Tip for Offline Businesses: Claim Your Google Maps Listing NOW

Have you claimed your listing in Google Maps and made sure the information it displays is accurate?
If not, you need to do it NOW — even if you don’t have a website yet. This step is vital.

Local Search — including sites such as Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, and Bing Maps — is quickly becoming one of the most dominant sources of online traffic. The local search market already generates about $33 billion a year — and with the growing popularity of smartphones such as iPhones, Blackberries, and Droids, it’s about to get a whole lot bigger — FAST.

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Pop-Ups — Sure You Hate Em… But They WORK

Want to make more money online? Increase your conversions? Build your opt-in list? Get more leads?

Well have you tried pop-ups?

The Marketing Experiments research laboratory recently revealed dramatic test results for a lead-generation opt-in form on a credit counselling site. The pop-up version attracted 63% more leads than the control version, which was a standard opt-in form on the web page.

The Marketing Experiments people figured this was a pretty radical experiment because they knew how much website visitors hate pop-ups.

We’ve never been quite so leery about the things.

Our own long experience at the Internet Marketing Center shows that pop-ups can easily yield double-digit improvements in opt-ins…

Five Reasons People Fail

A Guest Post by Brian Tracy, best-selling author of The Psychology of Achievement. Our new online magazine, StartUp, features an in-depth interview with Brian on how to manage your time and get more done.

People often ask me what the difference is between a success and a failure. For me, the answer is simple. A successful person knows how to set goals and work to achieve them. An unsuccessful person doesn’t.

The payoff for setting goals and making plans is being able to choose the kind of life you want to live. So why do so few people set goals? I think that there are…

What Are YOU Up To Online? Tell Us and WIN!

Want a chance to win a free subscription to our new online magazine, StartUp?

Well, give us an inside peek at your day-to-day online existence as you build or run your online business.

We’re wondering about what the average e-commerce pro is up to on the Web each day. What chores take up the bulk of your time? Are you spending more hours running your business, or promoting it?

Please take a moment to share your answers to these five quick questions in  our not-terribly-scientific survey:

1. How many hours do you spend online each day?

2. What are the tasks that occupy most of your…

Time keeps on slipping… slipping… slipping… into the future

The lyrics to that old Steve Miller song always seem especially appropriate when you’re trying to get a new online business off the ground. There’s so much to be done, and only 24 hours in a day to get everything accomplished.

Want to Make Millions Online? Dream On…

How often do you get bombarded with offers for online marketing products that are virtually guaranteed to make you an Internet millionaire almost overnight for only an hour or two of work a week?

Yeah… they drive us crazy, too.

Today we’re going to go against the grain and say what no other Internet marketer has ever said before:

You CAN’T make millions of dollars on the Internet overnight.

You won’t be making millions in your first month… or your first year… or even your first five years — unless your best friend is a leprechaun and your pockets are full of lucky pennies…

Online Success Series Part Three: Is Your Website Making a Great First Impression?

When you run a brick-and-mortar store, you’re there each day to greet customers and talk about your products.

That way, if there’s any confusion, you can answer questions and guide your visitors through the sales process.

When you run your business online, however, you don’t have the luxury of being there to greet every single potential customer personally — which is why your website needs to make that connection for you, and FAST… 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

So how can you help your online business make a great first impression?

Your first step is to create a pleasing, simple design…

Make Your Website Stickier with Navigation Choices

Do you have a search box on your website? If you don’t, and you sell multiple items, you’re frustrating about 50% of your visitors.

In a recent survey MarketingSherpa found a 50-50 split in the way people like to navigate around a site. Half like menus, half prefer search.

It depends somewhat on the type of product. Shoppers who want to compare what’s available will tend to use menus to find the category of product they’re looking for. Those who know what product they’re looking for like to just type it into a search box and go directly to it.

We asked our in-house…

What’s Your Motivation?

So, it’s more than halfway through the year… and all those good intentions of making money online have dimmed. You know you need to get going with this LIFE-CHANGING stuff, but somewhere along the line you just seemed to lose the excitement you had when you started.

Don’t despair! You’re not alone, and it happens to everyone! You’re in a slump and you just need a plan get back on track toward your goal of earning money online… so here are some things you can do to find (and keep) your motivation.

1. Grab a pen and paper and write in big letters why…

Answer One Little Question — And Boost Your Sales by 50%

How would you like to get twice as many of your subscribers to take critical action on your site? (Like buy something)?

All you have to do is make sure your emails answer one little question… HOW?

Before anybody can follow through on the action you want them to take, they have to know how. And you can’t just assume that they already know. So you need to provide them with detailed step-by-step instructions that walk them through the entire process.

After all, if you make it easy for your subscribers to do something, more of them will do it!

One of our in-house marketing…