Internet Business Opportunities

I’m Moving!

Hi,

Well as much as I love this domain, I’m going to have to move. 

Unfortunately my domain name is too long!  So some of the programs I’ve purchased from James Brausch won’t work because it needs shorter domain names.

So I’ve just registered OIBO.ORG because OIBO.COM has been taken.  OIBO is short for Online Internet Business Opportunity.  Hopefully this won’t cause issues in the long run… in the meantime, I’m on the hunt for another good domain.

Visit the new site at http://www.oibo.org - internet business blog.

Check out my personal weight loss blog at http://www.lose-weight-feel-great.com .

Regards,

Mohamed

Posted in Internet Business | 2 Comments »

Buying Traffic is probably Useless - Conversions Count!

Hi,

Have you seen those cheesy ads to buy traffic?  Guaranteed 1,000,000 visitors to your site - cheap, only $1,000 but on sale for you today for $19.95.

Yeah, it would be great if I could get 1,000,000 visitors to my site and hope and pray that someone from that 1,000,000 will buy my product or service.  In fact, this is how spam mail operators work — they know if that they send out billions of e-mails, it will result in sales from tens of thousands of people.

This is like throwing dodo/kaka/poop/whatever on the wall and hoping some sticks (sorry if I’ve offended anyone).

This is NOT the way to grow your business, and if you think it is — then please leave because I won’t be able to offer you any “stupid traffic tricks” to trick visitors to visit your site.

There is a difference between buying traffic and buying ad space.  If you are buying ad space on respected blogs, that are targetted to your market then you have a better chance of getting qualified visitors and then converting them to purchasers of your product or service.

Remember while it’s great to have 5,000 or 10,000 or more people visit your site — if you are not able to convert them, then how else can you monetize on the traffic?  In Internet Marketing and running your own business (whether it is Internet Business or traditional bricks and mortar), your goal is to convert the person visiting into a customer.

Walk into Staples, BestBuy, FutureShop or any other retailer.  How quickly are you left wandering around the store?  You’re not.  As soon as you walk in, you’re “tagged”.  The salesperson “follows” you until you pick-up a product or start peering at something closely.  Then they come and ask “Can I help you with anything”?  Craftier sales people are ready to offer you the warranty or start off with another line that they know will get you talking.  I’ve had sales people tell me the warranty on a product, and if that was important to me.  They hooked me pretty good.

While every retailer knows the value of getting the individual into the door, they know that they now have to convert that visitor into a purchaser.  The lifetime value of some individuals can extend into the tens of thousands of dollars.  If they provide exceptional service and value, they probably have a customer for life.

When you build your business, you need to think the same way.  You need to attract visitors (but NOT by buying 1,000,000 visitors), show them that you are providing them with value and they will come back again, and again.  They will buy your products and services without even thinking about it — because they value you and consider you an authority.

Let me share another story with you.

A friend of mine knows audio/video equipment very well.  He is a “professional” in this area, meaning he knows how to pick the right equipment for the space you want to put it in.  So he offers his services to friends, for free.  As his friends used him, they told others and so on.  My friend uses only one retailer to make purchases, and within that retailer he will only buy from one salesperson because of the quality of service and product.

Do you think the store owner wants to loose that salesperson?  Nope.  Do they want to loose his friends referrals?  Not at all.  They understand the value that these people represent to their business.

Offer your visitors real value, build yourself into an authority and you will do well.  Buy 1,000,000 visitors that are not targetted and you will suffer.

Regards,

Mohamed

Posted in Internet Business | No Comments »

Importance of Backing Up Your Data

Hi,

Years ago, when I first started using the Internet I had been using virus checkers.  I considered myself lucky, since I had never had a virus infection or any of the other problems associated with viruses on a computer.

I diligently ensured my virus checker was upgrade, along with the virus definitions.

Then one day I had a discussion with a friend, who said he never used a virus checker and never had a problem.  “Besides,” he said, “They are all bloated and use up valuable system resources!”.  Remember this was at a time when we were still working with maybe 1gb memory on PC’s and running 486DX chips.

So I followed suit.  And you know what?  I never had a problem either!  I probably went for months without one single issue.  I was laughing!  All those poor suckers who were paying for their virus software and definitions - if you are careful you’ll never have a problem.

So I kept surfing.  And downloading.  And installing software.

Well one day, I started up my Quicken application and it was crawling.  It was sloooow.  I couldn’t figure it out.  Lots of space on the hard drive, big swap file - what could be wrong?  Jumped onto the Internet and did some queries and it all pointed to a virus.  Damn.

So I re-installed my virus checker (McAfee) and updated it and did a full system scan.

Only minutes — or seconds into the scan it reported virus, after virus, after virus.  It tried to remove the viruses, but it only made things worse.  The system slowed down even more when it tried anything.  I was getting desperate.

I tried to stop the application.  No such luck.  CTRL + ALT + DELETE were not working.

What next?

I ended up turning the PC off, then back on.  Then all hell broke loose.  Windows wouldn’t start, even when trying to boot in safe mode.  I was finally able to boot off of a floppy disk and check the contents of the hard drive - what a mess.  I got errors when doing anything.

So I did the only thing I could.  I reformatted my drive.  I lost resumes, other personal documents, applications — everything was gone.  It took me almost one month to recover my PC to the state it was originally.

The next thing I did was to install a virus checker, and started making regular back-ups of my important documents.

Do you make backups of your important data?  How about backups of your website?  What would happen if you went to upgrade your WordPress or any other application and you lost all the data in your MySQL database?  What if you could not recover anything?

I now make regular back-ups of my websites, especially this site.  It’s easy.  I’ve prepared a short PDF that you can download.  Click on the tab FREE ITEMS (or click on the link) and the file will be available to download.

UPDATE - February 08, 2008 @ 1:38pm PST

My apologies to anyone that tried to download the file and wasn’t able to.  I had tested several download managers, but when it came to move it into the production environment, it behaved much differently than expected.

Click on the tab FREE ITEMS (or click on the link) and the file will be available to download.

After downloading, and reading the guide I would welcome your comments and suggestions for improvements.  Simply comment to this post.

Regards,

Mohamed

Posted in Freebies, Internet Business, Tech Options | No Comments »

Write About What You Know

Hi,

When I first started this blog, I was in a bit of a dilema.  I mean, how would I write about something new everyday?  I mean, I know full well how to do research and get ideas.  I can sit down and push out articles pretty quick, but how do you write something every day?

Then I started reading other blogs.

I read James Brausch blog regularly for about one year (and still do).  I read many of the blogs you find on my blog roll.  I also read blogs in other market areas, not just internet business.  They all had one thing in common - they wrote about the subject near and dear to them but at the same time they did interject with other relavant or related topics.

So that’s why you see what you do here.  The topics that I write about are relavent to my market focus - namely internet business and internet marketing.

I use my BlackBerry primarily for work, but it is set-up to receive messages from my personal e-mail so I know when James, Aaron, Richard or anyone else that I’ve subscribed to has posted something new to their blog.  In fact, I can click the link and view the site on the phone as well.  It’s great!  So I talked about it, because if I find it a great benefit then so will others.

You see James doing this all the time.  He’s off in Costa Rica talking about his time there, but he interjects relavent material into the post.  The fact that he’s talking about business in Costa Rica is a testament to the products and services he produces.  He’s not only posting about the topic of internet business or internet marketing - but he is telling you a story at the same time.

When you post to your blog, it needs to be natural.  As if you’re speaking to someone.  That’s the nature of the blog.  In the oooold days of static websites, you could get away with “generic” messages for your visitors.  That doesn’t work today.

Think about it like this.  When you go to a presentation, and the presenter is making a point or telling his story — does he look straight ahead?  Or is he looking at you?  Looking at you, right?  He/she knows the power of connecting with the audience.  When you go away from such a presentation, where the presenter involves you just by looking at you — you instantly feel a connection with them and will pay to see their presentations or attend conferences if they are presenting.

That is the power of writing about what you know and speaking to your audience.

Regards,

Mohamed

Posted in Internet Business | No Comments »

Use Yahoo! Answers to Drive Targetted Traffic to Your Site

Hi,

James Brausch recently ran a 24 hour special on his blog for a product called Getting Evergreen Site Traffic With Yahoo Answers.  While I’m not providing the process to perform the task, what I am providing here is information on Yahoo! Answers and how it will drive targetted traffic to your site.

What is Yahoo! Answers?

Yahoo! Answers is like one HUGE FAQ on thousands of different topics.  Yahoo claims to have more than 21 million unique users in the U.S. and 90 million worldwide.  It is the largest knowledge-sharing community on the web.

That’s good for me, and you.

Yahoo! Answers is an online community where anyone can ask and answer questions on any topic. 

The visitors you get from Yahoo will be highly targetted because they are looking at your site and you since you are one of the experts that responded to their question!

How does it work?

Simple.  You need a Yahoo! Answers ID — though you could use your Yahoo! e-mail address as one, various articles that I’ve read suggest that you should not put that account into any jeapordy.

Once you create your account, you can create an avatar.

You’re done. 

Next start looking for questions to answer.

As I’m in the Internet Marketing/Internet Business area, I will look for answers in those areas.

To the left is a high-level view of the categories that are currently in use on Yahoo! Answers.  You can drill down into any of the categories. 

Below I have drilled into the Business & Finance category and hilighted the areas that I would be able to give good answers to:

Of course you are not limited to these areas, you can answer questions on any category you choose.

Once you’ve registered and selected your cateogry, and sub-category it’s time to search for questions.  Here is what the main screen of Yahoo! Answers looks like:

Here I’ve selected the “Advertising & Marketing” sub-category.  Notice the questions - it’s in the tab marked “ANSWER Open Questions”.

Lets drill into ne of the questions that has answers in it already:

If a question is still open, then you can certainly answer it.

So how do you get TRAFFIC to your site?

Here is the answer template:

#1 - Your answer goes here.  Yes, you can enter URLS in here as well.

#2 - What is the source of the answer?  Again you can enter your URL here.

#3 - Click on PREVIEW to preview the answer, then you will have the option to post the answer.

It is that easy!

Now based on my research, some say to not post your URL on every answer and others say it is fine.  One site suggested 1 URL for every 5-7 answers which is between 15% and 20% of the time. 

The key is to not appear to be spamming.  If you are able to reply to 2-3 questions daily then it should be fine if during a week you only include your URL on 5 posts (total of between 10 and 15 posts).

As you gain expertise in one category, it would be beneficial to create another profile for another area/category and lead readers to a different site.

I have just started working with Yahoo! Answers (I replied to about 15 questions by this posting) and will share my results in a protected post soon.  Please note that only visitors that subscribe to my ALERTS will get the password to the protected posts.

Regards,

Mohamed

Posted in Internet Business, Traffic | No Comments »

No Registration Required

Hi,

I noticed that few people were making comments on my posts (no, I’m not being vain) but they were e-mailing me.  So I dug around the ADMIN panel in WordPress and noticed that I had enabled “membership” — meaning you had to register to post a comment.

My apologies to those that had to register!

I have since unchecked this option, and you no longer need to register to post a comment.  Comments are still held in moderation, and I’ll be installing a spam plugin shortly to deal with spam that I am sure to start getting.

So if you did want to comment, but I scared you away - you can now comment without me capturing your e-mail address in any database.

Regards,

Mohamed

Posted in Internet Business | No Comments »

Demystify

Hi,

I will be releasing my first product very soon, so this post is a “placeholder” for purchasers to leave comments.

Regards,

Mohamed

Posted in Products | No Comments »

Looking For Guest Writers

Hi All,

Short and sweet - please have a look at http://www.online-internet-business-opportunity.com/guest-writers.

If you’re interested in exposing your name even more, consider becoming a guest writer for my blog.

Simply read the page that I’ve posted and reply to this post with your name, and topic you’d like to write about.

I’ve had several people ask me about this, and never had a process in place to handle it — but have worked out the bugs and it is now ready to go.

Regards,

Mohamed

Posted in Ghostwriters, Internet Business | No Comments »

Cool - my blog is worth something now

Hi,

Have you ever visited http://www.business-opportunities.biz website?

You should, there is some good information on there.  There is also a cool widget called “How Much Is Your Blog Worth”.  I ran it when I first started my blog, of course the value was $0.00.  I ran it again today, and this is what it told me:

My blog is worth $9,597.18.
How much is your blog worth?

That makes me happy!  But it’s a looong way to go to get to the value of his blog which is estimated at around $6,000,000.00

Here are a few comparisons for you:

• James Brausch - $124,000 (.com)
• James Brausch - $47,000 (.org)
• Aaron Brandon - $37,000
• Richard Lee - $74,000

Regards,

Mohamed

Posted in Internet Business | No Comments »

Demystifying Reseller Hosting

Hi,

I am nearing completion of my first information product called Demystifying Reseller Hosting, I’m also working on the sales page and would value your feedback.

I will give away 5 copies of the PDF to those individuals that will:

1. Download the file
2. Read it from end-to-end
3. Provide FEEDBACK on the quality of information, and the quality and value of the product
4. Suggestions to improve upon it
5. Provide a testimonial

If you are interested, simply comment to this post (I won’t make them public) and I’ll provide you with a download link once it has been released.

If you will put this onto your virtual bookshelf, and let it gather dust - then this isn’t for you.

I appreciate your help!

Regards,

Mohamed

Posted in Internet Business | No Comments »