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jdflemng
New Member
Cash: $ 0.00
Posts: 3
Joined: 18 Jun 2004
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| Newbie requests a site review |
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Everyone who posts on this site seems knowledgeable about running an online business. I recently created my own online business and put my site on the web. I am a computer programmer by trade, but I wanted a project and, if things go well, hopefully an extra source of income.
I was wondering if anyone who has experience building their own online business would be willing to review my site and provide feedback. I am not looking to drive traffic to my site or advertise at all. I don't run banner ads and my product is freely available for download. I only make money off the site from sales referrals.
If anyone would be willing to review the site and give a newbie some pointers, I would really appreciate it. The site is http://www.5waystoprofitonline.com.
Thanks
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Fri Jun 18, 2004 9:27 pm |
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Andrew
Admin
Cash: $ 467.10
Posts: 1717
Joined: 02 Nov 2003
Location: Texas
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Hi jdflemng, thanks for joining.
I checked out your site, and I think you've done a great job.
Your webpage looks good and is easy to digest and follow. Your use of a helpful free product, that provides you with potential earnings thru the affiliate referrals is a clever technique. As I was reading the main document, I thought you might have missed PayPal referrals, or other similar obvious choices, but found that covered in the resource guide.
My only real suggestion at this time, would be to add some identifying information to your PDF, you know, like it's title, and description, the author, the website it came from, copyright notices, a link back to the website. You could even make a scan of your signature and sign the end of the main document. Make it feel very professional, official and polished, make the user feel like they've got something really special so they'll want to keep this resource close at hand for reference.
Obviously you want to get your website "in-front of as many eyeballs as possible", so what kind of marketing are you doing, or planning on for your site?
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Fri Jun 18, 2004 10:33 pm |
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jdflemng
New Member
Cash: $ 0.00
Posts: 3
Joined: 18 Jun 2004
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| Newbie requests site review |
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Online marketing and advertising are a little new to me. I've done quite a bit of research and come up with a few ideas. Unfortunately, the most effective marketing techniques can get expensive, and I don't have a very large budget to get this site going.
So far, I have submitted to several different search engines, including Google. Now I am trying to get my ranking as high as possible. I considered running some targeted ads on Google. That seems to be one way to get good, targeted traffic. Targeted traffic is more important than volume traffic for my site. It doesn't do me much good if the people who download my free resource have no intention of buying any of the services I recommend.
I also thought about offering an affiliate program at some point in the future through Commission Junction. However, I'm not sure how I would pay out to other sites since I'm not really selling anything. What inexpensive marketing techniques have worked best for you?
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Sat Jun 19, 2004 12:02 am |
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Andrew
Admin
Cash: $ 467.10
Posts: 1717
Joined: 02 Nov 2003
Location: Texas
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On the topic of your e-books being free, some pro marketers would say that you are undervalueing your resource unneccesarily, where the concept of "you get what you pay for" works against you in the mind of the consumer. Although in your case, this issue doesn't seem to apply as much.
Free organic SEO is great for getting leads, but it not as simple anymore to get good rankings, especially when you are promoting a single page. One thing that might help there is to expand your site somewhat. More pages on more specific topics can perform better than a single page. But if you are purchasing all your traffic you don't need to worry about SEO issues. I've found that it is possible to get a fair amount of cheap clicks using the big PPC systems by bidding very low on very popular terms. The issue there for your product is that the return on investment is going to take a while, as the user may not click and buy with an affiliate link in your PDFs for several months.
One more idea for you to consider is a joint venture with other marketers. You basically just want to get your documents out there as much as possible, so get other marketers of similar topic material to include your stuff as a bonus in their packages they are selling. You might even be able to convince them that they owe you a favor for using your free content. 
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Sat Jun 19, 2004 2:10 am |
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jdflemng
New Member
Cash: $ 0.00
Posts: 3
Joined: 18 Jun 2004
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I heavily debated whether to charge for this product or not. While doing research I noticed that every other sight that is similar to my own charged a fee for their product, which makes sense in a way. But then I started thinking about the affiliate commission potential revenue. It's hard enough getting people to use your product when you give it away for free, so charging a fee, no matter how small, would only serve to turn users away from the product. I made the decision to forego the comparably smaller purchase price in the hope of capturing more of the lucrative affiliate commission revenues. The thought that it might take months for this strategy to pay off also crossed my mind. It would be nice to have the revenue up front, however the payoff could potentially be enough to make it worth the wait.
I really appreciate all of your advice. This is good stuff that I'll definitely use. A partnership with another marketer never really crossed my mind, but it's a great idea.
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Sat Jun 19, 2004 2:30 am |
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UnXpected
Preferred Member
Cash: $ 17.10
Posts: 177
Joined: 10 May 2004
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Look great.
I think you should give it for free and build you opt list.
You will have your chance to earn back 
| Business Forum | MTG Cards | Webby4.com | eHub |
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Sat Jun 19, 2004 7:16 am |
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jukemann
Contributing Member
Cash: $ 2.60
Posts: 39
Joined: 15 Jun 2004
Location: Charlotte, NC
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Looks very clean from my point of view. Over time you may want to add additional pages and content and possibly create a link page so you can trade links with sites to help build your populairty and SER.
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Sun Jun 20, 2004 9:01 pm |
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