You know how sometimes you’re so blown away by the service you receive from a company, that you feel compelled to tell everyone about it?

Well, today I bought a suite of thirteen new professional WordPress themes from Simple Themes, but somehow managed to ‘break’ the first one I installed on a website I’m setting up for a new client.

I submitted a support ticket on the Simple Themes forum and left my office around 5pm.

In less than one hour, Casey from Simple Themes not only fixed what appears to have been an error on my side (a server issue – nothing to do with their theme which works perfectly), he also appears to have done additional work configuring the theme, adding images and extra plugins that make the theme sing.

I’m not used to that level of service from theme vendors. Like I say, I’m blown away (which is a phrase I don’t think I’ve ever used before!)

So, this is a BIG thank you to Casey from Simple Themes – fantastic WordPress themes and amazing service to go with it.

Ed.

You may have seen the news recently (it was on BBC1) … the US Government are trying to put through laws  (SOPA – the “Stop Online Piracy Act”) that will give them the ability to shut down any website they choose for extremely whimsical reasons, or even for reasons entirely out of the web site owners control.

Although that won’t directly affect my website here in the UK (or yours if you are also in the UK too) it will almost definitely affect the way you use the web every day.

Worse, if the US govn’t pass the law, you can be pretty damn certain that the red-tape-wallers in our U.K. goverment will want to do the same here too… and that very much would affect your website and how many sales and enquiries you get online.

I just registered my dissent on Avaaz – I hope you join me and do the same.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet/

NB: If you’ve not heard about this one the news and are wondering what this is about (very rare for me to do anything political on my website) then here’s some more info about it, courtesy of the BBC.

I hope you join me in taking action – even if it’s just a few seconds to register on Avaaz.

Thanks,

Ed.

Over the last 12 months I’ve noticed a marked increase in the number of small business owners who want to ‘escape’ from their business, either because they’re nearing retirement, or are struggling to keep their business afloat. Or because they’ve built a business they’ve ended up hating!

When people tell me they want to make money online — but not with any reference to their current business… well that’s not something I focus on, so I usually refer them to other people and resources.

One such resource is a book I read over Christmas . It’s one of the best I’ve ever read on the subject of how to earn passive income and live the ‘Internet Marketing Lifestyle’ so I wanted to quickly let you know about it.

Get Out While You Can – Escape The Rat Race so far has 158 four and five star reviews on Amazon, for a good reason.

The author — U.K. based Internet Marketer George Marshall – explains multiple business models, with the key focus being affiliate marketing — where you earn commission by creating Google-friendly websites that promote other people’s products and services.

I have done very little in terms of teaching or advocating affiliate marketing. It’s certainly not my core strategy (which involves list building using lead pages, and then e-mail marketing the list.)

However, as a business model I think affiliate marketing definitely holds a lot of appeal to the people who fall into one of the three categories I touched at the beginning of this article.

In his book George does an excellent job of explaining affiliate marketing in layman’s terms. And for more advanced marketers, it’s still a highly enjoyable read and contains dozens of references to useful resources and clever tricks of the trade.

However, there are the two big reasons why I like the book so much, and am unreservedly recommending it…

1) It’s honest.

George doesn’t talk about ‘Get Rich Quick’, or even ‘Get Rich Slow’ for that matter.

He explains how to create lots of small websites, each one of which earns a small amount of income, that over time build up to generate £60,000 a year or more.

Certainly not riches, but for anyone who is looking for a way to ‘escape the rat race’ as he puts it — that extra income will be a more than welcome addition to their bank balance.

While I’ve heard about this strategy before, what separates George from many other marketers who do this is that he advocates creating web sites that contain genuinely useful content – they’re not what I would call ‘junk content sites’ that unfortunately flood the Internet these days.

His book also contains numerous examples and links to actual sites he’s built, and he gives an insight into how much he actually earns from them. It’s an uncommonly candid account of ‘real’ Internet Marketing and the results you can expect.

Secondly, and critically…

(2) His book doesn’t just tell you what to do, it tells you HOW to do it.

In my own books I’ve always tried to not just explain what needs to be done, but also how to do things. In George’s book he’s done a brilliant job in this respect.

I could go on about how great his book is but at the end of the day it’s only £12.74 — not exactly a big deal if you’re already interested in Internet Marketing!

If you want to escape the rat race then grab a copy now, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Bye for now,

Ed Rivis.

P.S. I don’t talk about the Internet Marketing Lifestyle much. Is this a topic you’d like me to talk about more in future? Leave a comment below and let me know - if enough people comment then I’ll cover this topic more in future.  Thx.

Last week I received a very helpful but rather shocking message from one of my e-mail subscribers, informing me one of my websites had been hacked!

That was a tad embarrassing, and I probably should keep schtum about it!

However, what I learnt as a result of the incident is far too valuable for me to not share with you. If you’re able to use my experience to prevent the same happening to you then all’s well in the World!

MALWARE!

First of all, I don’t know how or why (the investigation continues!) but a malicious hacker somehow had managed to ‘inject’ my website’s key files with ‘malware’ … a small piece of code that randomly sent visitors off to a web site somewhere deep in Russia.

Luckily for me the malware didn’t work.

As far as I know, the worst anyone saw was a big red warning message. (I never found out what the Russian website was about… I dread to think!)

Although I never profess to be an expert at web site security, I had a good idea of what the problem involved, and where to go to fix it.

Today my site is now one hundred percent malware free.

How can I be so sure?

Well, since I discovered my sites had been hacked I signed up for a brilliant malware scanning service, called Sucuri.

Every day they automatically scan every file across my entire website, making sure it hasn’t been compromised.

When I first signed up for their service, they initially scanned all of my web sites, and here’s a screenshot of the rather unsettling results I got after one of their scans… (the handwritten annotation is mine)

Results of malware scanning service (click to view)

Once their scan detected a problem, the Sucuri team then fixed every infected file, on every infected website. (Unfortunately I had a few — all injected with the same malware.)

This all happened over a weekend, and the cost of fixing the infected files was included as part of the same service… it didn’t cost me any extra. To say I’m impressed is an understatement.

PREVENTION BETTER THAN CURE

In future I will be the first to know of any security issues, before my valued subscribers ever become aware there’s a problem.

Of course, in hindsight this type of service is something I should have had in place a long time ago, but ain’t hindsight easy!

So, first takeaway — if you want to avoid a Russian hacking nightmare – check out Sucuri.

The other big thing I learnt from this experience is the important of taking incremental backups.

HOW TO BACKUP YOUR WORDPRESS WEBSITE AUTOMATICALLY, EVERY DAY.

Soon after I discovered I’d been hacked, I accidentally deleted an important file on my edrivis.com website — and broke the entire site. It literally disappeared. If you visited the site immediately after I did that you would have seen a picture of a Yeti in a snowstorm. (I.e. A blank white screen!)

Now anyone will tell you – backups are important. But in this case restoring a backup would not have done me any good, because the very last backup I took contained the Russian malware. In other words I would have reinfected the site that had just been fixed. Not good.

Thankfully some time ago I did have the foresight to register for a brilliant WordPress backup service – that not only automatically takes a backup every 6 hours… it keeps a history of those backups too.

To get an older copy of the file I accidentally deleted, before it was infected, I simply logged into my WordPress backup service, (called Blogvault) and downloaded a slightly older version of the file.

I copied it onto my server, and voila… I was completely up and running again.

Once all my sites were Malware free, the next step was to make sure the hackers couldn’t reinfect the files. My decision here was to move my websites to a more secure server, and once again it was BlogVault to the rescue.

Normally moving a large WordPress website can be about as much fun as watching paint dry, with lots of time-wasted downloading files to your computer and then slowly uploading them all to the new server.

Thanks to BlogVault I didn’t have to do any of that.

I just used the ‘Move Site’ feature and in literally just a few minutes my website (more than 1GB of files) was installed on a brand new server.

All I then had to do was change the nameservers of my domain name and voila… job done.

HOW TO AVOID MY RUSSIAN HACKING NIGHTMARE

If your business websites run on WordPress, take a look at Blogvault. Knowing that you have access to automatic incremental backups gives incredible peace of mind.

And definitely take a look at Sucuri — regardless of how your website works, because it seems to be compatible with any type of website – Windows, Unix/Linux, etc.

For as long as I run my websites on WordPress I’m going to use these services. They’re an essential part of my web marketing infrastructure now.

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.

In last week’s article on Lead Tagging,  I revealed that with effective online advertising it’s possible to automatically get the names and email addresses of everyone who is interested in what’s offered, but have not yet bought or enquired.

Obviously that’s not possible with offline promotions like print advertising and press releases.

If you send a direct mail (post) campaign to five thousand people, until someone buys or enquires, you don’t know who actually opened the letter and read it.

When you pay thousands of pounds to run a print advertisement in a magazine, all you can do is sit and wait for respondents to get in touch. (And I guess you may even pray a bit too, depending on how much money you spent on the advert!)

However, when you send out five thousand e-mail messages — using inexpensive broadcast email services like this one — you get two ‘indicators’ that tell you someone is interested… even though they may not yet bought or enquired about the product or service you referred to in your email.

The two key indicators are…

1. A flag to say the recipient opened the email you sent them.
2. A flag to say the recipient clicked a link in the email you sent them.

As I explained in my second book about e-mail marketing, the ‘Open’ flag is ‘flimsy’. It’s not reliable enough to use as a way of accurately identifying people who are interested in what you emailed them about, for a number of reasons which I won’t go into here.

Suffice to say, the second flag — which tells you who clicked the links in your email broadcast — is a much better indicator of potential interest.

Providing you use a good e-mail marketing service, you should be able to get a report of everyone who not only opened the email, but also who was interested enough to actually click the link in your email to go and read more about the offer.

In the print world this would be the equivalent of someone phoning your office saying “Okay, I just received a letter from you about your new service, and although I’m not ready to buy yet, I would like to know more information about it.”

In other words, although those clicks are not a formal enquiry, they’re only one step away from an enquiry – and enquiries lead to sales!

All you have to do is follow-up everyone who clicked the link but hasn’t bought yet.

Provided you (or your sales team) are effective at answering your potential customer or client’s questions and overcoming their objections, then you should be able to convert more email subscribers into customers and clients.

A Real World Example

Last week I broadcast an email to a large group (segment) of people on my email subscriber list, announcing that I’m about to take on a limited number of clients who want my personal ongoing help and advice with their Internet Marketing activities.

A lot of people clicked the link in that email, and ended up on a web page that explained more about my Internet Marketing Coaching.

As expected, less than 10% of the people who clicked the link in the email and saw the coaching page actually submitted the form to register their interest in becoming a coaching client. That number is fairly standard.

However, it means more than 90% of the people who clicked the link have not yet enquired.

It’s safe to assume that a percentage of this latter group of people (who clicked but haven’t enquired yet) will become a coaching client… all I need to do is uncover their objections to coaching, answer any questions they have, explain the benefits in more detail, and show them how with my advice they can succeed online in a big way.

So, this week I’m following up everyone who clicked the link but have not yet enquired, to find out if they have any questions about me becoming their Internet Marketing coach.

Given the numbers involved, it’s highly likely I’ll garner extra coaching clients as a result of this additional follow-up — people who were interested but for one reason or another have not yet enquired.

Now having said all this above, if you’re just getting started with Internet Marketing then this may all sound like rocket science, but I assure you it’s not.

Take Action

In a future article I’ll give you four more ways you can ‘tag’ your potential customers and clients, and automatically turn them into sales-leads, (including advanced segmentation tactics that put your sales-lead generation on steroids.)

For today though, make sure you’re signed up for a great e-mail marketing service that can at least tell you specifically who clicked the links in your email broadcasts, so you can then simply follow-up the ‘clickers’ and turn more of them into customers and clients.

And of course, if you want help with your online marketing, don’t forget to register your interest here. Of course, if you clicked a link in my e-mail last week then I’ll be in touch anyway, to find out if you have any questions about it.

If you pay hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of pounds (or dollars) on print advertising of any kind then you know — you only find out if people are interested in what you advertised is when they actually respond. In other words, when they buy your product or service, or at least phone or email to request more information about it.

But what of all the people who don’t buy or enquire?

What of all the people who were interested enough to read what the print advert offered, and made a mental note to buy or enquire… but then later forgot how to respond?

What about the people who ‘put it on the back burner’, and thought they’d wait a while before buying.

And what about the people who saw your print advertisement, decided that yes they were ready to buy – but before they bought from you were contacted by one of your competitors and ended up buying from them instead.

All of those opportunities would have been missed, and wasted. It happens every day.

Now just imagine what would happen if you automatically got the names and email addresses of everyone who saw the print advert, and were interested but didn’t buy or enquire.

Imagine how that would transform your business!

All you’d have to do is follow up those sales-leads, find out and answer any questions or objections they had, and then… take their order.

Well, with email and web marketing you can implement systems that WILL tell you who not only saw your advert but actually were interested, but have not yet responded.

Effective web marketing can become a sales-lead generating machine that turns actively interested unknown prospects and potential customers or clients into red hot sales-leads who reveal themselves to you, sometimes without even realizing they have done so.

I’ll tell you exactly how to implement that system in my very next blog post, in the next day or two.

Warmly,

Ed.

This more advanced article assumes you know what lead pages are, and know how to use them to generate sales-leads and build a large email list.

“How much information should I ask for on my lead pages?”

This was a question someone posed recently on a popular web marketing blog, and it was quite fascinating to see the crazy answers people submitted!

Most people had an opinion based on their ‘gut feeling’.

Some people opined that lead pages should never ask for more than a name and email address.

Others argued the ‘bare minimum’ was first name, surname, email address and telephone number.

They were right in the respect that if you want to immediately follow up new prospects with a phone call, as well as a sequence of automated email messages, then you will of course need to request telephone numbers as well as email addresses on your lead pages.

And if you also send direct mail to your prospects, then you’re going to need to ask for their postal address too.

And how about asking for information about the newsletter preferences?

And some information about what they are trying to achieve or the challenges they’re facing?

All of a sudden, your lead page’s web form has turned into gargantuan form filling exercise for anyone unlucky enough to land on it. Most won’t bother.

They’ll probably just bounce off your lead page like ‘hailstones off a tin roof.’

No, the only answer to the question of “how much information do you ask for” on your lead pages is this…

Ask for the information you need to take prospects to the next step in your lead nurturing sequence, and nothing more.

Because if you ask for the prospect’s postal address on a web page that is only offering a free download, most prospects will refuse to volunteer the unnecessary data which they are savvy enough to realise is not required in order to send the free download being offered.

So, how about just asking for the information you need to send them the free offer – i.e. their email address? And at a slight stretch you could also ask for their first name so you can personalise emails you send them?

Then on the page that appears after someone enters and submits the form on your lead page, you can have an extended form that asks for more information.

That way you’ll capture the majority of people who the offer is targeted at, without risking the knee jerk reaction caused by presenting strangers with huge forms that ask for everything in one go.

Then, the people who submit the extra information on that next page are effectively raising their arms, and are indirectly telling you they are the most interested and highly qualified prospects on your list (database).

That technique is how I offer my paperback books.

On my lead pages I offer them as a electronic book (e-book) download, in return for my prospect’s first name and email address.

Then on the next page have a long web form offering a free copy of the physical paperback in return for full postal details and telephone number.

And how well does that work for me?

Well, at the risk of sounding like I’m boasting, which I assure you is not intentional (well okay, maybe a bit!) my lead pages which offer e-books about email marketing and website traffic generation get conversion rates as high as 93% conversion rate.

On the second page that appears immediately after prospects enter their name and email address on those pages is usually an offer for the paperback version of the same book for just £2.36, to cover the cost of postage and packing.

And the amazing thing is that even though those pages also ask for credit card details, they still consistently achieves conversion rates in excess of 50%.

Finally, on subsequent pages that appear for everyone who pays the £2.36, there are additional buying opportunities, (called ’1-click upsells’) which offer increasingly more expensive products.

I can get anywhere from 7% to 20% or more on those subsequent pages, depending on the offer and price point, and those additional sales usually pay for the cost of driving traffic to my lead pages. (Which is called a ‘self-liquidating offer’, but more about that some other time.)

Of course, I’m ‘quite’ happy with all of those numbers. The system works for me.

So, in a nutshell, I’ve found that splitting up your data capture web forms — and asking for the bare minimum of information to start with — works rather well, and you may want to consider doing the same with your web forms too.

It’s one of the most highly effective ways of first capturing as many email addresses as possible and secondly of getting the full details of your hottest prospects, who will no doubt become your biggest source of sales, revenues and big profit.

My colleague Alexa is now enrolling book coaching clients for January 2012.

What does a book coach do? Well, in Alexa’s case she works one to one with her clients, helping them formulate a solid concept for their book, and then acts as a weekly coach to make sure they write it.

I hire Alexa as my book coach every time I write a book, and—in a very big way—she has been responsible for getting all three of my paperback books ‘out of my head and into print’, so to speak.

The way Alexa helped me most was as an accountability partner. She also made sure I didn’t allow too much ‘geek language’ to slip into any of my three books undetected, (which would otherwise have meant the majority of my target audience of non-technical business owners couldn’t understand my books.) She made sure that didn’t happen.

Anyway, if you are thinking of becoming an author and want help from an expert (she helped me get all three of my books into print and selling on Amazon) then get in touch with her as soon as possible – she gets booked up with clients well in advance. (I’ve already booked her to help me get my fourth book in print before Xmas.)

Note: The average time from someone becoming a client of Alexa’s to becoming a published author is just 3 months.

If you like the idea of having your book (finally!) out of your head and in print, selling on Amazon, before the end of March then I can’t think of anyone better than Alexa to help you achieve that.

Click here to visit her ‘Book Refinery’ web site for more information, and don’t forget to make an enquiry about her services while you’re there, to get to the front of the line for 2012.

Best regards,

Ed Rivis, author of The Ultimate Web Marketing Strategy, E-Mail Marketing Dynamite, and Massive Traffic: 208 Ways to Get Hundreds or Thousands of Visitors to Your Website in the next 24 Hours… Guaranteed!

P.S. I’ve said it before, (and okay yes it does sound cliched, but it’s true), becoming an author changed my life. It could do the same for you too.