How to Harness the POWER of Pay-per-Click Search Engines

How to Harness POWER of Pay-per-Click Search Engines Copyright 2002 lessworkmoremoney.com By Armand Melanson

Unfortunately, I get email every day from people who have setup their websites to sell but they can't get any traffic to their site - they are going out of business fast. So let me emphasize an important element of online success: Find markets that you can quickly penetrate via pay-per-click advertising at Overture. What is a pay-per-click(PPC) Search Engine(SE) you ask? PPCs are changing face of Internet advertising. Let me explain how. With regular SEs, you have to write your marketing copy to create proper keyword density, then submit & wait for SE to spider your site. It can take anywhere from 2 to 12 weeks before you actually get listed. Then you have to start tweaking your site to try & move up ranks. It's a slow & labor intensive process. With Overture - biggest PPC out there - you can join, bid on particular keywords & get listed within 5 days! Your bid will determine where you rank. For example, if you are selling cigars, you can bid $0.20 for keyword "cigar" and that bid will determine where you rank when someone searches for "cigar". You pay $0.20 every time someone clicks on your listing for keyword "cigar". Everytime a search is done at Overture or its partner sites, keywords which have been bid on appear above non-bid keywords. So even if your competition has created a highly keyword focused site but hasn't bid on words you have bid on, you will be above them in search results. This means that even if you find a product which is in great demand, you should 1st determine if you can get a top 5 position at Overture for most relevant keywords before building your website. This is very important because if you can't get a top 5 at Overture, then you will not get sufficient traffic to your site to make money from start. Of course, you can go long route of using search engine submission tools, link trading, banner ads, ezine ads & what not. But this will take some time before it pays off in sufficient traffic to make you some real money. If you want immediate results, you have to be able to get a top 5 spot at Overture - top 5 is key because Yahoo, one of Overture's partners, picks up top 5 Overture results. If you can get top 1 or 2, then even better because Overture's other partners (MSN, ALTA VISTA, LYCOS, etc.) will display your results. But top 5 alone will produce good results because Yahoo is huge & gets a massive number of searches. ----------------------------------- MATH IS FOR PINHEADS?? - NOT!!!!! ----------------------------------- The way to calculate how high you can bid at Overture is pretty simple: Let's assume a very conservative 1% conversion rate at your site - that means 1 out of 100 visitors buys. Determine your profit on 1 sale of your main product - if you are selling widgets at $30 a piece (expensive widgets I know) & your cost is $10, then your gross profit is $20/sale (haven't factored in other expenses yet). If rough profit per sale is $20 & you make one sale/100

Love Your Irate Customers

Love Your Irate Customers Copyright 2002 lessworkmoremoney.com By Armand Melanson Everybody hates nit-picky customer who is never pleased. When an irate customer emails or comes in to tell you how bad your service or products are, you want to let them have it right between eyes right? Well don't do it. Love your irate customers. They're one of best things that can happen to your business because they tell you exactly what 100 other customers are thinking but haven't said. For every complaint you get, many more people likely felt same but didn't say anything about it. So when a complainer makes their views known, perk up your ears. They are about to do you a big favor. Even if you think complaint is unjustified or outrageous, don't react. Listen. Ask questions. Find out as much as possible about what was unsatisfactory about your product/service. Take comments of every dissatisfied customer with utmost seriousness & concern. Of course, there are limits to what anyone should take: abusive hreatening language or behavior should not be tolerated. But 99% of complaints don't come in that form. Most customer complaints give you very feedback you need to make your business better. When dealt with properly, complaints generate enhancements of your products & services. Furthermore, a well handled complaint will often turn complainant into an ally. Let me illustrate. I often use popups to ask visitors why they didn't buy at my website. Here's response I got from one guy ( we'll call him John Doe ): "Too many gimmicks on net. I didn't even bother to read. Plus I make it a habit to not buy from ANY site that uses popups. I believe in MY CHOICE of what I click on and choose to browse! Plus you don't even know how to make popups come to the