Links pointing to you, links you point to, the text around those links, the age of those sites, the type of sites, the relavence of those sites and more.

How do you get reputable websites to link to you?

I wanted to share some controversial but necessary lessons to business. If you haven’t been in business at least 5 years, you may not agree with all of this and you’re likely to be shocked that I said it, but it’s all true. You’d be best off to take this as a hard lump gospel that’s tough to swallow but true, than to fight it and learn it the hard way.

#1 – Staff & Friends

Some have a policy of “Don’t hire friends”. I now completely understand why. I don’t agree 100% with the policy, but I now understand… the rule should be “Don’t hire friends unless the expectations are abundantly clear and you can live with having to fire them”. Most people can’t handle firing friends, which is probably why they’d rather not hire them. If that’s you, don’t hire them. Fact is though, that not everyone’s cut out for every type of work, and some expectations are hard to make clear. Some just don’t get it when you think your being clear and they need everything a little more black and white. The fact remains true though, hire for attitude train for skills.

#2 – Get a lawyer

Every freelance job should have a contract, and every contract should be viewed by a lawyer. If it hasn’t, your an idiot. Sorry, I don’t want to be rude, and you may think your saving money, you may even believe no one will ever sue you. You MAY even believe that everyone’s generally good inside… But the Bible and the real world beg to differ. Another thing, if it’s not in the contract… DONT DO IT. Not this once, not as a favor, not ever. Especially not if you expect to get paid for it, or if you expect to be recognized for it. I’m not saying don’t over deliver (In fact I intend to always do that) but don’t expect anything from it – and make sure it’s abundantly clear it’s not in the deal. The last thing you want is someone walking all over you or expecting you’ll do extra work for free again in future. It happens… ALOT… so get used to it.

#3 – Stay off Facebook

Completely? No.. Not completely, but if you have an addictive personality, and you like spying on friends and business guru’s and getting feedback from friends, stay away. Have a set day and time you go on Facebook but don’t go there regularly… If you visit Facebook too many times each day, it’ll become your new job, and your new life. Only downside is, there’s no Bursaries from the Minister of Agriculture to Farmville addicts.

#4 – Don’t check email all day

Blackberry addicts will know what i’m talking about, and it’s hard in today’s world. It’s like everyone expects you to be there within a second’s notice.. But look at your heroes… Not the celebrities, not the billionaires, but the everyday business heroes that have happy lives and practical comfortable lives… do you see their eyeballs glued to their blackberry screens? Nope! When your blackberry controls you, you are not in control. You’ll become reactive putting out forest fires as they happen rather than preventative, putting out forest fires BEFORE they happen.

“Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them” – Albert Enstien

Also – don’t and I repeat NEVER respond to an email on an evening or weekend. Do it once, just ONCE… and clients will walk all over you forever. In 2011 I’ll stay even stricter to my office hours.

#5 – Stick with only 3-5 Main Goals for the year

In 2009, I started off with no primary goals. As the year progressed, I produced even more goals… and I followed new goals all the time. Some were to become a master of all things Mac, then Publishing, then PPC, then Social Media, back to salescopy, forward to landing page optimization… All while other things suffered and some weren’t even the primary goals I set out to accomplish! This year, i’ll stick to 3 main web properties… I wont touch any others.

#6 – Bonus – Backups!

It’s nearly January 1st 2011. I’d strongly recommend a backup of all Wordpress Databases, and all computers, client files, pictures, mp3 files, iphone contacts, Gmail emails (yes they may delete you some day), outlook PST files, and anything else I forgot! If you read this and didn’t at least add it to some day on your calendar where you have a free minute… Don’t call me to help retrieve it! Lets make 2011 the year of heroes…

Back it all up today! Make sure you save it in a safe place like your vehicle so it’s safe if your house were to burn down, hard drive corrupt, or online vault disappear… Use good quality CD/DVDs… DONT use an external hard drive.. they wear up and loose data when dropped. Don’t use a thumb drive, they can get flashed or shorted and shocked of their data. Don’t use online services that can go out of business or “Trust the Google”

All of the VERY, VERY best in 2011 guys. I mean it, I hope it’s the best year you’ve ever had. Hug your loved ones, you never know when you might not get another chance, get to know God now, you never know when your last breath will come… This has been a very trying, sad, shocking and rewarding year and it’s left me remembering that what goes on in the office is nothing to stress over.

Daniel J Deyette

It brings a bit of a tear to my eye to think that I had *So* much hope for RSS as a technology back years ago. Back in 2004 when I really started to embrace it and the web was really transforming and web 2.0 was still a new buzz word that was on the tip of everyone’s tongues (even though they didn’t know what it meant! LOL).

Skipping back, I remember conversations with my good friend Scott Paton back in 2005 when we were talking about blogging and RSS. I remember the twinkle in his eye as he described “Really simple syndication” or as consumers called them, “Web Feeds”. RSS Version 1.0 came onto the scene and allowed a constant “feed” of updated pages from a certain website to be fed into a reader of somekind. I remember the “My msn” and “My Yahoo” and “My Google” pages being the first places people added feeds. This was a little trick we used to get the major search engines to find our blogs, actually. Adding your feed to your personal homepage.

When Microsoft was launching Windows 7, they had planned all along to rename RSS (Ironically already deemed really simple), to “Web Feeds” to make consumers understand what they were better. They were planning a screensaver that brought an updated feed of news to your screen while your computer was sleeping. Almost like having an AM news radio in text format on your glowing LCD while your computer’s hard drive rested.

Jeff Nolan writes that Twitter Killed RSS, and while I don’t 100% agree Twitter is entirely to blame, I agree that RSS from a consumer standpoint is really dead now. In fact i’m not entirely sure it was ever really all that popular. It was kind of complicated for most newbies to figure out… and completely understand just how powerful it is.

RSS as a marketing tool

RSS is still incredibly handy for a number of reasons. It’s still being actively used for a ton of things, but it’s not widely publicized. I mean, those who know their “feed” address off their website can easily go to www.pingomatic.com and send the feed address to all the major search engines. Those search engines will check the feed’s updates and add the new findings to their databases.

RSS marketing doesn’t end there though… There’s an entire strategy behind it from Podcasts, to videos to PDF files and other media formats that come over RSS well. There’s also RSS analytics that actually track how many views, hits and clicks your feed address gets (Feedburner has some). Once your feed has exposure, the keywords you pick from your competitive analysis and research combined with your copywriting skills and ability to write compelling headlines that get massive clickthru’s will determine your success.

I tell them, oh that’s simple! It’s the art of writing words that suck money out of a person’s wallet like a vacuum cleaner on drugs! That usually explains it well. Bottom line is, it’s having a certain level of creativity to entice people to take action of some sort. That action could be “give me your email address” or it could be “buy this product”. If you don’t have a passion for writing, or a passion for sales – you probably shouldn’t write your copy. It’s not that you can’t do a descent job, you can… But it’s just like working on your own car versus taking it to the mechanics. It’s always comforting to have skilled hands on a job and have the job take less time and finish up right.

What’s really cool about copywriting…

Last night, I went for my jog around the block and was listening to David Garfunkel’s Copywriting Templates on Mp3. He was explaining the art of storytelling and he mentioned some things he learned about objection handling from a book written in 1932. That’s what’s totally cool about copywriting! The fact is, there’s gems to be had in a thrift store or auction lot… You can learn new tricks and new techniques EVERYWHERE. Books on psychology, books on writing and persuasion… Magazines, newspapers, everything is a potential copywriting resource.

Professional copywriters build up what’s called a swipe file. It’s a personal library of persuasion techniques… These can be impactful headlines, captivating stories, mind sucking descriptions or wordings, powerful pictures etc. These things all combine to make the best place to look when they’re going to write the copy for a product. Hiring a professional copywriter is so insanely important to the success of any marketing campaign.

What does a professional copywriter do for you?

1. First, they set out finding out everything about your target audience that you feel would benefit most from the product. Everything they can dig up. What type of car they drive, where they live, how much money they make, what they like, what they hate etc. Try and get a picture perfect clear idea of this person in the flesh. Writing to someone you know is easier, so a writer *must* meet your prospect.
2. They begin to dive into learning about your product, your industry, the history of the product, the reasons behind it’s creation, a bit more about the creators themselves and why someone took the time to create it. How much money it cost, how much time it cost to make or develop etc. The entire story from one end to the other. What it’s benefits are, what it’s drawbacks are and who would benefit most from it.
3. They build up a swipe file of competitor ads that have run in the last year online, offline etc. They sign up to competitor newsletters, they read competitor press releases and study the market and get to know the key players in the industry. What type of wording are they using to sell their own clients?? What can be borrowed, what can be renovated and what can be re-invented?
   Warning: NEVER believe you have ZERO competition! The competitor to the typewriter was the pencil. People are solving the problem somehow without your invention, and THAT is your competition.
4. A copywriter will then turn to their own swipe file and start finding critical examples of copy that match the purpose and plan and look thru those that have converted well in the past in different markets and similar markets and compare those to what’s currently available.
5. At this stage, it’s time to make a list of objections any prospect might have. These can be gathered from the study info found in #1 (learn about target audience) or from #3 (competitor ads) or from interviewing the folks that sell the product or any friend or family member of the copywriter. Always a good thing to get as large of a list of objections (too expensive, too small, too big, not fast enough, too fast etc..) to a product before writing so they can be answered/handled within the copy if possible.
6. At last, the copywriter writes your headline, the welcome/intro statements, the body and story, the features & benefits, the guarantee, the close, the call to action and other elements.

You can probably see now why there are no overnight copywriting houses? You can also probably see why copywriter’s aren’t cheap. I’ll tell you another secret about picking the perfect copywriter for your project that will inject the exact same amount of excitement you have about your product, book, service, solution as you have… Make sure that the copywriter has also bought the product.

Wait a minute!!

What if it’s not even on the market yet? I don’t mean literally, I simply mean make sure they’ve bought into it. They love it, they see a reason for it and they aren’t faking their passion for it. They genuinely think the product has a chance and should succeed and will sell and everyone should have one. If they don’t truly feel that way, there’s almost no way they can write compelling, exciting, mouth watering, earth shattering copy!

Need a copywriter?
Call 604-626-4820
E: dano@answerswanted.com
Leave a message with the details of your project, product or item you’d like to promote. Lets see if myself or one of my staff can get excited about YOUR project.

Could You Afford a 60% Loss in Business?

Critical Holiday Planning Time is Now

Why should you start planning for the holidays now? Whether your planning on advertising via pay per click (the sponsored results on the top and right side of Google) or with the “organic” free listings that appear on searches, it’s critical to start your planning right now.
The average search campaign takes 3 months to ramp up… With PPC, it’s really the time it takes to find the keywords that convert best so you can delete the words that don’t perform well from within your campaigns.
For search optimization (free results), it takes at least 3 months to build up enough popularity, and have Google find your links and give you proper credit for them in time.
Could You Afford a 60% Loss in Business?
Most people couldn’t imagine that and still survive, and yet many businesses focus all their efforts on pay per click (sponsored results) and not on the organic free listings… Did you know only 33% of all online searchers will click on a PPC ad?
When the holidays come along, deep snow prevents travel… People are more gift focused and it’s really important not only to have your advertising in place, but also to have a storehouse of funding in case sales dwindle or drop.
Contact us today for a completely free basic review of your marketing efforts to this point to see if there’s anthing we could to to make these holidays extra cheery.

Every Highschool Student’s Dream of “getting signed”

Those who aren’t familiar with the story of “The artist formerly known as prince” may not know why he chose to call himself that. Fact is that Sony BMG Music owned the rights to his name. He signed to a major record label much like every new artist dreams of doing. What he didn’t know was the darkside to this future.

In the beginning, signing to a major record label is a dream… They’ve got the funding and the existing media exposure to setup tours, promote tours, buy equipment, hire the best graphic designers and assemble a team for mass promotion at lighting speed. Nothing could be better for your career, right?

It’s the same in the book world. A publisher will have extensive media contacts that go back generations. They’ll have the best graphic designers who know how to make book covers look like something amateurs only dream of designing.
They’ll have editors that never miss a spelling or grammar mistake and they’ll have connections to getting things out there quick…

So what’s the downside of “getting signed”

Most publishers prefer to sign exclusive deals… sometimes on the one book, sometimes on the entire author name like in the case of “The artist formerly known as prince” he actually sold his entire name to Sony BMG Music. When they decided they nolonger wished to promote his music that was it. Because they owned the name they could decide that they not only didn’t want to market him any further, he couldn’t market it himself either as they owned the rights. They were not willing to let go of the rights, or let him produce any more music.

From a business perspective you can see a publisher deciding this, and yet not being willing to give you another chance either. They may decide this because from a business perspective after so many millions go into promotions and fall on dead years and make no more money or sales they may figure there’s no more point in trying even though you yourself may wish to continue!

In these cases there are no second chances. You’ve got a new style? Got a new song? Got a new book idea, or a new way to promote your existing book? Too bad they own it and if they’re not on board you’ll have a long road convincing them.

What prince did…

Prince decided to copyright “The artist formerly known as prince”. They may have owned the rights to the name “prince” but they didn’t own the rights to the new name… Yet fans would instantly recognize what the new name meant meaning he could retain his old audience but under a copyright that he owned the rights to. Thus a star was able to re-birth himself with lots of lawyering and up hill battles.

YOU can avoid those uphill battles!!!

By self publishing a book you do own the rights entirely, but it does come with it’s drawbacks. While you actually can do whatever you want to promote the book and decide to never give up marketing it… You’ll also have to come up with the money and drum up your own media contacts to get the promotion engine fired up.

What does a publisher do?

Leverage media contacts – They’ve been in touch with the media for years and that leverage can be copied to some respect but not 100% the same. What I mean is, you can leverage a PR agency or even publish your own press releases using release services that have similar contacts within the industry. The difference is you won’t get as much earplay as publishers… Publishers are known for producing a certain quality of content, so you will have to basically sell journalists and PR agencies on the quality of your material. That’s not impossible, but be aware of it.

Money – It’s without a doubt a challenging aspect. You probably don’t have millions of dollars so you won’t be able to get a full time graphics guy to design your stuff to the exacting qualities of a publisher. But quite a few freelancers can come awful close and design some pretty good stuff. This is a challenge but not a show stopper.

Publishing/Printing – There’s such a thing as print-on-demand services like Lulu and Cafepress that will print your book for you. They’ll print 5 copies if that’s all you sell or 500. Logically the more books you sell the better price you’ll get on the printing of each individual book. The other thing is the quality does suffer a little bit, they’re not QUITE as well done as a company that does a run of 1000 books or more. BUT… you can start this way and if your selling lots of books switch to getting a run of 1,000 done up or more.

Editorial - You’ll want to get it professionally edited or you won’t be taken seriously. It’s possible to hire recent english majors from a university that just got out of school too but you’ll want to be sure they love the topic and got high marks.

Reviews – Another thing publishers often have is a network of well known authors that can endorse your work on the back dust jacket by giving them review copies. Often review copies aren’t as polished as the final product but it’s the content being judged not the look of the material so that’s fine. You’ll have to manually contact noted authors and hope they’re as fired up about your material and topic as you are. That will require some sales and marketing in the print (mailed documents and letters) and emails, but again not impossible. Something I love doing and my team does too.

Getting on Amazon, Barnes and noble and leveraging the affiliates and resellers that exist joined to the affiliate programs of Amazon and barnes and noble isn’t impossible and there’s many websites that exist solely to promote books on these services. Getting on Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble’s “Nook” product and lots of other e-readers isn’t hard either..

Hope that gives you a long hard look into self publishing. It’s not an impossible road but certainly not an easy one but it yeilds more fruit and more money in the long run as you retain more royalties and more money than any other way.

How do you get the promotion money without signing your soul away?

Our team can help you with these aspects if you wish – AND there are independent book programs out there that even have contests and awards where you could win up to $100,000 in sponsorship to help promote your new book if you submit your new works and they win awards… Indie awards mean you could get money to promote your book without having to sign your name off to someone.

Why should you analyze competing websites?

Shouldn’t you know how long their websites have been out there?
Are they new to the scene or have they been online for years?
How long will it take you to get there?
How long ago did google stop by their website and cache it?
How many links on the web are pointing to them?
Which directories are they members of?
What’s their alexa rank?
Which pages of their site are ranking best?

Which keyword would be easy to rank for right now instead of years from now?

Email me for a free copy of this report showing the dramatic difference between these two keywords and how one has much stiffer competition than the other.
Ask about our keyword research too. Basic reports starting from $29.95.

Our 10 keyword analysis report for $49 ends Sept 30th 2010 and is limited to the first 10 customers.
Call 604-626-4820 or email dano@answerswanted.com now before it’s too late.

$699+ Tax (no tax for non Canadian residents)
Offer Ends Sept 30th 2010 for the first 5 people.
Call 604-626-4820 – Email: dano@answerswanted.com for Details.

Fact is – Template design and theme design is no child’s play. Especially when wanting a professional look and feel. BUT… For a user who has HTML and some understanding of PHP it’s not hard. We really shine for our clients when we produce sales… We feel that for the companies that have the internal resources to do the work themselves can hopefully get us closer to the MARKETING Part of the process.

We’re all about results… So with that, Lets start part one of the series on Developing Wordpress Themes.

Why Bother?

When developing a regular old fashioned website using strictly HTML + CSS with static pages, the website isn’t interactive… Web 2.0 requires that your customers and consumers are able to comment and join the conversation. Easily plugged in Facebook, Twitter and other things.

Saves you hours of coding, and your staff (marketing teams and writing teams) can get editor logins where they can update the site, add new posts to the blog without access to the admin areas. The Web editor in Wordpress is as easy as Micrsoft Word… but if that’s not enough, you can even click “paste from word” if you really would rather write the post IN WORD.

So… The process of building a Theme…

Wordpress functions great as a content management system for a number of reasons. You can turn on or off almost any feature including comments, categories etc. The other thing is, the constant security updates are not affected by a custom theme. In fact… Wordpress states in their code repository, that this is one area that isn’t affected by upgrades! In otherwords, you can theme to your heart’s content and still maintain a fresh version and the security and stability upgrades.

Part 1 – Using wordpress as a CMS and designing your own custom themes…

Here is the theme structure.

If you have your own web design, and you want to bring it into wordpress… The simple way of doing that (i’ll explain in more detail in a future post) is to use something like Dreamweaver… Go to where your content starts… The area where you’d normally start writing the words to your website…

Place your cursor there, where the arrow in this image above is pointing, and then go to the code view in Dreamweaver…

Now, simply highlight everything from where the cursor showed up, all the way up… That section is your Header.php. If you want the world’s simplest wordpress design ever and only want it for adding new pages to your website, simply add the latter half of your code to the footer.php and you’ve finished.

I’ll go into greater detail when I have time.

Thanks!