The Ebook Cavern Newsletter

When starting out online I found Internet Marketing terms very difficult to understand. The first time I heard of backlinks, fantastico and hits I didn’t have a clue. It all seemed like jargon to me. In this article I explain 26 must know Internet Marketing terms.

AD COPY:- This describes the actual information contained within your advert. If you write an eBay listing then the information it contains is your ad copy. Effective ad wording will in general lead to more sales.

BACKLINK:- Refers to links on other websites that link back to your website. For example, if I place a link on my website http://www.theebookcavern.co.uk/ to my other website http://www.theebookcavernreviews.co.uk/ then this is classed as a backlink. Increasing the number of backlinks to your website is one way to increase the popularity of your website in the search engines.

CAMPAIGN:- Usually refers to advertising campaigns. It describes all the work you are doing to advertise a particular site, service or product. For example, if you advertise via Adwords then this is an Adwords campaign, if you advertise to your newsletter subscribers via email then this is an email campaign.

DEDICATED HOSTING:- A type of hosting where your website is hosted on its own dedicated server. Dedicated hosting provides greater computing power and capacity than shared hosting but is also more expensive.

ECOURSE:- An email course. Usually a series of informational email lessons which aim to teach you a specific topic.

FANTASTICO:- A commercial script library which automatically installs web applications such as blogs and content carts on a website. Fantastico scripts are usually executed through the cpanel area of the website.

GIVE AWAY RIGHTS:- This is when you have the rights to give away the product for free. These rights are particularly useful when you want to offer a free bonus with your paid products or provide a free incentive for people who subscribe to your newsletter.

HITS:- A single hit is recorded each time a file request is made for one of your webpages, images or other files. For example, if a visitor loads one of your webpages with two images this would count as three hits.

IM:- An abbreviation of Internet Marketing. Internet Marketing is simply the process of marketing products or services online to make money.

JAVASCRIPT:- Another type of coding/scripting language that can be used to ‘write’ webpages. Javascript was originally developed by Netscape. It can interact with HTML code allowing web authors to add dynamic content to their website.

KEYWORDS:- Words or phrases that you are trying to target and work with for a given advert, article, website or product. For example, if you are selling a chicken recipes ebook then keywords could include “cooking chicken”, “chicken sauce” etc. The use of keywords is particularly important when trying to generate search engine traffic, as these are the words people will type into search engines to find your article, product, website etc.

LANDING PAGE:- Landing pages are used by affiliates. A landing page is the page in between your advert or article for a merchant product. A review of a product containing an affiliate link to that product would be an example of a landing page.

MAILING LIST:- A list of people who have opted in to receive emails from you and/or your company. A good way to organise your mailing list is through the third party service Aweber which I use myself. Possible uses for a mailing list include sending out an ezine, sending out product details or conducting research.

NEWBIES:- This refers to those who are new to something and in the context of Internet Marketing it refers to people who are new to Internet Marketing.

OPTIN:- This is when someone has opted to be part of your mailing list. Most newsletters now require double optin where someone first opts to be part of your mailing list through a form and then confirms their optin (double optin) by clicking a link in an email that is automatically sent to them after filling out the form. Double optin allows you to comply with many of the rules governing junk email but also allows you to be sure that the optin has an active email address.

PAGE LOADS:- The number of times your webpage has been loaded. It is a popular way of counting people that visit your site but it is not as good as Unique Visitor Count.

RECIPROCAL LINKS:- The process of exchanging links with another website. For example, if I agreed to place a link to http://www.abc.com/ from my website http://www.theebookcavern.co.uk/ and in exchange they placed a link back to my website, then this would be a reciprocal link.

SALES COPY:- This is very similar to Ad Copy. It describes the information written on your sales page. For example, I sell “How to set up a Successful, Automated Ebook Business on eBay” at http://www.theebookcavern.co.uk/. The writing on the sales page is my sales copy.

TEMPLATE:- Refers to a pre-designed webpage which comes with all the relevant text and images. All that is required is for you to fill in the blanks with your own text. For example, all my resellable ebooks (including this one) come with a pre-designed sales page that contains all the relevant text and graphics. All you have to do is perform any edits that you wish.

UNIQUE VISITORS:- A method of measuring traffic to your website which records the number of unique IP addresses that visit your website. For example, if you get 100 visitors to your website each day and 50 of these are from unique IP addresses, then you are getting 50 unique visitors per day.

VIRAL MARKETING:- A method of marketing which relies on people sharing the information you provide to them so that it can reach as wider audience as possible. The name originates from the term ’spreads like a virus’ because your aim is for your marketing efforts to spread across the Internet like a virus. So if you provide some information to 2 people, they pass it on to 2 more people each, then those 4 pass the information on to 2 more people each, your information will soon begin to spread across the Internet. An example of viral marketing is the resellable ebooks in my eBay store. Whilst they provide valuable information to the reader they are also a great promotional tool for me, because the reader will associate the ebooks with The Ebook Cavern.

WORDPRESS:- A popular website and script that is used for blogging (writing and managing your blog). Wordpress blogs allow you to add pages to your blog as well as posts. Check out http://www.wordpress.org/ for more information.

ZWORKS:- A meta search engine located at http://www.zworks.com/.

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About the Author:
Tom Parker is the author of Internet Marketing: A-Z which explains 101 must know Internet Marketing terms. To get a copy visit http://stores.ebay.co.uk/theebookcavern. To receive free tips from Tom regarding selling ebooks on eBay and a free collection of ebooks sign up for his newsletter at http://www.theebookcavern.co.uk/newslettersignup/.

(You may reprint this article on your blog, ezine, newsletter or website providing the article remains unchanged and the ‘About the Author’ box is included and unchanged.)

The Ebook Cavern Newsletter for August 2007 is now available for download.

You can view the HTML version by Clicking Here.

You can view the PDF version by Clicking Here.

I hope you enjoy it. Please leave your comments once you’ve had a chance to read the newsletter. They will be much appreciated.

If you have been reading my previous articles then you’re probably aware that I believe that an email list is one of the most valuable tools you can have at your disposal when selling digital products online. In fact, the majority of texts that cover selling online will agree with this point. Therefore, I’ve decided to base my next few articles on the subject of building an email list.

Now before you start building an email list there are a number of things you need to consider. Some of these are points that I personally considered before starting my email list. Others are factors I just wish I had considered before starting my email list. However, now that I have the benefit of hindsight I’ve collated a list of top tips to consider before starting your own email list:

1) Type of Autoresponder:- Before you start building an email list you need an autoresponder program to store all your email addresses. There are two types of autoresponder; Self Hosted (you host the autoresponder software yourself) and Third Party (you pay a monthly subscription fee to a company who will take care of your autoresponder for you).

Now I’m no expert on the subject but I have read that although Self Hosted solutions are cheaper (once you have purchased the software that’s all you have to pay), people often run into problems somewhere down the line. These problems include emails going straight into customers SPAM folders, emails not being delivered etc.

Although a Third Party solution is an ongoing expense, I feel this expense is justified. Third Party autoresponders usually provide very reliable email delivery rates, keep backups of your customer email lists and most importantly keep up to date with all the related legislation. If a new piece of legislation is introduced which you are unaware of and you are using a Self Hosted autoresponder you could potentially violate this legislation, landing yourself in very hot water. With a Third Party autoresponder, issues such as this are their responsibility and not yours. I personally use and recommend the third party autoresponder Aweber.

2) Number of Lists:- When I started The Ebook Cavern Newsletter I simply had all leads from all my websites subscribe to the same list. However, then I began to think that people who subscribe to my list after reading one of my reviews may not be be interested in the same topics as subscribers who came from my eBay About Me page. Therefore, I sat down, considered the different interests of my customers and then created different specific lists to match their interests e.g. an eBay list, a reviews list etc. Now when a lead subscribes they are added to a specific list depending on the website they subscribed from e.g. leads from my eBay About Me Page are subscribed to my eBay list. Every subscriber is also added to a main list.

By doing this I am now better equipped to cater to my customer needs. I can offer eBay leads free ebooks with resell rights and eBay offers, whilst offering leads from my reviews website free product reviews. If I want to communicate with all my subscribers then I have the option to do this by sending an email to my main list.

Although you don’t need to consider the number of the lists from the start I find it certainly helps. If you organise your lists in this way from the beginning you have a very good idea of what you’re different customer segments want and you can focus your marketing efforts accordingly.

3) Communication with your List:- Once you have decided upon your autoresponder program and the number of lists you will be operating, you need to consider how you will be communicating with your leads. Are you going to send out a regular email newsletter? Are you going to send out a combination of free ebooks and promotional offers? Are you simply going to offer product discounts to your list? These are important questions which you need to consider and then make a final decision.

My personal opinion is that a regular newsletter is the best way to keep subscribers up to date with what’s going on. In between each newsletter I send out offers which I believe would be of interest to my list. However, this is a very subjective topic and the final decision is down to you.

4) Incentive to Join:- In most cases you need to offer subscribers to your email list an incentive to join. This can include; a free digital product, a free newsletter or product discounts. It is wise to consider the incentive before you start your email list so that it is relevant. You don’t want to offer a free ebook on gardening if you are building a list in the health and fitness niche. Similarly, product discounts may only be a good incentive in certain niches. You therefore need to think carefully about the best incentive to fit your niche.

I personally believe the best incentive is a unique product (such as an ebook) that you have personally created. Offering a unique, self created product to your leads provides you with a great opportunity to demonstrate your expertise. If it’s a good quality product your leads will trust you and be more willing to buy from you. Furthermore, if subscribers pass on this unique product to other people it can act as a valuable promotional tool for you.

5) Newsletter Format:- If you are going to be sending out an email newsletter to your subscribers you really need to consider the newsletter format. You can deliver your newsletter as a plain text email, deliver it as a PDF file, post it on a webpage, post it on a blog or even have an audio/video newsletter. You need to make this decision before you start your email list so that all the relevant issues (including newsletter creation and newsletter hosting) are sorted prior to your newsletter’s launch.

I personally host my newsletter as a WordPress blog. I post each newsletter to the blog in both a HTML and PDF version. Prior to this I hosted my newsletter on a website. I made the decision to change to a blog because it is so much easier to organise and it allows readers to interact by posting comments on the blog. Changing from a website to a blog took me quite a lot of time which I could have saved IF I had considered WordPress blogs from the beginning. Therefore, I highly recommend you make the decision about your newsletter format at before you send your first newsletter.

Like with many online activities, preparation is key. Follow the five steps and you will have everything in place to launch your first email list.

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About the Author:
Tom Parker is an eBay Ebook PowerSeller who sells ebooks and software at http://stores.ebay.co.uk/theebookcavern. To receive free tips from Tom regarding selling ebooks on eBay and a free collection of ebooks sign up for his newsletter at http://www.theebookcavern.co.uk/newslettersignup/.

(You may reprint this article on your blog, ezine, newsletter or website providing the article remains unchanged and the ‘About the Author’ box is included and unchanged.)