Web CEO 7.7 – Hot New Release!
If you are serious about search engine marketing and optimization, even the Free Edition of Web CEO 7.7 will help you:
ATTENTION USERS OF PREVIOUS VERSIONS!
Please refer to the Web CEO 7.7 Migration Guide for the version upgrade instructions. With all your technical questions, contact our Support.
Important note: Web CEO employs a protection mechanism against manually manipulating its databases. Please DO NOT TRY TO COPY the old databases from the “Program Files/Web CEO/DB” folder after you upgrade to v 7.7. Such operation may render Web CEO totally defunct!
The only legal and proper way to backup and restore your data files is via the DataGuard Utility available in the Start Menu > Programs > Web CEO > Web CEO DataGuard.
Warning Mac Users:
Mac OS X users with Intel-based systems can run Web CEO as a Windows application with the help of virtual machine software (e.g. VMware Fusion). Another option for Intel-based Mac users is to use dual booting, i.e. Mac OS X and Windows (Boot Camp utility assists in installing Windows XP or Windows Vista on Intel-based Macintosh computers).
Note: Web CEO 7.xx version does not support PowerPC-based Macs.
to Promoting, Maintaning and Analyzing Your Site with Web CEO.
You will be overwhelmed with what Web CEO has to offer so we strongly recommend that you download a practical tutorial that will make it much easier for you to understand how to reach maximum effect with Web CEO.
Improve Website Conversion Rates with Talking Avatars
Conversion Matters
As a small business trying to increase the revenue from the site, individuals are faced with investing a significant portion of their budget on advertising to drive site traffic. Whether you are looking at time or money, it is too expensive to let visitors walk away without trying to engage them to become your customers. That’s where conversion rate comes in. The conversion rate of your website is the percentage of website visitors that take a desirable action while visiting, such as signing up for an e-mail newsletter or making a purchase. The higher your conversion rate is, the more efficient your website is and so is your marketing spend. If you are not paying much attention to your website conversion rate, you are leaving the money on the table.
A case study – A Talking Avatar increased the site conversion by 144% in an AB test
However, raising your site conversion rate is not as easy as it sounds. There are many tools out there, but some of them are too expensive or complicated for a small business. Anita Campbell, CEO of Small Business Trends.com and a renowned small business exports, says that a use of talking characters (avatars) can be a great solution.
Anita Campbell recently conducted an A/B test on her website to see the effectiveness of a talking avatar on the site conversion rate. She had heard about some buzz about avatars for site conversions, but she was not fully convinced and wanted to test it herself.
Small Business Trends.com is a website that provides content and other insightful information of interest to the small business community, and Anita wanted to increase the rate of sign-ups to its e-mail newsletter, as that is where 90% of lead generation for their consulting services originated. As the website and its service were focused around the persona of Anita, she had been using a still photograph of herself on the homepage to add authenticity and personalization to the site.
A 50/50 test was conducted as follows: half of the people visiting Small Business Trends were shown the main page with Anita’s still photograph and a graphic call to action button called “Subscribe to Newsletters” next to it. The other 50% were shown the same version of the page but with a speaking character of Anita instead of a still photograph. Anita used SitePal to make her speaking character. Google Optimizer, a tool that measures landing page conversion rates, was used to track the newsletter sign ups from both pages. With a statistically significant sample size of over 11,000 people, the results were clear: the website version with the talking avatar saw a 144% higher conversion rate than the version without it. In other words, the SitePal talking avatar helped to drive more than double the newsletter sign ups.
“The avatar focused the attention of visitors on the newsletter and was successful in convincing visitors to take the extra steps to subscribe. The SitePal avatar exceeded my expectations,” Ms. Campbell says.
After seeing such great results from the use of a SitePal talking avatar, Anita Campbell provided some best practices for making the most out of speaking characters. They follow.
- Use Persuasive and Brief Messages to Drive Conversions: By using a persuasive and brief message with your talking avatar, including a call to action, visitors are directed to specific sections of your webpage where they can act and respond to your call to action, whether it be the purchase of a product or signing up for a newsletter.
- Personalization is important: The test showed that people view talking avatars as more personal than a photograph. This helps to create a rapport with website visitors, keeping your site at the top of their minds. Including the tip of using one’s own voice.
- Differentiation is Key: You must find a way to stand out in the overcrowded world that is the Internet. With websites being built every single day, it is important to create a lasting impression in your visitor’s mind. Interactive features, especially speaking avatars, are very helpful in giving visitors something unique to remember about your site. They are also a great way to present potential customers with a distinctive call to action.
February 24, 2008 by Smith
Filed under Uncategorized
Look at the footer.. oh my goodies! you’re crazy folks! i’m so jealous, i think i’m gonna steal it! Noah, i’m not that evil 
but they those guys are really crazy, how could they created such a killing design visit the site here.
5 easy ways to make money online with Photoshop
This is the scenario: You are a skilled Photoshop artist, or perhaps you are a great photographer. If that’s not true, then you may be a cool designer or at least have some nice Photoshop tips or tricks that nobody knows. And you need money.
No matter what your skills are, if you are capable of creating something with a certain appeal with Photoshop or even other graphics application, there are many ways that you can turn that into money with certain ease.
In this article you won’t find any get-rich-quick tips. In fact, to quit your day job and make a living with this information may take you a long while. But, as with most in life, it depends on you. I will only show you what’s out there and make your startup a little easier.
Take into consideration that most of these tips do not require that you have a web site of your own, but with all the free services available, I believe that there is no excuse for not creating your own web site. Two interesting services are: Wordpress.com (free blog hosting) and Google pages (free web pages hosting).
Tip #1: Create Photoshop brushes or other goodies and sell them online.
Photoshop brushes are hot, hot, hot. Hotter than anything. Designers and artists are hungry for brushes. Photoshop brushes are total winners. Sadly there are a lot available on the web for free. The good news is that only your imagination is the limit. Take a look at what’s out there and create your own collection. Perhaps, instead of creating a collection of a million low quality brushes, you can create a good high resolution, high quality, brushes set or collection and sell them at your web site. Although textures, patterns, actions, and other Photoshop goodies are not that popular, you can always build a nice collection with those. Don’t worry if there is a lot of competition out there (and believe me there is), you simply have to offer a higher quality product than the rest and, most important of all, sell it better than the competition.
Once you have your product, you have to sell it. There are a lot of shareware and downloadable software payment processing services that will take care of all the payment process and also of the file hosting and delivery. Some of them even offer some exposure for your product and affiliate program solutions.
.: Payment processing services
» ShareIt and RegNow
Formerly independent companies, now both belong to Digital River’s network. These are among the most popular payment processing and software distribution providers. They host your application and provide marketing solutions too.» PayPal
The most popular electronic payment processor. Since it is so popular, it increases the chances of an impulse purchase. Many people don’t consider their PayPal balance as money. They are more willing to spend money from their PayPal account than paying with a credit card.» Payloadz and E-junkie
Both services offer a great load of options and features, some of them for free. I can’t talk much about E-junkie because I didn’t try them. But opening an account and submitting a file to PayLoadz is amazingly fast. They even have an ebay store.
Tip #2: Create your own gift store with your artwork
There are a lot of services where you can sell gifts (mugs, ebooks, t-shirts, calendars, you name it) with your own artwork or content on a print-on-demand basis. That’s the beauty of it. You don’t need to spend a lot of money building a stock base of products. In fact with these services you don’t need to spend ANY money. Just select the product you want, upload your content, select a few options, set your pricing and you are ready to go!
It is advisable to purchase some of your own items to check the quality of the output. Check following links to read more about these services: CafePress alternatives (talks about the alternatives to CafePress and the quality of these services). T-Shirt Forums (users share their experience in this T-Shirt design and marketing forum).
.: Print on demand services with e-store capabilities
» CafePress
» Zazzle
» Lulu
» 99 Dogs
» Print Mojo
» Printfection
» Spread Shirt
» Brandi Jasmine Art LinksThis site hosts a large amount of CafePress help links and alternatives along with other art related links.
Tip #3: Participate on contests.
I call this an easy way to earn money only because it is easy to submit your artwork to contests. The problem is that in this case your artwork has to be the best. In some cases, it is not the best artwork the one that wins, but the best idea. Anyway, here’s a little list of contests sites that can give you some earnings or at list some cool prizes.
.: Art and design contests sites
» Worth1000
The mother of all Photoshop Contest sites. Worth1000 (a picture is WORTH a THOUSAND words, got it?) hosts some corporate contests with cash prizes.» Photoshop Talent
Photoshop Talent members award you with points that are exchangeable for money. Not much money here, but if you are a regular submitter (and winner) you can make some. Prizes go for the winner and 2nd and 3rd place runner ups.» Photoshop Contest
There are no money prizes here, but the prizes are cool. Graphics tablets, training Dvds, iPods, etc..» Photoshoped up
No prizes here. You earn points but it is not clear if they will turn into prizes in the future. But if you are a car tuning freak, this is the place to go.» Graphic Competitions
This site is a directory of worldwide graphics competitions.» Site Point Design Contests
Site Point’s forum of design contests. Great prizes.» Elance, Get a Freelancer and Freelancer Network
Not exactly contests sites. A project is posted and freelancers post their quotation and skills to win that project.
Tip #4: Write your own tutorials.
Love to write but don’t want to write an ebook? Just write a good amount of tutorials and build your own web site or blog. Then submit your tutorials to tutorials directories and start watching the traffic come. You can submit tutorials to The Photoshop Roadmap, Photoshop Lover and Tutorialized among many others.
To earn money with this, you will have to display ads in your tutorials pages. The first and obvious option is Google Adsense. But there are also some other interesting choices like Chitika (mini e-malls) and Kontera (in-text ads). These ad networks pay you for each click made by your visitors. You can also join Amazon.com affiliates program to offer products related with your site’s topic and earn a commission for each sale you make. AzoogleAds is another good choice because it offers a vast amount of special offers where your visitors don’t necessary have to purchase something. If your visitors request a free sample or simply leave an email and a zip code, you will be paid. Nice, isn’t it?
Tip #5: Sell your photographs or illustrations.
You can find a lot of Stock Photography and Illustrations stores around and most of them, if not all, accept submissions from photographers and artists. In general they will pay you on a per sale basis. At Berman Graphics web site you can find a tutorial about selling your images on ebay
The following list shows some sites that accept submissions from Photographers and Illustrators.
.: Stock Photography and illustration online stores
» Shutter Point Stock Photography
» Dreams Time Stock Photography
» SutterStock Stock Photography
» Fotolia Stock Photography
» Stock Art Stock Illustrations
» Illustration Works Stock Illustrations
» Etoon Stock Cartoons
» Cartoon Stock Stock Cartoons
EXTRA TIP! Tip #6: Create and sell your own Photoshop plugins.
Warning! Loads of money here! But wait… Bad news: This is not an easy way to earn money with Photoshop at all. Additionally you will have to invest a lot of money in such a project.
If that’s not a problem, then I suggest you to read this article I wrote before: Programming Photoshop Plugins which is a thorough guide about the insights of programming a Photoshop plugin, including the idea generation phase, marketing and selling the final product.
EXTRA TIP #2! Tip #7: Write something that’s cool or unique.
Suggests you to write your own tutorials and submit them to tutorials directories. Some directories out there can drive a huge amount of traffic to your site for some days and then some small but steady traffic for a long while.
But sometimes you may come up with an article or project that doesn’t fit the limited categories of most tutorials directories. Then it’s time to contact those who love to discover and show special or unique content to the world.
There are some great blogs out there that can expose your article to a wider audience. Some examples are blogs like LifeHacker, PhotoJojo, John Nack, LockerGnome and Digital Photography School Blog (thanks Darren for mentioning this article!), to mention a few.
Remember that we are talking about Photoshop, photography and graphics here, so you should be very creative in your topic selection to stand out from the crowd.
You simply have to send them a polite email asking if they would like to check your article, and explain them why you believe it may be of their interest. But please, send them an article with some value. Don’t even think of asking them to read your latest chrome text or scanline effect. They will probably delete your email without even looking at what you’ve sent.
If you succeed, the traffic coming from blogs like the ones mentioned above will be large and of an excellent qualiy.Don’t forget that high quality traffic is the best that can happen to your site.
I would like to thank Chris Pirillo, a web celebrity also known as the LockerGnome, for suggesting me this tip. Thanks Chris!
Just a final word: The resources posted on this article are by no means the only ones available. You will have to do your own research, specially if you plan to sell stock images. There are a lot of stock images stores online and they offer very different commercial relationship with the artist. Another good advice is to create your own web site. That will help you do a better marketing of your products.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave a message on the comments section below.
Original Ways To Make Money Fast
February 20, 2008 by Smith
Filed under Make Money Online
You’re broke, the cupboard is bare. I sympathize with you though I don’t really understand how you could be in this position with the abundance of money around you.
People talk about living within their means and curtailing spending and such. The truth is you should be spending more on yourself. You only live once. The concept of worrying about the leak in the bathtub when really you should be more concerned about the speed of the water coming into the tub. Turn those taps on wide open.
Here’s a way you can make 20 thousand dollars in a couple of days. All legal of course and completey easy to do.
Real estate is very lucrative. But generally it’s accepted that without a deposit and good credit you may never enter that market. Fine, here’s a way to make a fast $5000-$30,000 without needing to spend more then a few dollars on phone calls and gas.
Jenny Rouse is a friend of mine, she was in a jam. When she tried this at my suggestion, she couldn’t believe how easy it was to make any amount of money she wanted. She continues to function as a Real Estate Bird Dog to this day. She drives a merc these days.
Day 1: Start hunting for a bargain. Take a few hours to study your local R/E Agents listings to get a feel for prices. For example a standard 3 bed house on a standard block, make that your target and establish what it’s currently worth. That’s the intrinsic value. This is important to guage accurately. Once you know what this type of house is worth give or take a few thousand, you can now look at individual properties and make allowances. For example a 2 car garage you can add $20,000 Larger backyard? You can add another percentage allowance to come to a final conclusion on the intrinsic value of each property you look at.
Dont trust the agents comments, make your own conclusions based on the prices you have observed.
Find one that is an obvious bargain. Say, you know it’s worth about $200,000 and they are asking $157,000 Now you are going to take that spare value and profitize it for yourself.
People sell houses for their own reasons. Divorce, no accurate knowledge of the market, a host of reasons. It’s your job to give them what they ask, not wonder about their motivations to sell. Make them an offer of $160,000 on the condition that they give you 48 hours to arange things at your end. They don’t need to know you won’t be the end buyer. It’s not their business, if they are getting more than they asked for, they have no concerns. The 48 hours gives you a few days to find a buyer, if you fail to interest anybody, you can walk away, free and clear. Give them a small deposit $50 your argument is that you will give them a proper deposit when you decide to definitely buy in 2 days (which the new buyer will give them).
Now you have control of the property. Legal control. They can’t sell it to anybody else but you for the next few days. Of course you have no intention of buying the house, you just want some temporary control of it.
This way, the deal must pass through you.
Day 2: Find some genuine property investors on the look out for a good deal. You will approach local investment clubs. There are always cash rich, time poor property investors on the look out for a new investment. You let them know about the house and arrange for them to inspect it. Tell them you will let it go for $180,000
They would snap it up at that price.
Now it’s a simple matter of assigning your deal with the initial sellers to the new buyers. Realistically this is a bit tricky. But what you can do is sell the “assignment” to the new buyer. Which always works. The assignment is the difference between the $160,000 you arranged and the new buying price of $180,000
Making you a nice profit of $20,000
Day 3: Repeat.
Being a real estate bird dog is very profitable. You have no overheads. No loans to worry about and certainly no deposits to come up with.
You can treat it like a business, form contacts with investors and shop your local neighbourhood all the time for new bargains. Some bird dogs advertise, others canvass door to door. You can print up some business cards.
This is just one way to get into real estate. It is definitely the way many people make large amounts of money very fast.
The $20,000 you just earned should be spent on a very nice new car. If you get skilled at this business, your money concerns will be a thing of the past.
To your health and rapid success!
10+ Unusual Ways To Make Easy Money On The Internet If You Love Writing
February 20, 2008 by Smith
Filed under Make Money Online
Here are some easy ways to make money, if you like writing. (I probably should have said simple ways to make money, rather than easy ways to make money, because there is a difference between simple and easy. But who cares, this is about how to make easy money quickly).
Yahoo! Search Marketing Becomes More Publisher Friendly
February 20, 2008 by Smith
Filed under Make Money Online
I have received this email through Commission junction, which is interesting:
After more than six months in the making and much customer feedback and testing, we are pleased to announce that Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM) has recently updated its editorial policies and will now allow U.S. publishers to direct link to their advertisers. In the past, YSM’s editorial policy prevented publishers from linking directly to their advertiser partners and required that traffic be sent first to the publisher’s Web site. The new policy eliminates this restriction and opens a much broader search marketing opportunity for publishers.
This YSM policy change is the result of a strong relationship between Commission Junction and YSM. We have spent more than six months working with YSM to enact the new editorial policy and are very pleased that this effort has resulted in changes that are sure to create opportunities for our publishers and advertisers.
We find this policy change exciting on several levels. First, this is a significant shift for YSM and could be a great opportunity for your search marketing campaigns. Second, you heard it here first – YSM has asked us to communicate this change to the affiliate community. Third, the work we’ve done with YSM on this policy change is just another example of our commitment to listening to and speaking up for our publishers.
So, if you’re running search marketing campaigns but have left YSM out of your marketing mix, now is a great time to expand your efforts.
Open a Yahoo! Search Marketing account today.
Google AdSense On A Blog Update
February 18, 2008 by Smith
Filed under AdSense, Make Money Online
As some may recall, I am running a case study to see if a personal blog can make money with Google AdSense. Here are the results so far. For the month of September, the blog made $352.94 from Google AdSense ads. However, you have to keep in mind that the ads were not turn on until September 17th, so these results represent only 13 days. That works out to $27.15 per day, which isn’t too bad. It won’t allow you to quit your job but it is a pretty decent part time income. There are a few things to note however.
The first thing is ad placements weren’t fully tweaked last month. I was still fooling around with different ad sizes, positioning, blending, etc. The key to AdSense success is to keep tweaking until you get it right. Sometimes the tweaks can step over the line. This email from Google put the brakes on my super blending AdSense trick. Right now, the current AdSense placement is to have a 468 at the top of the post, another 468 at the bottom of the post, and a 300 box inline with the blog content.
The best performing ad unit is the 300 box, follow by the 468 top then the 468 bottom. Percentage wise, the 300 box gets twice as many clicks as the 468 banners. This is not surprising since it’s the biggest ad and it’s embedded right into the blog post itself. I would like to know how you feel about this. Do you find the ad too intrusive? Does it turn you away from the blog? Feedback on my ad placement would be welcome.
The Digg factor didn’t have that much of an impact on blog revenues at first. However, by the time the 5th and 6th Diggs came along, I had managed to tweak the placements of the ads to the point where it made almost $100 on its biggest traffic day. I am very confident that the blog can make money on a Digg now.
So far, Google is the only monetization method used on the blog. Adding other revenue streams like text link ads, affiliate deals and Vibrant Media can easily double blog income. However, for this month I will just run the Google ads and nothing else.
I have decided to donate the income from the blog to my church and other charities. John Chow dot Com is my personal blog and making a profit from it just seems strange to me. Please note, I am not downing anyone who makes money off his or her personal blog – I think that is great.
