WIIFM - Free Internet Marketing Video Tutorials

I am sure you have heard of that popular station, WIIFM (What's In It For Me), that everyone is tuned into. It's in the interest of any marketer to answer that question for their target audience.

For a while I have offered a newsletter sign up on my website (and on this blog) that simply sends to my list a "snapshot" of blog posts throughout the month.

It occurred to me, that while it is a nice "service" to have blog posts delivered to your email box, I am not actually offering my subscribers anything more than what can be gotten by visiting my blog on a regular basis (or subscribing to it via RSS.)

SO, I have decided to offer something new.... I just got a wonderfully fun piece of software called Camtasia for recording screencasts / video tutorials and training materials. I am now going to offer a series of free video tutorials on topics related to Keyword Research, SEO, Link Building, Google Adwords and more ONLY to my newsletter subscribers. Stay tuned for the first free tutorials in April 2008.

If you know of anyone who would appreciate receiving this newsletter/upcoming tutorials, please pass the word!

The Joys of SEO! - Internet Marketing CT

Wow! I just found out that my site has made it to #2 on Google for Internet Marketing Connecticut. Thank you Josh Katinger, for letting me know!

I'm not banking on my site staying there... I think it's probably a temporary thing caused by some algorithm change or by personalized search. But it sure is fun to do that search and see my site pop up there right near the top! :-)

AskJoanne.com has been in the top 5 for Internet Marketing Newtown CT for quite a while. I usually recommend, when starting your internet marketing, to focus on having your primary service plus location be the first keywords you optimize for. This ensures that people who are looking for you can find you. The next phase of optimization is to optimize your site for other keywords and phrases your target audience might use in a search engine when they don't yet know they need you.

Sell Information Products on Clickbank

There's always SO much to learn about marketing on the internet! While I know alot about SEO, Link Building and Google Adwords I am still learning about things like eZine article distribution, Social Media Marketing and selling information products on marketplaces like Clickbank.

However, I just completed my first Clickbank project for a client and helped her get her e-Books into the Clickbank marketplace. Paula Terifaj, DVM is a Holistic Vet who has written a series of eBooks that address many common issues that dog owners face - Vaccines, Food Issues and Dog Allergies.

The process for Clickbank is pretty straightforward:
- Set up an account with them and create a "pitch page" that pitches your products. Clickbank gives you the payment links to use on your pitch page.
- Set the Title and Description for your products in the Marketplace
- Set the commission you are willing to pay affiliates for selling your products (eg. 25%, 50%).
- Set up each product individually and create a Thank You page that includes a link to download your products.

At first the Clickbank payment links send you to a test payment page so you can thoroughly test the links and your "thank you pages." Products can be e-books, audio files, screencasts, etc. anything that can be sold as a download.

Once it's all working properly, you request approval from Clickbank, pay a one-time $49 activation fee and then your products show up in the Clickbank Marketplace where affiliates can go to create links to your product pitch page and begin selling your information products for you.

You don't have to worry about being able to accept credit cards or even Paypal, Clickbank will cut you a check when your sales have reached a designated threshold amount.

The next step is to learn how to really market products within the Clickbank marketplace to get the most sales possible.... always learning!

Gmail the greatest thing since eMail

Why am I such a fan of Gmail? It has the best SPAM filtering of any email program I have ever used. I only get about 3 spam messages per day in my inbox instead of 50-60 because they are accurately filtered out by Gmail. I also almost NEVER have legitimate mail dumped into the junk folder by accident.

Another thing I love about Gmail is that I can have all my email addresses delivered to one inbox that is accessible from any computer via the internet. So, my personal email accounts, my business account, the accounts I have at client sites can all come into the same inbox. This saves me having to check multiple email accounts each day. Outlook can do this too, but the other benefit of Gmail is that I can log into my account and view my emails from any computer with internet access (great for traveling or when I need something at a client site.)

Gmail is SO easy to search and you get so much storage space that you never have to delete a mail. You can just archive them and then, if you need that info again, use the search box to search for words or phrases that you know were in the message you're looking for.

You can flag messages with a star for follow up, create filters to sort certain types of messages, and label messages to help keep them organized.

Gmail uses a "thread" type system for keeping track of mails so if you send an email out to a distribution list, everytime someone replies, it gets linked to the original mail message so you can always track back through the thread to find "who said what."

And as with most Google services, Gmail is free. The only thing you need to be able to deal with is seeing Google Ads next to your mail messages like the ones along the right column in this screenshot: