In reality it’s more like “If you build it – then drive traffic to it they might come and look around for a few seconds, maybe decide to stay around or go back to the search engine results and go somewhere else”

It’s tough out there folks and it ain’t getting any easier as more businesses become savvy on how to market effectively on the web.

The Key Concept to turning Visitors into Customers

The key concept that needs to be grasped here is the difference between the online prospect and the offline prospect. To illustrate this let’s make a quick comparison between an online surfer and someone who has just walked into your shop or place of business:

Now when you think how hard it can be to make the sale in person to someone who has committed the time and effort to seek you out offline – imagine what you need to do to get the first time website visitor on board.

The End-to-End process

Looking at our first time website visitor who has just clicked through to your website – put yourself in their shoes (or slippers) for a moment and ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the ultimate goal they are trying to achieve which has brought them to your site?
• Why should they keep reading and looking around when they arrive?
• What can you do for them right now (preferably for no cost or obligation) that can help them a step further in achieveing their goal or solving their problem?
• Why should they take up your fabulous offer?

Online it’s all about relationship building and providing value up front. You do this in the form of high quality content followed by lead generation. The idea is to get them to the stage they would be at if they had just physically walked into your business premises. Call it going from wearing slippers to wearing shoes.

The steps to doing this are:

1. You research the end result your target customers are trying to achieve. You need to think in terms of benefits and not features
2. You create something of value be it a download/ebook/piece of software/telephone consultation that helps them toward achieving their goal/solving their problem.
3. This high value freebie also educates them on how your products and services can help them toward that goal.
4. You make sure that the pages they arrive at educate them on how your freebie can help them achieve their goal
5. Your site ‘sells’ the freebie which only costs them their contact details and permission for you to follow up with them.
6. You focus all your online efforts on ths one goal of lead generation, all your site content, all your off site promotions are geared to funneling people to this fabulous offer

When they have converted you now have them at the stage they’d be at as though they’d walked into your business premises.

Now you can start selling to them

To find out more about using this technique to convert cold prospect website visitors into warm leads I’ve condensed it as much as I could into a short complimentary ebook which you can find out more about here.

So after this morning’s round of RSS feed submissions I decided to keep a record of all the sites that did not:

• Demand a reciprocal link
• Require an account sign up and email confirmation
• Masquerade as free directories then send me to a paypal sign up after filling in my details

As of today – 02/05/2010 (English date format) this is a list I ended up with of RSS directories where you can submit your feed quickly and relatively painlessly:

http://www.feedzie.com/submit.php

http://www.rss-network.com/submitrss.php

http://www.xmeta.net/users/

http://www.solarwarp.net/submitrss.php

http://www.leighrss.com/rss-add.html

http://www.postami.com/rss_submit_service.php

http://www.feedsee.com/submit.html

http://en.newsxs.com/Suggest/

http://www.search4rss.com/addfeed.php

http://www.feedplex.com/add-url.php

http://www.plazoo.com/en/addrss.asp

http://www.jordomedia.com/RSS/l_op=Addrss.html

http://www.goldenfeed.com/AddFeed.aspx

http://www.rssmicro.com/feedsubmit.web

http://www.rssmotron.com/feed_eater.php

This is by no means complete so if you can think of any more please do so in a comment.

Let’s just hope that 2010 is better than 2009… which shouldn’t be too hard.

This is the time of year when people reflect on what they’ve achieved over the last year, what they want to achieve in the long run and what they need to do this year to make it happen.

For me I do that all year round so today is just another day when I’m working while most of the rest of the world is still asleep and/or nursing a hangover. That in itself brings me up to my one and only resolution for 2010:

To work less, earn more and get more done (and make more money) through passive and automated channels. So to start with let’s see how many projects and businesses I have on the go, which ones are currently yielding better results, which ones have (currently functional and potential) automation – then start looking through the 80/20 glasses. If you don’t know what the 80/20 principle is then I’ll put a link to a detailed explanation at the end of this post.

Current live projects:

Visiboost – Internet marketing services for small and growing businesses.

This is my main project and looking to explode in 2010.  So far I have automated huge amounts of the information gathering and compiling and have yet to automate a lot more and streamline current scripts and processes.  – Priority and yield – very high

Social Media Optimisation and Training.

Creating social media platforms (custom blogs and accounts with industry specific networks) and training businesses on how to leverage these for growth. No current automation in place but there is plenty of potential to automate the preparation and information gathering process. The training is done in-person and cannot be automated. Potential to also explode in 2010 and is currently yielding high results – Priority and yields – very high.

Foreign Exchange (FOREX) Currency Trading

Highly speculative and high risk currency trading that when done sensibly using correct money management and leveraging can yield consistently high returns. I won’t go into detail about actual systems but the overall strategy is to trade a system that is consistently profitable and execute a large number of small trades that risk no more that 3% of the account balance.

This can be automated using special programming languages that trade 24 hours. The goal is to develop a trading system that is no less than 70% successful and automate it so that each trade only risks 3% of the account and no more than 3 trades are open at any time.   Priority and yields – very high.

That’s probably enough to keep going until this time next year, however there’s more. These are probably just as important as the above priorities:

Play my guitar every day - even if it’s just for 5 minutes. maybe develop a learning plan/schedule and get some jazz/Latin lessons to structure learning and practice.

Maintain a steady exercise pattern – currently I do a 10k run every week, don’t let this slide for any reason. A nice ‘carry on’ resolution there. Exercise is a way of life not a resolution.

Produce an album of my own music – this is something I’ve started on and left under a (virtual) pile of papers. I’ve recorded tons of snippets of ideas, time to weave them together – collaborate with someone else if necessary

See more live music – Try and see some live music at least once every month.

New Years Resolution – Keep Going, Focus and Streamline

So that’s 2010 all planned out for Dot-Dash Innovations Ltd. Nothing new – just keep going, focus more on what’s working and ditch what isn’t.

I love the 80/20 principle – and so should you

Happy New Year!

Well not just a blog, more of a web site that uses wordpress but for the most part it’s a blog. I personally prefer the term “content hub” but there you go.

All ‘corporate’ and official internet marketing related content will now reside on Visiboost.com

Here I’ll cover a range of topics from technical geek subjects (how it all get’s done), thoughts and developments on internet marketing, social media, investing and forex trading. Basicaly all the stuff that’s getting Dot-dash Innovations Ltd to where I want it to be.