EzSEO Newsletter # 185
This week:
1. Backing up your stuff.
2. Comparing Wordtracker Counts with Real Data
3. How to sell a product online - Part XII
4. November Niche Blueprint Released
Hi again.
Hope you have had a good week.
Its been a frustrating week for English Football (soccer) fans. England required just a draw at home to qualify for the Euro 2008 competition, but lost to Croatia. The excuses are flying around as to why England were unable to qualify from their group (not a difficult group either), but at the end of the day, the real reason was the Englsih FA hired a manager who was out of his depth (he was nothing special as a normal club manager). The decisions this manager made ultimately cost England a place in the Euro 2008 finals. The manager got the sack, and rightly so. However, what really bothers me is that the clowns who hired this manager in the first place did not get the sack as well.
I can’t get over how quickly this year is flying by. It’ll be time to make new year resolutions before we know it, and also look back on the ones we made for this year ;o)
This week I have spent an enormous amount of time trying to sort out the best way to get my data backed up so that I can send my laptop off to be fixed. I highly recommend you have a backup solution in place for your data, so I’ll tell you about my own experiences.
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1. Backing up your stuff.
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For the last year, I have been using an HP dv9085 laptop as my main work machine. While it looks nice, the downside has been the plastic casing they used with this model. The plastic around the screen hinges are under so much tension that it has cracked on the left hinge. I can no longer close the laptop screen.
After about three weeks of trying to get HP support to recognise this machine is less than a year old, and still under guarantee, they have finally agreed to pick it up tomorrow to be fixed.
Now, this has lead to a big dilemma, and many hours of work.
I wanted to remove the hard disks from the laptop before they picked it up, to ensure my data was safe. In fact, the support person on the phone said they may even reformat my hard disks (why when it is a monitor/casing issue, I have no idea). Anyway, they told me that if I removed the hard disks, then the guarantee would be void, and I’d have to pay 300-400 euros to get the machine fixed.
My options were simple. Live with a broken machine, or send it to get fixed, meaning the data on my hard disks needed to be backed up.
Well, my initial reaction was to keep the laptop in its current state, as the alternative would just take too much time. However, after thinking about it, I decided to go ahead and backup the data.
I want to tell you about a great backup tool. I have mentioned it before in this newsletter, but hadn’t really been forced to fully test before writing my review.
The software is called R-Drive Image. I wont put an affiliate link, just go and search Google if you are interested.
This software creates a compressed image of your hard disk on external media. Just select the drive to backup, and select the destination (in my case, I use an Omega 1 terabyte external hard disk), and click a button. The software then does its magic.
Now, there are two things I love about this software.
Firstly, the image you create can be “Mounted” on another machine so that the contents are seen as a new hard drive on your computer. You can then navigate the contents of your backup like any other hard disk using Windows Explorer.
Even better than this is the ability to put the image of your data back onto a hard disk. Here is what I did…
1. Backed up my “broken monitor” computer to the external hard disk.
2. Found an old laptop (which was kept for just this purpose if it ever arose).
3. Used the R-Drive Image “boot CD” to boot up the “backup” laptop.
4. Got R-Drive Image to copy the image of my “broken monitor” laptop hard disk onto the “backup” laptop.
R-Drive image transferred the data flawlessly, without requiring my backup laptop for be reformatted (or old operating system removed). R-Drive Image copied across the operating system and my data.
The backup laptop booted up with no problems at all, and I was soon looking at my familiar desktop with all applications installed and working.
The only downside to this is that my Windows settings for the “broken monitor” laptop were transferred to the backup laptop. Since the two laptops were related (both HP) this wasnt so much of a problem. I had the backup laptop CDs which contained a Windows configuration disk, so within an hour, the backup laptop was functioning great, and everything was working as it should.
R-Drive Image is a great tool that is really affordable. We all need to backup our data in case of hardware failure, or virus damage, and I can highly recommend this tool.
It works as it should, and really did make things a whole lot easier. I can now format my “broken monitor” machine’s hard disk and send it off to get fixed. When I get it back, I’ll simply boot it up from the R-Drive Image boot CD, and reload operating system and all of my data from the Omega external drive backup.
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2. Comparing Wordtracker Counts with Real Data
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I got an email from someone who had bought one of my Niche Blueprints in the past. They made a real success of the site, and the guy now has some great rankings. As with all successful marketers, testing is very important.
One of the tests this guy did was to look at his rankings, and compare the actual traffic he received for specific keywords with the traffic predicted by Wordtracker for those keywords. You can read his article here:
Wordtracker Count v Real Figures
One of the things you need to be aware of as you read this article is that the title, description and even URL displayed in Google can influence whether someone clicks on your link or not. Simply changing a page title can dramatically affect click through rates. Getting a #1 position does not guarantee your link will be clicked.
This article does give you a good idea what to expect though. Also, make sure you read the comments at the end, since the author does also make a comparison with Keyword Discovery :o)
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3. How to sell a product online - Part XII
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Last week, we looked at the Zeigarnik Effect, and how it should influence the way you create your sales pages. In fact, its not just sales pages for your own products, but also pre-sales pages you create when selling affiliate products on your sites.
When someone arrives at your site, the sales page has a big job to do. These visitors may not know you, or have heard of your product before that day. You need to convince them to buy your product. It is commonly believed (and I believe it too), that most people wont buy on their first visit no matter how good your sales letter.
For this reason, many marketers try to collect the email address of the visitors. If they can get an email address, they have the opportunity of contacting those prospects again in the future and re-exposing them to the benefits of the product.
There are a couple of options here:
1. Collect email addresses for an autoresponder.
2. Collect email addresses for an industry-specific newsletter.
The second option is one that takes far more work. It requires you to write a newsletter ever week or month, so takes a lot more of your time.
There is one huge benefit to a newsletter. By keeping in constant contact with potential customers, you have many more chances to sell them products, not just your own, but affiliate products as well. You can take your time to build a relationship with your subscribers and gain their trust.
The first option is one that takes much less effort, but can be very effective. An autoresponder is a piece of software that will send out emails at pre-defined intervals.
e.g. you could set up an autoresponder to mail new subscribers immediately after they subscribe, and then every two days for the next month. You would need to write the various emails ahead of time, and load them into the autoresponder. Once setup though, you can forget all about it, as it requires no further action on your part.
For newsletters and autoresponders, I personally use:
With Aweber, there isn’t really a distinction between a newsletter and an autoresponder list. All lists are seen the same by Aweber - as a list of names and email addresses.
People sign up for a list, and that list may or may not have pre-defined emails waiting to send out at predefined intervals. e.g. you could setup an autoresponder sequence for one list, but then at some point in the future start emailing that list on a regular basis, as a newsletter.
Capturing emails is something you should be doing. It’s like having free traffic that you can send anywhere you want, at any time.
Next week, we’ll look at how and where to put up email subscription boxes on your sales page.
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4. November Niche Blueprint Released
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The November Niche Blueprint was released this week. Its based around a small, tightly focused niche which makes it ideal for beginners, or anyone wanting to create smaller niche sites. You can read more about the Blueprint here:
Just click the link in the top right to November 2007.
Also, just a reminder. If you want to what a Niche Blueprint is like before buying one, you can download a fr.ee one on that site. Look at the top left for details.
Well, that’s it for this issue. If you want to read the recent issues of this newsletter, you can read them online at my blog:
http://ezseonews.com/blog/index.php
For older newsletters, you will need to visit the old archives at:
http://ezseonews.com/archives
Have a great week!
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The contents of this newsletter is copyright 2007 Andrew Williams. If you want to republish any of the articles, you must get permission from the author.
This newsletter disclaims all responsibility for the advertising copy or the product advertised. You cannot rely on the fact that the newsletter has examined the product or recommends or endorses the product, unless it clearly says that it has, when you make your decision whether or not to purchase the product or interact with the advertiser. You are advised to do your own investigation before buying. Additionally, this newsletter may accept articles that we do not write or investigate the accuracy of and for which we may receive direct or indirect benefit or compensation. We specifically disclaim any responsibility for the content of such copy.
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