Online Business Adviser

The Forum For Online Business Success

The internet is a big place – information coming from everywhere, all the time. To get ahead in your online business, you need to keep up to date. But how do you manage this constant flow of information to make sure you get what you need out of it? There is a process that I work through each day to make sure I extract maximum value from all of the information. Think of these in reverse too – giving your customers these tools make it very easy to find and distribute your content:

Email - This is my start point. It might sound obvious, but the information I want to read every day I get delivered straight to me. A lot of blog sites have the option to subscribe through feedburner, which essentially takes all the new posts from a given period and delivers them in text format to my inbox. I get it on my iPhone which means I can take it with me and access when I want, even when out of range.  Read more...

The live site project that I kicked off a few weeks ago has been ticking along nicely, however I realised I was remiss in calling it week 1, week 2 etc, as some things have taken longer than expected. Hereafter, this post will be in “parts”. A broken database link has meant that many of the plans involving the blog and syndication of the RSS feed haven’t happened yet, however we have begun building a solid profile on Twitter, picking up followers with similar interests along the way.

The good news is that traffic to the site has begun building. From a base of near zero, the site has picked up a decent daily visitation for this stage in its lifecycle, and jumped up in a big way in its Alexa ranking  Read more...

Google’s AdWords and AdSense programs revolutionised online advertising when they were launched, allowing greater accountability with advertising dollars and an opportunity for webmasters to make a little cash for their site. In the current economic climate, it allows shrewd spend for businesses looking to maximise ROI.

I have clients ask me my thoughts on whether they should use them, or how they effectively use one or the other. Ultimately it depends on your business model, but there are a few things you need to keep in mind when determining if they are right for your business.

AdWords is a Pay Per Click system, where you bid against other advertisers to appear against specific search terms, and the highest bids are the ones that appear closer to the top. So when I am talking with a client about using AdWords, my first question is around what price they put on acquiring a lead.  Read more...

I’m just back from the first Affili@SYD conference, and wanted to share what I considered some of the highlights and point you in their direction, as I think there was some incredibly valuable content that anyone starting an online business should know.

The keynote was from Jay Berkowitz, the CEO of www.tengoldenrules.com, and was certainly one of the most engaging presentations I have heard on online and affiliate marketing. Jay spoke on 10 Super Success Strategies for Internet marketers, which covered effective SEO, blog building and the importance of personal brand and what tools you can use to build it. One such site was PeoplePond, which allows you to aggregate all of your online presences and manage your reputation, something I will be covering in depth soon. Jay’s advice is incredibly practical, I recommend checking out his site TenGoldenRules.com  Read more...

Before I start covering social media, there are a few final quick tips for SEO that I wanted to add to yesterday’s post:

Submit your URL - Don’t leave it to chance that Google will find you eventually through links and keywords. Submit your URL to Google here – www.google.com/addurl. It may take some time for Google to get to it, but at least you are in the system.

Remember your Keywords – Whenever you are creating content, be conscious of your keywords. But make sure you don’t overdo it as they will lose their relevance. Use tags on your content with keywords where available.

Respect Forums – Make sure you read terms of use on forums before you go putting your URL all over it. Some frown on the use of their forum just to generate links and traffic, and can suspend your account if you do so. Place them where possible and necessary and make sure you are providing value in your contribution, which will in turn generate your traffic.  Read more...