June 21, 20140Comments

internet-marketing-free-affiliate-arrangement-1 An effective way to partner with someone is to offer unlimited future commissions in return for sending people to your website to get some free bonuses.

Why is this type of affiliate arrangement so effective? Lots of people will sign up for the free products, because they don’t have to buy anything. This makes the technique a powerful way to grow your list. Then, when the subscribers do buy something in the future, the partner will get affiliate commissions. The trend now is to set your affiliate program for cookies that never expire. Another trend is to use an affiliate program that recognizes referrals by their email rather than a cookie — this is generally a more stable setup long-term.

The process is a bit complicated and will probably take 3-4 hours of your time. Here are the steps: Read More

by Ellen Finkelstein

Increase sign-ups by customizing your Submit button

Email marketing

List building

Web technology

May 25, 20140Comments

You can get more people to subscribe to your list if your Submit button for your web form stands out. It should:

Be visually striking
Have a custom message

Here’s an example of a boring Submit button. In fact, it’s hard to even see it!

You probably get your for your sign-up form code from your email provider. In that code, near the end, is the section that contains the button.

This is going to get a little technical

But not difficult. Read More

by Ellen Finkelstein

Website security: They’re trying to hack your website — I have proof — and what to do about it

Web technology

WordPress/blogging

May 19, 20142Comments

online-business-website-security-your-website-is-being-attacked-1 — Your website is in danger!

There has been a wave of websites hackings. Some were very public, like the one that affected Target’s website.

But small websites get hacked, too. One of my websites was hacked about a year ago and believe me, it’s a frightening experience to go to your own website and see a message that says that the website is unsafe and telling you to get out of there as fast as possible.

It took 2 days of working with my webhost to get it fixed, using backups.

Your website might be next

I have a WordPress plug-in called Wordfence that tells me when someone logs into my account, when plug-ins are out of date, and more. Usually, these notices are routine; either myself or one of my assistants is logging in and that’s fine.

But In March, I saw a flurry of emails that looked like this. Look carefully at the parts with the red arrows. Read More

by Ellen Finkelstein

Increase your website traffic with this simple technique

Keywords & Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Web technology

WordPress/blogging

May 3, 20140Comments

online-business-increase-website-traffic-1 The more traffic you get to your website, the more opportunity you have to gain potential customers or clients. But many entrepreneurs have trouble getting traffic to their website.

Over time, your traffic will increase as you:

Write more content
Grow your email and social media lists

But that can take a long time..

And you want quick results, right?

Of course, right!

Is there a shortcut?

There are a few shortcuts, but one that you can use now is to take advantage of the pages on your website that are already doing well. These pages have content that people are searching for and are interested in, so they’re more likely to attract attention.

That means that you find out which pages get the most traffic and promote them. How?

I’ll tell you the two ways to promote them in a minute, but first you need to discover which pages are bringing you the most traffic.

Using Google Analytics

You can learn all about your traffic using Google Analytics. If you don’t already have them set up, follow these steps:

Go to google.com/analytics and set up an account.
If you have an HTML site, you need to add code that you get from Google’s site on each page. But for a WordPress website, you use a plug-in. (Read about how to install a plug-in here.) There are a number of good plug-ins but I’m happy with Analyticator.
Follow the instructions to set it ip — it’s easy to set up.

With most WordPress Google Analytics plug-ins, you can see stats in your Dashboard, but because I have more than one site, I usually go to Google’s website.

Watch this 4-minute video to see how to discover which pages have the most traffic.