Digging for gold! A nifty little ebook on keyword searching

Lol, that's the title of the ebook indeed. I had a chuckle when I saw it.
I love it when I find interesting tools that are originally targeted towards something else, but I can then use them for my own purposes. Like this ebook.
Digging for Gold is an ebook written by a Google geek (yeah, he knows what he's talking about) on how to find keywords - and I mean the really good keywords - with less or no competition at all. It's original taget market is the Internet Market niche, however we can nicely utilise it for our jewelry marketing as well. How?

Well if you're making jewelry, you have to market it somehow. Yes, you might say, I'm only selling through Etsy, Dawanda, Ebay, etc. Well then, ok, read no further :)
There are those of us though, who have either our websites, or blogs, or both, maybe our Squidoo lenses, that we want people to find us. Heck we need to sell our jewelry, that's whay we're here in the first place, no? We're not going to sell that jewelry to other jewelry makers, obviously, so we need to find our market outside, among the regular folks, who simply are out there to buy stuff. Word of mouth is great, but how much of that population does that comprise? I mean optimizing your website for 'jewelry' will be DARN hard, since if you Google that, you'll find millions (yes millions) of established sites out there selling just that. So you need to be THAT more specific!

Based on Rena Klingenberg's book on social marketing, I've started some Squidoo lenses as well, and it looks like the whole exercise is worth it. But one thing Rena doesn't approach that well is what exact keywords does the average, non hi-tech Jane Doe type in Google, to find some nifty jewelry to buy. Coz unless they know about my Marika's Jewelry on Dawanda, or type in the keywords that I used to set up my site or blog whenever I originally set it up, they might never find it, coz Google might never show it to them, since it doesn't find it relevant for the words the Jane Doe is typing in! What a wasted sale!

The TAKnique book shows you all the various ways to find keywords that people are typing in to find something in Google. Once you know those ways, how long does it take to work a bit on your site and optimize it for those very keywords? Of course, if she types in 'dog food', and you've optimized it as such, but when she gets to your site, you're selling beaded jewelry, she'll run away as fast as her mouse clicks allow her! Got my point? So obviously you need to find keywords around whatever you're selling.

One of my favourite tips was about how Google is lying to you, lol. Had a gigggle at that one!

One thing you need to keep in mind though, is that the book does not approach jewelry! So unlike Rena's book, which is specifically for jewellery, don't expect to be lead by hand on jewelry specific keywords! This guy gives you the techniques, tips and tricks, and it's up to you to apply them to your site. But it's so easy!

Oh I forgot the price. This gold digging book is only $17! I mean you pay for a specific instruction on how to make one piece of jewelry about the same! And yes, if you're asking, I'm advertising this book as it's good!

Social Networking - Sell your jewelry online the new way

Ok this is something that totally love. I bought Rena Klingenberg's book recently and I knew I couldn't fail with it. Being a regular visitor to her info site, I applauded her next step in creating this social networking book. And this book is just what we need, us jewelry artists and designers, and everybody else in related niches, such as glass or fused bead makers, jewelry suppliers, etc.
The internet is changing and from passive visitors of the web, we are becoming more and more actively involved in it. Now we can write in forums, post to blogs, leave comments, join Twitter and other social places, have a Squidoo lens and have an online calender that you can share with others. And so much more!
Rena goes deep in each of these above mentioned points, and in so much more.
Simply by reading her book I discovered a new world out there, pretty much untapped yet by jewelry artists and designers.
I mean, let's admit it, most of the jewelry artists online are doing a bit of marketing their product, but that's all. They sell on Etsy, on Dawanda (if you're in Europe), they "might" have a website, lately some have started using blogs, add some tags to their blog posts for SEO optimization, participate in forums leaving their signature at the bottom of the post, hoping that somebody would bite and click on their link and buy the jewelry, and...that's about it.
And they don't realise that they've been doing it all BACKWARDS! Yep. I couldn't believe it myself! All this time, I was hanging out in the WRONG FORUMS! where I would never get any sales. Why? Well Rena's social networking book will tell you that.
All this time I was simply targeting the wrong kinds of people, and hoping that the RIGHT kind of people would find me!
Yes, advertising by word of mouth, by bringing the offline folks (friends, family, friends of friends, colleagues at work, you get my idea) to Etsy and let them buy would give me some sales. But what about the rest of the crowd online? With the internet reaching the whole world, there is an untapped potential for sending your jewelry from India, to Australia and to Timbuktu if you want. But how do you reach those folks?
Well this is something that Rena Klingenberg will teach you in her Social Networking book, and so much more. Her 184 book is chock full of information, and I mean real information. She doesn't hold back. She doesn't need to, there's nothing for her to protect, since she has made it already. Rena with her business is in the top 1% of the websites. And that's a biggie! With this book, you can learn from the best!

Did I get your lips wet enough? If you want to read more about her book on her page, just follow this link, it takes you straight to her book page.

Site building with Synthasite - a review

I've heard very recently about Synthasite, a free website builder, and I decided to check it out.
Created an account, and in a few steps I was setting up my first site. I was impressed....at first.
So let's see what all I got out of it.

Pros:

• very easy to set up a site, practicaly a 'for dummy' construction
• requires no technical skills
  
• it's free: web building, webhosting
• has easy to use templates that you can select from, not bad for freebies
• has a support (sort of) forum where you can ask your question and hopefully you'll be answered
• it's really easy to use - did I say how easy to use it is? :)
• it has a shopping cart - yes, you can sell your stuff online. The site uses Paypal for payment
• can create a site or a blog
  

Cons:

• NOT flexible. And I mean, at all. If you want to customize, for example, your heading, be it location on the page, or font size, color or anything else, forget it.
• cannot customize the templates. Some come with banners that you can replace with your own, some come with banners that you cannot replace with your own, and some don't have a banner at all.
• the bottom of the site has a link to the website, which is ok, but not with a tag of 'free personal site by...'. If you're selling jewelry and want to be viewed as a serious jewelry artist and business person, having a 'free personal website' is a no-no.
• cannot move the placement of the text and picture boxes (called 'widgets' like the blogger apps) on the page. They are fixed location. Quite unfriendly.
• and my biggest petpeeve as of now: when making your online shop, you cannot have more than 1 picture per product. Since your customer cannot see and touch the actual item, it is important to have a few good pictures of the same product from different angles, or some enlarged, so that they have a better idea of what they are getting online.

After struggling with a few templates to try to get them the way I want, I left it at that and returned to my current project, my osCommerce shopping cart site. I've spent already enough time with osCommerce to sort of know where I am with it, how can I tweak it, even how to add multiple pictures per product (by default it doesn't allow you that either, you need to install some modules, called 'contributions'), so I've decided I will continue with it.

I didn't find my evening of playing around with Syntasite to be a failure. Don't get me wrong, it is a lovely place to build your generic site. It's great if you want to have a site with your online portfolio, to display your jewelry (you can add multiple pictures on a page, you can only not add multiple pics on the pages for your shop), and some of the layouts are quite good. For example, a colleague of mine created a personal site with info about a particular group of folks, and on the side of her page she added affiliate products that one can purchase. Passive income. That works too.

Having said all that, of course, another alternative you have, is once your site is done, to download it (which you have to do anyway if you host it someplace else), then tweak your html, php and css files, and then upload to your host. If you're good with these, then go ahead and tweak to your heart's content. But then why did you want to use the 'dummies' tool in the first place?

First review - a freebie - The Ultimate Supertip in Online Marketing

Well, I could have started with something really gorgeous out there (which I will keep for one of my next reviews), but for now, since my first post mentioned it, I'll blurb a bit about an ebook that got me thinking and got me started on various ways to market better my product. It didn't have all the answers, but it did what it was supposed to do: got me started.
If you are a pro in online marketing, you'll probably won't need to read this ebook, but if you're just making your jewelry, or creating your product and not sure of what next, (and aren't we all at some point in our lives?), this might as well be your starting point.

Well, contrary to popular procedure, I'll start with the Cons, what put me off at first and why I almost didn't read it.

- When you go to the site you'll see all that flashy typical selling looking page, which most of us have come to avoid and just click away. Like I said, I almost did it too. Really, these guys should change their outloook of their pages, if they're to attract more readers to their site, dooh.

- Getting past the red flashy page, I read through, actually more like scrolled through (yeah, I'm an action kind of person and want to get to the good stuff without having to read through all the blurb. Are you also one to simply tick that 'Terms and Conditions' button, without reading fully through the whole blabla? yeah same here :-). So scrolling down, ehmm, another button to click to get to the Download page. Oh well...click click...

- Finally, the third con is that once you read the ebook and get to the end, you'll see a button that you might want to click so you can buy his next ebook, so of course, although the book is free, the guy has to earn his living too. But you don't have to click on the link to buy his other books, that's just purely optional. At first this gave me a slight feeling of 'I'm betrayed' here, until I realised that no, I'm not at all. I click if I want to. He's just advertising it. I still got the free book out of the deal, no?

And now on to the Pros:

When you download the book, there are no 'subscribe here' forms to capture your email address and other contact details. It's a simple zip file, that you download and open with your favourite zip file extractor (winzip, winrar, etc). So no email harvesting opportunities here. Hm, I like that.

- It really has some nead strategies and ideas on selling your product, or any other product for the matter, online. Some I knew, some were new to me. But even those I knew were good to be reiterated here, that's what they say afterall that repetition is the mother of perfection.
- Some of the topics covered in his book are:

• - Getting traffic to your site
• - Preselling with free ebooks
• - Preselling with articles
• - Autoresponders and follow up campaigns
• - Ad tracking
• - Affiliate marketing
• - ClickBank
• - Viral marketing
• - PDF book creation
• - Ebook rebranding
• - Creating niche sites
• - Resale rights

What I particularly liked in the book was, for example, the bonus at the end on PDF book creation. Many jewelry artists like to create their own tutorials and set of instructions on various things they know to do best. Take for example Iza, or Magda, or Eni Oken. They all use PDFs in making their tutorials. Well, before you pay out a fortune for Adobe Acrobat with all it's bells and whistles check out the bonus product that Harvey mentions. It's worth every penny.

- Also I liked the part about Creating Niche Sites. Well yes, jewelry, beading or wire working are niche sites. But can you narrow it down even more for a better target market? It looks like you can.

- And finally as a last point, the book is entirely free. And I think that if one is researching on how to write ebooks, getting all the freebies out there and seeing how the masters have done it (and no, this ebook is not targeting jewelry designers particularly, but pretty much everybody who is selling something online) is worth 1 minute time to download it.

When you want to download this ebook on online marketing, it will take you through two of those 'click next' pages, so bear with it, but then you'll have it :)

If you're still not decided to simply download this, and want some more opinions, read these testimonials about the book.

Why this Ebook reviews blog?

Well, I think it's because I've finally decided to combine three of my main passions : making jewelry, reading books and the internet. And now comes a hidden tidbit about me: I also love reading e-books. And no, I'm not talking about the illegally downloaded novels from torrents, emule and the such. If I have to choose, I love reading my novels with a cup of coffee next to me, or in the bed just before going to sleep, or yes, while taking a hot bubblebath.
I'm talking about the 'how-to' type of ebooks that teach you things you either didn't know, but were searching for desperately, or things you didn't even know you didn't know, or simply things that are interesting and always good to read about. And as making jewelry and the internet are my two main hobbies, I already have several ebooks that I either downloaded for free, or purchased, which I will review here. And of course, as an ebook junkie, I'll continue to supply myself with ebooks on these subject, so there will always be plenty to review here.
Thus my focus here will be on how to make it as a home based jewelry business artist on the net. I have ebooks on online marketing, on online selling, on creating your first (or second, etc) website, about SEO (search engine optimization), all these which constitue the building block for your new online jewelry business. Of course, if you are selling offline, unless you're an ebook junkie like me, there's not much to do here for you :)

Although I'm selling jewelry for over a year now, I've only now started to realise the potential that online marketing offers to us, jewelry designers who want to have our own jewelry home business. So I've started reading as much as I could on the subject, but then something else came along. I started to get lost in all that mumble jumble out there. Clicked from link to link, from SEO tip to SEO class to online marketing blog to keyword tracker website, then I forgot to bookmark this link or another when I wanted to come back to it. It was a nightmare. So I want to offer a common place for all these books, articles, blog posts (I will focus on ebooks, but I might mention here and there a good website, blog or whatnot, if I find it worthwhile your time), so that it makes for you, the newcommer to marketing and selling your product online, or for you who are already doing it, but would like to learn to do it better, much easier than it was for me to find that needle in that proverbial haystack. And yes, both free and paid ebooks can help you with learning the basics and much more.

I've had a chat not so long ago with somebody who perceived free books to be without value, and she only read books that she paid for. Well I am about to prove her wrong, as although I've read a couple of crappy free ebooks, I've also read some so-so, and some really good ones out there. For free.

Actually, the idea of blogging about ebooks came from such an ebook that I downloaded for free the other day.
Now I wouldn't consider that said ebook to be over the top full packed with goodies, but it had its merits as it got me started here. Also that same ebook gave me the needed push to start my own website. So was that ebook worthwhile my time reading it? Yes, I'd say so, I took something out of it.
My next post will be about that book as a matter of fact, since I've already mentioned it here.

One last thing, when I brainstormed about ebook reviewing with a friend, she asked me why am I doing this, do I want to sell ebooks now? No, I am not focusing here on selling ebooks. I will, however, post a link to where the ebook can be downloaded or purchased from, to make it easier on finding it.
Besides, I do have my product that I am actively selling through various avenues, Dawanda, my blog and shortly my upcoming website. Now yes, THIS is a sales pitch :)