Monday 22 September 2008

Indian Summer profits

We were all thinking that the summer had passed us by here in the UK. Endless days of pouring rain and high winds and no chance to do anything outside.

So I turned my attentions back to online profits and came up with a number of valuable tips and insights I'd like to share with you.

I completed the rewrite of my 'personal branding' website and set about letting everyone I knew about it. As I mention on the Resources page on the site, the only leads service I currently used is Triple Your List. The free version only gives me a few new names per week, but they seem to be responsive and keen on snapping up any new opportunity I offer.

I noticed when I was reading traffic exchange emails that some people were adding their email addresses and sometimes Skype contact details too. I'm very polite when I contact them, I say I've visited their website that they were advertising in the mail and could I have some additional information please. Of course I include an invitation to visit my website too! At the end of the email is an optout if they don't want any more email from me. Mostly people don't bother to opt out, so they stay on my regular mailing list.

I mail my Triple Your Listers and 'harvested' addresses once a week. A new Triple Your Lister will get a welcome mail as well - with all my business websites and this blog listed.

I also re-discovered the huge value of Linkreferrals - kind of by accident. GDI's own sitebuilder has a built in stats feature. However, GDI decided that they would replace their sitebuilder with a very inferior product that also trashed any existing pages, which was what led me to re-develop the site. BUT their hosting service does not have the stats feature enabled so I had to add my own hit counters.

About the same time, I had a notification from Linkreferrals that someone had found and reviewed my site, even though it had slipped down the ratings a lot. Of course I had to go and review theirs too and I thought that a little work might get me some visitors. Was I right! An amazing increase in hits on every page of the site over the weekend.

Now just a hint here. While doing the standard 30 site visits a day will hike you up the ratings, and put your site nearer the top of its category list, you need to do a little more work. If you find a site you really like (or really hate!) review it! And if it's going to be something you'll want to revisit - like the one with the yummy chocolate recipes I found - add it to your favourites list. If someone reviews you, review them as soon as you can. If you aren't strong on grammar and spelling, write your review in Word first and cut'n'paste into Linkreferrals. You will get extra credit for well written reviews.

Just before I close up this post, I should mention this. In my email was an offer to download a free report with a moneymaking potential just for giving it away. I was very sceptical, who wouldn't be, but that little report has not only done what it promised, the method it used has set me off on a whole new project.

More to come very soon on my other profitable discoveries - keep watching me!

PS - The weather has taken one of its typical UK Indian Summer turn-arounds with several sunny days with light winds, although the nights have been chilly. I've been able to garden and go sailing and my grapes and tomatoes are ripening nicely.

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