Small Business Digital CoachGROW REVENUES BY 25 TO 100% OR MORE IN 90 DAYS OR LESS while reducing advertising cost and effort

Today I signed up with Technorati. Technorati may be the single most influential website and directory service for bloggers. Of course I’ve been sharing my posts with my Twitter “followers” as well as my Facebook “Friends”.

It really illustrates the “hassle-free” earning power that can be generated when you combine database-driven content websites with an Adsense income model. If you’ve ever thought about creating and monetizing a so-called “Adsense site”, you want to check this out. Enjoy!

AdSense millionaire from Hendrik Kleinwaechter on Vimeo.

Here’s the huge take away:

If you think carefully about what pieces of absolutely useful public information is wasting away on government and municipal websites (even corporate websites) all over the world, and you figure out how to package them for relevance to the marketplace, you may be just one more step away from a fabulous hassle-free income online.

Before you spend hundreds of dollars on an internet copywriting course that may or may not be effective for your ultimate purpose, there are a few questions you should ask yourself about your website, your product/service or your brand.

And if you’re patient, I’ll share a wonderful resource to help you…

I’ll tell you about the best FREE internet copywriting course around! (Don’t worry, I didn’t produce it!)

If you’re like most people who search for internet copywriting resources online, you’re probably working on:

1. Launching a new website.
2. Launching a new product/service on your website.
3. Adding a monetization stream to your website for the first time.

The very first step you must undertake even before you sign up for any “Copywriting for the web” product is to define the target web visitor profile for your web site or page.

I have created some questions that can help you with this:

• Who is it you most want to visit your website or web page?
• What problems, desires, habits, complaints, fascinations does she have?
• What words and phrases does she use to describe these problems, desires, habits, etc?
• Where does she meet like minds online and offl?
• Who do she admire or detest?
• What organizations does she belong to?

These 6 questions above can help you define a pretty accurate profile of the person you hope to speak to online and help you craft effective an message.

The next major consideration is to decide the action you most want web visitors to take. I refer to this as “Most Desired Action Step”.

Defining the most desired action step keeps you from sending your website visitors mixed messages. Nailing down your ideal website visitor, and successfully drawing them to your site will do you no good if your web site copywriting confuses them. From your headlines to sub-headlines, bullet lists, pictures and picture subtitles, every element of your content must lead to the most desired action step.

Finally, you must consider the medium; the web. Writing for the web differs from any other type of copywriting in at least 2 ways:

Traffic generation
Web visitor reading habits

Some of my past clients have initially struggled with the following insight which I find I often have to repeat to internet newcomers:

“A web page may be the only ad copy delivery medium in which the words used not only convert prospects into customers, but actually have a hand in attracting the prospects in the first place. This is accomplished through the magic of search engine marketing with keywords.”

Keywords and keyword phrases are the terms web users type in to the search engines to look for information. For instance, you may have found this article by searching for “Internet copywriting course”… a keyword phrase.

If you intend to drive traffic to your website through the search engines, your web copy will have to include the keywords and keyword phrases likely to draw your target audience. The process of creating web pages that effectively attract traffic from the likes of Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc is known as Search Engine Optimization.

Unless, you intend to make a heavy investment in alternative ways of generating traffic, you must pay close attention to optimizing your copy for the search engines.

Apart from considering the search engines in your copy, the last point you need to keep in mind is how the online medium changes reading behavior. Research has shown that online visitors do an awful lot of skimming and prefer to read online copy in bite-sized chunks.

Your writing style, use of short paragraphs, bullets, graphics and other elements become more important than ever. There are many mistakes to be made…

and that’s why I was so pleased to find out that…

Dr. Ken Evoy’s Internet Copywriting Course is now free!

If you don’t know who Dr. Ken Evoy is, let’s just say you’ll be in for a real treat. He’s one of the most accessible CEOs in the world, but more importantly (for you), he’s the guy who virtually revolutionized internet business in 1999 with the landmark E-book (now updated), Make Your Site Sell!

On the good side (for you), the whole episode brought my attention to an oft-overlooked piece of valuable real estate you might be wasting on your website… your 404 Error Page.

Just in case you don’t know what that is, it’s the page that displays whenever a visitor to your website requests a page that either no longer exists (most commonly) or never existed.

For example, typing in www.yourwebsitename.com/yarmulke-boy-example3 will probably bring up a 404 Error page that draws a blank like this one from Lee McIntyre, (a favorite internet business coach).

Lee’s 404 error page is typical of most blogs and websites (including mine) because it leaves all that valuable real estate blank. Now don’t get me wrong Lee is one of the most brilliantly effective entrepreneurs out there, but by ignoring the opportunity to customize his 404 Error page, he’s not really strongly leveraging this particular resource.

I decided to check out another favorite mentor of mine, Business Coach Terry Dean, to see what his 404 Error page looked like. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like (as of today anyway):

Terry Dean’s page above is a better use of the 404 Error page because a whole list of options to connect to Terry are made available to the web visitor. Some of his most important pages such as his “About”, “Products” pages and others are made available right there.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be working on ideas to customize my 404 Error pages profitably. If you have any ideas for me, you can leave a comment below. This whole idea is not new, but I was reminded of the concept after Comcast (my internet cable provider) tried to hijack my default “Page Not Found” browser display with a page for their own purposes.

Usually, when you type in a nonsensical url website address like www.marsh3reaf.com , you’ll get a “Page Not Found” like the one I get (see picture below):

Instead, almost 2 weeks ago, I found that Comcast had hijacked my 404 error page and replaced my normal “Page Not Found” Page with their own customized page with this one below:

I had a few problems with this:

First, I tend to use the browser search as my own domain name availability pre-test before I check out any other services such as Godaddy.com.
Second, it really smacked of “BIG BROTHER” as I really don’t want Comcast to know anything I’m up to when I’m online! It’s bad enough they know my home address, home phone number and can tell that it’s me whenever I call…

Third, when on earth did I opt-in to their service?

This last part really bugged me the most when I found out just how difficult it became to OPT-OUT! Apparently hijacking my “Page Not Found” was part of a service they’re calling Domain Helper Service:

Which I never asked for, and had to jump through all kinds of hoops to get taken off from.

Why is my internet pipeline provider concerned with “helping” me find my domains anyway?
2 days after I first tried to opt-out I was getting a call at my house (albeit from a very courteous rep) re-’re-verifying’ my decision to opt out of the silly Domain Helper Service.

Anyway, I’m not a conspiracy theorist (usually), and I’m a fairly normal guy (I think)… this just bugged me. What else does comcast know or want to know about me? Is there a reverse webcam staring at me through comcast’s internet service?

Don’t laugh, you never know… Anyway my own rant is starting to remind of the old quote, “Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me”!

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Till next time.