Monetization Magic

Colorado Website Development

YOUR Website Advertising 123 Easy!

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A great way to monetize your website is to sell advertising space.  You can easily create and sell 125×125 pixel ads and place them on your website using nothing more than Microsoft Paint and some HTML code.  You do NOT need fancy software to put the ads on your website.  A typical ad price would be $50 per month for a 125×125 ad.  This is 123 Easy.  If you can cut and paste you can do this!

1.  Create the Ad

Likely the advertiser has their own 125×125 already created and you can simply upload that; however in the event that they don’t, you can create an ad for them and charge them appropriately.

2.  Create the Ad Structure

The simplest ad structure that you can use is a table.  The table contains at least one row and cells.  Each ad image is uploaded into the cell of the table and a link pointing to the destination is attached to the image.  The basic structure code is as follows:

<table>

<tr><td>Ad Image 1</td><td>Ad Image 2</td></tr>

</table>

Calm down!  It’s a little bit of code and the good part is that WordPress will create the rest for you.  You can copy and paste, right?  Simply copy the code above and put it into a temporary post using the HTML tab. Find the HTML tab in the image below:

 

 

 

We won’t be keeping the post, we’ll just use it for a working area for the moment.

Click back on the Visual tab and you will see a basic table.  It will look like this:

Ad Image 1 Ad Image 2

Don’t worry about the size as it will self adjust as we move forward.  Breathe!  The rest is just copy and paste.  Highlight the words “Ad Image 1” in the first cell of the table.  Click on the Upload/Insert button:

Search for the ad you which to insert and then click on the button to upload the image.  Then click on the Insert into Post button.  Once the image has been inserted, click on the image and click on the Link button and type in the destination for the ad image.

If you happen to have 2 ads, simply repeat the process to get the 2nd one into place.  Once the ads are in place and linked, click on the HTML tab again.  You’ll see a lot of HTML code back there.  You created that!  Now we’re going to select all of it (you can hold down the CTRL key and click on the A key if you have a PC).  Next we will copy it in preparation for step 3.

3. Place the Ad Structure Into a Text Widget

Open a text widget and simply paste the code into the lower area.  You will not need a title.  Go ahead and click on the blue Save button at this point.  Open up another browser window and admire your work!  Next, click on each of the ads to ensure that they link to the proper destination.

That’s all there is to it!

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New Merchant Credit Card Account Service

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What is it?

A merchant credit card account is an account set up with a bank to process credit cards.  It allows a business owner to accept credit cards for purchases made in their business.  The account is completely PCI compliant so your information and your customers information is safe!

Who needs it?

If you own or will be owning a business, you will need a merchant credit card account.  The amount the bank charges for processing the credit cards can vary and some are quite expensive!  I am able to offer VERY competitive rates for this service.  If you are currently paying over 2%, we definitely need to talk!

How does this benefit you?

This benefits any business owner by lowering their overhead and increasing their profits.  I am also able to provide equipment and give you the ability to accept credit cards using just your cell phone, if you have a need for portability.  Doing business at the beach?  No problem!  This is a great option for those vendors that will be selling their products at the state fairs that are currently taking place across the country!

Does it really make a difference?

Yes!  For example, let’s say your current rate is 2.75% and let’s say your rate is reduced by .75% down to 2.0%.  A business with only $1000 in monthly sales would save $90 or 9% of their gross monthly sales in fees!  That can make or break many businesses today!  If you happen to be using PayPay and receiving a rate of 3% + $.30 on each transaction which is common, you’ll save even more!  Over the course of a year, your savings really add up!

Would you like to learn more?

I would love to explain to you how I can help you to retain more money in your business by getting a better rate on your credit card processing.  Simply fill out the form at http://monetizationmagic.com/merchant-credit-card-accounts and I’ll be in touch with you within 24 hours!

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3 Steps to Attract 1000 Fans

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You’ve created your blog and you’re wondering why you’re not getting traffic?  You have to actually tell people about all the great things that you have created for them!  Wouldn’t it be great to be able to create something that will just work by itself so that you can concentrate on your business?  This is where social networking enters the marketing arena.  This will be a very tactical post that tells you exactly how to accomplish getting more fans, so let’s get started!

Twitter

Set Up Your Profile  Have you set your profile?  Really, go look at it.  Do you have your picture out there?  95% of people will not connect to others who have not put their picture on their profile.  Why?  Because they feel like they are trying to hide something or are otherwise dishonest.  Is your bio blank?  Go ahead and add some information there such as where you live, what you do, where you work, who your best customer is.  It doesn’t need to go into really personal details, but give people something to help you and determine if they want to connect with you.  Lastly you’ll want to create a background for your profile.  It makes you stand out!

Find Software  I’m willing to bet that you don’t have time to be interrupt your work 10 times a day to make sure you tweet something to your followers.  Wait!  I’ll have followers?!  Yes, what you have to say is important and people will follow you to hear what you have to say.  Wouldn’t it be great to have a system to automatically take care of making sure you connect with your present and future clients?  The software I use for this task is called Tweet Adder.  Tweet Adder is great because it works silently in the background on your behalf.  They even have a 30-Day free trial.

Add People  I’m sure that you know the top performers in your industry.  Wouldn’t it be great to find out who is following those people and wouldn’t it be even better if those people followed you too?  Or, better yet, wouldn’t you like to know who the influencers in your industry are following?  Simply set up the software to follow the followers of your influential people along with who the influencers follow and set the software to follow back all who follow you and you’re on your way to creating your first 100 fans in record time!

Start Tweeting  This seems pretty obvious; however, you’d be surprised at how many people simply do not do this.  Tweet about what is new and interesting in your business.  Are you having a new product promotion?  Will your store hours be changing for the season?  Is there something your current customers should be thinking about or doing to make things easier for themselves?  Tell them about it and include a link back to your website to get more information or make an appointment.  Tweetmeme is a great free plug-in for tweeting about what you have just posted on your blog.

Facebook

Create a Fan Page  Create a Fan Page for your business so that people can read about the new and interesting things that your business is doing.  Set up an opt-in area with some valuable content that you give away for free when people click the “like” button on your fan page.  That way they stay up-to-date with your business.  This will help you to build your prospective customer list.  Set your blog up with Networked Blogs and your blog posts will automatically appear on your Fan Page.

Invite Friends  Invite your friends to like your business fan page so that they can stay up to date with what your business is doing and when they hear of someone needing your products or services, they can refer them.

Ask High Profile People to Become Fans  You’d be surprised at how many influential people will actually help you on your way by liking your business fan page.  They remember what it was like when they started out and once others see that they are following you, their fans will want to follow you too!

Post Regularly When you post to your blog, you’ll want to also tweet about each post and place a bit of the article on your fan page with a link back to your blog.  You can set up your blog to automatically publish to your fan page so that you don’t have to update your fan page.  It is automatically done for you!  I love it when the computers work for me.

Top Lists

Create a Title  The best way to start to create a top whatever list is to just create a title.  Once you have the title, you can go about the work to create the list.  Top lists drive close to 30% more traffic compared to other types of posts and they’re so easy to create.

Outsource  If you don’t have the time to create your list, you can outsource it.  I would recommend posting an ad on Fiverr.com and see if you can find someone to do the work for you.

Post Of course, once you have the post created, you’ll want to post it to your blog and watch to see how much traffic you receive.  You’ll be amazed.

Twitter/Facebook  Yes, once again, you’ll want to tweet and post to your Fan page that you have a new post on your blog.  If you’ve already set Tweetmeme and Networked Blogs up to go automatically, it’s already been done for you!

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Heat Wave Kills Electronics

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Do what you can over the next several weeks to keep as cool as possible!  That goes for your electronics too.  As the heat wave in the US continues to move East and get even hotter, remember to keep your electronics out of the heat and do not leave them in your vehicle.  That includes your GPS device, cell phone, laptops, all your electronics.  The excessive heat can warp the circuit boards, keyboards, and the screens.

Leaving electronics in the trunk of your vehicle will expose your equipment to temperatures in excess of 115 degrees.  If you find yourself out with your electronics, just take them with you.  It’s much less hassle than having to repair or replace and reprogram everything.

If you have sprinkler system or alarm system circuitry in your garage and the temperatures are creeping over 110 degrees, it’s time to think about moving a fan into the garage to attempt to cool things down there too.

Venturing out to the pool to keep cool?  Don’t leave your iPad or laptop on a metal table as that will cause issues as well.  It’s best to keep the electronics inside where it is much cooler.  Think cool thoughts everyone and we’ll get through this!

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Blogging for Business Growth

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Gone are the days when having a website meant that you had a cute picture of your store front with your business name, address, phone number and hours of operation.  Today’s website needs to include a blog, social network connections, free give-away items, an area to get more information from the business, an area to submit an e-mail from the website, items for sale and in some cases an events calendar.

Does that sound like a lot of hats to wear in addition to your normal day-to-day operations?  Actually, it’s a blessing rather than a curse.  It’s a blessing because you don’t have to do everything yourself.  You are able to hire someone else to do some of the work for you at a reasonable rate.  Other tasks can be created once and automated so that you can get back to the normal operations of your business.

The websites of today can introduce several additional streams of passive and residual income to your bottom line.  The optin area is used to gather names and email addresses for people who are interested in learning more about what you have to offer or perhaps to receive your monthly newsletter.  The email addresses are fed to your auto-responder software to send out communication to your current and prospective customers to let them know key items about your business.

For instance, let’s say you have a heating, ventilation and air conditioning business.  Every fall it starts to get cold and every spring it starts to get warm.  Every month we’re supposed to change the filter in our systems.  What if every summer, your email system automatically began to notify customers that they needed to contact your company to set up an appointment to have their furnace serviced to take advantage of the Early Bird special?  What if every winter, your email system automatically began to notify customers that they needed to contact your company to set up an appointment to have their air conditioner serviced to take advantage of the Spring Early Bird special?

Customers might even choose to schedule their appointments and pay for the service prior to you performing the service.  It’s convenient for them and would remove some receivables from your books.  WooHoo!  Instant cash flow!  I can see your accountant clicking their heals already.

Your blog could be used to educate your customers on the proper way to install a filter or drain a sprinkler system.  It could also be used to let your current and prospective customers that you regularly maintain the local soup kitchen for no charge just because you like to give back to your community.  Your blog gives your business a human touch to an otherwise cold relationship.  If your little business will be doing an exhibit at the local home and garden show, you can let your customers know to stop by and see you to pick up their coupon for one of your services along with something nice to drink.  People like to do business with people whom they know, like and trust.  You may not have time and resources to meet and greet all your customers, so put some systems in place to do that work for you.

Take a look at the website you have today.  If your website is more like an unlit billboard in the night than a fully interactive, systematized money-making machine, consider having an Action Strategy Session with me so that you can begin adding more to your bottom line before your competition gets a hold of this valuable information.  The normal investment for this service is $349.00.  The Action Strategy Session is even priced for today’s economy because you can take advantage of the Take Action Special for $97.00.  You may just find there are 10-15 different income streams that you can take advantage of that you hadn’t even thought about before your Session.  Reserve your time at I’m always happy to help!

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What is Latent Semantic Indexing?

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What is it?

According to Wikipedia, Latent Semantic Indexing is an indexing and retrieval method that uses a mathematical technique called Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) to identify patterns in the relationships between the terms and concepts contained in an unstructured collection of text.

What?!  You say you speak English?  Oh!  No problem!  What this means in plain English is that when you write an article or post about a key word, certain other words normally occur in the same context.  For instance, let’s say you were writing an article about schools.  It would be normal to see the following words in the same article:  students, teachers, teacher student ratio, classrooms, budgets, parents, curriculum, extra curricular activities, clubs, textbooks, books, schedules, grades…you get the idea.

Why Do I Care?

Not too very long ago, the way to achieve a #1 ranking with Google was to stuff your articles and posts full of your key work with no regard to the quality of the content.  Those boys and girls at Google are pretty smart.  They wanted to ensure that the readers had quality content to read on the internet instead of a bunch of garbage so they changed the magic formula.  They now judge an article or post based on how many related keywords are in the article instead of how many times your keyword phrase appears in the article.

If you’re not on the first page of a Google search, your chances of being found by a potential reader decrease significantly.  If there’s not anyone finding your site, there’s even less chance that any of your ads are being looked at much less clicked upon.  Consequently, when you decide to sell your site, you’ll leave a lot of money on the table that could have been in your pocket.

Who Uses It?

Ultimately, Google uses it to rank your site.  Since most people use Google to do their searches, it’s pretty important to rank in the first 3 or 4 choices for your keyword phrase as most folks don’t look any further than the first page of a search to get to the information for which they are looking.

Your competition is using it to gain ranking over you!  Obviously, you won’t know this; however, your best insurance is to write content rich articles for your readers so that you don’t even have to be concerned about your competition.

Can I Leverage It?

Yes, you can.  Find out your competitions keywords and write better articles and posts.  If you don’t write well, hire someone who does write well to help you to get ahead!  No one said you had to do it all.  Finding out the keyword phrases that your competition is paying for and writing better articles for these phrases is even better!

Another way to leverage this concept is to sprinkle high paying keywords among your keyword phrases to raise the dollar value of the ads that Adsense is feeding to your blog so that when your reader clicks on one of your ads, you automatically make more per click.  You will want to ensure that the high paying keyword actually fits in with your post or article.  I would only use one extra high paying keyword per article to ensure you are playing by the rules and don’t get your Adsense account shut down by the nice boys and girls at Google.

Are There Tools to Help Me?

Once again, you’re in luck!  I use a tool called BlogGlue Toolbox to assist me with my SEO when I’m posting my articles.  It checks my title, description, keywords and document content and gives me suggestions on how I can write a better article.  Best of all, this won’t cost you a dime!  Talk about great insurance!

The bottom line is to show off a bit of your knowledge about your niche and give your readers great content.  You will be richly rewarded for it.

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Turn your iPhone into a credit card terminal

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Are you a business that makes money transactions on the run?  Perhaps you’re a street vendor or rental car agent or someone who would like to take credit card transactions where there is limited resources to set up a credit card processing terminal.  You can now swipe your credit card using an add on piece of hardware or simply type the credit card number into your iPhone and process the transaction.  This even works on the Edge network which has the slowest data network that the iPhone will handle!

The best part of this is that the information is NOT stored on the iPhone.  So why do we need an office anymore?!  I’m way impressed with this.  We’ve come a long way from the days when everyone went to work in a cubicle farm and spent their days on conference calls in an 8X10 cell…er, I mean cubicle.

So what do you think?  Would you use this application in your business?  Would this help you?  Do you have experience with this application?  Let me know in your comments below.

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Who Owns Your Website?

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There are currently a lot of internet businesses beginning to emerge in the market place.  In today’s economy, everyone is looking to save a little here, create a little there to keep up with the changing financial landscape.  Not too long ago, some real estate investors would acquire a controlling interest in a piece of property so that when the property was sold, they would make some money during the transaction for having a “controlling interest” in the property without actually owning the property.  I am seeing a similar scenario emerging when it comes to internet businesses.

When a domain name is registered, the name and address of the person is recorded during the transaction.  If you’re purchasing that domain through a software developer, they may purchase the domain for you and then sell it to you for an amount or they may lease it to you for an amount.  Either way, they control the domain.  They also have the ability to lock the domain.  Locking a domain prohibits the ownership and associated hosting from being transferred to another entity without the owner’s consent.  Locking a domain is a normal activity used as a protection so that the website cannot be redirected by someone else.  It is simply a safety mechanism.  Even if you paid the software developer to purchase the website domain on your behalf, if they purchased it in their name, you do not own the website until it is transferred to your name.  Because you do not own the website, you do not control it either.

How do you know who owns your website?  You can search for your website name using a tool called “whois”.   Simply search for “whois” + yourwebsitename as shown in the example below:

Obviously you would replace “monetizationmagic.com” with the website name for which you are inquiring.

Your search should return several possibilities.  Take a look for one that will discuss who owns the website.  It is possible that this information has been obfuscated by a privacy service as well.  If this is your case, you will need to contact the privacy service and prove your right to know this information before this is revealed to you.  This can be a very good thing if you are a high profile individual and someone is looking to extract large amounts of money from you.  With privacy protection in place, they will not be able to easily uncover intellectual assets that are in your name.  Truly, if you have an internet business that makes a lot of money, there are other protections that should be put in place that are outside the scope of this post.

Now maybe you’re completely comfortable with the website ownership; however, you should keep in mind that website “flipping” is becoming a very lucrative business for those who know what they are doing.  Let’s say you have a website in which you have lost interest.  To you, the website is in a good niche and has a nice title but frankly it’s ugly.  It’s kinda of like the ugly, unkempt rental real estate down the block.  What is trash to you may be a mighty treasure to someone else.  Rather than just abandoning it, try to sell it and you may find that you can pocket a nice return on your investment!  Someone else might be able to purchase those ugly bits from you, transform it into something beautiful and then resell it for thousands more than they paid for it!  To whet your appetite, check out the article below that talks about Apple just paying over $4 million for a highly coveted domain name.  (Now why didn’t I think of that!)  If this is something that you might be interested in learning for yourself, check into my class offerings to get you started.

Look for website auctions to be opening right here in the coming weeks!

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