niche cartoon A friend sent over an article about some entrepreneurs who have created a business around buying niche domains. The entrepreneurs entire business plan is to buy domains in relatively uncompetitive niches and then own the niche through powerful Internet marketing. It looks like they succeeded and are now multi-millionaires from their efforts.

Category: Internet Marketing, Marketing Ideas

seo copywriting I have to admit that Dina Giolitto has become one my favorite bloggers on copywriting. The advice she offers and the way she writes is on the mark, clear, and fun. I recently read an old blog post of hers on how to write effective web copy and I felt she was right on target. She offers ten bits of advice but I only want to offer commentary on a couple of her tips. To really get a good understanding I would recommend that you take a look at what she has to say on the subject, and also follow her blog. ~Paul W.

Analyze the audience. I like to refer to this as the IG Principle (IG=Internet Grooming). I feel that so many people don’t groom themselves for the Internet when they start out. Not only do you need to understand the audience you are writing for, but more importantly you need to know how you want your audience to perceive you. Believe me, this is a lot easier to do than trying to understand your audience.

Adjust your tone. I have found that having a casual and friendly tone—even for large corporations—is much more effective in gaining your customers trust. However, I do recognize that this cannot always be the case. When deciding on your tone, do a competitive analysis of your competition’s websites. Take a gauge on their different tones and see what resonates with you best. Yet, I would never advocate copying their style. Do this to gain a better understanding on what’s out there. You should then add your creativity and magic in order to establish what’s best for your website.

tardiness Sorry for the tardiness of SEO Friday. Yesterday was quite crazy. Being a small business owner you sometimes have to run around putting out fires, instead of doing what you would rather be doing—blogging. Today is less hectic, and I am catching up on all my Friday tasks that had to be put off.

www.seomoz.org – Ryan at ioventuresinc.com once again directs us to another invaluable SEO tool. At SEOMoz is an in depth page on search ranking factors. What makes this page amazing is that SEOMoz has reached out to all the SEO masters and aggregated their advice. You are able to see what really is important to those who actually succeed at Internet marketing. Link Gratitude: Utah SEO

tools.seobook.com – If you are a newbie at Internet marketing, or need to brush up on your SEO you need to check out Aaron Wall’s book on SEO. Aaron truly is the leading authority on anything search engine. Also, he offers some great tools that you should checkout. I really like his keyword tools, but really he has too many tools for me to highlight just one. If you want to become a master follow Aaron’s advice and use his tools and you will see serious success. Link Gratitude: Free SEO Tools

I had to laugh when I came across the error in this ad. It makes it even more funny that the ad is promoting an institution of “Higher Education.” Let this be a lesson to always proof read your ad campaigns before launching them. ~Paul W.

A badly done banner ad--spel chekc poepl

Junk Mail There’s so many websites that require our email addresses these days that I truly can’t keep up with all the stuff I’m sent. This was the case with the email I read today from netmarketingmegacourse.com. I don’t ever remember visiting their site, but I have no doubt that I have. The email I received I thought was quite basic but also could be very helpful to some. I offer it to you so that you have one less email you need to figure out in your inbox. ~Paul W.

10 Web Site Design And Writing No-No’s

1. Don’t load your web site with a lot of high tech
clutter. Your visitors may miss your whole sales
message.

SEO_sandbox.jpg This is my second post for SEO Friday. You may have noticed that in these posts I offer anchored text to those who contribute. If you desire an anchored text link to your site please send over to me some of your favorite SEO tips. I also provide SEO tips that I discovered on my own. If I highlight your site or tool please contact me and let me know what keywords you would like anchored in my posts. ~Paul W.

SEO Presentation – I’ve attached a power point presentation from Google engineer Matt Cutts. Matt’s presentation is decent and offers some great suggestions on how to better SEO your blog. I wish I could find the audio or video. If anyone has suggestions let me know.

Page Rank Table – This was sent to me from my friend at newlifehabits.com. I am not sure where he got it from, but it makes for interesting conversation. I was recently discussing with another friend on whether Google’s page ranking is more a vanity tool now than what it was originally designed for. Either way, I’ve learned to never second guess the Google gods. If they are still using it, I will also.

My good friend Jenny emailed me the below excerpt last Friday morning:

I was woken up about 6:30 with a banging on my door (my neighbour) telling me that my car had been broken into and so was hers and the cops were on their way. I panicked at first thinking of my golf clubs in the trunk.. However when I got down there aside from a car full of glass from the broken window, and a massive rock (I mean like a boulder) in my front seat nothing was stolen.. Not even my ipod sitting on the front seat. Stupid junkies looking for cash it had to be.. They did not take anything at all.. even my neighbours camera was sitting on the front seat and they did not take that.. It was more than super annoying..

Marketing Theif

771215_low.jpg Last Friday I spoke at the Davis Applied Technology College on business blogging. Afterwards, a reporter from the Davis Clipper interviewed me. Here’s his full article.

Unfortunately, Janet had some important things come up and was unable to assist me with the presentation. So for an entire hour 20 small business owners listened to me preach and prophecy about blogging and its future.

Sometimes I get so caught up in the blogosphere that I forget that blogging might be quite daunting for many. For your benefit I thought that I would share a few questions that I fielded at my presentation. These were questions that I didn’t think to cover in to my presentation. Hope you find them helpful.

m&m_friday When I quit Oracle I thought I would be blogging more. I felt that I would have the whole day to myself, and that I could blog all that I wanted. How very wrong I was!

Running your own company keeps you very, very busy. At Oracle if

I didn’t finish my work there was always tomorrow. As an entrepreneur it seems that everything needed to be done yesterday and that there is no tomorrow.

quit_job_01.jpg After almost a year working at Oracle I finally gave up cubicle land to focus on my own company. My business partner, Janet, and I have been burning the midnight oil in preparation for this moment. The long evenings and Saturday hours seem to have been a worthy sacrifice.

In my parting thoughts I must admit I have mixed emotions about my departure. Oracle, or more accurately the 8th floor in Salt Lake City, is an amazing company. The people I worked with really made my experience quite enjoyable. Doing what I did for the last year did get quite tedious. When you work with fun people it’s still tedious, but at least it is bearable.

My last day at the office I packed up a year of my life into a small cardboard box, and then my supervisor/friend, Darren, walked me to the door and wished me luck. I walked down the hall to the elevators for the final time wondering if I was the craziest man alive to give up such a great job and career.