Colin Klinkert Dot Com

I am sitting in the Hong Kong Airport on my way to Australia for Christmas and I just logged onto ebay and purchased myself the new 16gb 3G Iphone for $818us (inc. Shipping), not a heap purchase for a phone, but wht makes it even more nuts is that I have the Nokia Equivalent the Nokia N95 8gb. I have only used 1 gig on it and havent even installed the software or added the nokia maps to the phone yet.

Why did I buy myself a new phone when I have one with the same functions (some might say better, the camera on my nokia is a 5megapixel the Iphone is only 2)

Because The IPhone is COOL!

I am telling you what you already know, Apple have built a wonderful brand and even though I know I’m spending $800 on something I already have (and I have another sony phone too, seeing as I can only use one at a time, it was not a purchase that was required) I want it because it has a shiny interface, a cool layout and most of all, it has an apple logo on the back!

I got suckered in by marketing, and more specifically ‘public opinion’ and I knew it before I chose to search Ebay for it and I know it now after submitting payment…

Marketing lesson? – Build a Brand! It is a must, be it your personal name you want to brand or an alias like I am still considering doing with ViralKing, listen to another company that is cool, and know’s how to push peoples emotional triggers, Nike… Just Do It! People trust what they know and will buy from you or your brand based on 3 things:

* They Know You (Hence build a brand)
* They Like You (Make it a Cool Brand… Apple… Cough Cough)
* They Trust You ( Provide a Service You Would Like Others To Provide You)

Just Build Your Brand Already, what are you waiting for?

This post is a follow on from the post I made a few days ago, click here to read it first

Get That Business Coming Your Way!

You like the idea of an online newsletter, and you are beginning to see how this will help you bring in more business to your website. But you do have a few concerns, which is perfectly natural. You need to know that everyone who starts something new, has their own concerns and fears.

Some of the most common question are;

1. What if I don’t have anything interesting or relevant to write?
2. Can I keep the quality up over a long period of time?
3. How do I make links from my pictures to my website?

These are just a sample of the questions that are asked…but never fear! This is so much easier than it sounds.

The thing you need to be concerned about IS WHEN you are going to DO IT! Stop with the excuses, just begin and you will realize how simple it really is.

1. You do need to remember that you must always offer something that is of interest or very useful to your reader.
2. Keep your newsletter fairly short. So many these days have more than enough emails to read, and they don’t have time to read a long newsletter. They will like the fact that they can read it quickly and get something from it.
3. You want the best format possible for your follow up emails, so put some thought into this process. You want a model that you can use week after week, which by the way makes your job easier.Below are a few ideas that you can use as your standard format, choose one or combine them, whatever fits your personality.I. Tip of the Month

   Here you will come up with some great tips that focus on your main products. Do a bit of brainstorming giving you two or three months of content. If you are focusing on an area that you are familiar with, it should be easy. Some of the topics can be offering and explaining the problem, then offer a tip that will solve the problem.

   II. The Famous “Top Ten” list

   This format is so popular because it works. If you are an expert in Doll Collecting, then write your article about “Top Ten Reasons to start Doll Collecting”. Keep your sentences short.

   III. Three Different Ways to….

   Sometimes it can be difficult to find ten ways to do something, but you can always find three ways to do it. This can be done alternately with your Top Ten newsletters.

   IV. The “Before and After” approach

   You can use this much like you would the “Tip of the Month” format. You will introduce a problem with the solution. This format works best when you can include case studies which is an excellent way if interacting with your customers on a direct level. You may even ask your customers for some examples of their ‘before and after’ and if they will give their permission to share it with your readers. If your format is in text only, you can include a link to show pictures on your website.

   V. What about “Checklists”

   If you want to share something new with your readers, a great way to do this is with checklists. Be sure to include all the steps, and these check lists will help save your readers a lot of time, which they will love. You will begin by writing a short paragraph which introduces your topic, include your list, the end it with some final tips. You can format your entire newsletter on the checklist formula, or present it randomly.

   Now you can see that online newsletters aren’t as difficult as you first thought. Get your list and get started, no excuses.

Check out the Posting Contest I have running: Click HERE to learn how you can win $100!

Bring in Even More Business!

Today I want to talk about online newsletters and how these can bring in even more business for you. This is a very cost-effective way to market and will not eat up all of your time.

Whether you are mailing your newsletters out through the post office, or sending them out via email, this is a great way to increase the recognition of your brand, bringing in repeat business and sharing your experience and story and success with your readers.

1. You are going to first put your list together of your current customers along with any potential customers. Any names that you have collected from inquiries, direct mail response cards, etc…that you have from the beginning of your marketing endeavors, will be the start of your list. If you don’t have a list, and you have some money set aside, you can purchase a list, giving you names of the best potential customers.

1. If you are doing an online newsletter, it is best to include a content manager system. This will make your editing much easier with a newsletter template, your graphics and giving it your own style. You will have a little bit to learn, but you will have a lot of fun doing it. If you need help through the process, call a college student, they will be a great resource. Another option would be to hire somebody at Guru.com at great cheap prices.
2. Next you want to have a feature that allows you to track bounce back emails to help you manage. your list, deleting these names from your list. It is really important to keep your list up to date. Now, your goal is to increase sales, but you need to make this an easy process for your readers because they all have very busy schedules, so you need to show off your products in the very best manner.\Below are some tips to help you do this and achieve greater financial success from your email marketing.

• Include pictures all throughout
• Show details in these pictures
• The pictures need to be bright and cheery
• Make the picture a link to the sales page or product information page.
• Be sure to add a text link which is associated with your product picture which links to the online product page
• Include the ability to order directly from your newsletter with purchase buttons
• When you have a new product, make sure you have direct links in the website, making it easy for them to get there without any extra navigating.If you still have concerns about your new online newsletter, …just know you can do it…I will go over tomorrow some of your biggest questions..such as “What do I say?”, or “How much time will this take?”, or “How do I set up the links?”. Well, we will answer these questions in our next blog. Stay tuned…..

What Do You Know About Affiliate Marketing

As you already know, Internet marketing uses the Internet to market products as well as their promotion. You can be using this method to promote your own products or the products of others.

This is where we get into the affiliate programs and how they can benefit you financially by earning commission on the quality products you are promoting for others.

There are several avenues of marketing that you can use such as your website and web pages, personal blogs and Email Opt-in lists. You are going to promote the product with a squeeze page or promotional letter, In your letter, you will include an affiliate link which will contain the affiliate identifier.

With your affiliate identifier link, your visitors will click on the link, be sent to the product sales page or website, and with their purchase, you will be given a percentage of the sales price. This is very similar to sales in brick and mortar stores, however with an affiliate program, your part is very simple and self running. All you need to do is do the initial set up and optimize the traffic.

You need to realize though that Not All Affiliate Programs are the same, so choose wisely.

What you need to know and look for in choosing the right affiliate program:

1) Training and Support

Affiliate programs will usually provide training and support, which is crucial for those just starting out on Internet Marketing. This is so important as it will be the only way for you to become effective as well as profitable. You need to look for affiliate which offers sufficient training and the know how in selling their product. There are however, Internet marketers who have experienced great success in affiliates without the training and support, but wouldn’t it be nice to have that training and support?

2) Look for High Commissions

You are going to put in the effort to bring in the traffic to the affiliate product with your sales pitch, then directing the customers to the affiliate sales page, and for your well earned efforts, you will receive a percentage of the sale in form of commissions. As you look at the different Affiliate programs to market, look at the amount of commission they offer, some are hardly worth your effort.

The most popular site to promote affiliate programs is Clickbank. You will soon see that Clickbank is the largest online marketplace on the Internet. Clickbank places hundreds of thousands of products which are sold on a daily basis. There are some that pay up to 75% of the purchase price.

3) Affiliate Referral Programs

There are a few programs that will offer you a chance to recommend their affiliate programs yourself. This sill ultimately award you with a greater percentage of all the sales generated for the program you recommend. This is where your viral marketing techniques will come in effect, the more you recommend, the more money you will make.

4) Triple Combination; Affiliate Training and Support, Referral Commission and Product Commission

You will be happy to know that there are some programs out there that offer the best of all three worlds of affiliate marketing. You can have all of these with training to help you in your marketing efforts. A wonderful example of this is the Internet Marketing Center’s Affiliate program. With this combination, you can reap huge commission benefits.

You can make some good money with Internet marketing bringing you closer and closer to your goal of financial freedom. But remember, you need to be willing to put in the time and effort.

No I’m not quitting

Having said that, I am sick of people new to the industry feeling they need to spam their affiliate links all over the web. 99.99% of the time with no result other then to make yourself look like a tosser!

Comments are moderated these days so it’s a waste of time making spam posts, they won’t get approved. It wastes your time, my time and does nothing but hurt your reputation.

This is a short ‘Rant’ post because like a second hand car salesman business, there are some VERY good and VERY honest people that sell used cars; but if you say you are ‘used car salesman’ what is the response you get from others? Friends, Family? Do they say ‘wow, that is awesome!’? I doubt it…

Well our industry has a similar connotation! Even though we have so many great, amazing marketers who’s main focus and goal is to educate others and help them lead a better life… there are, due to the ease of labeling, ‘internet marketers’ who spam, fail and clog up our industry and with it the reputation of those of us who want to be positive and make a real difference!

Where am I going with this? Well anyone can be an ‘internet marketer’ even if you lose money at it! You can still self proclaim yourself an ‘internet marketer’. Guess what, if you post a bunch of spam, or even comment on forums promoting a product or service, you are ‘marketing’ on the ‘internet’, welcome: ‘internet marketer’.

From now on, I am an…. Interactive Marketer!

The difference? I interact with people both followers and friends and we work together to produce better results then are currently available, we work to advance the standard and truly help and educate people.

I challenge you to label yourself an ‘Interactive Marketer’ and walk the walk!

Check out the Posting Contest I have running: Click HERE to learn how you can win $100!

Pay Per Click Advertising Does Have Some Disadvantages…

As I have written in an earlier post, PPC is considered to be of the best and most affordable forms of advertising on the search engines. You can use Pay Per Click advertising to bring in targeted traffic and generate leads and sales in your particular niche. You will use this type of advertising to lead traffic to a website landing page in order to obtain immediate sales, or gaining future clients. This is a multi-million dollar industry and will continue to grow. There are however, a few disadvantages and pitfalls. If it were perfect, everyone would be doing it, but as it stands right now, there are are many who don’t.

What Are The Disadvantages?

Let’s start off by first explaining that keywords are bid on by marketers to use in their ads. The Pay Per Click Company will display the ad when somebody enters in the keywords, which will link the browser to the marketers website.

As the user enters the keyword into the search engine, there will be an ad showing up along with other sites in order for the user to choose from. If the ad is clicked on, they are taken to the website and the marketer then pays for that click. The marketer only pays when the ad is clicked on, not just being viewed.

As you are choosing your Pay Per Click advertising, be picky in the companies you use. There are so many companies to choose from, and as with anything, some have greater advantages than others like some of the smaller companies.

The reason the smaller companies may not be as advantageous is they may not have the exposure that the larger companies may have. You want to put your ad where there will be a lot of exposure allowing your keywords to be in the forefront of those looking for your product type.

There are also some of the Pay Per Click companies that are not equipped to operate like the larger companies are able to. The top runner of all the Pay Per Click companies that dominates the Internet is Google Adwords.

Don’t be one of the many who have lost tons of money on Pay Per Click ad. The reason so many have lost out is because they have not had a clear picture and aware of the complex issues involved.

You need to take the time to learn the bidding process, be creative in your ads, make sure they are relevant to your campaign. Be prudent, this is crucial to your success in anything.

Be sure that you are appealing to your market. You want to make sure you are unique, not dealing with the competition of several hundred marketers using your same keywords.

Just imagine finding out after you have bid for keywords, that there are numerous other Pay Per Click marketers who already have these positions in place. You do not want to end up on the bottom of the search engine pages, and you don’t want to spend all your money trying to outbid your competitors.

There are other methods that work just as well, sometimes if not better, than Pay Per Click.

According to some recent studies, it has been shown that the Pay Per Click conversion rates are actually lower than other methods such as article marketing.

Let’s say for instance you get 50 hits on your landing page through your PPC ads, but you only made one sale. What does this tell you? Do your homework, compare your PPC advertising to your article marketing, how many hits turn into sales.

The biggest disadvantage to Pay Per Click advertising is the time you need to dedicate to learning the complex methods it involves. This is not something you want to jump into without your research and knowledge of how it works. You will end up spending a lot of money with no returns.

Pay Per Click is something that you need to venture into slowly, carefully, with your eyes wide open. Have an alternate method in place, and test this out slowly, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

You will be well on your way to successful marketing when you know all your options. Test it, then do it!

Check out the Posting Contest I have running: Click HERE to learn how you can win $100!

What Can Social Networking Do For You?

Build Your Brand and Develop Some Great Business Contacts

We live in a solution based world, trying to solve our own problems, or the problems of others. These are the goals of most businesses, and the best way to accomplish this goal is through a network. This is where Social Networking comes into play, or should I say, work. When you are using sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn, you have the ability to really reach out and make some great new business contacts.

As you get started, you will find that you spend more time and effort giving to the community than you are getting back. You will find it a bit challenging to keep your personal connections separate from your business connections.

There are three network sites that are great to begin with; Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. These are the leaders when it comes to reaching across several interests.

For a more targeted market if you are in the online business niche, along with 2 partners my new site, ViralNetworks is in prelaunch and is about as targeted as you can get. (shameless self plug!)

Social Networking Advice

Take the time to create a warm and inviting profile, providing all the public information including your current employment to your job history. You want to portray yourself as someone who is thorough and complete in everything you do, and this includes your profile.

Don’t create big spam profiles just filled with links and imitating a Splog (Spam Blog) with a bad case of the runs, be sure to keep it decent sizes, accurate, well written and with correct grammar.

Be Reachable! Provide many ways for others to contact you. Some examples are your IM address, email address, Skype username, Twitter name, as well as a phone number. Create a number of keywords that associate with your niche product, and tie it all closely to your blog.

How Important Is Your Email Signature?

This is very important and will provide value in your networking efforts. In your email signature, include your contact information, links to your blog and LinkedIn profile, making it easier for those to find you.

(Shameless Plug Take Two:) ViralNetworks has a Signature File in your profile, you enter your text in there (make it compelling, make people want to click on it) and then it hyperlinks to your chosen site. This Sig is used on guestbook comments, on the forums, on video comments, so can lead to MASSIVE exposure. It is VERY important to write a compelling Signature, as you are not allowed links ‘in post’ with most sites, including ViralNetworks

If you have any profiles that are currently inactive, clean them up and make sure they are professional. Do a search for your name on Google, Zoominfo, and Spock and see what is out there, delete anything that is not proper or inactive.

From this moment forward, be careful as to what you post, including photos, blog posts, and articles. Anything that can be linked back to you, needs to be professional and easily seen. You will also be seen by subscribing to a site application such as FriendFeed.

You will find benefits of social networking through many of the services available. You will learn how is using these services, and invite them into your network.

Next, you will invite your contacts by email to join your social network, but be careful how you do this…you do not want to become a spammer.

Take advantage of the Social Networking sites, get your name and brand out there and build up your own network. If you want to follow me on Twitter, please click here.

Check out the Posting Contest I have running: Click HERE to learn how you can win $100!

Please DIGG This Story – Opens In a New Window – Thanks For The Support

If you are just getting into the online marketing business, there are a lot of ways to start your journey. I am not going to tell you that the road is easy, the road is actually a bit bumpy…but it is also a lot of fun and very exciting. The first thing you are going to learn is the importance of research. Research will be the key to your success. Find out what you are interested in…what appeals to you. Are you interested in creating your own products, or maybe you like the idea of selling products for others for a commission, such as Clickbank products?

You will find a lot of options and even more hype. This is why it is so important to do your research. There are many who just start on the journey, and that is where the bumpy ride begins, so you can save a great deal of that by knowing how you are going to do this. So, do your research.

If you don’t have a product of your own, then you can sell information products that belong to other people. But before you do this, test the product. Don’t sell something that you haven not personally tested. Think of it this way…if you are going to buy a product, who would you buy the product from…Seller A who knows nothing about the product, or seller B who has firsthand experience with the product and can share his own experience and success with the product? Well, you know the answer…so test the product before you sell it.

Be honest with your customers, let them know that you are someone they can trust and that you have integrity. Integrity seems to be something that is indeed lacking in the Internet Marketing business. If you are honest in the way you portray yourself and your products, then you will have return customers and referrals. This is a key to viral marketing, your reputation will follow you for a very long time….so protect it.

Let’s talk a minute about Email

Email is wonderful! Or IS it? Email comes in many shapes and sizes, and it is sent and received instantly. Email comes in HTML, plain text, and even “rich media”. Email can be a major tool to marketing online. You can use it for advertising, newsletters, and to reach business contacts as well as friends. But as does everything, it has a flip-side. This flip-side would be SPAM. No one likes that four letter word. Sadly to say, spam is a form of email marketing, if you think about it in technical terms. For you however, the legitimate email marketer, it poses as a threat.

Not everybody has the same definition of spam, but typically, it is email from a source you did not request the information from. There are dangers of sending spam, one being the legal consequences, but another very important consequence that is often overlooked is the credibility of the sender. There has been companies that have had their credibility ruined just by sending out spam. So, before you become a “spammer”, know the consequences and the risks you are taking, it could mean “the end”.

Note: You need to be targeting a list of members that have opted in for information from you and are in your niche. They need to be able to opt out at any time too. We have provided a solution called: ViralUrl where you can build an optin list and even instantly have a list of 3,000 by upgrading to Gold. You never have to worry about spam with our program. Check it out.