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New Software for Building Your Websites

The search continues to find good software to build websites with.  Although I’ve been using Yahoo Sitebuilder

for over a year now and am very pleased with it – I felt that I needed something more to start building my latest websites.

Hence I’ve been looking around to see what the experts are using and recommending.  One piece of software that I’m sorely tempted to try is X Site Pro – built for individuals who are really looking to build profitable online businesses.  It automatically integrates Adsense into your sites, allows instant template changes, creates a Google Sitemap in xml for you, two clicks to create a privacy page (essential these days for Google to see you as a “serious” site), built in pop-in and pop-up creator, customised & easy to follow seo optimisation tips for each page, remembers details of your affiliate links – what am I waiting for?  

Did I mention that it also has a 300 page user manual – I’ve tried other softwares but have always been let down by the lack of an adequate and detailed manual to really understand the full functionality. 

The only other tool which I have looked at is the Wordpress blog created by semiologic, but I have to confess that I am put off by the fact that you do need some technical knowledge to get it going – although it seems to be all bells and whistles once it’s up and running.  Jonathan Leger uses it for his blog at http://www.jonathanleger.com/ – although I don’t love the font he uses, you can see what a clean and easy to follow site it is.

Anyhow, I’m now going to sit down and plan out my next website, which I am pretty certain I’ll be building with XSitePro.

Risk Free – How To Write An ebook

There’s plenty of free information on writing your first ebook at places like www.ezinearticles.com .  Plenty of people who couldn’t write a conventional book have written and published their own ebook.  The key tip is to write about something you know about – don’t just find something that you think will make money and try and write about that. 

The big internet marketing successes are people who wrote about what they know – even if it may seem small and obscure to you. 

 Have you got an idea for your book but just don’t know where to start, then How to Write and Publish Your Own eBook in 7 Days – is guaranteed to get you started.  It’s the book I read before I started writing my first ebook, and I’ve now got several books successfully written and selling.  Jim & Joe are very successful in internet marketing and their writing is very easy to follow and understand – each time I decide to write a new book, then I get the book out again for reference and inspiration!   Try it out for two full months – risk free.

 You can even get an ebook written for you by the freelancers at Elance – I’ve had two books written in this way and it was both quick and successful.  I just jotted a few notes and titles down and the writers did the rest – and much more affordable that I’d have thought.

Love the ebooks covers at ebookecovers.com and, of course, Killer Covers – an aptly named company!

If you want to become a published author – writing and publishing your own e-book is probably

risk free – how to write an ebook

Article Submission – top results for this method of site promotion & traffic creation

Yep, I’m reviewing several of the initiatives that I started back in early summer.  You may remember that I bought the Instant Article Submitter software in order to get wider circulation of my articles and to create additional traffic for my site. 

Did it work?

Judge for yourself between these two figures:-

Google Links to article before using Article submission – 33

Google Links to article today after using Article submission – 1030

Very impressive!  I guess that this reflects the many people creating their own article sites in the hope of earning Adsense revenue – but this creates many useful links back to my site.  Has this been reflected in traffic to the site? 

As I decided to use Article submission as my main source of promotion – I’ve done very little other work on this site since submitting the Articles.  Hence, the increase in traffic by around 400% is probably mostly due to traffic received from these Article submission sites. 

Adsense revenue from the site has been good and continues to increase – and should buy me more than a cup of coffee!

Payloadz Scores 10 out of 10

One of my “sidelines” is selling ebooks.  I initially used Paypal to set this up but had one or two problems with people not being able to download the ebooks after paying for them.

I happened to come across Payloadz whilst browsing the internet – admittedly I was looking at some pretty expensive solutions to ensuring that people could safely and immediately download my e-books.  They had a trial option, so I tried it out on the ebook which I sell the least of, just to see how it worked and how easy it was to set up.

All payments are made by Paypal so go instantly to my Paypal account – no monthly cheques to wait for and bank.

Result:-  It’s easy to set up a product, adding the html to my site couldn’t be easier and I’ve had no problems with downloads.  I’m sent a copy of all emails sent to customers – so that if one email does get eaten by the spam filters you can just forward it to them or cut and paste the link to the download.

As the download link expires within a short time, it’s not possible for people to email the link to their friends so that they can download it for free. 

An additional bonus is that it’s possible to offer the product to affiliates who sign up via Payloadz which gives an option for additional income.  Not only that, but once you’ve reached a certain level of sales, your products are automatically listed on the Payloadz site on eBay – free promotion for your ebooks – not bad!

The charges are pretty minimal, considering the ease and convenience of this system – and are based on your turnover – so if you don’t sell too many books, the charge is pretty small.

 I’d recommend Payloadz if you’re considering an easy and secure way for people to download your ebook without spending loads of money.

Review of David Watson’s Website Article Wizard

A few months ago I mentioned that I had bought and used David’s latest software, Website Article Wizard.

I set up some channels on Adsense to monitor the traffic to these new Articles. 

I reckon I’m not the only one to be disappointed with the outcome of all that hard work – although it’s still only a few months and time will tell.  To use one of Dr Andy’s quotes, “the Adsense income wouldn’t even buy me a cup of coffee” – that kind of gives it away without going into any detail.

Sean Wu reckons these kind of Article sites are already “dead” as so many people are using the same content.  However, he does believe that there’s a future in “Authority Sites” and I’ve been enjoying reading “The Authoritiative Guide to Creating Profitable Authority Sites” that he’s recommended.  It’s a free download and just 20 pages – but worth taking the time to download and read.