RosalindGardner.com

Learn Blogging & Affiliate Marketing with Rosalind Gardner

Recommended Autoresponder Services

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Research has shown that the average person needs to be exposed to an ad at least 7 times (and often many more) before they will buy a product. You therefore need to remind visitors to come BACK to your site, making an autoresponder service essential for your online business.

Below I've listed those autoresponder services that I and other Internet marketing professionals have used and trusted for years.

TOP PICK: Aweber Communications

Having used their service since 1998, Aweber's autoresponder service is my TOP pick and the one I most highly recommend. Just some of Aweber's features include detailed email web analytics, activity based segmentation, geo-targeting, broadcast split-testing and an easy-to-use email setup wizard. Try Aweber risk-free for a month to get
more email subscribers, enhance your subscriber relationships, and increase your sales.

Visit Aweber | Read my Aweber Review

Constant Contact

Constant ContactConstant Contact's service includes customizable website visitor sign up form; Over 100 professional HTML email templates (newsletters, promos, invites and more); List management and hosting (including unsubscribe and bounce mgmt); Automatic delivery in the correct format, HTML or text; Real-time reporting (including opens, who clicked on which links and more); You can try it free for 60 days. Every free trial includes a subscription to their email marketing best practices newsletter and email campaign coaching tips.


Visit Constant Contact

Get Response

Get ResponseGet Response is the email marketing / autoresponder of choice by such top-notch Internet marketers as Michel Fortin, Marlon Sanders and Yanik Silver; and has been used by over 500,000 internet marketers since 1998. With GetResponse, your email marketing campaigns are protected by their Delivery Guard™ technology that monitors your mailings 24/7. Support service is also 24/7.

Visit Get Response

Aweber Autoresponder Review

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“Aweber is still the best autoresponder service available – bar none.”

If you've been searching for a service that will let you build a list of subscribers, deliver auto-response messages and send broadcast news to those subscribers, then you already know that there are many different options from which to choose.

You may be finding it difficult to choose, so… I'm going to make your choice simple.

Get an Aweber autoresponder.

I have been using Aweber's autoresponder service since 1998. For comparison purposes only, I've tested many of the other autoresponder services available and have ultimately cancelled all but Aweber's service.

With Aweber, you get everything you need to build your email marketing campaign at a reasonable price.

Unlimited Autoresponders, Broadcast & Followup Messages

These are the most basic benefits of having an Aweber autoresponder account:

  • Unlimited autoresponders so you can set build a different for list for each of your sites or pay per click campaigns.
  • Unlimited follow up messages. You can have something as short as a 5-part autoresponder series or build one that delivers a message to your subscriber every week for a year… or longer. It's up to you.
  • Unlimited braodcast messages lets you share news with your subscribers on an ad-hoc basis.
  • Unlimited message length. There are some services that restrict the amount of text you can send.

In addition to support, the Aweber guys frequently blog and write articles about email marketing topics such as “Just Because We Publish, Doesn't Mean You Read” and “Confirmed Opt-in Myths Exposed”.

Personalization, Shopping Cart Integration and more…

The features that you get with Aweber's service is too extensive to list in this article, but here are few:

  • Your messages can be personalized to include your subscriber's name.
  • Send your messages using text, HTML or both — and you can choose from a number of pre-designed HTML templates.
  • A WYSIWYG editor is available for the HTML challenged.
  • Click-through and open rates are tracked automatically.
  • You can send attachments such as ebooks or PDF's along with your messages.
  • Aweber is easily integrated with Paypal and other third-party shopping carts.
  • Free customer support via phone, live chat or ticket submission. This is one of the few autoresponder services that has support available on the weekends – and their support is fabulous — they actually answer the question that you asked! 🙂

Aweber makes it easy for you to start using their system as well, with free training videos that show you how to do everything on a step-by-step basis.

Creating your opt-in form is as simple as navigating to the “Web Form” section, filling in 4 form blanks and selecting one radio button. All you have to do then is copy and paste the code where you want it on your site.

Pricing

Subscribers Monthly Cost
0 – 500 $19.00
501 – 2,500 $29.00
2,501 – 5,000 $49.00
5,001 – 10,000 $69.00
10,001 – 25,000 $149.00
25,000+ Contact Aweber

 

You will have no trouble covering the cost of the service as your list grows, because with MORE subscribers you'll be making much MORE money!




Powered by AWeber

So, as I've been telling new Internet marketers and webmasters for years — with more features and lower prices, Aweber is still the best autoresponder service available – bar none.

Visit the Aweber site now to learn more…

Did you find this post informative and useful? If so, please share it with others! If you have a comment, question or suggestion, please leave a comment below!

Cheers,
sig-ros

Advanced Software for Internet and Affiliate Marketers

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Here are more advanced software tools to ease your workload…

They include:

  1. Article Distribution Software
  2. Graphics Editor
  3. HTML Editor
  4. Macro Software

You can also check out the video tour of my home office. The page includes a list of 25 different hardware components that I use to make money online.

Article Distribution Software

Rather than submit articles to each individual article directory where you have to login, input all the pertinent information about the article (title, author, link, article content, resource box and more), I use Article Announcer to automate the process and increase traffic to my sites quickly.

Here's an example of “What Happened When I Tested Article Announcer“.

Graphics Editor

I've used Corel's Paint Shop Pro (PSP) graphics editor for years and it does everything I need to do with graphics — as a Windows user. Paint Shop Pro's closest competitor is Adobe's more robust, much more expensive Photoshop that is available to Mac users and which sits unused in my bookcase.

Rather than pay for a graphics editor, let me suggest that you try GIMP, which is short for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is freely distributed and used for photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems and in many languages.

However, if you insist on having the most robust graphics editor, Adobe's current promotion lets you save up to $150 when you buy Photoshop Lightroom together with Photoshop CS4 or Photoshop CS4 Extended.

HTML Editor

Dreamweaver, NVU, and Coffee Cup are just a few of the HTML editors that I've tried and used, but I'll stick with my copy of Homesite 5.5 until it breaks and can't be reloaded for whatever reason or is no longer available from Macromedia.

Click Here for CoffeeCup Website Design SoftwareIf that happens, I'll switch to using Coffee Cup full-time (I use it on my laptop now). The Coffee Cup HTML editor is similar to Homesite with both a code editor and a drag and drop WYSIWYG editor.
 
CoffeeCup comes with more than 100 DHTML & JavaScripts, a DHTML Menu wizard, 25,000 graphics and photos including over 1,000 XP style Icons. It also has Built-in FTP Uploading and easy to use Table, Frame, Font, and Form Designers. Preview your work in any browser or use the exclusive Split Screen preview.

CoffeeCup offers their HTML Editor as a as a free trial download.

Macro Software

If you type the same signature line, sentence, or URL's on a repeated basis, you really should use macro software that can reduces each of those to just one or two keystrokes. I've written about macros and the macro software that I use. Check out the Auto Macro Recorder.

Wordtracker Review

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“STILL my TOP PICK in the keyword research tools category”

Wordtracker is undoubtedly my TOP PICK in the keyword research tools category, and it offers a FREE trial version.

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch said this about Wordtracker:

“If you are serious about search engine optimization, then WordtrackerWordtracker is an essential investment, a must have resource for any search engine marketing professional. It combines both a respectable search term database with tools that make mining the information easy.”

How does Wordtracker work?

You simply enter your keyword or keyword phrase, and Wordtracker will generate a list of related keywords, displayed on the left-hand side of their interface.

Better yet, that list includes related keyword phrases and combinations, some of which you may never have considerred!

Click on one of the phrases in the left column and another list of keywords related to THAT keyword magically appears on the right-hand column showing you the number of times that word or phrase was searched for in the previous 60 days.

It also tells you how many of your competitors use those keywords by scouring each major search engine, directory and PPC (pay-per-cick) search engine for results.

From there you have the option to click on individual keywords in the right-hand column to ‘dig' for even more related keywords and phrases.

Using the paid version, you can add up to 5000 selected keywords to your ‘basket' which can be emailed to you.

Although the free version is limited in scope and use, I suggest you give it a whirl.

You may purchase Wordtracker's service by the day, week, month or year. Many professional Internet and affiliate marketers buy short subscriptions of Wordtracker for a day or a week, and concentrate their keyword research during that time.

As of 2007, Wordtracker's subscrition rates are as follows:

  • 1 Year £149.00 / $299.00
  • 1 Month £29.00 / $59.00
  • 1 Week £15.00 / $30.00

Their service comes with a full 30-DAY money back guarantee.

Summary

No other tool surpasses Wordtracker in terms of accuracy of results and scope of service. I HIGHLY recommend that you sign up for the FREE trial at very least!

Wordtracker

Datafeedr: Affiliate Stores for WordPress Bloggers

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Gone are the days of flat file manipulation and sharing 4th click revenue… Datafeedr is here. HURRAY!

Datafeedr is a slick new solution by Stefan Everaet and Eric Busch for WordPress bloggers who want to easily incorporate merchant product datafeeds into their blogs.

Features include:

  • You'll never have to deal with raw datafeed files again – HURRAY! Datafeedr has eliminated the technical hurdles for converting raw datafeed files into webpages. Just pointing and clicking is all what is needed.
  • You won't have to rely on supplied merchant datafeed categories (some were very VERY sloppy – if they existed at all). Now you can create your own store categories and subcategories.
  • You can add search for and choose exactly which products you want to add to your store..
  • When you ‘subscribe' to a specific search, existing products will automatically be updated and new products meeting the search criteria will be added to your product list.
  • You can combine products from different merchants across different networks in one store.
  • Currently, there are products available from Shareasale, CJ, Linkshare, Netshops, Bridaluxe, as well as Shareasale coupons and deals. Plans include adding Affiliate Window, Commission Monster and PepperJam.
  • Individual products can be embedded in blog posts.
  • There's also a drip feed option… so you can post a product (or two or three) per day and send those out via feed to your subscribers.

Stefan and Eric have posted a very good video on the homepage showing how the setup process works and detailed video tutorials are available to help you set up your own affiliate store using Datafeedr.

Subscription plans for this service are available starting at $27 per month.

I highly recommend that you watch the video so you can see for yourself what a slick operation Datafeedr is. Personally, I LOVE it!

Get More Buyers Course: NOT Another Bogus Review

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Get More BuyersWere you completely bombarded by emails urging you to buy Michael Rasmussen's new “Get More Buyers” Video Course on Tuesday?

Ya, me too.

What really got me was the sheer number of so-called ‘reviews' that contained exactly the same wording.

(Here's a tip… regurgitating merchant copy word-for-word is NOT how one becomes a Super affiliate.)

Suffice to say that those marketers probably didn't bother to watch the course in its entirety — if at all.

I did.

But before I tell you what I thought about the course and just in case you think email marketing / list-building isn't where it's at when it comes to making money online — I sent out 2 emails last month in one niche and bought an RV with the proceeds — and I don't do everything that Michael suggests in “Get More Buyers“… yet. 🙂

[Read more…]

Rosalind’s Speed PPC Review

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Build large, effective PPC campaigns incredibly fast

Updated / added July 23rd, 2010…

Since its release in 2008, the SpeedPPC campaign builder has developed into a very advanced piece of software. Most important for those who are just getting started with PPC, they have written an extensive guide that will allow you to understand the intricacies of the software and the different functionality that it possesses.

SpeedPPC is best PPC campaign building tool bar none that works with not only all the major PPC companies like Google, Yahoo! and MSN/Bing, but also all the 2nd tier ones.

I finally spent some time over the weekend playing with Speed PPC by Jay Stockwell, a qualified Adwords professional.

After about 2 hours of reading and hitting different combinations of radio buttons (and building a few campaigns (into which I'd put too many keywords and ad groups for the Google Adwords Editor to accept), I finally built a small 672-keyword U.S. state-related campaign using only 3 base keywords and the U.S. state expansion list. It took only seconds to generate the outputs and all were uploaded to Google Adwords via my Google Adwords Editor a few minutes later.

Other “Expansion lists” included with Speed PPC are US city names, Australian city names, Australian suburb names, UK town names, top 1000 movie names, top 1000 music artists, top 1000 actors, top 300 Xbox games, top 300 Xbox 360 games, top 300 PS2 games, top 300 PS3 games, cell phone model names, car model names, motorcycle model names, perfumes, cosmetics, digital camera model names, video camera model names, router model names, laptop model names, printer model names, and occupations.

Compared to how I used to build state-related campaigns using an Excel spreadsheet, Speed PPC was very swift both in terms of speed and ease. Better yet, the resulting search to ad display relevancy is MUCH much better.

For example, if someone searches for “New York Singles” not only will your ad title be “New York Singles”, but Jay also teaches you how to modify your landing pages to display the same phrase.

Although I did not try out the “Affiliate Datafeed Landing Page Generator” software that is included in the package, I imagine that for pure search affiliates who use huge product datafeeds and want to track the efficacy of their campaigns down to the model name, this piece would be very helpful indeed.

In summary, once the software has been mastered, Speed PPC is a worthwhile tool for experienced search marketers who want to quickly build BIG, highly relevant campaigns which result in higher quality scores and lower ad costs.

Although Speed PPC is pretty pricey at the posted price of $497, Jay has offered my readers a 20% discount ($397) and there is a 60-day money back guarantee.

Build large, effective PPC campaigns incredibly fast…

If you're a dyed-in-the-wool search marketer, or better yet, a content publisher who uses PPC marketing to drive traffic, I'd say give it a shot and set aside a morning to build some of those new campaigns you've been thinking about doing over the holidays. A well-versed pay per click advertiser should be able to recoup their Speed PPC investment in fairly short order.

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