Kick off Fall with a Coupon Promotion

Give Your Audience a Special Discount as Motivation to Purchase

All of us who shop online know that special promotions and coupons can motivate us to buy. If you've never offered your audience a discount to encourage them to try one of your own products, you might be surprised by the strong response you get. Here at iAmplify our aim is to provide you with the tools and information you need to grow your online business, and as part of that effort we'll be providing you with regular promotions you can use to generate a strong call to action for your audience.

This month, we're offering you a 20% off coupon to promote to your audience. The coupon code is:

Fall20

All your customers need to do is enter the code at checkout to receive 20% off their order of downloadable products. You can distribute it to your audience through an email to your list; through posting on your website; or even through your search campaigns.

No matter how you share the good news with your customers, don't forget to offer them a clear idea of the specific benefits they'll receive by taking action now: for example, Save 20% When You Buy Today, or Start Losing Weight Now!

How to Position Your Products to Sell Themselves

Create Compelling Product Titles, Product Descriptions and Audio and Video Previews

You might have the most amazing audio or video download out there, but if you don't introduce your product in a compelling way, people won't find it and chances are they probably won't buy it. This is especially true if people have never heard of you. With this in mind, we wanted to give you some tips that will help you create compelling product titles, descriptions and audio or video previews.

Research

• The first thing you should do before anything else is to study your competition. Who is selling similar content? This is one of the best ways to get ideas about how to market your products. Look at their product titles and descriptions. Check out their product previews if any exist. You might even want to buy their product. Find out what differentiates you from your competition and what added value you have to offer your potential customer.


• Then you should think about who your ideal customer is. What type of person is likely to be interested in your product? How might you appeal to the needs and desires of that customer? Think about why these customers might buy from you instead of buying from your competition. Create a unique value proposition. What benefits and features will you provide that your customers will value most?

Product Title

• Once you've done your research you can use this information to inform your product title, product description and preview sample.


• Your title must not only describe the product itself, but it should also include keywords that a potential customer might search for. Use Google's free keyword tool to research popular terms. Enter keywords you think describe your product best and this tool will give you a list of similar keywords along with their search volume. It also gives you an indication of how much competition there is for those keywords. Your product title should be unique but also include some targeted keywords where you may have a chance to rank well in the search engines.


• Your title should be short and concise: Steer clear of lengthy titles

Product Description

• Your product description should start out with the main benefit or benefits of what you are selling. This could be in the form of bullet points or a splash heading. It should answer the question "how will this product improve my life?"


• The rest of the description should be the psychological link between the promise in the bullets or headline and the product. This is where you describe the content of your product in fuller detail with supporting details of the promise you made in the headline


• Use the targeted keyword you decided upon for your title and repeat strategically in your description. You should repeat this keyword 2-4 times without sounding repetitive. This will help your product show up in search engines for the keyword you would like to target.


• Include a call to action. The best product descriptions always ask for a sale. Be creative and encourage the potential customer to purchase your product by telling them exactly how to do it.

Audio or Video Preview

• Your audio and video preview can be the most important persuader to whether people buy your product. It should immediately draw your potential customer's attention and should leave them wanting more.


• Create an emotional connection with your potential customer. This preview should also answer the question "How will this improve my life?"


• We usually suggest making the clip 2-4 minutes, but we've seen great success with longer samples recently. These samples are in the 5-10 minute range. The length of the sample depends on the category of your product and the length of your product


• Gary Null's video preview of The Law of Attraction is a great example of an emotionally compelling sample

Check out this great article from Copy Blogger: Sell with Words Copy Blogger is a great marketing reference for anything having to do with writing.

Marketing Tip of the Week: Get Linked!

Did you know that you earn an extra 30% of every sale when a customer buys your products from your website? That's 70% or seven of every 10 dollars!

Linking up is easy and we have put together a handy guide which walks you through the process. You can access it here. There are also some great tips about how to optimize the placement of your products as well, so check it out even if you're already selling your products through your website using iAmplify.

Our partner Pure Classical Pilates made their downloads available on their website and saw their sales increase significantly!

If you have any questions about getting linked up, email us at expert@iamplify.com.

Twitter Tutorial

This is our fifth post in our blog and social media tutorial series. This tutorial is about Twitter, the "micro-blogging" platform that has become quite popular in the past few months.

Twitter’s “micro-blogging” interface is perfect for transmitting tips, quick thoughts, updates and links. When you have something quick that you want to tell or show people, try messaging it through Twitter.

You can sign up for Twitter at: www.twitter.com.

Sign up under your own name or a catchy name which means something to your business. Be sure to capture your name while it's still available!

Next, fill out your personal profile. Here you can add your location, your website and a short bio about yourself. You can also upload a photo of yourself and pick a background design from Twitter's design templates. If you prefer, you can download your own custom design template.

Then Twitter will ask to search your email addresses to find people you know who are already on Twitter or who you might like to invite to sign up to Twitter. You should encourage your followers to sign up for a twitter account so they can get updated news and offers in a timely manner. Once you have connected with people on your own list, you can also search for like minded people on Twitter and follow them. It is an acceptable practice to follow people you do not know and often, once you follow them, they will also follow you.

Try searching for keywords that are important to your business, like self help or fitness and you will find other people who mention these keywords in their posts. You can search for keywords through Twitter search.

Now, it's time to post. Actually, it's better to post a few "tweets" before you follow people you don't know so they can see a sample of what you are going to post. There are quite a few spammers on Twitter so people are starting to get suspicious of people who don't have a lot of details filled out in their profile or people who post the same thing over and over.

To post on Twitter follow the instructions below:

1. Log into your account at: http://twitter.com/
2. Type in “What you’re doing” in 140 characters or less, and you’re all set.

Twitter is a great place to let people know what you’re up to. You can tell your followers what you’re working on, what you’ve just completed, or offer a link to your website or iAmplify product page.

One great thing to remember is that you can paste your affiliate links directly into your Twitter post, and they will be tracked through the iAmplify Affiliate Program. Follow the directions on how to pull your affiliate tracking link from your affiliate text link html code in our WordPress Tutorial. You can shorten your links by using a tinyurl service. This is especially helpful since you can only use 140 characters when posting.

Check out this "Ultimate Guide to Everything Twitter" to get more in-depth details about using Twitter.

Here's another great post about finding followers on Twitter:
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/11/looking-for-m-1.html

This post is a case study on how Twitter drives sales:
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/02/twitter-drives-traffic-sales-a.html

And don't forget to follow us on twitter @iAmplify!

Wikepedia Tutorial

This is our fourth blog post in our blog and social media tutorial series. This week's tutorial is about Wikipedia.

Wikipedia.com has become one of the foremost outlets for user-generated information on the Web. Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has “grown rapidly into one of the largest reference Web sites, attracting at least 684 million visitors yearly by 2008. There are more than 75,000 active contributors working on more than 10,000,000 articles in more than 260 languages.”

If you search Google regularly, you will notice that Wikipedia articles generally rank very high in the search results. So publishing a page about yourself or your business on Wikipedia can be a great way to market yourself or your website. You can significantly increase exposure to yourself and your products.

However, be careful about how you approach writing articles on Wikipedia. Wikipedia strongly discourages writing autobiographies because it is difficult to remain neutral when you are writing about yourself. While it is strongly discouraged, you can still create an autobiographical page if you are strategic about it. Write about yourself or your business as objectively as possible and as if you are writing about it solely with the purpose of providing information. Better yet get someone else to write it for you! Read this article for helpful information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autobiography

Getting started

In order to edit within Wikipedia, you will need to create an account. The steps are easy and their interface walks you through this process. To get started, go to http://www.wikipedia.com and click on ‘Create Account’.

Get the introduction and learn more about Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Introduction

The basic editing cheat sheet is available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cheatsheet

More information about creating your first page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Your_first_article

Take special care to search for your name or business in Wikipedia to make sure there is not already a page created about you. If there is a page about you already, you can simply add information or links to the existing page.

Inserting links to your downloadable products on your Wikipedia page:

Once you have created your page or found the page that someone else has already created for you, you can insert a text link to your products in the ‘External Link’ section of the Wikipedia page. Here are the steps for inserting the text link into your page:

1. Go to www.iamplify.com and search for the product or products you would like to feature on your Wikipedia page
2. Copy the URL of the product landing page
3. Login to your Wikipedia account
4. Go to your Wikipedia page
5. Click on the ‘edit’ link for the ‘External Links’ section
6. Go to the last external link (usually denoted by a *)
7. Add a * on the next line and then [
8. Then paste the URL and hit the space bar
9. Add the text you would like to appear as the link. For example, Kathy Smith Downloads. After the text add another ]
10. Each link should look similar to this:

* [http://www.iamplify.com/store/bio/Kathy-Smith/products/author_id/226 Kathy Smith Downloads]

11. Scroll down on the edit page and click ‘Show Preview’
12. If the preview is satisfactory, then click ‘Save Changes.’ This will prompt you to enter a confirmation cod

More Information

• About Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About

• Making the Best Use of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About#Making_the_best_use_of_Wikipedia

Self Growth Tutorial

This is our third blog post in our blog and social media tutorial series. Now that we've posted tutorials about the two most popular blogging services out there at the current moment, we are going to move on to social media sites. Let's begin with SelfGrowth.com.

SelfGrowth.com is a great website that aggregates self-improvement experts on the Web. There are numerous categories on their website including personal growth, finance, health and fitness and spirituality. In fact, most of our partners fit into one category or another.

The Self Growth website allows their users to link to their websites, etc. online. This guide outlines how to link to your digital media downloads from your SelfGrowth.com page so that you can increase exposure to yourself and your products.

Getting started

If you have not done so already, you should create a Self Growth account. The steps are easy and their interface walks you through this process. To get started go to http://selfgrowth.com/user/register. You will most likely want to create a Professional account.

Inserting your downloadable products into your SelfGrowth.com page:

Once you have created the account, you will need to submit your website for approval in order to create an ‘Expert Page.’ The approval process takes about 24 hours. Once that is done, you can edit your Expert Page, adding bio information, contact information and product information. Here are the steps for inserting the product links into your page:

1. Login into your SelfGrowth.com account.
2. Click on the ‘Expert Page’ tab from the yellow tabs at the top of the page
3. Click on the ‘Products’ tab from the blue tabs at the top of the page. These will be right below the yellow tabs.
4. Scroll down to the Audio & Video products section
5. Leave this web page open and pull up a new tab or window in your web browser
6. Go to http://affiliates.iamplify.com
7. Login to your iAmplify Affiliate Account
8. Search for the product you would like to feature
9. Click on ‘Get Links’
10. Copy the code for the product Text Link. Here is an example for the text link code for Marianne’s Miracle Matrix.: <a href=http://affiliate.iamplify.com/scripts/t.php?aid=b4958085&bid=0f97c381><b>Get a FREE 30-Day Subscription to Marianne Williamsons Miracle Matrix </b><br/><img src="http://affiliate.iamplify.com/scripts/sb.php?aid=b4958085&bid=0f97c381" width="1" height="1" alt="" border="0"/></a>
11. Go back to the web page for SelfGrowth.com, which should still be in the products section of the ‘Expert Page’ tab.
12. Insert the Product name in the box labeled ‘Title’
13. Insert the text for the Text Link code box labeled URL
14. Edit the Text Link so that only the bolded part remains (note that the numbers for the ‘aid’ and the ‘bid’ will be different when pulled from your affiliate account.)

<ahref=http://affiliate.iamplify.com/scripts/t.php?aid=b4958085&bid=0f97c381><b>Get a FREE 30-Day Subscription to Marianne Williamsons Miracle Matrix </b><br/><img src="http://affiliate.iamplify.com/scripts/sb.php?aid=b4958085&bid=0f97c381" width="1" height="1" alt="" border="0"/></a>

15. Click the ‘Submit’ button at the bottom of the page.
16. Repeat this process for each of the product you would like to feature on SelfGrowth.com (we would recommend you do this for all of them).

Other Tips

• There are probably many other SelfGrowth.com experts in your industry. Be sure to network with them by becoming connected through the social networking feature in your account. This is a great way to meet others, create collaborations for seminars or downloadable products, etc.

WordPress Tutorial

This is our 2^nd Tutorial in our Blogging and Social Media Tutorial Series. This post, we will be focusing on WordPress.

WordPress is another popular blogging service similar to Blogger. While it is not our recommended blogging service because it does not support our media player widgets, there are other ways to promote your products through this service.

Getting Started

WordPress answers some basic questions about signing up and setting up your blog here:

http://support.wordpress.com/getting-started/

Wordpress.tv is a great resource for WordPress video tutorials. Below is a video tutorial that walks you through the sign up process: http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/05/signing-up-with-wordpresscom/

Dashboard

One of the biggest differences between WordPress and Blogger is the WordPress Dashboard. The below tutorial gives you an overview of the WordPress Dashboard

http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/05/the-wordpresscom-dashboard-introduction/

Adding an “About Me” (or any other static) page

One of the first things you’ll want to add to your new blog is an “About Me” page to introduce yourself. This is a great place to add a photo of yourself, biographical information and links to your products for sale at iAmplify. This tutorial will walk you through this process: http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/14/adding-an-about-me-or-any-other-static-page/

To add affiliate links to the “About Me” page or any blog post:

1. Write out the Product Title or how you would like the linked text to appear in your post
   
2. Highlight the text you have written with your mouse and choose the link button on the Nav bar of your post (it's the broken chain symbol)
3. A pop up will appear and you will need to paste in your affiliate link URL into the Link URL field.
4. To find your affiliate link for a specific product, just search for the product you would like to link to in the affiliate interface.
5. Once you find the product, click on the “Get Links” link for that product and find the text link. Copy that code and paste into a text document. It will be look something like the below. I’ve highlighted the part that is the actual tracking link in the html code:

<ahref="http://affiliate.iamplify.com/scripts/t.php?aid=c9d4b4cc&bid=f84ab092"><b>Click here to buy <i>Heartworm Prevention Naturally!</i></b><br/><imgsrc="http://affiliate.iamplify.com/scripts/sb.php?aid=c9d4b4cc&bid=f84ab092" width="1" height="1" alt="" border="0"/></a>

6. The final URL you will paste into the Link URL field of your blog post will look like this: http://affiliate.iamplify.com/scripts/t.php?aid=c9d4b4cc&bid=f84ab092
7. You can also choose a target (whether you want the link to open in the same window or in a new window), choose the title of the link (this is the title that will appear if you mouse over the link) and choose a class
   
8. Click on insert link and you are done!

Blog Appearance

Next you’ll probably want to customize the appearance of your blog. You can access themes (blog templates) under the Appearance section in your dashboard’s left nav. This tutorial will walk you through the process

http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/14/previewing-and-activating-themes-2/

Displaying a List of Links in your Sidebar

You can customize what people see in your sidebar by adding widgets. You can also access this feature under the Appearance section in your dashboard’s left nav. Even though WordPress doesn’t have an html widget option like Blogger does, you can set up permanent links to your products for sale at iAmplify by adding a links widget to your sidebar. You can extract the affiliate link to your product pages as instructed above. This tutorial will walk you through the process of adding links to your sidebar: http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/05/displaying-a-list-of-links-in-your-sidebar/

Arranging your Links into Categories

You can categorize your links as well. So if you have several different products or just want to differentiate your iAmplify links from other links, you can choose a category name for these links. For example, you could choose to name your products for sale through iAmplify as Downloads. This tutorial will walk you through the process:

http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/05/arranging-links-into-categories/

Other tutorials

I’ve detailed the basics of setting up your WordPress blog and featuring your content for sale, but there are many more tutorials you may want to watch. Below are some other tutorials you may want to check out.

Customizing your Writing Settings

Creating your WordPress.com Profile

Changing your Reading Settings

Writing & Publishing a Post

Adding Categories & Tags to Your Posts

WordPress SEO & Optimization Strategies

The Tag Cloud Widget

The Pages Widget

Blogger Tutorial

Over the next several weeks, we are going to post some tutorials surrounding blogging and social media platforms. We know that these platforms can be especially helpful to our expert's marketing efforts, but we also realize there is so much information out there that it's hard to know where to begin. So it is our intention to aggregate some useful information and links to help you navigate and put these platforms to use.

The first platform we are going to talk about is Blogger. Blogger is one of our favorite blogging platforms not only because we use it, but because it supports our media player widgets. It is also one of the most popular blogging platforms out there.

Below are some helpful links to get you started as well as some tips on how to set up your media player widgets. I've also included links to more advanced tips so you can optimize your blog once you are fully set up.

Getting Started

Blogger has quick tutorials that will help you get started creating your blog. The steps are easy and the interface walks you through the process.

1) How do I create a blogger account? Basic Instructions on how to sign up: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=41348

2) Getting Started Basics: http://www.blogger.com/features#gettingStarted

3) Getting started video tutorial- this tutorial walks you through the basic steps visually:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnploFsS_tY

I wanted to give special attention to the Layout Guide that Blogger links to in their getting started steps, because this will be one of the places where you can add a permanent widget placement to your blog.

You can do this by adding a Page Element which I will detail below.

How to add a Page Element (how to add a permanent placement for your media player widget):

Go to the Layout/Page Elements tab in your blogger account.

You can add several page elements to your blog page or sidebar by clicking Add a Page Element. This will open a pop-up window. Click Add to Blog in the proper element section to add it:

· Link List: Add a link list to your blog with the ability to add a link list title, select the number of items to display and sort your link list alphabetically.

· Labels: Add a list of all the labels you've used on your posts. Click each link to see a page showing all the posts with that label. You can change the title of the list, and sort it alphabetically or by frequency of use.

· Picture: Add a picture from your computer or the web. You can also add a title and caption to your picture and shrink the picture to fit into your blog perfectly.

· Text: Add text to your blog (such as a welcome message or footnote) with our rich text editor.

· HTML/JavaScript: Add third-party functionality or other HTML/JavaScript code to your blog.

· Feed: Add content from a site feed. Enter the feed URL, then click Continue. You'll then be able to add a title, select the number of items to show (up to five) and display the item dates and/or authors by selecting the appropriate check boxes.

· Logo: Add one of our stylish Blogger logos to your blog.

The HTML/Java Script page element is the page element you want to add to your blog layout to add a permanent placement for your media player widget. For an example of how this looks please view our blog at: http://iamplife.blogspot.com/. You’ll see that I’ve added a permanent placement on the right that is called iAmplify’s Featured Download. This is a permanent element on the blog, but I change out the featured widget and description weekly.

You can also add a media player widget to any blog post. To do this, you just need to switch to the Edit Html tab in your blog post and past the embed code into the Html.

*Please note that you must use the embed code format. Blogger does not allow Javascript.

More Features

Blogger details some additional features like developing your community, getting feedback from your community, new post notifications, open id and converting your blog into different languages.

http://www.blogger.com/features#moreFeatures

Advanced Features

In the Advanced Features sections, Blogger details how to post on the go, group blogging, and adding third party applications.

http://www.blogger.com/features#advancedFeatures

Featured Blogger Tips & Tricks

There are millions of blogs that are dedicated to blogging tips and tricks. I’ve looked through several of these blogs and Bloggerbuster.com is by far the best I’ve found.

Look at these two posts:

200 quick tips for using blogger

The complete list of blogger tutorials

I’ve pulled out some of the tutorials I found useful:

Remove “nofollow” tags from your blogger template to spread some link love

How to use a background image for your blog

Create “wordpress” style pages for your blogger blog

How to hide the blogger nav bar

How to add background music to your blog

Create navigation buttons to enhance your blog

How to add icons beside your navigation links

What makes a great blog header?

How to create a custom header in blogger

How to create post summaries in blogger

How to generate links to related posts

What is a blog feed and why do I need it

Five Ways FeedBurner can improve your readership

New Partners

We continue to add new partnerships and their products to our store. Don't forget to check out the affiliate account center to find new products that you may want to feature on your site. To access the new products feature, login to the affiliate account center and then click on the Text Links, Banners and Widgets text link on the left hand side. Then click on the New tab on the top of the page. This will give you all of the recently launched products. Below are a few exciting new partner stores we've recently launched.

In partnership with Meredith Corporation, we've launched download stores for All People Quilt and Scrapbooks etc., both divisions of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. Their products are also available at iAmplify for purchase. So if you have a craft related site or would like to feature how to quilt or scrapbooking products, sign into your affiliate account and search for all people quilt or scrabooks etc in the search box in the upper left hand corner. Then choose the products you would like to feature and grab the appropriate tracking codes for that product. You can choose from text links, product images or media player widgets.

We have also recently launched a partner store for one of America's leading health and nutrition experts, Gary Null. My Generation magazine dubbed him one of the top health gurus in the United States. For over three decades, Gary Null has been one of the foremost advocates of alternative medicine and natural healing. His products are also available at iAmplify and if you want to feature his products on your website, follow the steps above by searching for Gary Null. If your site has any health component, especially alternative health, his products are a perfect complement!

Last but not least, we've recently partnered with Seminars on DVD to launch a partner store called Seminars on Demand. This store features all of the amazing business seminars that you can find on DVD in a convenient downloadable format. Find seminars from business leaders like Jack Canfield, Brian Tracy and Bob Proctor. As with the above stores, these products are also available via iAmplify. We are actively searching for more business related affiliates. If your site features business content, we would love to hear from you!

If you need help navigating your affiliate account or if you are having trouble with any of your links, please contact us at affiliates@iamplify.com. We are always happy to help!

New Year's Promotional Ideas

Happy New Year! The New Year a great time for promotions. Everyone is eager to tackle a new resolution; to make a change in their life. If you are a physical fitness trainer than you know that this month is one of the best month’s to promote your fitness product. The most popular New Year’s resolution is to lose weight or get fit. Why not send out a special promotional newsletter to your audience with a couple of tips on how to lose weight or get fit this New Year? Then offer a limited time coupon for your product and let your readers know how your product can help them achieve their fitness goals. Use coupon code NewYear09 for 20% off. This coupon code will expire on Feb 28, 2009 so start promoting!

If you are not a physical fitness trainer, there are many more New Year’s resolutions to promote. I’ve listed a few below. Get creative! No matter what kind of product you sell, you can tie it to a New Year’s resolution. So don’t procrastinate! Send out your newsletter before the end of January. You can use the same email template and coupon code as above. Begin with a few tips, insights or even a story and then promote your product at the end. It’s that simple.

Other New Year’s Resolution ideas:

• Quit a Bad Habit
• Learn a New Skill
• Be more positive
• Improve a relationship
• Connect with your spirituality
• Become more motivated
• Earn more money
• Learn to be a better leader
• Advance in your career
• Relax more
• Have fun
• Get rid of anger or negative emotions
• Become more grateful
• Connect with your family and friends
• Become a better parent

These are just a few ideas. I’m sure you could come up with a million more if you think about it. Please let us know if you need any assistance with promoting your product. We are always happy to help. Best of luck this year!