AlanAllport.Com

Just exactly how do you start a Web business? That’s a question I get asked all of the time – and I guess it’s probably a question that most people who run their own Internet business also get asked on a regular basis.

I actually think that the answer should be the same whether the person asking the question is looking to start an information-based business where they are going to be supplying their own info products – ebooks etc. or those of others via affiliate programs, or whether the person asking the question is looking to supply physical products of their own or physical products via affiliate programs.

The best way to start an Internet business of either of the above types is by giving information away for free as an incentive for people to join your list.

You basically need three things to put this strategy together:

1. A ‘special report’ to give away as your freebie, which can be as short as about ten pages, so it need not be onerous to write – it should, of course, be of interest to the people in the market you are aiming at.
2. A squeeze page spelling out why your target audience should want to download your free report. This page will have a sign up form for collecting the name and email address of the prospect.
3. An autoresponder system to store the names and email addresses so that you can follow up with them over and over again.

Whatever the latest flavor of the month Internet marketing system may be that you’re getting bombarded with right now, just remember that the above system, and variations of it, have stood the test of time and form the basis of all solid Online businesses now and will continue to do so in the future.

When you have the above components in place all that remains is to send traffic to your squeeze page. You can use various methods to do this, but the best one to start with – and another one which has stood the test of time – is by writing articles containing links back to your squeeze page and submitting them to the top Online article directories.

The above is a pretty simple system – no rocket science there – but it is solid, dependable and will continue to work when lots of the latest whizz bang techniques have fallen by the wayside.

I’ll be bringing you more details of the above system – including downloadable reports – in the future, so remember to keep checking back.

And stop being attracted to the latest shiny object!

At long last I’ve managed to get Web Traffic Mechanic ready for you to download at absolutely no cost – yes it’s FREE, and you like free don’t you?

If you’re having problems getting traffic to your Websites and squeeze pages, or even if you’re an old hand just looking for a few extra traffic tactics that you might not have tried before, then this free guide could be just what you need to get the stat counter on your Website jumping.

Ok, so you do have to opt in to a newsletter by giving your name and email address, but I promise I won’t bombard you with emails trying to sell you stuff all the time (just some of the time!) and I promise to let you in on all of the very best traffic tactics around as I find out about them and as I prove they work for me.

What exactly is covered in this free Web traffic guide? Check out some of the tactics discussed below:

• How to generate unstoppable traffic using free resources
• Fast and powerful backlinking strategies
• The #1 traffic source that will instantly catapult your Website into the search engines
• Critical components for the best search engine rankings and how you can set them up in as little as 15 minutes
• The best way to create powerful article campaigns that will lead to floods of customers for your offers
• And much, much more!

Check Web Traffic Mechanic out by clicking HERE NOW!

I’ve had a Dell Streak 5-inch touchscreen tablet PC for about a week and a half now – and I absolutely love it!

Already I wouldn’t want to be without it. It’s a super little Internet browsing device – it does a good job on the ‘real’ Internet, not just the mobile one. It works on the Android platform so there’s a ton of downloadable apps available for it – not quite in the iPhone league maybe, but it’s getting there – and with Google behind it, no more than you’d expect.

If you’re on the move in the UK and you want decent Internet access your only choice is mobile broadband, and the unlocked Streak will take a data sim from any UK mobile network.

Yes, you can use it as a mobile phone with a voice sim, although I guess some people will think it a little large to be holding up to the ear – I guess it’s horses for courses, this is really a device for people whose priority is a decent, pocketable Internet device that can also double as a mobile phone, rather than the other way around.

For me, I just wanted a useable and ultra-portable Internet browser, and this device with an excellent HD screen of 800 x 480 resolution is brilliant for this. I’ve never had a mobile phone – I sometimes feel that I must be the last man in the world who hasn’t – I guess I almost have one now – nice to know that the device is capable of performing this function if I want it to.

The Streak takes its place alongside my 8″ Sony Vaio P-Series that I’ve had since last October – 1600 pixel resolution across an 8″ widescreen can really put a strain on these ageing eyes as it was set up out of the box, but otherwise I like it and it is light and compact enough to be easily carried around.

I’ve upgraded it from Vista to Windows 7 – and I would definitely recommend this as Windows 7 isn’t such a system hog. Think I’ve definitely got my portable computing sorted for the moment!

Check the Dell Streak Out Here

Check the Sony Vaio P-Series Out Here

If you’re here now and have been here before you might just notice that my blog looks a little different today.

I was getting a little bored with the previous theme so I decided to design a new one last night. Installed it this morning without too many hiccups. Did an update to WordPress 3 at the same time and wondered if I’d messed things up completely – got a ‘Site Is Undergoing Maintenance’ message when I tried to view my blog (if you did too then I apologise). Anyway, all seems well again now – although I did have a frantic few minutes backing up the database, just in case I had to do a completely new install – ah, the joys of Website ownership, eh?

Anyway, it’s a simple little theme – ‘cos I’m a simple guy and don’t really like anything too fussy. I did toy with the idea of installing one of those new slick, professional themes like Flexsqueeze, but decided against it. I don’t profess to be a great designer when it comes to color co-ordination and all that jazz, so if you don’t find it easy on the eyes, I’m sorry. I can always change it again later without too much hassle – I guess that’s the beauty of WordPress as a blogging/Website-building platform.

I’m changing focus with my Internet marketing business at the moment, got a lot of new stuff in the pipeline and I intend to start giving out a lot of excellent quality information for free, so watch out for that if you’re interested in starting – or improving – an Internet business of your own. I highly recommend getting something going that brings in an income via the Internet, I really do – particularly in these precarious times in the traditional job market.

So, stay tuned for lots of exciting developments!

The football (or should that be soccer?) World Cup has started in South Africa. The first two games have been played – both ending in draws.

Waiting for the opening England game tonight and also looking forward to Argentina versus Nigeria today also.

It’s a once every four years event that I always enjoy watching so I’m going to try to catch as many games as I can over the next three weeks of the tournament so my work schedule is going to take some sort of battering.

I’m a bit worried about England defensively – we don’t even know who our number one goalkeeper is! The best England teams of the past were built on a solid defence that was marshalled by a very strong and usually vocal personality in goal. This is lacking at the moment.

Up front we definitely have one of the best players in the world right now in Wayne Rooney, so if the service is good enough then I’m sure he will be. And we have some decent ball-playing and creative midfielders in the likes of Stephen Gerrard, Frank Lampard and Gareth Barry to provide the supply for the attack – it’s just that defence. We’ll see.

The opening game between South Africa and Mexico seemed to be a good one. Only managed to catch some of the radio commentary on this and catch some tv highlights later. It ended in a 1 – 1 draw with the hosts South Africa scoring a superb goal that was equalised late on by Mexico. Mexico had the lion’s share of the possession in the first half but, typically for Mexico, didn’t really have a cutting edge to convert that into goals.

The second game between France and Uruguay wasn’t really a particularly good match. I was able to watch all of this. I wanted Uruguay to win – I really like their striker Diego Forlan. Anyway a fairly lacklustre 0 – 0 draw was all this game could muster. France were unable to make anything significant happen even when Uruguay were reduced to ten men after having a player sent off.

I really struggle to understand how the French manager, Domenech, has managed to be in the job for 6 years given that his tactical nous always seems to be so poor – he just doesn’t seem to be able to make the best use of the players at his disposal by reacting to how a game is unfolding abd changing things accordingly. France were truly dire at the last European Championships and don’t look much better here on this evidence. We’ll see if they can improve.

Anyway, getting ready to watch all of today’s three matches – South Korea v Greece, Argentina v Nigeria and then, the big one, England v USA – my brother in law’s invited me round for a beer or two tonight so no doubt plenty of shouting at the tv will ensue!

I’m currently working on a new Website that’ll help you to generate traffic to your Websites. There will be free and paid options – and I’ll make sure that the free option will be more than worth your while getting involved with, I promise.

I’ve invested in some new hosting to run this on – and it’s with a Webhost I haven’t used before so I have a little trepidation (I’ll let you know how I get on with this host in due course).

Traffic is always a huge bugbear for most people involved in Internet marketing – I know, I’ve been there!

It doesn’t matter what it is you’re attempting to sell, whether it be your own product, or if you’re promoting someone elses product as an affiliate, if you can’t get targeted traffic to your Website, squeeze page or landing page, you just aren’t going to make any sales. I know that isn’t rocket science, but it still bears repeating.

If you’re like I was in the past, then you’ll probably enjoy building the Websites, but get really bogged down when it comes to promoting them. Spend a little time doing a bit of this, a bit of that, not see totally fantastic results, and then give up.

Let’s face it, most traffic generation techniques are pretty mind-numbingly tedious to carry out so you either have to face up to the fact that you’re going to be bored out of your skull doing them yourself, or you’re going to have to shell out some of your hard-earned to pay someone else to do it for you.

My solution is pretty fun to do, and has a huge viral component to it as well, so you just set it on it’s way and it starts the process of getting you some hands-off traffic. I can’t tell you too much more right now, but I’ll update you when it’s ready. I’m pretty excited about it and I think you will be too when you see it!

And, talking of traffic, I’m also getting a product ready that will tell you all about something that’s close to my heart – how to get free traffic to any Website. Being a cheapskate I don’t like paying for traffic, I like to get it free of charge (I also find that many free traffic sources are much more longterm – i.e. do it once, benefit well into the future – than most paid sources).

Anyway, I’m putting the finishing touches to an ebook and video series detailing just about all of the free traffic sources that are working right now and that will work on an ongoing basis – no flash in the pan stuff here. And I’ll be letting you have a free audio taster too, shortly.

Keep checking back and I’ll update you when both of the above are open for business!

UPDATE: 8/8/10 – had a problem with the Webhost I’m using for this site – they needed to change the server over and managed to delete all of the files for this site. This was quite a complicated install that I had done professionally so, needless to say, I’m pretty disappointed. Have tried to get everything set back up myself, but having problems and don’t really have confidence that user accounts would be safe on this host, so, for now at least, this has been put on the backburner.

Nevertheless, traffic generation is such an important subject that I’ll definitely be giving you lots of info on it going forward to help you put into place a traffic strategy for your own Websites.

I recently received an email letting me know that one of the earliest sites on the Internet that sold a digital information product has been put up for sale on eBay.

The late, great Corey Rudl put up the site CarSecrets.com in the mid nineties selling an ebook giving tips  on buying cars. Subsequent to this he set up the Internet Marketing Center to sell his famous Internet marketing course, detailing what he’d learnt about Internet marketing as a result of the success of sites like CarSecrets.

Corey tragically died in a car accident a few years ago but his legacy lives on via the Internet Marketing Center, who are now offloading the site that started it all, which they admit they haven’t really done anything with for the last couple of years.

The interesting thing for me is that IMC are stating that CarSecrets has generated $647,000 worth of sales in about 15 years. Why was that interesting, well, given what I know about what Corey earned over the years it seems quite clear that he earned more money from showing other people how to market on the Internet and providing the tools allowing them to do it than he earned from selling his own niche products. Something to be learned from that eh? Just like the Klondyke Gold Rush, sell them shovels!

If you’re interested, the current bid, as I write this is $7,197.00, (and the reserve has not been reached). The auction ends on 12th May 2010.

You can check out the auction details by clicking here.

UPDATE: This auction ended on 12/5/10 and it didn’t sell because the reserve price wasn’t met – 7 bids, top bid was $7,497.00. Would be interesting to know what IMC thought this site was worth.

As widely predicted, the UK woke up to a hung parliament yesterday morning. No political party had gained a majority in Thursday’s UK parliamentary election.

I did what I intimated I would do in my last blog post – I spoiled my ballot paper by writing some choice comments on it detailing what I thought of the poor calibre of candidates I was being asked to vote for and the fact that I feel that the whole parliamentary system in the UK needs a kick up its backside right now with too many people feeling totally alienated and that their views are not being adequately represented.

I have been not at all surprised by the result – the Conservatives have the most MPs but without managing to muster more than 50% of the parliamentary seats meaning that they don’t have an overall parliamentary majority, Labour are second, 50 or so seats behind the Conservatives – as the sitting party they have succeeded in destroying the faith of a lot of their traditional supporters (myself included) so were in line for being on the receiving end of a protest vote, which is effectively what happened, and the Liberal Democrats have trailed in a dim and distant third, not managing to turn their potential in the opinion polls into actual votes at the ballot box – no change there then.

The booby prize has definitely been won by the Liberal Democrats, because their leader Nick ‘sit up and beg’ Clegg can now say to the two main parties ‘what are you going to offer us to throw our hat into the ring on your side?’ They don’t really deserve to be in this position of power given their truly pathetic showing in the polls, but, there you are, that’s how the system works.

So it seems we are in for at least a few more days of wheeling and dealing before we know whether we have a weak power-sharing coalition in place to govern the UK, or whether we go back to the polls to do it all over again (which is probably the more unlikely of the outcomes).

We shall see.

The UK goes to the polls tomorrow for a general election that has, quite frankly, left me cold. For the first time in my life I really can’t, in all conscience, cast a vote.

I have considered simply not turning up at the polling station, but I think that what I’m going to do is turn up and spoil my ballot paper by putting on it exactly what I think of all the candidates and the system they represent.

Now, I have thought long and hard about this, it certainly isn’t a decision I’ve taken lightly. I am fully aware of how many sacrifices so many people made so that we all have a democratic right to vote in elections in the UK, but I’ve grown more and more cynical with the whole process which I now feel needs a huge kick up its metaphorical backside.

We’ve been regaled for the last year or more with tales that don’t reflect well on either of the main political parties of the wholesale abuse of the expenses system. If you add this to the, frankly, completely childish behavior that’s on display during just about every debate in the House of Commons and the political game playing that goes on, the complete unwillingness of politicians en masse to give a straight answer to a straight question, and the only thing that surprises me personally is that I’ve taken so long to become so disenchanted with the whole gigantic game of charades that I’ve decided there isn’t anyone fit for me to vote for.

I’ve been a Labour supporter all my life and I’ve never felt that this party was less worthy of being voted for than they are now. I feel completely let down and betrayed by the mental pygmies that have leading positions in that party today – including the person who I feel is the worst leader that they’ve had in their entire history. They don’t represent me, so they are not getting my vote.

The Conservatives – I’m totally allergic to them – have never voted for them, have never wanted to vote for them, have no affinity with them whatsoever, can’t see myself ever feeling comfortable voting for them in this lifetime.

We have a third party, the Liberal Democrats. Neither they nor their predecessors have been in power since before most of us can remember. They come across as totally naive and unfit to take the reins of power. If they had anything about them whatsoever they would’ve had a field day against two incredibly weak main parties. The fact that they haven’t tells you all you really need to know about them.

Another factor that leaves me totally apathetic to the whole system is the fact that your vote counts for nothing outside of your local constituency – there is no element of proportional representation whatsoever. In the past I’ve voted Labour but the constituency I live in is overwhelmingly Conservative – has been probably since the dinosaurs roamed the Earth. So I’ve never actually been on the ‘winning’ side in terms of voting for the guy who ended up as this constituency’s MP in parliament – I think I can be forgiven for being a little tired of this after 31 years of voting.

And you know what the clincher is? I don’t think it’s going to make a fat lot of difference to this country in the grand scheme of things which party ends up in power, or if we have a hung parliament with no party having a telling majority – which is what the opinion polls are telling us is a distinct possibility.

For most of us, our lives will probably go on much as before and we probably won’t notice much difference.

So, with somewhat of a heavy heart that it’s come to this, I’ll be spoiling my ballot paper tomorrow.

I guess we’ve all heard about this kind of Internet income plan – aim to make just a little money each day from an individual Website (and Adsense usually seems a good bet as the income source with this type of plan), and build lots and lots of these sites to earn your total target income each day. So assuming you think that you can manage a measly buck a day from each of your simple little sites, then to hit $100 a day target income, you’ll have to build 100 of these sites (even I can manage that math!)

Now, I’ve never been a huge earner from Adsense, but it is a regular daily earner for me since I was accepted into the program at the beginning of January 2004, so this sort of plan has always intrigued me.

The big problem with it for most people is just building and maintaining the number of sites needed to make it work. Clearly, even if each site is only five to ten pages in size, that’s still a fair amount of content to write if you’re going to aim for unique content – which is clearly the best kind. And another problem is the boredom factor – unless you’re a genuine polymath you’re probably not going to have much of an interest in most of the subjects you’re building sites around, so coming up with that content is probably going to be quite a chore.

Of course, you could outsource the content, but that takes money, and if you’re like me, you may not be very good at outsourcing – yes, I know, you really should be looking to outsource the time-consuming, menial stuff so that you can devote your valuable time to more productive things, but I guess that’s one of my failings – I never said I was perfect!

Anyway, I got to thinking, what if you could get away with readily available and free content from article directories for example and just use WordPress with a basic theme to build these Websites and maybe even aim for really low expectations of 50c per day or every few days? If the sites were quick and easy enough to build, this might be a feasible plan.

So, as a sort of  a case study, I’ve built a site today using WordPress with just articles from ezinearticles with a simple, non-graphical theme. I’ve even used a subdomain for this site instead of putting it on its own domain.

To compromise a little because of not having unique content I’m using a WordPress plugin called WPUnique which makes the content different enough to pass Google scrutiny without changing the actual wording of the articles.

The other aspect of this that is normally time consuming is the promotion. Now, given that you’re only targeting relatively small amounts of cash from each site, you clearly aren’t going to be doing anything promotion-wise that takes an inordinate amount of time as that would just about invalidate the concept anyway and make it a complete waste of time. But clearly you’re going to have to do something.

I’ll go into more detail in further updates on this experiment, but what I’m trying to do is get away with as much automation as I can. To that end I’ve used a couple of autosubmitters I have which I don’t have too much faith in, I’ve used a WP plugin called Twitter Tools, I’ve submitted the url and xml sitemap to Google, Yahoo and Bing, I’ve submitted the RSS feed to various RSS aggregators, I’m using a ping list with WordPress and, something I’m hoping for big things from, I’ve just purchased a directory submitter called Deep Linker Pro which is way more automated than most and which I’m hoping for good things from.

Anyway, I’ll let you know how this experiment goes in future posts here, so watch out for them. I’m keeping my fingers crossed because this is a strategy that I have an affinity with and an enjoyment in so I’m hoping that this little test gives results that justify it being put to use as a genuine longterm business strategy.