Issue # 34, 6-May-2003
ISSN 1447-4956
Copyright 2003 Jason Anderson. All rights
reserved worldwide
http://www.achievenetprofits.com/
IN THIS ISSUE
1. From the Editor
2. Interview - Phil
Wiley
3. Resources - Profit Generating
Ideas
4. Final Word
1. From the Editor
Welcome to another issue of Achieve Net
Profits - I hope
everything is well for you. After last weeks
delayed issue (I was
still recovering from my holiday ;-) ), I'm
happy to say that
everything seems to be back to normal now. I
think!
While not everyone's cup of tea, one interest of
mine as far as
running an online business is concerned is
search engines.
Now I'm never going to write a book on them, or
set myself up as
an SEO expert - I don't know enough, and I don't
keep up with all
the latest happenings. But one expert I have the
highest respect
for is Jill Whalen.
I even managed to interview Jill last year, and
she passed on
some great info in her interview.
Anyway, the reason I'm mentioning this is to
talk very briefly
about PageRank - the value that Google displays
for a web page in
their toolbar (and in their directory
listing).
The (in my opinion) bad thing about this is that
some people now
refuse to link to others (for fear of their
PageRank 'leaking'
from their site), or won't exchange links with a
site that has a
lower PageRank.
Frankly, I think that is stupid. For two
reasons.
The first is a simple "whatever happened to
linking to a good
site"? Rather naive, I know, but its a policy I
will always keep.
I'm quite happy to link to other sites (whether
they link back to
me or not) if they have something interesting or
useful for my
visitors.
The second reason could be considered more
practical. Even if a
site (who wants to do a link swap) has low
visitor numbers (and
PageRank) today, that doesn't mean that they
will in the future.
They might become as big as Yahoo - there is no
way of knowing.
Jill Whalen wrote an excellent article on why
you shouldn't worry
about PageRank (I didn't say ignore - just not
worry about), and
I urge you all to read it.
http://www.highrankings.com/issue004.htm#seo
(Oh, and subscribe to her newsletter while
you're there. The
information she passes on each week is
invaluable).
I've been meaning to say something about a new
service I've been
using for a while, but I wanted to hold off a
bit and make sure
they were everything they claimed to be. So far,
I'm happy to say
they are.
http://www.achievenetprofits.com/ultimatemerchant/
The service I'm talking about is called
"Ultimate Merchant".
These are the people who are now hosting this
newsletter (and all
my other lists).
But autoresponders is only a small part of their
service - they
also provide ad trackers, product ordering,
running an affiliate
program - everything you need to automate your
business.
If you have a merchant account, you can set
their system up to
work with it. Or, if you wish you can work with
several third
party payment processors (like PayPal,
2CheckOut, etc).
Since everything is integrated, you don't have
to worry about
trying to get several bits of software to talk
to each other, or
logging in to several sites to run your
business. Everything is
in the one place.
The only disadvantage with Ultimate Merchant is
they can't be
integrated with ClickBank. This can be worked
around (you have
two sales pages - one with ClickBank, and one
set up for Ultimate
Merchant), but it is inconvenient.
To be honest, if you are just starting out with
your online
business a service like this is overkill. But if
you are getting
ready to sell your own product, or if you have
several products
with resell rights, this service may be worth
looking at.
I'm certainly very happy with them, and I can
happily recommend
them to you.
http://www.achievenetprofits.com/ultimatemerchant/
(As a side note, QuickPayPro and Terry Dean's
MakeBuyingEasy site
are exactly the same software - just with a
different name).
And now, without further delay, what's in store
for you in this
weeks newsletter.
My interview this week is with Phil Wiley. Some
(including me!)
call Phil the master of mini sites. Phil has
figured out how to
build small (5-10 page) web sites that can earn
you a monthly
income automatically.
While each site usually earns only a few hundred
each month, when
you start running several such sites the amounts
add up! Not
surprisingly Phil's interview is on mini sites,
and the
information he passes on is invaluable.
The members only resource section has had a make
over. In an
attempt to make it easier to find things, the
long list of items
have been broken up into categories, and are now
over several
pages. Hopefully this will prove useful.
I've also added my list of "top 5" products to
the resource
section. These are products I own and feel are
the best of the
best. If you've been reading this newsletter for
a while the list
shouldn't come as any surprise - I've mentioned
them all here
before.
The new resource for this week is an ecourse by
Dirk Dupon.
Titled "Profit Generating Ideas", the ecourse
covers a large
range of topics on how you can improve your
online sales. More on
this below.
I hope you enjoy it. Don't forget that you can
view
all the past issues online at
http://www.achievenetprofits.com/archive/
2. Interview - Phil Wiley
Sorry, this interview is no longer available in the archives. It has been moved to the membership site. You can find out more about the membership site (and how to join) by visiting here.
3. Resources - Profit
Generating Ideas
This weeks resource is a 10 part ecourse
written by Dirk Dupon.
Dirk covers a lot of ground for both newcomers
to running an
online business, and people who have been doing
it for a while.
Some of the topics he covers in his ecourse
are:
- How to double your sales by changing one
thing in your sales
letters, ezine ads & ecourses
- Selecting and promoting affiliate
programs
- Building your list
- Attracting traffic to your site
Its a good read, and I enjoyed it when I
subscribed to it. A word
of warning though - it does have a lot of
product recommendations
in it. If such things offend you, it would
probably be best for
you not to subscribe.
http://www.achievenetprofits.com/pgiauto/
This link has also been added to the "members
only" section,
along with the existing collection of ebooks,
ecourses, and other
useful sites.
http://www.achievenetprofits.com/members/
[Subscribers-only area. The password
was sent out in the
annoumcement message for this issue]
4. Final Word
One of our cats (Harlequin) has an annoying
habit. We always
bring the cats inside at night, but Harlequin is
always difficult
to get in. And if we get him in, he always tries
to escape back
outside if given the chance. Normally we then
spend ages trying
to get him to come back in, but we found the
perfect (and
obvious) way to deal with it last night.
We just left him out there. The big brave
tabby cat who's used to
curling up in a basket at night with a hot water
bottle (its
coming up to winter here), or on the sofa with
other cats.
Strangely enough, just before we went to bed
he was mewing at the
front door wanting to get in ;-)
If your online business has started to grow,
I'd like to urge you
again to check out Ultimate Merchant. They offer
a complete
system for running an online business, and I've
been very
impressed by how it all fits together.
http://www.achievenetprofits.com/ultimatemerchant/
Till next week, I wish you much success in
your online business.
""He who sacrifices his conscience to
ambition, burns a picture toget the ashes." --
Chinese proverb
