by TJ Philpott
Working online from home seems to be the most picture perfect scenario anyone can imagine. Earning a work from home income obviously offers it advantages but with it comes a certain mental stress that is easily overlooked until you've actually experience it. With the growth and success many are achieving in online marketing more people are starting a small business in their homes. Although this does allow for folks to escape the traditional 'rat race' as we know it, these types of businesses are still fertile grounds for work related stress. No longer 'slaving away' in a 'formal' work environment no doubt offers its attractions but work is still work. The associated tensions and anxieties still exist and need to be addressed.
Due mainly to the solitude or isolation online entrepreneurs typically experience when working at home many stress related issues often go unnoticed. This can set the stage for even greater damaging effects if this stress is left unchecked.
Recognizing it does exist and can not be avoided here are 5 tips to help reduce the mental stress experienced when working at home.
Schedule Your Work Hours
It is important that you have predefined hours in which you conduct your work. Like a regular job you need start on time and avoid the habit of 'lingering' at work since it's right there in the home.
The hours that you set aside for work need to be maintained consistently. Don't allow the distractions/temptation of the home environment to disrupt this schedule.
Leave Work at the Desk
Once you've completed your work for the day walk away and forget about it. Having your work set up in the home may tempt you to 'sneak' in a little overtime since it is right there.
Discipline yourself to let work go till the next day. Whether you're aware of it or not you need the break to recharge your mind, energy and spirit.
Finding the Humor
As you know things don't always go according to plan so when the unexpected happens don't dwell on it but rather try to find the humor in it and let it go.
Schedule Personal Time
Schedule time for your personal life and maintain this schedule. It is important to maintain a 'balance' in your life between personal and professional pursuits in order to keep your mind and spirits healthy.
Realize that you personal endeavors are just as important, if not more so, then your profession since they better define who you are. Remember you work primarily to pay the bills so don't let this aspect of your life dominate you!
Consciously 'Slow Down'
Pay closer attention to your level of intensity as you work since subconsciously we have a tendency get too caught up in it leading to increased tension. If need be take the time to deliberately slow yourself down and take the 'edge' off. As your tension eases you will find your thoughts become clearer and your productivity increases.
Although working online from home does offer many freedoms it does not eliminate work related stress. When starting a small business in your home it is important to realize that stress could in fact take an even greater toll on you. Many online entrepreneurs enjoy earning a work from home income but also burn out quickly due to this stress. By consistently practicing the 5 tips we discussed above there is no reason you can't find long lasting financial success in the stress free environment of your home.
TJ Philpott is an author and Internet entrepreneur based out of North Carolina.
For additional Online Success Tips
and a free guide that demonstrates how to find both profitable markets and products visit: http://affiliatequickstart.com/
Sunday, November 22, 2009
How to Get the Best Eye-Tracking Results for Your Website
by Dr. Philip Michael Zeman
Simply stated, someone who studies human behaviour and the brain (a Behavioural Neuropsychologist) can help you:
(1) select the best participants for an eye-tracking study,
(2) determine the number of participants required,
(3) design the eye-tracking task to get usable results,
(4) design task instructions, and
(5) understand how study results apply to the target population.
Why Having a Behavioural Neuropsychologist on Your Eye-Tracking Team is a Good Idea
I've had considerable experience with eye-tracking: constructing an eye-tracker from spare parts, creating calibration procedures, writing analysis software, and using the eye-tracker in multiple studies. Although my background is in engineering, more recently, I completed a PhD combining engineering, biology and psychology to create new tools to study brain activity and human behaviour. Since completing my PhD, I've seen my fellow engineers, computer scientists, and web gurus struggle to obtain clear, usable results from the latest and greatest eye-tracking equipment. In my opinion, the crux of their struggles lay in what they don't know about behavioural neuropsychology- the science examining the relationship between the human brain and human behaviour. While I can't quite call myself a Behavioural Neuropsychologist, I have trained with them and can describe some of the gotch-ya's of behavioural research. This article describes why including someone with experience in the field of Behavioural Neuropsychology on your eye-tracking team is a very good idea.
Tracking Your First Eye
Imagine if you will, that an associate of yours has just lent you an eye-tracker and you're keen on using it to optimize your web site. You want to know what people are looking at and you want to modify your web site based on this information. To investigate this, you sit a co-worker down in a chair in front of a computer and configure the equipment to track their eyes. Then you display your web site; the eye-tracker shows where they look when various pages appear. It also shows where you co-worker looks when they stare blankley ahead, confused and perplexed, asking you, "What should I do?". eye
Making Eye-Tracking Data Useful
While you might have been able to successfully track a few eyes while people viewed a few web pages, the process of obtaining useful eye-tracking results requires some thought and experience. Considerable thought and experience, actually. My recommendation is that you find someone who has a working knowledge of brain function and has done behavioural research to help you obtain useful data from your eye-tracker. This article is about why this is a good idea.
Let's assume that your goal is to optimize your web site; to get as many people who arrive on the site to make a purchase, or read about and digest an idea. Without getting into the details of what eye-movement and eye-gaze means, let's focus on the role of a behavioural neuropsychologist in the design of the actual 'experiment' that will help you optimize your web site.
The Role of the Behavioural Neuropsychologist
The behavioural neuropsychologist can help you get the most out of your eye-tracking study by helping you design the study correctly. They can do this because they have studied the science of behaviour and specialize in understanding the relationship between brain activity and human behaviour. They research WHY people do what they do, which is exactly what you want to find out! They can help you (1) select the best 'type' of participants, (2) determine the number of participants needed, (3) determine how to investigate the specific behaviours of interest, (4) design task instructions, (5) and understand how study results apply to the target population.
(1) Selecting the Best Type of Participants
When examining how people interact with their environment, the question always arises, "who are the best people to use for my study?" There are a number of human factors to consider including: expertise, gender, and the interest study participants might have in your product or service.people
� Expertise: training and experience. People often seem to have their own way of doing things and often it seems that you can predict what people will, or won't do, before they enter the room. My own experience with eye-tracking is that engineers generally do things way differently than 'normal' people. Similarly, my own neuropsychology colleagues, familiar with seeing the behaviour of students who study psychology, were at first amazed at the bizarreness of an engineering approach to completing standard behavioural psychology tasks. Engineers have been trained to apply algorithms to solve problems, and hence, their training and expertise affects how they behave in the real world. They apply strategies that are not typical of other populations. Hence, you might reconsider using an engineer in your study if you want to understand the average person. (Unless of course, you wish to understand engineers!)
� Gender: male versus female. Remember gender 'equality' movements of the past? Remember when we were told that males and females are the same? These days the data are telling us that the genders differ in many ways. Behaviourally speaking, it is not entirely clear whether or not these differences are simply the result of experience and training. A fun factoid that I recently acquired is that most behavioural rat research is conducted on male rats. I've been told that female rats are much more variable than males, and for this reason, it is harder to use them in research. My own experience with human study participants is that females are generally more variable than males (when it comes to spatial navigation). The take-home on this point is that there is a good chance that two similar studies, one with only males versus one of only females might have different outcomes. Always consider gender in your study.
� Interest in your product: interest versus indifference? If you're examining how people interact with your site, it is important to remember that people who are genuinely interested in your product will probably behave differently than people who are participating in your study simply for the ten or twenty dollars (a standard incentive to get participants in behavioural studies) you are giving them. Since the objective of a product site is generally twofold: (1) to sell to people who know and are loyal to the product, and to (2) convince people to buy your product who are new or are just 'surfing', you probably want both types of people in your study. You should probably examine the resulting eye-tracking data of each group separately so that you really get a feel for how features of your site relate specifically to each group.
(2) Determining the Number of Participants Needed
"How many people do I need in my study?" is another important question. This is a number that people always like to optimize because it directly relates to the cost of the study. You don't want too many people because that increases the cost of the study, but you want enough people so that you can be confident in the results.
� Variability of the group of people you selected. If you want to know about males, females, experts (engineers for example), non-experts (average human population), and those who are interested, and indifferent, you probably have quite a bit of variability on your hands. Variability in people generally leads to large variance in your results. Variance is something you want to strategically minimize to gain confidence in your results. Generally, it is best to be very specific about the question you are investigating and in your web site optimization goal. For example, you might shape your study to find out what engineers look at on your web site and then optimize your site for engineers. By doing so, you will probably require fewer participants to achieve your goal (particularly if those engineers you choose are male). By strategically selecting your participants, you can minimize the costs associated with your study.
� Confidence you need to have in the results. Determining how confident you need to be in your result can be a little confusing and it is often useful to simply follow conventional methods. Often 95% confidence is acceptable in behavioural research. This means that you can be confident that 19 in 20 people will act as the study results have predicted. This said, when dollars are the main concern, 99.9% confidence is better than 95% confidence because you don't want to risk making a poor design change to your site that results in lost income. However you must remember that getting 99.9% confidence might require many more study participants (increased study cost). A researcher who has experience doing behavioural research can help predict how many people will be required to attain required confidence levels.
(3) Deriving Usable Results from Eye-Tracking Datastatistics
Planning a study so that the resulting data can be easily analyzed, and usable results can be obtained is a fundamental skill of someone who has been trained in behavioural research. A Behavioural Neuropsychologist who has experience with eye-tracking can help solidify your goal of optimizing your website into some tangible research questions and apply the appropriate statistics to get the required answers.
� Formulating a statistically testable research question from the general requirement of web site optimization. Having some ideas about what comparisons can be made using an eye-tracker, and how to do the statistical analysis to answer specific research questions is a fundamental part of making all of this work. Let's consider a simple example where a web page has two links. Link A is on the left-hand side of the page and Link B is on the right-hand side of the page. You want to know if there is a real difference between how many people look at link A versus link B. From your web site logs (or Google Analytics data) you know that on average, more people click link B than link A.
However in this example, we are supplementing our click analysis using eye-tracking data to measure covert behaviour. Eye-tracking will tell us where people have looked and might tell us why people have not clicked. It is a safe assumption that people probably won't click on a link they have not looked at.
There are multiple possible research questions that may or may not include the factors of Gender, Expertise, and Product Interest described above. You might ask if there is a relationship between eye-gaze at A and B (how similar are they) and if there is a gender difference. For example, is there a relationship between the duration males look at A and the duration males look at B? Does this differ from females? Alternatively you might ask, is the latency from the time the web page appears on the screen to when males look at A and look at B different? Subtle differences in the specific question you are asking might require important differences in how the experiment is formulated and how the data collection is approached. The mechanism used to reveal information from the data in the cases described above is called hypothesis testing and it requires that the statistical test you do after data collection be known before the experiment begins.
� Finding information hidden in the data. One key advantage to having a neurospsychologist around is that they have used statistics to obtain hidden information from the data. For example, often unexpected results can be found by applying multiple types of statistical tests in a variety of ways on the data. This doesn't fit within standard hypothesis testing rules and regulations but it does help you understand your data and find effects that might be new to you. We can look for relationships between things like Gender, Expertise, and Product Interest with the eye-tracking data collected. For example, you might find that females look at B BEFORE they look at A and that this behaviour does not seem to be present in males. Now this is something potentially very useful for web site optimization and you can probably use this to improve your site performance. It would be unfortunate if money were spent on an eye-tracking study and important information, hidden in the data, was not uncovered because the appropriate statistical tests were not run to reveal it.
(4) Designing Task Instructions
A question that I have rarely been asked when talking with people about eye-tracking analysis of web sites is, "What instructions should be used to guide the actions of study participants?" The fact this question is asked so rarely suggests that it isn't on people's minds. Task instructions are very important. They are so important that there is a whole body of research specializing in how instructions affect what people do.
If you really want to study bona fide human behaviour, no instructions are best. However, a study with no instructions isn't realistic: you have to tell them something! Given that we want as little variability in the behaviour of study participants as possible, the ideal thing to do is to use the same instructions for all participants in the study. While this seems like a solid idea in theory, different peoples use and response to identical instructions is different ways. And this contributes to more variable data. For example, sometimes people don't understand the instructions given, they have their own interpretation of the instructions, or they forget what was said right after the instructions are given. This is variability that you probably don't want to appear in the final result of the study.
� Get an experienced professional to design your task instructions. A Behavioural Neurospsychologist who has had experience with these situations, has been trained to deal with the problems associated with task instructions. They have experience designing task instructions.
� Get an experienced professional to actually run study participants. These people are not necessarily Behavioural Neurophysiologists, but they have been trained to run study participants and know the value of doing things 'properly'. They have had experience 'guiding' people along when they have forgotten why they are there. They have 'already' made their mistakes and will hopefully spare you the headache of learning on your dime.
(5) Understanding How Study Results Apply to the Target Population
Finally, the last key element that I will talk about that a Behavioural Neuropsychologist can help you with is in understanding how the results of your study apply to the general human population. Said another way, it is very important that you know how your study applies to the population of existing and potential customers. A Behavioural Neuropsychologist will use all of his or her power and knowledge to design the study to represent your target population. When this is done correctly, the confidence numbers of 95% or 99.9% that describe the sample of the population used in the study can be applied to the target population of potential customers out there on the internet.
Summary and Conclusions
It is not sufficient to simply track eyes; what you need is a small study of what peoples' eyes do when they look at your web site. Partnering with someone who specializes in behavioural psychology (studies the relationship between brain function and human behaviour) can maximize your investment in eye-tracking. They will help you:
(1) select the best participants for the study,
(2) determine the number of participants required,
(3) design the task to get usable results,
(4) design task instructions, and
(5) understand how study results apply to the target population.
StepForth Web Marketing Inc. and I (Dr. Philip Michael Zeman) are currently investigating a partnership to offer eye-tracking analysis of web sites. In order to launch this new service and build our dossier we are willing to provide significant discounts for parties interested in having eye-tracking conducted on their site. We are accepting inquiries by email and phone - here is our contact information.
For more information about web marketing and web site optimization services see http://www.stepforth.com. For more discussion about Eye-Tracking and related brain activity analysis see http://www.brainandvision.com
-More Background-
What is Eye-Tracking?
Tracking eye-movement allows one to identify where people look on a web page. It shows: where people spend their time looking, the sequence in which people look at things on a page, what they do not look at, and reveals how visitors separate (or 'chunk') information on the screen.
Click here for YouTube on Brain Scan Technology Called MOST-EEG (Multiple Origin Spatio-Temporal Modeling)
Why is Eye-Tracking a Good Idea?
Many organizations are using eye-tracking to optimize their web site performance: to make information easier to find, and to increase web site conversions. These include: Microsoft, Xerox, The New York Times, Ask.com, Marriott, Sprint, among others. Eye-tracking analysis of a web site is scalable, meaning that the costs associated with it can be reduced when the behaviour of specific markets or specific users is examined. It can be made very affordable to small business.
Eye-Tracking versus Web Site Usability?
Eye-tracking is a science of human behaviour-covert human behaviour. The goal is to try to see what is going on in people's heads and use this information to improve site performance.
In contrast, web site usability is about making it easy to use a web site. It is the theory of web site design. Eye-tracking actually tells us empirically about the effectiveness of your specific web site design. It tells us how we might modify a site to optimize site performance after all the theory of usability has been applied.
Dr. Philip Michael Zeman provides consulting in the area of behavioural analysis. He recently completed a PhD involving the analysis of eye tracking and brain activity data. You can read more of the veteran StepForth team at http://news.stepforth.com or contact us at http://www.stepforth.com/
Tel - 250-385-1190, Toll Free - 877-385-5526, Fax - 250-385-1198
Simply stated, someone who studies human behaviour and the brain (a Behavioural Neuropsychologist) can help you:
(1) select the best participants for an eye-tracking study,
(2) determine the number of participants required,
(3) design the eye-tracking task to get usable results,
(4) design task instructions, and
(5) understand how study results apply to the target population.
Why Having a Behavioural Neuropsychologist on Your Eye-Tracking Team is a Good Idea
I've had considerable experience with eye-tracking: constructing an eye-tracker from spare parts, creating calibration procedures, writing analysis software, and using the eye-tracker in multiple studies. Although my background is in engineering, more recently, I completed a PhD combining engineering, biology and psychology to create new tools to study brain activity and human behaviour. Since completing my PhD, I've seen my fellow engineers, computer scientists, and web gurus struggle to obtain clear, usable results from the latest and greatest eye-tracking equipment. In my opinion, the crux of their struggles lay in what they don't know about behavioural neuropsychology- the science examining the relationship between the human brain and human behaviour. While I can't quite call myself a Behavioural Neuropsychologist, I have trained with them and can describe some of the gotch-ya's of behavioural research. This article describes why including someone with experience in the field of Behavioural Neuropsychology on your eye-tracking team is a very good idea.
Tracking Your First Eye
Imagine if you will, that an associate of yours has just lent you an eye-tracker and you're keen on using it to optimize your web site. You want to know what people are looking at and you want to modify your web site based on this information. To investigate this, you sit a co-worker down in a chair in front of a computer and configure the equipment to track their eyes. Then you display your web site; the eye-tracker shows where they look when various pages appear. It also shows where you co-worker looks when they stare blankley ahead, confused and perplexed, asking you, "What should I do?". eye
Making Eye-Tracking Data Useful
While you might have been able to successfully track a few eyes while people viewed a few web pages, the process of obtaining useful eye-tracking results requires some thought and experience. Considerable thought and experience, actually. My recommendation is that you find someone who has a working knowledge of brain function and has done behavioural research to help you obtain useful data from your eye-tracker. This article is about why this is a good idea.
Let's assume that your goal is to optimize your web site; to get as many people who arrive on the site to make a purchase, or read about and digest an idea. Without getting into the details of what eye-movement and eye-gaze means, let's focus on the role of a behavioural neuropsychologist in the design of the actual 'experiment' that will help you optimize your web site.
The Role of the Behavioural Neuropsychologist
The behavioural neuropsychologist can help you get the most out of your eye-tracking study by helping you design the study correctly. They can do this because they have studied the science of behaviour and specialize in understanding the relationship between brain activity and human behaviour. They research WHY people do what they do, which is exactly what you want to find out! They can help you (1) select the best 'type' of participants, (2) determine the number of participants needed, (3) determine how to investigate the specific behaviours of interest, (4) design task instructions, (5) and understand how study results apply to the target population.
(1) Selecting the Best Type of Participants
When examining how people interact with their environment, the question always arises, "who are the best people to use for my study?" There are a number of human factors to consider including: expertise, gender, and the interest study participants might have in your product or service.people
� Expertise: training and experience. People often seem to have their own way of doing things and often it seems that you can predict what people will, or won't do, before they enter the room. My own experience with eye-tracking is that engineers generally do things way differently than 'normal' people. Similarly, my own neuropsychology colleagues, familiar with seeing the behaviour of students who study psychology, were at first amazed at the bizarreness of an engineering approach to completing standard behavioural psychology tasks. Engineers have been trained to apply algorithms to solve problems, and hence, their training and expertise affects how they behave in the real world. They apply strategies that are not typical of other populations. Hence, you might reconsider using an engineer in your study if you want to understand the average person. (Unless of course, you wish to understand engineers!)
� Gender: male versus female. Remember gender 'equality' movements of the past? Remember when we were told that males and females are the same? These days the data are telling us that the genders differ in many ways. Behaviourally speaking, it is not entirely clear whether or not these differences are simply the result of experience and training. A fun factoid that I recently acquired is that most behavioural rat research is conducted on male rats. I've been told that female rats are much more variable than males, and for this reason, it is harder to use them in research. My own experience with human study participants is that females are generally more variable than males (when it comes to spatial navigation). The take-home on this point is that there is a good chance that two similar studies, one with only males versus one of only females might have different outcomes. Always consider gender in your study.
� Interest in your product: interest versus indifference? If you're examining how people interact with your site, it is important to remember that people who are genuinely interested in your product will probably behave differently than people who are participating in your study simply for the ten or twenty dollars (a standard incentive to get participants in behavioural studies) you are giving them. Since the objective of a product site is generally twofold: (1) to sell to people who know and are loyal to the product, and to (2) convince people to buy your product who are new or are just 'surfing', you probably want both types of people in your study. You should probably examine the resulting eye-tracking data of each group separately so that you really get a feel for how features of your site relate specifically to each group.
(2) Determining the Number of Participants Needed
"How many people do I need in my study?" is another important question. This is a number that people always like to optimize because it directly relates to the cost of the study. You don't want too many people because that increases the cost of the study, but you want enough people so that you can be confident in the results.
� Variability of the group of people you selected. If you want to know about males, females, experts (engineers for example), non-experts (average human population), and those who are interested, and indifferent, you probably have quite a bit of variability on your hands. Variability in people generally leads to large variance in your results. Variance is something you want to strategically minimize to gain confidence in your results. Generally, it is best to be very specific about the question you are investigating and in your web site optimization goal. For example, you might shape your study to find out what engineers look at on your web site and then optimize your site for engineers. By doing so, you will probably require fewer participants to achieve your goal (particularly if those engineers you choose are male). By strategically selecting your participants, you can minimize the costs associated with your study.
� Confidence you need to have in the results. Determining how confident you need to be in your result can be a little confusing and it is often useful to simply follow conventional methods. Often 95% confidence is acceptable in behavioural research. This means that you can be confident that 19 in 20 people will act as the study results have predicted. This said, when dollars are the main concern, 99.9% confidence is better than 95% confidence because you don't want to risk making a poor design change to your site that results in lost income. However you must remember that getting 99.9% confidence might require many more study participants (increased study cost). A researcher who has experience doing behavioural research can help predict how many people will be required to attain required confidence levels.
(3) Deriving Usable Results from Eye-Tracking Datastatistics
Planning a study so that the resulting data can be easily analyzed, and usable results can be obtained is a fundamental skill of someone who has been trained in behavioural research. A Behavioural Neuropsychologist who has experience with eye-tracking can help solidify your goal of optimizing your website into some tangible research questions and apply the appropriate statistics to get the required answers.
� Formulating a statistically testable research question from the general requirement of web site optimization. Having some ideas about what comparisons can be made using an eye-tracker, and how to do the statistical analysis to answer specific research questions is a fundamental part of making all of this work. Let's consider a simple example where a web page has two links. Link A is on the left-hand side of the page and Link B is on the right-hand side of the page. You want to know if there is a real difference between how many people look at link A versus link B. From your web site logs (or Google Analytics data) you know that on average, more people click link B than link A.
However in this example, we are supplementing our click analysis using eye-tracking data to measure covert behaviour. Eye-tracking will tell us where people have looked and might tell us why people have not clicked. It is a safe assumption that people probably won't click on a link they have not looked at.
There are multiple possible research questions that may or may not include the factors of Gender, Expertise, and Product Interest described above. You might ask if there is a relationship between eye-gaze at A and B (how similar are they) and if there is a gender difference. For example, is there a relationship between the duration males look at A and the duration males look at B? Does this differ from females? Alternatively you might ask, is the latency from the time the web page appears on the screen to when males look at A and look at B different? Subtle differences in the specific question you are asking might require important differences in how the experiment is formulated and how the data collection is approached. The mechanism used to reveal information from the data in the cases described above is called hypothesis testing and it requires that the statistical test you do after data collection be known before the experiment begins.
� Finding information hidden in the data. One key advantage to having a neurospsychologist around is that they have used statistics to obtain hidden information from the data. For example, often unexpected results can be found by applying multiple types of statistical tests in a variety of ways on the data. This doesn't fit within standard hypothesis testing rules and regulations but it does help you understand your data and find effects that might be new to you. We can look for relationships between things like Gender, Expertise, and Product Interest with the eye-tracking data collected. For example, you might find that females look at B BEFORE they look at A and that this behaviour does not seem to be present in males. Now this is something potentially very useful for web site optimization and you can probably use this to improve your site performance. It would be unfortunate if money were spent on an eye-tracking study and important information, hidden in the data, was not uncovered because the appropriate statistical tests were not run to reveal it.
(4) Designing Task Instructions
A question that I have rarely been asked when talking with people about eye-tracking analysis of web sites is, "What instructions should be used to guide the actions of study participants?" The fact this question is asked so rarely suggests that it isn't on people's minds. Task instructions are very important. They are so important that there is a whole body of research specializing in how instructions affect what people do.
If you really want to study bona fide human behaviour, no instructions are best. However, a study with no instructions isn't realistic: you have to tell them something! Given that we want as little variability in the behaviour of study participants as possible, the ideal thing to do is to use the same instructions for all participants in the study. While this seems like a solid idea in theory, different peoples use and response to identical instructions is different ways. And this contributes to more variable data. For example, sometimes people don't understand the instructions given, they have their own interpretation of the instructions, or they forget what was said right after the instructions are given. This is variability that you probably don't want to appear in the final result of the study.
� Get an experienced professional to design your task instructions. A Behavioural Neurospsychologist who has had experience with these situations, has been trained to deal with the problems associated with task instructions. They have experience designing task instructions.
� Get an experienced professional to actually run study participants. These people are not necessarily Behavioural Neurophysiologists, but they have been trained to run study participants and know the value of doing things 'properly'. They have had experience 'guiding' people along when they have forgotten why they are there. They have 'already' made their mistakes and will hopefully spare you the headache of learning on your dime.
(5) Understanding How Study Results Apply to the Target Population
Finally, the last key element that I will talk about that a Behavioural Neuropsychologist can help you with is in understanding how the results of your study apply to the general human population. Said another way, it is very important that you know how your study applies to the population of existing and potential customers. A Behavioural Neuropsychologist will use all of his or her power and knowledge to design the study to represent your target population. When this is done correctly, the confidence numbers of 95% or 99.9% that describe the sample of the population used in the study can be applied to the target population of potential customers out there on the internet.
Summary and Conclusions
It is not sufficient to simply track eyes; what you need is a small study of what peoples' eyes do when they look at your web site. Partnering with someone who specializes in behavioural psychology (studies the relationship between brain function and human behaviour) can maximize your investment in eye-tracking. They will help you:
(1) select the best participants for the study,
(2) determine the number of participants required,
(3) design the task to get usable results,
(4) design task instructions, and
(5) understand how study results apply to the target population.
StepForth Web Marketing Inc. and I (Dr. Philip Michael Zeman) are currently investigating a partnership to offer eye-tracking analysis of web sites. In order to launch this new service and build our dossier we are willing to provide significant discounts for parties interested in having eye-tracking conducted on their site. We are accepting inquiries by email and phone - here is our contact information.
For more information about web marketing and web site optimization services see http://www.stepforth.com. For more discussion about Eye-Tracking and related brain activity analysis see http://www.brainandvision.com
-More Background-
What is Eye-Tracking?
Tracking eye-movement allows one to identify where people look on a web page. It shows: where people spend their time looking, the sequence in which people look at things on a page, what they do not look at, and reveals how visitors separate (or 'chunk') information on the screen.
Click here for YouTube on Brain Scan Technology Called MOST-EEG (Multiple Origin Spatio-Temporal Modeling)
Why is Eye-Tracking a Good Idea?
Many organizations are using eye-tracking to optimize their web site performance: to make information easier to find, and to increase web site conversions. These include: Microsoft, Xerox, The New York Times, Ask.com, Marriott, Sprint, among others. Eye-tracking analysis of a web site is scalable, meaning that the costs associated with it can be reduced when the behaviour of specific markets or specific users is examined. It can be made very affordable to small business.
Eye-Tracking versus Web Site Usability?
Eye-tracking is a science of human behaviour-covert human behaviour. The goal is to try to see what is going on in people's heads and use this information to improve site performance.
In contrast, web site usability is about making it easy to use a web site. It is the theory of web site design. Eye-tracking actually tells us empirically about the effectiveness of your specific web site design. It tells us how we might modify a site to optimize site performance after all the theory of usability has been applied.
Dr. Philip Michael Zeman provides consulting in the area of behavioural analysis. He recently completed a PhD involving the analysis of eye tracking and brain activity data. You can read more of the veteran StepForth team at http://news.stepforth.com or contact us at http://www.stepforth.com/
Tel - 250-385-1190, Toll Free - 877-385-5526, Fax - 250-385-1198
Thursday, November 12, 2009
How to Use LinkedIn for SEO
by Andrew Plimmer
If you have been the owner of a website or a blog for any length of time, you're probably striving continuously to improve the SEO (search engine optimization) of your website. Let's face it; the more effort you put into SEO, the better your ranking will be on the various search engines, which in turn means your website will enjoy more traffic as a result.
Of course, even though you more than likely already use several social networking sites, you may not yet be sure of how much those sites can help improve your rankings. One of the best sites to take advantage of is LinkedIn. The main reason for this is that the site already enjoys phenomenal rankings due to the profiles which are hosted on it.
In the event that you already have a LinkedIn account then you can already begin improving your website's SEO with your LinkedIn account. In fact, let's take a look at a few simple ways for using LinkedIn in order to improve the SEO of your website or blog:
Step 1 - Make Use of Anchor Text and Links
Even though this is incredibly simple, it's of the utmost importance, if you want to increase the SEO of your site. You need to use anchor text in order to link to your website from your LinkedIn profile. When you create links to your various websites, it results in potentially profitable backlinks, and this is why it's important to use anchor text which makes use of specific keywords which are relevant to your website.
You need to bear in mind that major search engines such as Google will quite literally scrutinize anchor text when they rank websites. This of course means that if you had web site specific key words to your anchor text, your SEO will be vastly improved. In other words you need to avoid using names like "My Website" or George's Blog, but instead, you should try to be a little bit more creative.
Step 2 - Focus on Keywords When you Compose Your Profile
When you sit down to type up your LinkedIn profile, it's imperative that you focus on using the most relevant keywords. During the process you'll be required to include a headline, personal interests, summary, and also job descriptions and etc. Without over doing it, try to keep your profile rich with relevant keywords relating to your specific website or blog.
Step 3 - Adding Connections
The importance of using LinkedIn for adding connections simply cannot be stressed enough, particularly if your goal is to improve the SEO of your website. In doing this, you'll effectively be making your website more visible, bearing in mind that the more connections you have, the more visible your site will be to people out there in cyberspace. Over and above increasing your website's visibility on the LinkedIn site, you'll also be increasing the overall visibility of your own website or blog on the internet.
Step 4 - Customizing Your URL
Lastly but not least, you need to customize the URL which you have on the LinkedIn site, bearing in mind that LinkedIn members have an opportunity to customize their profile URL, rather than making do with the default one. In fact, you can even choose to change the URL to your own name, the name of your company, or even the name of your website. You can rest assured that if you do this it will result in your profile becoming far more visible, and this in turn goes a long way towards improving the SEO of your website.
Andrew Plimmer is CEO of Suncoast Internet, Sunshine Coast SEO, web design and web development specialists. For a free SEO analysis of your website go to =>
http://www.suncoastinternet.com.au/
If you have been the owner of a website or a blog for any length of time, you're probably striving continuously to improve the SEO (search engine optimization) of your website. Let's face it; the more effort you put into SEO, the better your ranking will be on the various search engines, which in turn means your website will enjoy more traffic as a result.
Of course, even though you more than likely already use several social networking sites, you may not yet be sure of how much those sites can help improve your rankings. One of the best sites to take advantage of is LinkedIn. The main reason for this is that the site already enjoys phenomenal rankings due to the profiles which are hosted on it.
In the event that you already have a LinkedIn account then you can already begin improving your website's SEO with your LinkedIn account. In fact, let's take a look at a few simple ways for using LinkedIn in order to improve the SEO of your website or blog:
Step 1 - Make Use of Anchor Text and Links
Even though this is incredibly simple, it's of the utmost importance, if you want to increase the SEO of your site. You need to use anchor text in order to link to your website from your LinkedIn profile. When you create links to your various websites, it results in potentially profitable backlinks, and this is why it's important to use anchor text which makes use of specific keywords which are relevant to your website.
You need to bear in mind that major search engines such as Google will quite literally scrutinize anchor text when they rank websites. This of course means that if you had web site specific key words to your anchor text, your SEO will be vastly improved. In other words you need to avoid using names like "My Website" or George's Blog, but instead, you should try to be a little bit more creative.
Step 2 - Focus on Keywords When you Compose Your Profile
When you sit down to type up your LinkedIn profile, it's imperative that you focus on using the most relevant keywords. During the process you'll be required to include a headline, personal interests, summary, and also job descriptions and etc. Without over doing it, try to keep your profile rich with relevant keywords relating to your specific website or blog.
Step 3 - Adding Connections
The importance of using LinkedIn for adding connections simply cannot be stressed enough, particularly if your goal is to improve the SEO of your website. In doing this, you'll effectively be making your website more visible, bearing in mind that the more connections you have, the more visible your site will be to people out there in cyberspace. Over and above increasing your website's visibility on the LinkedIn site, you'll also be increasing the overall visibility of your own website or blog on the internet.
Step 4 - Customizing Your URL
Lastly but not least, you need to customize the URL which you have on the LinkedIn site, bearing in mind that LinkedIn members have an opportunity to customize their profile URL, rather than making do with the default one. In fact, you can even choose to change the URL to your own name, the name of your company, or even the name of your website. You can rest assured that if you do this it will result in your profile becoming far more visible, and this in turn goes a long way towards improving the SEO of your website.
Andrew Plimmer is CEO of Suncoast Internet, Sunshine Coast SEO, web design and web development specialists. For a free SEO analysis of your website go to =>
http://www.suncoastinternet.com.au/
5 Things to Remember When Creating a Blog
by TJ Philpott
When creating a blog you'll want to keep a few things in mind from the very beginning that will help you to properly direct your efforts. If you aspire to become one of the most popular blogs in your niche your focus will have to be on the blog reader. If you are blogging to make money then realize your income will be dependent upon the people who visit your site. These people will ultimately decide how popular your blog is or how successful your promotional efforts may be so don't lose sight of that.
With that said here are 5 areas you will not want to overlook or disregard especially if you are counting on your home business blog to earn you an income.
Establish Transparency
Allow your readers to get some insight into who you are and why you blog. By increasing their familiarity with you in this way you are gaining more trust from them. Don't be afraid to share your opinion or a little bit about your personal interests, family or anything else that would be relevant to your blog or the readers.
This is especially important if you intend to promote any type of products on your site. Trust will be needed if readers are expected to make any purchases on what essentially will be your home business blog.
Create a Network
When posting take advantage of great content you may have found elsewhere and credit the source on your blog. By linking to other sites in this manner you will eventually have these sites link back to you creating a flow of traffic from their site.
Leave Comments
Visit other blogs within your community/niche for ideas on content, design, or even to see what others are talking about. Participate and if possible leave ONLY helpful, insightful, or informative comments. You will be creating a greater awareness of both you and your blog by doing this.
Do Your Research
Before you post anything be sure it is accurate and helpful to your readers. Don't position yourself as an expert on something you know little or nothing about. Be willing to do the research if you are not already an expert and over time you will gain the recognition as an authority on the subject matter.
Show Gratitude
Remember what we spoke of earlier that your readers will be responsible for your ultimate success. With this in mind periodically extending your appreciation to them for their loyalty will only help to strengthen the bond between you and them. A simple thank you will suffice and an occasional 'free' report won't hurt either. Besides gratitude is always good for the soul!
When creating a blog it is always smart to keep your ultimate goal in mind. Your site was created for the blog reader and their enjoyment. By catering to the needs of the visitors to your site you will put yourself in the position to become one of the most popular blogs in your niche. If you are blogging to make money then this will be of obvious importance to you since it will directly impact your income. Your continual attention to the 5 areas above will likely result in the greater satisfaction of your readers which will lead to the desired results you are seeking for your blog.
TJ Philpott is an author and Internet entrepreneur based out of North Carolina.
For additional Money Making Tips and a free guide that demonstrates how to find both profitable markets and products visit: http://blogbrawn.com/
When creating a blog you'll want to keep a few things in mind from the very beginning that will help you to properly direct your efforts. If you aspire to become one of the most popular blogs in your niche your focus will have to be on the blog reader. If you are blogging to make money then realize your income will be dependent upon the people who visit your site. These people will ultimately decide how popular your blog is or how successful your promotional efforts may be so don't lose sight of that.
With that said here are 5 areas you will not want to overlook or disregard especially if you are counting on your home business blog to earn you an income.
Establish Transparency
Allow your readers to get some insight into who you are and why you blog. By increasing their familiarity with you in this way you are gaining more trust from them. Don't be afraid to share your opinion or a little bit about your personal interests, family or anything else that would be relevant to your blog or the readers.
This is especially important if you intend to promote any type of products on your site. Trust will be needed if readers are expected to make any purchases on what essentially will be your home business blog.
Create a Network
When posting take advantage of great content you may have found elsewhere and credit the source on your blog. By linking to other sites in this manner you will eventually have these sites link back to you creating a flow of traffic from their site.
Leave Comments
Visit other blogs within your community/niche for ideas on content, design, or even to see what others are talking about. Participate and if possible leave ONLY helpful, insightful, or informative comments. You will be creating a greater awareness of both you and your blog by doing this.
Do Your Research
Before you post anything be sure it is accurate and helpful to your readers. Don't position yourself as an expert on something you know little or nothing about. Be willing to do the research if you are not already an expert and over time you will gain the recognition as an authority on the subject matter.
Show Gratitude
Remember what we spoke of earlier that your readers will be responsible for your ultimate success. With this in mind periodically extending your appreciation to them for their loyalty will only help to strengthen the bond between you and them. A simple thank you will suffice and an occasional 'free' report won't hurt either. Besides gratitude is always good for the soul!
When creating a blog it is always smart to keep your ultimate goal in mind. Your site was created for the blog reader and their enjoyment. By catering to the needs of the visitors to your site you will put yourself in the position to become one of the most popular blogs in your niche. If you are blogging to make money then this will be of obvious importance to you since it will directly impact your income. Your continual attention to the 5 areas above will likely result in the greater satisfaction of your readers which will lead to the desired results you are seeking for your blog.
TJ Philpott is an author and Internet entrepreneur based out of North Carolina.
For additional Money Making Tips and a free guide that demonstrates how to find both profitable markets and products visit: http://blogbrawn.com/
New Kid on the Block - Should Twitter be Worried?
by Craig Friesen
To many readers the idea that anything could replace or compete with Twitter today is ludicrous. Millions upon millions of people are tweeting every day - what will ever change that fact? Realistically speaking the answer is not much could hamper let alone halt Twitter's momentum. But I suspect there were many people who quietly laughed at Jack Dorsey when he introduced his brainstorm of a short message service being used by individuals to share snippets of their lives with friends and family - even today people still wonder "who cares?" That is the miracle of social and technological innovation - a simple and sometimes crazy idea gains shape and forward, virtually uncontrollable motion until it cannot help but influence the very fabric of society. I wonder how many other "ludicrous" ideas have been voiced then squelched. I also ask myself whether I would have acted if presented with the opportunity to try out Twitter in its first weeks? Consequently I found it difficult to resist trying out Sokule when it was introduced to me in mid-August 2009 a month before its official release. The rest of this article is a review of my experience with Sokule, "the gentle giant."
Can You Make Money with Social Networking?
Sokule is described as "like Twitter but monetized." I found this to be true in several ways. First of all, while the lingo is different, with Sokule you can send short messages called "squeeks" out to your trackers but included are options to increase the length of postings. And whether your squeek is short or long it can be resized and re-squeeked to Twitter automatically. Secondly, while Sokule has a free membership like Twitter it also has paid subscription options to increase its power as a social marketing platform. Thirdly, Sokule's focus on creating a messaging service for marketers makes it possible to earn an affiliate commission from referred squeekers who upgrade.
Sokule is not just about monetizing your short messages. I discovered that the leverage being provided by Sokule is worth joining alone. When you post or squeek on Sokule you can choose to broadcast on Twitter, Blogger and LiveJournal among those currently available; and soon you will be able to post directly to other social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Flickr. To be able to do this with just one squeek on Sokule is simply amazing and a great boon for anyone wanting to get a message out.
In addition to the SMS function of Sokule members have the option to add marketing links, graphics and videos to the side panels of their postit page. Some third party applications provide a similar service to Twitter users but it's nice to not have to join additional programs to get some of the same marketing advantages Sokule provides.
So Should Twitter be Worried?
From a business perspective I think Sokule has some distinct advantages over Twitter which in all fairness was not really created with business marketing in mind (as far as I know). Even without the possibility of earning commissions from Sokule I see enough unique and useful features available or in production to make it worthwhile joining for free. A good portion of Twitter followers stop using the service after only a month yet the number of new users seems to grow exponentially so I am quite sure it will be a long time before Twitter need worry about any competition. Social networking platforms like Sokule and third party applications that make use of or enhance Twitter's platform will also continue to fuel its growth.
I wish I had jumped into Twitter much earlier than I did - as a newcomer to the social networking scene I feel like I am at a disadvantage to have not "seen the light" earlier. It may be too early to really evaluate Sokule's contribution to the social networking sub-culture but from what I have seen thus far I would rather be on board now at the beginning than wishing I had later.
Craig Friesen is a freelance writer and owner of TopAffiliateProgramsMakeMoney.com. He has written articles and marketed online for several years but confesses to being late in joining social networking as a good business marketing venue. You can see Sokule in action at http://www.sokule.com/postit/topaffiliatepro or visit Craig's business website.
To many readers the idea that anything could replace or compete with Twitter today is ludicrous. Millions upon millions of people are tweeting every day - what will ever change that fact? Realistically speaking the answer is not much could hamper let alone halt Twitter's momentum. But I suspect there were many people who quietly laughed at Jack Dorsey when he introduced his brainstorm of a short message service being used by individuals to share snippets of their lives with friends and family - even today people still wonder "who cares?" That is the miracle of social and technological innovation - a simple and sometimes crazy idea gains shape and forward, virtually uncontrollable motion until it cannot help but influence the very fabric of society. I wonder how many other "ludicrous" ideas have been voiced then squelched. I also ask myself whether I would have acted if presented with the opportunity to try out Twitter in its first weeks? Consequently I found it difficult to resist trying out Sokule when it was introduced to me in mid-August 2009 a month before its official release. The rest of this article is a review of my experience with Sokule, "the gentle giant."
Can You Make Money with Social Networking?
Sokule is described as "like Twitter but monetized." I found this to be true in several ways. First of all, while the lingo is different, with Sokule you can send short messages called "squeeks" out to your trackers but included are options to increase the length of postings. And whether your squeek is short or long it can be resized and re-squeeked to Twitter automatically. Secondly, while Sokule has a free membership like Twitter it also has paid subscription options to increase its power as a social marketing platform. Thirdly, Sokule's focus on creating a messaging service for marketers makes it possible to earn an affiliate commission from referred squeekers who upgrade.
Sokule is not just about monetizing your short messages. I discovered that the leverage being provided by Sokule is worth joining alone. When you post or squeek on Sokule you can choose to broadcast on Twitter, Blogger and LiveJournal among those currently available; and soon you will be able to post directly to other social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Flickr. To be able to do this with just one squeek on Sokule is simply amazing and a great boon for anyone wanting to get a message out.
In addition to the SMS function of Sokule members have the option to add marketing links, graphics and videos to the side panels of their postit page. Some third party applications provide a similar service to Twitter users but it's nice to not have to join additional programs to get some of the same marketing advantages Sokule provides.
So Should Twitter be Worried?
From a business perspective I think Sokule has some distinct advantages over Twitter which in all fairness was not really created with business marketing in mind (as far as I know). Even without the possibility of earning commissions from Sokule I see enough unique and useful features available or in production to make it worthwhile joining for free. A good portion of Twitter followers stop using the service after only a month yet the number of new users seems to grow exponentially so I am quite sure it will be a long time before Twitter need worry about any competition. Social networking platforms like Sokule and third party applications that make use of or enhance Twitter's platform will also continue to fuel its growth.
I wish I had jumped into Twitter much earlier than I did - as a newcomer to the social networking scene I feel like I am at a disadvantage to have not "seen the light" earlier. It may be too early to really evaluate Sokule's contribution to the social networking sub-culture but from what I have seen thus far I would rather be on board now at the beginning than wishing I had later.
Craig Friesen is a freelance writer and owner of TopAffiliateProgramsMakeMoney.com. He has written articles and marketed online for several years but confesses to being late in joining social networking as a good business marketing venue. You can see Sokule in action at http://www.sokule.com/postit/topaffiliatepro or visit Craig's business website.
How to Market With YouTube
by David Bouchez
YouTube is one more piece of the Internet Marketing Puzzle. This is a great way to get your name out there, help brand yourself, and play a big role in your website's search engine placement - if done properly.. It’s also a good way for you to interact with potential customers, and attract new ones.
The thought of doing a video really scares some people; they're concerned about how their looks and the sound of their voice will be perceived.
"What will I say?". Not to worry. There are ways to create fun, stress free videos that are very effective for your marketing efforts - just stick around : )
Almost 150 thousand YouTube videos are uploaded daily, with over 80 MM users. So this market can be competitive, but there are ways to go about getting your video ranked high on the search engines.
Below are 10 basic tips to get you started.
1. Provide Value. This is not the time to create a commercial for your product or service. With so many videos out there for people to choose from, you need to give them something that they want to see. Provide useful information. Do a training video on something that people are interested in. Just make sure that it ties in with your product, brand, and service.
2. Keep it short. Ideally, keep your video between 3-5 minutes. Any longer, and your viewers may not watch the entire thing. You don’t want that because YouTube actually tracks how long viewers watch a video. If they don’t watch it in its entirety, your ranking will go down.
3. Good Quality. Make sure the sound is decent and the lighting is good. Be sure that there aren’t any distractions in the background.
4. Shy about talking on a video? There are other options. If you are uncomfortable with the idea of being on camera, look into such programs as Camtasia. This program allows you to present information directly on your screen. You don’t have to be on camera. All you will do is explain or present your topic.
5. Search Engine Optimization. Use typical SEO techniques to get your video ranked higher. Use keywords in your URL and filename. Also use appropriate keywords in your title and video description. This is a whole topic which can be very complex, so we won’t go into detail here.
6. Allow comments and ratings. This is a good way to interact with your viewers. You will have the option to remove comments if you think something is inappropriate or spammy. Try to respond to the comments as well. Allowing ratings will also help with your rankings on the search engines.
7. Place your website in the description box. Place it before your actual video description. This will help point traffic toward your website, as well as create back links.
8. Get your video out there. Post your videos on blogs, websites, and social media sites. Anytime your video is viewed, even if it’s on other sites, YouTube counts it as a view and this will help your rankings. So post your videos anywhere you can.
9. Do it often. When you start this form of marketing, make sure you create your videos frequently. Every time you learn something new, immediately make a video. Remember, these don’t have to long. The more videos you put out there, the higher your rankings will be.
10. Research. There are many more techniques for posting, and ranking your YouTube videos. As you become more comfortable with this marketing medium, you can research and learn these more advanced methods.
David Bouchez wrote How to Market With YouTube to teach the valuable skill of Video Marketing. Get No Cost Traffic and receive free video internet marketing training. Drop by right now to gain access to the training and tools you need.
YouTube is one more piece of the Internet Marketing Puzzle. This is a great way to get your name out there, help brand yourself, and play a big role in your website's search engine placement - if done properly.. It’s also a good way for you to interact with potential customers, and attract new ones.
The thought of doing a video really scares some people; they're concerned about how their looks and the sound of their voice will be perceived.
"What will I say?". Not to worry. There are ways to create fun, stress free videos that are very effective for your marketing efforts - just stick around : )
Almost 150 thousand YouTube videos are uploaded daily, with over 80 MM users. So this market can be competitive, but there are ways to go about getting your video ranked high on the search engines.
Below are 10 basic tips to get you started.
1. Provide Value. This is not the time to create a commercial for your product or service. With so many videos out there for people to choose from, you need to give them something that they want to see. Provide useful information. Do a training video on something that people are interested in. Just make sure that it ties in with your product, brand, and service.
2. Keep it short. Ideally, keep your video between 3-5 minutes. Any longer, and your viewers may not watch the entire thing. You don’t want that because YouTube actually tracks how long viewers watch a video. If they don’t watch it in its entirety, your ranking will go down.
3. Good Quality. Make sure the sound is decent and the lighting is good. Be sure that there aren’t any distractions in the background.
4. Shy about talking on a video? There are other options. If you are uncomfortable with the idea of being on camera, look into such programs as Camtasia. This program allows you to present information directly on your screen. You don’t have to be on camera. All you will do is explain or present your topic.
5. Search Engine Optimization. Use typical SEO techniques to get your video ranked higher. Use keywords in your URL and filename. Also use appropriate keywords in your title and video description. This is a whole topic which can be very complex, so we won’t go into detail here.
6. Allow comments and ratings. This is a good way to interact with your viewers. You will have the option to remove comments if you think something is inappropriate or spammy. Try to respond to the comments as well. Allowing ratings will also help with your rankings on the search engines.
7. Place your website in the description box. Place it before your actual video description. This will help point traffic toward your website, as well as create back links.
8. Get your video out there. Post your videos on blogs, websites, and social media sites. Anytime your video is viewed, even if it’s on other sites, YouTube counts it as a view and this will help your rankings. So post your videos anywhere you can.
9. Do it often. When you start this form of marketing, make sure you create your videos frequently. Every time you learn something new, immediately make a video. Remember, these don’t have to long. The more videos you put out there, the higher your rankings will be.
10. Research. There are many more techniques for posting, and ranking your YouTube videos. As you become more comfortable with this marketing medium, you can research and learn these more advanced methods.
David Bouchez wrote How to Market With YouTube to teach the valuable skill of Video Marketing. Get No Cost Traffic and receive free video internet marketing training. Drop by right now to gain access to the training and tools you need.
How To Make Money From Your Membership Site In 5 Simple Steps
by Jeremy Gislason
Membership sites can generate a very nice income, allowing anyone to quit their day job and work from home. A freedom that many people would die for.
Starting a membership site is not as difficult as it may sound. With the tools available to us today, it can be a very easy process. You simply decide on a topic, put up a site, generate the content, launch and promote the site.
Let’s go through the steps one by one.
Step 1: Choose A Topic.
Before you pick the topic you will be building your site around, do some extensive research. You are going to want to choose a topic that lots of people are interested in.
Niche topics are best, and you want to make sure that there are enough people interested in the topic to enable you to generate a decent income. Creating your site around raising goats may not do the trick. Some examples that will draw a good crowd would be cars, weight loss, video games, traveling and so on.
Once you decide on the topic of your site, break it down into sub-topics, to create tightly focused discussions. This will help to make the site engaging to specific interests.
Step 2: Build The Site.
A membership site can be put together in a mater of minutes with the right tools. There are plenty of tools on the market that will get the job done quickly and easily. Some of these tools are free as well.
If you are going to be setting up your first membership site, I would suggest using a free tool, such as Wordpress. It is easy to use and has numerous plugins that will help you to get ranked quickly and easily in the search engines.
Using some of the free tools available will let you get started without investing too much money right off the start. Later on down the road, when you are making enough money from your membership site, you can purchase something like Dreamweaver or Frontpage to build your site. But it is not necessary.
Step 3: Generate Content.
This is probably the most difficult part of planning a membership site. What will you be offering your members in return for their membership fee? The options are unlimited.
For example, you might offer e-lessons on your niche. You could offer an e-book as well. People love information and it is exactly what they are searching for every time they open a browser window. If you have a lot of knowledge in your niche, you probably have some valuable information to offer. Make the offer exciting; entice them and over deliver on what you have to offer.
Set up a forum if you have the technical know-how, or simply hire someone who can do it for you. One of the great things about forums is that once they get going, all the great content will be coming from the members. These members make up for a great community and have a lot of valuable information to offer each other.
Step 4: Set Up Your Payment System.
You need to make a decision on how you are going to charge people for their membership. With the right topic, forums can become quite large.
You can charge a very low monthly fee, or a one-time payment for a lifetime membership. With a small fee to join, you can still earn a large amount of money. Charging a monthly fee will create a dependable income. This in turn, will allow you to spend a fair amount of time and energy on the membership site, building up relationships with your members.
Some marketers offer the forum of their membership site for free, but has certain sub-forums for paid members only. The site would need to have so much good information on it, that it will lead free members to wonder what was going on behind the secret door. Curiosity will get the better of them, and they will pay for access to the exclusive members area.
Once your forum is open and you have active members, it is just a matter of time before you build a relationship with the active posters. Once you do, you have gained their ultimate trust. It is at this point that you can begin to recommend products that you feel will be helpful to them. These products can be your own, or affiliate products that you promote, enabling you to earn money from each purchase they make.
You may also consider using Adsense advertisements as an extra way to generate income. Using Adsense to place relevant adds on the forums is easy to set up. Every time a member clicks on an advertisement, you will earn a little more money.
Step 5: Launch And Promote Your Membership Site.
This is the most exciting stage of the membership website. This is also one of the more challenging steps in the process. Getting the word out will take a little work. You want to use all mediums to generate excitement and attract members. You will want to use online and offline forms of promoting the opening.
-Write and submit articles to directories related to your niche.
-Start a blog about the upcoming opening of your site.
-Post at related forums, answering questions about your related topic.
-Write a press release
-Include the web address in your email signature.
-Use PPC advertising campaigns to drive traffic to your site.
-Purchase banners on targeted websites.
Completing all of the steps above is going to take a little planning on your part, and will keep you busy for a while. But if you are passionate about the topic of your site, this should be a fun challenge for you.
Once you have members signing up to join, and the posts are coming in, the hard work is done. At this point you can sit back, relax and get to know your members.
Want to know proven ways to tremendously increase membership sales? Want to take membership marketing to a whole new level of overflowing profits? Build high-earning membership sites like a pro by going to http://www.membershipmillionaire.com
Membership sites can generate a very nice income, allowing anyone to quit their day job and work from home. A freedom that many people would die for.
Starting a membership site is not as difficult as it may sound. With the tools available to us today, it can be a very easy process. You simply decide on a topic, put up a site, generate the content, launch and promote the site.
Let’s go through the steps one by one.
Step 1: Choose A Topic.
Before you pick the topic you will be building your site around, do some extensive research. You are going to want to choose a topic that lots of people are interested in.
Niche topics are best, and you want to make sure that there are enough people interested in the topic to enable you to generate a decent income. Creating your site around raising goats may not do the trick. Some examples that will draw a good crowd would be cars, weight loss, video games, traveling and so on.
Once you decide on the topic of your site, break it down into sub-topics, to create tightly focused discussions. This will help to make the site engaging to specific interests.
Step 2: Build The Site.
A membership site can be put together in a mater of minutes with the right tools. There are plenty of tools on the market that will get the job done quickly and easily. Some of these tools are free as well.
If you are going to be setting up your first membership site, I would suggest using a free tool, such as Wordpress. It is easy to use and has numerous plugins that will help you to get ranked quickly and easily in the search engines.
Using some of the free tools available will let you get started without investing too much money right off the start. Later on down the road, when you are making enough money from your membership site, you can purchase something like Dreamweaver or Frontpage to build your site. But it is not necessary.
Step 3: Generate Content.
This is probably the most difficult part of planning a membership site. What will you be offering your members in return for their membership fee? The options are unlimited.
For example, you might offer e-lessons on your niche. You could offer an e-book as well. People love information and it is exactly what they are searching for every time they open a browser window. If you have a lot of knowledge in your niche, you probably have some valuable information to offer. Make the offer exciting; entice them and over deliver on what you have to offer.
Set up a forum if you have the technical know-how, or simply hire someone who can do it for you. One of the great things about forums is that once they get going, all the great content will be coming from the members. These members make up for a great community and have a lot of valuable information to offer each other.
Step 4: Set Up Your Payment System.
You need to make a decision on how you are going to charge people for their membership. With the right topic, forums can become quite large.
You can charge a very low monthly fee, or a one-time payment for a lifetime membership. With a small fee to join, you can still earn a large amount of money. Charging a monthly fee will create a dependable income. This in turn, will allow you to spend a fair amount of time and energy on the membership site, building up relationships with your members.
Some marketers offer the forum of their membership site for free, but has certain sub-forums for paid members only. The site would need to have so much good information on it, that it will lead free members to wonder what was going on behind the secret door. Curiosity will get the better of them, and they will pay for access to the exclusive members area.
Once your forum is open and you have active members, it is just a matter of time before you build a relationship with the active posters. Once you do, you have gained their ultimate trust. It is at this point that you can begin to recommend products that you feel will be helpful to them. These products can be your own, or affiliate products that you promote, enabling you to earn money from each purchase they make.
You may also consider using Adsense advertisements as an extra way to generate income. Using Adsense to place relevant adds on the forums is easy to set up. Every time a member clicks on an advertisement, you will earn a little more money.
Step 5: Launch And Promote Your Membership Site.
This is the most exciting stage of the membership website. This is also one of the more challenging steps in the process. Getting the word out will take a little work. You want to use all mediums to generate excitement and attract members. You will want to use online and offline forms of promoting the opening.
-Write and submit articles to directories related to your niche.
-Start a blog about the upcoming opening of your site.
-Post at related forums, answering questions about your related topic.
-Write a press release
-Include the web address in your email signature.
-Use PPC advertising campaigns to drive traffic to your site.
-Purchase banners on targeted websites.
Completing all of the steps above is going to take a little planning on your part, and will keep you busy for a while. But if you are passionate about the topic of your site, this should be a fun challenge for you.
Once you have members signing up to join, and the posts are coming in, the hard work is done. At this point you can sit back, relax and get to know your members.
Want to know proven ways to tremendously increase membership sales? Want to take membership marketing to a whole new level of overflowing profits? Build high-earning membership sites like a pro by going to http://www.membershipmillionaire.com
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