I was just re-reading Joel Comm’s Monthly Templates for copywriting tips when I begin to have this funny feeling that some elements of his sales page are ‘bugging’ me, and I can’t tell exactly what they are. Guess what? Today, a mail from another marketer was trumpeting more loudly this one aspect of Monthly Templates.

If you read through Monthly Templates, Joel emphasize that his templates are designed using W3C-compliant XHTML, whatever that means to you :)

Now how does it feel to give your product a label of certification to make it look good? Like it is safe to use, right?

Wah, AdSense templates that are validated with W3C-compliance. Perhaps it did not come to my attention when he promoted Instant AdSense Templates before. Now I am stifling a laughter under my breath and thinking whether this is some kind of overkill or a new marketing angle. But AdSense templates are supposed to be “stripped down” and simple anyway…

OK, time-out for some education. What is W3C compliance?

The W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium and since 1994 (that’s waaay back) the W3C has provided the guidelines by which websites and web pages should be structured and created. They set the standards by which best practices in web design are defined and followed through according to the type of coding used, whether it’s HTML, XHTML, XML (blog feed), CSS etc.

(Strangely, W3C reminds me of the United Nations. Who still listens to them these days?)

If not for W3C standards, nothing that you read on screen would be intelligible. One of the main challenges that Tim Berners-Lee, the so-called Father of the World Wide Web, had to face up to and solve during W3′s formation is to ensure interoperability and that data is not lost in translation as they are presented on-screen.

It is still quite a big issue among webmasters today. From personal experience, I had designed sites without thinking how people would view them in FireFox. If you don’t care for these folks, you lose a market share, simple. (Part of the problem is that proprietary features that do not conform to any existing W3C specifications are designed into popular browsers, so life become very difficult for those of us attempting to create websites that look good across most, if not all, browsers and platforms, screen sizes and resolutions and overcome most types of visual disabilities.)

I surprise myself on looking back, that it took me a significant amount of time to realize from an Internet Marketer’s point-of-view, when designing a website, you need to bear in mind that visitors ONLY respond in 3 ways:

1) To click on a link.
2) To opt-in.
3) To purchase something.
4) And only 1 WAY AT A TIME.

The last point is terrifically important. I recall seeing a website with black background with lots of links, blinking graphics and bright banners. It reminds me of Las Vegas. If I fly to Las Vegas for the first time and not knowing anything about the place, I wouldn’t know where to start enjoying myself. That’s the problem with such sites. Everywhere is a shout, yet there is still no obvious call to action.

(This is another “Las Vegas“.)

Thus the principle is: the more obvious a “call to action” is, the simpler the site must be. It must simply scream, “DO THIS.” And when a site is made simply, I presume it cannot veer too far from W3C specifications. Look at Microsoft.com. Did you think it’s W3C-compliant or bloated with excess code? It’s a chicken-and-egg problem for the webmasters at Microsoft if they are pressed for time (so as a result, do not pay careful attention to making their site more lean. Looking at their history of software patches, one may make an educated guess of how they work.)

Back to Monthly Templates, you want to get this not only because they are W3C-compliant (i.e. they don’t look spammy to SE spiders so Google should love them), not only because sales is going to be limited, but also because Joel has done the job for you, so you can quickly upload them for good without giving any further thoughts (perhaps market research). You may have heard that one trick to encourage more AdSense clicks is to make the site content more unremarkable or mediocre so visitors can “click away”. It’s simply suppressing quality so this point is very debatable. Whatever, part of Monthly Templates is giving you 250 new PLR articles every month so you have no lack of variety and pages to add on.

You also get:

* 50 new professionally designed niche site templates each and every month in these 5 formats: HTML, HyperVRE, XSitePro, WordPress and phpBB

* 3 hours of user-friendly training videos

* Joel’s bestselling “Google AdSense Secrets” worth $97

* Content creation e-book revealing how to write, find, outsource and develop your own content for your virtual real estate sites.

* Several e-books on generating traffic and finding additional ways to monetize your sites.

* The starter kit CD, an indispensable part of the Monthly Templates program, and has material valued at several thousand dollars. This alone is worth the minimal price of admission.

* Something called “Word Page Builder”. It’s kinda sandwiched in the sales copy so it’s easily overlooked. This is a fast-action bonus worth up to $197 so don’t miss this! Not available to the general public (probably until February), you can instantly convert any MS Word document into a website fully optimized with Google AdSense with WPB! Very cool and saves times as well.

Joel will deliver his box pack direct to your door as quickly as possible so you may begin getting to work on your sites asap.

Then, the “monthly” part of Monthly Templates will start in 30 days when Joel will be sending you a NEW CD, packed with 50 brand new professionally designed templates in all formats with graphics, private label rights articles and a new special exclusive bonus!

If you just want to get an endless supply of articles, I recommend Cody Moya’s Your Own Articles which gives 850 PLR articles every month + niche keyword lists to boot too.

The alternative offer to Monthly Templates is the one which I came to know only today: “The ONLY 100% Hand-crafted AdSense Templates That Are Validated by W3C and Loved by Google!” Upgrade your membership to access all templates though…only $9.97/month.

There you have it, I’m giving you some choices so you can exercise your freedom in having how and what you want your online business to be. Expect to see 10 more marketers offering W3C-compliant, Google-lovin’ sites next week, haha.

How would you like to get the exact number of web pages and backlinks indexed in Google, Yahoo! and MSN?

These key statistics have mostly been accessible in some highly priced complicated SEO software. Some free web-based and similar services do a similar job of reporting, but they don’t record a day-to-day comparison of the numbers so you can’t get a clear impression of general indexing performance.

But Site Page Tracker is about the change all that!

Site Page Tracker uses a PHP script to accomplish its magic. Server installation is a snap, and as you can see from the picture above, your stats are saved each time the software runs a cron job. You can even copy & paste into a spreadsheet to chart your data. It tracks article listing too!

Site Page Tracker installs on your own domain and can track as many domains as desired from a single installation. Daily updates can be forwarded to you by email automatically. You’d be very surprised to find out why the search engines can de-indexed, re-indexed, de-indexed, re-indexed hundreds of pages every day…

Sharlene Raven has released her New Year Firesale containing 134 Internet Marketing and niche products + 16 MRR bonuses, inclusive of SPT and other very interesting e-books and software…

Promotion ends on January 14th.

By investing in her firesale, you are also helping to cover medical expenses for her husband Scott. This is no ‘sob’ story…it’s a real human crisis at work since early last year! You are giving her husband back, and you are giving Sheyenne and Stormy their daddy back!

On January 8th, we mentioned a new coaching program by Gregg Hall and since then there are folks who asked good questions about how the coaching is carried out, the validity of its current pricing and so on. We quote Gregg at his words:

“I just wanted to be sure you know that the personal coaching from me is just what it says. What I mean by that is that I am not involving any staff which is why I am able to offer it at a rate so much less than many others, but I also still have my other businesses to run and I have a family so please be patient on response times especially in the evening and on weekends.

“A big part of our business relationship is going to be based on trust and mutual respect. I opened the coaching program to fulfill a need that I saw and truly want to help everyone who joins but please be realistic on time constraints and also make use of the immense resources I have given you in the member’s area. The subscription you are paying for is the hourly coaching per month. The member’s area, including the forum I am working on by the end of the month, and where you will be able to bounce ideas off each other and even do business with each other, are bonuses.

“I am here to help you but I need to focus on what you need help with most. What I am finding with most people I am talking to is that the biggest problem they have is just that, a lack of focus. I can give you detailed help on one subject in a one-hour consult, if you choose several topics, it is not going to give you the results you want.

“Internet Marketing is like eating an elephant, there’s a lot to eat and it can be done, but it takes time. I have been marketing online since 1995 or so and I still learn something new everyday. How long have you been marketing?

“If you haven’t already done so, take the time to put together the areas that you wish to receive your first consultation on so that I can be prepared to help you to the best of my ability.”

Coaching is the beef, but we capture just some of the goodies in the members’ area as you see above. Gregg is going to bring you up to speed with making sense of and optimizing the all the Internet Marketing resources you have.

If you have any further questions, we encourage you to get in touch with Gregg to see how he can fulfill your needs. Click on the Helpdesk link on this page.