• Give ‘Em More Than They Hoped For •
• You’ve Got To Outshine Your Competition •

No matter what service or products you offer via your website, remember to ALWAYS overdeliver in every area. This certainly includes the quality of the content (information) you provide; the ease of ordering your products; ease of navigation throughout your site; even your visitor being able to find your “Contact Me” information quickly.

You’ve got your competition nipping at your heels! So, your goal is to to make sure your website is much more than a site that provides “basic” information and allows an order to be placed.

Exceed your customers expectations! Provide them with quality content that gives them MORE information than they would have expected. I don’t know about you, but I appreciate having everything I’d like to know about a proudct or service clearly spelled out for me, without having to search through FAQ’s, or worse … not finding the information I need to know and having to call or email the company.

You should have a handle on what “overdelivering” means in your unique niche. If you don’t … please go and check out what the competition offers on their web pages. You ought to get a good idea of what you’ll need to provide on your site to be better than the others.

Always do your best to make your site be more than a few “quality” notches above your competition.

You’re competing for shoppers that will stay with you beyond that first sale! Don’t you want them to become long-term customers? If so, then the overdeliver philosophy will serve you well!

As is so often said (because it’s the truth) … it’s all about meeting your website visitor’s and/or shopper’s needs, wants and desires. So, the more you can offer as far as quality content (information) the more likely they will be to purchase from you.

• Give Away A Free Product To Help Build Your List •
• Internet Marketing Strategy That Isn’t Hard To do •

Maybe you’ve heard of a “giveaway”; maybe you haven’t. But I’m here today to encourage you to think about utilizing this opportunity as yet another way to add names of interested prospects to your mailing list. Notice I said “interested”?

By this I mean, in a giveaway event, you are actually offering a FREE downloadable product of some sort. Could be an eBook, a software program, almost anything you can think of that you can offer for free. It can be something that you produced or wrote yourself, maybe a product that is rebrandable, etc.

In order for interested people to get your freebie, they must first opt-in to your email list. So, you end up with another person who just might want to purchase one of your offers you’ll be making via your EMAIL CAMPAIGN … and they end up with a free product that grabbed their attention. This is, in the best case a win-win for both of you.

Plus, the fact they were interested enough to want to download your freebie, hopefully increases the likelihood that they will have an interest in the niche targeted products you will be promoting in future mailings.

I highly suggest you get signed up and very comfortable using an autoresponder email service. The two top ones in the industry are GetResponse and Aweber  In order to be successful with an email campaign, and your list building, you’ve just got to have an autoresponder email service at your disposal.

Here’s A Real Example

Alright, since many of you reading this are brand new to the concept, I’ll share with you a real example of a giveaway that will soon be ready to be opened up on April 1st. Firesale Magic Giveaway tells interested participants: “112 Marketers Are Giving Away Over $5936.00 Worth Of Ebooks, Software, And Scripts for FREE - With Absolutely No Catch!”

As an internet marketer who is VERY interested in building up a quality mailing list, I have joined this giveaway. I am a newcomer to giveaways. There are lots of them out there, and sifting through the ones worth getting involved with versus the ones that aren’t worth your time is not an easy task. In my case, I trust the advice of my marketing mentor to guide me to the ones I should consider becoming involved with.

So then, I can say to you that I feel comfortable in referring you to investigate this giveaway, if you are so inclined. To learn more and sign up (it’s all FREE remember), click here: Firesale Sign-Up  

Remember, it’s not yet open to the public to get the freebies, but it is open to those of us wanting to be included as a vendor.

I’ll be posting lots more on giveaways, my experiences, and such.  So please stay tuned!

• Your Domain Name Should Define Your Website’s Identity •
• Keep In Mind Your Online Marketing Theme or Niche •

Oh boy!  It’s time to pick out your new domain name.  If you’re one of the lucky online marketers, your creative name (you know, something to the point and descriptive like “yummybrownies” or “expertpondbuilders”) might be sitting there, available to purchase. But for most of us, the name we want has already been taken.

Certain niches are more saturated than others, like those dealing with internet marketing.  So, you might encounter obstacles in finding an available domain name that also is one you will feel comfortable with. As example, I had a hard time when I was choosing the domain name for my SEO consulting website. Every name I kept coming up with (meaning I could live with it for the rest of my website’s life) was taken. I spent hours and hours until I finally settled on one.

I feel it’s very important to do keyword research before you jump in and buy a domain name. The process of researching keywords helps you not only understand the search behavior of your target customers, but also really helps you see which keywords are actually being searched for by your prospects. If you are struggling to come up with a domain name, this step should help your creative juices some.

Don’t Go And Buy Up A Domain Name Blindly

Think about this. You are going to be basing everything around this new identity you are creating, that being your new website. You might wish to use your product’s brand name, or you might pick a domain name that is indicative of what the website is about. I’ve done that with most of my websites. The domain names I chose gives a potential visitor a very good idea of the theme (or niche) of each site.

If you already have an established brick and mortar company, and a website is going to be your newest marketing arm, don’t necessarily assume your company name is the best choice for your website. It may be, and then again, depending upon the product … it might be better to not use your company name. I’ll get into that in a minute.

As I’ve already said, it is best to do keyword research first. In my case, I went to Wordtracker and started there. The keyword results I uncovered gave me a really good idea of what my potential visitors were searching for. Then, I kept that in mind while I was researching available domain names.

There are many domain name sellers out there. Double check on the pricing before you pay. I’ve seen .com domains for $24.95 a year down to $9.95, or cheaper if a sale is being offered. I have been quite happy with using GoDaddy when I want to purchase a domain name. They are one of the biggest domain name sellers so are able to offer great pricing.

Like I said, in most cases you’ll probably spend a good deal of time researching available domain names, unless you luck out and the one you want is sitting there ripe for the picking.  Here’s a tip: I also use a thesaurus to help me find words I might not otherwise think of.

Here Are Some Important Points To Keep In Mind While You’re Deciding What Your New Domain Name Will Be

• Keep it short and sweet whenever possible. Simple phrases work great. Think about how really long domain names can so easily get misspelled if someone is trying to manually type it in. Not everyone may have your site bookmarked!
• Don’t assume your unique product’s brand name is the best choice. It might be better to incorporate a keyword or two along with the brand name.
• Targeted keywords in a domain name are useful in making it clear what the site is about. Again this is where your keyword research pays off.
• I do not advise you try to cash in on trade-name or trade-name typos. Domain “squatting” on high profile corporate names can lead to costly legal battles.
• If possible, also buy the .net, .info, maybe the .mobi (or other variations) of your domain name. If nothing else, you are keeping them away from a competitor. And you never know when you’ll have a need to use the variation for a different branch of marketing or service for the main domain. If you don’t use them, you can always redirect them to your main .com domain, as example.
• Many people also purchase other spelling variations of their domain name. You can redirect them to the main domain as mentioned above. This is done mainly to get traffic that might have not otherwise reached you.
• Stick with a .com domain whenever possible. However, if you are a non-profit, then go for a .org. These are preferable over .net, .biz, .info, etc. But it you have to use one of these to get the domain name you are just dying to have, then OK.
• If the domain name you want is already in use, adding hyphens between the words is an option—unless that variation is already taken. There are pros and cons to doing this. However, with two of my domains (SEO-Innovation.com being one of them), I purchased the hyphenated version as I wanted that name. I visited the sites that owned the non-hyphenated versions and thought long and hard about the implications of the two of us having very similar names. You do take a slight risk in having a domain name that is identical to someone else’s site save for the hyphens in the name.

What To Do If The Domain Name You Absolutely Positively Cannot Live Without Is Already Taken

There are options you can take to try and buy a domain name from the existing owner. Since I use GoDaddy, if you check on a name and it’s already taken, there are links asking you if you want to try and buy it, and how to go about it. Most other companies offer the same service.