Email newsletters are an excellent way to market your business, highlight your expertise and build a relationship with your prospects and customers. Email newsletters are relatively easy and inexpensive to produce, but that doesn't mean they're fool-proof.

Sam told me he never bothered collecting testimonials since he always thought they were "stupid". He claimed that reading testimonials never inspired him to make a purchase since they always sounded like they were made up anyway.

Here's a great plan of attack for using email marketing to supplement your sales during the holiday - and beyond.

You probably know by now that your web site needs to be updated on a regular basis. Updating your site is vital because search engines love fresh content.

Google's recent changes to AdWords make it easier for novices to get started with pay per click advertising. But if you've never created a PPC ad before, the task can seem a little intimidating.

Every SE has its own web crawler program and its own formula for ranking pages. However, while page factors might be ranked differently by different engines, the idea behind the web crawlers is basically the same. Getting your site crawled often is a good indicator that the SE finds your site important.

I just finished up my business plan for 2009 (and if you haven't updated your 2009 plan yet, I urge you to get started soon!) and I'm working with several clients to update their plans also. One of the roadblocks many of clients run into is the difficulty of setting concrete goals and objectives.

If you haven't used pay per click advertising to drive traffic to your web site, now might be a good time to get started. Google has recently announced several changes.

My most popular service lately has been copywriting, both for online web pages and offline sales letters. Whether you're a service provider or a retailer, a solidly constructed sales letter (or better yet, a three-letter series) can work for you...

Does this sound like you...the economy is going south, and you're starting to panic. You're worried about the financial health of your small business. You think about slashing your prices to stimulate your sales. You assume you need to cut back on your...

I don't know about you, but I get a little annoyed by the big-name pundits who declare "I refuse to participate in the bad economy." Sure, it's a great philosophy, but for the small business owner who sees his income shriveling away, who has to lay off long-time staff members...

I've recently suffered a computer crash, and one of the folders that wasn't backed up was one that contained all my testimonials. So I'm now on a mad-scramble to try to acquire new testimonials to use...

Unfortunately, since many small business owners don't consider marketing as a core business activity...it's often the task that gets set aside when time is crunched. But by taking just a few minutes to plan ahead, your future marketing activities can go much smoother; you'll be able to complete your marketing activities quickly and easily.

Our customers don't know our products inside and out. They do not make the mental leap from features to benefits. We need to show them, to spell out exactly what our product or service will do for them.

Pay Per Click campaigns are not set it and forget projects. Without advanced planning and continued monitoring, they can become extremely unprofitable. Use these proven techniques to squeeze the most ROI out of your PPC:

If you're using a free report as a lead generator, you obviously want your conversion rate as high as possible. If your landing page is clunky or confusing, you might be losing out on many valuable prospects. I've recently implemented a few simple changes to a client's landing page that resulted in double the conversions. These changes are all easy to do, so I urge you to try them yourself:

Don't get too comfortable with that cushy search engine position you've been experiencing. Chances are, your rankings will go through quite a few fluctuations over time. A minor move up or down is nothing to get alarmed over. But if your rankings suddenly plummet, consider these top reasons:

On the web, attention spans are extremely fragile. Web surfers are looking for immediate gratification. Do they really want to stick around and read a gazillion word sales letter? Does long copy outperform short copy, even on the internet?

You crafted a great e-zine campaign, and yet the sales aren't pouring in as you expected them to. Only a fraction of your readers actually opened your e-zine. Now what?

Having a hard time ranking in Google? Why not try optimizing for Yahoo? After all, Yahoo commands over 22% of the search market - and 22% of billions of users is quite a lot!

Many internet service providers and email clients now default to displaying html messages with the images turned off. Up to 50% of your readers will never see any of the images embedded into your e-zine, but that doesn't mean they can't have a great user experience.

Many web site owners mistakenly believe that a "Contact Us" page will cause tons of prospects to fill out an online form or to pick up the phone and call...