The hundreds of built-in features eliminate the need to download extra plugins which can often slow down your site or even worse, expose your website to security risks. Most WordPress gurus would tell you to stay away from third party plugins as much as possible, so this is a big plus for me.

My Favorite Optimize Press Features:

• Squeeze Page Templates
  
• Sales Page Templates
• Blog & Blog Page Template
• Launch Pages
• Membership Pages
• Over 100 Built In Short Codes
• Built In SEO Options
• Exit Popup Opt-in Options 
• Exit Re-direct Options
• Built In Page Re-direct Options

How Does OptimizePress Measure Up Against Other Premium Themes?

The Number One Mistake That Small Businesses Make

Well, there’s actually two parts to this as they go hand in hand with each other.

The first mistake that I see most small business owners make is not claiming your local listing and filling out the proper information  about your business on the three major search engines.

Just in case you’ve been living in the dark ages the past decade, the three search engines I’m talking about are Google, Yahoo and Bing. Here are the links to claim your listing at each of them:

• Google Places
• Yahoo Local Listing
• Bing Business Portal

If you’re not utilizing these free listings, you are missing out on potential customers or clients!

These are completely free to set up, the only thing it will cost you is some time – But, don’t just start clicking on the links and claiming your listing just yet because I’m gonna reveal the second part of the simple mistake  small businesses make.

When you claim these listings, make sure you fill out all of the information possible about your business.

Yahoo won’t let you upload a logo or other images of your business without upgrading to a premium listing, but Google and Bing allow you to upload up to 10 pictures to be featured on your listing – UTILIZE IT!

Along with the pictures of your business, try including an image with a call to action such as “Call Us Today” or even a picture of a current coupon that you offer in a local newspaper. This will help your listing stand out from your competition that doesn’t know about these simple techniques. Another great feature in your Google Places dashboard is the “Offers” tab which allows you to promote a coupon on your page, and another feature that allows you to post live updates to your page to promote special offers and such.

Is That All It Takes To Dominate On Google?

No, what I explained above are just basic steps that every local business should be utilizing to help increase brand awareness and overall exposure.

With thousands of free and paid listings on the web (I’m personally not a fan of the paid listings, but in certain cases they can be useful), you should utilize all of the free directories related to your business because it will help you gradually see an increase in rankings and traffic to your website.

Every time you list your business information on these directories, it gives you a backlink to your website from theirs and it’s making a citation of your business information on the web. This gives your business a sense of credibility in the search engines eye’s because of all these other sites pointing to yours.

There are other things that also factor in to get top rankings, such as:

• A well structured website for the search engines and your visitors
• An overall positive rating from different user reviews across the web
• A good social media presence (Facebook, Twitter, G+ and others similar social media sites)
• A good product or service offered to your customers

I think the last one in that list is the first and foremost important aspect because if you don’t provide value to your customers they will not return. But, in order to get your business found by new customers, it’s important that you at least cover the basics that I listed here so that you can be “in the running” with your competition.

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If you’re an affiliate marketer, you probably know how difficult it can be when trying to use banners to make your website look like an actual online store. I’ve created dozens of websites with the intention of selling different products without much success, and when I look back on it the main reason is because none of my websites actually looked like an online store.

I just recently found a website plugin that will change the way affiliates build websites, and I’m not kidding. The plugin that I’m talking about is called Datafeedr and it is the only thing that I will build my online stores with ever again.

The Downfall

Datafeedr requires a monthly fee of $27 and some basic knowledge of WordPress, and it can be a bit tough learning how to get your store set up the way you want it. But, the owners Eric and Stefan have some pretty detailed videos to show you exactly how to customize an online store that will look the way you want.

The Positive

This plugin allows you to easily choose the affiliate programs that you are actively participating in and it automatically adds/refreshes for new products after you set it up. Itis literally something that you can set and forget while it continuously makes you money. There is also a 30 day money back guarantee in case it’s not right for you.

If you want to know how to start an online store without inventory, there is no way that you can pass up this opportunity. To make it even better, if you buy through my affiliate link and you cannot figure out how to use the Datafeedr plugin from the training videos provided by the owners, I will give you up to *30 minutes of training by me to help you make the most out of your purchase.  You can find my email address at the top right of this website with the mail icon.

Some of you who are reading this might have no idea what affiliate marketing is. If this is the case for you I highly suggest checking out the Wealthy Affiliate University, it’s the place where I learned a good portion of what I know today about internet marketing.

*In order to get the free 30 minutes of training from me, you the link on my site should be the last one you click before subscribing to Datafeedr.

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The first site that I am going to tell you about is Social Monkee, which allows you to get 25 free social bookmark backlinks every day for free. All you have to do is create a title, short description, keyword tags and then hit the submit button and everything is good to go. If you are familiar with the “Google Panda Update” you probably already know that social media has started to make an effect on how they rank sites on the results page.

Social Monkee also offers a premium version (which is currently on sale for $47) that allows you to have 100 bookmark submissions per day, along with the ability to drip feed your baklinks. This is a really good deal because it’s only a one time payment and the value you can get out of this is tremendous.

The next place that I use to get 5 free backlinks every day is Social Adr. This is another social bookmark submission site, and it takes a bit of time to set up accounts (like an hour or two). Once you get everything set up it only takes about 1 minute each day to login and create your backlinks.

Although Social Adr does not give as many backlinks and takes more time to set up, I still find value in it because of the links I get pointing to my website. If you have any questions or comments about these please feel free to do so below.

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Every Website Needs A Goal

There are different goals that each person will have when going into building a website, and it really depends on what kind of business you are running as to what your goal should ultimately be. Here are the main ones:

1. To sell a service – people like lawyers and web designers are examples of businesses who sell a service.
2. To sell a product (digital or physical) – eCommerce retailers and brick and mortar businesses are usually the types of businesses with this kind of goal.
3. To inform people about something – These are usually sites like Wikipedia and .edu sites from universities so that people can find a solution to a question.
4. Getting people to come to your business – Restaurants, Hotels and Bars are just a few of the types of businesses that will have this goal.

A clear call to action

Once you have a clear goal you should now focus on the content of your website and making sure that you have a clear “call to action” for people to take when arriving to your site. A “call to action” is when you tell your visitor what to do when they get to your site. This is usually done by have a message that is visible as soon as you arrive to the site with some sort of link, or button that urges you to either buy a product or sign up for an email list.

Keep it above the fold

It’s important to keep your call to action “above the fold”, which means that it appears on the top half of the website so that when people arrive on your site they do not have to scroll down the page to see it. The reason for this is because of the way people read websites, which in a nutshell people normally just scan websites while browsing. I have a post on the F Pattern that explains the importance of how you set up your website.

Let your products or services sell themselves

Hard selling products or services can often times turn people away from doing business with you. Simply put people are sick and tired of the sales pitch and just want some honesty, and that is why you should write to inform people about what you have to offer. Try to solve the question or problem your website visitor is looking for, and pointing out the pros and cons for people to see will gain a lot more respect than if you hadn’t. This is how you gain long term and repeat business.

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I remember there were several nice looking templates to choose from, but the problem was there were limited things I could do to customize it. This was a big problem, with a language barrier for the support system and no experience with html, I thought that I was doomed.

Now my hunt began for a website builder that I could just “drag and drop” the stuff I wanted to do. After a few days of doing research I stumbled upon a website builder called Weebly that allowed you to build a free website so that you could try it before you buy it.

Weebly was the “drag and drop” website solution to all of my problem’s, and boy oh boy was it just in the nick of time because I was close to blowing a gasket. To make it even better the price tag was even cheaper than the other hosting I had, and I could have up to 10 websites with my Weebly Pro account.

I made a video to show you how easy it is to use, you can literally build a website within minutes once you get good with using it. The video is about 6 minutes long and just goes over the basics of starting to build a website. I will make additional videos to show more of the features and how to use them.

How To Build A Free Website With Weebly

 You can see what I’m doing in the video a lot clearer if you view it in the full page view.

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To answer that question, Yes there is definitely a right and wrong way to go about this. I’ve seen this happen way too much on the affiliate marketing side of business in particular, so I would like to go into detail on the proper way comment on blogs.

Find Industry Related Blogs

First off, you should know that blog commenting is one of the best ways to acquire backlinks to your website and if done properly it can increase traffic and brand recognition. Staying on topic with your type of business is important because it can help you build up a reputation as an expert in your niche. If you are in the internet marketing niche, you should not be targeting blogs that are about fantasy football in hopes of receiving a good backlink. While this method may work for some people, it’s usually not going to score you any brownie points with the fantasy football crowd of folks who will probably look at your internet marketing posts with an awkward eye. Those people are on that blog because they want to talk about who scored the most points over the weekend, and not about how they can help their business with internet marketing… which takes us to the next step:

Be Engaging With Your Crowd

If you at a blog and are not sure what to say, just look at what others are saying and try to add your opinion about the subject. If you see someone asking a question that hasn’t been answered yet and you know the answer, go ahead and give it a shot. When doing this you should always try to use proper grammar, spelling and punctuation. They didn’t teach us this stuff in school for nothing, just try to think when doing this that all of these readers could be potential clients after reading what you’ve posted. If there is not a question that needs answered, feel free to give an opinion on the matter. I usually like to lead my comment with some statement and end it with a question so that others will feel intrigued to add in their thoughts.

Capture Interest By Staying On Topic

If you are trying to sell raincoats at a baseball game on a 85 degree sunny day, the odds are you won’t be getting too many interested buyers. This is also true with blog commenting. If you are on an internet marketing blog post that is talking about the Google Panda Update, and your comment is about how to learn affiliate marketing, people will probably tend to ignore your comment because it’s off topic and not interesting to them. After all, most people will go to that same blog to read about the Google Panda Update and will not be thinking about anything off this topic.

Get Attention To Your Blog Comments

A great way to start getting a conversation going is to share your blog comment on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Encourage friends or co-workers to take a look at some of the blogs that you comment on, just don’t go overboard and be pushy about it. A suggestion is to post a status update on one of these social media sites and say something like “I just commented on -example post-, what’s your opinion?” so this way you are encouraging people to go look at it while leaving a bit of curiosity too.

These simple steps can leave an impact about the way others on the internet perceive you and your business, so keep this in mind the next time you are blogging for your business.

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I first started using WordPress when I joined at the Wealthy Affiliate University, and I remember how I couldn’t find any simple WordPress themes for me to use. Since I know how

difficult it can be in the beginning when you’re first starting out in affiliate marketing, I feel that I should share with you what I’ve found in hopes that it can save somebody else out there a whole lot of time struggling to to find that great theme you are looking for.

The first simple WordPress theme I found was Socrates. This theme was created by Joe Comm and Dan Nickerson, and when they did so the purpose was to keep affiliates and other internet marketers in mind with the user friendly customization’s. It is Adsense and ClickBank monetized, search engine optimized, and comes with over 220 niche header design’s. The support forum is by far one of the best I’ve encountered. I had plenty of questions my first few months using this theme and every time Dan Nickerson answered them within a few hours. I was impressed to say the least.

There are several different options when buying the Socrates theme. You can buy a single site license, an unlimited site license or even a developers license if you are making sites for customers. One of the great things about this theme is that you can Try It Free For 7 Days with no obligation to buy, but if you’re a serious affiliate like me I’m sure you’ll want this one in your arsenal.

The next theme that I’m going to tell you about is iFeature Pro by CyberChimps which is my all time favorite, and it is the same theme that I’m using for this website at the time of me writing this. It’s something about this one that I particularly like, and I cannot quite pinpoint any one particular reason for me feeling this way.

I’m going to start by telling you that this simple WordPress theme allows you to select on any page whether you want a sidebar on the right side, two sidebars on the right side, a sidebar on the left and right side or even a full width page. On each individual page you can create a custom image slider that has all kinds customization options, and it is by far the easiest slider I’ve dealt with once I figured out how to work it. There is also a “callout section”, this you can put a call to action at the top of any page with custom text and a button that you can change colors to.

This theme is also SEO friendly, and unlike a lot of other themes that claim to be so, CyberChimps themes truly are. You can set meta data for your page title, description and keywords to tell the search engines what to display in the SERPS when your website is queried. There are lots of other cool feature it has that I’m not mentioning in this post, but if you want try the Free Version of CyberChimps and take it for a test run.

I personally use both of these themes, and still use them today. I’ve purchased the unlimited license of Socrates and a developers license of it, while I’ve also purchased iFeature Pro and its sister themes Business Pro and Neuro Pro. If you end up buying one of these themes through one of my affiliate links above I would be happy to share a tutorial video with you to show you around a bit and how I customize my sites with these themes.

I hope these simple WordPress themes can be of help to you, and if so please feel free to share this with a friend.

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They say that the “F is for fast”. This is usually the way you can describe how a visitor looks at your website. It is said that you only have 3 seconds to capture the attention of your visitor, so if you have something to say I recommend that you do it “above the fold” and have a strong call to action that gives value to that person.

Really though, the F does not actually stand for fast. The F is the pattern in which most people’s eyes focus on while visiting websites, as you can see in the picture below. There have been eye tracking studies which  reveal how the majority of people read content while looking at websites, and the results can be very useful for people who design websites.

There are 3 distinguished eye patterns

First, the majority of people will read your site in horizontal manner. This usually starts from the top left of the page moving over to the right of the page at the same height from which they began, which forms the top of the letter F on the pattern.

Second, the users move down the page just a little bit and make the second horizontal look at the website. This typically covers a smaller area than the first horizontal look and this line forms the bottom line in the letter F on the pattern.

Third, the users view the site in a vertical manner on the left side of the website. This is what forms the F’s stem in the pattern.

This study isn’t exactly saying that all people visit a website in this manner, but it’s more directed to simply how a good majority of users do. Whether or not you take this into consideration could mean a huge difference when you are planning the design or redesign of your website.

What does this have to do with my business?

Every website should have a goal for you or your business, whether it’s a brick and mortar business or an e-commerce business. If you own a local business your goal should probably be for collecting an email address or for users to call your business to inquire about your goods or services. If you own an e-commerce website your goal will probably be something like increase sales on your products.

If you have a strong call to action that is above the fold, which is the top part of the website that you can see without scrolling down, it can drastically increase leads and sales. This is often one of the steps taken into consideration when internet marketers talk about on page optimization, at least marketers who know about the F Pattern.

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For years there have been a set of fundamental principles by Sun Tzu in “The Art of War” that businesses use to help them become successful. I was inspired to write this to enlighten those of you who are not familiar with this business plan and help to refresh the memory of those who already know it.

The fundamental principles of business are merely just guidelines for success. Although you do not always have to follow these principles, by ignoring them is taking a big risk with your business and is a major reason why many businesses fail in their first year.  The reason is because Professionals are aware of the basics of business rules and amateurs often ignore these rules, which leaves the odds in favor of the Professionals.

Here is the list of Fundamental Principles for a Successful Business:

Organize an Intelligence System - First off, you should always know the market that you are going into. This should be something you know like the back of your hand, because if not there will be someone else out there who does and your lack of knowledge will eventually be exposed. Your decision making should be driven by data.

Maintain Your Objectives – Determine a clear direction that you want your business to go and make sure you do not lose your aim. When you wander down side tracks is when you lose sight of the true purpose of your business. This is very important to keep your goals always in sight.

Establish a Secure Position – Strengthen the core of your competencies more than your competitor does. This will help you occupy a position that cannot easily be taken from opponents in your market because of the preparations that you’ve made in securing this position.

Keep on the Offensive – When you keep an offensive position it enables you to be free in your actions, which keeps you in control of the situation that you’re in. When you are on the defensive, it causes you to be reactive instead of proactive.

Plan Surprises – One of the best ways to gain psychological dominance and deny the initiative of your opponent is to catch them by surprise. An essential component of this is speed, so that your competition cannot keep up with what your business is doing.

Think Maneuver – Think of how you can put yourself at an advantage while at the same time putting your competition at a disadvantage. Find the niche in your market that is lightly defended or even completely unoccupied by competitors so that you can begin to dominate this sector.

Concentrate Your Resources - Use your superior forces at the precise place and time that they need to be. Be a guerrilla when you cannot be a gorilla! The person who is strongest at any given time and place will always defeat the weakest, so always know when and where to “fight your battles”.

Practice Economy of Force – When you concentrate all of your strengths in one area, you will become weak in other areas. Learn how to focus your strengths in more than one area without neglecting certain aspects of your business.

Keep It Simple – The simple things, they simply work best. Even the simple plans can be tough to execute.

Applying these principles should be an art. It’s within this art that your judgement should come into play. To know these guidelines and to simply ignore them is plain old stupidity. Although you may have to stray from these at times it is best to always keep on track and only stray if you have a valid reason.

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