by Aaron | Feb 22, 2006 | Web Hosting
I used to hate with a passion the web hosting providers that I used and relied upon (cough, cough) before I started Web Smart Central.
Just the simple task of communicating was a foreign concept.
Other things used to bug me but you could break it down in the end to just plain bad communication.
If you have watched the Seinfeld TV show at any stage, you may have seen the episode where George Costanza being completely inept and hopeless at everything he ever did in life, simply turned himself around 180degrees to lead a charmed life, by doing the exact opposite of what he normally would do.
Well that is the exact philosophy that I chose when starting this hosting firm.
I figured if I do the exact opposite of what the bad hosting firms were doing to me, then I would have a great web hosting company.
I was right! Thank you George Costanza.
My main goal was give my clients as many avenues of communication as possible and to keep them informed when necessary.
To achieve this, I’ve setup… a Postoffice (email lists), Forums, Support System, Phone contact, Emergency Mobile Contact
Since I’m in regular contact with my clients through email, I am building up a relationship with them that other web hosting providers fail or are unwilling to do. Their loss.
As I’ve always said (assuming that your product is good) business is all about relationships.
Aaron
by Aaron | Feb 22, 2006 | Web Hosting
I have been getting a fantastic newsletter from Scott Bywater from copywritingthatsells.com.au
He mentioned finding out from your existing customers their biggest fear they had before they become a customer of yours.
Simple question, but it the answers give you a direct key to knowing what you have to do to alay those fears that are present in your yet-to-be customers.
Invaluable knowledge wouldn’t you say. I asked my client list this very question.
“What was your biggest fear when deciding to sign up for our hosting service?.”
I was blown away by the response of 22% of my clients taking the time to answer my question. Not only answer my question, but give me other fantastic information as well.
It was such a good response that I’ve added some of the responses to my testimonials page and tagged a link to it from my homepage.
Go and check out what they had to say on the testimonials page.
I strongly suggest that you ask your clients what their biggest fear was, and you might be pleasantly surprised. I was.
Aaron
by Aaron | Feb 16, 2006 | General
Doing joint ventures with other internet businesses is a fact of life these days. Bottom line is you can grow your business in leaps and bounds with just one good joint venture.
Affiliates are a form of joint venture, and is a topic that some internet users have an aversion to. Affiliates have their sales tracked by embedding a fairly obvious user ID string onto a link. It’s easy to spot an affiliate link and some people will go out of their way to either strip out the affiliate information relieving you of any commissions you may have been entitled to or in fact hijack the link with their own ID.
It’s just another form of stealing when you get right down to it. I refuse to expose myself to it, so I wrote a script some time ago to stop theifs dead their tracks. I’ve now decided to open it up for everyone else, mainly to get some promotion for my Australian Web Hosting and Development company, and maybe sell some of Jim’s software as well.
Jim Edwards had a program written called Affiliate Link Cloaker that has all the bells and whistles on it, and automates the whole process for you.
But if you want to see what all the hype is about you can test it for yourself, you can use my very own online link cloaker. Nowhere near as good as Jim’s product, but it get’s the job done and it’s awesome for hiding affiliate links
Beware it is manual process and probably not for newbies and also doesn’t have any error checking other than for pain in the ass spammers. Shite In = Shite Out
Enjoy
Aaron
by Aaron | Feb 16, 2006 | General
I’ve been an avid student of Brett McFall and his marketing ways for just over 2 years now, and last year when the World Internet Summit was held on the Gold Coast, I was very I’ll and wasn’t able to attend. It was disappointing for me.
This year as soon as tickets went on sale I jumped at the chance, grabbing one of Brett’s Birthday special price tickets. Only this year, it’s being held in Sydney.
So I’m off on a plane to Sydney for 4 days next month to immerse myself into internet marketing, joint ventures and all things internet. I can’t wait. For me personally since I am not a newbie to the internet (far from it in fact, since 1993), I’ll be using the time to meet like minded people and perhaps gather some Joint Ventures and great contacts.
Here’s the catch cry from Ted Ciuba (one of the 3 amigos) that run the event.
“Give Me A Willing Person…
Loan Me A Laptop Computer
With An Internet Connection …
And Within 72 Hours That Person
Will Have A Product, A Website …
And Money In The Bank – PLUS
A System To Make That Money
Over And Over Again FOR LIFE!”
Now they hold a contest where they pluck someone from the audience and use them as an example of the process to make a product and sell it online. From scratch.
Of course the huge figures that you see on the website are based on selling the product to the speakers (internet marketers) existing lists. Since the guinea pig in the audience didn’t have any contacts yet, this just shows the power of joint ventures. But the principles of the task are the secret sauce that you must know.
If you are thinking about generating an income online then why reinvent the wheel. You’re wasting your time. I’ve wasted about the last 2 years slowly learning about internet marketing when I could have been moving at full steam straight away if I had of been to a seminar like this back then.
Visit the World Internet Summit site here to see what it’s all about.
If you decide it’s what you’ve been waiting for then please contact me as I’d love to know someone ahead of time that’s going to meet up with them at the event.
Aaron
by Aaron | Feb 9, 2006 | General
I am a big fan of search engine optimisation – SEO.
But it can be so frustrating at times.
Let me outline for you the keywords that I’m trying to crack and have been since March 2005.
Brisbane Web Hosting and Australian Web Hosting
These are big players in the keyword marketplace. They fetch a high price on Google Awords and Yahoo Search Marketing (the old Overture)
I have advertising in both and it costs me, but it without it I would have no targeted traffic generation at all. Notice the bolded word targeted. It’s the best kind to push for.
Over the last few months I now have a good ranking i.e position 1 and 2 for Brisbane Web Hosting, and 2 and 11 for Australian Web Hosting, MSN and Yahoo respectively. But I’m still not showing in Google.
Now why is that. The Google web crawler visits my site up to 3 times a day, yet I still don’t show for my main keywords that I’ve optimised for.
I do show for other obscure terms that I never would have guessed people would be entering.
Aparantly Google has a sandbox (a trap they keep you in) for high profile keywords that you can only get out of over time. Supposedly up to 18months. How ridiculous that I have a number 1 postition in Yahoo but don’t even show in Google. My content is fresh, I am a legitimate business, but I’m still shut out.
The worst part is that there are listings in the first 10 pages that are just rubbish. I’m not talking about taking a front page spot here, I just would like to at least be in the first 10 pages and work it up from there, like I did with the other engines.
I have yet to work out what to do about this. I’ve been told by experts that I still need more links to my site. But when I do a check on the competition even on the first page of Google, I actually have better links and more of them than they do.
Will update the blog once I find a solution. If anyone has any ideas for me to try, I’m all ears.
Aaron
