How Long Does It Take Your Site To Load on Dial Up?

Your site is getting traffic, but conversion rates are horrible. Everything seems to be working, so what’s wrong? Your site may simply be to slow.

Load Times – Are You Driving A Ferrari or Moped?

Give some thought to the sites you have visited of the past few weeks. Were you willing to wait 20 seconds for a site to load or did you hit the back button? Why would visitors to your site behave any differently? They won’t.

Webmasters, designers and site owners universally access the web through high-speed connections. Because of this, it is easy to forget roughly 40 percent of surfers use dial-up connections. While your site may appear to load quickly on your high-speed connection, have you tried loading it on a 56k connection? The results can be shocking.

Sites that appear to load quickly on a high-speed connection can take forever on 56k. It is not unheard of to find a “fast site” actually takes 30, 50 or 80 seconds to load on a 56k. Sometimes, the load time is so slow the browser will actually “time out” and fail to show anything. If your site has this problem, 40 percent of the hits are worthless. Worse, those frustrated surfers are unlikely to try to access your site in the future even if you fix the speed problems.

How fast should a page load on a 56k connection? As fast as possible, but no slower then 25 seconds. If you can get 56k load times below 10 seconds, you can turn a negative into a competitive advantage. Surfers come back to fast sites.

Determining Load Times

The best way to determine the load time for your site is to actually use a 56k connection. While this solution isn’t particularly technical, it will let you see exactly what your prospects are seeing when they visit the site. You will be able to see what loads quickly and what appears slowly. This should let you isolate particular elements in need of optimizing.

Server statistics can also provide you with evidence of slow load times. Are users spending a lot of time on entry pages, but not visiting internal pages? Either you have poor content or a loading problem.

Finally, you can also use diagnostic programs to test load times. Typically, the programs will kick out estimated load times for dial-up, DSL and T1 connections. Make sure you test your home page and internal pages. Diagnostic programs are excellent tools, but don’t get lazy. Make sure you physically watch your site load on a dial-up connection. The experience will prove invaluable to improving your site and conversion rates.

Improving Performance

The steps needed to improve the performance of your site often depend on the nature of the site. A database driven site will have different issue than a graphic intense site. There are, however, universal factors that can be checked:

1. Graphics: Typically, browsers have to make a connection for each image on a page. The more you have, the longer the load time. Limiting the number and size of graphics can help.

2. Tables: If you use tables, try to break them up into smaller modules. Large tables can negatively impact load times.

3. Multimedia: If it flashes, explodes, spins or blinks, consider ditching it. Yes, it looks great, but is it worth 40% of your audience?

4. Size: Scrutinize the size of your pages. The bigger the page, the slower the load times. It shouldn’t be a problem if the page is comprised of text, but large pages with lots of code will load slowly.

Cheer up if you have a speed problem! Yes, you’ve lost a lot of business, but now you can fix it. Most of your competitors will never figure it out. That puts you ahead of the game.

How To Post Your First Ebay Auction in Five Simple Steps.

Ebay is the internet&s largest marketplace, and it’s an excellent place for buyers to find what they want at bargain prices, and for sellers to find buyers. If you haven&t posted an auction on ebay before, It’s fairly simple to post your first auction on eBay. Just do the following five steps.

Step 1: Open an eBay seller’s account.

Obviously, this is the first thing you need to do . If you’ve bought things on eBay, then you already have an account – just log in with it and click ‘Sell’ in the toolbar at the top of the page, then click ‘Create a seller’s account’. If you’ve never used eBay before, then you’ll need to open an account first using the ‘register’ link underneath the toolbar, and then click ‘Sell’ and ‘Create a seller’s account’. The eBay site will then guide you through the process. For security, this may involve giving card details and bank information.

Step 2: Decide what to sell.

For your first little experiment with eBay, it doesn’t really matter what you sell. Take a look around the room you’re in – I’m sure there’s something in there that you’re not all that attached to and could put in the post. Small books and CDs are ideal first items. Once you get more used to how things work, try to indentify which market is right for you.

You need to consider two things in your market choice. The first is market size, which indicates how much demand exists for the products you’re considering to sell. Second, your personal intterest in what you sell. You must balance between those two factors to be successful.

Another thing I noticed on Ebay is what I call the Uniqeness Factor. What I mean by that is how unique are your offerings. If people see a lot of people selling the same item. They will tend to buy the cheapest, and that starts price wars between sellers. A smart seller chooses a smaller, more profitable niche to conquer. When you differentiate your offerings your profits and chances of making a sale will be higher. That’s why starting with your own things at home will be unique enough and wouldn’t cost you much for your first auction.

Step 3: List your item on Ebay.

Click ‘Sell’, and you’re on your way to listing your item.

Before you go ahead and list your item, look at some other existing sellers and learn from them. Notice how they layout their auction page, what keywords they use. Also note their starting prices and determine some of the startegies they use to attract bidders.

Next, choose a category – it’s best to just type in what the item is and let eBay choose for you. Next, write a title and description. Include key words you think people will search for in the title box, and all the information you have about the item in the description box.

Make sure you build an attractive and inforamtive auction page. Use pictures and headlines to highlight the benefits of your product. Answer as much questions a buyer might have as you can. Clearly state your refund, shipping and payment policies and contact information.

Now set a starting price. $0.01 is the best starting price, as it draws people in to bid who otherwise wouldn’t, and items will almost never finish at such a low price. The next thing to set is the duration of the auction: 3, 5, 7 or 10 days. This is up to you: longer sales will usually get more bids, but will also seem to drag on forever. If you’ve taken a picture, add it now – items with pictures always sell for more. Finally, tick the payment methods you will accept (just PayPal is best for now), and where you will post to (limit yourself to your own country to begin with). Submit and you’re done!

Step 4: Wait for it to sell.

This is just a matter of sitting back and letting eBay do its thing – buyers will find your item and leave bids on it. Some bidders might email you with questions about the item, and you should do your best to answer these questions as quickly as you can.

Remember that if your item doesn’t sell then you can list it again for free.

Step 5: Collect payment and post it.

eBay will sent your buyer emails guiding them through the process of sending you payment for the item. Make sure you have the money before you send anything.

Once you’ve got the payment, all you need to do is pack the item for posting (make sure to use some bubble wrap), take the buyer’s address from the confirmation email eBay sent you, and write it on the parcel. Put some stamps on, post it, and you’re done!

I hope you will enjoy selling your first item on Ebay.

Five Ways To Continually Grow Your Affiliate Checks

The promise of earning profits without really doing much of anything has enticed a lot of people towards affiliate marketing. But does affiliate marketing really work this way?

As an affiliate, all that is required of you is to simply place the merchant’s ad on your website. Then after that, you virtually do nothing but wait for anyone to click on the merchant’s ad and later collect your profits. Easy, right? Well, not quite often. Many affiliates earn almost nothing from their affiliate programs simply because they do nothing. Remember that affiliate marketing is but another form of marketing, and you’ll definitely need to market your merchant’s product for you to earn something.

Successful affiliates in any affiliate program simply don’t sit there and wait for money to come. Why? Because there is no money in simply sitting and waiting. If you want to be successful in affiliate marketing and if you want to continually grow your affiliate checks, you’ve got to do something. Think of ways on how to promote your merchant’s business and products better. Think of ways on how to induce other people to click on the link or ad provided to you by your merchant. Think of ways on how to make your affiliate sales increase!

So if you’re new in affiliate marketing and you try to follow the easy go lucky pit that most unsuccessful affiliate marketers follow, then you’re definitely on the wrong track. But we&re not advising you to stop right there. No. Rather, we want you to take some steps to make your affiliate program work better and gain more commissions for you. How? Here are a few guidelines that may help you to continually grow your affiliate checks:

1) Become an expert on your affiliate product.

You can promote your merchant’s product better if you know a lot of things about it. To become an expert, the best thing you can do is purchase your merchant’s product yourself. This way, you can tell your customers about your first-hand experience using the product. You can even write a testimonial or a personal endorsement ad about it. But if any condition does not permit you to purchase the product, you can at least make a thorough research about it.

2) Host your own website.

Or at least have a domain name that is short and easy to remember. You certainly wouldn’t expect a visitor to remember a very long and incomprehensible URL. And if that&s so, you also wouldn’t expect him to visit your website any time soon. That means less traffic for your page and the less chance for your affiliate ads and links to be clicked.

It is also a good idea to create a private website and offer access to it to anybody who clicks on any of your affiliate ads. Visitors usually get interested with these private websites. Private websites also gives you a venue to promote your back-end affiliate products.

3) Write your own affiliate ads.

Many merchants usually wouldn’t mind if you write and design your own ads for their products, for as long as you ask permission from them and present them your ad before posting it on your site. This gives you a greater advantage over a lot of other affiliates who must be advertising the same affiliate products.

4) Participate in chat rooms, discussion boards, and forums related to your product.

If you use to ignore them before, then it is time for you to start focusing your attention on them. You can start your own chat or join an existing chat related to your product. You don’t have to promote your affiliate product at once, but find the chance to advertise and promote it as you go along. The same would be true for message boards, discussion boards and forums.

5) Create a free ezine or newsletter.

Ezines and newsletters are periodical publications whose aim is to inform a group of people about a certain subject. In your ezines and newsletters, you don’t always have to promote your merchant’s product for this may greatly annoy your subscribers. Rather, find a way to insert your affiliate ads and links on some portions of the letter. Also, don’t forget to promote your ezine or newsletter on your website.

These are but a few guidelines on how you can increase your affiliate sales and continually grow your affiliate checks. Sure there can be a lot of other tips that out there, and if you think they would work, we won’t discourage you from following them. What’s important is that you be able to find a way to: attract more traffic to your site, induce your visitors to click on the ads on your site, and be able to promote your merchant’s products even outside the boundary of your website. If you can do these, there’s no reason for you to fail in affiliate marketing.

You Must Use The Right Key Words To Succeed In The SEO Game

Know what words your customers will use when searching.
You might know what your customers search for. If not, find out. Is it a description of “pants” or “jeans?” One may be searched more often than the other, but why not target both? How about “executive gifts?” Maybe “desk accessories” will broaden your web site marketing strategy.

Ask all kinds of people. Get advice from people in all walks of life including management, employees, customers, vendors, friends and family on how they would search for effective search engine positioning keywords. Ask them how they would search for different products and services. It’s really not about what you think they would search for, its about what they think. Believe me, they can many times be two totally different things.

Once you have successfully harvested a meaningful keyword list, remove any keywords that are too targeted or not to specific. Also remember that keyword placement is important. Try to put as many keywords as possible in the beginning paragraphs, and of course the title line.

The higher the value of the keyword the more competition you will have. Every SEO utilizes tools similar to the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool and also know the value of a keyword. The lower the value of the keyword the less competition we will have.

We don’t want to aim to low but we also don’t want to aim to high. We need to find a middle ground. For you that may be a keyword with a value of no less than 1000 and no more than 10,000. It will be up to you to determine what you deem reasonable.

Also, the keywords should appear regularly throughout the opening Web page. It is especially important that they appear frequently in the opening paragraphs.
However, resist the temptation to overuse keywords. The search engines can spot it and will reduce your page rankings. Tools are available to help with optimal keyword density. However, avoid software that writes the site’s pages. Search engines can sniff these out, too.

A good rule of thumb is: Never sacrifice quality of content for keyword placement. This will affect your page ranking. Most importantly, your site won’t appeal to visitors. For a FREE EBOOK detailing the fastest way to the top of the search engine, visit:
http://www.1StepSystemSuccessSecrets.com/affh/tooleey or http://www.ride-to-the-top.com and
http://www.1stepsystem-premier.com

How to Sell Your Products on eBay

Founded in September 1995, eBay is The World&s Online Marketplace for the sale of goods and services by a diverse community of individuals and small businesses. Today, the eBay community includes more than a hundred million registered members from around the world. People spend more time on eBay than any other online site, making it the most popular shopping destination on the Internet.

Did you know that most eBay sellers are full time workers in a huge variety of work domains? You may see eBay as a great opportunity to supplement your income, or you may see it as a modern form of a garage sale. Regardless of your views, you can make the most out of eBay’s offer and reach an extensive audience for whatever it is that you wish to sell.

Selling your product on eBay is a user friendly, simple process. The first thing that you need to do is to create your own free eBay account. In order to do this you need to provide the site with your credit or debit card number and your checking account information. You needn&t worry about security issues, as eBay has some of the most secure servers in the world.

The second step is to choose to have your fees deducted from your checking account with eBay Direct Pay or to pay for them with your credit card. EBay charges you an insertion fee, for each item you post for sale, and a final value fee when the item is sold. The fees are low and if the item isn’t sold you don’t have to pay the final value fee. In case you do not have a credit card you can still participate to the buying and selling activities on eBay by verifying your identity for $5.

When you eBay account is ready you will have to follow these steps: • Decide on your selling format. There are several ways to sell items on eBay and you will have to choose the one that suits your need best. • Select a category – place your ad in a relevant context for better exposure. Its like selling them in the right place inside a huge mall. People will likely to search at that category, just don’t forget to emphasize on categories. • Write a concise title. Titles sell the best, one-liners or what you think is best. You can make things appealing considering you have the merchandise; they can instantly pull of another sound made by cash registers on a sale. • Describe your item as clearly as possible. EBay users search of the best image for the merchandise, you can have to improve your camera skills to attract probable customers. And of course add photos of the item in all angles. This is a very convincing argument for most buyers as they will trust your product more when they get to actually see it. • Set your price and the duration of your auction. Having to decide on this might be a good idea when the bidding closes off, as some schemes let the possible buyers choose the buy it now option if the conditions apply, try to experiment on things that may entice them to actually buy the product at a high price. • Make your item stand out from the crowd by using the numerous listing upgrades. Upgrading your listing makes them fresh and on top of the competition. this is fairly optional, but if you have the time to update your list, might as well do them. • Enter Payment and Shipping Information and specify who will pay for the shipping and how your buyer will release funds for it. These conditions are critical to state. Often, confusing your prospects and make them walk away from the deal if you give them a horrible shipping condition. Try to build their trust; after all, what you really want is to sell your items.

The steps mentioned above will take only minutes to complete, making your eBay selling experience a pleasant one. You will be asked to review all of the information you provided and then submit it. Your eBay listing begins from that moment and you can start watching the buying process unfold.

5 Simple Steps To Posting Your First Ebay Auction.

It’s surprisingly simple to get started posting your very first auction on eBay. Here’s what you need to do.

Step 1: Open an eBay seller’s account.

If you’ve bought things on eBay, then you already have an account – just log in with it and click ‘Sell’ in the toolbar at the top of the page, then click ‘Create a seller’s account’. If you’ve never used eBay before, then you’ll need to open an account first using the ‘register’ link underneath the toolbar, and then click ‘Sell’ and ‘Create a seller’s account’. The eBay site will then guide you through the process. For security, this may involve giving card details and bank information.

Step 2: Decide what to sell.

For your first little experiment with eBay, it doesn’t really matter what you sell. Take a look around the room you’re in – I’m sure there’s something in there that you’re not all that attached to and could put in the post. Small books and CDs are ideal first items.

Step 3: Submit your item.

Click ‘Sell’, and you’re on your way to listing your item.

The first thing you need to do is choose a category – it’s best to just type in what the item is and let eBay choose for you. Next, write a title and description. Include key words you think people will search for in the title box, and all the information you have about the item in the description box.

Now set a starting price. $0.01 is the best starting price, as it draws people in to bid who otherwise wouldn’t, and items will almost never finish at such a low price. The next thing to set is the duration of the auction: 3, 5, 7 or 10 days. This is up to you: longer sales will usually get more bids, but will also seem to drag on forever. If you’ve taken a picture, add it now – items with pictures always sell for more. Finally, tick the payment methods you will accept (just PayPal is best for now), and where you will post to (limit yourself to your own country to begin with). Submit and you’re done!

Step 4: Wait for it to sell.

This is just a matter of sitting back and letting eBay do its thing – buyers will find your item and leave bids on it. Some bidders might email you with questions about the item, and you should do your best to answer these questions as quickly as you can.

Remember that if your item doesn’t sell then you can list it again for free.

Step 5: Collect payment and post it.

eBay will sent your buyer emails guiding them through the process of sending you payment for the item. Make sure you have the money before you send anything.

Once you’ve got the payment, all you need to do is pack the item for posting (make sure to use some bubble wrap), take the buyer’s address from the confirmation email eBay sent you, and write it on the parcel. Put some stamps on, post it, and you’re done!

I hope you enjoyed selling your first item. Now that you’re starting to get into it, the next email will give you a checklist of things you need to do to be a successful seller.