As a product developer and seller, it can be a challenge to determine where you want to promote your products (or services). What is THE best option is to create and promote a sales page or sales letter.

Below are some pros and cons on why you should consider using a stand-alone sales page with its own domain name versus one that is listed on your website domain name.

The PROS:

• A product page or sales page having its own URL would be indexed separately and having a better chance to be searched and clicked on using major search engines.
• You would be able to track your traffic statistics and effective marketing strategy having a separate product page.
• You can showcase your compelling offer, coupled with client testimonials to strengthen your sales pitch, which is separate from the kind of content you have on your website pages.
• Starting your product page with an eye-grabbing headline and pay button could easily make the purchase.

The CONS:

• Unless you do not have a link to the sales page on your website or have it as a navigation button on your website, then it can easily be buried.
• If you are not marketing your page using your subscriber list or using social media marketing techniques, again, that stand-alone page could truly be standing “alone”…collecting dust.
• Be aware of the length of your product page. Your readers could become bored or frustrated with the content and leave the page without making a purchase.
• Having only one page creates less of a chance of visibility and purchase success. Developing more than one product and marketing the sales page(s), gives you more visibility and more traffic, thus increasing the chances of orders.

I have been selling products of my own for over a year now and I have actually created both a stand-alone product page and a product page on my main website. What seemed to have worked better for me was having the sales page as a separate web page with its own domain name. I had more product orders by keeping my product page separate from my main website.

But this may not be the case for each product. What could make the product sales difference is how you are promoting your product beyond the page or website. That’s a great topic for another article regarding promoting your product online and offline!

Before you decide to create your first business website…or even upgrade your current site, be sure to take into consideration the layout of your site first. It’s really important that you develop your site so that it’s easily accessible and easy to read for your site visitors. You want to make sure your visitors stay beyond the first few seconds that they land on your home page and review what you have to offer. If they are not interested, immediately, they exit out of your website!

So consider these few important points when planning your website layout:

• Grab a piece of paper and pencil & sketch out several layouts
• Choose the layout you like the most
• Find a WordPress theme that closely correlates with your layout
• Name your website and purchase your domain name

Here are just a few samples of layouts you can use as a guide when you are crafting your site layout:

Now that you have mapped out your website layout design, your next steps will be whether you want to create your website using a traditional HTML program or WordPress. Well, it’s a given what I’m going to recommend to you. Build your dynamic marketing-magnet website using WordPress, or course!

Start off by reviewing the different pre-made themes that hundreds of developers have created for you. My top themes list can be found here. Be sure they match up with the layout you chose for your website. Then once you have chosen a theme you want to use for your site, you are ready to move forward with the development. If you are interested in having WordPress to Website build your next website, feel free to visit the PLANS page here.

As I visit more and more blogs on the internet that interest me, I see more of them posting videos rather than providing content. And I have also heard that by adding video, you are opening up yet another SEO opportunity for your blog or website. So I decided to research and find out more about video blogging, and this is what I found.

What is video blogging?

A videoblog is a blog that uses video rather than text or audio as its primary media source. Cell phones equipped with cameras, digital cameras that can record short video sequences, or inexpensive video cameras equipped with microphones make it easy to acquire the raw content of a videoblog. I personally use the Flip camera to record my short videos with.

Videoblogs are usually accompanied by text or still images, and some include metadata or keywords to further annotate the site and to aid in SEO techniques. Digital video-editing software allows videobloggers to cut and paste sequences and integrate audio (background music, special effects, etc.). Like a text blog, a videoblog is updated regularly, typically includes personal or business reflections, often contains comments on other sites, and offers a simple web form for subscription and delivery through RSS feeds. Very much like a regular blog does.

How can a video blog benefit me?

Individuals like myself are finding that video allows them to express themselves more naturally and with greater facility than static, text-based sites. As video software and hardware capabilities advance, and as the medium matures, video enthusiasts could have significant influence on web site design and development for instructional purposes. I find it a way to gain trust from my current and potential clients as they can see me in action through my training courses and tips that I offer.

So if you are considering starting a video blog, be sure you have the right tools to get started. As I mentioned before, I invested in a Flip video camera to record my videos, then I can go in and edit them. Once I’ve edited them, then I use Vimeo to store them on so that I can embed them into my blog or website. A great example of one of my videos can be found at http://mywordpressmembership.com.

Join me, Aletha McManama, your WordPress Expert, Designer and Trainer, where I will be hosting via a FREE 60-minute live webinar…

“The WordPress Website Creation Online
Workshop Preview Call”

This info-packed webinar will take place on Thursday, May 13 at 12 PM EST (11 AM CST, 10 AM MTN, 9 AM PT)

You will come away from this webinar call with an understanding of:

• How to plan and map out your website layout

• What to look for when choosing a theme for your website

• What are the best enhancements (or plugins) to make your website more appealing

• What effective marketing techniques to use for your website

There will be time at the end of the call for questions, so please come prepared to have your most challenging questions asked and answered by me.

Hey, and if for some reason you miss the live webinar call, I’ll be sure and send you the recorded video/audio in your inbox shortly after the call ends. But I would certainly love to have you there “live” so you can ask questions and gain the most out of this webinar session. And did I mention that the call is FREE?!

I wouldn’t pass up this opportunity as I reveal tools and tips to maximize the effectiveness of your website creation and marketing efforts.

More information and registration HERE.

Granted we are nearing the end of the first quarter for 2010, you are not too late to create a blog post editorial calendar to keep you on track to meet your blogging goals this year. It’s no surprise in the online marketing arena that blogging is one of the most popular marketing tools on the net. Remember, fresh and viral content places you strategically in most of the major search engines for your industry.

So to be consistent with your daily or weekly blogging tasks, create a blog editorial calendar that you can plan out your article topics ahead of time, write your articles and post them on the day you want them to be broadcast. It’s much easier than saying you are going to blog daily or at least three times a week and you have no plan of action on what you are going to write or when you are going to write.

So I have included in this post a basic editorial calendar that I have put together using a simple Excel spreadsheet that you can download and use it anyway you like. Click HERE to download your copy to your computer.

How to Use the Blog Editorial Calendar

The editorial calendar spreadsheet is laid out so all you have to do is input your daily or weekly topics and a slot to input the different categories that correspond with your current blog categories. It may be easier for you to list the different categories that you want to write about and build your blog articles from the categories you choose.

Here is an example of what my editorial calendar would look like:

Set aside some time to complete your editorial calendar because it will take you an hour or two to put all your categories and topics in it, but once it is completely filled out, then you have a clear focus on what you will be writing for the whole year, not just tomorrow when you haven’t even thought what you were going to write about!

Another thought is that your blog editorial calendar may not be totally set in stone what you are going to write about. You can always tweak your schedule to meet the changing needs and trends of your business. But just think…you have a schedule that you can stick too!

Calling all Veteran and Newbie BLOGGERS…!

Join me, Aletha McManama, THE BLOG STRATEGIST, where I will be your Question and Answer host via a FREE 60-minute live webinar …

“THE ULTIMATE WORDPRESS Q & A SESSION WITH
THE BLOG STRATEGIST”!

This info-packed webinar will take place on Thursday, March 18 at 12 PM EST (11 AM CST, 10 AM MTN, 9 AM PT)

I want to take this time with you to not only critique sample WordPress blog or blogsites, but to also open up the webinar session to allow you to bring your most challenging WordPress questions to the call so that I can answer them for you. And if you would like for me to critique your WordPress site for you, email me at aletha@theblogstrategist.com and I will be happy to review your site on the webinar call.

You will come away from this webinar call with an understanding of:

• How to critique your own WordPress blogsite…what to look for and what not to have on your blog!
• Tips on how to create your own blog posting editorial schedule
• Listen and learn from others that come to the call with challenging WordPress questions

There will be time throughout the call and at the end of the call for questions, so please come prepared to have your most challenging questions asked and answered by me. Better yet, email me your questions beforehand and I will have answers prepared for you when you attend the call! I will take your questions by email at aletha@theblogstrategist.com.

Hey, and if for some reason you miss the live webinar call, I’ll be sure and send you the recorded video/audio in your inbox shortly after the call ends. But I would certainly love to have you there “live” so you can ask questions and gain the most out of this Q&A session. And did I mention that the call is FREE?!

I wouldn’t pass up this opportunity as I reveal tools and tips to maximize the effectiveness of your blog marketing efforts.

Click and register here: http://wordpresstowebsite.com/qawebinar-mar18/

As one of the top plugins that I install one each one of my client WordPress sites and my own sites, there is a little added work involved to configure the WP-DB Manager plugin so that the little pesky error message that shows up at the top of your dashboard window disappears . And I’m referring to the one below:

Your backup folder MIGHT be visible to the public

To correct this issue, move the .htaccess file from wp-content/plugins/wp-dbmanager to /home/content/x/x/x/xxxxxxx/html/wordpresstowebsite/teleclasses/wp-content/backup-db

Well, it’s not as easy as the message reads!

What IS located in the wp-dbmanager sub-folder is an htaccess.txt file, but that’s not the correct file to move. Yes, go ahead and remove the htaccess.text file from the wp-dbmanager file. It’s okay to do that. Now the correct .htaccess file you need to copy and paste over to the backup-db sub-folder is the same .htaccess file you will find in the root directory of your website (or in your host server account). Look for the folder that reads, “wp-content”, and you will find the .htaccess file. Copy that file over to your hard drive using an FTP client like SmartFTP or a web-based client called net2ftp. Net2ftp is a free service whereas SmartFTP is not.

Then upload the .htaccess file from your hard drive over to the /backup-db sub-folder. Log into your WordPress site dashboard if you haven’t already, and check to see if the above error message has disappeared. If it did not, then I would refer to the documentation for this particular plugin, which you can find here:
http://lesterchan.net/wordpress/readme/wp-dbmanager.html

Now how many times have you heard, “Don’t judge a book by its cover!”? Way too many times for me to count. I couldn’t resist adding a twist to the title and having it read, “Don’t read a blog by its cover”! There’s a story behind this title…read on.

How many times have you visited someone’s website only to totally ignore the blog page? Before you decide that you don’t like the layout of someone’s website you are visiting, give it a chance and just take a moment to visit their blog page and read their blog postings. You may actually gain insight or information on what the blogger has to say. Better yet, if you like the information they provide, don’t hesitate to subscribe to their blog by an email web form or via RSS. Hopefully, this blog has the capability to subscribe. If not, the author is missing out on some great traffic to their site!

This is just one of the items that I will be seeking on sample blogs that I will be critiquing on next month’s WordPress Q&A call. Granted the author may be providing great content, but it is so, so important to keep your readers coming back so they can gain interest in what you have to offer. Okay, I couldn’t resist this cliché either…build it and they will come! They will come only if you have made an effort to index your blog site by easily available SEO tools for WordPress. The SEO tool I use for most of my blogsites is the All In One SEO Pack which you can find here.

Certainly, there are other ways to promote your blog, but the most important thing to remember is to post often! I would love to hear from you if you have other ideas you want to share. I’ll be glad to pass them on to the list in my next edition of the WordPress to Website newsletter! Email me at aletha@theblogstrategist.com.

WordPress 2.9 has been released for upgrade for your current WordPress blogs or sites, but I must caution you that the newest version is causing some issues with plugins that are not yet compatible with the new version of WordPress. As a matter of fact, I received an email from WP Wishlist letting me know that it’s not a good time to upgrade to the 2.9 version until they test it with their plugin. So I am waiting to upgrade until I hear back that there are no known bugs that would cause their plugin not to work.

I also heard from a client over the weekend that once they upgraded to 2.9, their page editor screen no longer allows them to make edits and save them. That’s a HUGE problem. It could very well be from a plugin, but we won’t know until we test them all out.

In the meantime, I will be re-installing the 2.8.1 version to the client’s website so that we can get the page editor window back to its normal version.

You can try to upgrade to the 2.9 version, but I would also recommend backing up your website files before doing so.