Internet Marketing Strategy & Website Development

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This blog is contains information related to Internet Marketing Strategies, Website Development, and Website Design (ASP.net)

March 5, 2010 • 8:16 am 0

Copywriting Tips

“How To Write Good Sales Copy”

Here are the essential elements that you should cover when writing your sales copy:

  1. Powerful Offer (Headline)
  2. Problem/pain – Don’t create this pain but simply remind the prospect of its existence.
  3. Solution – For every element of pain you bring out, you have to offer a practical, powerful solution.
  4. Impeccable Credibility – establish your credibility as early in the game as you can
  5. Details – information that isn’t really a benefit, but it needs to be clearly stated. It can be early in your piece, in the middle, at the end – anywhere where it’s most convenient.
  6. Benefits list – show your prospects what’s in it for them.
  7. Limited offer – it’s vital that the scarcity you present be actual. Your limited offer can be placed at different points in your sales piece
  8. More benefits
  9. Price – you must always tell the prospect the price of your product or service
  10. Guarantee
  11. Scarcity
  12. Benefits summary – Right before you close your sales piece, you need to remind your prospect of everything they will be getting
  13. Close (sell, sell, sell)
  14. P.S. (if your piece is a salesletter) – So you can use the P.S. to restate a major point and possibly capture more readers

Filed under: Copywriting Tips

September 6, 2009 • 11:08 pm 0

View the SQL generated by SubSonic

SqlQuery sq = new Select()
                   .From(Item.Schema)
                   .InnerJoin(ItemStatus.IstIDColumn, Item.ItmStatusColumn)
                   .InnerJoin(ItemCategory.ItcItemIDColumn, Item.ItmIDColumn)
                   .WhereExpression("ItmIsEnabled").IsEqualTo(true)
                   .AndExpression("ItmName").Like("%" + findThis + "%")
                   .Or(Item.ItmShortDescriptionColumn).Like("%" + findThis + "%")
                   .Or(Item.ItmItemCodeColumn).Like("%" + findThis + "%")
                   .Or(Item.ItmLongDescriptionColumn).Like("%" + findThis + "%")
                   .Paged(pageIndex, PageSize)
                   .OrderAsc("itmName");

          Response.Write(sq.ToString());

Filed under: C#, SubSonic

September 2, 2009 • 11:17 pm 0

Dynamically add button and event to Repeater

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        int i = 0;

        while (i < 10)
        {
            Button btn = new Button();
            btn.ID = i.ToString();
            btn.Text = i.ToString();
            btn.CommandArgument = i.ToString();
            btn.Click += new EventHandler(Button_Click);


            Repeater1.Controls.Add(btn);

            Literal lit = new Literal();
            lit.Text = "<br />";

            Repeater1.Controls.Add(lit);

            i++;
        }
    }

    protected void Button_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        Button btn = sender as Button;
        string selectedButton = btn.CommandArgument.ToString();
        TextBox1.Text = selectedButton;
    }

Filed under: ASP.NET, C#

September 1, 2009 • 5:57 pm 0

Thesis Theme Tutorial

One of the most powerful WordPress Themes out there.

The Thesis Theme is a pure simple framework that taps into the hidden power of WordPress and takes customisation and flexibility to a new level. 

Here is a quick Thesis Tutorial to show you how to format your posts so that they look beautiful.

This is an example of a left block quote
Syntax: <blockquote class=”left”>TEXT </blockquote>

Integer malesuada, quam ut ultrices hendrerit, lorem purus consequat orci, id vulputate purus arcu nec ipsum. Donec lectus orci, porta in semper sit amet, rhoncus at magna. Nullam laoreet condimentum eros, et auctor leo varius eu. Etiam faucibus elit id arcu eleifend in placerat massa euismod. Vivamus vel augue justo, et commodo nibh. Donec elit augue, vulputate eget hendrerit vel, tempus sit amet quam. Integer sollicitudin, leo quis volutpat consectetur, ante quam congue odio, vitae congue libero risus id leo. Vivamus hendrerit, lacus vitae pellentesque molestie, massa elit rhoncus arcu, sit amet commodo risus nisl feugiat elit. Integer non lacus enim, a elementum sem. Donec tincidunt hendrerit porttitor. Maecenas sem massa, aliquet vitae scelerisque facilisis, mollis ac risus. Duis tempus, eros eu ornare commodo, velit purus pellentesque nisl, ut vehicula lectus mi nec sapien. Maecenas venenatis vestibulum faucibus?

This is an example of a right block quote
Syntax: <blockquote class=”right>TEXT </blockquote>

Integer malesuada, quam ut ultrices hendrerit, lorem purus consequat orci, id vulputate purus arcu nec ipsum. Donec lectus orci, porta in semper sit amet, rhoncus at magna. Nullam laoreet condimentum eros, et auctor leo varius eu. Etiam faucibus elit id arcu eleifend in placerat massa euismod. Vivamus vel augue justo, et commodo nibh. Donec elit augue, vulputate eget hendrerit vel, tempus sit amet quam. Integer sollicitudin, leo quis volutpat consectetur, ante quam congue odio, vitae congue libero risus id leo. Vivamus hendrerit, lacus vitae pellentesque molestie, massa elit rhoncus arcu, sit amet commodo risus nisl feugiat elit. Integer non lacus enim, a elementum sem. Donec tincidunt hendrerit porttitor. Maecenas sem massa, aliquet vitae scelerisque facilisis, mollis ac risus. Duis tempus, eros eu ornare commodo, velit purus pellentesque nisl, ut vehicula lectus mi nec sapien. Maecenas venenatis vestibulum faucibus?

Drop Caps
Syntax: <span class="drop_cap">D<span>

 Alert Paragraph
Syntax: <p class=”alert”> Text <p/>

e.g.

Light Up Your Social Accounts Easily manage multiple Twitter accounts on one single page with your own TweetCockpit. Never again switch windows and log in and log out of multiple Twitter accounts. SocialOOMPH

 

Notice Paragraph
Syntax: <p class=”note”> Text <p/>

e.g.

Light Up Your Social Accounts Keep your Facebook, MySpace, and other social media accounts ticking over with scheduled updates via our Ping.fm integration module. SocialOOMPH

Image Placement Left
Syntax: <img class=”left” scr=”theimagesource” />

Morbi aliquet convallis tempor. Integer vestibulum, nibh sit amet rutrum suscipit, nunc nisi sodales enim, viverra interdum leo libero sit amet ante. Duis posuere arcu ac velit convallis tempus! Sed eget mi libero, et dapibus orci. Curabitur eu neque non orci pellentesque blandit ut in enim. Vivamus lobortis lacus metus. Ut vestibulum mauris libero, a cursus ipsum. Integer erat sem, pharetra pretium eleifend sit amet, dapibus id purus! Duis vitae risus sed sem tristique sodales id rutrum augue. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Etiam commodo tellus sit amet risus consectetur id sagittis.

Image Placement Right
Syntax: <img class=”right” scr=”theimagesource” />

Morbi aliquet convallis tempor. Integer vestibulum, nibh sit amet rutrum suscipit, nunc nisi sodales enim, viverra interdum leo libero sit amet ante. Duis posuere arcu ac velit convallis tempus! Sed eget mi libero, et dapibus orci. Curabitur eu neque non orci pellentesque blandit ut in enim. Vivamus lobortis lacus metus. Ut vestibulum mauris libero, a cursus ipsum. Integer erat sem, pharetra pretium eleifend sit amet, dapibus id purus! Duis vitae risus sed sem tristique sodales id rutrum augue. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Etiam commodo tellus sit amet risus consectetur id sagittis.

 

Image Placement Center
Syntax: <img class=”center” scr=”theimagesource” />

Morbi aliquet convallis tempor. Integer vestibulum, nibh sit amet rutrum suscipit, nunc nisi sodales enim, viverra interdum leo libero sit amet ante. Duis posuere arcu ac velit convallis tempus! Sed eget mi libero, et dapibus orci. Curabitur eu neque non orci pellentesque blandit ut in enim. Vivamus lobortis lacus metus. Ut vestibulum mauris libero, a cursus ipsum. Integer erat sem, pharetra pretium eleifend sit amet, dapibus id purus! Duis vitae risus sed sem tristique sodales id rutrum augue. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Etiam commodo tellus sit amet risus consectetur id sagittis.

Filed under: Wordpress, , , ,

August 31, 2009 • 8:34 pm 0

How To Reference A User Control In Your Master Page (asp.net c#)

If you need to reference a User Control that resides in your Master Page you can do so as demonstrated below:

  1. Expose the user control as a property in the code behind of your master page 
     //Publically expose the user control
    public ASP.cms_cart_cartcontrols_cartinfobox_ascx mstUserInfoBox
    {
        get
        {
            return cartInfoControl; //The ID of the user control
        }
    }

    .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre
    {
    font-size: small;
    color: black;
    font-family: consolas, “Courier New”, courier, monospace;
    background-color: #ffffff;
    /*white-space: pre;*/
    }
    .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; }
    .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; }
    .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; }
    .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; }
    .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; }
    .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; }
    .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; }
    .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; }
    .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; }
    .csharpcode .alt
    {
    background-color: #f4f4f4;
    width: 100%;
    margin: 0em;
    }
    .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }

  2. Register the control on both the master page and on the aspx page 
    <%@ Register TagPrefix="cmsCart" TagName="userInfo" Src="~/CMS/cmsControls/userInfobox.ascx" %>

    .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre
    {
    font-size: small;
    color: black;
    font-family: consolas, “Courier New”, courier, monospace;
    background-color: #ffffff;
    /*white-space: pre;*/
    }
    .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; }
    .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; }
    .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; }
    .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; }
    .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; }
    .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; }
    .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; }
    .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; }
    .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; }
    .csharpcode .alt
    {
    background-color: #f4f4f4;
    width: 100%;
    margin: 0em;
    }
    .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }

  3. Cast the control in your aspx page to your master page control  type and then access the exposed control 
     //Update the right cart info box in the master page
        ASP.cms_cart_cartcontrols_cartinfobox_ascx mstCartInfoControl = ((ASP.default_master)Master).mstUserInfoBox;

        cartDefaultPageControl.publblCartTotal = mstCartInfoControl.publblCartTotal;
        cartDefaultPageControl.publblLastItemAdded = mstCartInfoControl.publblLastItemAdded;
        cartDefaultPageControl.publblNumberItemsInCart = mstCartInfoControl.publblNumberItemsInCart;
        cartDefaultPageControl.pubMinOrderValueLbl = mstCartInfoControl.pubMinOrderValueLabel;

That’s it!

Easy, hope this helps someone.

Filed under: ASP.NET

August 19, 2009 • 10:55 pm 0

How To Use .htaccess to Cloak Affiliate Links

One method to cloak your affiliate links is to use the .htaccess file to redirect the user. This technique is widely used to make URL’s shorter and easier to remember as well as hide your affiliate links from the visitor.

WARNING & DISCLAIMER
If you make changes to your own .htaccess file, you do so at your own risk. You should always keep a backup of any file you change.

The .htaccess file located or should be uploaded to the “root” folder of your website however you may find an .htaccess in any folder on your server.  However, for the purpose of cloaking your affiliate links, we only need to be concerned with the .htaccess file in your root folder.

To cloak and redirect your visitors using the .htaccess file add the following line (the file needs to be saved as plain text – do not use WORD,etc) :

redirect /[YOUR Link TEXT] [YOUR AFFILIATE LINK]

Replace [YOUR Link TEXT] with the name of your link,  and [YOUR AFFILIATE LINK] with your affiliate or redirect link. e.g.

redirect /bestwebhosting http://www.xoomweb.com

So for this redirect above to work you need to create a link in your website like this:

[YOUR DOMAIN]/[YOUR Link TEXT]

e.g. http://e-webdevelopers.com/bestwebhosting

When someone clicks this link, they will be redirected to [YOUR AFFILIATE LINK] and in this case http://www.xoomweb.com (Best Web Hosting Review Site):

This method has one other big benefit that allows you to update your links in one place, so if any of your links change all that needs to be done is to change them in the .htaccess file.

WordPress Simple Link Cloaker

Wordpress Simple Link Cloaker is a nice little WordPress plugin that you can use to manage your cloaking all from within the admin console.

“Experienced affiliate marketers know the necessity of ‘cloaking’ outgoing affiliate URLs. But it wasn’t easy. You either had to build the redirects by hand, use hokey meta refresh tags, upload a bunch of PHP files to your server, or use some complicated WordPress plugin that basically tried to wipe your rear for you while guessing what link was supposed to do what and go where. No more. This plugin is simplicity in action. If you’re at all capable of copying/pasting or writing down a simple URL, and don’t need fancy tracking and CTR stats, this plugin’s for you. You’re not limited to a certain folder name or names, you can make the outgoing URL as long or short as you want it, make it say anything you want. Doesn’t matter.”

Filed under: Affiliate Marketing,

August 19, 2009 • 7:16 pm 0

Top 10 Sites For Internet Marketing Research

These are a list of sites that I commonly use to do market research before I enter into a particular niche of market:

  1. Blogpulse.com
  2. Yahoo Buzz
  3. Ebay Pulse
  4. Google Keyword Tool
  5. Google Insights
  6. Google Trends
  7. Magazine.com
  8. MSN Demographics
  9. Quantcast Demographics
  10. Amazon

Good sites to find out what questions are being asked in a market:

  1. eHow
  2. Ask.com
  3. Wordtracker keyword questions
  4. Yahoo Answers

Filed under: Market Research, , ,

August 17, 2009 • 11:27 pm 1

Blog Ping List

When you create a new Post in WordPress, the blogging engine automatically pings or notifies other sites that you have a new post.   This is really effective for your blog as when you publish your posts on your blog, wordpress will automatically notify search engines with your recent posts.

Blog Ping List

WordPress will ping all the sites listed in the “Settings >> Writing” tab in the admin section.  The sites are listed in the “Update Services” textarea at the bottom of the page.

Here is a ping list that I use as my update service when I publish a new post.  WordPress automatically notifies the following sites in this ping list informing them that I have new content:

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.twingly.com/
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc
http://www.bloglines.com/ping
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.feed24.com/?c=add
http://www.feedblitz.com/f/f.fbz?XmlPing
http://ping.feedburner.com/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://www.octora.com/add_rss.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://www.wasalive.com/ping/
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.phpActivate

You may also consider using the following services to manually ping your posts / sites:

IMPORTANT: It is important NOT to inlcude the list above in your Ping List as this may mean that your site will be pinged twice and some sites don’t like this, so be careful.

If you aren’t running a good ping plugin, make sure you install one to protect you from double-pinging services when you edit a post.  There is a chance you can get banned from some of the services by re-pinging even when you do simple edits to a recent post.

Filed under: Blogging

August 17, 2009 • 10:58 pm 0

Best WordPress Plugins For WordPress Seo & Other Great Functionality

These are some of my favourite WordPress plugins that I use on my Blogs for WordPress SEO , Security, and other great functionally.

  • Akismet – Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen.
  • Secure WordPress – Little help to secure your WordPress installation: Remove Error information on login page; adds index.html to plugin directory; removes the wp-version, except in admin area.
  • Simple Tags – Best tool to manage your WP tags. It was written with this philosophy : best performances, more secured and brings a lot of new functions
  • Sociable – Automatically add links to your favourite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and in your RSS feed.
  • TweetMeme Button – The TweetMeme button easily allows your blog to be retweeted. The button also provides a current count of how many times your story has been retweeted throughout twitter.
  • Twitter Tools – Twitter Tools is a plugin that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account
  • WP-Ads – is a WordPress plugin for showing and rotating ads in your blog. You only have to define the ad positions and the ads you want to rotate in each position, and WPAds will serve your ads randomly. WPAds can show contextual ads (ie, Google AdSense, Yahoo Publishers Network, etc) and also image banners.
  • WP-DBManager – Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database.
  • WP-PageNavi – adds page navigation functionality to your blog results
  • WP-reCAPTCHA – is an anti-spam method originating from Carnegie Mellon University which uses CAPTCHAs in a genius way. Instead of randomly generating useless characters which users grow tired of continuously typing in, risking the possibility that spammers will eventually write sophisticated spam bots which use OCR libraries to read the characters, reCAPTCHA uses a different approach.
  • WP-Cumulus – WP-Cumulus allows you to display your site’s tags, categories or both using a Flash movie that rotates them in 3D. It works just like a regular tags cloud, but is more visually exciting. Clicking the tags can be a little hard (depending on your speed setting) but does take you to the appropriate page
  • WP-Sticky – Adds a sticky post feature to your WordPress’s blog.
  • Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site.
  • FeedWordPress – is an Atom/RSS aggregator for WordPress. It syndicates content from feeds that you choose into your WordPress weblog; if you syndicate several feeds then you can use WordPress’s posts database and templating engine as the back-end of an aggregation (“planet”) website.
  • GD Star Rating – allows you to set up rating and review system for posts, pages and comments in your blog. You can set many options for displaying the rating stars, and also add widgets into the sidebars for displaying top ratings and other statistics generated by the plugin. It includes advanced settings panels that will allow you to control many aspects of rating. it also supports multi ratings along with thumbs based ratings.
  • All in One SEO Pack – Optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization).
  • Contact Form 7 – manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.

Thesis Theme – Best WordPress Theme

I also use the Thesis Theme which is one of the best WordPress Themes for SEO and flexibility.  After testing many WordPress Themes I have finally found a theme that in my opinion is one of the best out there.  Thesis includes:

  • SEO: the degree to which your code and content are organized and optimized for both search engines and people
  • accessibility: your ability to reach different audiences—those with special needs, people using alternative Web browsers, mobile users, etc.
  • usability: how effectively your users are able to navigate and interact with your site
  • flexibility: how easy is it to get the look you want by providing rich markup for styling and customizations via a control panel

Click Here to See How The Thesis Theme Can Benefit YOU!

This site is powered by Thesis!!!

I use a combination of Thesis and the WordPress Plugins mentioned above to run most of my sites.

Filed under: Blogging