Awkward Keyword Phrases And Headlines

Optimizing your content for the search engines can be tricky sometimes. Actually, it can be downright frustrating.  Who comes up with these keyword phrases anyway? 

Misspellings, plurals, and words that are out of any logical order, it’s enough to make your head spin yet these are the keywords people are using to find products and services like yours so you have to find a way to make them work.   

For example, the subject of wedding photography may generate the following keywords:

 Wedding photos family, wedding invitations photos, wedding photos ideas – they probably made sense when plugged into a search engine however, in the form of content, well….Fortunately they’re all good topics for content the trick is fitting them into a sensible and catchy headline.     

While search engines spiders look to find keywords in your subheadings and in the first and last paragraph of your content for your keywords.  They’re also sophisticated enough now that they look for relevant words throughout your copy. 

However, the first and most important place they look is in your headline, so how do you fit the keyword phrase Wedding Photos Family into your headline? When all else fails, here’s a good trick.  Place your keyword phrase in your headline and separate it with a hyphen from the rest of your catchy and attention getting headline.   

For example, Wedding Photos Family – 10 Tips to Capture Your Special Day.   Or  Wedding Invitations Photos – Setting The Right Tone For Your Perfect Day. 

This structure keeps your awkward keyword phrase in your headline so that you get the benefits of search engine optimization and it enables you to offer a compelling headline at the same time.

This type of headline structure works great for article submission sites, blog posts, and SEO optimized web content.  Next time you have an awkward keyword phrase, don’t pull your hair out – hyphenate it.

Are You Carrying A Secret?

Hi Everyone!

I just returned from a week and a half conference with the leaders of one of the top companies I work with – whew!  I love the chance to connect with my clients “live” and put faces with names and voices that I hear and see all throughout the year.

I also love connecting with them in a more intimate way.  Somehow I’ve become not only a coach and strategist, but also part therapist, part confessor. My clients tell me their “secrets”, the things they aren’t supposed to talk about with their upline, downline, crossline – any line. 

These secrets usually follow along the themes of struggle and disappointment.  Unfortunately there is a trend out there in the direct selling world that says “don’t talk about anything negative, don’t admit that you are struggling.  Put on the face of success because no one is attracted to anything less than that.” 

While I understand the “attraction” theory behind this trend (you attract what you put out), I find that it can produce some alarming results.  For example, one of my clients got shunned by her roommates at this event (I mean literally – she had to find another room to stay in!) because she dared admit she was struggling in her business.  I wish this kind of stuff were exceptional, but my experience tells me it is not.

Women lined up after my workshop to tell me – often with accompanying tears – that they ARE struggling and that something must be wrong with them because their business isn’t flourishing like everyone else’s.  That just made my heart hurt.  I assured them that, at times, everyone struggles in their business – I mean isn’t that true?  And that they are not flawed in some way because they admit to it.

Please hear me – this trend is not confined to this one company.  I hear about it every single week from people from many different companies who call me or email me for help.

So, if you are a direct seller who is carrying the secret of struggle and/or disappointment, I want you to hear my words of support and encouragement.

Anyone who operates her own business struggles at sometime or another.  Heck, even I entertain fantasies of quiting sometimes.  This does not make you or me weak or unsuccessful.  It makes us real and authentic and human.  And to me, those are the ingredients for success I am after.  I don’t want anything less in my life. 

Find someone you trust (even if they are outside of your company) to talk to about what is going on.  Sharing your burden will make it all the lighter, I promise.

If you know someone in your organization who is secretly struggling, I encourage you to find a way to lift her up and support her through the hard times.  Encourage her to share her burdens so she does not feel alone. 

Isn’t Direct Selling based on achieving success through teamwork?  In my experience, painful secrets and looking down on those who struggle are not part of any teamwork model that I know of. True teamwork cannot exist without open, honest, authentic communication.  Initiate it. Encourage it. Foster it.  Then you can watch your success soar.

I’ll get off my soapbox now:)

Love & Success!
Sarah

Take Inventory & Clean Out the Clutter

Take Inventory & Clean Out the Clutter

With week 2 in full swing at Internet Marketing Spring Cleaning, I’m having a great time helping my students get focused and ditch the excess keeping them from growing their online business. The clean out has been so amazing that I thought I’d share a few ideas to help you do the same.

In order to really clear the confusion and focus on what is most profitable in your business, the first thing you must do is take stock of everything you currently have on your plate. Once you’ve done that you need to decide exactly what things are working and what things are best to be rid of. Here are just a few ideas of things to consider:

Mailing Lists & Newsletters
It’s easy to get sidetracked when you’re signed up for every guru under the sun’s list. Take some time and jot down all the lists you are currently subscribed to.

Domains & Websites
Many online business owners, have a bad habit of purchasing domain name after domain name. It’s ok…we’ve all done it at some point. It’s learning to deal with our obsessive-compulsive domain disorder that makes us better business women.

Once you have your inventory taken, it’s time to throw out all the excess stuff weighing down your business. Using the examples above here are some reasons to clean out your business storage room.

Once you’ve compiled a list of all the newsletters you are subscribed to – it’s time to go through and tell the ones that aren’t helping you reach your goals Adios! How many emails do you get from one particular list that you never even open? Is the list owner supplying you with valuable information that pertains to your market? Do you find you’ve outgrown a certain newsletter? What I mean by this is was it a list you signed up for in the beginning of your business venture that caters to the newbie in your field and now you’ve surpassed the knowledge you receive in those emails?

Let’s move on to those gazillion domain names and websites. Each domain name purchase starts with good intentions, but how often have you acquired a domain name and then done nothing with it? Whether you are lacking time to get a website up and going or it doesn’t fit into your plans now like you originally planned, it’s time to let it go.

Of course Spring Cleaning is all about getting down and dirty and deep cleaning house, but these few things should help you get started and on the right foot. As you move along with these tips you’ll find other areas of your business that need a thorough cleaning, but don’t start on other areas until you have these completed.

Taking Credit Cards Without A Merchant Account

Mila recently asked me about accepting credit cards for her products without signing up for a merchant account. As she found out quickly this can be a confusing process. If you think that too, don’t feel bad at all. When I started out online it was like this huge dark thing that I could never decipher.

Credit cards are a little outside my realm but I know enough about it to make my business work and will gladly share what I know.

For Mila, she knew one of her options is PayPal but these days, PayPal has several offerings. There’s Website Payment Standard and Website Payments Pro . What do all of them do?

1. Website Payment Standard, is the one that almost everyone has. You know, the one that you can send payments by email, create a payment or add to cart button. The basic, regular, plain vanilla PayPal if you wish.

   You can take credit cards through Website Payment Standard, but users will automatically be signed up for an account (which they can close) when they checkout or use an existing PayPal account.

2. Website Payment Pro is more advanced, but implementing it may not be as easy as the standard because you may need special technical setup OR your shopping cart has to support this. On top of that, your website has to meet certain safety standards. In case you wanted to ask, let me answer you now – No, Wahmcart cannot accept Website Payment Pro at this time.

   But why use it Website Payment Pro? Because it works more like a regular merchant account in the sense your customers stay on your site, and it looks like you do have a merchant account. Plus, you can process credit card orders in person, by mail, cellphone or online. So all that is pretty sweet.

So that’s it for Paypal. What if you want other choices? Here are some services you can try.

• Clickbank
• 2Checkout
• ccBill

Keep in mind, that anytime  you process credit cards through a service like the above, you are in fact using their merchant account and the fees will be higher than regular merchant account fees. As scary as a merchant account may sound it’s not as expensive as you may think it is to operate.

Telling Versus Selling

Ever wonder what the difference was between telling and selling? Here’s your answer…

Web copy, advertisements, sales pages, autoresponders and more all have one main job – to sell. Is your copy doing its job? Is your copy telling or selling? Here’s the difference:

Telling lists features. For example, the washing machine has a 7 cubic foot capacity.

Selling explains benefits. For example, larger capacity machine means fewer loads and more time spent doing the things you want to do.

Telling describes. Stainless steel face with digital controls.
Selling paints a picture. Bring your laundry into the 21st century with designer controls and a sleek stainless steel face. Digital controls are touch accurate and make doing laundry simple enough for your five year old.

Telling makes a statement. Does your laundry.
Selling makes a promise. Do your laundry in half the time, and save water too.

Telling speaks to the head. Use logic to reinforce the buying decision later in your copy through testimonials, case studies, and facts. People don’t want to read, buy this washing machine because it cleans clothes. They want to know what it will really do for them. Will it save time? Will it help the environment? Will it make their laundry room look like it was professionally designed? Will it clean their clothes better?

Selling speaks to the heart. We buy for emotional reasons, not logical ones. Strong words and copy that bring about or speak to the emotions of your buyer will not only capture their attention, they’ll keep them reading and encourage a sale. Emotions like curiosity, jealousy, love, anger, gratitude and so on are strong emotions that can be used to effectively sell the benefits of a product or service.

Here’s an opening sentence for Swiss Money Strategies that uses the emotion of fear very effectively – “Your wealth is in imminent danger.”

When your sales copy is complete ask yourself one important question – does your copy tell or does it sell?

Keeping All the Plates Spinning

Keeping All the Plates Spinning

People ask me all the time, “How do you do all that you do?”

Well, it’s not easy.

It takes organization and I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to sorting stuff.

So here’s what I do.

At night, I write down the next day’s To Do List in my daytimer. That way I don’t worry about them all night.

If something keeps me awake, I turn on the light and enter in the appropriate place to be acted on in my daytimer.

Then the next day, I get up and take a walk.

Unless it’s deer season, I walk in the woods with the dog. I spend the early morning listening to the wind in the leaves, the birds in the trees.

It doesn’t matter if some tasks are business-related and some concern the family. I put all the appointments, classes, lessons outside the home and conference calls on the schedule.

Then I walk through them one at a time.

I also prioritize them with family first, then business.

If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, learn to keep all the plates spinning all at the same time.

You can do it! You are a multi-faceted organizational machine!

So go for it!

So many books, so little time…

Rhea!

who is waiting patiently for that new grandbaby to arrive

How Long To A Living Wage?

A great guestion from Cathy:

“Hi Kelly, I’m a member of Mom Masterminds and have been listening to your podcasts for several months. I know you are a single mom. How long did it take you to get to a full time living wage in wah career?”

I started my first internet effort in early 2002 but I mostly stumbled around bumping into things for the first year.

My first goal in having a home business was to make ends meet.  My day job paycheck wasn’t cutting it and I was $14,000 in debt with little hope for every getting out.

Do you know that I only wanted to make $200 a month?

Oh how small I thought about things back then!

The good report is this:

Between 2002 and September of 2005 – I paid off that $14,000 in old debt!

Then, when I didn’t have to send every spare dollar to some bill collector I realized that I was making quite a bit of money online – more than I had imagined… more than I made at my day job!

So in 2006 I quit the day job and came home full time.  Now I earn more than I have at any other time in my life and enjoy the freedoms that come from being self employed.

I guess the answer then is: Five Years

For some more inspiration:

I blogged over at Work at Home Moms Talk Radio last week and shared about how my residual income has grown over the years.

Get Paid to Tell People about Products

Learning to be an affiliate is not that hard. It’s the easiest money on the Internet, after selling on eBay. All you do is sign up, send an email, when you make a sale they send you a check, you cash it.

We love it.

One of the most important things to remember is to sign up for programs or products that you LOVE. That way you don’t have a problem endorsing them. One rule of sales is this: use the product you represent. If you don’t use it, then you can’t honestly tell others it is the best and they need it.

Another thing to look for is affiliate programs with healthy commissions like 35% to 50% or even 70%.

Also look for programs on products that are priced right. It takes the same amount of effort to create an email program to sell a $4.95 book as it does a $4,995 conference. Do the math and see which one you would rather earn 50% on. Although the conference would take more emails to sell than the book, the amount of effort and time it would require would make it very much worth it.

The reason WHY you want to be IN an affiliate program is because you can sell products or services but you don’t have to do anything except tell your friends about them. You don’t have to ship them or deal with customer service. If you’ve ever sold Tupperware or Avon, you’ll realize what a good thing this is.

The Internet makes marketing easy and many businesses have adapted their entire marketing programs to accommodate this business model. Businesses know that word of mouth is the best advertising. So if they can pay you for telling your friends, that means more business for them.

An affiliate program lets a company build a grass roots sales force that is paid on commission.

It is a Good Thing.

So even if you don’t have a web site, you can join affiliate programs of companies you love so that you can get paid to tell others about their products. All you have to do is sign up with their program (usually for free), get an affiliate link and send your friends an email telling them about the product or post their link on your site.

Just start building a list to send emails to so that when you have a great product to sell, you’ll have someone to tell about it.

When you join an affiliate program, send your affiliate link to your friends and clients in a paragraph and tell them why you would love to have them join the program or buy that product. Don’t make decisions for them. Just send it to everybody you have permission to email. DO NOT EVER SPAM. That means sending something to email addresses that you do not know or do not have permission to mail to. It is illegal and not something we do.

Podcasters Should Write More Show Notes

There are many reasons to write complete show notes for your podcast and internet radio show and the most important reason in my opinion is that search engines can’t listen to your show!

If you’ve recorded a twenty minute podcast and only write about 20 words to describe it, you’re not providing the search engines with enough food to index to pull in good traffic.

Always try to write at least 100 words to describe your topics and guests.  It takes a little extra time but I tackle this by working on show notes all through the week.

When I interview someone, I write up a brief note about them and our discussion for the show notes right then.

When I think of a topic I want to cover during my solo time I go add the show notes for that idea right at that moment. (It helps me to remember what I wanted to say later so it serves a double purpose.)

When I’m all done with the show and am uploading the audio, I give the notes a final tweak, adding links and details mentioned during the episode.

What Sparked All These Changes?

Mara asks: “You’ve been making a lot of changes in your life lately. What was the biggest thing that made you take that step forward into making these changes? What caused to you refocus to the degree that you have?”

Hi Mara!  Yes, I have been making a crazy number of changes in my life and my business lately.  I sold my house, moved downstate, changed many aspects of my internet business dramatically – and it’s only getting crazier because I’ve just decided to move again.  This time from Lansing to Portland.

We’re driving back and forth to Portland every day and that means  almost five hours on the highway each week – five precious hours that I’d much rather spend in some other way. (Not to mention the gas money could be spent in some other way too!)

So we’re apartment hunting again.  I’m looking to downsize a bit for a season and then work towards buying a nice condominium in another year or two.

The main spark for all this change is definitely my niece’s very high risk pregnancy and the birth of her four amazingly healthy babies in 2007.

I’m giving a big chunk of my life over to helping out with those adorable babies.  Right now my son and I are sleeping days and covering the night shift with the babies so that Mom and Dad can get some much needed sleep each day.  Once they get to sleeping well at night and they run out of family leave time, I’ll switch to helping out more during the day.

This means I have less time to work.  I’ve committed to a four hour work day, something I just blogged more about today over at Work at Home Moms Talk Radio.

So most of the changes you see for me are at least indirectly caused by the need to work less and have more free time :)

It’s an exciting time in my business really.  I’m working less, but my income continues to motor along quite well thanks to the smart decisions I’ve made in previous years.

Thanks for the question :)

Next Page »