“Your PayPal payment of $xxxx!”

“You’re APPROVED…”

“Re: Your $100 guarantee…”

Have you come across these sentences ever?

I am sure you have seen emails with these subjects in your inbox, if you had ever shared your name and email addresses on any of the self-proclaimed GURU’s websites promising a free download of some information.

What was your first reaction?

It is increasingly becoming a trend to use these kind of subject lines in marketing emails that are delivered to you inbox. Does it really work?

The first couple of times it might work. But in the second instance you will surely unsubscribe from the list unless you are too lazy to do it. What people using such subject lines forget is the fact that email marketing is about building relationships and not spamming your prospects mailboxes.

One of the very important things to keep in mind in email marketing is the importance of a subject.

A subject sets the tone of your email. If your email should be read or, not, is determined by your subject. If the subject of your email is truthful and appealing your email opens will increase.

Constituents of a Good Subject Line -

What is a good subject line? What are the things that you should keep in mind when writing a subject line for your emails?

1. Keep it short – Follow the principle of KISS while writing your headlines. Keep it short and Simple. About 3 – 4 words is the ideal length. That comes to about 50 characters.
2. Summary – The subject should be a summarization of your email, yet should not reveal the complete secret.
3. WIIFM – You should always keep in mind the needs of your reader when you write your subject line. The WIIFM is one of the most important aspects of your email subject. This is the reason why your readers would read your email.
4. Urgency – Your email subject line should create a sense of urgency in the reader. They should not defer reading your email. Instead it should be the first thing to do on their priority list.
5. Teaser – The subject line should be a teaser. It should immediately catch your reader’s attention and should pique their curiosity.

It is extremely important to emphasize the benefits of reading your email. So your email should read out a benefit and create a curiosity in the minds of your readers. Don’t spam them. Instead give them quality content to read and tell them the actual reason for the email in the subject. If you are able to write a subject that can tell them the benefits of reading the email, they are sure to open it.

Photograph courtesy Luca Pedrotti

In one of my earlier posts we discussed about the importance of creating a Fanpage on Facebook. Facebook is the hottest thing in the world of Internet Marketing right now. The GURUS are cashing in on this phenomenon by releasing courses and ebooks on how to create a successful marketing campaign on Facebook.

Creating a Fanpage on Facebook is not a difficult task. All that you need to do is browse over to this page at Facebook and follow the simple instructions there. In less than 5 minutes you can create a Fan page. But, does it guarantee you success? Will this be the best Fan page to build your business?

Of course, not.

Had it been the case, all of the thousands of Fanpages on Facebook would been successful!!

In this article we will discuss about 5 such elements of a successful Facebook Fan page.

5 Elements of a successful Facebook Fan page -

Facebook offers a lot of customization options through the thousands of applications that are available online. You can create numerous different custom tabs and landing pages with the help of these applications. These are the key to a successful Fan page.

1. Custom Welcome Page – It is very important to create a relationship with your visitors and fans. The default welcome page for any visitor to your Facebook Fan page is your Wall. You might want to create a custom landing page for your visitors. You an design in using a simple HTML editor and paste it into your fan page using an application called as FBML.
2. Build a list – Your Welcome page should have a way of gathering names and email addresses. Facebook can be a good resource to build your lists. You can use Aweber to do this and integrate one of their scripts into your Welcome page by using FBML. The key to getting leads here is offer something of value to your visitors.
3. Upload your logo – Success at an Internet Marketing business is about creating a brand for yourself and a LOGO is one of the first things that an help you build a brand for your business. Once you have created a LOGO, use the same in your Facebook Fan page to brand your page. This helps you maintain uniformity in branding and also gives your fanpage a professional touch.
4. Links in your sidebar – Your sidebar is another important area that you should try to utilize to the maximum. One of the features of your sidebar is the option to display a few links. You can utilize this option to display links to your website, your blog and any other relevant pages about your business. This can help your readers navigate to your business pages including your blogs. Connecting with you fans is extremely important for the success of your fan pages. These links will help you connect with them.
5. Promote your Fan page – Most Internet Marketers shy away from talking about their fanpages and their online business to their friends and relatives just because of the fact that they might make fun of them. Promote your fan pages to everybody, even your friends. Your objective is not to prospect your friend, instead it is to make use of the viral feature in Facebook to connect to their friends. You should promote your fan pages on your websites and blogs as well. Link from anywhere and everywhere. Create as much visibility as possible for your pages. Another form of promoting your page is by sending updates to your fans. Being in constant touch is also a form of promotion.

These are certain basic things that you should do to ensure that you fan page is a success. There are a lot of application on Facebook which can further help you in your objectives. If you have a blog, you should use an application called as “Networked blogs” which can help you display your blog articles on your fan page.

The best way to find which application suits you is to browse through the various applications available and choose the one that best fits your business and its needs.

Automattic  – the creators of WordPress released their thirteenth major release code named as “Thelonious” and otherwise called as WordPress 3.0.

It is indeed worth the upgrade and the options of upgrading should already be available in your blog admin pages. So what is new in WordPress 3.0. Let’s take a quick look at it -

1. New Default Theme (Twenty Ten): One of the most refreshing changes is that Kubrick is gone and there is a new default theme called as the Twenty Ten theme. This is to go with the new theme APIs. Twenty Ten is a more modern and flexible theme that takes advantage of a lot of the new features.
2. A Newer and Lighter Admin Interface: WordPress 3.0 comes with a new administration interface. The new interface has contextual help on every page and has a light feel to it.
3. WordPress MU Merger: WordPress MU has now been designed into the wordpress administration in WordPress 3.0. This will let users create multiple blogs from a single installation.
4. WordPress URL shortener: URL shortening can now be done from within your blog as WordPress 3.0 has integrated support for URL shorteners including their own wp.me.
5. Choice of Admin name: You can now choose an admin name when you install a new blog and will not have to rely on the default “admin” username any more.

There are many other important updates in the new WordPress. You can watch the below video to learn more.

One of the major bugs that I found after upgrading to the new version was with the plugin “DB Cache Reloaded”. WordPress now has integrated a few new plugins which are probably conflicting with DB cache and producing the below error -

“Call to undefined method wpdb::get_blog_prefix() in /home/xxxx/xxxx/xxxxx.com/public_html/wp-includes/user.php on line XXX“

The easiest resolution to this error is to deactivate the “DB Cache Reloaded” plugin.

In conclusion I should say that WordPress 3.0 will change the way people blog. It is a welcome change – the admin interface and the contextual help and everything else. Upgrade and enjoy.

Internet Marketing is about making a living online. It is about starting an online business without the huge investments involved like in a traditional business. Then why should you be spending a fortune to build an online business?

It is true that you can start an online business with as little as $10.00. There are lots of stuffs that are available free of cost on the internet that you can use to build your online business. But how will you find these free stuffs?

Let me ask myself a question. Did I have to spend money on building my Internet Marketing business?

The answer is “Yes”. I spent a lot of money online and kept buying products after products, falling into the traps that the GURUS made for me.

But as I built my business, I realized one thing. You don’t have to spend a fortune in building your Internet Marketing business. You don’t have to buy everything that the GURUS sell in order to be successful.

Success in an Internet Marketing business is a simple step by step method and involves a few steps.

For eg: Step 1, 2 and 3. It is the exact same steps that different GURUS package in different forms and sell them for a few hundred dollars. Does changing the nomenclature from a decimal system reading 1, 2, 3 to a ROMAN numeral saying I, II, III really change the content of the steps? Not really.

Then why should you invest so much into the same repeated information. This is where I decided, I will start a blog and the purpose of DKSpeaks is to make available information at an affordable price (If there is a cost involved).

So coming back to the total investment required to start an online business. This is what I think an ideal investment should be. You might have a different opinion altogether.

1. A Domain Name ($9.99 per year) – You can get one for cheap at my domain store here.
2. A Hosting account ($4.95 per month)- You can get a hosting account at a very low price at Hostgator. In case you do not wish to spend on a hosting account, you can use Blogger, which is a free option and also provides you with a lot of customization features.
3. Micro Niche Finder ($99.99) – The best Keyword research tool. You can use the free alternative at the Google External Keyword Tool in case you do not want to make this investment.

If you noticed, you would have found that there is a free alternative to almost all the paid options. So you need not spend on the options that are costing you some investment, in case you are unable to afford it right now. Rather you can go with the free options for now and invest in the rest once you have started making some money.

In addition to all this, you will have to follow a good mentor who can guide you in your efforts to make money online. This is a difficult step because no body will give advice free of cost and mentoring means lots of advices. A free option to getting advice in your internet marketing efforts is to interact through a social media like Facebook or, Twitter. These are places where there is a lot of information shared and all of this is free of cost. You can ask questions and you will get responses to your questions because that is what social media networking is all about.

In order to help you in your Internet Marketing efforts, you will also need some guides on the basics of setting up an Internet Marketing business. These are available free of cost on the internet. You can also get a few of these for pennies from some resellers.

I am starting a weekend sale, starting this week and I will be putting valuable content on offer. These will be extremely valuable content made available for pennies and these offers will run for a entire week, after which I will change the prices to the normal. This is in an effort to help you build your business.

As a starting point, I am offering an extremely informative ebook on affiliate marketing written by Adeel Chowdhry – Affiliate Secrets Explained. This book covers everything from the basics to the details of affiliate marketing and is a required guide if you are starting off on affiliate marketing.

Let’s look at what is covered in this guide -

1. Selecting the Right Niche for you – Learn how to spot the moneymaker when you see one so that you don’t waste your efforts.
2. Setting up your site and making money.
3. Tips for tapping into the money market.
4. How to increase conversion and tips and tricks to do it.
5. Should you start a blog or, not?
6. Is search engine traffic important? How to get traffic from Google.
7. The secrets to gaining fast and free traffic.
8. Everything about SEO – Only things that are important and that you need to know.
9. Tools to boost you revenue.

There are a lot of success stories as well which will keep you motivated in remaining persistent with your efforts. After all, Internet marketing is about being persistent.

You can grab your copy of “Affiliate Secrets Explained” for only $9.95 today. Order your copy today!!!

Do you hate Internet Marketing?

Are your still reading this post, right now?

In all likelihood, you are on the verge of quitting your Internet Marketing business and is on a last bit quest to see if there is anything that you can do to save your sinking IM business!!!

That’s right. The fact still remains even if you deny it today.

I too, hate the Internet Marketing business for obvious reasons of mine. Having said that I should say that I am not a failure in the IM business. I am making a living out of the internet. My wife who had to quit her job and take care of my new born daughter is also now on the verge of becoming an independent business owner in the Internet Marketing arena.

So the question is, If I am not a failure and am making a living out of the Internet, then why is it that I hate Internet Marketing?

The failure rate in Internet Marketing is about 96%. That means only about 4% succeed in any online business. Why is the success rate so low?

The internet marketing business is about persistence. You are a failure only if you quit the business. If you remain in the business and do whatever is right, there is no reason why you should fail.

10 Things I Hate about Internet Marketing -

So what are the 10 things that I hate about the Internet Marketing business?

1. I cannot drive to work anymore – One of the biggest charms of starting on an Internet Marketing business, for me was time. When I read articles and posts and watched videos where Internet marketing Gurus were leading a lavish life, I was fascinated not by their houses or, cars. Instead I was fascinated by the time that these guys had because they did not have work a 9-5 job. They had all the time in the world to spend with their family. In my 9-5 job which would often get extended up to 14 hrs a day, I could hardly find time to chat with my wife. I hate Internet Marketing today because I cannot drive to my office anymore, because I do not have to.I love to hate Internet Marketing for that. I only drive for pleasure and that is all that I want.
2. No Investment – Internet marketing does not require huge investments like a normal brick and mortar business does. This is the biggest bane of the IM business. Since there is no monetary investments involved, people just don’t take it seriously. Since they are not tied down with the burden of investments, they prefer quitting than being persistent. I hate this aspect of the Internet marketing business. There should have been huge investments involved and people would not have quit it so easily.
3. Unbelievable income – When I first started on my Internet marketing journey, I was surprised to see the amount of money that people were earning. People kept showing their checks on their websites and I had a difficult time convincing myself that this could be true, especially if you are only spending a few hours everyday and that too at home. Most of the non-starters remain non-starters because they were not able to convince themselves that they could earn so much money online.
4. No Proofs can convince – This is an interesting aspect and I was also a party to it when I started. No proofs can convince anybody to start an online business. There are thousands of courses and ebooks released everyday and people buy it, read it and let it be there on their shelf to gather dust. No proofs can convince them into using these strategies to start an online business.
5. No Education required – I hate Internet Marketing because there are school dropouts out there who are more successful than I am and I hold a post-graduate degree and some other professional qualifications. Internet Marketing does not require any education. Even and absolute layman can also start a successful internet marketing business. All my degrees are gathering dust and I hate IM for that.
6. Overwhelming options – When I first started my online business, I had a difficult time deciding on what to do. There were so many options that a newbie would get overwhelmed by it. Affiliate Marketing, blogging, reselling, product creation, article writing etc. can all make money, if done correctly. But what to choose is a million dollar question. I hate internet marketing for the sheer reason that so many options at times makes it difficult for the newbie to decide on what to do and a wrong decision could end in his exit from the IM arena.
7. Free is the least opted for – Nobody would believe you, if you say that you can start an Internet marketing business for free, without having to invest in any ebook or, software. That is right!!! Successful Internet marketers keep saying this, still people prefer spending thousands of dollars on ebooks and software, which anyways they would dump deep down in their store-rooms after reading. In everything else that you do, you would prefer to look for anything that is free, but Internet marketing is one place where free is the least opted for.
8. Easily Misused Tools – There are thousands of tools out there that can help you build a successful online business. Social Media is one such platform. I have been using Twitter to build my business. But it is often observed that these tools are misused because of the sheer magnitude of reach that they have and because these are free of cost.
9. The Confusion of which Guru to follow – “GURUS” are plenty in Internet marketing. Every second day there is a new self-proclaimed GURU on the internet who would come out with a product of his. How to distinguish the genuine GURU from the fake one and whom to follow. This confusion is without a solution and often people end up following the wrong person.
10. I had to cheat on my wife – I had promised my wife that I would never love anybody else and I had to cheat on her. I had to break this promise because I fell in love again – with my computer and my Internet marketing business. But this is one cheating that my wife is also happy about because she is able to spend more time with me.

You cannot hate Internet Marketing!! You spend a whole night thinking for reasons you would hate an Internet marketing business but you will find none. All of the above reasons mentioned above are only reasons to love my online Business.

To be successful in an Internet Marketing business, all that you need is a bit of commitment and the determination to remain there and be persistent.