News From Blogger!

December 10, 2008
Your blog, your data
Today’s release features a brand new graduate from the Blogger in Draft testing ground: Import and Export for Blogger blogs.

The import/export feature opens up a whole new range of portability for your blogs, as well as allows for a few new options in the blog creation process. To get you started, we've rounded up a handful of ideas that can be done with importing and exporting:

* Merge two or more blogs into one. Have a few scattered blogs and want to get a fresh start? Now you can combine comments and posts from multiple blogs into a brand new blog.
* Move individual posts from blog to blog. Cross-publish your posts on multiple blogs, or transfer large batches of posts from one blog to another with a single click.
* Back up your blog to your own storage. It's never a bad idea to create backup copies of your own content, and now you can easily export an archival copy of your blog to your hard drive with a simple tool.
* Move your blog somewhere else. Our standard Atom XML export format will open up new blogging channels between providers, and let you take your content with you should you decide to move somewhere else. And of course, if you decide to come back to Blogger, importing your export file will get you back up and running in seconds.

How's your empire coming along?

Cross-linking and
upselling are 2 of the major ways to create your income
stream from your multiple sites. However it can get
confusing for some.

I found this article and thought it had some amazing ideas on
using Upselling to increase your dollar-per action conversions.

Did I mention 'she' the author is a Bounty Hunter?

No kidding:

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10 Upsell Strategies That Will Increase Your Profits
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By Rojo Sunsen

As you know it can be very expensive to attract new customers. You
can cut down on those expenses by "upselling" to those new
customers. For example, let's say you're selling a computer with a
15" monitor for $1200. You tell people they can upgrade to a 17"
monitor for only $200 more.

That's upselling! Your goal is to get more money out of the first
sale. Below are ten upselling strategies you can use to increase
your profits.

1. Deluxe Upsell-You could sell a basic product and tell people for
a little more money they can receive the deluxe edition.

2. Money Upsell-You could offer people the rights to sell the
product they are buying from your business. You could charge an
extra $30 dollars to get the reproduction rights.

3. Discount Upsell-If you're selling a product people may order
again in the future like shave gel, you could offer them a second
can of shave gel at a discount.

4. Time Upsell-If you're selling a product or service people
subscribe to, like a magazine, you could tell them if they
subscribe for two years instead of one, they can receive it half
off the cover price.

5. Quantity Upsell-This is similar to the discount upsell. The only
difference is you increase the discount by how many products they
order. If they order 3 it's a 10% discount, if they order 5 it's a
15% discount.

6. Package Upsell-When you're selling a product you could offer
similar products in a package deal. Tell the people the other
products are cheaper with the package deal versus purchasing them
separately.

7. Affiliate Upsell-When you're selling a product you could offer
someone else's product as an upsell. You would have to make a
commission on the product in order to profit.

8. Free Upsell-You could offer a free sample or trial of your
product (your first sale would be free) and then tell people if
they order the full version right now they will get a discount.

9. Extra Upsell-There are many things you could charge extra for at
the time of sale. It could be gift wrapping, imprinting, custom
designs, etc.

10. Extended Upsell-If your product comes with a warranty, you
could ask people if they would like to extend the warranty one more
year for only $30.

In conclusion, you can use one or all these strategies to increase
your profits at the point of sale. Don't be afraid to use your
imagination to come up with other upsell strategies.

About the author:

Rojo Sunsen is a specialized bounty hunter who prefers to work
quietly/confidentially for the benefit of her clients.

The Google Sandbox

One of the most common questions I get asked is ‘what is the Google sandbox?’ or ‘How can I get out of the sandbox?’, so in this guide I’ll aim to dispel some of the myths about what the Sandbox is, why it’s there, and how you get out of it.
What is the Google sandbox?

To begin with I must say that the Google sandbox is a ‘theory’. Google has never confirmed its existence, so until they do, it will remain a theory. The Google sandbox theory is extremely simple. Around February of 2004 Webmasters of new websites started to notice that their websites were not ranking well in the Google results for their targeted keywords, but they were seeing good results in Yahoo! and MSN, or they found that their site ranked well for a couple of weeks and were then dropped to the 8th page of the results.

The reason for Google doing this is not known for sure, but there are a couple of theories:

The first theory is that Google may delay the inclusion of brand-new websites to encourage Webmasters to build quality, content-based websites instead of building poor quality sites providing information that is available on countless other websites. The delay might encourage webmasters to focus on the content of their main website instead of building useless mini sites. So in essence, rather than the search engines being full of poor quality but heavily SEO'd (search engine optimized) websites, they would get a better quality of website prevailing for the more popular keywords.

The second, more under-handed theory is that Google makes most of it profits from its sponsored listings, so if your site gets relegated to the 8th page of Google, then the only way you can get listed is by paying for a sponsored listing. Obviously if Google sandboxes every new website, and a company has a large advertising budget then they will have no qualms paying 20p to get people to access their website. Since the Sandbox was introduced Google has announced record profits from its AdSense advertising program.

Regardless of the actual reason behind the introduction of the sandbox, it has had advantages and disadvatages. The advatage is for the users of Google; they can now be assured that for any popular keywords they enter, they will be seeing quality websites, not just websites that are good at search engine optimization. The disadvantage is for the search engine optimizers and producers of new websites as it means all their efforts will not be rewarded for eight months.
How do I know if I’m in the Sandbox?

Perhaps the easiest way is simply by looking at the age of your site. Most websites come out of the sandbox after 8 months or so, so if you have a website that more than a year old that is fully optimized and has a lot of quality backlinks and you are still listed on the 8th page of the results, then chances are your website is receiving some kind of penalty.
What can you do to get out of the sandbox?

If you have a new website, then you can expect that it will be fully listed within 6-8 months in Google from the time when Google first indexed your website. While you are waiting, don't just sit a twidle your thumbs, add content to your web site, get good incoming links and make sure that your web pages are optimized for Google. But be careful not to over-optimize or you could end up doing more harm than good! See the Avoid Getting Banned tutorial to check you aren't over optimizing your website.

In order to reduce your waiting time in the Sandbox, as soon as you have registered your domain name create a few temporary pages and link to it from a couple of other websitse to make Google index your website. The 6-8 month delay seems to start with Google's first contact with your website. The sooner Google knows about your website, the sooner it will be listed.

Remember, Google isn’t the only search engine on the Internet, Yahoo and MSN don't have such a delay so don't focus all your efforts on Google alone but also optimize your web pages for these search engines.
Can you speed up the whole process?

It seems that there's nothing or very little that can be done to speed up the sandbox process. Some webmasters advocate that getting inbound links that point to different web pages of your website ( not just to your index page) can speed your your time spent in the Sandbox. Others suggest trying to get quality links from .edu or .gov websites.

The sandbox is Google's attempt to prevent spammers from creating web sites that are just after quick gains. Google aims to return high quality web sites with good content in its result pages. So while you’re waiting for your site to emerge you might as well spend your time productively; write good content for your website, and try to get good quality, one-way backlinks, and before you know it the 6-8months will be up.

Writing A Sales Letter: Practice Tips On Making The Pitch © Mario Churchill

The meat of any sales letter lies in its ability to make readers pull out their wallets and buy a product or service. Making a sales pitch is difficult enough off paper; on paper, it has to be quick, terse, and convincing. A sales pitch has to be brief, but neither too short so that it appears hurried, nor too long so that it becomes less and less believable as the sentences run by. A sales pitch also has to be eager, but neither too eager so that the reader is tired out reading it, nor too staid so that the reader ends up bored to death.

Writing a sales letter pitch is difficult, but you can practice writing it by following these simple tips.

- If you are in the marketing or sales department of a company, writing a sales letter will be inevitable business for you. You might not be assigned the job at once, but this should be no excuse for you not to practice. Do not wait until you are given a sales letter to write. Start practicing, so that when you finally get sales letter writing duties, you are already an expert at the art and craft.

- Buy a good book of style and usage. Writing a sales letter does not merely mean putting together sentences and disregarding grammar, spelling, and punctuation rules. You need to watch your language, and now, more than ever, simply because it is your only weapon in fighting your big sales battles. A poorly-written sales letter can turn off customers faster than a poor product or service. After all, customers will not care about what you sell until they know that you care about them first. If you cannot care for your grammar and writing skills, then why should they buy anything from you? The last thing anyone needs is a careless person, and your customers know that.

- Practice the craft on products or services that you are familiar with. Start practicing writing sales letters on a product or service that you actually like and use. Although this sounds easy, it can actually be difficult. How do you make a product or service sound good without sounding like you are hollering your praises out? How can your favorite shampoo sell without you having to showcase how beautiful your hair has turned out? How can you make your potential customers get that spa treatment of their dreams without you sounding like the spa paid you millions to make the endorsement?

- The best writers are those who can sound interested in something that they do not even remotely like. This can be a good practice exercise for you if you have already sharpened your writing skills for the previous exercise. Pick a product or service that you do not like, and try to endorse it. This can prepare you for the times when you might be assigned to do a sales letter on a product or service that you do not believe in; you can always opt out and tell your boss that you do not want to get in the way of your principles, but this option is one of the biggest no-no's in the sales and marketing world.

- As soon as you know how to get your sales pitch out, it's time to trim it down. The best sales pitches are no more than a few hundred words long. When writing a sales letter, you need to keep your words convincing, but to a minimum. Remember, not all your readers have all the time in the world to listen to what you say. You need to make your little letter worth their while.

Look back at all your previous exercises and count how many words you used in describing a product or service that you liked, or did not like. How many words did you use? Did you use five hundred or two thousand words? Keep exercising: write the same sales pitch over again, with fewer words this time, but with the meat of your pitch still in it. Keep on trimming your pitch until you are left with nothing but the convincing summary of your endorsement.

Writing a sales letter can be difficult if you do not know how to make a sales pitch. As with any other letter, you need to be formal and respectful, but not stiff and boring. You need all your skills as a writer and salesperson, and you need to put them all into practice. So what are you waiting for? Pick up that pen, or get to that keyboard, and start writing a sales
letter!

About the Author: Mario Churchill is a freelance author and has written over 200 articles on various subjects. For more information checkout http://www.websiteconversionexpert.com and http://www.killercopywritingblog.com