One of the most important elements of marketing is your mailing list. In fact, it’s probably your single, most valuable asset.

What you do with your lists, how you communicate to your public, what you say, what you promote, what words you use in your emails to your customers, all these things make a huge difference in the success of your online business. So how to do you figure out what to say in your emails, what’s effective and what isn’t? TESTING, that’s how.

So in this week’s live show I decided to give a live demonstration of how Aweber works as a split-testing tool. For those who don’t know, Aweber is an email/autoresponder service. One of the great features of Aweber is a testing tool, where you can test variations of an email and determine which communicates best to your own public.

Want to see how it works? Watch the vid!

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Training Videos

Google has just released a feature for users of iPhones, Palm WebOS phones, or Android-powered devices. (Google’s blog post.) As of right NOW, if you do a Google search on your phone for a product, you will see a blue dot if that item is available at a store near you! On that screen you will also see if the item has full or limited availability, the price, which stores near you have the item, the distance those stores are from you at that exact moment, the phone number of the store, and a link to get directions with Google Maps.

This is a sort-of mashup of the “Around Me” app and Google search, with the added feature of the blue dot item-specific information.

Currently, this feature will only show up for items available at Sears, Best Buy, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm. But it’s only DAY ONE! Surely you can see where this is going.

Now for you as business owner, this is even more amazing. You can add your own products, using the Google Merchant Center, so that YOUR products in YOUR store show up in these searches, both in desktop searches and mobile ones.

Add to that the fact that people can already rate, review and comment about your business & your products using Yelp or 4square. Further proving the point that the direction the internet is taking is Local, Social and Mobile.

These are exciting times.

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News

These companies will promote a product or service, take the consumer’s credit card information, bill them exorbitant fees monthly and make it nearly impossible for them to get requested refunds or stop the service. Sometimes they pass on the credit card information to other companies and add additional charges for additional services or products that the consumer knew nothing about. So what started as a small one-time charge turns into hundreds or thousands of dollars of unexpected debt for the consumer.

Google has been working very hard to rid the internet of these fraudulent companies, and they are having success.

But you, as an affiliate marketer need to pay attention to what you’re promoting on your own websites, so that you don’t unwittingly get caught up in this yourself.

Here’s the clip where I went over this point on my live show. For more information, stop by BusinessInnerCircle.com every Tuesday at 6:30 pm PST. Get your questions answered and get the help you need to create a successful online business.

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affiliate marketing

We often have the urge during traditionally “tough” economic times like holidays, to go into agreement with them, and blame those holidays or seasons for drops in our sales, low income, etc. What times are “tough” depend on what business you’re in. We say “Things are always slow this time of year” or “It’s the economy” or “It’s the holidays”. But saying those things doesn’t improve the situation, it just justifies low production.

Instead what you SHOULD be doing is not agreeing with it. Do the exact opposite of what your urge is. Promote MORE. Make MORE phone calls, get out MORE promotional materials, MORE direct mail, see MORE customers.

The solution to any low production time is to promote and market your way out of it, even if it DOES mean spending a little bit of money to do so. It will be worth it.

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Training Videos

The show starts TONIGHT at 6:30 PM Pacific Standard Time / 9:30 Eastern. Stop by early & say hi:

http://www.billmcintosh.tv/live

If you are a member of my Business Inner Circle, you should go to:

http://www.businessinnercircle.com/forum/forum/addonchat.php
(If you’re not a member yet, just click the link & sign up… it only takes a minute)

I look forward to seeing you there!

All the best,

Bill McIntosh
Follow me on Google Buzz:
http://www.google.com/profiles/squidbill

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Local

The show starts TONIGHT Tuesday March 2nd at 6:30 PM Pacific Standard Time / 9:30 Eastern. Stop by early & say hi:

http://www.billmcintosh.tv/live

If you are a member of my Business Inner Circle, you should go to:

http://www.businessinnercircle.com/forum/forum/addonchat.php
(If you’re not a member yet, just click the link & sign up… it only takes a minute)

I look forward to seeing you there!

All the best,

Bill McIntosh
http://www.billmcintosh.tv/live

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Social Marketing

1. The best Twitter app
2. How long I’ve been blogging
3. Good keyword tools
4. Tools to submit sitemaps
5. Good pay-per-lead programs

For answers to these questions, watch the clip. And stop by tonight to get your own specific questions answered.

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Live Questions

I mentioned the Gold program in last week’s show and decided to make a little clip of it like a PSA, to explain what this service is to anyone who might not be familiar with it.

So here you go…

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psa

Backupify is an online backup tool that backs up your social data, blog posts, pictures, etc. from your WordPress blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and many other social networking sites. Until the 31st of January it’s FREE. So if this is something you are interested in, you only have 2 days to get it for free. I’m not an affiliate for them, and this isn’t a product I own or sponsor in any way. I just thought it was cool, and I like to promote helpful tools to my friends and fans.

Cheers!

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Training Videos

1. A special automator service for affiliate marketers (VigLink).

2. A duplicate content finder (Plagium).

3. A grammar assistant tool (Gramlee).

There’s a lot to know and do to be successful in creating an online business.  So tools that make things easier and faster are always welcome, in my opinion.  Just thought it might be nice to share a few of them with you.  Watch the clip from this past week’s show below to see what they are and how they work.  Hope they help!  And feel free to contact me about new tools that you think are cool, as well.

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Training Videos