Amanda Hocking went from working a low-paying job to becoming a self-publishing sensation in just a few short months. In less than a year, she rose to become one of Amazon’s top-selling authors and to earning more than $1 million in sales – all by herself. Hocking was rejected numerous times by literary agents and publishers, and so she published and promoted all her books herself.

Now she has an agent and a traditional publishing deal, and many of her books are finally seeing their time in print. Some of her books have even been optioned for movies.

No matter what industry you are in, you can learn a lot from Amanda Hocking’s success. Here are just a few of the things that small businesses and marketers can learn from Amanda Hocking:

Find Your Niche

Hocking has written in her blog and said in interviews that she always wanted to write more high-brow fiction – stories similar to those written by the authors she admired, such as Kurt Vonnegut. But when she would try to write those stories, she didn’t find success.

It wasn’t until she started experimenting with other genres – namely, young adult paranormal romance – that she finally found her niche. While she might have aspired to produce work like the authors she admired, she was actually good at writing another kind of fiction.

No matter what your market, you need to find your niche if you are going to be successful. Experiment until you find what you are good at doing – and then keep doing that.

Study the Market

In 2009, Hocking made it her mission to get published that year. She went to bookstores and she studied what was on the shelves. She looked at sales and trends. She wanted to find out what was selling.

Seeing that vampire stories were very popular, she decided to write one for herself. Another rejection made her realize that market was too saturated. But the larger market for vampire stories – paranormal romance – still held a lot of opportunity, and that’s what she wrote next and where she found her success.

Study the market you are entering. What does the market demand? What do your customers need? What are the gaps that you can fill?

Build Relationships

After Hocking started publishing her own books on Amazon, she had some moderate success, with steady sales trickling through. It wasn’t until she started sending her book out to bloggers to get free reviews that her sales really exploded.

In addition to reaching out to bloggers and building relationships with them by e-mailing, sending copies of her book, and commenting on their blogs, Hocking also put a lot of effort into building relationships with her fans. She maintained a blog about her work, participated in forums, and was active on social media.

Building relationships is critical to the success of any business. Online marketing is about more than just creating awareness of a brand. Blogging and social networking should have customers in mind first, and business owners and marketers should use those channels to get to know customers better. The stronger the relationship businesses have with customers, the more loyalty they will inspire and long-term, repeat sales.

Don’t Give Up

Hocking faced rejection after rejection in her quest to get an agent and to be published. Instead of giving up, she kept writing. She edited her works and resubmitted them. She studied the market and tried writing new stories. She solicited new agents and new publishers. Then she tried publishing her work herself – and then tried getting published again.

You are bound to face rejection and failure in your quest to grow your business and make it a success. You should never give up – rather, use that rejection and failure to figure out how to tweak your business or your approach to make it better and find long-lasting success.

There are many things that small businesses and marketers can learn from a break-out success like Amanda Hocking. Studying your market and finding your niche is important to getting the right start. Then you must find ways to build relationships with your customers for long-lasting success. Above all, never give up!

Establishing a strong online presence is one key to success for any small business. AptoHQ can help by providing small business web design. Contact us to find out what we can do for you!

There are two ways you can promote your blog: Paid advertising or search-engine optimization (SEO). Effective SEO can help your blog appear higher in relevant search-engine results, helping your site get more exposure and more traffic. More traffic leads to more regular visitors, which leads to more sales.

While you can learn to do SEO yourself, it is an art, not a science. If left in the hands of someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing (including you), your blog could suffer.

Not sure if your SEO strategy is working? Here are 5 warning signs that your blog needs better SEO:

Low Traffic

Traffic is the best indicator of how successful your SEO strategy is. If your SEO strategy is working, then your site will be appearing higher in search results, and you will be getting traffic. If your SEO strategy isn’t working, your site will be buried below pages and pages of search results and may never been seen by the majority of searchers. People who don’t see your site can’t visit your site.

Regularly check your Google and other analytics data to see how much unique traffic you’re getting (apart from your mom). If those numbers are still in the double digits, you likely need to do an SEO audit of your site.

Slow Growth

Maybe you’re getting fairly good traffic to your site, but you’ve hit a plateau. Your traffic increased fairly steadily, but the numbers haven’t budged in months. If you haven’t been growing your traffic – of if you’re traffic is growing very slowly – take another look at your SEO.

Again, keeping a close eye on your analytics is key. Export your data and create spreadsheets to look for trends in growth. If you’re site is just hitting a seasonal slump, it may be nothing to worry about. However, if your site has seen stagnant growth for months, you probably need to reboot your SEO efforts.

Inconsistent Search Results

The next time you’re in your analytics dashboard, pay close attention to your referral sources. What keywords are bringing people to your site? If your users are stumbling onto your site through random keywords, that’s a good sign that your own keyword strategy is not working. You should be ranking for your targeted keywords, not getting random traffic based on luck.

Also pay attention to what sites are linking to yours and referring traffic. If you are getting a lot of traffic from random, unrelated sites or content farms, that’s another good sign that your keyword and linking strategy is not effective.

High Bounce Rate

When visitors come to your page and leave immediately, it’s a good indication that they did not find any valuable content on your site – or that they weren’t drawn in by your design to learn about your valuable content. If your visitors aren’t finding what they need on your site, it may be because your keyword strategy isn’t drawing in the right visitors.

Make sure you understand your target audience and what they need, and align your keyword strategy appropriately. When you are using the right keywords, and your SEO strategy is effective, you should be bringing in targeted visitors to your site, and they should be staying on your site for longer periods.

Few to No Comments

Another sign that your blog isn’t getting enough traffic – and that your SEO strategy isn’t working – is a lack of comments on your entries. Even if you are getting a lot of traffic according to your analytics data, a lack of comments could indicate a lack of engagement, which could mean that your keyword strategy is not targeting the right visitors.

Take a close look at your content and the call to action you are including in your blog posts. If you think that they are adequate, you may need to take a closer look at your SEO.

Effective SEO is key to the long-term success of your site. An effective SEO strategy can help you drive traffic to your site, raising awareness of your brand and boosting sales. If your blog shows any of these warning signs, it could mean that you need to re-evaluate your SEO strategy.

If your SEO strategy isn’t working, call AptoHQ for an audit. We offer professional website design for small businesses, including SEO consulting.

Is your SEO strategy working for your blog, or do you recognize some of these warning signs? Share your thoughts in the comments!

It’s inevitable that there will come a time when you need to redesign your site. Maybe your look has become outdated. Maybe your brand has undergone a makeover. Maybe you have added new products or services to your line, and you need to update your site to reflect those.

As necessary as redesigning your site may be for your continued success, changing your site can also threaten your search engine ranking. Whether you are deleting old content, changing the location of your pages, or changing your domain entirely, these changes can cost you your hard-earned page rank and have you starting over from scratch trying to climb back up to the top.

Here are a few ways you can redesign your site and still maintain your page rank in the process:

Don’t Get Rid of Pages that are Ranking

These may seem obvious, but many web masters get overzealous in their redesign efforts and decide to scrap all the old site content and start fresh. This is a mistake. Eliminating pages that have attained some authority will strip away value from your site.

Identify the pages that have attained successful raking and be sure that you keep those pages in your new site. Don’t change the content or any of the page elements. Move them over to the new site as is.

Keep URLs Where Possible

Your page URLs are closely linked to your content. Google has crawled and ranked those pages by their URLs, and any links you have earned back to your site are tied to those URLs.

Wherever possible, don’t change the URLs to any of your pages in your redesign – especially those pages that contain important content (such as your home page or “about” page) or that are ranking well.

Create 301 Redirects for Popular Backlinks

Your links are an important part of your page rank. The more links you have, the better your ranking. If you change your URLs – or move to a new domain entirely – you lose those links and that ranking influence.

If you cannot help but change your URLs or move to another domain, ensure that you do not lose those important links by creating 301 redirects. That way, when someone visits the link, they will still be funneled back to your site. If you don’t want to do this for all of your old links, do an audit and create redirects for the most important backlinks you have garnered.

Add a Useful 404 Page

When users land on an outdated link that does not have a 301 redirect, make sure visitors still find their way to your site by adding a useful 404 page. This is an error page that will let visitors know that they have found your site, even though the link is broken. Include information on the page to lead them back to your site, such as links to important resource pages.

Create a New Site Map

When you change up your site, Google gets confused about its previous index of your site. Pages and elements are not where they were when your site was previously crawled. This can hurt your page ranking.

Help Google quickly index your new site by creating a clear site map. Your pages will be quickly indexed – hopefully without costing you any page rank.

Redesigning your site is an important part of maintaining a strong online presence for your small business, but you must take care to ensure that you don’t learn your hard-earned page rank in the process. Following these tips can help, as can consulting with AptoHQ to get an audit of your site. We offer affordable web design to help you grow your small business! Learn more about our web design services now.

Your web design can make or break your online marketing. Good web design can attract new leads, drive conversions, and keep your customers coming back again and again to develop a long-term relationship and lead to repeat sales. Bad web design can bore or alienate your customers, driving them away and costing you business.

A professional web design company like Apto Hosting can ensure that your web design has all the elements it needs to drive sales and build relationships with your customers. Here are the 10 elements that your web design must have to be successful:

Clear Branding

When visitors land on your page, they should be able to recognize your brand right away.
This can be accomplished through a prominent logo, as well as design elements that show off the personality and values that your brand represents. For example, if you have a toy company, your web design should be light and fun, using bright colors and quirky fonts. If you have a consulting service, your design should use strong colors and simple fonts that convey a sense of professionalism.

Every element of your web design should come together to highlight your company’s brand so that customers understand what your business is all about and can quickly recognize your products and services wherever they may see them.

Consistency

Consistency is a part of clear branding. Fonts, colors, and other design elements should all work together to create the image you want for your business.

Consistency also creates a more professional look for any web site and improves the user experience. Inconsistency creates a site that looks messy and is difficult to navigate.

Easy Navigation

Customers should be able to find any information they need on your site quickly and easily. If your customers have to look for the information, they are more likely to just leave your site and look elsewhere for it.

Ensure that your site is easy to use through elements such as drop-down menus, clear labels, and a clean interface. The navigation should be intuitive. In other words, your menu should include clear headers that contain the expected information.

Simplicity

In web design, less is more. Too many elements on your page can clutter your design and make it harder for your customers to navigate or to find the information they need. Resist the impulse to include too many flashy graphical elements, too many different colors, and too many fonts.

Pare down your design so that the focus is on your branding and your messaging. Highlight the most important features so you can have a bigger impact and make a stronger sales pitch.

Strong Landing Page

Your landing page may be the only page your visitors ever see. For many websites, this is the home page. Make the most of the opportunity to draw visitors into your site and to drive sales by creating a strong landing page.

Your landing page should be visually compelling, and it should make a strong sales pitch. You may only have a few seconds to draw visitors in when they land on your page — make sure you seize that opportunity.

Strong “About” Page

One of the most frequently visited pages on any website is the “about” page. Your visitors want to learn more about your company, and this is the place to tell them. Your page should tell your visitors about your company history, why you are a leader in your field, and what makes you unique in what you have to offer your customers.

A strong “about” page can help you make the sale, and it can encourage your customers to explore the rest of your site to learn more about your products and services, hopefully leading to sales.

Useful Content

Encourage your visitors to return again and again to your site by offering them useful content. If your site is one big advertisement for your products and services, your customers are only likely to return when they need to purchase. However, if your content offers them useful information and solutions to their problems, they are likely to return to your site frequently — and perhaps make a purchase, even if they had not intended to do so.

Including a steady supply of useful content on your site also helps you to gain Google’s favor, helping you to rank your site higher in search results.

Call to Action

Your visitors often need you to tell them what you want them to do. Want them to buy your new product? Ask them to. Want them to sign up for your e-mail newsletter, or leave comments on your blog, or follow you on Facebook or Twitter? Just ask.

A call to action is a powerful suggestion that can push your customers into doing what you would like them to do. Don’t expect them to be moved by your testimonials or claims about how great your product is. Make your intentions clear and ask them to act.

E-mail Subscription

Making a sale certainly helps your bottom line. But finding ways to make sales over and over again can help you ensure the long-term success of your company. Building a strong e-mail list can help you do that by building long-term relationships with your customers and developing a database of leads to tap anytime you have a product or service to promote.

Be sure you are taking advantage of every opportunity to build an e-mail list by including sign-up forms on every page of your site. Make the forms prominent and easy to use to ensure the greatest number of leads.

Clear Contact Information

This one should be obvious, but it’s surprising how many websites bury or omit their contact information from their site. Include your e-mail or phone number on every page of your site — perhaps through a link in the header or footer. Make this clear and easy to find.

Failing to make your contact information easy to find can put you at risk of losing sales. If your site visitors can’t get in touch with you to ask questions about your product, or to make special requests, then they are likely to leave your site and not return — and you lose out on potential sales.

Your web design is a critical component of your online success — and perhaps the success of your company. Ensure that your website has these 10 essential elements and you will see your sales soar.

Contact AptoHQ for custom web design that meets your small business needs! We have affordable web design that is suitable for almost any budget!

When someone visits your site, you only have a few seconds to make an impression. Visitors make a snap judgement about you and your products based on what they see there. Make the wrong impression, and your visitors will leave and won’t come back. You miss out on the opportunity to make a sale and the opportunity to win over a loyal customer.

Creating a professional-looking website requires much more than installing a Word Press theme and uploading some flashy graphics. Not sure if your website is up to snuff? Here are 10 reasons why your web design might suck:

There are Too Many Fonts

Using a different font for your headline, your banners, your menus, and your body text? You have too many! You should only have one — or a maximum of two — fonts on your site for a cleaner and more streamlined look.

Too Many Colors

Like fonts, too many different colors can make your site look too busy and chaotic. Be sure to choose a simple and complimentary color palette to accentuate — not distract from — your content.

Color choice is just as important as the number of colors you choose, as garrish colors can make your site look cartoonish and clunky.

Busy Backgrounds

A simple background — usually just a plain color — is all you need to create a professional and clean look for your site. Repeating images, flash animation, and bright backgrounds can make it hard to navigate your site or to even read your text.

Bad Photos

Your site needs strong visuals to draw readers in to your page. If your photos are boring, poorly rendered, or to small or blurry to see, readers will think your site is poorly designed and that your product or service will be equally poor in quality.

Choose sharp, professional, and compelling photos to illustrate your blog posts and pages.

Not Enough White Space

What you leave out of your web design is just as important as what you put in, in some cases. White space — or the absence of text and graphic elements — can help break up sections of your site and make your content easier to read and navigate.

The right use of white space can also highlight certain elements of your site and make a bold design statement.

Flash Animation

Flash intros and other animations used to be all the rage in web design. Now, most users see them as intrusive and a waste of time.

Flash also doesn’t play on all browsers or devices (such as smart phones). Skip the flash and focus on content instead.

Background Music

Have you ever been browsing the web then opened a tab and heard loud music come blaring out of your speakers or headphones? What did you do when you heard it? Chances are you closed the site and didn’t go back.

Background music is annoying and intrusive, and most users won’t visit your site if it has it.

Horizontal Overflow

Most websites are created to be 1024px resolution. If your site is created to be larger than your user’s computer screen, a horizontal scrollbar will appear at the bottom of the screen, and much of your content will be cut off. Most users won’t bother to scroll to see the rest of your content.

Make sure all your content fits on one page for any user who comes to your site so you don’t lose any traffic.

Slow Loading Times

The longer visitors have to wait to get the information they want from your site, the more likely they are to leave your site and not come back. Make sure that all your graphics and photos are optimized for fast load times. There are also plug-ins and coding elements you can use to ensure that the rest of your page content loads quickly.

No Clear Contact Form

Many blog owners make it difficult, if not impossible, for readers to figure out how to contact them. The e-mail is either hidden away on the bottom of a rambling “about” page, or it’s tucked inside an image or amidst some symbols.

Make it easy for your readers or your customers to contact you by putting your e-mail address in a place that’s easy to find right on your home page.

Does your web design suck? No worries! Contact AptoHQ offers affordable web design for small businesses. Call us to find out how we can help your small business with professional custom web design!

Twitter started out as a novelty. Its concept: Share your thoughts in 140 characters or less. No flashy profile. No “likes” or sections to list your interests or catchy quotes. Just your picture and a status update tweet.

Many saw nothing more in it than a way to share what you were doing at that moment — such as what you might be eating for lunch, what you thought about the day’s news story, or what you were thinking of doing that evening. But it soon became obvious that this simple medium had the potential to have a powerful influence.

Now businesses everywhere are incorporating Twitter into their marketing strategy and learning that the site plays a critical role in helping connect with customers. Here’s why Twitter matters to your business:

More Traffic

Twitter trails just behind Facebook and Pinterest for social-media traffic referral. It is responsible for sending millions of visitors to new sites every day. The more traffic you get to your site, the more conversions you are likely to get for your advertising, affiliate marketing, or your own products and services. The more followers you have on Twitter, the more people are likely to see your links and to follow them.

Better SEO

Every time someone follows you on Twitter — or likes you on Facebook or adds you on Google+ — they are sending Google an endorsement of your page. They do the same thing every time they share content from your site. Therefore, the more fans and followers you have on social media, the more authority Google is going to give your page and the higher it will ultimately rank you in search results.

Stronger Relationships

Social media allows you to build stronger relationships with your customers and to start new relationships with potential customers. Twitter’s simple format encourages more communication. Posts are pared down and conversations can take place almost like instant messages.

Fortunately, building a strong presence on Twitter is relatively simple. There are many ways that you can build your followers quickly — actual followers in your niche not just bots that you can purchase to inflate your numbers. Here are a few ideas:

Follow Other Users

Twitter is very follow-friendly, meaning that if you follow a user, that person is likely to follow you back. Not everyone follows this protocol, but you are likely to see a great number of followers just by following others.

Be sure to follow people who are in your niche to ensure that you are gaining targeted followers. You don’t want to just grow your numbers; you want to build an audience who may actually be interested in your products or services.

Use Keyword Hashtags

Keyword hashtags are like SEO for Twitter. When you use the ‘#’ symbol in front of a word, it allows users to find you when they search for that word. Using keyword hashtags often will help other users in your niche find you more easily.

Every tweet you send out should have at least one or two hashtags. However, you shouldn’t overuse hashtags or else your tweets will read like spam.

Engage in Conversations with Influential Users

Whenever you reply to a user, your comment appears in that person’s Twitter feed. Therefore, if you engage in conversations with influential users (those who have many followers), you will instantly get more exposure for your brand.

Choose users who are dominant in your niche so you can be sure you are getting exposure with your target audience. Also be sure that your comments are adding something of value. If you are just echoing what others are saying, you won’t stand out, and you won’t give other users a reason to learn more about you.

Cross-Promote

If you’re already on Facebook (which you should be) or Google+ (which you probably should be also) or another social network, go ahead and promote your Twitter presence there, as well. Most social media users maintain profiles on several sites, and they are likely to follow your other profiles, as well.

Make sure you aren’t posting the same content on all of your profiles. Users need to have a reason to follow you on more than one site, and if you’re giving them the same information, they don’t have that incentive.

Host Contests

Everyone likes to win something for free. Hosting a contest or giveaway is a great way to get noticed — as well as a great way to attract new followers on Twitter.

Offer up a great prize and then ask your visitors to follow you on Twitter as an “entry.” You’ll see the number of your followers soar! Just be sure to follow up your contest with a lot of great content so that you encourage your new followers to stick around.

Offer Exclusive Deals

Give your visitors a reason to follow you on Twitter by offering exclusive discounts and promotions on the site. Send out a code that only Twitter followers can use to get a discount, free shipping, or something other freebie.

If your visitors know they can snag exclusive deals like this, they are more likely to become your follower and to stay a follower. Then you can take advantage of that captive audience to promote your products and services.

Make Sharing Easy

Finally, make it easy for users to follow you and to share your content by adding social buttons to your website. Don’t make followers search for you on Twitter. Include a link to your profile directly on your site. Add buttons allowing users to tweet your blog posts and pages, as well, giving you free publicity for your brand. The more Twitter users see your content, the more likely they are to visit your site and to become your Twitter followers.

Growing your Twitter presence is important for marketing your business, as the site is responsible for a great deal of referral traffic and can help you boost your site’s search engine rankings. It can also help you build better relationships with your customers, helping you to create loyal fans.

Increasing your Twitter followers is not difficult. Incorporate some of these strategies and you will see your numbers soar. Then you will have hundreds (or even thousands) of leads each time you are ready to promote your products or services.

Are you on Twitter? Come join AptoHQ on Twitter and get information about custom web design for small business websites!

Many new bloggers – and some seasoned pros – think they have to blog everyday in order to be successful. After all, Google likes to see lots of fresh content and rewards those sites with higher page rankings. It seems only logical to provide as much new content as possible in order to leverage your site for better rankings.

However, writing everyday for your blog can actually hurt your blog’s success. In order to really leverage the full potential of your blog, you may need to blog less. Here’s why:

Quality is More Important than Quantity

More than fresh content, Google values high-quality and authoritative content that is truly useful to readers. If you are writing everyday, you are not likely to be writing in-depth and authoritative articles. Your content is likely just skimming the surface.

It is far better to spend more time on your content and to produce lengthy and analytical articles that really deliver useful information or solutions for your readers. Even if you are only publishing once a week (or less), Google will still rank this content more favorably than thin “filler” content that is produced every day.

Too Many Updates May Alienate Readers

Think about the e-mail lists or updates you have signed up to receive. Did you ever unsubscribe because you weren’t getting enough updates? Chances are that you dropped out because you were tired of getting incessant updates.

If you are publishing everyday, you risk alienating some readers who don’t want to be notified about your constant activity. Of course, this depends on your niche and the type of blog you have. Some people might welcome a joke a day, but they might be more annoyed with a post a day with financial advice. (Again, it depends on your content and your readers.)

You Need to Focus on Promotion

Content may be king, but if no one is visiting your blog, no one will ever see your amazing content. Even if you manage to create high-quality, authoritative blog posts everyday, chances are that you won’t have any time left over to promote your blog to get the visitors to read it.

Spend less time blogging and more time promoting your blog. Make sure your SEO is top notch, and spend a lot of time reaching out to other bloggers and websites to create quality backlinks. Guest posting is a wonderful way to get quality backlinks. However, if you’re too busy cranking out content for your blog everyday, you won’t have the time to write quality guest posts.

Contributors Add to the Value of Your Blog

Finally, if you are blogging everyday, you aren’t leaving very much room to invite your own guest posters and contributors. Welcoming guest writers on your blog gives you multiple perspectives that will enrich the content on your site. It also takes the pressure off you to come up with amazing content everyday!

Make sure you put a guest posting policy on your blog so that you announce your openness to guest contributors and so they know what is expected in a guest post.

You Can Focus More on Design

The design of your website is just as important – if not more important – than your content. You only have a few seconds to make a first impression and to convince your visitors to stay and explore your site. If you have poor web design, you will likely lose that visitor and send your bounce rate sky high.

Spending less time on writing will give you more time to build quality web design for your site. Of course, professional web design is also an option. AptoHQ offers custom web design for small business websites to help them maintain a strong online presence to increase branding and sales.

While keeping your blog supplied with fresh content is important, blogging everyday is not necessarily the solution. It is far better to focus on creating quality, in-depth content – which may take more time to produce. Bloggers should also focus more time on promotion and web design, and supplement their content with diverse guest posters. All of these will add up to more readers and higher conversions.

How often do you blog? Do you think you need to blog less? Tell us your thoughts in the comments!

Many bloggers and online business owners make money with their sites by selling advertising. Google’s AdSense is a popular program for selling advertising, as it connects businesses from all niches with site owners and pays per performance (number of clicks), allowing site owners with a lot of traffic to make a nice passive income.

At least that’s the idea.

Many site owners never make significant income from AdSense — or any income at all. You have to have thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of visitors to your site to make real income from the program.

Not only do most site owners never make any notable income from AdSense, but many actually lose money by adding the program to their site.

Here’s how:

It Creates Page Leaks

Suppose that your AdSense campaign is successful. People are clicking your ads, and you are collecting revenue. What’s actually happening? You are losing customers. Your readers are leaving your page.

AdSense contributes to a higher bounce rate, which means that your readers aren’t spending more time looking around your site and learning more about your content, your products and services, or your opt-in e-mail list.

Every time a reader leaves your site, you are losing out on a potential sale or e-mail subscriber. Not only are your customers not spending their money with you, but you are also losing out on the opportunity to collect their e-mails for potential future sales. The few cents (or, if you’re lucky, dollars) that you collect on each of your ad clicks is only a fraction of what you could be making on your own sales or e-mail marketing.

It Cuts Into Affiliate Earnings

If your customers must leave your page, it should at least be more profitable for you. Commissions on affiliate products are much more profitable than revenue from ad clicks.

When your site visitors are leaving to look at advertising, you are missing out on opportunities to make an affiliate commission. This could be costing you hundreds or even thousands of dollars every month.

Put your focus where it counts: On promoting affiliate marketing and your own products and services. The profit margin will be much higher in the long run, and it will help you to be successful even when you experience ebbs in traffic.

It Makes Your Page Look Spammy

You only have a few seconds (if you’re lucky) to make a first impression on your blog or website. Your content and your page design should be what pulls your readers in to stay longer and learn more about your company. However, if you’re page is plastered with AdSense advertising, many readers are likely to form a negative impression, thinking that your site is overly spammy, and will leave.

Your page should offer useful information for readers — it shouldn’t be focused on selling them something. Though your end goal is to clear a profit for your site, you won’t be successful if it seems like you’re only interested in making a sale. Too much AdSense can convey that message and alienate readers. Promoting affiliate products or your own products and services, on the other hand, can be done more subtly and can be integrated with the information on the page.

Selling AdSense on your blog or website is a short-term solution that can pose long-term problems. You may make money in the short term as your readers begin to click through on your ads, but you will lose much more money in the long term as you lose readers and miss out on opportunities to sell affiliate products and your own products and services and to build your e-mail marketing list.

Have you included AdSense on your blog or website? Tell us how it has impacted your bottom line in the comments!

Of course, if you want to make the best impression on your customers and take advantage of your full potential for online sales, you need a professional website design to build a strong online presence. Contact AptoHQ to learn how we can help you with your custom web design to drive your sales and conversions!

LinkedIn is a bit of a silent player in the social media scene. It doesn’t have the popularity of Facebook, and it doesn’t have the fun factor of Twitter. Yet it has held its own as an influential player. LinkedIn is still a strong driver of referral traffic, and it is a powerful tool for social media marketing.

LinkedIn isn’t just for finding your next job. You can use it to promote your small business to make beneficial partnerships, connect with new customers, or even find your next employee. Here are a few tips for how you can use LinkedIn to market your small business:

Get Recommendations and Testimonials

Just like you can get colleagues to recommend you to future employers, you can get your current or previous clients to write recommendations and testimonials about your products and services to help you get new customers. Ask some of your best customers if they would be willing to write you a testimonial. You can also offer incentives for recommendations, so long as what you are offering doesn’t influence the content of the testimonial.

Join Groups

LinkedIn has dozens of groups to bring together professionals around a common topic of interest. You can join these groups to find potential customers in your niche or to connect with other professionals in your industry. By participating in discussions, you can either establish yourself as an authority in your niche to attract new business, or you can foster a relationship with other professionals to create profitable business partnerships.

Answer Questions

There is a little-known feature on LinkedIn known as “Answer” in which users can ask questions and have members of the community provide answers. It is similar to Yahoo! Answers and Quora. You can provide answers to member questions and establish yourself as an expert in your field. Not only will you build credibility for yourself, but you’ll also spread awareness of your brand, winning new customers.

Post Regularly

Like with other social-media sites, you have to be active on LinkedIn to get the most out of it. If you rarely post or you only ever visit your profile to update your information, your page will be little more than an online resume. However, if you post regularly, including status updates and discussion questions, you will foster an active community around your page, helping you to spread awareness of your brand and to make new connections.

Buy Advertising

LinkedIn offers advertising that is still a relative bargain compared to other outlets, such as Facebook and Google. Take advantage of the budget-friendly advertising to get a little more exposure for your brand. There are also occasional deals for a free month of advertising, so you can try the service for free to see if it works for you.

Don’t count LinkedIn out when planning your social media campaign. It is still a strong player that can get you a lot of leads to grow your business. Try some of these tips and see how much you can grow on LinkedIn.

Do you use LinkedIn to promote your business? Tell us about your strategies in the comments!

Also, don’t forget about our social media contest to win six free months of web design and hosting from AptoHQ. You just have to leave a comment at the contest page and become our fan on Facebook to enter!

Click the link below to record your entries. Contest ends on Monday!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

AptoHQ is now on Facebook and Twitter, and to celebrate our new fans and express our appreciation, we are hosting our first ever blog giveaway!

AptoHQ offers solutions for small businesses, including custom web design, web hosting, and online marketing. We help businesses gain a competitive edge by building a strong online presence that represents their brand and helps them to connect with new customers.

Our budget-friendly packages include:

• Dedicated web developer
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E-commerce plans also include a merchant account, shopping cart system, and content creation and submission.

AptoHQ helps small businesses get the traffic they need to grow their customer base and their sales.

Web Hosting and Marketing Giveaway

To say thank you to all our new fans and followers, we are giving away six months of our Informational monthly package, which includes all our most popular features. To enter to win, become our fan on Facebook and leave a comment below letting us know why you’d like to win and how the service will help you grow your business. Be sure to use the Rafflecopter widget to record your entry.

If you want more entries to increase your chances of winning, you can follow us on Twitter, or share the contest link on Facebook or Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter to get information about our newest products, exclusive deals and discounts, and stay up to date on our latest blog posts.

Again, be sure to record all your entries using the Rafflecopter widget.

A second winner will be selected and will receive a 10% discount on either the Informational or the E-commerce web hosting and marketing package for a full year. Entry requirements are the same.

Contest Duration

This contest will end on Monday, August 6, at 8 p.m. Winners will be chosen at random using the Rafflecopter entry information.

Winners will be announced on Tuesday, August 7.

Enter to Win

Enter here to win!