A recent survey unsurprisingly revealed that ‘Lose weight’ is the most common new years resolution.

Other popular resolutions included ‘quit smoking’, ‘read more’, ‘get organized’, ‘have more fun’ and ‘learn something new’.

But what about ‘Get more traffic to my website’.

Out of the business owners who make new year resolutions, I’m guessing probably very few have this on their list.

And yet…

1. More traffic equals more potential customer and clients on your website.
2. More potential customers and clients on your website equals more enquiries and more sales.
3. More sales usually means more profit.
4. And of course, more profit means more money to spend on things like a flash new sports car, an amazing holiday, a home cinema… or simply the freedom to choose what, when, where and how you live your life.

Now I’m pretty sure that one or more of those items are featuring prominently in the minds of a LOT of business owners — not just at the start of a new year, but probably all the time.

In fact I don’t know a single business owner who does not want to generate more cash-in-hand profit in 2012.

Which is the paradox.

If most business owners want to generate more profit, and getting high traffic volumes on to their website is one of the master keys to success, then why does ‘get more traffic to my website’ not appear high up on the lists of business owners new year resolutions?

I suspect it’s because most people don’t know how to get more traffic.

Or they’ve tried and lost money, when the investment didn’t produce any significant increase in traffic. Or they did increase the traffic to their website, but it didn’t result in extra sales and enquiries.

Over xmas I ran my own survey. I wanted to discover the number 1 biggest frustration business owners had in 2012.

Lack of traffic was the most common frustration.

It comes as no surprise.

Anyone who has been immersed in the ‘Internet Marketing’ world for any length of time will tell you… traffic is the #1 hottest topic. Period.

So, if you know you need more traffic to your website, to produce a much desired increase in enquiries, sales and profit then here’s my suggestion.

First, if you haven’t already got it, claim a free copy of Massive Traffic, my third paperback book.

It’d be my pleasure to send you it totally free of charge – the e-book version is an instant download, so I can send you that immediately. (Paperback retails on Amazon for £9.47 .)

The book is only 96 pages, so it’s a quick read but it will give you 208 ways to get a lot more visitors to your website — and many of the tactics featured in the book don’t cost a penny.

Secondly, if you can afford it and are eligible, sign up for my new email coaching programme.

Together over the coming months I’ll be working with a select group of business owners, showing them how to drive outrageously high levels of traffic to their website, and how to implement ‘Set & Forget’ systems that ensure they get high levels of traffic to their web sites every week.

In addition to traffic my coaching clients will get my assistance on the five other key areas that comprises a powerfully effective web marketing strategy.

If you want to find out more, click here for more information about my new coaching programme – and discover how a systematic approach to web marketing can help you achieve your goals in 2012.

Whether or not you become a coaching client, I hope this is the year you get massive traffic to your website.

Warm regards,

Ed.

Have you ever tried setting up a joint venture with someone, only to be rebuffed, rebuked or even totally ignored?

As I explained in Disc 4 of my Massive Traffic video training programme, Joint Ventures are without doubt one of the quickest, easiest ways of gaining new business, and unlike traditional advertising, it’s not speculative either. (With a commission-based Joint Venture, you only have to pay your J.V. partner when you win new business for their referrals.)

Now with this said, one of the most common types of e-mails my office receives is from people who want me to promote their product to my list, and yet unfortunately, I have to decline most offers.

Although the reply we send to people is always polite, I usually don’t reveal why I’ve said ‘No thanks’. I guess it would be perhaps a bit rude of me to start giving someone advice who didn’t ask for it.)

However, as a reader of my blog, and possibly an active email subscriber of mine too, I want to share with you one of the biggest secrets of successfully setting up Joint Ventures, which if you apply this to the way you initially approach potential Joint Venture partners should make all the difference in them saying  ‘Yes please!’ instead of ‘No’, (or even completely ignoring your email altogether.)

It’s this…

When you approach a J.V. partner you’ve had in your sights for a while, make sure you quickly tell them..

• How much they can expect to earn, on average, for each person they send to your sales page. (PVV – Per Visitor Value).
• Other people you’ve successfully Joint Ventured with (and provide endorsements where possible.) so they know you’ve got a proven track record.
• That you want to promote them too – including details of how big your email list is (and best to be up-front about how many active e-mail subscribers you have, not the total list size including hundreds or thousands of people who have unsubscribed, gone away, or not opened any of your emails in the last twelve months!)
• Details of what you want them to promote, and why their email subscribers would find it interesting, useful and relevant.
• The number of people who have already bought your product, and links to testimonials, endorsements and other types of social proof. (So they know it’s not a untested, unproven product you’ve just created.)
• And anything else you think that is pertinent to — and all about — the Joint Venture partner, not you.

All of these things combine to make a strong initial approach to a JV partner, that tells them WII-FM (what’s in it for them), and why your proposal is a ‘no brainer’.

Failure to explain why the promotion would be great for the JV partner too will usually result in rejection, or being completely ignored.

Also, from experience I can tell you it’s a lot easier to get other business owners to agree to a Joint Venture with you, if you can tell them that you also own a big list of active customers and e-mail subscribers, and that you are willing to promote them (the JV partner) to your list. (I.e. A reciprocal joint venture arrangement.)

Finally, if you’ve just developed a brand new product or service, my advice is to NOT instantly go out and try and get Joint Venture partners to promote it.

Why?

Because most potential partners won’t want to promote brand new untested and unproven products and services to their customers.

I instead recommend you sell it via other channels first. Make sure your sales page achieves a ‘good to great’ conversion rate before you ask JV partners to send their traffic on to it.

If not, and you manage to get a JV partner to promote for you and it produces very poor commissions…  you may find the JV relationship to be very short lived!

Now I realise a lot of this advice is quite obvious, but you’d be amazed how many of the people who email me make some or even ALL of these mistakes when they contact me, and probably wonder why I didn’t agree to the ‘big money-making opportunity’ they’ve brought to me.

If you’re considering going down the JV route to win new business, I hope you found this helpful?

Leave a comment below if you have any questions or feedback about setting up Joint Ventures.

Bye for now,

Ed.

Google have just dropped another bombshell.

They’ve just changed the way they index web sites, and as a result some very high traffic (heavily visited websites) have seen their traffic drop by more than 90%.

Now for some businesses that is going to be a killer.

However, if you’ve been building a great website, with great content, then you should be okay.

But then some of my clients have been emailing me, concerned about how this will affect their sales lead generation activities.

More specifically, they’re concerned how this will affect the way they build ‘lead pages’ — the special kind of web pages that I use to capture the names and email addresses of qualified prospects (who may then go on to buy my products and services.)

Of course my advice has always been to not even bother with organic traffic for lead pages.

I wrote about this quite strongly in my first book, and have blogged about it enough times at Edrivis.com.

Hopefully anyone who uses lead pages, and who has read my books and been following the articles on my blog (and attended my seminars and workshops) will have heeded my advice and not built their entire lead generation activities on SEO.

I’ve always advised against it.

Partly because, just like it’s too dangerous to rely on one customer or client for all your work, it’s also too dangerous to rely on just one source of traffic for your website. Especially one that’s liable to change their rules (algorithm), in a big way, at the drop of a hat, like they (Google) just have done.

However, the other reason I advise against SEO for lead pages is because it’s a passive traffic tactic.

Here how SEO works. You optimize your website, you submit articles, you build backlinks. You wait. You wait a bit longer. You build more backlinks. Submit more articles. Add more content to your site and tweak and optimise your ‘on page ranking factors’.

And then, hopefully, over time, you get some of that glorious organic Google traffic arriving on your site.

Now, that is a great strategy for local businesses who don’t rely on lead pages.

I know Karin Hermans who I interviewed for my second book, Email Marketing Dynamite, gets a lot of organic traffic to her natural wooden flooring website. She’s got a great site with lots of content. I’m sure Karin’s site will be unaffected by Google’s algorithm change.

I also know that the website of Chipping Sodbury solicitor Paul Hajek, will be okay.

Paul’s website gets organic traffic every day of the week, and he gets a lot of work from the qualified leads his site generates.

Those kind of websites will be fine. Lots of great quality content that Google will give a ‘thumbs up’.

However, in terms of lead pages, my advice has always been to perform proactive marketing campaigns that get visitors to them, and to not even bother performing SEO on them.

The only way Google’s recent algorithm change has impacted any of the lead generation advice I give to my clients is that if they use Google Adwords, they may need to change their lead pages.

NB: Some people call lead pages “squeeze” or “name squeeze” pages – but I don’t. I loathe the connotation of “squeezing” potential clients for anything!

Lead Pages are a totally ethical way to generate sales leads, but when people call them Squeeze Pages… it makes them sound sleazy.

So, to reiterate, my advice had always been to forget about SEO for lead pages.

Get traffic to your lead pages through Joint Ventures, traditional advertising using ‘Direct Response Print Ads’, article marketing in OFFLINE publications or syndicating articles to industry specific websites (rather than junk article directories), and so on.

In my latest book, Massive Traffic, I outlined 208 ways any business can get more traffic to their website. If you haven’t read my book yet, grab a FREE copy here. (And hey, guess what… that link goes to a lead page!!!!)

So in the current panic about Google’s algorithm change, I have to restate — just like you wouldn’t (or rather should not) rely on a single customer or client for 90% or more of your business, you should not be relying on Google delivering all your web traffic… it’s like building your lead generation strategy on a foundation of egg shells.

I’m launching more lead pages than ever at the moment – and they break ALL of Google’s rules. (E.g. I still don’t put any external links in.)

For example, this one I’ve created in conjunction with Paul Hajek who I mentioned above – The 7 Best-Kept Secrets of Sole Practitioner Websites.

We launched that page 5 days ago and it breaks just about every rule in Google’s book!

And yet it’s already working like gangbusters… and is on its way to build a very large list of UK solicitors… without getting ANY organic traffic from Google.

If you sell complex products or services, and are using lead pages to ethically capture the details of targeted sales leads and qualified prospects… I hope you’ve not been relying totally on Google’s search engine to deliver visitors every day.

If you want to know more about how to build lead pages and drive traffic to generate hundreds or even thousands of sales leads, click here to sign up to get free ‘insider announcements’ about my forthcoming programme “The Ultimate Expert’s Marketing System”.

Ed.

This Online Lead Generation Cheat Sheet shows the eight step process you can use to generate hundreds or sometimes more than a thousand new e-mail subscribers and highly-qualified sales-leads every month – and automatically drop them in a system that turns them from prospects into paying customers and clients.

RIGHT-CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD
(5MB PDF download,)

The cheat sheet covers each of the eight steps involved in a successful online list building, lead generation and client attraction system, which include…

1. Identify your ‘most wanted’ type of client.
2. Determine their ‘pain’
3. “Shrink Wrap Your Brain!”
4. Repurpose your content
5. Launch Lead Pages
6. Design a Lead Nurturing sequence
7. Promote the Lead Page
8. Review & Refine

Even though the cheat sheet’s crammed with information, I realise it’s going to raise a lot of questions, so sometime soon I’ll release a video that explains each of these steps in more detail.

I hope find the cheat sheet useful and I look forward to releasing the video shortly.

All my best,

Ed Rivis

Ready, Fire, Aim is the title of one of the best business books I’ve ever read.

The author Michael Masterson is an American entrepreneur who has successfully built three multi-million businesses. Not a bad track record!

Anyone who achieve those kind of results three times in a row obviously knows what he’s doing, which is one reason why I like his book so much.

The other reason I like the book so much is that Masterson explains how he did it, and one of the key reasons for his staggering success is in the title of the book.

The basic premise is that so many business owners waste months (or even years) fine-tuning their products and services, trying to get them ‘perfect’ before making them available to their customers and prospects.

Masterson’s ‘Ready, Fire, Aim’ approach is to just get on with it. Launch your new product or service despite it’s imperfections, then get live feedback from the only people whose feedback really matter… actual paying customers and clients.

Then you can, if necessary refine and relaunch version two of the product, based on what your paying customers actually want rather than what non-paying customers — or your ‘gut feeling’ — has suggested.

Another key benefit to this approach is not only that vital revenues start flowing early on… without months or years of cashflow drout.

Of course I learnt all this the hard way. I used to be a perfectionist, and spent three long years writing my first book. Way too long!

I sometimes still spend too long on projects than I should, but I’m certainly not the serial perfectionist I used to be.

As a case in point, I spent less than a week writing my most recent book, Massive Traffic.

Now I’m the first to admit, it’s not as nicely designed as my first book. It doesn’t have as many words. And at 98 pages is less than half the size.

It also could do with another in-depth proofreading and copy-editing session, because I perhaps took the Ready, Fire, Aim approach a little bit too literal!

HOWEVER … for anyone who wants a snappy compendium of web site traffic tactics they can choose to investigate further, it’s fine.

Also, it did exactly what I wanted it to do – because I wrote it specifically for lead generation. And generate leads it has… many thousands of them in fact, and a percentage of them continue to buy my flagship traffic generation home-study programme, become private clients, and so on.

And to think, before I understood this principle, I would have still been writing the book, trying to get it ‘just right’ before releasing it to the publishers.

So, of course I wholeheartedly recommend ‘Ready, Fire, Aim’. You can buy it from Amazon and other good bookstores.

And if you’re thinking of writing a book, or started one ages ago but haven’t finished it yet, then maybe 2011 could be the year you finally accept “good enough is good enough”, and simply get it out there… working it’s tail off, generating highly qualified leads for your business too.

My third book launches tomorrow and as someone who follows my blog I’d like to gift you a copy.

Massive Traffic will give you more than 208 ways to get more visitors to your website within the next 24 hours, and is based on ‘The Ultimate Traffic Tactics Mindmap which I gave away on my blog here recently.

==> Click here to claim your Free Book

You’ll be able to claim the Ebook (digital) version instantly.

Also, if you want the full paperback version you can have that too for free — all I ask if you cover the cost of p&p (a few pounds and that’s entirely optional — you can have just the download if you want.)

I’m really looking forward to sending you Massive Traffic, because it clearly explains more than 208 ways you can drive a lot more people on to your website and hopefully generate a lot more sales and enquiries!

Best regards,

Ed Rivis

Issue #007 of my monthly report Web Profits Monthly is going to print on Monday (10th August), and I want to send you a copy – because I think you’ll like it.

For example in this month’s issue I’m covering the crazy world of Twitter – something I’ve barely scratched the surface of… and yet which is quickly becoming a Worldwide phenomenom. (It’s been on the BBC news more times than I’ve had hot dinners lately – almost to the point where I’m sick of hearing about it… and I’m a web marketer!)

SO, as with any other web marketing tactic, I asked the question…

“Can any small business owner use Twitter to increase their sales and profits? Or is it just going to suck time and money into a black hole?”

Well, in this month’s issue the question is explored and answered, in full detail. (A special 17 page report is also available for download in the Web Profits Monthly subscriber’s members area.)

If you want to know all about Twitter and how your business can profit from it, you’ve got two options…

1) Sign up for Web Profits Monthly and get your first issue free (only pay a low cost of postage and packing),

or…

2) Pay £47+vat to get just the report on it’s own.

(Hmmm….. free… or £47… which shall it be!!)

Click here to subscribe to Web Profits Monthly, read all about Twitter and a myriad of other powerfully effective web marketing tactics (like Google Adwords, Search Engine Optimistion, copywriting and outsourcing, to name just a few.) Then implement the tactics and immediately boost your profits.

Also, if after reading your free trial issue you decide you don’t want it any more you can cancel with one quick phone call – and it’s a freephone number if dialling from inside the U.K.. Easy. No risk.

You’ve got nothing to lose. Subscribe today, and find out if you really can use Twitter to grow your business using the web.

Warm regards,
 
Ed Rivis, author of The Ultimate Web Marketing Strategy
and (in September ’09) E-Mail Marketing Dynamite

P.S. If you’re already susbscribed to Web Profits Monthly then I look forward to sending you this special issue – it should be with you on either Wednesday or Thursday next week. (And don’t forget to check the online subscriber’s only area where there will be a full 17 page report and Twitter videos showing what it’s all about and how to use it effectively. (I’m also hoping to post a special guest interview there. (Cindy and Richard – I hope to speak with you about this – please contact me when you get chance thanks.)

Image via CrunchBase

Social Media Marketing is the art of using ‘community driven’ websites like YouTUBE.com, Facebook.com and MySpace.com to attract new business and increase sales and profits.

There’s a lot of buzz at the moment about social marketing.

Increasingly more “everyday small business owners” are becoming aware of it as another approach to online marketing.

In fact maybe you’ve heard about Twitter?

It’s been featured on the news lately, and the front page of the Federation of Small Business “First Voice” Magazine — and no doubt countless other business publications around the world.

Now, I agree Twitter is definitely the ‘coolest kid on the block’ at the moment.

I don’t deny some businesses are set to make a killing on those kind of sites. In fact many already are.

I know of at least one business that’s successfully using Twitter to get more clients. (Hey Cindy, I’d love to interview you about that!

So this all begs the question – why haven’t *I* been “preaching” social media marketing on my blog here, or in my e-mail newsletter?

And to confuse people even more, I also recently announced I’m writing a book on e-mail marketing… which is just about the OLDEST online marketing tactic available!

So why have I been ignoring the ‘cool’ new tactics?

Well the fact is… I can clearly see that very few small businesses are using even just “plain old” e-mail marketing.

So for most businesses, looking at anything other than email marketing at the moment is like signing up to take a Degree… when they haven’t even taken their eleven-plus, O-levels, or GCSEs!

(The old maxim “Walk before you run” springs to mind!)

E-mail marketing is THE most essential tactic every business should have in place BEFORE they look at all the other ‘cool’ stuff.

And here’s a case in point:

At this very moment one of the year’s biggest online product launches is taking place.

Perry Belcher and Ryan Deiss are two of the most successful entrepreneurs in the (short) history of Social Media Marketing, and they’ve created what sounds like an incredible training programme that explains how to profit from social media.

Perry has got more than 100,000 followers on Twitter, which is a big deal if you know Twitter or maybe have an account. (Did I mention all the best social media sites like Twitter are free to use?)

Anyway, as part of their product launch, Perry has released some brilliant videos which explain how to use social media to generate new business, open up new revenue streams and ultimately make more money from the web.

They’re extremely compelling. Click here to sign up and watch them. You’ll see what I mean!

WARNING

Compared to Perry, I definitely come across
as the Brit with the Stiff Upper Lip! He makes use of a fairly
colourful vocabulary – so be warned if you decide to watch
the videos. (I found them extremely entertaining as well as
informative.)

Something you’ll notice in their videos is that they still advise you to ultimately direct your social media traffic at e-mail capture pages.. so you can then perform e-mail marketing. (What I call list building landing pages.)

In other words, they’re still bringing it all back — full circle — to e-mail marketing.

Why?

Because having your own e-mail list of prospects and customers and clients is STILL the number one way to use the web to effectively grow any small business.

Social media marketing is just one (admittedly very powerful way) of injecting more e-mails into your sales funnel.

Anyway, whether or not you’re e-mail marketing, I strongly recommend Perry’s videos — check them out now…

==> http://www.edrivis.com/recommends/perry-smm-videos/

As well as getting videos you’ll also get some ‘cheat sheets’ to support the videos – I’m really impressed with the quality of the free stuff they’re giving away as part of this launch.

NB: If you who took my advice and got hold of Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula should sign up to this launch, if just to see how a launch being done to perfection!

And if after watching the videos and getting his downloads you find yourself asking the question “should I (YOU) be using social media marketing?” the come back to my blog here and post the question below.

I’ll be happy to answer individual questions on this one (unless I get to many to cope with – so if you have a question make sure you get back to my blog quickly to post your question as a comment.)

Here’s the link one last time – sign up to watch the videos and get the ‘cheat sheets’ while you still can… http://www.edrivis.com/recommends/perry-smm-videos/

All my best,
Ed.

P.S. For anyone who signed up for announcements about my new book on e-mail marketing – I’ll be sending an email shortly… I want you to help me choose which cover design to use. (I’ve got two versions to choose from). Hope you can help out.

If you’re not on the announcements list for E-Mail Marketing Dynamite click here to sign up.

I don’t go every often but when I get the chance I love Scuba diving – the last time was in Grand Cayman quite a few years ago now. It was an amazing experience.

Anyway, because of this, whenever I do training on Google Adwords, I quite often use ‘scuba diving’ as an example topic, because I can talk about every type of site from e-commerce shops selling scuba equipment, through to dive centres, certified training courses and so on.

So this morning I was writing an article on Google Adwords for the next issue of my Web Profits Monthly newsletter, explaining how to structure campaigns for maximum return.

I needed a screen shot (illustration) to go with my article so I went to Google and ran a search on the phrase ‘scuba face mask’ and here’s the screen I got…

Now you can see I’ve highlighted some parts of the screen red — those are adverts offering me ‘swine flue’ or ‘surgical masks’… in other words poducts that are totally irrelevant to what I was looking for.

It’s crazy advertising, and here’s why…

Obviously I was looking for a scuba face masks. The word scuba was in my search phrase.

I was not looking for face masks to help me avoid getting swine flu, or to help me operate on anyone!

Now, the swine flu pandemic is of course on my mind. So I could quite easily have clicked any of those adverts out of general interest.

Had I done so, my click would have cost those advertisers money – and I’m guessing quite a lot of money, because the adverts I’ve highlighted in red were at the very top of the page, which is the most expensive place to have your Google adverts.

And if I had clicked, how likely would I have been to buy a swine flue face mask?

Not very!

In other words those advertisers are potentially losing money by getting untargeted clicks – people who click the advert out of interest but who are not actual prospects.

Google Adwords can cost a lot. If you want a Google Adwords account that helps grow your business — and doesn’t just bleed your credit card dry with nothing to show for it — then you need to advertise smart.

Use Negative Keywords.

All those advertisers need to do to minimise untargeted clicks is to add words like ‘scuba’ as what are called negative keywords, which tell Google Adwords when not to display adverts.

In this case those retailers who are advertising swine flu masks should have negative keywords that prevent their adverts from displaying when I search one ‘scuba face masks’, and also any other type of face mask that is not swine flue related. (Motorbiking, BMXing, cycling, swimming, and so on.)

That’s all it takes, but they’ve failed to do this simple step and I reckon it’s costing them money.

If you’ve not yet tried Google Adwords for your business then I thoroughly recommend it – the impact on customer acquisition and sales-lead generation can be nothing short of staggering… just don’t make the same mistakes these advertisers are making!

Ed.

P.S. I covered negative keywords in a lot of detail in last month’s issue of Web Profits Monthly – you can get back issues from here, but it’s a lot cheaper to get them on subscription.