Bill McRea

Regardless of whether or not you’re a fan of Google products they offer an amazing selection of free products to help you to be successful in your online business. If you are not familiar with the Google Keyword Toolbox, this article will introduce you to a suite of free tools that you can use that save you time and money, and even help you to make more money in some cases. Let’s dive right in.

The centerpiece of this priceless suite of online business toolbox is the Google Keyword Tool. This is where you go to start doing your keyword research which is really the foundation of most website projects. There’s an instructional video, vital information for absolute beginners who are not even sure what a keyword is, and a help center with videos and contextual help.

Google’s Webmaster Central provides tools that are geared towards helping you to get more targeted traffic to your website. There are video guides, a help center, and a webmaster forum, which is a huge, user-generated knowledge base where you can ask questions and offer what you know to others.

You’ll find a link to their free browser called, Google Chrome. It’s an alternative to Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. You might want to install all of these browsers on your computer so that you can test how your website looks and works across the various browsers.

OK, now here’s the part where you’ll learn how to make money. It’s the website owner income earning program called AdSense. Most online entrepreneurs are familiar with this program where you place Google ads on your website and then you get paid when your visitors click on one of those ads. It’s one of the easiest and often the first way people learn how to make money online.

The Google Trends Timeline is a great tool when you are looking for hot, timely topics to write about. You will get an idea about what the trending topics are in real time, and you can research a topic’s timeline as well.

Google Analytics is a power tool that most people probably take for granted. Before GA was available for free, webmaster would have to pay thousands of dollars for the same information from SEO specialists. GA tracks everything about your website with regard to where your visitors are coming from, what they do when they visit your site, how much time they spend on your website, what keywords they are using to find your site and so much more.

One of the most valuable products on this page is the Official Google SEO Starter Guide. Written by Google employees, this guide will help website owners to improve the performance of their website with regard to their rankings in the search engines.

Make use of the robust products in the Google Keyword Toolbox that are all geared toward helping you improve the improvement of your website.

For more webmaster tools and tips about building and growing your online business visit http://mcreasite.com/blog today.

Affiliate marketing is a deceptively simple business model that is very easy to get started with, but not quite as easy to make a ton of money with quickly for the average affiliate marketer. If you are looking to diversify your income streams, you might want to consider trying cpa marketing. Affiliate marketers who already have a website set up, and who know how to drive traffic have everything they need to get started doing cpa marketing.

What is CPA marketing?

CPA stands for, cost per action because you will get paid each time a visitor to your site views the offer takes the desired action thus generating a lead for the advertiser. There are lots of companies that will give you a payment for each lead that you generate for them.

For example you might have a weight loss blog. You would then host a cpa offer that would appeal to your existing customers. Typically the offer would consist of the visitor filling out an online form or a survey. Once the visitor has submitted their information you have just generated a lead and the advertiser will pay you for it.

How much can I earn doing CPA marketing?

The payments for CPA offers varies widely. Some offers pay anywhere between $1. to $5 per lead, while other offers in more highly competitive markets can offer payments of over $20. per lead. So you can see how important it is to drive lots of targeted traffic in order to earn a decent income with CPA marketing.

Here’s how to get started with CPA marketing.

Start a blog on a targeted niche topic. Drive a ton of traffic to that site and then start looking for CPA networks to join. Sign up as a publisher or affiliate at one of the dozens of CPA networks online such as:

• MAX Bounty
• Commission Junction
• Peerfly
• NeverBlue
• ClickBooth

When you are applying to a CPA network, you want to come across as a professional. Keep in mind when you are new you may get rejected on your first try, but don’t give up. There are other networks out there.

Make sure your website looks professional, apply using an email address with your own domain rather than a free gmail account, and be prepared to report how much traffic your website gets and where it’s coming from.

Your key to CPA marketing success

The way to success with CPA marketing is to learn how to drive lots of targeted traffic to your offers. Once you have mastered a particular method, try another method and keep adding until you can get a dependable flow of traffic to your offers.

Do your research and consider taking a training course in traffic generation techniques. Keep testing and tracking your results so that you can constantly improve your results.

CPA marketing is a good way to diversify income streams for affiliate marketers, and it’s a good way to put your existing online marketing skills to good use.

CPA marketing is one of the many ways to make money online. For more information about online marketing visit http://mcreasite.com/blog today.

Copywriting is also called salesmanship in print therefore its one of the most vital skills you can learn as an online entrepreneur. While you are busy handling all of the other tasks of your business, there are times when you need to write some copy and you don’t have the time or resources to outsource it. Having some solid copywriting skills in your back pocket can save you time and money, and as you get good at it, these skills can make you even more money.

Here are five copywriting tips that you can use in your daily business. As with any skill, the more you practice the better you get, so make it a point to use your copywriting skills at every opportunity. You will definitely notice your skills improving and you will notice your response rate going up as well.

1. Be clear and concise.

Make every word carry its own weight. Break up long sentences, and vary the lengths of the sentences in your copy. Find a colleague that you trust who is willing to proof and critique your writing. Making your message clear and direct while making sure that the reader knows exactly what’s in it for them makes your copy more effective.

2. Convey a sense of urgency

Everyone’s natural instinct is to put things off. Your goal is to move your prospect to action as soon as possible. The job of your copy is to convince the reader that now is the very best time to act on your offer. Whether it’s a sale with a limited time frame, a certain quantity of products, or a specific limit on the number of people you can work with, putting a deadline on your offer and explaining the scarcity can inspire buyers to take action.

3. Be trustworthy

Don’t write overtly hyped-up sales copy that sounds like a used car salesman in print. Tell the truth, warts and all, about your product. No product is the be all and end all product. Tell the truth about its strengths and possible weaknesses. Your prospective buyers will appreciate your candor. Remind buyers of whatever money back guarantee that you offer. This helps lessen the inherent element of risk that some buyers feel when they are getting ready to make a purchase online.

4. Always include a call to action

This tip is from copywriter Susan K. Jones, “The goal of every component of a direct marketing campaign is to induce action: whether ordering by mail, calling, agreeing to buy, or coming into a store. This action must be spurred by the copy, but without coming on too strong.” melissadata.com/tips/copywriting10.htm

5. Never stop learning about copywriting

Copywriting is such a vital skill it makes sense that you would want to invest some time in improving your skills. Read books, take online courses or attend live writing classes, and follow the blogs of your favorite online copywriters. There are so many absolutely free copywriting resources online. Most of all, practice copywriting every chance you get.

Copywriting is a lucrative skill that you would do well to keep improving. If you’d like to learn more about how you can build and grow your business online visit http://mcreasite.com/blog today.

Pinterest is the sizzling hot, new social media website that is everyone’s new guilty pleasure. Well, OK, not everyone, as the audience tends to skew towards women, but Pinterest is a great place for businesses that are based on a visual image, such as fashion, food, furniture, design, etc, to generate lots of interest, exposure and traffic and build your brand.

Pinterest is an online pin board where users can collect and ‘pin’ images that they find online. Once the image is on a user’s boards others can see it, ‘Like’ it, and comment on it. The people in your network can also ‘re-pin’ an image that you’ve pinned to their boards. If you take a look around you will see that some images ‘go viral’ and get pinned hundreds and even thousands of times.

After you create your profile on Pinterest you’ll have the opportunity to add a bookmarklet widget to your browser’s toolbar. The next time you are browsing a website that has an image that you’d like to save, you just click the ‘Pin It’ button, and the image is taken into Pinterest and you assign it to one of the various boards that you can create according to any category you choose.

It’s easy to get started with Pinterest because it links either your Facebook or Twitter account, so if you’ve got a good following on either network, those who are on Pinterest will automatically be brought into your network.

Pinterest sounds like a lot of fun, but how is it going to help my brand? That’s a great question. Along with each image is a link to the page that it came from. Some of these are no follow links, but when human visitors click on them they bring traffic to your website. So, the more people view, pin and share your images, the more traffic and exposure you can get for your website.

Here are a few tips for making the most of Pinterest:

• Actively ‘pin’ images that you like, re-pin the images that your friends pin and comment on images. There is a little image avatar beside every comment that you leave, which is an opportunity to share your thoughts about the image.
• Pinterest RSS WordPress plugin

Download and install the free plugin to your wordpress blog, and you’ll get a sidebar widget that displays images of    your latest pins.

• iPhone app

The Pinterest iPhone app lets you pin photos of what you see in your daily life.     You can also browse the recent pins of the people you follow and you can add a location to the photos you take.

• Follow Me & Pin It Buttons for websites

You can easily add the ‘Follow Me’ button by cutting and pasting a bit of code where you want it to appear. The ‘Pin it’ button will allow your readers to pin your product images to their Pinterest boards.

While Pinterest might seem like a lot of fun, it’s already having an impact on social media marketing and it’s creating a great way to gain favorable exposure and build your brand. For lots more tips and strategies on building your business online http://mcreasite.com/blog today.

WordPress bloggers usually have their favorite plugins that they swear by to help them keep their blogs running smoothly. But with millions of bloggers using this flexible, free CMS, there are tons of new plugins being produced that perform many useful functions on your blog from helping to improve SEO, to giving your visitors a better browsing experience.

Today we’re going to take a look at five of the newest plugins for WordPress blogs that you might want to try this year.

1. Kindle This

Have you ever found yourself reading a blog post, and then wish you could save it and read it later on your kindle? Well, now there’s a plugin for that. This sidebar widget gives your readers the opportunity to type in their Kindle email address and your blog post will show up on their Kindle the next time they make a wifi connection.

wordpress.org/extend/plugins/kindle-this/

2. WordPress SEO by Yoast

This plugin promises to help you to increase your search engine rankings, and increase the click through rate for organic search results. This is a comprehensive SEO plugin which also helping you to write better content because it forces you to choose a keyword to focus your blog post on.

wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-seo/

3. A/B Test for WordPress

Splittesting is one of those things that you know you should be doing more often, but may not be high on your priority list because you’ve got so many other tasks to maintain your blog. But if you had this handy plugin you could do it with just a few clicks. You can test content, styles, Javascript and themes.

wordpress.org/extend/plugins/abtest/

4. Pinterest RSS Widget

This plugin creates a widget that displays the thumbnail image and title of the latest pins on Pinterest from a specific user via their Pinterest RSS feed. The dimensions of the widget are adjustable, and it allows you to add the official, “Follow me on Pinterest,” button beneath your pins.

wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pinterest-rss-widget/

5. WP Super Cache

This plugin is a very fast caching engine for WordPress that produces static html files, which speeds up your page’s load time. Since Google uses page load time as a metric in their ranking algorithm, using this plugin might help boost your page rank over time.

wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/

Whether you are launching a brand new blog or you are maintaining an existing blog, you always want to make sure that you have the plugins that you need to keep your blog looking and functioning at its best.

Note: We haven’t thoroughly tested each of these plugins, we are simply sharing some of the new plugins that are available for you to try. When you visit the plugin download page, make sure that the plugin is compatible with the version of WordPress that you have installed (which should always be the latest version available). As always when you install new plugins be sure to back up your blog before installing them.

WordPress plugins help make your blog more efficient. For more tips and strategies for growing your online business visit http://mcreasite.com/blog today.