Steve Wagenheim’s Home Business Blog

As soon as I saw the thread title, “Profanity In Emails,” I knew I had to write an article on this subject. I knew right away, without even going into the thread itself and reading it, what it was going to be about. It’s most likely the usual rant about how you shouldn’t use profanity in emails. While I personally don’t, I am going to take a different stand on this issue. Keep reading to understand where I’m coming from.

If you’ve been around the Internet marketing world for a while, at one time or another, you had to be on the list of The Rich Jerk. Well, if you were, then you know what his emails were like. They were loaded with profanity. In fact, I sometimes felt like I was watching an X rated movie. That guy could really hit you hard with his straight talk. And oddly, he also made a ton of money doing it. I wonder…do you think a majority of his list was NOT turned off by his use of profanity?

Right or wrong, what it comes down to is your audience. You have to know who they are. If you have a list in the health niche and you’re primarily targeting people who have arthritis, you probably want to keep your emails relatively clean. And if you’re targeting a kid’s list, you definitely want to keep it clean if for no other reason than morals problems.

But what if you are targeting a niche where the people in it are themselves known for using a few off color words in their daily living? Well, in that case, you can probably get away with some off color remarks. That doesn’t mean you will. You still have to test the list to see how they respond. And that’s the point I’m trying to make here.

If you’re going to be a marketer, you have to put your personal feelings aside. Sure, if you are dead set against using profanity, then don’t use it. But if you talk like a truck driver around the house and easily accept such language, don’t assume your audience will. You have to be objective and ask yourself if the niche you’re targeting is going to be receptive to the way I normally speak. If not, you may be doing yourself a big disservice by not toning it down a bit.

There IS a place for profanity in emails. The trick is knowing when and where.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim.

Tired of not getting your emails delivered, read or opened? Sick of not making any sales from your email marketing efforts? Visit my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/emailmarketing/index.html and get your hands on 5 years of my personal experience with email marketing…experience that has earned me tens of thousands of dollars yearly.

Okay, so I’m browsing through the Warrior Forum this morning and I see a thread with the title, “Call the Internet Police! Domain Keyword Abuse!!” and I just had to open it up and take a look. Well, what I found was absolutely hysterical. There was this domain that somebody found that had to be one of the longest and most ridiculous domain names I’d ever seen. Something to do with cats, dogs, training, behavior, counseling, and a dog bakery. Yeah, don’t ask. Well, seeing this domain got me thinking. Why would this person want such a domain?

Well, I can think of one reason off the top of my head. You know how everybody talks about targeting long tail keywords? Well maybe this guy figured that by combining every single long tail keyword that he could think of into his domain name, he’ll get ALL the people who are actually looking up those keywords. I guess in a kind of twisted way it makes sense. But here’s the problem.

Most people, though not all, like to be able to remember the domains of places they go to so that they can just easily type them in. They also don’t like those domains to be too long so that they don’t have to type so much. Trust me, I have a couple of domain names that, though they would be considered perfectly acceptable, are probably longer than they should be. People are lazy and don’t want to do more than they have to… especially when it comes to typing in a URL.

So coming up with a name that is just ridiculously long is counterproductive to what you’re trying to do. Sure, you might get the curiosity seekers coming to your site to check out your long domain because it’s novel. But do you REALLY think that many of these people, if any at all, will turn into buyers? Maybe if you have some novelty item. Point is, you want to make your name as recognizable as possible. You don’t see Nike coming up with nike-is-the-greatest-sports-shoe-in-the-world-so-buy-one-and-just-do-it dot com, do you?

Picking a domain name is probably one of the most important things you will do. It will, aside from targeting certain keywords that you’re after, identify you for life. I for one don’t want to be known as the internet-marketer-who-has-ocd-and-just-cannot-get-away-from-his-computer dot com.

At least not yet.

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

What is it with Internet marketers? You’d think the very first thing they’d learn to do is use a search engine. I mean how hard is it? I see how you guys use search engines and it’s a crying shame. Well, this article is going to teach you the RIGHT way to use them. If you’re curious as to what I have to share, you might want to read this.

First of all, you have to get away from this habit of using quotes when you search for something. Don’t you realize that that’s only going to help you find what you’re looking for a lot quicker? What’s the fun in that? Don’t you want the adventure of scouring through all those meaningless search results when you look up things like “how do I get cat poop off of my Stetson?” If you use quotes, you’re going to find your answer way to fast as there can’t be too many sites that are going to have that exact question. But without quotes, well, who knows what you’ll find? That’s the fun of searching without quotes. Be adventurous! Dare to live outside the box!

Secondly, when you use the search engines, you want to ignore all those results at the top and the right hand side. Don’t you realize that, one, those results are probably going to be the most relevant since those people are actually PAYING for those positions and two, you DO realize that those people ALL have something to sell to you. Do you REALLY think that you’re going to get to those sites and get the info that you need for FREE? I mean get real. You’re a marketer for crying out loud.

Finally, when you use the search engines you DON’T want to use just ONE. I mean what fun is that? You end up getting blasted with the same irrelevant results for every search you do because the search engine you decide to use doesn’t know a pea from a peanut. You MUST use ALL the search engines. That way you can get an idea of which one provides you with the MOST relevant results. Then, you can decide, depending on whether you want info quick or just want to get jerked around, which search engine you’re going to use for THAT particular search.

There you have it…my top three tips for using search engines.

Now aren’t you glad you read this article?

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.

Okay, so you’re a blogger and you’re setting up your first blog and you’re looking for a theme. Essentially, you’re looking for something that looks good, at least to you. You weed through the WordPress themes directory spot something you like and install it. You’re done. But are you? Did you choose the right theme? For that matter, does it even matter? A lot of people seem to think it doesn’t. Well, this kind of thinking can land you in a lot of hot water. Themes DO matter…a lot. This article explains why.

Naturally, how a theme looks (good or bad) is, in a lot of ways, subjective. What one person may call a nice looking theme, another person might think looks like garbage. You’re never going to please everybody with your choice of theme. However, there is one thing you DO want to keep in mind when choosing a theme. You want it to fit with the topic of your blog as closely as possible. I’m going to give you an extreme example so that you understand what I mean.

Let’s say you have a blog on health related issues. Don’t you think that maybe you should use a theme that has health related designs on it? Maybe stock photos of doctors and/or nurses. Maybe some medical symbols. Maybe photos of natural herbs. You get the picture, right? Well, what would somebody think if they went to your “health” blog and saw balloons all over the place, or photos of tanks and cannons? They’d think that your blog was a joke.

Now I understand, the above is a very extreme example and I’d like to think that nobody is that dense as to put tanks and cannons on a blog about health. But trust me, I have seen some strange things. Point is, even subtle inconsistencies can turn off your target market. It doesn’t take much. If just one thing about the theme is off, such as the color (do you want a black theme for a health blog?) it can give visitors the wrong idea.

At the very least, you should go with a theme that is neutral so that it could go with anything. However, look itself is not all that makes up a theme.

Next, there is functionality. Let’s say you want your blog to have some nice Amazon ads on the sidebar. Well, you better pick a theme that has an Amazon widget or something compatible. If you want to display rotating banners, you better pick a theme with that kind of functionality. Again, themes are more than just look.

So when picking the theme for YOUR blog, make sure that it not only looks the part but that it has the functionality that YOU need to do the things that YOU want to do.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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One thing that I have found out about people who build lists is that they make a very serious mistake, especially if they have more than one product to sell, whether it be one they created or sell as an affiliate. In this article, I’m going to point out what the mistake is, how to correct it and how it can easily make you an additional $50 a day with very little work. Keep reading to find out more.

Okay, if you’re the typical product creator and/or affiliate marketer, this is probably the trap that you end up falling into. You create a product and promote it to your list. You make a whole bunch of sales and life is good. But after a while, the product gets old and sales slow down. So you create another product or find one at an affiliate marketplace and promote that one…completely forgetting about the old one, thinking that there is no more money to be made with it.

Problem is, as time goes by, your list is still growing. There are new people on it who never saw your old product. In fact, they don’t know that it IS old. So, if the product is still viable, meaning that it isn’t outdated and can still help people, why not send out a broadcast to people on your list who maybe joined in the last 30 days and see what happens? You’d be surprised at how many extra sales you can get that you wouldn’t have normally gotten because you left that old product for dead.

I can’t speak for other autoresponder services but Aweber has a broadcast feature where you can send an email to people who signed up for quite a few different time periods. In fact, you can send an email to all people who joined in just the last seven days. If you do this once a week for all your old products, think of how many sales you can make. Of course this all depends on how many subscribers you add to your list on a daily basis.

Point is, don’t abandon your old products. Just because they are old doesn’t mean that they whole world has seen them. There are new people coming online everyday who wouldn’t know an old product from one that was created the other day. As long as the product is still useful, there is nothing wrong with promoting it.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of not getting your emails delivered, read or opened? Sick of not making any sales from your email marketing efforts? Visit my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/emailmarketing/index.html and get your hands on 5 years of my personal experience with email marketing…experience that has earned me tens of thousands of dollars yearly.

I get a chuckle from some of the questions that get asked over at the Warrior Forum. It’s just so funny what people will buy into. Today’s offering is this one. “Is the standard squeeze page still effective?” If you’re a typical Internet marketer, you probably use one of these yourself. So you probably already know the answer…for you. Ah, but therein lies the rub. Confused? Well, sit back, relax, and read what I have to share on this subject. It isn’t what you think it’s going to be.

One of the things that I learned (and it took me a LONG time to learn it) is that there are no absolutes in this business. Every single day you hear proclamations by other marketers.

Long sales copy is dead.

Article marketing isn’t as effective as it used to be.

And the proclamations go on and on. You’d think that the sky opened up and some divine creature fell down from it revealing all the truths about Internet marketing. Well, the truth is, there ARE no truths. What works for John Doe may not work for you.

But why? Why is that so? Why is it that for John Doe, his squeeze pages perform like gangbusters and yet for you, they don’t do squat. I mean, either they work or they don’t…right?

Wrong!

There are many variables that go into the effectiveness of a squeeze page. The niche itself for starters. Some niches are more jaded and blind to squeeze pages. Other niches are afraid of them simply because they are so far removed from buying things online that they’re afraid to share their email address with you or anyone. They apparently never heard of junk email accounts.

The look of the squeeze page itself comes into play as far as effectiveness. Different niches will respond to different looks. You certainly can’t expect a squeeze page designed for rappers looking to get a record deal to perform as well with the same look targeted towards people who are looking to get out of debt. They’ll be running for the hills when they see all that glitz.

I learned a long time ago that absolutes will kill you. Anybody who says that one thing or another either works or doesn’t work ALL the time, is greatly misinformed. There is no such animal.

So, the answer to this question is simple.

Test and find out for yourself.

That is the ONLY way you’re going to know.

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.

There is no question that SEO is important unless you’re just going to spend all your time on paying for traffic. And even then, you want your pages to be as optimized as possible so that they are relevant enough to keep your PPC costs down. But how many people know if they’re up to their level of competition in the niche that they’re tackling? How do you find out? Well, this article is going to provide some simple, but effective tips for sizing up the competition to see if you can battle with the big boys.

Probably the first thing you want to look at is the site itself. What better way to know what you’re up against than to look it straight in the face? Take a look at how many indexed pages they have. See what keywords they’re tackling. Take a look at their site design. Naturally, you want to see what all this work has done for their ranking. If you want to beat them, you’re going to have to be better than them.

Now don’t get me wrong. I have seen some God awful looking sites at the top of the SERPs. You’d really have to wonder how they got there. Well, there is more to a ranking than just looks and content. Unfortunately, and until Google starts to give this less weight, backlinks play a big part in the ranking picture. A sight with a lot of backlinks, in Google’s mind, is a site that is popular with other sites online. As a marketer, you know that this isn’t really true. But that’s the flaw in Google’s algorithm. Hopefully, one day, they’ll change it. But until they do, backlinks are important.

Another thing you have to look at is how much they’re actually paying for advertising. By paying for advertising, they’re getting more visitors to their site. In turn, as time goes on, those visitors bring their pages up the ranks. If they’re spending a lot of money, can you compete with them? I’ve seen sites spending thousands of dollars a day in PPC costs. Most beginning Internet marketers simply cannot compete with them.

Point is, sometimes you have to pick your battles. If you find you’re looking to get into a niche that is dominated by sites with high PR, tons of backlinks and an ad spend that would make the US debt look tiny in comparison, you might want to reconsider and get into something else. I’m not saying that they can’t be beaten. What I am saying is that it’s going to take a lot of work.

So take a look at your competition and figure out what YOU have to do in order to give THEM a run for their money.

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

Today, the world as we know it ended. Yes, everything came to a crashing halt. Aweber, the mighty autoresponder service was down for a few hours. Get Response was down as well. Turns out that their data center had a problem and that was the reason. In the meantime, Internet marketers all over the planet were in a panic. Opt ins were lost and nobody could email their lists. Yes, everybody was ready to jump out a second story window but me. Perspective is a wonderful thing. This article is going to try to give you some of the wisdom of my years and a piece of perspective at the same time.

Let me start off by asking you a question. The outage at the data center. Is there anything YOU could have done about it? I’m not talking about what the data center or what Aweber or Get Response could have done. I’m asking what YOU could have done. The answer to that question is pretty obvious. There is nothing you could have done. This whole situation was out of your control. When you put your business in the hands of a third party, you run the risk that the third party in question is going to have problems…maybe even go out of business.

So what are your options? Well, after the outage today you have two choices. You can continue to go with Aweber or Get Response, whichever one you use, or you can go with a different company. But let me ask you a question. If you go with a different company, do you REALLY believe that something like this can’t happen to them? I mean, after all, Aweber and Get Response are two of the biggest. So if this can happen to them, it can happen to anybody. No company is immune to problems…no matter how big they are. And if you DO switch, will you get the same quality service? Will delivery rates be as good? These are questions you need to ask yourself.

In short, stuff happens. The world is not perfect. If it was, we wouldn’t have all the problems that we have. The key to surviving in this world is being able to recognize what problems are within your control and what problems are out of your control. If in your control, then don’t just sit on your butt doing nothing. Attend to the problem quickly and efficiently. If the problem is out of your control, make the best of it. Do what you can but don’t get all worked up over it.

I know…easier said than done. But as you get older, you’ll find that it gets easier.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of not getting your emails delivered, read or opened? Sick of not making any sales from your email marketing efforts? Visit my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/emailmarketing/index.html and get your hands on 5 years of my personal experience with email marketing…experience that has earned me tens of thousands of dollars yearly.

I’ve seen marketers make stupid statements before but the other day, over at the Warrior Forum, I saw what was probably the stupidest statement ever. I am talking about relevant backlinks. The person who started the thread claims that the only backlinks that are relevant to your site are ones that come from sites that are in the same niche. In other words, if you have a site on home repair, the only backlinks that are relevant are the ones that come from other home repair sites. If you believe that, I have some land to sell you…cheap.

Okay, let’s clear this issue up once and for all because this is the biggest bunch of malarkey I have ever heard in my life. Probably the best way to illustrate my point why ALL backlinks are relevant (though some are more relevant than others) is with an example. I hope this example paints a very clear picture for you.

Let’s say, for argument sake that you have a site that sells hard to find trading cards. I’m talking about cards from old TV shows like Combat, Batman and so on. You’ve got tons of these, all in mint condition. People who are card collectors absolutely LOVE your site. Some of them love it so much that they actually rave about it on their blogs. But wait a minute. What kind of blogs do these people have?

Well, seeing that these are just regular folks (not marketers) it turns out that they have blogs that have all sorts of content on them such as needlepoint tips, entertainment watches, photos of cats and dogs and just about anything you can think of that has NOTHING to do with collectible trading cards. In fact, there are no backlinks to your site from any site that sells trading cards. Why? Because the last thing they want to do is promote the competition.

So you have all these backlinks from sites that have nothing to do with trading cards and these backlinks, along with the fact that you have some great content on your site, shoot you right up to number one on Google’s hit parade. So tell me. Are these backlinks NOT relevant?

Sure, it would be great if you could get some backlinks from authority sites in your niche. But just because you don’t doesn’t mean that the ones you DO have are meaningless, worthless or whatever the person at the forum is claiming.

Okay, point made? Any backlink that you can get is going to help you with your site ranking as long as it’s not one from a site that has been sandboxed by Google for being in a bad neighborhood, spamming or whatever the reason is.

Hope this clears up this ridiculous issue once and for 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

I’m beginning to think that Internet marketers want to sit back on their couch and have an automated robot do their marketing for them. If they could have that robot also bring them a drink with a straw, that would be great too. Yes, there is no doubt about it…Internet marketers are getting fat and lazy. Yes, this is a rant that you’re about to read. So you’ve been warned.

I don’t even know where to begin with the laziness that I’ve seen. The most recent examples are the ones where marketers come to Internet marketing forums and ask questions that, on the surface, appear to be simple enough to find with just a little bit of search engine research. Sure enough, the one question I saw today over at the Warrior Forum, I got an answer in about 30 seconds just from typing the question into the search box. Are people so lazy that they can’t even do that?

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Laziness isn’t just about research. It’s about work too. For example, you tell somebody that all they have to do is write one article a day for their niche and after a month they should have enough content to shoot them to the top of the SERPs and you’d think that they’d have no trouble doing this. Then, 30 days later, you ask them how they did and you find out that they wrote four articles. That’s right…four articles in 30 days. That’s about one article a week. What were they doing the other six days?

Then of course you have site design. Now let’s face it, today, you don’t have to be an HTML expert to put up a site. With things like WordPress, you can have a functioning site in a matter of hours. So if you tell somebody to have a site up by the end of the week with at least SOME content on it, don’t you think that should be easy enough to do? But then the end of the week comes and the person hasn’t even picked out a domain for their niche. Why? Beats me if I know why.

If you think people are lazy and don’t want to work, take a look at the lines for the lottery each week. Those are people who are looking to spend the rest of their lives on some deserted island drinking rum and cola or whatever their drink of choice is. And if the lottery lines don’t do it for you, how about all the emails I get from people who ask me “Is this going to be a lot of work?”

Let me save you a lot of trouble if you’re wondering if making a living online takes work. It does. If that’s a dirty four letter word for you, do yourself a favor…make sure you get a winning ticket.

You’re going to need it.

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.