30 Common Website/WordPress Mistakes by both Novices & Pro Authors

1. Allowing your content to be author-focused instead of reader-focused
2. Using WordPress.com instead of self-hosted WordPress (.org)
3. Using a generic or defective theme
4. Not designing for mobile use
5. Not optimizing pages and images for SEO
6. Not properly integrating social media
7. Not setting up the permalinks properly (A.K.A. ugly permalinks)
8. Too many categories, not enough tags
9. Letting it be too design heavy or too boring
10. Overwhelming your visitors
    Too many navigation links
    Too much on the home page
    Too many pop-ups and moving graphics
    Too many ads
11. Not using video to the best of your abilities
12. Not making it easy for visitors to connect with you on social media
13. Not making your book’s buy-now button easy to find
14. Not offering an easy way for visitors to get on your list (appealing incentives?)
15. Not using effective calls to action (where are you leading them?)
16. Not taking full advantage of the scripts that are available such as
    Google XML Sitemaps
    Contact Form 7
    Akismet
    All in One SEO Pack
17. Running too many unnecessary scripts
18. Trying to run e-commerce plugins on WordPress
19. Not posting on the blog often enough
20. Not having a regular backup of your database & site files
21. Not using Google Analytics
22. Not using Webmaster tools to get your site indexed
23. Ignoring Google Authorship Markup
24. Not using a Gravatar (Globally Recognized Avatar)
25. Not customizing the Favicon
26. Not taking advantage tools like CDN and CACHE that help your site load faster
27. Ignoring WordPress updates
28. Going with a faulty hosting company just because it is cheaper
29. Not taking steps to further “harden” your WordPress site (here are just a few)
    Not using proper security plugins
    Not changing the default username from “admin”
    Not changing the “wp_” prefix of your database table

30. Not talking to your website designer about all of this!

Contact Cherished Solutions today to discuss your website and WordPress needs.

One of the best ways to sell books is through the one-on-one contact that occurs with book signings. That’s why we’re recommending you check out P. A. Ritzer’s instructional guideon how to sell books at a bookstore book signing. P. A. Ritzer has sold thousands of copies of his first book, the award-winning historical Western Seven Ox Seven, Part One: Escondido Bound, at over 175 bookstore book signings (over 165 at Barnes & Noble stores alone). He has written Love and the Art of Bookstore Book Signing as an answer to authors, bookstore personnel, distributors, and others in the book business who have sought to know how he does it.

Ritzer does not just detail a method but goes to the heart of the matter. He exposes the real basis of his success in interacting with customers and the people who help him sell books. In Love and the Art of Bookstore Book Signing, Ritzer shows that an author need not be a celebrity to make book signings rewarding for himself and the stores and their customers. Rather, he can create the kind of experience that inspires customers to buy his book and managers to invite him back for 18 or more successful signings of the same book at one store.

Reviews

“This is a one-of-a-kind book on jumpstarting your book sales. P. A. Ritzer has achieved remarkable success in bookstore book signings. In ‘Love and the Art of Bookstore Book Signing’ he shares the principles and practices that have led to that success. It is a valuable read and resource for any who would like to make their book sail up the charts.”— Dan Poynter, author, The Self-Publishing Manual

“If P. A. Ritzer is open to sharing his passion for bookstore signings, we should listen carefully. His signings are a phenomenon the likes of which I have not seen in my 35 years in publishing and book distribution.”— Chris Bell, Vice President and Chief Operations Officer of Midpoint Trade Books

“P. A. Ritzer, author of Seven Ox Seven, is one of the best authors for a book signing for many reasons. First and foremost, he has a terrific work ethic. . . . He becomes and is a presence in the store. . . . Mr. Ritzer is versed in the art of a book signing and wields his knowledge and experience well.”— Joel McCree, Store Manager, Barnes & Noble, Colorado Springs, CO

“P. A. Ritzer has the art of author bookstore signings down to a science. His consistent sales results through in-store book signings are truly remarkable.”— Alexander M. Kampmann, Director, Trade Sales of Midpoint Trade Books

“P. A. Ritzer is an author, yes, but it is because of his great ability to engage our customers like a neighbor and a friend that he is also a regular bookseller in our store. I wish all authors would approach and sell to customers like he does. He has been by far the most successful author to sign and sell books in this store. He knows how to move books, and that is what the retail environment needs from authors today. Because of his gifted ability to sell, P. A. Ritzer has been and continues to be a tremendous asset to our team.”— Eric Welch, Store Manager, Barnes & Noble, Fort Collins, CO

Cherished Solutions (including Something to Cherish and Been Cherished)  is excited to announce that we will be participating in this year’s Author University Extravaganza for authors and writers.

Of course, we will be there offering the finest illustration, website, book and marketing design services around (check us out at CherishedSolutions.com). You will also get to learn about the latest publishing trends from some of the top experts in the nation!

I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to share this time sensitive info with you, so here it goes:

Author U Annual Extravaganza
May 6-7, 2011

Soaring Your Book to the Rock Star Stratosphere – Aurora, Colorado

Over two powerful days, you will work with amazing book marketing strategists, publicists, Internet gurus, rock star branders, creative geniuses … all done in an intense workshop environment …

Can’t come to Colorado? Participate via LIVE Broadcast and DVDs

The Extravaganza Speakers:

Craig Duswalt Create Your Own Rock Star Branding—participants will learn all the elements of creating Rock Star Branding with Craig … if Guns n’ Roses loved him, so will you!

Chuck Blakeman Rock Stars Get Off the Treadmill “Making Money Is Killing Your Business” was selected by the National Federation of Business Owners as the #1 book this year—ahead of Seth Godin at #6. His session will focus on authoring/books.

Justin Matott Rock Stars Make “Creativity” Their Middle Name is at the core of winning books … no one does it better than Justin. High energy, perfect way to end two high power days.

Joan Stewart Become a Rock Star Harnessing the Internet comes to Colorado and will work with both traditional publicity and social media options.

Eric Kampmann Create Rock Star Author Power with Partner Publishing will be a new relationship for the self and independent Author/Publisher. Eric will explore options and how to set up.

Alex Carroll Rock Stars Reach Millions For Free — Without Leaving Home will do an interactive workshop with participants on state to learn how to “pitch” to a producer plus find the right radio market.

Peggy McColl Create a Rock Star Amazon Bestseller, her workshop will be a hands-on on how to do it.

Marcella Smith Publishing’s Insider, Insider will present a thought provoking vision of what’s happening and the future of publishing in a special, Dinner with Marcella on Friday.

Tom Campbell Rock Star Printers Reveal All that includes many of the Exhibitors, this won’t just me a panel … it’s what’s what in the book world today.

So, will you join us?

Register Now

(Hurry, the Early Bird Deal Ends April 15th!)

Author U (niversity) is a community of writers, authors, small and independent publishers. It’s for you if you want to learn about …

• ·       Writing a book;
• ·       Creating one that will find a following;
• ·       Strategizing the steps to be successful;
• ·       Developing a game-plan that has roots;
• ·       Publishing a book that turns heads;
• ·       Marketing moxie that creates results;
• ·       Publicity tactics that work;
• ·       Gizmos, gadgets and technology; and
• ·       Achieving Amazing Results

See You there!
~Cherish Flieder & Benjamin Hummel

Free Submission list of Universal Search Engines and Directories

Many people seem to think that selling on the Internet is a complete mystery. Funny how we see the Net as its own entity instead of just another marketing channel.

When I meet people and they say they’re going to start an “Internet business”, I get worried. It’s as if that’s all they need to know — not what they’re selling or who their customers are. (I mean, when faxes first came out, did you hear people saying they were just starting a “fax business”? Not really.)

The Internet is just one type of media that can sell for your business, and it follows a sales cycle like any other. It’s not magic … it’s a process.

But once you WORK that process, it CAN work like magic!

So let’s look at the five basic parts of the Internet sales cycle:

1. Collect Leads

Who are you looking for? Your answer should match your ideal client or customer. (Please don’t say that’s “everybody”!) Do you market to women? Men? What ages? What professions? Certain areas of the country or world? What publications do they read? What interests do they have?

The answers to these questions will help you determine where and how you can find these folks. There are tons of ways to get leads online: search engines, pay-per-click ads, banner ads, articles, blogs, directories, and other types of advertising and promotions.

2. Get Them in Your Funnel

Once you’ve found who you’re looking for, you need to get them in your “sales funnel”. On the Internet, that means get them on your list. The best way to make this easy is to offer a free ezine or e-course.

On your website, getting visitors on your list should be your #1 objective! Why? Up to 99% of your first-time visitors will not buy from you or even contact you. They’ll take a quick look and then click away, and you’ve lost them forever. These people are already valuable prospects — they took the time to find your site and are interested in the subject matter or products you deal with. Does your home page or landing page give the visitor a bazillion choices? If so, ditch the clutter and give them a compelling invitation to sign up for your ezine or e-course.

3. Follow Up

Marketing studies have always shown that your prospects need to be exposed to your message at least 9 times before they’ll take action! (Some say it takes even more times on the Internet.)

In traditional sales, real people had to follow up with their prospects via live meetings, phone calls, or postal mailings… over and over and over. What a lot of work! But the Internet makes all this easy, instant, practically free, and … automatic.

This is where your ezine or e-course works like a charm, following up for you automatically. In fact, with many of the programs available today, you can schedule email messages up to two years away! It’s like putting your marketing on auto-pilot, so you can just “set it and forget it”!

4. Close the Sale

The goal of your ezine or e-course should be to drive the reader to buying what you have. Of course you’re also providing useful content and information — that’s why they got on your list, and that’s why they’ll stay on your list. But your underlying objective is to make more sales.

Most people make the mistake of trying to sell from the actual email. That is, drive them straight from the email to taking out their wallet. This is usually not effective for two reasons: 1) you don’t have the room in an email to fully explain what you’re selling and demonstrate its value to the prospect, 2) it can turn people off who aren’t ready to buy yet, and you’ll lose those prospects from your list.

The idea of the email is to get them excited about your offering and to get them to CLICK.

Once they click, they’re taken to a sales page that you set up specifically for that product or service you’re promoting. It’s THERE that the prospect will get the full scoop on how great it is, why they need it, how much it costs, how to order, etc.

5. Upsell, and Upsell Again

Here’s the biggest mistake I made when I started to sell my first information product online (Boost Business With Your Own Ezine): It was the ONLY product I had to offer for 2 whole years! So once anyone bought it, I had nothing else in my funnel to sell them. (Marketers also call this having a “back end” product.) That meant I had to work extra hard at finding new prospects all the time.

Smart salespeople know it’s much easier to sell to people who have already bought from you than to constantly go out and find new prospects.

I finally realized I already had thousands of valuable customers who knew, liked, and trusted me. They’d already purchased a product from me that they were happy with. So I learned more about WHAT ELSE they wanted.

That’s when I began churning out valuable new products and programs that my customers ate up like crazy. And that strategy took me from sales of less than 5,000 dollars a month to these days averaging 50,000 dollars a month!

Now, that didn’t happen overnight! In fact, I recommend starting with ONE product like I did. It makes learning this entire process much easier, and your results will come faster. Once you get the system down, you can start adding more valuable offerings to your prospects and customers.

Learn It, Work It, Live It

Pretty simple, yes? Based on this model, you may see the missing links in your own Internet sales cycle. Have patience, keep learning, fill in these gaps, and you’ll start to see the magic work for you.

© 2005-2008 Alexandria Brown International Inc.

Online entrepreneur Alexandria K. Brown publishes the award-winning ‘Highlights on Marketing & Success’ weekly ezine with 30,000+ subscribers. If you’re ready to jump-start your marketing, make more money, and have more fun in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.AlexandriaBrown.com

email marketing service

 The number of incoming links your site has that have been recognized by Google can be checked by typing link:www.yoursite.com into Google (other search engines have similar functions).

Other ways to generate incomming links to your site include:

• Add your site’s url to your signature on forum posts on other sites.
• Submit your site to directories.
• Note: Leaving comments on blogs will not help with this, since all modern blogging tools use the rel=”nofollow” attribute. Don’t be a comment spammer.

With Statbrain.com you can find out how many visits any site has.

Statbrain uses different resources on the web combined with mathematical and statistical methods to estimate how many visits a website has. Please enter the URL of the website that you would like to check.

(Or, repeat, repeat, repeat your message!)
by Ali Brown

Would you blow your entire annual marketing budget on just one ad to run once during the Superbowl?

Of course you wouldn’t. You know that people seeing your message just once wouldn’t be enough.

Then why do we tend to spend our time and dollars on single-shot marketing, rather than repeated messages?

The answer is… most folks just don’t know any better. Or, perhaps it seems boring to repeat your message over and over and over and over.

But the truth is, your fortune is in the follow up!

Before Bill Glazer (one of my longtime marketing coaches) took over Glazer-Kennedy Inner Circle, he spent the last few decades of his life running Baltimore’s #1 retail men’s clothing store, Gage Menswear, along with his late father.

Bill talked about one of his first direct mail campaigns, and how during the planning stages he announced to his dad that they were going to mail a special promotional offer to the same list not once, not twice, but three times. His father was appalled and yelled at Bill that he was crazy and was wasting their money!

Bill persisted and mailed all three pieces of the campaign. Well, their results revealed that mailing the exact same offer three times not only increased their response, it DOUBLED their response! Pop was floored, and he sure was delighted with the flurry of sales that came in. From that point on he also trusted Bill with their marketing dollars.

Why does repeating your message work?

It’s simple… people are inundated with messages every day. Last statistic I heard was each of us sees over 3,700 distinct messages a day! That means you need to repeat yourself over and over if you’re going to break through the clutter, actually get their attention, get them to read or listen AND get them to respond.

Your assignment is to now look at all areas of your marketing and advertising in your business, and see where you need to add some follow up.

Some quick places to look at:

Your Ezines – Are you publishing your ezine enough? Once a month just doesn’t cut it anymore. You should be reaching out and “touching” your prospects and customers at least once a week, if not more. (If you’re running out of ideas or you’re not sure how to do this without bugging folks, my ezine system takes care of that for you!)

Teleseminars and Live Events – When promoting events, you’re going to need many more than one or two announcements or mailings. As a general rule, when I’m really trying to fill up a teleseminar (phone seminar) I sent out at least three emails dedicated to the promotion. For live events, you need dozens of messages, and well ahead of time. Most of the trainers I know start marketing no less than six months ahead of any live event they’re hosting!

One-on-One Marketing – If you cold call or mail out letters to prospects, how many times are you following up? Don’t be afraid to call or mail again. I myself have finally responded to an offer after I’ve been contacted several times, and was glad the vendor took the initiative to follow up.

Advertising – Instead of blowing your budget on a few large ads per year, try running a smaller ad much more often! Also most publications, both online and offline, will usually give you big discounts for purchasing more than one ad at a time. (I do this with ads in my own ezine, Highlights.)

Remember, many marketing experts who test all these strategies say that repetition is the key. So don’t even feel you have to be creative with your marketing – just saying or mailing the same thing over and over is better than not saying it or mailing it again.

© 2006-2009 Alexandria Brown International Inc.

Online entrepreneur Ali Brown publishes the award-winning ‘Highlights on Marketing & Success’ weekly ezine with 36,000+ subscribers. If you’re ready to jump-start your marketing, make more money, and have more fun in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.AliBrown.com

 Meta Tags are HTML tags used to control your site description in the search engines that support them: Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, AOL Search, AltaVista, AllTheWeb (FAST), HotBot, Lycos, Infoseek (Go), Excite, and WebCrawler. It is important to have well made meta tags because they can help increase your Search Engine position.

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