your marketing in a methodical way, doing the usual dull boring ads that everybody else is doing, or you can try to give your target market something a little different…something that they can get excited about. Think about some of the TV commercials that you see. Some of them are pretty off the wall.

But have you noticed that there are some commercials that are very straight laced. You won’t find a commercial for some kind of medical problem taking the comedy route. Most people would consider that in very poor taste. It’s also very rare to see an off the wall commercial for a high end item like a luxury car. These commercials are usually very refined because they’re targeting an elite crowd. So yes, you have to know when you can go a little nuts.

Having said that, as a marketer, do you take some chances especially if you’re in a niche like entertainment, which is wide open to craziness, or do you stick to your middle of the road guns? If nothing else, don’t you think it would be worth a shot to test something out? The worst that can happen is that the ad campaign bombs out and you start over.

Most people have pretty dull, routine lives. A nice outrageous ad just might be the ticket to putting a smile on their face and some money in YOUR pocket.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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If I hear one more question about whether or not a niche is saturated, I swear I am going to blow a gasket. In spite of what Google will have you believe with their search results, competition isn’t nearly what most people think it is. And REAL competition, for the most part, is scarce. I’m going to explain why in this article, though this is really more of a visual concept.

I want you to follow along with these instructions as I give them to you. I want you to go to Google and type in, in quotes, “make money online” just to start off with. I want you to make a note of how many sites come up. It’s something like 12 million, right? Okay, I want you to go to the top of the page and set the search results preferences to 100 per page and then redo the search.

Go down to the bottom of the page and click on the last number for the number of pages in the search. It will probably be nine or ten. You will notice, when you get to the next page in the search, that at the bottom of the page it says that only the most relevant sites have been included. Now go back up to the top of the page and look at how many sites have been returned. It’s something like 900. Now redo the search WITH the omitted sites included. Again, click on the last page and you’ll still see that it’s no more than 900 sites that come up.

What happened to the other 12 million sites?

In short, they aren’t important enough to include probably because they are either undeveloped domains or spam blogs with those keywords plastered all over them and no real content. Whatever the reason, the sites aren’t relevant enough to be included. So in essence, that’s your REAL competition…900 sites. But why? What’s the underlying reason?

It’s simple. Most people are too lazy to put the required work into a site to make it relevant to list. So what you have left is essentially the few marketers who care enough about what they’re doing to put up a site that at least has a shot at getting some traffic.

Most of these sites, if you look at page one, aside from the very top sites, have a low PR and almost no backlinks. This should make it a piece of cake to rank on page one.

So the next time you think there is too much competition for a keyword, do a search and dig down to the core of it. You’ll probably discover that there isn’t that much competition at all.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Is your site sinking like a dead weight in the SERPs? 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