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Can Crowdfunding Kickstart Your Business?

By Carl Weiss

Many people have used crowdfunding sites to jumpstart new businesses or take existing businesses to the next level. With a proliferation of crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, RocketHub and more, these sites have given a number of entrepreneurs the chance to fund a pet project or business that would have otherwise languished.

Let’s face it, banks are not exactly throwing their cash around these days. Friends and family cannot always be relied upon to have the wherewithal to back your dream. Credit cards while another opportunity for self-funding is fraught with many risks, especially since the credit card companies draconian policies can suddenly ramp up your interest rate to twenty five percent or more. This is one of the prime reasons that crowdfunding is got its start.

Is Crowdfunding Music to Your Ears?

While most people think the phenomenon of crowdfunding is an invention of the 21st century, its roots can actually be traced back some four hundred years to a time when many publications were sold by subscription before the first copy came off the presses. However the trend to branch out to other business models is indeed a recent development. While there is some conjecture as to which website was the first to offer crowdfunding, Wikipedia lists ArtistShare which started in 2003. Slanted toward the recording industry, the site was designed to allow recording artists to raise funding from fans in order to expedite the expensive process of bringing out a new album. (Imagine how Mozart would have jumped at the opportunity in the 1770’s to have thrown off the yolk of the church and embraced crowdfunding in order to have artistic control of his career.)

By 2006, there were three more hats in the crowdfunding ring: EquityNet, Pledgie and Sellaband. While Sellaband was another CF brand devoted to the fan funding of recording artists, EquityNet and Pledgie were something else altogether. Founded in 2005, Equity Net was designed to help startups and existing businesses raise equity capital from accredited investors. Used by more than 10,000 entrepreneurs, EquityNet provides access to 20,000 individual investors, including angel investors. To date it has helped companies raise more than $200 million. Pledgie.com was the first site to take crowdfunding to a whole new level by allowing a broad spectrum of entrepreneurs, artists, philanthropic causes and others to use the Internet to fund their project s. Created in 2007 by Mark Daggett and Garry Dolley, the site permits anyone the opportunity to pitch their project in order to solicit donations. (The site has a list of 50 categories under which to solicit funds.)

However, it wasn’t until 2008/2009 that crowdfunding hit the big time with the introduction of such sites as IndieGoGo, KickStarter, and RocketHub. Whether it was a combination of savvy marketing or just being in the right place at the right time, these three platforms definitely made their mark by raising funds in a big way. To date Kickstarter is the current BMOI –Big Moneymaker on the Internet, having raised more than $10 million for smartwatch startup Pebble alone, along with a number of other multi-million dollar funded projects. For a list of the top-10 Kickstarter projects go to http://www.bornrich.com/top-10-kickstarter-campaigns-raised-money.html?view=all

Not to be outdone, IndieGoGo raised more than $2 million apiece this past year for the independent films Lazer Team and Gosnell the Movie. They also raised more than a million dollars for a video series called Tabletop Season 3 that is all about tabletop games. To see more go to: http://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2014/09/50149-crowdfunding-best-top-10-successfully-funded-kickstarter-indiegogo-films/

Then there’s RocketHub.com. While not yet as well-known as Kickstarter or IndieGoGo, this crowdfunding platform begun in January of 2010. Just like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, on RocketHub you get to pitch your project, select a funding goal and choose a deadline by which to raise funds. The chief difference with RocketHub is that if you do not reach your stated goal you get to keep the funds raised minus 12%. (8% fee charged for unsuccessful projects + a 4% transaction fee.) With both Kickstarter and IndieGoGo you need to achieve or exceed your strike number in order to collect your prize.

Of course, there are other crowdfunding sites that have joined the fray as well, such as FundRazr, Fundly, GoFundMe, Microventures, FundaGeek, Peerbackers and more. Each of these platforms have their rules and regulations, fees and disclaimers. Before selecting a platform you need to read the rules and regulations thoroughly. However, even this doesn’t mean you will be accepted, much less successfully funded. The bad news is that if you are rejected, it is difficult if not impossible to find out why or what you need to do to meet a site’s criteria since most of the crowdfunding sites do not have a customer service number, chatroom or email address to which funding hopefuls can respond. The good news is that with all the CF sites out there, just because you crash and burn on one doesn’t mean you will flameout on another. (It’s all part of the learning curve.)

Also, recent changes to the rules at Kickstarter have opened the doors for projects that would have previously been turned down out of hand. Take for instance Zack Brown, the Potato Salad Guy. His proposal that sought to raise $10 to make potato salad instead raised $55,492 when it went viral. (Talk about supersizing your order.) Not only didn’t Zack’s project have any definitive objectives, once he raised $55k he wound up hiring a bunch of lunch trucks to throw a potato salad party with his windfall. (He deemed the event PotatoStock.) Check out Zack’s project at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/324283889/potato-salad/comments

Go Fund Yourself

I know what you’re thinking… How do I get some of that salad, the green kind? The first thing you have to do is decide on which type of crowdfunding model fits your needs best. That’s right, this is not a one-size-fits-all industry. Currently there are three flavors from which to choose:

Reward-Based Funding – Just as the name implies, while this model does not require you to give up points or pay back funds raised in this way, you do need to provide something of value (real or intangible) in order to use this model. Rewards could be anything from having your name written on the closing credit roll to books, t-shirts and/or real merchandise being created for the funds raised.
Equity-Based Funding – As the term implies in this funding model you are required to give up a percentage of the business or points in a movie.
Credit-Based Funding – This third model can provide funds that are paid back just as you would a loan. This form of funding also encompasses micro-loans which is another form of crowdfunding that has reached a worldwide audience.

Which Platform is Right for You?

When it comes to selecting the best platform that fits your needs, the first thing you need to do is search the CF site for current and previously funded projects. See how closely they conform to your proposed project. Look for failed as well as successful projects and try to determine what went wrong. Then write up a proposal which while not plagiarizing that of a successfully funded campaign closely emulates its format. (Even this does not mean that the project will be given a green light. It just makes the odds of acceptance better.)

Then comes the fun part; creating your presentation. This should include visual elements such as one or more videos, photos of your finished product or prototype, photos of you and your team and so on. The better you convey the excitement and timeliness of your project from concept to completion the better the chance it will resonate with those considering funding it. In fact, it is this last part of the process that is the most important to successfully raise funds: your audience.

While major CF sites have anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of viewers that doesn’t mean that each and every one of them is going to see your proposal. So if your idea to raise funds is to set it and forget it you could be in for a rude awakening. Since most projects are restricted to a 30-60 day term in which to raise funds, the onus is on you to get the ball rolling fast and early. This means that not only do you need to write your proposal, shoot videos and photos, but you also need to start networking as soon as the project goes live.

This boils down to having your troops in place to hit the beaches and start fanning the flames. Through the use of social nets, email blasts, text messaging, phone calls as well as up-close-and-personal grassroots in your face meetings you need to get your friends, family, coworkers and anyone else you can convince to not only buy into your project, but get their friends, family and coworkers to do the same. The beauty of the CF community is that if you can get the ball rolling then many times the crowd and sometimes the owners of the funding site will rally around your cause. If on the other hand you think you can simply plug your project in and walk away you are going to be disappointed.

However, as I mentioned earlier in this blog, just because you crash and burn doesn’t mean that your hopes to raise funds are over. Lick your wounds, learn from your mistakes and try another CF platform to toot your horn. Who knows, maybe you too can use crowdfunding to kick start your business.

Carl Weiss is president of Working the Web to Win, an award-winning digital marketing agency based in Jacksonville, Florida. You can listen to Carl live every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern on BlogTalkRadio

Can Dirty Tricks Deep Six Your Business?

By Carl Weiss

There was a time not long ago when the search engines began cracking down on what were termed Black Hat SEO Techniques. Tactics such as keyword stuffing, serial websites, and link farms, just to name a few, were deemed verboten by every search engine on the planet. The reasons why were obvious: If you could cheat them to beat them, there was no way that search engine operators could guarantee the validity of their searches. Back in the early days of the Internet, there was little that the search engines could do to curb this trend since their spiders were not savvy enough to understand what it is they were reading. However, this is no longer the case. What this means is if you either knowingly or unknowingly hire a practitioner of black hat SEO, you could find your site sandboxed or even de-listed. As a result, you need to take care when entrusting your online business assets to a third party.

The good news is that Black Hat SEO firms are a dying breed. The bad news is that a number of former black hatters have retooled their heinous skills in order to turn a profit. What I am referring to is the growing danger of online dirty tricks, where an unscrupulous business owner willingly pays to have a competitor’s reputation besmirched or even to cause overt damage to their web presence in such a way that it becomes difficult or even impossible to do business on or offline.

Here’s how it works:

1. What’s In a Name? – Everyone knows how online reputation sites have changed the way in which we do business. Whereas in years past a shoddy business could operate with impunity, today the first place that a disgruntled customer will go are to sites like Google Local, Yelp, Angie’s List, Ripoff Report or other reputation sites to lodge a complaint. While a boon to consumers, many of these sites allow people to post complaints anonymously. This opens up the doors for underhanded competitors to post fabricated complaints against a competing business in order to damage the competition. Worse still: a number of these complaint mills offer no way for a business to address or reverse a complaint. This means that once posted, it’s is nearly impossible to seek redress.

2. Yellow Press Express – Another way to damage a company’s reputation is by publishing inflammatory blogs, newsfeeds and press releases about a competitor. Sound far-fetched? Back in May of 2011, ABC News reported that Facebook admitted hiring a major public relations firm to pitch anti-Google stories to news outlets across the U.S. The blog went onto elaborate the fact that a cottage industry of sorts has sprung up where writers are paid to write comments on review sites that either boost a given business or criticize it. http://abcnewsradioonline.com/business-news/nasty-competition-fuels-dirty-business-tricks.html

3. The Hack Attack is Back – Hackers can also be employed by a competitor to do everything from launch Denial of Service attacks on your website, to attempting overt industrial espionage. Several businesses were even damaged by hackers when they subverted ownership of a company’s social sites or even closed or deleted a company’s social site or blog. Wresting control of another person’s online asset is surprisingly simple. Even if that fails, it is child’s play to create a social site or website that spoofs a competitor’s, thereby giving the hacker carte blanche to post all sorts of slanderous material. Just like identity theft, if this should happen to your business, it could take months sort out the mess this creates. Since these tricksters can be located anywhere in the world, trying to seek redress for any damage done can prove to be all but impossible. (See our previous blog, “The Hack Attack is Back.”)

4. Fraud Free For All – Another way that competitors can strike is by making fraudulent purchases. In a recent CNN Wire report, Uber, a San Francisco ride-sharing service was accused by competitor, Lyft, of having its employees order and cancel some 5,000 rides since last October. The article goes onto say: “Lyft claims 177 Uber employees around the country have booked and canceled rides in that time frame. Bogus requests decrease Lyft drivers’ availability, which could send users to Uber instead. But it’s not just the company that suffers. Canceled rides jeopardize income that Lyft drivers depend on — plus they spend time and gas money en route to passengers who have no intention of taking a ride. And even when Uber employees don’t cancel, Lyft drivers complain to headquarters that they take short, low-profit rides largely devoted to luring them to work for Uber. Lyft claims to have cross-referenced the phone numbers associated with known Uber recruiters with those attached to accounts that have canceled rides. They found, all told, 5,560 phantom requests since October 3, 2013.” While the article goes onto state that there was nothing to suggest that Uber’s corporate office commissioned or sanctioned the canceled rides, it states there is the potential for a competitor to create havoc in a company by the use of such a tactics. http://kdvr.com/2014/08/11/uber-accused-of-dirty-tricks-to-damage-competitors-business/

5. The Ultimate Inside Job – If you have ever wandered inside a casino then you know that they are awash with security cameras that record everything from the players and dealers on the gaming floor to game supervisors and security guards that handle either chips or cash. Unfortunately, most small businesses do not have access to this kind of technology. As a result, this leaves the doors open for a competitor to have one of his or her minions infiltrate your business. As the old saying goes, “It’s hard to find good help.” However, for underhanded competitors it’s oh-so-easy to find bad help by hiring a saboteur that is paid to join your ranks. Once inside a company, the damage that can be done by an interloper is incalculable. Everything from client lists, to suppliers, and even in some cases social security numbers can be purloined by a wily competitor. Armed with the keys to the vault as it were, this kind of access can not only harm a company’s bottom line, it can destroy in from within. Also, if a hacker wants to gain access to a server, there is no easier way than being able to plug an external thumb drive into a system. If that wasn’t bad enough, Amazon even carries a book in its listings entitled, “How to Steal Your Boss’s Job.” Talk about an inside job!

When it comes to doing business, competition isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s been known to spur innovation and force an industry to tighten its belt, which in many cases improves prices for consumers. (Remember when laptops used to retail for $2,500?) However, if a competitor decides to go to the dark side and employ dirty tricks, the only numbers you’re likely to see could be the Deep Six.

Carl Weiss is president of Working the Web to Win, an award-winning digital marketing agency based in Jacksonville, Florida. You can listen to Carl live every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern on BlogTalkRadio

DIY SEO

By Carl Weiss

English: a chart to describe the search engine market (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you own a small business and have a website or plan to launch a basic business website in order to get more visibility, it is imperative to consider Search Engine Optimization, otherwise known as SEO for your new website so that it can be found by prospects. This is especially important if you plan on selling goods directly on your site. The rub is that many times web designers spend more time fretting on form rather than function. As a result, many websites that we have surveyed are lacking many of the on-page SEO elements that are needed to get properly indexed by the search engines. To address this conundrum you need to either hire a knowledgeable optimization expert, or you can try a little DIY action. When you consider the number of website analysis programs on the market, DIY SEO is not as much of a mission impossible as many people believe. In fact, if you invest a couple of hours a month on your website’s SEO then you can do it yourself.

Before you start your analysis, it is important that you select the right keywords or phrases for your website. That is to say, you need to select the words or phrases that someone who is unfamiliar with your business would enter on the search engines in order to find businesses like yours. For example, if you have a furniture business, you must have the keyword furniture somewhere in your domain. We can take a second example, say your business is plumbing and fitting services provider, then you must have the keyword ‘plumbing’ or ‘plumbing services’ somewhere in your domain name.

Now that you have some suspects lined up you need to weed them out. The best way to do this is by entering your keywords and phrases into Google’s Keyword Planner which is found by accessing your Adwords account. (If you don’t have an Adwods account you can set one up by going to adwoords.google.com.) The tab for the Keyword Planner is located under the Tools tab at the top right of the page. Once you enter your suspects into the Keyword Planner’s lineup it will come back with the traffic count for each and every keyword or phrase entered. More importantly it will also suggest other keywords and phrases along with their respective traffic counts. The biggest mistake that most people make is to either choose too many keywords or choose keywords with little or no traffic. The Keyword Planner is the perfect tool to help you identify the best keywords to target.

Once you have selected the right keywords or phrases for your site now you need to plug them in. There are several areas that you need to apply these keywords, namely your Meta Tags, the Alt Tags and at the beginning and end of your website. The Meta Tags are located directly below the Title Tag. An example of how these tags should be formatted is listed below:

Next come the Alt Tags which are descriptors used at the end of the code for every image on your website. Since search engine spiders can’t see images, these descriptors tell the spiders what the image is all about. While many people ignore the alt tags this is a mistake since it is another way to let the search engines know how to rank your site. Below is some sample code that shows you what the alt tags look like. Make sure all off yours are complete if you ever hope to make it to page one of any search engine.

Next you need to include the keywords in your content. Whether you are creating verbiage for your website, blog or video you need to find a way to insert the keywords and phrases into each and every one of these. Just don’t go crazy with the keyword density or you risk being penalized by the very search engines you are trying to woo. (In fact there is a black hat SEO term called keyword stuffing that every search engine knows and loathes.)

So the key is to use the desired keywords in your content in a fitting way. That is to say, it should not look like keywords are thrown in unnecessarily. Always remember that content is designed first and foremost to be read by human beings. This means that keywords should be used only in the proper time and place. They should also be grammatically correct. Last but not least the most important keyword or phrase should be used at the beginning and end of your website in a font that is bold and italicized. This lets the spiders know that the word or phrase is important.

Off-Page SEO

In today’s content-rich world, even the best on-page SEO is not going to usually be sufficient to
generate a page one result on most search engines. But it is a good start. To really get into the game and get the spiders to sit up and take notice you next need to start providing regular content that is valuable and interesting. (That’s right folks, the spiders have learned how to read.) Weekly content has become king due to the increased competition of the marketplace. People are eager to learn what’s new and exciting with your business. They want to know how you can help them save time and money or overcome obstacles. They want to hear what other customers think about you. Since most people rarely update their website this makes it difficult for people and spiders to find out the latest about news regarding you and your business. That’s what blogs and social networks are all about. They are also good for creating backlinks to your website which is another benchmark that the spiders use to rank sites.

When it comes to self-promote your website you need to use both On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO techniques. Once your website receives good ranking on all the major search engines, do not stop your Off-Page SEO activities. You should continuously work for your website each week so that your competitors will not overtake your ranking. Yes, you will require lesser effort and time to do the maintenance work as part of the Off-Page SEO once your website receives good ranking. If you do not have the time to promote your website, you can also outsource some or all of your online marketing tasks. Just take care to thoroughly check out any SEO expert that you are considering turning your web presence over to or your site could wind up DOA.

Carl Weiss is president of Working the Web to Win, a digital marketing agency based in Jacksonville, Florida. You can listen to Carl live every Tuesday at 4pm Central on BlogTalkRadio.

Google Gives Everybody the Bird with Their Pigeon Update

By Carl Weiss

SEO is for the birds, at least in terms of the last two updates from Google, the first of which was called Penguin and the latest that has been deemed Pigeon. While birds of a feather, there are big differences when it comes to the intent of the two most recent algorithm tweaks.

Penguin Puts a Chill on Black Hat Operators

First released back in May of 2012, Penguin was designed to penalize websites that were deemed to be using deceptive online marketing techniques to achieve ranking on the world’s most popular website. What this meant was that anyone using such tactics as keyword stuffing, link farming, hidden text or any of a number of other back door techniques employed specifically to generate search engine ranking was punished by having their sites relegated to the backwaters of Google. In some cases if the infractions were serious enough, Google delisted these sites, meaning that they would never again appear in search.

The reason that Google was able to accomplish this was due to the fact that their spiders were now sophisticated enough to not only read what was on a site, but they were able to comprehend the meaning of what they read. This made the job of sifting through hundreds of millions of websites possible. Prior to that it was necessary to flag a site and then have a human being physically check it out so that it could be determined whether black hat tactics were being used. When you consider that more than 130,000 new websites are published every day, this was a superhuman task prior to 2012.

Pigeon Flies the Coop

Male homing pigeon, (showing of ;-) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Where Penguin concerned itself with identifying and penalizing cheaters, Pigeon is more interested in improving localized search parameters. In fact the most pressing reason that Google commissioned its latest update was due to local directory Yelp complaining that its listings were being unfairly weighted in Google search. What this means is that local directories will benefit directly by the latest update. If your site is not listed, or if your directory listings are incomplete or inaccurate now is the time to address this issue.

Another vital task is for website owners to police their online reputation and to embellish it by actively pursuing a policy that encourages satisfied customers to rate your website. Face it, sooner or later you are going to rub a customer the wrong way. While in the past this could have produced a snub, what it is more likely to produce today is a ding. By ding I mean a negative review on any number of local directories such as Google Local, Yahoo, Yelp, Angie’s List, etc. Since many companies have no policy that encourages satisfied customers to post positive reviews, all that leaves for the public to find online are negative ones. Even if you have to offer a reward to customers in order to get them to post positive reviews, the reward to your business far outweighs the cost.

Learn a Few Tactics from Homing Pigeons

Homing pigeon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you really want to create a local sensation on Google then you need to take a lesson from homing pigeons. These birds have been known to find their way back to their nests after being released as far as 1,100 miles away from home. So long has their ability been known and so accurate was their homing instinct that Genghis Khan used the birds as a pre-aviation version of air mail.

Like the homing pigeon, if you want to achieve outstanding local results then it is vital that you start feathering your next with local content. This can include everything from location specific landing pages with keyword sensitive urls, to blogs and social posts that are keyed to local events. Also make sure that you include a Google map on your site and landing pages. Include (and label) videos and images that pertain to your locale. In short, anything and everything that points out your location is going to be vital to getting Pigeon to roost.

Instead of Merely SEO You Need to be Concerned with GEO

If you want Pigeon to make sure that people in your neighborhood can find you, then you need to make sure the name of your neighborhood is included on your website, landing pages, your blog, your videos and your social posts. As geotargeting gets more and more prevalent you need to seed your site with geographical breadcrumbs that can be seen by the spiders. Just make sure that you don’t overpopulate any content piece with them or you might wind up being considered a spammer.

Keep in mind if you find out that Google Pigeon has done to your site what pigeons the world over do to statues, the best way to keep pigeons from dropping all over you is to leave breadcrumbs in front of someone else’s door.

Eggs of the homing pigeon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Top 5 Ways to Feather Your Nest:

1. Use location specific landing pages.

2. Create more location specific content such as blog posts.

3. Encourage your customers to review your site on local directories.

4. Generate more local links

5. Make sure your local profiles are accurate and complete.

Carl Weiss is president of Working the Web to Win, a digital marketing agency based in Jacksonville, Florida. You can listen to Carl live every Tuesday at 4pm Central on BlogTalkRadio.

Does PPC Advertising Spell Pay Per Crook for Your Business?

By Carl Weiss

When you think about it, it’s amazing that the bulk of Google’s revenue is derived from Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.I say that because many small business owners whom I speak to, who have used PPC ads, are dissatisfied with their results. It’s not that they aren’t appreciative of the fact that PPC can generate a Page One position for their business. It’s more that using PPC does just that and little else. Generating a click doesn’t mean generating a lead or a sale. It simply means generating a click, every one of which erodes your ad budget. While some clicks are spurious at best, before you decide to declare your PPC ads DOA, there are a few things you should consider.

#1: Have You Fine Tuned Your Ad?

One of the things that many neophyte PPC advertisers don’t realize is there are a number of ways to fine tune their campaign. Adwords, along with most every other PPC engine will leave the pipe wide open unless you specify otherwise. This means is that you need to determine when, where, and how often your ads are displayed. If you aren’t the kind of business that offers 24-hour service, why run your ads all night along? Simply by specifying you only want your ads to be displayed form 9 a.m.to 5 p.m. will literally cut the burn in half. If you don’t sell your products or services worldwide (or in every state in the Union for that matter), you need to tune your campaign to specify its geographic scope. Keyword selection is also key. Not only is it important to choose the keywords and phrases that best describes your business’ products and services, you also need to add negative keywords to exclude your ad being displayed for similar keywords that will generate browsers as opposed to buyers.

#2: Why Being Number One Isn’t the Best Bet

Other than failing to test and measure your keywords effectiveness, the second biggest blunder that any PPC advertiser can make is to insist on being the number one result. In the first place, since all PPC advertising is based on an auction, jumping right to the head of the line only assures you that you are going to pay top dollar for every click you receive. It doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to generate the most results. Far from it, since you will burn up your ad budget the fastest this way. All that shooting for the top slot means is that you run the risk of creating a bidding war that you can’t win.

What we aim for is position number three for our clients that use PPC. The third from the top means that your ad will display at the top of Google. It also means that your limited advertising budget will go further before your ad reaches your daily limit and goes dark.

#3: How Strong is Your Offer?

If you really want to get the biggest bang for the buck, you need to spend more time working on your message and offer, and less time worrying about being atop the pile. In fact, a world-class, text-based ad can help you generate more clicks in the number three spot than a weaker ad can at the top of the page. Since PPC ads are the only thing online that requires you to be more succinct that when you use Twitter, less is definitely more.

The key to maximizing results is to thoroughly understand the demographic and psychographic profile of your ideal customer. What age brackets do you wish to target? Which income brackets are representative of your ideal prospects? Where do your ideal prospects shop? Knowing these factors will not only help you hone your ad to a fine edge, but it will also aid you in selecting the best keywords and phrases from which to campaign.

Once you have a complete profile of your ideal prospects then it’s time to create the ads that are designed to appeal to this group. That’s right, I said ads. The beauty of working online is that every click can be tracked. In order to maximize your results in any PPC environment you want to design and test a number of different ads. What sounds good on paper may quickly prove to be next to useless in the fast-paced world of the Internet. Unlike print ads that are fixed in stone for a set amount of time, online ads are imminently adjustable. Within a few days of launching any PPC campaign, you should be able to determine which ads are pulling their weight and what ads need to be either tweaked or pulled out of rotation altogether. You should also do the same for your keywords, as well as the networks upon which your ads are displayed.

Unless you intend to shred a mountain of money in your initial attempts to locate and appeal to your ideal prospects, all of the steps above must be accomplished before your campaign is activated and the first click is produced.

#4: Looking for a Happy Landing?

Unlike in aviation, where it is said that any landing you can walk away from is a good one, if you want to have a high probability of converting clicks into cash you need to look at the place you intend prospects to land. The single biggest mistake advertisers make is to send the prospect to their homepage. Your homepage is designed to showcase your business, not to create new customers. As a general rule, it’s too busy. It offers too many choices to prospects. It wasn’t designed with the express purpose of dangling the bait and reeling in the fish. In short, if you send a prospect to your homepage you have just reduced your ROI by as much as 90%.

Just like your ad, your landing page needs to be customized to funnel the prospect through the buying process with the least amount of speed bumps to accepting your offer. It needs to contain a short series of selling lures that will make your landing page stickier. In short order, you need to answer the following questions:

1. What need or desire are you trying to fulfill?

2. How does your offer remedy a problem or ease a pain?

3. How does your offer stack up to the competition’s offer?

4. What counteroffer are you promoting in case the fish doesn’t take the bait?

The best way to crystalize the process is to take a look at your existing landing page. From a visual standpoint, what catches the eye? Are you wasting valuable real estate above the fold with nebulous graphics or fancy Flash cells that do little to entice the prospect into taking action? What type of funnel have you created to limit the prospects’ choices and lead him or her inexorably to agreeing with your marketing message and taking the bait? How much sales resistance is your offer likely to cause and how does your copy address it?

#5: Don’t Drop the Ball at the One-Yard Line

U.S. Air Force Academy senior linebacker Aaron Shanor recovers a fumble by California Golden Bears tailback Justin Forsett during the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl at Amon G. Carter Stadium in Fort Worth, Texas. ID: 071231-F-0558K-010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So you have made a successful pitch and have generated a lead. Bravo! Don’t pat yourself on the back just yet. The secret to turning leads into sales without running yourself to ground is via a drip marketing program. While most business owners feel that they can kick up their feet and relax once the lead or initial sale is in the bag, I disagree. All you have done is taken back a tiny amount of ground for a battle that was hard-fought. If you really want to maximize the ROI of any online marketing campaign, what you need to do next is craft a multi-touch drip marketing plan that reaches out and touches a prospect no fewer than ten times.

If you want to enhance your return, I suggest sending buyers a monthly online newsletter that keeps them appraised of your growing business. Feel free to include an offer at the bottom of each newsletter. This tactic not only is a cagey way to dangle an offer in front of a prospect, it is also a way to keep your business top of mind. If you really want to generate maximum return on every dollar invested, this technique is truly gold-plated.

While many business people lament the sometimes uneven results that they achieve when they employ PPC ads, the best way to turn clicks into cash is to up the ante and make sure that you aren’t robbing yourself blind by failing to fine tune your campaigns.

Since 1995, Carl Weiss has been helping clients succeed online. He owns and operates several online marketing businesses, including Working the Web to Win and Jacksonville Video Production. He also co-hosts the weekly radio show, "Working the Web to Win," every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern on BlogTalkRadio.com.

In Search of Sir Spamalot

By Carl Weiss

The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, originated from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Everyone remembers the 2005 musical comedy Spamalot along with its irreverent send up of the Arthurian legend. Directed by Mike Nichols, the Broadway production garnered three Tony awards and grossed more than 175 million dollars. Flash forward nearly ten years and the term can be applied anew, only this time without coconut shells substituting for horses or the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. What I am referring to is online spam.

What Constitutes Spam? (And I’m not talking about the kind that comes in a can.)

Ever since the Internet was begun there have been a number of individuals who weren’t willing to play nice with all the other children. Spammers have been the bane of many people’s existence online, especially in terms of using the worldwide web as a kind of email assault weapon,. How big of a problem is spam mail?

According to securelist.com as of August 2013:

· The percentage of spam in email traffic in August was down 3.6 percentage points and averaged 67.6%.

· The level of phishing increased tenfold compared with July, and averaged 0.013%.

· Malicious attachments were found in 5.6% of all emails, an increase of 3.4 percentage points compared to the previous month.

http://securelist.com/analysis/monthly-spam-reports/57893/spam-in-august-2013/

Add to this the fact that not only have malicious emails increased during the past year, but spammers have become much craftier, using everything from “Back to School” themes during August and September, to other lures relating to everything from popular holidays, sports, lifestyle, age and gender slants.

Recent spam trends have included fake airline ticket offers, cruise ship deals and other inducements targeted toward people looking to take a vacation. A number of these emails were even made to look as though they had been sent by legitimate companies such as Delta Airlines, Royal Caribbean Cruise Line or shipping companies such as FedEx, UPS and DHL.

“Fake notifications often utilize the names of popular international delivery services such as FedEx, UPS and DHL. They tell recipients that a courier failed to deliver their parcel due to an incorrect delivery address. To get the parcel, the recipient should print out the attached document and call the company's office or confirm specified data, including the delivery address. Malicious files can also hide in fake documents supposedly containing detailed information about the parcel, which does not in fact exist. Spammers try to make their fake notifications look legitimate and typically use not only an apparently real sender's address but provide non-existent order information, genuine contact details from official websites and a copy of a privacy notification letter.”

There Ought to Be a Law

While there are indeed a number of laws on the books in the US, the problem begins with trying to determine where the spam originated. In fact the preponderance of spam originates from foreign shores. A number of spammers also use proxy servers, slave drives and other forms of subterfuge to cover their trail. There are a number of state, national and international laws in effect to prosecute these crimes. However, this type of subterfuge not only makes it difficult to prosecute the offenders, it makes it nearly impossible for the average citizen to seek any sort of redress should their system be compromised by malware.

An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure

The first line of defense in the fight against spam is to never open an email from an email address with which you are unfamiliar. This doesn’t guarantee success either, since email addresses can be pilfered and/or spoofed. So if your best friend sends you an email that goes something like, “Check out this blog/offer/link,” don’t go there since your friend’s address has in all likelihood been compromised. The quickest way to infect your system with malware is to get you to accept a link.

Also look for odd word choices or misspelling since people to whom English is a second language frequently have a hard time getting a fluent grasp on our native tongue. If the message tells you that you have either won some contest that you never entered, or are about to be penalized due to an implied negligence, don’t fall for this trick. (Note: The IRS does not notify you by email.) When in doubt, call the company from which the notice was purportedly sent or talk to an expert such as your business partner, accountant, or attorney if you need to check out any offer’s validity. Never click on a link due to any emotional response.

Do not fall for an unsubscribe that requires you to enter your email address. This is just a ruse designed for you to verify that your address is active. There are dozens of ways for a spammer to get your email. They can purchase a list or they can use a bot to trawl your site looking for contact information. Don’t make spammers lives easier by signing up to win a free iPad. Guess what, the only winner is going to be the spammer.

Need to leave your contact info on your website? No problem. If you use Gmail, you can create a number of subsidiary email addresses that you can use and eventually change once the spammers get hold of them. Here’s a tip from WikiHow:

Have one main account, and then make a separate account for different purposes (one for friends, one for entertainment sites, one for your financial websites, etc.).

· In gmail, you can add a "+" button to your email address. For example, you can signup for newsletters like JohnDoe+Newsletters@gmail.com if your email address is JohnDoe@gmail.com

· Set all those addresses to forward the mail to your main account so that you do not have to check multiple accounts.

· If you start receiving spam through one of your alternates, you can trace it to one of your disposable addresses and simply delete that account.

You Need More than One Line of Defense

While most email systems come with a spam filter, this is not nearly enough to protect your system from malware. I recommend you not only invest in a first rate virus and malware protection system, but you should also invest in a secondary adware/malware system such as Malwarebytes or Advanced System Care. Today one level of defense is insufficient to protect your system and your data. Better to pay a few dollars now than many thousands of dollars should your security be compromised.

If you haven’t realized it already, spam is not going to go away. If anything, it is becoming ever more prominent, effective and insidious. While laws will continue to be created, these will have little or no effect slowing much less stopping those who wish to spam a lot. Unlike the Knights of the Round Table, the call to arms when it comes to spam is not ‘One for all and all for one.” It’s more like, “Every man for himself.” That being said, it is up to every individual to defend themselves against this ilk since the courts are for the most part stymied by the international nature of this techno crime. Where’s the Holy Hand Grenade when you really need it?

When Carl Weiss isn’t tilting against technological windmills, he helps clients learn how to start working the web to win. He is also co-host of the weekly online radio show of the same name that airs live every Tuesday at 4 pm Eastern.