RSS Subscribe Box: Does Yours Get Attention? (Video)

Posted on 19 May 2010 by Suzanne

Do you have an eye-catching subscribe button on your blog? Here’s what you need to look at …

When you start any new site and you start to invite others to visit your site you will want to decide what you want them to do when they get there. You probably want them to do several things while they’re there so you’ll need to write those out and number them.

If you have a product for sale then you probably want to invite them to a sales page where you have sales copy for your product and their options are either buy or leave.

If you want them to read your posts and find your content valuable then you want to make reading your posts your main focus.

If you are trying to grow a mailing list or RSS subscriber base … then you want those to be the dominant feature.

For my Bikini After 40 site I want my main focus to be on gaining RSS subscribers. Eventually I will offer some nice freebies to grow my mailing list but that will come down the road.

So if my main focus is gaining RSS subscribers I want to (a) put my opt in box in a “prime real estate” area of my blog, (b) draw some attention to it, and (c) ask readers to subscribe.

I put the opt in box in the area that’s called “above the fold.” That means the part of your page that you can see when the page loads without having to scroll down the page. Then depending on where your side bar is located you would want to put it at either the top left or the top right side. Research shows that our eye scans a page in a “z” pattern … starting at the top left side … moving straight across to the top right side … then down and left … and then back across to the right so you’ll want to keep that in mind when choosing the opt in location.

To draw some attention I like to use something animated in the opt in area. I hired Chrissy Jensen to design the opt in area for the site and I think she did a great job. I told her to use the one here on suzannefranco.com as a guide and to make it match the look and feel of the bikini site.

In the box I ask readers to subscribe. Seems obvious but sometimes I just see icons and a field to fill in … and I like to make it a little more apparent that I want them to subscribe. I’m still coming up ideas for something to dangle and a call to action but I’ll get it there eventually.

Here’s the screen capture video I made for you:

So what do you think of my opt in on the bikini site? Do you have some ideas for me? I’d like to entice visitors to subscribe … do I need a good freebie? What info do you think my readership would most appreciate?

Do you know what your number one priority is for your site? Have you focused your efforts and energy there? Is it obvious to your visitors/readers? Do you have any questions I can answer? Let us hear from you! *SmiLes* Suzanne

P.S. If  you’ve enjoyed the post and video would you please take a quick second and share it with your friends on Twitter or Facebook (or your favorite social site) … I’d really appreciate it! ;)

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Go download it and learn how I drove new visitors and grew my RSS subscribers by over 800% ... in 30 days flat! Let me know what you think of the book ok?

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Happy Mother’s Day (Watch My Most Favorite YouTube Video)

Posted on 09 May 2010 by Suzanne

I want to wish all moms a Happy Mother’s Day! I hope you’re doing something wonderful today … whether it’s exciting or relaxing … I hope you get to see or talk to your favorite people today.

I want to share my most favorite YouTube video with you … it’s my dedication to my own mom (love you mom!) and to all mom’s in the world today. *huGs* Suzanne

P.S. She sings very fast so I chose the version with the lyrics included … Hope you get a great laugh … and it puts a smile on your face ;)

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Come Check Out My Newest Site! (Video)

Posted on 06 May 2010 by Suzanne

Well … we’ve planned our next trip to Mexico and I’m soooo stoked! In early June we’ll be taking kids down to the resort where we took our honeymoon, Dreams Puerto Aventuras, in the Riviera Maya area about 45 minutes from Cancun. It’s an all-inclusive resort and we’ll be totally spoiled. LOL We’ll also be in our bathing suits much of the time … so that means the race is on for me to lose some weight and tone up.

Since I was journaling my food and exercise and taking before and after pictures I decided to put up a blog and share my tips and ideas with others who would also like to look great in their swimsuit http://www.bikiniafter40.com. Why am I sharing that with you? Well, I am building this blog from the ground up so I thought some of you might want want to follow along and see what I do to set it up, to drive traffic, build backlinks, do the SEO, monetize, etc.

If you’d be interested in watching me I’ll be posting every so often here on the blog at suzannefranco.com and I’d love to hear any questions you have about what I’m doing with the site. I’d also love to have your feedback on the blog itself. What do you think of the concept? Of the look and feel? Of the content? All thoughts are welcome of course!

Here’s a video message:

Please leave me your comments and let me know what you’d like to learn about my new site and I’ll address it here on the blog. *SmiLes* Suzanne

P.S. If you’re looking to lose weight and/or tone up … or interested in health and fitness in general I hope you’ll join me over on the new site so we can support and encourage each other ;)

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Q. Suzanne, How’s Your New Business Going? (Video)

Posted on 19 February 2010 by Suzanne

I’ve received a lot of emails asking me how my new business is going (blog post here: http://www.suzannefranco.com/im-starting-a-new-online-business-wanna-join-me/) so I wanted to give you an update. I purchased the Traffic Geyser “business-in-a-box” training and it included their video submission service for a year (and a bunch more quite honestly) and it was a great decision. It was $2,000 so it wasn’t for everyone but I’m at a point in my career where I was ready for it so it was well worth the investment.

I have spent a ton of time watching the tutorials (as I mention often – I’m very detailed and over analyse everything so I’m “slow” LOL) and I’ve learned a lot about how to start this business. I have also done some testing using my own businesses and so far everything is working really well. For those who aren’t familiar, the Traffic Geyser system is focused on using video submission to get page one Google results. This “business” is using that method to get local search results for offline businesses.

I can’t wait to try this for someone else’s business and so I’ll be doing some barter here soon to get my feet wet.

Did anyone here reading also start this business? If so, how’s it going? I’d love to hear from you … questions … comments? *SmiLes* Suzanne

Mardi Gras:

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Get Rid of Your J-O-B … (Video)

Posted on 18 February 2010 by Suzanne

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So I took some time off from the blog during the holidays (still had to run my other businesses) and when I was ready to return … tragedy struck. My 12 year-old son, Nathan, crashed his dirt bike doing about 30 mph and broke his collar bone and both of his wrists (poor little guy). I already love working from home but when this happened it reconfirmed just how lucky I am to be able to truly be there for my family and to not have a boss to deal with.

If you are working a job and would like to work from home why don’t you make 2010 the year? What I’d suggest you do is to figure out exactly how much you need to make to replace your job. List out all of the expenses of working at your job (clothing, lunches, gas, etc.) and subtract that from your take home pay and see what you need to come up with. That way you’ll have a true picture of what that will take for you.

You can start out by supplementing your income and see what it will take to replace the job all together.

I took the plunge by purchasing an existing business (on eBay LOL) and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I’ve had several people ask me what I’d charge to help them set up an online business from scratch and it’s got me thinking about doing some site flipping – which is where you set up an online business and then sell it (usually auction style) so stay tuned for any news related to that. If you’d be interested please leave a comment below and/or shoot me an email telling me what type of business you’d be interested in and let me know your budget … we’ll see what I can come up with OK?

Hope everyone is well and I’m glad to be back to work here on the blog. *SmiLes* Suzanne

*** If you click on one of the images you can scroll through them easier ;)

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A Lesson in Procrastination = Anthony Lost a Bet LOL (Video)

Posted on 12 December 2009 by Suzanne

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I’ve had a crazy busy week! In a good way. LOL. I’ve been trying to organize all of my sites (there are a ton of them *sigh*) and I’m evaluating each site, prioritizing them, figuring out what each site needs, looking for sites that I many need to drop (or handle differently), and just plain trying to get organized with my work. I have so much going on that sometimes I’m overwhelmed and I know I get less accomplished because of the disorganization.

So new news on my business partnership with Anthony too. We decided to get Anthony set up on his own blog (http://www.anthonyaugugliaro.com) and it’s been a great decision that we’re both really excited about. It gives him a chance to find his “voice” and niche without having to “tag along” on my site. LOL. Go check it out!

Meanwhile, we decided we’d team up on a niche site and we’re both super stoked to see what we can do with the site. It will be wine related (still deciding on the exact niche) and we’ll announce how we conquer the site as a team as soon as we get all of the details ironed out. This lead to me prompting Anthony to get his feet wet with his own niche store/site and this really got F-U-N! Anthony has been putting off starting his own site since we met (like a year and a half?!) so as any good friend would do … I started to push and get bossy! LOL. Well, he started his keyword research and he promised to follow some steps and do some “homework” by a certain time and he didn’t follow through (completely – and I’m a stickler) so he lost the bet he made with me. You can see how he made good in the video below.

As for my niche stores, I can’t believe it! After I just did my update post telling you how my income was cut fairly drastically with eBay/EPN and how I was looking for ways to diversify and drive less traffic to eBay … I’m on track to have my best month ever with them! Geez … I just don’t get at all how they are calculating my clicks or my income. I guess I need to take the time to go to their blog and forum and read up on this new payout. *sigh* So … I’ll keep you posted as the month progresses (let’s say that through the 9th of December I’m already over my November total).

I hope you’re having a great month. Please share any questions you have either in the comments section or via my Contact page and I’ll help in any way I can. *SmiLes* Suzanne

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Niche Store Profits / Earnings September & October 2009 (Audio)

Posted on 30 November 2009 by Suzanne

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As you may or may not have heard, EPN (eBay’s affiliate program) has recently changed the way they pay their affiliates and most people I know have not been too happy about the changes. Although some affiliates are making more money on this new payout the vast majority are not. Not only that, people are concerned that they can’t seem to pinpoint exactly how we’re paid so that’s a bit of a concern.

My earnings from September were $528.06 and my earnings for October were a mere $298.38.

I’ve finally set out to do some maintenance on my niche stores. I’ve been slacking and I’m ready to get back into the niche store “game” and I’m willing to put in the time and energy to get the stores performing and possibly add some more stores.

I’ve written out each store I have now (there are five) and I’m in the process of evaluating their status: what I need to update/fix, what promoting would work best, and I’m trying to get an overall feeling for how each store is performing and what I could do to each to make it perform better.

I’m looking to make sure all software is updated and running the latest version (including BANS, WP, WP plugins, etc.) and I’m adding some plugins to each as well (there are various plugins designed for adding affiliate products to a WP blog). For instance, on my first three BANS stores (Build a Niche Store) I used a free theme designed for BANS stores but these stores don’t have blogs on them. I don’t want to redo the entire stores and lose my search engine positioning and/or backlinks so I’ve decided to add WordPress blogs to the “backend” of them (installed in a subfolder). The other two stores were built on a theme that was designed specifically for BANS but it’s a WP theme that integrates the BANS store on the blog. I’m upgrading everything and I’m also planning on updating the “look and feel” of some of them too. It’s also a good idea to go through each store page and make sure everything is in working order. If eBay changes a category number it can destroy your site and if you’re not monitoring the sites and/or stats you won’t know about it.

Once I have these five stores under control and performing smoothly I’ll be adding a handful of stores. I’m still deciding if I’ll be using a BANS format or if I’ll use a WordPress blog with some of the various plugins available for pulling affiliate products into the site.

My favorites are: phpBay and ReviewAzon ( and you can even integrate the two by using ReviewAzon) and I’m also beta testing two more affiliate plugins so I’ll have more information on those too.

So, although my store earnings are down with the new payment methods I still plan on working hard on my sites and hope to up my income by remaining flexible and adding some other affiliate product sources too. I’ve written before about how important it is to diversify! I’ll be looking at some other options (besides eBay) and I’ll keep you posted here on the blog as to what I find, what I try and how it works out.

Do you have any niche sites? What tools do you use and which are your favorites? Have you wanted to get started with some niche sites but don’t know where to start? Let us hear from you! *SmiLes* Suzanne

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Keyword Research – My Tactics and Formulas (Video Tutorial)

Posted on 23 November 2009 by Suzanne

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I honestly feel that keyword research is one of the most important skills you can have as an online business owner.

I decided to use a video from my Blogging for Bucks BootCamp and I think you’ll enjoy it. If you did not make it into BootCamp you can click HERE and see if I’m still accepting new attendees.

Since the video will “show” you what I do and why I won’t go into a ton of detail here in the post.

 

 

I use a combination of tools and I honestly feel  you can get most all of the information you need by using Google’s free tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.

I start with a very broad term and then use the results from the tool to drill down until I find a keyword phrase that will work for my needs. I use keyword phrases for the main title of a blog, my domain names, my file extensions, for each individual post, for anchor text, for tags and keywords … for any aspect of telling the search engines (and readers) what my site, page, or information is about.

After I find some potential keyword phrases I move on to checking out the competition. I need to know how many other pages I’ll be competing for if I use that phrase.  You want to find that “sweet spot” … enough searches to bring visitors vs. the least amount of competition for that particular term. Make sense?

So … I’ll share some of the ways I look at the competition in an upcoming lesson.

Was this video helpful? Do you have any questions? Do you have any ideas or tips that I’ve missed? Do you need help? Share your thoughts and ask your questions below and if you’d like some one-on-one attention please see my services page. Let us hear from you below and please Retweet this post if you’ve enjoyed it. Thanks! *SmiLes* Suzanne

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Diet Soda or Beverages? Choosing Your Niche Topic (Audio Tutorial)

Posted on 18 November 2009 by Suzanne

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I’m just wrapping up a small series on brainstorming and how to go about finding a topic that you’re truly passionate about and now I want to do a follow up on how to narrow that topic down into a niche topic to give you a better chance of success for your online business.

What I don’t think I stressed enough in the previous lessons is how important this is … even if you ALREADY have an online business.

If you’re not as successful as you’d like to be I hope you went through the lessons as well. If you didn’t get to them yet please do yourself a favor and give them a quick listen (they’re audio/video lessons).  You can find them here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and you’ll also want to check out the post about Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, Crush It, that is specifically about finding a topic you’re passionate about (enter for the signed book giveaway too).

In fact, I once heard Gary say (I wish I could remember which interview I heard this on *sigh*) that one mistake people make is that they have a topic they’re passionate about but they change it (even slightly) because they think there’s not a market for that specific topic.

Diet Soda … Soda … or Beverages?

The example he used was about a guy who was passionate about diet soda. He figured there was no way he could make a business out of his passion for diet soda so he thought maybe soda (all sodas). After he put some more thought into it he decided he wanted to make a fortune (and there couldn’t possibly be an audience for diet soda) so he decided to go with beverages. The problem with this way of thinking is that this guy isn’t passionate about all beverages … he’s passionate about diet soda! So when it comes time to speak and/or write about vodka or juice or any other beverages for that matter … he’s just not very interested (not full of passion for the subject) and he dreads going to work on the business and/or gets overwhelmed.

This was a “light bulb” moment for me. I have a site that I’d love to work on more often and I just don’t because it’s overwhelming and I feel like I’ll never get it to where it can be truly successful. As you might already know, Ken and I got married in Mexico earlier this year and I spent a ton of time online researching destination weddings … where to get married, what the requirements were for each country, the seasons/weather, travel expenses, etc. I was so excited about the subject that I started a site/blog on the subject (Best Destination Weddings – might as well give it a little link juice huh? LOL).

Well … after hearing the diet soda illustration I realized this: 

Weddings = Beverages

Destination Weddings = Soda

Riviera Maya Weddings = Diet Soda

Do you see the idea here? I could research, read, write … and talk about the Riviera Maya area where we got married (we returned to their for our honeymoon as well) all day every day and be totally excited and passionate about it … without wondering how much money I’ll make for sharing this information … B-I-N-G-O!!!!!!!! There’s my passion … don’t you agree?

I will not scrap the existing site but rather I will be adding a separate site that’s more specific to that area and then the sites can be a referral source for each other. I hope to find alternative ways to fill the existing site with steady content (article directories, guest bloggers, etc.) and that way I can focus my time and energy on the niche site and I’ll be thrilled to work on it.

So … where are you at in choosing your niche topic? Are you ready to get started? Do you have an online business? If so, was this helpful to you too? Are you considering an adjustments to any of your niches? Have questions? Let us hear from you! *SmiLes* Suzanne

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Gary Vaynerchuk Audio & Free Signed “Crush It” Book!

Posted on 16 November 2009 by Suzanne

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NOTE: Read details for FREE signed book at the bottom of this post!

img00014-20091021-1223Last month I went up to Austin (about an hour away) to Gary Vaynerchuk’s (Vay-ner-chuk) book signing for his new book, Crush It, and it was so worth the trip.

If you’re not familiar with Gary you’ll want to check him out on his blog, Gary Vaynerchuk, and his wine site, Wine Library TV. He was the first person who really, truly inspired me to try vlogging (video blogging) even though after watching him I felt totally inadequate LOL.

He has been hugely successful at using social media to brand himself and to grow his businesses and now most recently to promote his book.

I love the explanation on his book cover, “Why Now is the Time to Crush It! … Cash in on Your Passion.” I feel that brainstorming and truly digging deep within to find your passion is one of the most important aspects of starting any business and I’ve really enjoyed the book.

He talks a lot about how much business has changed (and is changing) and with the internet anything is possible for anyone who wants to succeed … and I completely agree. Gone are the days of needing a ton of money as start up capital … you can be up and running with a new business in a day and for under $10 bucks. Don’t believe me? Shoot me an email … Contact Suzanne.

We showed up for the signing and when he arrived he took his time with each of us privately while he signed our books and then he said to stick around for a “Q & A” session. He stood up and started speaking and I let the good’ol flip start rolling (I felt a little bad sticking that thing in his face but I’m happy to have the video). He spoke and answered our questions for over an hour. In fact, I used up my 60 minutes on the Flip and had to switch over to my Blackberry (I’ve never used that feature so I lost a few minutes of recording – and I can’t figure out how to make the Blackberry portion bigger but you can still hear it LOL).

NOTE:  The video was too long (large file) and it was causing the page to have problems loading so Ive added an audio version too: 

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I hope you enjoy the audio and if you’re looking for a great motivational read you need to pick up a copy of Crush It for yourself.

Now let’s have some fun!

I have a signed/autographed copy of the book, Crush It, that I’m going to raffle off here on the blog. It will be a drawing and it’s super easy to enter.

  1. Subscribe to my RSS via email (must be email so I can confirm the subscription)
  2. Tweet this post using the “Retweet” button at the top of this post (if you have a Twitter account)
  3. Leave a comment below that you’ve done so (with your Twitter ID)

If you are already subscribed via email no worries just retweet the post and leave a comment that you’re subscribed and that you’ve tweeted (with your Id) … if you are not on Twitter please state that as well.

Last day to enter is November 30, 2009!

Let us hear from you! Are you familiar with GaryVee? Have you read the book Crush It? If so, what’d you think? Are you entered into the drawing to win your own signed copy of the book?

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   Crush It … the book sold on Amazon.com – for less than the cost of lunch?! Better at least check it out!

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