The Internet Business

The Keys To Successfully Selecting Keywords

2010-08-03T23:38:00.000-07:00

If you are the owner or operators of an online business enterprise, you may be interested in developing different schemes through which you can increase traffic to your Internet website and increase your customer or client base. Of course, more customers and clients means more revenue and profits for your business.

One methodology that more and more web based business owners are employing when it comes to increasing traffic to an Internet website is the use of keywords within a website and within articles included within the Internet website in question.

Of course, if you are going to use keyword enriched articles or if you are going to include keywords and keyword phrases (with the intent of drawing more traffic to your website) you will want to make certain that you are using keywords and keyword phrases that actually will attract more traffic to your web based business venue.

There are now services on the Net that will provide you with a listing of the most popular keyword searches (on search engines) at any particular point in time. By incorporating these popular key word phrases, keywords and keyword search terms into your website and into articles appropriately maintained at your website, you will be in a far better position to increase traffic to your website -- you will increase the number of potential clients and customers who pay visits to your website business.

Some search engines offer programs which can assist a business in developing an overall marketing campaign for a Net based business that includes the use of keyword enriched content and keyword enriched articles that can be included within the confines of an Internet website.

Finally, you might want to consider engaging the assistance of a professional in your overall plan to develop a meaningful keyword based marketing campaign for your Internet website. A professional, a SEO professional, can assist you in developing both website content and articles that include worthwhile and meaningful keywords and keyword phrases -- words and phrases specifically designed to increase your ranking on search engines, and thus increase traffic to your website venue. Again, increased traffic generally translates into an increase in revenues and profits for your Internet business enterprise. Of course, you will want to use a reliable and qualified SEO professional to assist you in developing your own Internet marketing campaign that incorporates keywords and keyword phrases effectively.

Socom 3 Message Boards Revealed

2010-08-02T23:37:00.000-07:00

Addicted with playstation? Got a passion for SOCOM 3? If so, then I am sure that you would be happy to know that with the advent of the Internet, you can now discuss SOCOM 3: US Navy Seals with your fellow SOCOMers on some SOCOM 3 message boards.

SOCOM 3: US Navy Seals is in the first place one of the hottest playstation games on earth. It was developed by the Zipper Development team and since birth, SOCOM 3 have earned status and station in the playstation universe through avid gaming and forward thinking. Today, thousands of people considered themselves as SOCOM fans.

With the rising popularity of such mentioned gaming fad, more and more playstation sites are now designing and developing SOCOM 3 message boards online. These message boards, also known as online forums, were developed for one particular purpose, to provide the fanatics of SOCOM a great place to meet and make friends with the other fanatics around the world. The SOCOM 3 message boards are also a great place to learn about the game. You can in fact find and information about the history and the development of the game, its guidelines and controls, and everything about the game. The message boards are also great places to exchange your comments, ideas, suggestions or advices, and some tips for a successful gaming experience.

Now, the question is: are you interested to find SOCOM 3 message boards online? Do you want to participate in the forums and discuss about this gaming sensation? If so, I have here below a few sites that you can visit online. You can access information about SOCOM in these sites, but if you really want a full access to the various sections of the SOCOM 3 message boards, then you better consider membership. You only need to register.

Playstation.com

The SOCOM 3 message boards at http://Playstation.com are managed by Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. (SCEA), a company that markets the Playstation family of products and the one which develops, publishes, markets and distributes software for the PS one console and Playstation computer entertainment system for the North American market.

The SOCOM 3 message boards run by SCEA accept posts from anyone who has interest on the game. These SOCOM 3 message boards are in fact considered as the communities suitable for gamers of all ages. At these boards, you can find different sections; all tackle everything about this game sensation. There is also a section that is only official to the players of SOCOM, and there is a section that tackles everything about the seal weapon and the SOCOM maps.

IGN.com

You can also access SOCOM 3 message boards at http://IGN.com, a site maintained by IGN Entertainment, unit of Fox Interactive Media, Inc. which is a leading Internet media and services provider that gives certain focus on the videogame and entertainment enthusiasts markets. At this site, you will not only find SOCOM 3 message boards, but also other forums designed for the other hottest playstation games. It is actually at these message boards where the playstation addicts of all ages, gender and race meet.

Profiting from internet home based businesses

2010-08-01T23:37:00.000-07:00

These days, very few people can ignore the opportunity that the internet offers. Unless you are among the affluent few, internet home based businesses can give you a very large boost in your income. Thus, it is important that you understand how they work and how you can make such businesses work for your benefit.

Internet home based businesses can help you earn a income, and they can help you earn residual income as well. Residual income, of course, is money that you earn for a one-time effort, as opposed to a salary, which you only receive as long as you keep working. Residual income allows you to profit from something that you have already accomplished in the past, such as when an author receives royalties on a book that he has written, even if that book was written twenty-five years ago.

If your concern is earning a salary, you will have no dearth of opportunities online. As long as you have a specialized skill, you should be able to find work. Telecommuting is now an accepted practice for most companies, so take advantage of it. You can sell your personal services on both a salaried basis and a freelance basis, whichever you prefer. Both have their specific advantages and disadvantages, so choose carefully. If you become a salaried employee, for example, you will necessarily have less control of your time, but a more regular income. A freelancer, on the other hand, only gets paid for the work he actually finishes,

If your goal, however, is to earn residual income, then affiliate programs should be an important part of your strategy. Affiliate programs, as you know, are programs that allow you to advertise and sell someone else’s goods and services for a commission. Unlike what most people think, however, succeeding in affiliate marketing actually does require work – lots of it, at least in the beginning. Finding a good partner merchant and selecting a reasonable compensation package takes quite a bit of research, something that most people are unwilling to do. However, it is very important that you lay the right foundation, so spend some time here and look up what if currently available.

As with every business matter, being able to trust you partner is important, so look up on your partner merchant’s record. If you know anyone who has done business with them before, be sure to ask them about the experience. You might even sacrifice higher returns with a relatively unreliable company to work with a more established one.

Once you have established a relationship with a suitable partner, all that’s left is developing your site. There are many resources on this on the internet, be sure to look them up. Site building software is also available, so check that out if you feel that you need more assistance. As long as you put a good effort into the creation of your site, your internet home based business will flourish, and you’ll stand a good chance of earning through it for years to come.

Online Paid Surveys – Internet Jackpot or Petty Cash?

2010-07-31T23:36:00.000-07:00

Type the phrase “paid surveys” in Google, and you will see a countless list of paid survey web sites. Some claim $150/hr payment, others say it’s the perfect work at home job, while others say online paid surveys are just a scam. With all of these conflicting links, it’s hard to know what to believe. Are online paid surveys an Internet Jackpot, an online scam, or somewhere in between? Are you missing a great opportunity or should you stay away?

The first thing that you must understand is that market research is a real business. Market Research firms have been paying customers to take surveys and participate in focus groups long before the internet was a household commodity. It’s just that with the increasing number of people online, the internet has become an effective and efficient way for marketing companies to collect data and test their advertisements. Also the internet gives these market research firms access to a wide demographic of users, which allows them to get a better idea of how their products will perform with people of different age, sex, nationality, etc.

Unfortunately, many questionable sites have popped up on the internet which has ruined the image on online paid surveys. These sites usually make outrageous claims about how much money you can make by working from home. They usually charge a “membership fee” to gain access to a list of web sites that conduct online paid surveys. They claim that their lists are special, and offer the highest paying surveys. But the truth is that the survey sites they list can be found for free on the internet. Legitimate market research firms do not charge panel members any fees or try to sell you any products. With a little research you can find all of the quality market research firms yourself. Also, there are several good sites on the internet that offer free reviews and listings. You should never have to pay for information or access to online paid surveys.

Assuming that you manage to avoid the scams, and stick with legitimate market research firms, the question remains is it really worth the time? The answer lies in your expectations. If you are looking for the perfect work at home dream job, this is not it. If you would be happy with an extra couple hundred dollars a month then read on.

The typical pay for any given survey varies, but most offer between $2 to as high as $50 or more per survey. The problem is that these firms are usually looking for a certain demographic, and you may not always qualify for all the paid surveys that are sent your way. These survey invitations are usually sent to you via an email, with details about the incentive offered, and a link to the survey. Usually you are asked to fill out a short screener survey, and if you qualify then you can continue on and earn the full amount promised. If you do not qualify, you are dismissed, with some sites offering a small incentive or a sweepstakes entry for your time. The screener survey usually takes less than 5 minutes, and the full survey can take anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes.

If you sign up with several quality market research firms, and can qualify for several surveys, you should be able to make anywhere from $50 to several hundred dollars a month for the household petty cash piggy bank. It’s not exactly a fortune, but it can help offset some of your monthly bills, and it only takes a couple hours a week.

Make A Fortune On The Internet

2010-07-30T23:35:00.000-07:00

Think You Can Top Yahoo?

Do you want to make a fortune on the Internet? Sure, we all do. People use the Internet to work from home everyday, and many of them earn a living from it. But is it really possible to make a fortune on the Internet?

Well, that depends on what your idea of a fortune is. If working from the Internet allows you to pay your bills, put food on the table, gas in the car, and clothes on Little Johnny’s back, then yes, it is indeed possible to make a fortune on the Internet. However, if you are thinking in numbers closer to the upper hundreds of thousands, millions, and even billions then the likelihood of being able to make a fortune on the Internet is probably not too great. Not impossible, mind you (think Michael Dell of Dell Computers, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Pierry Omidyar of Ebay, and David Filo of Yahoo!—all are worth billions of dollars today), just not too great.

Many websites claim to be able to help you make a fortune on the Internet. Be careful with these. Usually they are scams that try to get you to purchase materials and equipment for something that won’t be successful, if it even exists. They’ll throw ridiculously high numbers at you, promising you can make that amount if you follow their plan. Some websites, however, are very clear in their definition of what a fortune is. For example, if you visit a website that claims you can make a fortune on the Internet by completing online surveys at twenty-five dollars each, you’re probably safe. They are honest about the money you would make, and you are smart enough to know that unless you complete thousands of surveys a month, you aren’t going to be able to make a fortune on the Internet using this plan. But if you need some extra cash for the holidays, go for it.

Your dream to make a fortune on the Internet is similar to the dreams of so many others. And, though it’s not an impossible dream, it’s not an easily possible one, either. Have patience, do research, and most importantly, come up with something bigger than Yahoo!

Is It Possible To Earn A Fulltime Income Online?

2010-07-28T23:34:00.000-07:00

Most of us have seen numerous adverts promoting programs that will earn us yachts and mansions for only a few dollars investment. Too good to be true? Unfortunately yes. Most of the time you will waste time and money with these programs. So is there a way to make a full time income from only working online a few hours per day?

The short answer is yes but you need to put in a lot more time than a few hours per day to start with. Over the past 6 months I have worked up to 12 hours per day building an income to replace the one I lost when I left my previous job. It takes dedication and focus and slowly but surely your income will grow to the point that you can cut back your hours and get some quality time with your family.

The first thing you need to do is to sit down and have a long hard think about what you want from life. I would bet that most of you will at first think about the fast cars and mansions and the celebrity lifestyles that are depicted in many aspirational adverts. However think harder, these are things you would like to have not what you want from life. If after you’ve thought deeply you decide that you want to see your family grow up, you want to be able to make it to your children’s school concert and not have to work late on that important project. If you decide that you want to be able to take your wife for a romantic lunch before you collect the kids from school then you have the correct frame of mind to start making an income for yourself. If you don’t have a family and you decide you want to be self reliant and not a wage slave then you are on the way. Be realistic and you won’t be disappointed.

Now you know what you want and you know it’s realistic it’s time to get yourself a strategy. I like to think of my income building strategy in terms of building a house, before you put up the walls and roof, the part of the house you can see and admire you need to put in the foundations. The foundation of your income has to be a steady source of reliable income that you can build on. For this I built a number of content websites and monetized them by adding Adverts and Amazon feeds. I write articles and submit them to directories. I do everything I can to get the sites into the search engines and get traffic to them. Once the visitors started coming and I was getting a steady income then it’s time to branch out and work on the 4 walls of our strategy.

The second part of the strategy involves taking some profit from the site building and investing it in well researched programs that have a long history of paying out. You need to do your research and due diligence here and spread the risk among a number of programs if you have any doubts about a program walk away. Now you have your foundation and 4 walls in place it’s time to top it all off with the roof.

The Roof like in your house is the top level of our strategy, this is where you take everything you have learned building your foundations and walls and apply it to your own programs, by now you will know what works, you will have developed a network of contacts through programs and forums and you are ready to develop your own programs.

The great thing about this strategy is that if you have no spare cash you can start out with very little, in fact it is possible to start out with $0.00 and turn this into a full-time income by clever use of resources. If you don’t believe that this is possible then have a look at the blog detailed in the resource box at the end of this article and watch start with $0.00 and prove there is such a thing as a free lunch.

Remember be focused and realistic and a full time income is within your grasp.

Internet Myths Exposed

2010-07-27T23:34:00.000-07:00

The last 10 years we have been overwhelmed by the get-rich-quick schemes on the internet. The variety is huge but they do have some common principles. They promise you less or no effort and spend nothing and gain gazillion dollars in a month.

Myth 1: Buy this “Super Magic” software and you will become an internet millionaire overnight.

Although there are great software titles out there that can automate your business, there is no such a thing like Magic software that does everything. You can find software saving you time or even money but you will never find software doing everything.

Myth 2: I make 35.000$ per month!

It’s true, people who make that income exist and maybe more. But what they don’t tell you is how much they spend in order to make those amounts of money. Don’t believe anyone of them, promise you that by spending 10$ you will achieve those numbers. A good example is Google Adwords.

You see those sales letters and the photos with proof of making 600$ per day? Did they also show you the advertising costs? Sure, spending 1000$ per day on Adwords, with careful planning, can make 1600 per day. The tiny detail is this: can you afford spending 1000$ per day (30.000$ per month)?

Myth 3: Become Rich with other people’s efforts.

This refers to MLM and similar techniques. You shouldn’t contemn multilevel marketing completely. There are serious MLM companies that have been expanded on that way. Some universities also teach MLM. But when someone promises the earth by making downlines only and not focusing on the products and how to market them, stay away.

Do you honestly believe that you will find 3 business partners becoming your downline and each one of them will bring a thousand referrals with you doing nothing? It will Not Happen.

Myth 4: Work only 10 minutes per day!

I wish this could be real. We should believe in the saying “work smarter not harder” but there is huge misunderstanding on that. Even the most successful online entrepreneurs , before they reach the ideal lifestyle working few hours per day, they came across the path of working endless hours , spending & loosing money , testing & retesting , failing . There is no shortcut to this. PERIOD.

Myth 5: I make 50.000$ per month. Buy my 19.95$ “Super Magic Secret E-book”

Isn’t that obvious? Doesn’t it ring the bell? If you had that “50.000$ Super Secret” would you share it with the whole internet world and actually charge it so cheap? Get Real. It’s 100% certain that you will find the same recycled information with other 500 similar resources.

Myth 6: Buy 5.000.000 email addresses CD. Only 99$!

Be Careful. This is SPAM. Have no doubt about it. Don’t even think of purchasing this. Those emails have been extracted without the email owners consent. You will not make a dime and you will loose your website & internet connection and maybe more with the new strict antispam laws.

Myth 7: Sign to 50 Auto Hits Generation websites and Get 20.000 visitors per day.

There is another saying for that: “Garbage in – Garbage out”. Think for a while, if you are using this web traffic generation method what stops other webmasters do the same? You will not watch at the sites automatically reloaded and obviously you will be doing something else during that time.

So, you think you are the only one who thought about that? No you are not.

How Many Links Should I Have To Point At My Website?

2010-07-26T23:33:00.000-07:00

Using links as a way to get your search engine ranking high is a good thing. The question that many people ask, though, is just how many links should you have in order to have this happen? Can you have too many? Link marketing is the use of links to build traffic to your website as well as to build your search engine ranking. These things go hand in hand. If you want to increase your search engine rank, work on your links.

But, How Much?

There is no real set number. It's not having ten or twenty or even having a 100. It is more about having the right type of links coming to your website. For example, you need to consider both reciprocal links as well as those that are one way links. One way links generate traffic to your site without luring someone away with additional links on your website. Reciprocal links, when placed correctly and used in the right overall manner can help as well.

Beyond this, you will want to work with having good quality links. The links should be related in some way to your website. For many this will mean finding webmasters that offers similar, but not the same content as your site. If you are in the market of refurbishing homes, you may want to have links at your site that are not directly related but indirectly. Here, you could have a roof specialist listed.

As far as how many links you should have pointing to your website, the best number to go with is as many as you can. Make sure that they are solid, well researched links, not something that is inexpensively purchased. Make sure they provide for both reciprocal and one way links. Use them correctly and your business really can benefit from them.

Getting Your Site Indexed Before You Launch

2010-07-25T23:32:00.000-07:00

I've noticed that most SEO articles focus on what to do after you launch your site. Those that do deal with preparing your site for launch usually discuss on-site SEO like keyword research and meta tags. What tends to be neglected is the advantage that you can gain by getting your site indexed before you launch. With a little planning and a few hours of work it's easy to be indexed by Google, Yahoo, and MSN before your site goes live.

The key to getting your site indexed in the big three is getting links pointing to it from sites that are already indexed. When the search bots crawl those sites they will inevitably find the link to your site and your site will be added to their index. Follow these five steps a month before you launch and you'll be a step ahead of the game.

1. Register your domain name. You'd be surprised how many people wait until the last minute to do this. The sooner you register your domain, the sooner you can get some quality links pointing to it and get it indexed.

2. Put up a home page. Make a “coming soon” page with your logo, information about your site, and expected launch date. You can also add a form for people to sign up for email updates about your site. This starts building your email marketing list before you even launch.

3. Start a blog and sign up for Feedburner. Put up a blog at www.yoursite.com/blog. It doesn't matter if you use WordPress, Blogger, or whatever blog platform you prefer, just make sure you host it on your site. Make a few posts about your site, what people can expect when it launches, and why your site will be unique. After your first post, sign up for a Feedburner account at http://www.feedburner.com/. Under 'Publicize' in your account make sure to sign up for 'Ping Shot'. This will notify blogging directories of your posts which hopefully will result in a few links to your site.

4. Write a few articles and submit to directories. Regardless of what your site is about, there is certainly a topic relating to your site that you could write an article about. For example, if your site is going to sell fitness equipment, you could write an article about how to build a home-gym. Or if you are going to rate and review new cars, you could write an article about how to shop for a new car. After you've written and proofread your articles, submit them to article directories like Ezine Articles (http://www.ezinearticles.com/) and iSnare (http://www.isnare.com/). Be sure to include a description of your new site and a link back to it in the resource box. Again, this should result in a few links to your site.

5. Get a link from an indexed site. Steps 3 and 4 should result in some links from indexed sites which should then ensure your site to be indexed. But it can't hurt to get a few more on your own to be certain. When I launched my last site, I linked to it from my personal blog, which I knew was indexed. If you don't have that option, you can ask someone with a blog or site related to yours to mention it. If you can't find anyone willing to do it for free, you could offer them some free advertising on your site when you launch in exchange for the link.

Getting yourself indexed before you launch gives you a head start on your SEO and will allow your site to have a more immediate impact. Why wait until you launch? Get started a month early and you'll reap the benefits when launch day rolls around.

Ever Thought of Running a Poker Website?

2010-07-24T23:32:00.000-07:00

Running your own poker website can be very profitable and a lot of fun. In the current climate of uncertainty in the employment market, starting and running your own poker web site offers a realistic way to make a very good monthly income that is both sustainable and constantly increasing.

These days more and more people are turning towards the internet to find ways of making extra cash or even to make a full time income and one of the best is to start a poker information website.

There are numerous advantages to starting a poker website; an enormous customer base, flexibility, the fact that you can start with virtually no money at all, and best of all - the chance to make a really good income online.

Now there are some truly awful poker sites out there but that is in fact a great advantage for you if you decide to build your own poker site. The fact that so many poker websites are of very poor quality means that you can build up a strong and loyal following just by offering a service that is better than the majority of the rubbish out there.

People search the internet for one thing above all others, and that of course is information. If they are looking on the web to learn more about their favorite poker player they want to go to a site where there is some decent, well written content. If they find what they are looking for then they will come back again and you will have gained a loyal customer.

If on the other hand they are taken to a page where there's nothing of interest and all the site is doing is trying to sell them something, they will leave quickly and probably never return.

Once you have enticed your visitors in to look at your site and they have found valuable information, they will be in a mood that is more predisposed towards buying so if you do have something to sell, you are far more likely to buy it.

So provide valuable information for your visitors and you will be miles ahead of all the other junk and spam poker sites out there.

Dmoz is in dire need to improve its image.

2010-07-23T23:31:00.000-07:00

Dmoz.org or ODP (the Open Directory Project) is a web directory which was originally created in 1998 as Gnuhoo by Rich Skrenta and Bob Truel while working at Sun Microsystems. The first controversy started soon Soon after the launch the directory and lead to renaming it to NewHoo after wide spread accusation that the name of the directory implied open source yet the directory was a closed source which negates the spirit of free software of GNU projects which the directory was originally named after.

The directory was sold to Netscape which is now part of AOL/Time warner and currently boasts of having 5,229,762 sites, 71,337 editors, in over 590,000 categories. The importance of the directory increased and its status and the status of websites listed in it also increased despite the Internet trends of using search engines to locate websites faster than navigating through a multitude of categories in a web directory to find what you're looking for. The popularity and importance of Dmoz to webmasters followed the increased importance and relevance big search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN placed on the directory and on sites listed in it. This can be seen clearly in search results with sites listed in Dmoz listed on top of most search results for most search term. Another value that has been closely associated to Dmoz was Pagerank, which is a value Google places on web pages, one of the most important factor that drives Pagerank up when Google does its calculation of Pagerank is the number of back links, and the Pagerank value of those linking web pages.

Dmoz is important not only because it is a great web directory, but because many search engines adopted it as its de facto directory because of the ease of importing the the whole directory data and reusing it as its own. Google's own web directory is based on that of Dmoz. The estimated number of web sites that use Dmoz's data as a base for their own directories, and the number of mirror sites of Dmoz are not known exactly but it can be argued to be in the thousands. This number translates to a huge number of back links to websites listed in the directory. This alone makes Dmoz very important to any serious webmaster in their website's marketing strategy, contrary to what Dmoz editors on their public web forums try to convince webmasters otherwise.

Having a very valuable Directory at their disposal the editors of Dmoz have a great deal of power at their finger-tips and they know it. I say they know it because of the over the top attitudes of take it or leave it, and its our way or the highway attitudes expressed at the resource-zone forums, the hangout of the egotistic editors. Many webmasters depend on their websites for a living and hence they try to market their websites with everything available to them in order to ensure a steady stream of income. When there is a perception that there is a great resource that can help make or break a website by the mere fact of being listed or not listed in Dmoz makes it hard for webmasters to swallow. This is not a bad thing nor should it not be controlled by competent editors. yet the stories of unethical editorial behavior, kickbacks, and revenge and overwhelming feeling of corruption and egotistic attitudes towards webmasters makes a person cringe at the mere mention of Dmoz submission.

There are many other stories and complaints about Dmoz, about its editors, about the way they run the directory, about the refusal to listen to suggestions for improvements, about their lack of sensitivity to webmasters, about the length of time it takes to review a website though they have thousands of editors, about their inability to get with the time and roll out better measures to control and run the directory while minimizing abuse and setting in place tools that help in enforcing a fair and equatable checks and balances approach when including websites.

There has been many suggestions to the directory and its editors, most have been dismissed as unworkable, or too much of a burden on the directory and its army of editors to handle, yet they forget that they have a lot of responsibilities to the general web users and webmasters. A constant theme with the editors is that the directory is here to serve the public i.e. the surfer/visitor public and not the webmasters, yet the webmasters are the ones who made the whole Internet what it is right now, the webmasters work is what the public seeks. Measures to accommodate webmasters and release that they DO count and that the directory does need them is required and DMOZ does need to reach out and work with webmasters to help make the directory better and more reflective of the reality of the Internet.

When looking at Dmoz as a project there are a multitude of features that are badly lacking and in need of improvement, some of the needed improvements are critical to the well being of the directory and to its survival, others are nice to have and will help make the directory better and help give the project the respect that it needs and is currently lacking.

One of the most important improvements is a system that will make submission and review faster than the current system which can take up to 3 years for a website to be reviewed and added to the directory. This is not accepted today as it was not accepted in the first days of the Internet. In todays world of constant change, it is very hard to even find a decent website that does not make changes weekly or daily let alone yearly. A site submitted a year ago may not be the same a year form now and maybe rejected on that bases alone.
A system that will decrease the SPAM the directory receives is the first step to improving responsiveness to site submission and review process. Editors claim that over 95% of websites that they receive can be classified as SPAM or BOT submissions. Captcha (a way to control web forms, which distinguishes between human and automated robotic entries and submission) or a similar measure should be put in place ASAP. If this measure is implemented to weed out 90% of web site submission the total wait time will improve accordingly. A web site that might take 6 months to be reviewed will be reviewed in 18 days (6*30*0.10=18). That alone would be a great improvement and it would elevate the heavy load on editors.

The second critical improvement to the directory and to its image would be in implementing a system of better control over editors and their power in accepting and rejecting websites, especially those that directly compete with their own websites or websites that they are affiliated with. A good start would be by implementing a system that marks websites added to the directory with an existing affiliation to an editor. Currently Dmoz require editors to declare their association, yet the public does not have access to base any complaints that is supported by this claim. Dmoz itself does not have to publish this association in the public directory but should make sites associated with editors clearly stated in their public profile, so when someone has a complaint about how a directory branch is edited they can find any relevant information in the editor profile where they can base their investigation of any unfair editorial claims.

Another benefit of the above would be helpful for the directory mirror sites when editing listing and deciding on a relevancy of websites to be included in their implementation of the directory data. I know first hand of some of the major implementation of web directory based on Dmoz data that administrators would like to know which websites exactly belong to editors which may need to re-reviewed by a third party before inclusion in their directory but the volume of the links in the directory makes it hard to weed out any sites that are implanted unfairly by corrupt editors and are being spread unintentionally throughout the Internet. This is in no way meant to punish or remove sites belonging to editors, but after all the accusations and controversy this may be needed and website using the Dmoz data can decide on their own what to do with those websites.

There are many more things that can be done to improve the directory but the above two suggestions would make a huge difference in restore the respect, the image and the spirit that the directory was created under.

Can You Make Money With A Turnkey Business Website?

2010-07-22T23:30:00.000-07:00

There are lots of ways to start making money online, but all come with a cost. You can spend the time to learn about html, website design and scripts, and build your own website, or join an opportunity which gives you a sales site identical to everyone elses, but there is another way.

You can buy a turnkey business website. This is a prebuilt website which is all ready to take orders, and make you money, but can you really make money with these sites?

The simple answer is yes you can make money with a prebuilt website, and it will help you to cut a lot of corners in getting started in your own online business. With a turnkey website there is no need to learn all the geeky stuff behind the scenes, as long as you buy from a reputable seller, the site should be ready to update with your details in a simple admin panel, and start making sales.

There are a lot of different turnkey website packages available, and you'd need to do a little research to find out what is best for you. Do you want to own a sales site selling digital products, be an affiliate for another company with a prebuilt store updated from the main companies website, or do you want to try making money with Google Adsense?

Once you have decided what kind of website you want, you can then purchase a turnkey website which does what you want it to. Then your work begins. Unless you pay the extra for a site which is already developed, which could run into thousands of dollars, you will be buying a site which is all setup, but has no traffic. You will need to do the work to get a steady stream of traffic to your site, but this is the case with any business, you will need to bring in your potential customers. This will involve doing link exchanges, advertising and promoting your website address to get people to your site to turn into customers. An advantage of a turnkey site is that the copy will have been written by a profesional, so it should have a higher conversion rate than a site you built by yourself, making it easier to turn browsers into customers.

If you want a shortcut to owning a website business online, then turnkey sites are well worth looking into. Just make sure you know what you want before you purchase and don't believe you will be able to buy a site, kickback and do nothing but watch the money pour in, you will still have to build your business the same as any other and put in some effort to get customers.

Bring Your Family Home To The Internet

2010-07-21T23:30:00.000-07:00

Are you concerned about the mental, emotional and physical distress being placed on your family by our society? Actually, you should be! The family is clearly the most important unit in our society. However, it is well recognized that the family is in a negative down spiral. The social environment in which we live is turning our families into a complex unmanageable organization.

Statistics and facts show the family being overwhelmed by uncontrollable circumstances. Money Management for example; there is never enough. The credit cards are overdrawn. You just bounced another check. You need to pay for school lunches-again. How does the young family manage on such a small income? Rent costs are out of sight. Inflation is settling on everything we purchase. How can we cope with the high price of gas?

Do you have a solution? Not likely. But there is a change needed. Maybe we need a new approach and outlook on life.

"You've got to win in your mind before you can win in your life." - John Addison

Actually this just might be the right place and time to make changes to our baseline strategy of managing our families. Now consider this very real fact for a moment.

Husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, parents, children really CAN manage their lives! You really can care for you family properly IF you can get just a little have help from friends. Think about it for a moment. If information is needed about how to manage a family where else would one go? The internet of course! There are incredible amounts of information on any subject you might have in mind. That is literally an ocean of products available at your finger tips. Really!

However, the internet is such a massive collection of products and data the average individual has no idea of how to use it properly. But the solution is rather simple. If we can’t take the family to the information why not bring the products and information to the family --- via the internet.

For instance let us put all the “products” and “help” into one place, i.e., a family oriented user friendly website. A website where you can go for one stop stopping for the information and merchandise needed for the family. Now you CAN save time and money! Now you have access to the information that might help you manage your family.

We are talking about a website that does more that just sell and run. The internet website we are talking about is a holistic family website with your family interest in mind. It is true the website would provide access to carefully selected merchants that will fulfill family shopping requirements. But if you have a family problem that needs immediate attention the website would provide access to those ebooks, documents, and links that will provide immediate help and guidance to you. AND if you cannot find exactly what you need on the website a search of the entire internet would be available for ebooks, links, document and other information. More importantly the information must be downloadable in digital form for immediate access.

A website to be of service to the family must do more than sell a product, take the money and disappear. It must supply additional functions to maintain health and well being for you and your family.

Can your family read? Of course they can! Let us rephrase this last question. Does your family read? If not why not? There are unlimited FREE downloadable ebooks, magazines, articles and other publication (any type you want) on the internet. Do you know what the top 100 downloaded ebooks were last week? You will on the family imall. Any classic work you desire is usually a free download. You can LISTEN to many popular books with free down loadable Audio eBooks? There is a fantastic selection on the internet. If you need additional documents or information you can search the entire internet with advanced ebook/ezine search pages. There are over 10,000 ebooks at you disposal. Do you suppose this would be more beneficial than 10 hours of TV violence every day for you family?

In order to stay current with the world there must be FREE informational news downloads and news letters to keep you informed. In order to save on the cost of gas you can keep abreast of the merchant national sales promotions from the current sales webpage. In addition for your convenience we have a website category directory page with many day to day informational functions. This includes a search page, news & weather, with much more

Are you interested in saving money through competitive shopping for you family? At the family imall all merchants are brought into one website for your convenience. You do not have to drive for hours just to get to each merchant. Also keep in mind anything you purchase from any of the merchants on the internet is delivered to your front door. In addition, there are ‘specialty ishops’ to cater to the popular needs of the family. When you become part of a family oriented website you seldom have to leave your home to shop.

If you ‘bring your family home to the internet’ you will be able to find and have access to what is required to manage a family. A family mall is about Internet honesty and morality. It is a website where a family member can go for an honest no scam internet deal. It is more than just selling. It is about sharing. It is about being of assistance in times of distress and in good times.

It is about your family.

Your Visitors Want to be Blown Away!

2010-07-20T23:29:00.000-07:00

Today I stumbled upon a cool music player – it worked so well, it was so easy and intuitive – it simply delivered. In fact it was quite remarkable. Take a look at that word – remarkable! Remark-able, yes, I was able to make voluntary, un-coerced positive remarks to my friends. They also liked it and may just tell their friends. What makes one website/product so remarkable? Well simply put when a website solves a problem, meets a need or satisfies a want, it’s likely to be a good site. However a remarkable site does all that so well that it literally over-delivers, surpasses all expectations and makes its visitors feel good just for finding it. In what way is your site, your product remarkable?

Why do you care? Because you want traffic, traffic, traffic. A good site may only convert 2- 5% of its traffic, so the higher your traffic, the more you sell. But other than positive, pervasive word of mouth you will have to work or pay for that traffic. I say work because there are some ways of generating traffic that don’t cost much money – rather they demand time and effort.

One of the best ways to draw people to your site is through original content, articles specifically. There are hundreds of sites dedicated to article postings and within your ‘author bio’ you can post the link back to your site. People go online primarily for content. They are looking for answers, looking for ideas and solutions – sure some people are just bored and browsing, but your potential clients will only exchange their hard earned money for the promise that your product will get them closer to their goal. If you can write articles that show you understand them and that you have a special insight into their interests, they may in return believe in your product enough to give it a try.

You can also write some press releases. A press release is nothing more than a written announcement that discusses something exciting and hopefully newsworthy about your business. Typically it will have contact information so that any member of the press can easily reach you in case they have questions. There are many press release sites that can educate and help you spread your news.

These ideas are just the tip of the marketing strategy iceberg. You ought to find a mentor who can help you do all the above and more. Remember – be remarkable. Let’s give them something to talk about!

Thanks for reading,
Your Rich Cousin
(Author and Business Success Story) Get the free e-book that got me started and helped me start making money at http://www.richcousin.com It's so straight forward and easy to understand AND you will have the support you need to start making a great income online.

What I Discovered About Global Resorts Network - Part One

2010-07-19T23:29:00.000-07:00

I've been involved in Internet Businesses for quite a few years....even before we retired. We were fortunate to be able to retire early, thanks in part to the Internet. I've had success with some programs, as well as paying my dues and acquiring an expensive education with unsuccessful programs. But I've certainly learned a lot. And one of the most important things I've learned is that things are constantly changing on the Internet. What worked last year might not work this year or a new strategy will work better (more on this later).

A real business with a real quality product, that is worth the cost, is important to me. Although, I confess I've gotten caught up in a few "money games" and questionable programs along the way.

Anyway, last year my main business company was going down, although I was still working it. I started looking to see what else was out there. I saw several programs selling ebooks and software for a hefty price...many of them were available for free or a low cost if one searched. And other programs with good products that were over-priced. And some other programs with some good products, but hard to understand and explain to justify the cost. Many now days are 1 or 2-up programs, where you just make money on your sales with no opportunity for residual income. And a lot were probably good programs, but were not capable of producing a great income without recruiting tons of people into a matrix.

And then I was introduced to Global Resorts Network by my sponsor in a couple of previous programs. When I saw it and studied the product, I was thrilled. We love to travel and own a couple of timeshare weeks and enjoy staying in luxury resort condos. It's so much nicer than just a hotel room.

But time shares can be frustrating. It can be hard to exchange for when and where you want to travel. And the fees keep going up...there are maintenance fees, exchange fees and subscription fees, plus the initial cost of buying a week...which can be tens of thousands. We pay over $1000 a year in these fees. So when I saw the GRN Platinum Lifetime membership for only $3000, I was excited. We could get rid of our timeshare weeks and not have to pay all of the fees. And with the Global Resorts Network membership, now we pay only for what we actually use...as low as $298 for a full week in a luxury resort condo!

Ways To Distribute Your Catalogs To Your Targeted Customers

2010-07-18T23:28:00.000-07:00

Ok, you have done everything you need to do to produce a quality catalog and they have been printed. How do you get them into your customer’s hands? In this article we will talk about catalog distribution.

If you are going to distribute your catalog in the most common method, by mail, then you will need a mailing list. Maybe you already have a list of customers you are mailing the catalog to or maybe you need to purchase a mailing list that targets a specific demographic or geographical area.

There are mailing lists that are targeted by zip code, by income, by the fact they are homeowners, by if the people on the list have children, and even more specifically targeted categories like homeowners who have lived in their home more than five years, etc.

You can easily find lists by searching the web, but be careful. How new is their data? When was the last time they updated their data? Is the company you are buying the list from reputable? These are questions you need to keep in mind before purchasing a mailing list from anyone.

There are also catalog distribution services who already have all of that information and who can handle all of the distribution for you. Having a professional catalog distribution service do this for you can help you avoid costly mistakes.

The post office can give you rates depending on the size and weight of the catalog you want to distribute by US mail. Something I hope you kept in mind when printing your catalog is durability. The post office has to process all mail including catalogs, then it is handled by other people, then the postman, before it ever gets to your customer.

So if you do not have at least a durable cover for your catalog, you may want to have them wrapped before mailing them out to protect them from damage. You want your customer to see your well-designed catalog before any damage occurs.

There are other ways to distribute catalogs as well. Of course if you have a retail outlet or store, you can offer your customers or walk in traffic a catalog. If you have foot traffic going by your store all the time, you can set up a display outside of your store with catalogs for them. You would be surprised at how many people it will bring inside to shop.

You can talk to friends who also have stores and shops, your beauty shop or barber shop, convenience stores even. People will pick up a well-designed catalog that looks like it has something they might need. Everyone loves to shop and a catalog is the easiest way for them to shop.

Be creative, keep catalogs in your car so you can hand them out to people. When you stop somewhere you might want to ask the store owner if they mind putting some of your catalogs somewhere for their customers to pick up. Obviously if you sell anything similar to what they sell it’s not a good idea to ask them.

Last but definitely not least is offering your catalog through your website, ezine, or newsletter. If you have a website, you simply put in a form for a visitor to fill out with their name and address and mail them a catalog. Websites seem to be impersonal to many people. The offer of an actual catalog sent to them from your website will also give them more confidence to buy not just through your catalog but through your website as well.

If you already have an ezine or newsletter you mail out to website visitors, offer your catalog to them as well. Here is why. Yes these people already may be buying through your website so sending them a catalog is costly. However, you have to keep in mind when you send out one catalog to one person, many people may end up browsing through it. They distribute your catalog for you in effect. They may not show everyone your website, but they will share their catalog.

I hope this article has helped you with your decision about how to distribute your catalog. There are other methods depending on your budget, the number of catalogs, and the people who you want to send them to. The most common way is to use the postal service. Professional distribution is more costly, but they know how to get your catalog in the right hands and can track the mailings and have other advantages.

Selling Services Online

2010-07-16T23:27:00.000-07:00

Is it possible to take a normal offline service business like a legal practice, private medical practitioner or even a real estate business and make money with it from the Internet?

As someone who’s been doing this since 1996, I say the answer is a resounding “YES”.

If you are a business owner, or even an affiliate marketer, you know how hard it is to make a living online.

Many so-called Internet Marketing gurus will tell you that the only way to make money online is to create your own information products, hype them up with a completely fictitious sales letter and then sell via Clickbank, allowing an army of keen and eager affiliates to do your marketing for you.

Whilst that can and does work, there are other paths that are equally successful.

I know from experience, having made my living online by using my own web sites to promote other people’s businesses.

The business I chose were all service oriented. The reason for this is that a service business typically has a low overhead in order to provide the service.

I found that they were more willing to provide me with a larger share of the fees I was able to generate.

The key is to use sales language and “speak” to the businesses clients in language that they understand and respond to.

For example, there’s no point using a 5 page sales letter when you’re trying to sell the services of a conservative legal practice – it just won’t work.

The other key thing is to build the web site in a way that it looks to be providing objective advice.

People like objectivity when they are buying.

The sites I tend to concentrate on are business to business sites. I just don’t like selling to individuals, as they have less money to spend and are infinitely more fussy than a corporate buyer who typically just wants the facts.

My approach works and through various web sites, I have attracted the business of quite a few household name clients for my clients.

The great thing about the way I do business, is that I don’t necessarily have a client when I build my web sites.

Instead, I build a web site based on a certain topic and then quite literally build a business around it.

The sales copy doesn’t have to be blistering hot, it just has to be convincing and contain a strong call to action for the reader on the particular web page.

Make that call to action strong enough and the customers will come knocking on the door and there will be no need for cold-calling. The web site does the selling for you.

Of course, it’s not just down to the sales copy. There are a number of tools that can be used very effectively in order to make selling services online extremely easy.

Rules Of Duplicate Content

2010-07-15T23:26:00.000-07:00

If you are going to be starting a website, you have probably heard the phrase “duplicate content” come up time and time again. This is a much discussed area when it comes to the internet, and one that has garnered a lot of attention over the past couple of years. But the fact of the matter is that most people have no clue what duplicate content is, or how the rules are enforced.

Knowing the definition of duplicate content is the first step to avoiding the penalties that go along with it. Duplicate content is when different domains use the same or nearly identical information in order to serve the online community. In other words, this means that there is more than one website with the same information on it. People do this in order to get as many websites out there as possible, but without having to put in all of the work. Duplicate content also covers when content of one page on the internet is identical or similar to another page.

But even though this may seem like a large problem, it really only affects webmasters that are trying to design a lot of websites without having to put in all of the work. Unless you are using the exact same content as another website, in the exact same way, you will not be hit with duplicate content penalties.

If you are concerned about duplicate content penalties the best thing to do is to determine if anybody else is using your information. The most common way is by running the content through copyscape. This will tell you if anybody else is using your information.

At this point, you may be thinking about the private label articles that you use on your site. Many people use these as a way of getting new content every month; but at the same time there may be other people that are using the same content as you. The best way that you can avoid this is by taking the articles that you receive from your private label company and slightly modifying them. By doing this, you will be able to avoid any penalties. And remember, while you are modifying your content, anybody else that received the articles will probably modify theirs as well. The end result is entirely different articles being posted on each respective site.

Another great way to use content, but avoid duplicate content penalties is by sending them in text format. In other words, if you have an article that is going to be republished on other websites, make sure to send them in text format. This way when the recipient posts the content it will be reformatted. This will ensure that the content is viewed by the spiders sent out by search engines as original.

Duplicate content is not as big a problem as you may think. Many people are under the impression that this is a huge problem. Even though there is no place for copyright infringement, if you have the rights to an article you do not have to worry about this. Overall, duplicate content penalties are most often enforced on webmasters that are trying to create several sites using the same or similar content.

Part Time Income

2010-07-14T23:25:00.000-07:00

Many people love the idea of having some extra part time income and are able to enjoy time with my family and friends. Some work part time and are involved in a variety of loose-ended jobs: delivering newspapers, selling encyclopedias door to door and even selling a little insurance. Although these experiences teach the basics of sales techniques and perseverance, they rarely offer any significant amount of income. Some even try the infamous MLM opportunities and, as many, are thoroughly disappointed.

Some of these so-called “home based businesses” promise a lot of people of achieving great wealth. They prey on unsuspecting folks with the idea of utilizing their families and friends and then having them recruit their friends, as well, for the purpose of generating sales. Some even require big start up costs for the purchase of their products and then a sacrifice of the first couple of sales to a “sponsor” or “mentor” before any income is reflected. Lastly, money back guarantees are rarely offered.

Scams are everywhere: illegal pyramids, ponzi, chain letters and gifting schemes. The owners of these companies love the idea of taking advantage of the individuals recruited performing all of the sales for them while they are banking the money. What is worse is that these people had to spend practically an arm and a leg to even get access to these programs. They offer absolutely no support and never respond to any email inquiries or telephone calls. A complete waste of time!!! As the old saying goes, if it looks to good to be true than it probably is.

What ever happened to good old fashion instruction on how you can build your part time home based business - establishing sound fundamentals with little or no-start up costs. People want to find a particular income vehicle that they can operate out of the comfort of their own home. The Internet has provided this as a reality for many in the form of Internet Marketing. Remember making money part time does not have to be laborious in nature. If you have a skill to offer or hobbies that you enjoy, these also can be made into income producing revenue. There are a many available resources online that can teach you on how to get it started. Instruction is the key so become a student of the Internet and you too will see your part time income soar.

Make a Referral Offer They Can’t Refuse

2010-07-13T23:23:00.000-07:00

Sometimes your referral marketing effort just needs the right hook or offer to get people to pay attention and participate. Draw from my top 5 referral offer starters and think of ways to creatively wrap your business around one or more of them.

1) Offer special pricing

If you are looking for referrals from your existing clients, you can develop a special price for those clients who refer a set amount of new business. Then, when a new client asks what the price of a product or service is, you can respond, "Do you want the full price or the special referral price?" This encourages repeat business and can provide a strong incentive to refer on the spot.

2) Will work for referrals

If you can target a referral source that has influence with your target market, you can offer a trial service or product in exchange for an endorsement of your products or services, a testimonial or a place in the next association speaker panel.

Seek out the leaders in trade groups and organizations you would like to target and offer to perform a service or let them try your product free of charge. Get them to agree that if they like your product or service as much as you know they will, they will send a letter to the membership of the organization promoting your offer. Then write the letter for them.

3) Help a worthy cause

Donate a percentage of business acquired by way of referral to a non-profit agency. By offering to help a worthy cause, you can increase referrals while improving your community.

There are many variations on this referral strategy. You can make donations to a designated charity in your referral source’s name. You can allow your referral sources to designate a charity of their choice. If you have a product or service the non-profit agency uses or buys, you can donate that.

One of the hidden powers behind this strategy is that the non-profit agencies can become strong referral partners. If they benefit from referring clients, then they may be highly motivated to provide referrals. In many cases, non-profit agencies have loyal donors, board members, community activists and volunteers who would be happy to do business with a firm that was providing funding for the non-profit agency through a referral marketing program.

4) Give away gift certificates

Although the use of gift certificates isn’t a true referral marketing strategy, it can be great way to generate referrals. If you have a product or service that lends itself to this, you can provide your clients or referral sources gift certificates to use as a referral tool. The idea is that your clients would give the certificates to people they feel would enjoy receiving them. In most cases, these recipients would be new clients willing to try your service by using the certificate.

A consultant might give certificates for a one-hour evaluation assessment. The value of the assessment, if purchased, might be $150. It is important that the certificate communicate this value. Make sure that what you are giving has a high, perceived value.

A plumber could give free service call certificates at each stop and ask the client to hand them out to neighbors.

5) 100% refund for referrals

This is one of my personal favorites because not only is it a terribly powerful referral strategy, it presents such a strong offer that it can become a core point of differentiation.

In other words, the sales message is so strong, you become known for it.
In this strategy, you simply show your clients how they can receive a 100% refund on a specific purchase by simply referring five other people who become clients or make a similar purchase. (Again, you work out the numbers that apply to your business.)

The power behind this is three-fold.

It helps you land clients because people think, “What the heck, I can get all my money back,” and because it becomes a game for them. Structure your offer in such a way that they get a 20% refund (up to 100%) every time they refer someone. That way, they can keep score. It usually makes sense to put a time limit on the offer as well.

Another very important aspect of this particular strategy is that it has a viral component to it.

Anyone who can earn a 100% refund will talk about it. In addition, everyone who comes to your practice by way of this method will already understand the rules of the game and may very well be ready to play the day they become a client. So, that’s 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 and so on. You do the math!

Reread that last paragraph because it is true of just about any referral marketing strategy you create. That’s one of the reasons referral marketing is so powerful.

Lets fight the self-appointed Spam Lords

2010-07-12T23:23:00.000-07:00

Lets get one thing clear - SPAM is very bad. Spam is demeaning, intrusive, frustrating, etc. However, the reaction to Spam is defeatist, Luditist, intrusive and reactionary.

Firstly, lets look at the reality of Spam; you download your emails, you delete the Spam.

Come on, are they that hard to identify? Is the email from Aunt Dot injured by the Spam? Do you have to spend hours reading each one to the bitter end to guess it is spam?

Email programmes come with a button called - DELETE; so delete - end of the matter. I hear you whinning: "but they take so long to download"; "they fill my inbox"; "they contain pornography", etc. One answer: Delete.

Actually, the porn Spam does present a bigger problem- for children of course, and the degree of insult they produce. To be honest, if your email is privacy protected, which it should be, then these problems can be partially avoided as well.

By the way, Spamhaus, a major Spam identifier, notes that 80% of Spam originates with just 20 groups.

So how does everyone suffer from over-reaction when dealing with Spam? How many genuine emails get blocked by Spam walls? I will use some examples of personal experience to show you the problems.

I have had important emails blocked just because I used an ISP that one of the 20 gangs had used for a period. This ISP was actually the major telephone service for a country, one that about 50% of the country's residents used. Great response: close half a country's international emails.

I have had emails blocked because I used the word, 'free'. My project, is a free resource on the Internet. Now I cannot say free, and hundreds of schools write to me to ask if my Project is free. I have also had emails blocked because I said, "For adults working with children"; NO adults, obviously pornography.

A professor at a University asked me about my Project; he was considering doing research with me, but I could not reply to him: intrusive Spam wall.

How many international websites today do not include any email contact details, or go to great lengths to hide them? What is the point of a website if you cannot respond and communicate with the owner? Am I expected to make international phone calls, send letters, snail mail?

I can go on. The bottom line is that our fears of using a delete button have allowed us to start to lose one of the great technology innovations of this era: email.

Email is better than great: it is better than landing on the moon. How did we live without email? This amazing technology is being murdered by ourselves and our ridiculous, stupid over-reaction.

Weigh the good of email and the cost of Spam; the balance is wrong. Wake up! To join the fight AGAINST the spam lords

Learn How To Get High PR Links

2010-07-11T23:22:00.000-07:00

In order to rank high in the search engine results (especially on Google) you need a series of elements, such as unique content, freshly updated web pages and, of course, plenty of links from high PR sites. “PR” actually refers to Google’s algorithm – Page Rank – used to determine the importance of a web page in relation with the others.

High PR websites are considered by Google to be authority sites and their web pages are often displayed among the top ten results during a search. For any webmaster who wants to promote their business, getting high PR links is essential.

But how can a young website get important links that will help it boost its popularity? Most webmasters that own high PR websites will not consider a link exchange with a website that has a PR of zero – this brings the high PR sites absolutely no benefits as far as search engine ranking is concerned. There are, however, a few ways to get links from websites that are deemed important by Google:

* Create a unique website that will impress other webmasters. This is the only way to get high PR sites to link to your new site. If the webmaster of an important site sees that your own website offers something complementary to his topic, and if you offer high quality content and an excellent visual appearance, you might just be considered for a link exchange.

* Stay within reasonable boundaries – don’t go asking for link exchanges from PR 6 or PR 7 websites – they probably get dozens of link exchanges each day, and unless your site is truly exceptional chances are they will not give your link exchange request any chance.

* Use online resources that allow you to post your own links. You can get some nice links from Wikipedia, the encyclopedia you can edit yourself. Just make sure to become a constant “Wikipedian” user, and add valuable content to the website – with a reference link towards your website. Most Wikipedia pages are PR6 and upwards, so this is a great source of links – just don’t become a spammer!

* Blogs, forums and other types of online communities might also allow you to post links. Some of these groups are very popular and have high PR, and if you become a member you might be able to post a few links every now and then.

* Article submission may also get you some nice one-way, high PR links. Although chances are that you will not have your articles published on blogs and websites with a PageRank over 3 or 4, that’s still an excellent start for a new website. You can add your articles to directories like:

o http://www.MyContentBuilder.com
o http://www.MyPetContent.com
o http://www.Buzzle.com
o http://www.EzineArticles.com

Article submission can be tedious, which is why you may want to consider an automatic article submitter. It will submit one article to over 30 directories in half an hour. To watch a video on how to accomplish this, go to:

o http://1trac.com/dt/t/Article_Submitter_Video.php

* Automated link exchanges – webmasters using automated link exchange websites are also less likely to dismiss your link exchange requests. A great resource for automatic link exchanging is:

o http://www.MyLinkMachine.com

Keywords, Content And Copywriting

2010-07-10T23:21:00.000-07:00

Today WebPages must compete for survival just like animals in the wild. Natural selection isn’t just a concept limited to Mother Nature. Even in the world of cyberspace there is a “law of the jungle”. Search engine optimization or (SEO) lies at the core of this law. Many skills must be mastered to rise to the top. Three important ones are keywords, content and copywriting. Let’s begin with the first of the three.

Keywords are extremely important because they act as a marker for search engines. Keywords can be placed anywhere on a website. Besides being noticed they must be carefully selected. You must take care to choose keywords that are not only relevant to your site but also that are likely to be used by those who are searching for what is on your site. Several things must be taken into account. Variations in spelling of the keywords as well as spelling errors can conceivably drive traffic to your site. The links in your site are a vitally important spot to place keywords because not only will they be noticed by search engines but they will also direct people to the other pages on your site thus increasing your ranking.

Content is the second factor here. Beyond the obvious fact that the content of your site is what people are going to read when they get to your site the content is the larger aspect of keywords. The keywords may be the specific point that a search may target but the better your content in both amount but quality the easier it will be to place you keywords. Imbedding keywords in content is one way to get them spotted by search engines but good content will force you to have good keywords. As it has been said the best way to hide something is in plain sight.

To better facilitate the use of the aforementioned factors you must understand copyright concepts. Certain things can be copyrighted and certain things can’t. Slogans, titles, names and related items can’t be copyrighted although titles can be trademarked. One important thing to keep in mind is how you use something. The context of how you use a word or phrase or what have you can violate a copyright or not. Copyright in many areas is tricky so be careful. Things created by the government are free domain as well as donated items or things people give permission to use by other people for any purpose.

Learn the rules before you play the game.

Solitaire Klondike: Learn How to Play

2010-07-09T23:20:00.000-07:00

Since computers entered each and every household, classroom and office, solitaire became the most popular game. It is simple to learn, easy to play, and addictive because of its simplicity. But that was ages ago, and people have begun to grow tired of that same old game. As a result, they turned to new variations and Klondike is the most popular of them.

Ironically, its not a new game. The term Klondike as a game surfaces somewhere in the latter part of the nineteen hundred, and historians suggest that it evolved from miners in the Alaskan and Californian mountains to pass the time.

How Can You Play Klondike?
This is not a difficult game to learn, but what's good is that though you will get the hang of it quickly, its difficult to beat in an addictive way. Its not frustrating, but fun and invigorating. One of the things you must learn is how to lay the cards out.

1) Start by placing one card on the table in front of you. Place it facing up.
2) Place another six cards to its left, but keep these facing down.
3) Place a card facing up to the card left of the first card you placed down.
4) Add another card facing down to all the remaining cards a bit below them so as to form a column. Likewise, continue by placing one open card and then by adding a closed card to the rest.

If you follow the instructions properly, you should have it so that last column will have seven cards. Check also that you have twenty-four cards in your hand because these are the cards you will play with.

Now What?
What you have to try and do is place all the cards on the four different aces. These will appear whenever they do, and you have to try and create the four suited sequence from the ace to the king. The moment you see and ace, place it on the side and start adding the next card. (eg: After an ace, place a two and then a three.) Note that each suit must be according to colour and type. By this I mean that the ace of diamond gets only diamonds, the ace of spades gets only spade cards and so on. Likewise, you can create card sequences down on the base cards as well by placing the card lower than it of the opposite colour. For instance, under a six of clubs, you can place either a five of diamonds or a five of hearts, but the five of clubs or the five of spades is out of the question.

Opening the Cards Facing Down
When you can use the cards facing up, then you can open the card that appears under it. And like in regular Solitaire, when you manage to open a base card and have only six or less bases, you can open a new base by placing a King there.

Moving Sequences
You can also move card sequences from one base to another and this doesn't depend on the length of the sequence. All that matters is that the rules of sequence are kept.

To use the cards in your hand, take the top three cards and turn them over. But remember that you can use only the top card. Only if and when you use that card, you can use the next one under it. Continue revealing batches of three. Once done, pick up all the cards and start again.

People Getting Rich Online - Niche Research

2010-07-08T23:20:00.000-07:00

How’s that list coming along? You wll recall in the first part of this series I covered getting a list together of ideas for your site or blog niche. Hopefully you have a good sized list of general categories. The next steps involve narrowing the keywords and then doing some supply and demand research.

There are many keyword tools out there. I like to use Overture’s because it’s free and easy. Keep in mind that the numbers from Overture are usually inflated — sometimes a little sometimes a lot. They fudge the numbers by counting like queries — fly and flies or affiliate and affiliates get counted as the same query. Remember — they make more money convincing their prospective advertisers that a search term is popular.

So plug in one of the general search terms from your list. I’m going to try dogs. Here are the results:

Searches done in February 2006
Count Search Term
1104234 dog
225786 dog breed
183180 dog training basics
152056 dog show
139072 dog breeders
98321 dog name
97021 dog training
91172 dog picture
88480 dog for sale
62657 dog grooming
56907 dog gift

I edited a few like snoop dog out for expediency. I like dog breeds and dog training [basics]. Looks like people are searching for both quite a bit. Now that we have the demand, let’s go over to Google and check the supply.

Type in the exact search term, putting quotes around it so Google searches for exactly what we want. If you put in dog breeds, Google returns 5,59o,000 results. Look in the upper right-hand corner for this number.

Ever heard of Sumantra Roy? Probably not. He’s a man who specializes in SEO and particular keyword research. He has invented a formula called the Keyword Effectiveness Index or KEI to measure the potential of a keyword. I use a simpler version of it. Here it is:

KEI = Demand / Supply

That is - Demand divided by Supply. The higher the KEI the better. This gives you a simplified KEI that ranges from 1-10. People compare this to the Richter Scale, meaning that each successive number is exponentially better than the last number.

In our example above, the KEI for dog breed would be .04, which isn’t that great.

Dog Training Basics yields 45,600 results for Google. The KEI would be 4, which is terrific. Hmm…wait a minute. That concludes our lesson. Bye. [Sound of running down the hallway and door slamming]. A little nerd humor there.

Do a few more and see what you come up with. I did dog name and got a KEI of .10, which is lousy. I also tried dog gift, which got me a KEI of .07.

I usually pick up the highest KEI keywords and plug them back into the Overture tool and try it again.

Incidentally, Wordtracker does this all for you. Try it for free and see how easy it is. Just keep in mind that they use different sources for both supply and demand than my example above, but that shouldn’t make too much of a difference.

So now we should have a much smaller list that has some good prospects on it.

New Web Site Helps Groups Stay Connected

2010-07-07T23:24:00.000-07:00

Groups, clubs and organizations all face the same challenge - how to grow membership while increasing affinity and participation.

Whatever your passion, be it biking, documentary filmmaking, writing or photography, you can grow your group and drive activity by finding an audience at Gather.com.

Members of Gather Groups are connected through interactive, multidirectional communication that extends beyond the one-way communication inherent in today's Internet, according to founder Tom Gerace.

Gather Groups enables members to interact with one another through compelling, member-created content such as articles, photographs, profiles and messaging.

"Today, organizations lose the interest of their membership as soon as the meeting ends," said Gerace. "With Gather Groups members are constantly connected, which increases and maintains group affinity."

Anyone can start such a group, and each receives a unique URL. The group owner determines the moderators; who is allowed to post; and what permissions members have in terms of posting images and articles and inviting new members. Groups are searchable by tags, making it easy to find other members with similar interests. It can not only give your group more exposure, but also help you get feedback from others with the same interests.

"Gather Groups has enabled us to bring those involved with our organization together in a way we had previously been unable to achieve," said Cynthia Close, a documentary filmmaker.

"We've created a high-energy environment around a shared passion which has only fostered further membership participation. Being part of the overall Gather community has helped draw attention to our documentaries and brings out members' new perspectives, ideas and experiences."

Online Payday Lending And The CAN-SPAM Act

2010-07-06T23:19:00.000-07:00

The Internet-based sector of the payday loan industry began in the 1990’s, when the CAN-SPAM Act didn’t yet exist.. That’s because the Act didn’t exist back then. But as the popularity of the payday lending industry has grown, along with the popularity of all sorts of online businesses, it was time for the false claims and the intrusive nature of e-mail marketing to come under control once and for all. When the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 became reality, the online payday lending industry took notice.

The goal of CAN-SPAM, short for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act was to set standards for distinguishing between e-mails that are legitimate and those which are SPAM. The sending of SPAM is against the law. Since the Act applies to all businesses that use email in their operations, most payday lenders found themselves needing to understand this new law that outlined severe consequences including penalties and jail.

Online payday lending and the CAN-SPAM Act

The CAN-SPAM Act delineates guidelines for using email addresses for the purpose of sending and receiving electronically transmitted marketing materials. It is an extensive act, and here are some of the basics.

First of all, the Act prohibits the sending of unsolicited email. New online payday lending websites are springing up every day and each is competing hard to steer the attention of the masses in its own direction. Mass emailing messages with flashy advertisements and discounted offers is a popular way to steer new customers to this lucrative business.

One way to distinguish a good online payday lending business from the “bad” ones is by never agreeing to do business with a payday loan company that sends you unsolicited commercial email. Any legitimate company would never purposely violate the CAN-SPAM Act so you’d have to wonder about the legitimacy of a payday loan company that would intentionally do so.

The CAN-SPAM Act also states that the information in e-mail headers and subject lines must not to be falsified. If you find yourself the willing recipient of advertising from an online payday lending company and you are tempted to respond to the e-mail, go ahead and do so. If the information to which you responded turns out to be incorrect or misleading, that company could be in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act.

Choose online payday lending businesses that adhere to the CAN-SPAM Act

Another section of the CAN-SPAM Act states that any email message you receive must include an opt-out link. The link is a way of notifying the sender that you no longer want to receive email from that sender. If the email lacks such opt-out opportunity, the online payday lending business is violating the CAN-SPAM Act. Again, that’s probably one online payday lender you should stay away from.

Even though most online payday lending businesses are legitimate, some aren’t. The CAN-SPAM Act helps weed out the bad online payday lending companies so you don’t have to.

Make A Living On-Line

2010-07-05T23:19:00.000-07:00

Is it possible to make a part time or full time living on the Internet? Can you make enough money to make your time worthwhile?

According to all the "gurus" you can easily make a LOT of money by buying their program and doing EXACTLY what they tell you to do.

Is all of this hype really true? The answer is yes and no. It really is true that a stay at home Mom or a student in need of extra income or a full time worker needing a part-time income can make money on the Internet. It is also true that a lot of people are making a full-time living and even becoming rich on the Internet.

The question is, "Can you do it too"? Again the answer is maybe yes and maybe no. It depends on how much time you are willing to invest in studying the techniques and learn the methods you need for Internet Marketing (IM) success.

The fastest way to earn extra money online is to sell on Ebay. You can start right now, today, and in 3 days be paid online for items you sell. There are a lot of "get rich quick" tutorials for sale on how to make it on Ebay, but you don't need one. You can simply register at the Ebay site, read their tutorial and get started selling items you have around the house.

A lot of people make a few extra dollars to a few hundred extra dollars a month on Ebay. Others make a lot more. Ebay or any business you get into online or in a physical business location has the potential to make money. Lots of people succeed in business and a lot fail. Your success or failure will depend on how well you prepare, how much you study and how much energy you put into the project.

The great thing about online businesses compared to brick and mortar stores is it usually costs a lot less to get started. For instance, getting stared selling on Ebay doesn't cost anything. You only pay fees when you run an Ebay auction ad.

Once you have some money rolling in on Ebay, you can invest in one of the guru courses that you can find in any search engine by doing a search for, "Internet marketing".

Do you have to buy a course? No, you can find free information online to help you get started. The advantage of a course is that it is all in one place.

Every course you find will offer you good advice. It is hard to say which is best. Just like some people love Fords and hate Chevy's, it is the same with IM guru courses. The secret is to do a little online research, pick one and then follow it.

Internet Marketing can be as easy as creating a simple website and putting other company's ads on the site. You get paid when someone buys a product or even when someone clicks on an ad. You don't even need a product to sell; you only have other's ads on your web pages.

Ebay is a make money today proposition. For most people, Internet Marketing is a get rich slow process. Yes, some people make money within days or weeks of starting on online business.

There are no hard and fast rules on how long it will take you to make money online or how much you can make. It all depends on how hard you are willing to work and how much time you are willing to devote to creating a new business.

Online Business And The Solution Driven Mindset

2010-07-04T23:25:00.000-07:00

I can't begin to relate how rewarding it is to have a solution driven mindset. This is the manner of thinking that looks at a difficulty and tries to find a solution, as opposed to excuses or avoidance. Online business is a business like any other, and problems occasionally arise. You might also fail to reach your goals once in a while, and both of these are instances where a solution driven mindset works so very well.

Some of you may know it better as "no excuses", but I see no reason to be harsh about it here. If you want to be successful in online business, you'll need to think in a way that solves your problems so you can meet your goals. Excuses are unproductive, and avoiding the problem isn't going to work for you either. The whole point of a solution driven mindset is to overcome your problems so you can make money in your online business and live your own life.

This mindset can be summed up as follows:

- If you have a problem, find a way to fix or mitigate it.

- If you see a problem coming, find a way to avert it.

- If you fail to accomplish something, figure out why so you don't fail again.

All well and good, but how do you solve problems? The first and foremost way is with learning. Knowledge is power. You'll need to know about how things work online to run an online business. This is less difficult than you might think. The Internet has it's own way of doing things, like anything else. But, it's not as difficult to comprehend as it may appear at a glance. All those complicated-sounding terms have explanations that aren't that mindblowing if you'll simply learn them.

The second is to act. Knowing the solution does you no good if you don't do something with it. I'm not talking about panic, which is an exceptional way to insure what you fear most comes to pass. I mean acting on your solution and putting it into effect. Come up with an effective plan to solve the problem and then use it.

Last, remember that problems don't get solved by any of the following:

- Ignoring them: Problems don't exist only in your mind. They can hurt you even if you don't want to know they're present.

- Giving up and making excuses: If you can't solve a problem at first, don't give up. You can either learn what it takes to solve it, or find someone who can solve it for you. Excuses aren't helpful, as no volume of them has ever made a problem go away. If they did, the world would be a problem-free utopia.

- Allowing a problem or failure to overcome you: Problems and failures happen. It's a fact of life and not a reflection on you. If they get rough, take a bit of time to make yourself feel better, then analyze your performance and try again.

- Not averting them: It's a blessing when you can see a problem coming, although I know it causes a lot of people heartburn when they do. If you see a potential trouble on the horizon, act to insure it never comes to pass. An ounce of prevention can be worth a pound of cure. It'll take less time, money, and effort to solve problems or avert them before they become big problems.

- Panic: It's worth mentioning this one a second time. I've actually seen former supervisors do this and bring their own worst fears to life in a frenzy of so-called 'preventative action'. To panic is not the equivalent of taking something seriously. Taking something seriously is the equivalent of taking something seriously. Panic is a good way to waste a lot of time and money. So suppress panic when things look tough, and just cut straight to the 'take it seriously' part.

I highly encourage those of you intending to start your own online business to develop a solution driven mindset. The path to wealth online can best be reached when you solve your problems and overcome your failures, which this type of mindset can do.

Innovative Solutions for Internet Branding

2010-07-03T23:17:00.000-07:00

Since the advent of the Internet, computers have changed the way people work, play and communicate.

Today's children are learning by computer games. Today's businesses are building stronger relationships and experiencing significant change in organization and filing, research and operation - and even advertising and marketing - through their desktops.

There are more than 200 million Internet users, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. To keep up with the rapidly expanding Internet marketplace, many businesses are turning to companies like Centale Inc. (OTC BB: CNTL), based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., which helps communicate, market, brand and advertise on the Internet.

The company's "next generation tools," like Catalyst EV, Music On Demand for Windows Media Player, custom Web browsers, instant messengers, media players and toolbars are used in all types of organizations where the goal is to build a community; communicate with subscribers or customers; develop new revenue channels; and increase brand exposure, traffic and customer loyalty.

With Catalyst EV, businesses are building effective marketing campaigns through a programmable desktop application that can be distributed as an e-mail attachment or downloadable via the customer Web site. This cutting-edge technology has Centale customers communicating with their audience, one-to-one direct to the desktop in audio, video, rich media, animation or text format.

Centale's universal instant messenger connects simultaneously to AOL, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber, IRC, Napster and other networks. Music on Demand is a desktop application that allows users to find virtually any song or video in the world and play it instantly without downloading any files. Centale plans to unveil an iTunes-compatible version of Music on Demand to attract digital-music listeners.

Music On Demand for Windows Media Player includes a publishing tool that allows webmasters to create and list their songs in the search directory.

Centale's custom-made branded browsers offer Internet security that blocks pop-ups and sexually explicit material. The browsers include an efficient search engine, an easy-to-use interface for people who are visually and audibly impaired and multilingual menus and translators.

A Good Web Site Is a Web Site That Works!

2010-07-02T23:16:00.000-07:00

How can you know if your web site is a good website, or what is a good website?

A good website is a website that works, if you have created your website to sell some products, you can say that your website is a good website if it does sell products.

* But are you selling as many products as a good website sells, or you are only selling a few products now and then?
* Are your sales pages good enouth to consider your website a good website?
* Do you have enough visitors to your website to consider it a good website?
* Do you have enough return traffic or all your visitors are first time visitors?
* Do your visitors stay enough time to consider your website a good website?
* How can you know for sure if your website is a good website?
* What kind of questions should you be making to yourself to know if your webite is a good website

ASK YOURSELF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS TO KNOW IF YOUR WEBSITE IS A GOOD WEBSITE

* Who cares?
* What are you looking for?
* What kind of visitors do you have?
* Which is your priority?
* How should you mesure your success?

WHO CARES?

If the website belongs to a company, then the web pages don´t belong to a single person, there´s not only one person that can say if you have a good website, so you will have to round up the people that are vitally interested

You will find the techno-geeks, the sales people, the public relations people, etc. etc. and everyone of them will have their own idea of what is a good website.

But once again as the website belongs to ALL the company, the people on your company who care enough to judge the website, should be asked to join the team and take some responsability about the design of the website.

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?

Every one of the people who cares about the website will have their own idea of what they want out of a good website. Many of them will just be talking on behalf of their own departments, but you must force them to think on behalf of the company.

Every department can have their own objetives, goals and aspirations, every one has his own idea about what is a good website, but they need to think as a company, and the conclusion must satisfy most of them, and if you can, your must create a good webpage for all of them.

WHAT KIND OF VISITORS DO YOU HAVE?

Every website has first time visitors, returning visitors, curious, buyers, people that arrived by mistake, people that spend a short time at the website, people that spend a long time at the website, etc.

What kind of visitors do you want, the ones that show more often, the ones that read the most pages, buys more stuff, buys more frequently or spend the most money?

Which are the most important visitors for your company, to think that you have a good website?

Once you get them you can be satisfied that your site is a good website

WHICH IS YOUR PRIORITY?

Once you know what everybody wants, you will have to prioritize everybody´s goals.

Will you go after increasing visits, selling more products per visit, provide more information about the company and it´s products, improving customer satisfaction.

After a discussion that will depend on how many people is giving their own opinion about what cares most, you´ll end up with your own list of priorities, and the ones that will not be satisfied with their request, at leas will know why.

HOW SHOULD YOU MESURE YOUR SUCCESS?

How can you be sure that the numbers that you are getting are telling you that your site is a good website, It depends...

* If your main priority is to get visitors, then www.Alexa.com and it´s ranking can help you on that, but you can also use some javacript and or cookies.
* If your main goal is revenue then the sales will have the leading voice.
* If you are going after customer satisfaction then you must agree with the other members of your company how will you gather satisfaction data and how will you weigh it.

All the information that you gather must help you take business decisions. It´s not a matter of getting as much information as you can, because too much information can be as bad as not enough information.

Make sure that you keep on measuring your success, make it part of a constant improvement process, because the web changes month after month.

Then you´ll really be able to tell if your website is a good website

Written by Dr. Roberto A. Bonomi

A Free Online Business Is Not Necessarily "Free"

2010-07-01T23:16:00.000-07:00

Almost every hour of every day, the Internet turns up with more advertisements to entice people who are interested in starting up their own online business. Why not start an online business, indeed? First off, it is quite lucrative, once you know what you have to do, what you need and how hard your resolution must be to succeed.

Having assured yourself of a sensible and thorough decision, you can start looking up for free online business advertisements. Weigh up your prospects and see the most lucrative of them all. However, you also need to see the reality that free online business is not necessarily free. There may only be some aspects in the business wherein you do not have to invest any amount to actually open up your online business.

Otherwise, there are bills to pay -- internet access, computer maintenance, electric bills, food, etc. Keeping this in mind will prevent you from getting bitterly disappointed.

Next, look up actual experiences of online entrepreneurs who are now earning thousands of dollars. From their experiences you may learn several things that will help you become ready than ever to launch your free online business.

- On getting a domain - Accept the fact that you cannot open up an online business without a website. In looking for a domain, there will be some free offerings while some are paid. Either you choose the free online business domain offerings or the paid ones, remember to research on the features of the domain you will get before starting any transaction. If your online business need more than what the free online business domains are offering, do not hesitate to register in a paid domain.

- On Web hosting - your online business domain must reach everywhere. Better not search free offerings for these and choose the best services, even if they might cost you some dollars. However, choose the web hosting service that offers the ones you need. Do not spend on other features that you do not require.

A reliable web host has great uptime record, offers excellent customer service and has a reputation in the search engines. You do not need empty promises in web hosting services.

- On Website stats - Your online business will rely largely on the users it attracts. It is important to have a great tracker that will actually show you how many visitors you got and be able to identify each one. You must also know their reaction to your website. Know the pages they view most, so that you can refine your website and improve your marketing efforts.

- On Ad tracker - like the website stat, advertisement tracker assists you in knowing which of your marketing campaigns have the best results.

With the advertisement tracker, you will know how many users responded or reacted to your ad. Probably not all your marketing techniques are effective. With the ad tracker, you will know exactly what marketing techniques to retain and continue doing.

- On Auto responders - these tools will assist you in following up your numerous client's requests and queries with necessary data they ask for and you think, they might need.

- On List hosts - for your free online business to prosper, you must know how to capture your target customer's email address. By knowing their e-mail addresses, you can contact them on a more personal level and build a trusting and credible business 'relationship' with them.

Your free online business will also flourish more, if you as its manager and administrator educate yourself in making your venture prosper. Many courses online offer free online business training and comprehensive orientations.

Many free online business information from reputable websites give you tons of tips on handling your internet business.

Free online business may not be very free. Nevertheless, in breaking down the aspects you need to have and know in getting started, you will find many free offerings to take advantage of.

A Comprehensive Strategy For Using Website Statistics

2010-06-30T23:15:00.000-07:00

An crucial component of any e-commercialism first step is to track the effectiveness of the marketing effort. Through careful psychoanalysis of a website's statistics much selective information tin be gleaned that tin can be further secondhand to fine-tune the advertising, website subject and customer relationship management strategies and policies. These wholly of import elements of Internet marketing plans and strategies that toilet ultimately dictate the achiever or failure of any e-mercantilism opening move.

Surfing the World Wide Web involves traversing the connections among hyperlinked documents. It is I of the about common ways of accessing World Wide Web pages. Theories and models beginning to explain how observed patterns of surfboarding behavior emerge from fundamental human entropy hunt processes. Hence, the ability to predict surfriding patterns has the potential to be instrumental in solving many problems facing producers and consumers depicted object. For instance, website designs lavatory be evaluated and optimized by predicting how users volition surf done their structures. Web node and host applications lav besides reduce substance abuser perceived network latency by pre-fetching cognitive content predicted to be on the path of individual users or groups of users with similar patterns. Systems and interfaces john be enhanced by the ability to recommend mental object of interest to users, or by displaying info in a way that best matches users' interests. Proper depth psychology of a website's activity is therefore an authoritative process that supports an enhanced and intelligent design of a website. Continued from Page 1. Given the limitations of the data recorded in memory access logs, it is not surprising that sites command users to adhere to cookies and defeat caching to gain More accurate usage.

Still, numerous sites either do not employment cookies or do not compel users to accept a to gain entree to message. In these cases, determining alone(p) users and their paths through with(p) a website is typically done heuristically. Even once cookies exploited, several scenarios potential a previously encountered is refined. If the petition is coming from the like server regardless of the agentive role, the postulation is treated as organism issued by the equal. This is because a unequaled is issued to only single web browser.

If the asking comes from a known horde, and then we could wealthy person a new to(p) or the, otherwise the bespeak is from a dissimilar. It is significant to point out that these latter two cases could too be issued from non- compliant crawling software package. An interesting set of scenarios pass off a unexampled is encountered. If the call for is from a legion that has already been and the previous economic value of the was "null" and the federal agent is the, it is carnival to conclude that the quest is from a young that just received their first from the waiter in the previous. If the guest is not victimization obfuscation package, unity would expect the following requests from this to altogether contain the.

Withal, suppose the previous time value from the innkeeper and was a another(a), it could be the obfuscating requests, or a Modern from the ISP victimisation the version and platform as the from the previous. Barring any other piece of supporting evidence like the referrer line of business or consulting the's topology, it is difficult to decide which the correct scenario is. If the is from the previous, but accompanies a New from the boniface, it is funfair to wear that a raw has entered the.

Of course, a wet behind the ears(p) from a fresh master of ceremonies regardless of the is a novel. You bathroom likewise learn something approximately visitors by studying their realm names. Though the lumber file cabinet may record IP addresses, your analytic thinking program commode make up one's mind from many of these IP numbers the associated world or ISP. This might tell you if your almost customer - or competitor - has been looking at your pages. The all but simplistic assumption to make close to users is that to each one IP destination or demesne name represents a unequalled.

Using this method, whole the requests made by the emcee treated as through and through from a single. Once a newfangled is detected, a recently profile is created and the corresponding requests associated to the newly. Several methods that consumption additional recorded in the accession logs or other heuristics as well conceivable. One refinement is to economic consumption the airfield. Using this method, freshly users identified as above as well as requests coming from the machine give birth agents. Another refinement is to place session timeouts on requests made from the machine. The intuition is that if a certain amount of time has elapsed, the old has left the and a has entered. A IP name and address is encountered (put on this is a ), or 2. an already IP speech is encountered and: * a session is terminated due to a timeout, get into a has entered the. Thence, if a substantial part of your statistics imply that many of the hosts and timeouts were from hosts in the land/IP turn to space, you crapper infer that a big identification number of website users either connect to the via ISPs with lading balancing proxies, or that a prominent phone number of users admittance the from within the sphere, as would pass with a magnanimous company, or that some combination of both cases exist.

Laying Horses The Easy Way

2010-06-29T23:35:00.000-07:00

One of the best laying strategies that I often employ is to lay very short priced favourites with the sole intention of backing them later on in the event. Let me explain, let us say that you are looking at a tennis match between Tim Henman and a low ranked unseeded player in a first round match at Wimbledon. Tim Henman is the reigning champion and one of the most gifted  players ever to hold a racket and his opponent basically has no or very little chance

The odds of 1.04 on the exchanges reflects the Swiss players supremacy and expected victory. But you have to understand that despite Henman's supremacy and his almost certain victory, he is after all going up against another top tennis player. He is not playing some semi decent local club player. This means that there will likely be periods in the  match where he will not dominate his opponent.

When you look at the result of a tennis match like this and it reads 7-5,6-4, 6-0, it looks pretty convincing for the winner. Of course over the entire space of the match, that is what it is. But if we were to break the match down into periods then what tends to reveal itself is that the weaker opponent will have good spells

What looking at the overall result will not show was that Henmans was 5-5 in the first set and a break of serve down in the second set. It is these periods that will have a profound effect on the relative prices of both competitors on the betting exchanges.

A clear betting exchange strategy now presents itself. When you LAY any competitor at a massively short price and 1.04 is a massive 1-25, your maximum potential downside is known. If you back Henman at 1.04 for £100 then you only  stand to win £4. But the reverse is true when you are laying. If you Lay Henman to that same £100 and he wins then your liability is only £4.

In fact, it is less than £4 because if things fail to go your way and Henman just simply steam rollers his opponent and his price quickly shortens to 1.01 and stays there, you can still back Federer at this price to reduce your losses. But if as expected, the match enters one of those phases where Henman is playing loosely or hasn't warmed up yet or maybe is lacking motivation against his journeyman opponent, then his "well up for it" opposition may start to enjoy relative success in various stages of the match.

When Henmans's price hits 1.10 when it is 5-5 in the first set then you can back him for that same £100 to win £10 should he win and thus lock in a bet to nothing. Many events in various sports that have overwhelming favourites follow this pattern where the supposed "no hoper" will have a decent spell in the match and profits on the betting exchanges can accrue from those who are smart enough to do the exact opposite of what everyone else is doing.

A Closer Look At Micropayments

2010-06-29T23:15:00.000-07:00

During the early days of the Internet, most of the contents found online are provided for free, either by different institutions or universities. As the years go by, the Internet has experienced various innovations. One major factor in the evolution of the Internet is the consumers’ ability to purchase, sell and advertise products and services, a concept that is more commonly referred to as “e-Commerce”.

As the popularity of the Internet continuously grows, it is only natural for the content providers to start looking for different ways of making money from the content that they publish online. Basically, there are three ways for users to earn money from content; one is through advertising. Here, the content is available for free; however it comes with certain ads or links to their sponsor sites.

Another way for content providers to make money is by charging subscriptions, wherein consumers are required to pay a certain amount in exchange for access to the content for a certain period of time. The downside to the subscription model is that it only offers one choice to the consumer – either they do not pay the subscription and thus get no content or pay a substantial fee to get all the content. Oftentimes, this kind of choice led the consumers to move on to sites that offer content for free. Meanwhile, the third form of revenue is through donations that are solicited by the content providers themselves.

However, in 1998 a fourth form of revenue was proposed – the micropayment system. The concept of micropayments would not die down completely, nor would it fully come to life. What are micropayments, exactly? Micropayment is generally defined as the means of transferring small amounts of money (usually in pennies, nickel or dimes), usually in purchasing digital contents like music, movies, games and others.

Since charging such small amounts through the customary payment system like credit cards is impractical, the micropayment system is a viable option for those websites that wish to go "micro". The main objective of micropayments is to target a high volume of consumers by offering content at a relatively low price. It is also usual for micropayment systems to accumulate several payments and then charge it in one regular payment.

Most micropayments advocates firmly believe that the micropayment system is the solution to the free rider problem for those sites that are solely dependent on advertising. As for websites that are charging subscription fees, micropayments will be a viable alternative in order to increase the number of their consumers.

However, regardless of all the benefits that micropayment systems seem to offer, its popularity among the consumers did not quite catch on for quite a time. This is mainly due to the pressing disadvantages that micropayment detractors are quick to point out. Most micropayment system detractors insist that micropayments would cause inconvenience rather than convenience to consumers. How so? The most popular argument used is the "mental transaction cost".

What does mental transaction cost mean? Well, this is where a consumer stops and thinks twice whether the content is actually worth the price, regardless of how small the price is. This could cut down the number of your customer, since more people are likely to opt for free content.

The people pushing micropayments believe that the dollar cost of goods is the thing most responsible for deflecting readers from buying content, and that a reduction in price to micropayment levels will allow creators to begin charging for their work without deflecting readers.

Another possible drawback to using micropayment systems is that it requires the consumer to use major credit cards. Remember that Internet consumers are quite diverse in age; therefore, you cannot assume that all of them would have credit cards. Since teenagers are under the legal age, they do not have credit cards. Moreover, even among those consumers living in highly developed countries, not everyone has a credit card, and borrowing someone else’s credit card just to read a certain article in the Internet would prove to be a big inconvenience. Simply put, micropayment systems could very well alienate those consumers who do not have credit cards.

So with all these disadvantages, why do we need micropayments? With the growing demand for ethereal products (like information) in global economies and their immediate delivery at a low cost, the customary payment methods seemed to be impractical. Since most information found online (Web pages, Web links, etc.) cost barely a penny, the cost of charging in the usual payment method would turn out to be more expensive than the actual product. Thus, micropayment is a viable alternative.

A lot of content providers agreed that micropayments offer them the opportunity to regain the cost of online publishing, even possibly make money, that is, if they are popular enough. At present, content providers see their online popularity as a disadvantage since their popularity requires them to pay for large amounts of bandwidth. Another benefit that micropayment systems offer content providers is the opportunity to be completely free from sponsorship and advertising, which offers them more independence. Without advertising the provider could concentrate on publishing materials that interests their consumers instead of what interests their advertisers.

Micropayment systems are showing signs of recovery recently, what with the launching of Apple’s iTunes $0.99 a-song, the model is finally showing some signs of life. Furthermore, reports on the state of the paid content market shows that, content purchases below $5 increased 707% in 2002. A veritable accomplishment, since it made a seven-fold leap from virtually nothing.

Although, millions of people find the notion of purchasing $.99 songs at iTunes attractive, Apple’s administrators themselves admitted that most consumers still prefer purchasing larger album packages instead of the per song purchases. After all, Internet users do not purchase content as if they were a piece of candy. Some micropayment solutions even admit that their customers are loading less money into their accounts than what they initially expect which means that a considerable barrier still remains. Now, whether the micropayment system will eventually find success this time around or not will still depend on the consumers’ behavior, a hurdle that is yet to be crossed.

A Click On Your Profits

2010-06-28T23:14:00.001-07:00

Pay-per-click advertising is a very economical compared to other advertising tools on the Internet. You pay only when a visitor clicks on your ad and goes to either your web site or to the website of which you are an affiliate of. The advantage of pay per click advertising is that you do not need a website, and this is an ideal way for home business beginners to earn money on a low budget.
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The main advantage of Pay per click adverting is that you only pay for actual clicks on your ads. Pay per click internet advertising lists your ads according to your bids on your keywords. Of course, ads which pay more are ranked higher.

Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing are the two most popular Pay per Click programs on the net.

Another advantage of Pay per Click programs is that you can constantly monitor the progress of your ads, edit your keywords, change the bids on your keywords, Change the Daily Budget (You can set a daily budget for your ads. After your daily budget gets exhausted, your ads stop running. on that day) This can be done anytime and any number of times. If you find your ads are not working for you , you can pause the ad or simply delete it.

Before you actually launch on a pay per click advertising, make sure to check out your competition. It will give you a good idea as to how to structure your ad. Also make out a list of keywords with which you want to link your product. A useful tip is to try out Wordtracker’s trial package to get the necessary keywords. You can also get the KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) here which will allow you to determine the niche keyword and not get lost in a sea of keywords. This is a very effective tool to determine the competition of the keywords and gives you a good idea as to which keywords to bid for to get targeted audience to click your ads at an economical price.

The Pay per Click advertising allows you to test market your future campaigns. If you intend to launch a full fledged website , Pay per Click advertising allows you to test the waters. You can analyse your keywords and find out which works for you best You can also test viability of the products for which you are an affiliate of.

Pay per Click advertising not only helps you in earning money but can also be a very effective marketing and information tool for your future businesses.

A Brief Synopsis of the Internet

2010-06-28T23:14:00.000-07:00

Like an opening act for a play, the telegraph, telephone, and radio all took a part in introducing the World Wide Internet. The Internet had no problem taking over and crashing many predictions about whether or not it would be successful. It has no boundaries and pays no attention to international limits or geographic locations. Instantly you are connected to scores of businesses and people all over the world.

With its origins dating back almost 50 years ago, J.C.R. Licklider at MIT recorded the first description of the communications that could be performed through networking. Between him and a host of other individuals with brilliant forward thinking, the idea of the internet was conceived.

The first email made its appearance back in the early 1970’s as a way for the developers to communicate with one another. By the mid-1980’s the internet was being used by various developers and researchers as well as being tried out by many computer businesses. It finally was given a name in October 1995.

The internet became a vital part of today’s economy. Many companies regard it as a critical part of their daily activities. Individuals rely on it for their communication to the outside world. Bills may be paid, homework research accomplished, books read, Christmas shopping accomplished, music downloaded and personal relationships established through their access to the internet.

Although it may not seem so, the internet has changed greatly in the last 2 decades since its birth. Through file sharing, remote login, resource sharing and electronic mail, it has definitely kept up with the fast-paced computer industry. Expect nothing else through the future.

A Brief History Of The Popup Ad

2010-06-27T23:13:00.000-07:00

Pop-up ads are a form of online advertising on the World Wide Web intended to increase web traffic or capture email addresses. It works when certain web sites open a new web browser window to display advertisements. The pop-up window containing an advertisement is usually generated by JavaScript, but can be generated by other means as well.

A variation on the pop-up window is the pop-under advertisement. This opens a new browser window, behind the active window. Pop-unders interrupt the user less, but are not seen until the desired windows are closed, making it more difficult for the user to determine which Web site opened them.

For early advertising-supported web sites, banner ads were sufficient revenue generators, but in the wake of the dot com crash, prices paid for banner advertising clickthroughs decreased and many vendors began to investigate more effective advertising methods. Pop-up ads by their nature are difficult to ignore or overlook, and are claimed to be more effective than static banner ads. Pop-ups have a much higher click rate than web banner ads do (about every 14,000th popup ad is clicked on).

Pornographic web sites are among the most common users of pop-up ads. Some particularly vicious types of pop-up ads (again, most often seen in connection with adult entertainment sites) appear to have either been programmed improperly or have been specifically designed to "hijack" a user's Internet session. These forms of pop-ups sometimes spawn multiple windows, and as each window is closed by the user it activates code that spawns another window -- sometimes indefinitely. This is sometimes referred to by users as a "Java trap", "spam cascade" or "Pop-up Hell" among other names. Usually the only way to stop this is to close the browser.

Opera was the first major browser to incorporate popup-blocking tools; the Mozilla browser later improved on this by blocking only popups generated as the page loads. In the early 2000s, all major web browsers except Internet Explorer (then the most popular browser and still as of 2006) allowed the user to block unwanted pop-ups almost completely.

In 2004, Microsoft released Windows XP SP2, which added pop-up blocking to Internet Explorer. Many users, however, remain unaware of this ability, or else choose not to use it. Many others are not able to use it at all, as they do not use Windows XP SP2, but older versions of Windows. Some users install non-Microsoft ad-blocking software instead.

A Brief History About Downloading Music

2010-06-26T23:13:00.000-07:00

Downloading music is a process whereby music files are opened on the Internet and saved for future use. This has become one of the world’s greatest online pastimes during recent years, and the popularity of downloading music continues to grow.

Ironically, however, downloading music didn’t start off in the most positive light. As a matter of fact, it was considered quite illegal, and many file-sharing technologies, such as peer-to-peer networks, provided countless music to the public free of charge and without the permission of either the artists or the music copyright owners. One famous site known for this, Napster, was incited for breaking copyright laws and told to shut down. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), this practice was not only unlawful; it was hurting sales for the music industry—downloading music from the Internet exceeded sales of CDs and videos in some countries. Many lawsuits ensued, and yet other sites were ordered to shut down.

Several artists cried out at the practice of downloading music. They felt betrayed, since their hard-earned music was being passed along without profit and without their permission. They felt disrespected and ripped off!

Eventually, there was a solution that would keep downloading music an active pastime. Legal digital downloads became popular through iTunes in 2003, and downloading music from the Internet increased exponentially, setting new records in sales. One example of this is Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy, which landed a position at the top of the U.K. Singles Chart solely on the distribution of downloading music. Napster is back online, too.

Interestingly enough, many of the artists themselves got in on the online game of downloading music, and now lots of their music is available on their personal and commercial sites. These downloads, however, are either brief previews or low-quality sampling—enough for the artists to market their music to those who prefer downloading music, and also to make money online as well as through music outlets!

Downloading music, then, has been a rather shaky ordeal for many, but due to compromise and innovative technological advances, this practice is fortunate enough to continue for some time to come!

A Beginner’s Toolbox: 8 Things Every Home Should Have

2010-06-25T23:12:00.000-07:00

Congratulations! You’re living out on your own. If you’re renting an apartment or bought a home of your own, there are going to be little things you need tools for. Whether it’s removing part of a light fixture to replace the lightbulb, or hanging your favorite pictures on the wall, a basic toolbox can come in handy. Here are the top eight tools that will be the most helpful.

1. A flashlight. This is crucial, even if you don’t buy anything else on the list. If the power goes out, or you can’t find the exact lid for your Tupperware container in the back of the cabinet, shedding some light makes life a lot easier.

2. A screwdriver. For maximum efficiency, and especially if you are going to be doing just little jobs, there are screwdrivers available now that have removable tips so you can buy just one tool for all screws and swap out the tips depending on what you need.

3. A tape measure. Ask anyone who has ever rented an apartment and then couldn’t fit the couch in any of the rooms, having a tape measure is a good thing to have. It will help you place furniture, decide how big an area rug to buy, or know how long a cable you will need for your TV.

4. Adjustable pliers. Maybe two pair, one large and one small. Maybe the previous owner or tenant left a nail in the wall that just won’t come out, or they used a stapler in the windowsill to hang their Christmas lights. Pliers will give you the grip you need to pull things out.

5. An adjustable wrench. This will help you tighten (or loosen) nuts and bolts. You can change your shower head, or loosen your dryer vent tubing to check for lint.

6. A hammer. Hang things on the wall, close up a paint can securely, or pound in stakes so your kids can camp out in the backyard.

7. An electric drill. You can keep it pretty basic, but a drill can save lots of time. Buy one that has a screwtip adapter also, and you can drive in screws much faster than with a manual screwdriver (and with less stress on your wrist).

8. A first aid kit. Don’t own a home without one. If you’re a first timer with any of the rest of the tools, you can put this to good use when you pinch yourself with pliers, or cut yourself on a fast retracting tape measure.

3 Simple Steps to Your Own Website - Explained.

2010-06-24T23:11:00.000-07:00

So you want to build that website – for whatever reason, perhaps you’ve started a business or simply wish to share pictures of the new addition to your family. Let me tell you it’s easier than you think – all you need is directions that you can follow and you will soon be online.

Let’s talk what it will cost upfront. For $10 - $20/month you can have a working website (Imagine: www.yourname.com), available to anyone in the world with internet access. That’s a trip to your favourite fast food joint. (Yes, you can afford it!) There are also some ways of getting a free site – still residing at www.yourname.com, but lets learn about all those weird internet terms first.

There are 3 basic components required to building a personal, custom website.
You need:
- A domain name
- A hosting account and
- Content written in HTML or some other web language.
I know, what’s a domain name!!!?

Here is an analogy I teach:

You live in a home that is built on a certain piece of land (that you rent or buy). That piece of land has a specific address.

Your website (a collection of individual web pages) sits on a hosting account that you rent. That hosting account is found at a specific address – called a domain name.

Your Home Your Website
Your Street Address: e.g. 1 John St, Anytown
Your domain name: e.g. www.yourname.com
Your plot of land Your hosting account
Your physical house Your web content

Here is the 3 step process:
STEP 1: Choose your address
STEP 2: Rent some space on a computer connected to the internet
STEP 3: Build the house you want and place it on the space you bought in step 2

Let’s explain each step:
STEP 1: Choose your address (a domain name)
With the internet you can choose what you want your address to be (your domain name). What are you selling? What would make a cool name? Understand that after over 10 years of public internet access – a lot of good names have been taken. So get creative, and be unique but understandable. An easy place to start with is your full name for a family/personal site or your product name for a business site. Make a list of about 10 possibilities that you like in this format www.yourdesiredname.com Move to the next step.

STEP 2: Rent some space on a computer connected to the internet (A hosting account)
With a quick search for the words “Web Hosting” on the internet, you get a list of web hosting companies – all eager to sell or rent you some space on their computer. GoDaddy.com and 1and1.com are some recommended companies – feel free to look into others, but there are thousands upon thousands – so don’t waste your time searching for the cheapest (you pay for what you get, but $10+ will get you a decent hosting account.

Many of the hosting companies will either give you or sell you your choice of domain name at the same time you start your hosting account. Bring out your list from STEP 1, and when instructed in the purchase process, enter in your first domain name choice. You will be informed if that name is available or not. Keep trying out your names in order of your preference until you find on that is available. Finish the purchase process and let the hosting company instruct you on how to access you account. (They’ll send you an email – and if you go with one of the companies I recommended, you can call them with your questions.)

STEP 3: Build the house you want and place it on the space you bought in step 2
You have some choices to make here:
A - You can ask someone to build you a site.
B - You can build it yourself.
C - Use a free website builder – (like a blog)
Each has its pros and cons.

The first option is great if you can afford it and can find someone reliable. If you want cheap, post a job at your local high school – someone in computer club will be able to help you for really cheap. The problem is that they may not always be around when you need them to make changes. Enter choice B

It’s great to learn a new skill, and you can learn for free online – just invest a little time. Remember once you know how… you own that knowledge forever and you will never depend on someone else to build your site. Again search online for “how to build a website” They will tell you how to design, build and upload your site onto your hosting account form STEP 2.

If you don’t really require a customized design and all you want to do is place some text and perhaps some pictures online. I suggest starting what’s called a blog - these are often free, and have a really simple “HTML CODE FREE” way of adding your content. All you do is type and publish. You can often still have your own domain name here, but each blogging company is different. Again search online for blogging – and read what the various companies offer.

Content
There is one thing that is really important and that ONLY you can do! That is come up with the content and the idea. Think about what you have to offer and what problem it solves for your visitors and prepare your content so as to answer that problem. E.g. You write great jokes. People are looking for jokes… your website should give people some jokes and perhaps they can register for your daily joke email.
Write simply, write short, write clearly. As time goes on, remember to keep your site fresh. Keep the content updated and relevant to your ideal visitors.

The goal of this article was to give you easy steps of how to get a website for yourself. Naturally you can learn more about each step, and there are many people who can give you help, but now you can start the journey. Create your list of domain names, purchase a hosting account (including the domain name you want) and build your site and keep the content fresh.

In future articles I’ll take about next steps:

- “I build it, but they ain’t coming to see it.”

- “I built it, but nobody’s buying”

- “I built it, but I don’t know how to improve it.”

A journey of a million miles starts with one step – so go to step 1 and start. (Don’t worry – this is not a long journey – but it’s exciting!).

Here to Help You!

Thanks for reading,
Your Rich Cousin
(Author and Business Success Story) Get the free e-book that got me started and helped me start making money at http://www.richcousin.com It's so straight forward and easy to understand AND you will have the support you need to start making a great income online.

3 Legitimate Reasons For Getting An Immediate Product Refund

2010-06-22T23:09:00.001-07:00

So now that you've finally decided to purchase that product and can't wait to try it out, you have to find out that it does anything else but what you've expected. Don't worry, you still have a chance to get your money back with the following tips for getting an immediate product refund.

1. False advertising

"Get 10.000 hits to your website in 24 hours". Such tempting promises might sure make you wanna flip out your credit card immediately. But when you apply the methods or use the software and have to find out that those 10.000 hits might really result in 10, then this is a legitimate reason for requesting a refund. Unfortunately it's not always that easy. Many vendors get around such false advertising by stating in the fine print that these results cannot be guaranteed. Therefore always keep an eye on such statements and if you cannot believe what's advertised then search for product reviews using your favorite search engine.

2. Product outdated

Believe it or not, but I've seen products that were still advertised and happily took the money out of the customers' pockets but were totally outdated or didn't work anymore. I once bought a product that could not be downloaded anymore but still had the sales page up and running, it even displayed the current date indicating the end of a special promotion. Every attempt to contact the creator of the software failed and after I read in a forum that I wasn't the only one not being able to download the software, I contacted the credit card processing company and got my money back.

3. Usability

Not every software is as user-friendly as Windows (you got the joke, right?!), which can be frustrating if you want nothing more than use it immediately. For most complex software products there exist written tutorials that exactly describe how to use them and sometimes even video tutorials that make the product handling even easier. If you've read and watched all tutorials and still cannot manage to use the product, then state this to the creator and you should get that refund.

If you've contacted the product creator and still were not able to get a refund despite some legitimate and acceptable reasons, not all hope is gone. Most marketplaces offer a refund guarantee for products that were sold through them (e. g. Clickbank offers its customers a general refund policy of 8 weeks after the product purchase, for a vendor like PayDotCom you have to contact the credit card processor like Paypal which has a refund policy of 60 days).

It is always suggested to clearly state the reason for your product refund and to keep a friendly communication style. Even if the product is not worth a single penny it doesn't make things easier when you insult the creator. Try to show that you've really tried to use the product in an efficient way, maybe attach some screenshots, include suggestions what could be better, etc. The product creator might loose you as a customer but still can benefit from your experience and will most of the time happily give you the refund.

Whatever you do, please be fair. It's just not right to purchase a product which you badly want and then request a refund to get your money back but still continue to use the product. Most marketplaces (Clickbank, PayDotCom) tolerate 2 or even more refunds, but after that you might not be able to purchase anything again through the specific company.

3 Free Website Marketing Ideas - Easy And Quick

2010-06-22T23:09:00.000-07:00

Online marketing is not cheap. You can spend thousands of dollars on Pay Per Click (Google Adwords) and thousands of site-targetted dollars (AdBrite), and you can spend thousands just buying text links from individual sites. Trust me, I've spent thousands on advertising.

However, my favorite form of marketing is the free kind. Anything free I like, especially if it helps my websites make more money without increasing my advertising costs.

Here are three easy and quick ways to market your website at no additional cost.

1. Free Business Cards

Free business cards are a staple in my advertising arsenal. You can leave them everywhere and give them to anyone. The best part is, they are free! Use them where you want, when you want, and as often as possible. That is the motto I live by whenever I get a shipment of free business cards in the mail.

2. Link Exchanges

Link exchanges are a great way of spreading Page Rank, but also of sharing visitors. Most people who like a site will bookmark it. After they have read everything they want, they will read the site that you link to. You get the visitors, and share the visitor through a link exchange.

3. Business card networking

After you have received your free business cards, use them to network with other people. Everytime you meet someone, hand them one of your free business cards. After that, ask for one of their business cards in exchange. If they don't have one, make sure you mention what you do, and the website address that is also listed on your free business card. Free business cards make a great networking tool if you will put them to use. Never forget, they are free, and should not be used sparingly. Use them in any situation you can think of. People will take them home and visit your site when they pull your business card out of their pocket.

With those three free website marketing ideas, your website will not only be more successful, but you won't have to spend any of your hard earned money on marketing!

3 Quick Ways To Start Your Own Online Business In Less Than 24 Hours

2010-06-21T23:10:00.001-07:00

The Internet and online business especially are becoming more and more popular by the day in todays world simply because people are starting to see the true benefits of the web, consumers are starting to trust the web more, and more importantly, the start up costs for a online business are next to nothing compared to the offline world of business start ups.

The only set back most people run into when wanting to start one of their own online business is How and Where to get started.

I did a search under the keyword term "home based business" and the search results returned 575,000,000 results for that keyword alone.

That's a pretty intimidating number for someone wanting to start their own home based business on the web wouldn't you say?

These were the same obstacles I was up against when I first ventured into the online world of business.

But I didn't let that stop me and I hope that won't stop you either from wanting to start your own online business.

So, I saved you the hassle and put together 3 of the quickest ways for ANYONE(that's You) to start their own online business with next to no investment required and can get started in less than 24 hours.

Are you ready? I hope so.

Business Model #1. Affiliate Programs.

Affiliate Programs are simply programs set up by the business owner for others to sign up for and promote for the business owner for a agreed upon commission(usually between 10 - 75%).

The great thing about Affiliate marketing is it doesn't cost you a single penny to get started, you don't have to worry about refunds or customer service that come with owning your own product.

All you have to worry about is generating the traffic to your affiliate link and collecting your commission cheques.

This is the quickest way to get started online... Period!

Here's a few Affiliate Directories to give you a start:

Associate Programs - http://www.associateprograms.com

Refer It - http://www.refer-it.com

Business Model #2. Resell Rights.

Resell Rights are simply products that have already been created and are available to anybody who is willing to pay for the Resell Rights to market them.

The upside to this is you get Ready-To-Go websites with PROVEN sales letters that convert. The best part of all is... you get to keep 100% of the $Profits$.

The draw back is you can't claim those products as your own. The original creator of the product maintains full rights. You just get to keep all the profits.

Not such a bad trade off wouldn't you say?

Business Model #3. Private Label Resell Rights.

Private Label Resell Rights are simply products that are ready to be branded with your name to it.

What I mean by that is you get full rights to the product or products and are able to claim them as your own even though you didn't create them yourself.

This is the fastest way for anyone to start a online business who really doesn't have any experience or knowledge on how to create their own products.

The other really cool thing about Private Label Resell Rights products is they come with Ready-To-Go websites which then again saves you time and money in having to create them yourself.

Well there you have it, 3 Quick Ways To Start Your Own Online Business In Less Than 24 Hours.

The easiest way to locate any of the above via the search engines is by entering something like this into there search engine web form:

affiliate programs + "what your niche is"

(Note: make sure you use the quotations around what niche you want to target. Very Important!)

This will save you time and target your search much better, where as if you were to just enter 'affiliate programs' into the search engine web form you would get a gazillion results, leaving you frustrated.

Now, the only thing left for you to do Right NOW is make a decision on what you would really enjoy doing as a business online.

Once you've figured that out the only thing left for you to do is put together a... Plan For $Profit$.

3 Easy, Money-Making Internet Business Models

2010-06-21T23:10:00.000-07:00

All the noise and hype on the Internet today, not many people realize that all the ideas and techniques you can find are petty much useless if you don't first understand your business model. In other words, even the most amazing Internet marketing technique will not work if you don't understand how to apply it to YOUR business.

The 3 most popular business models are:

1) Affiliate Marketing

This is perhaps the most popular one out there, since there are absolutely no barriers to entry. Almost anyone can sign-up for an affiliate program for free and start promoting the product or service on the Internet with hopes that someone will buy, giving them instant commissions. Affiliate marketers don't carry any risk, since they do not pay for the creation of the product, they do not handle customer service and they do not need any up-front investments.

When you consider that those are the top three things people want to avoid, it's no surprise that almost everyone and their neighbor promotes an affiliate program or another. In fact, if there is a single reason why the Internet today is so proliferated with ads and banners, it's because of affiliate programs.

Even though there are so many affiliate marketers out there, only 5% ever make any money and only 1% makes big money. The "Super Affiliates" do it very differently from all the other millions; therefore they earn the big checks.

2) E-book and Information Publishing

Sitting at the other end of the spectrum, e-book authors need to be more disciplined in their approach to Internet marketing. Of course, they also need to invest more than affiliates do. While affiliates can get away trying to "get something for nothing" the same is not true for the e-book type of business.

If you're thinking about publishing and selling your own e-book online, and you think it's going to be easy, think again. You'll need to learn a lot more than affiliates are required to. You'll need to spend some amount of money getting your business up and running. However, when you do it right, the payoff in this online business model is much more rewarding.

The reason why e-book marketers and "Infopreneurs" make more money is simple; they have very, very low production and maintenance costs. Anything digital doesn't cost a single cent to be produced in millions if necessary. Whatever initial start-up costs spent can be covered by selling just a few copies of high-margin e-books, and you can even recruit an army of affiliates who are more than willing to do all the selling for you.

Of course, it's not as easy as it sounds, but the point is, when done properly, the "E-book Publishing" model is a truly profitable business.

3) Internet Based Network Marketing

I've heard many people say that the Internet and network marketing are a match made in heaven. In my opinion, though, almost 90% of people get it wrong when it comes to Internet based network marketing. People in this business usually think they're talking about network marketing, but in reality they are talking about affiliate marketing.

They try to make the Internet do all the work. They hide behind their computers and pretend everything's going great. They focus on selling more and more every month. They have systems that are so complicated only they can understand it. Well, that doesn't sound like network marketing to me!

Internet based network marketing is simple if you understand it, and are willing to put in the effort. The role of the Internet here is only to get you the names and contact details of people you can talk to, after which YOU, not a computer, has to build a relationship with these people and help them to start their own business.

For this simple purpose, it is not necessary for you to have a high-tech system and pretend that your auto responder is building relationships for you. It's not going to work. The key is to have simple systems that are duplicable, something you can teach to all those people you have built a relationship with.

E-book authors, no matter what they say, have no obligation to teach you their "Secret Strategies to Become a Millionaire” of any variations to that. The reason is simple; why tell you the absolute truth when you'll end up as their competitor? No one wants more competitors, right?

Internet based network marketing is very much the opposite of that. You HAVE to tell people EVERYTHING you know or your business will never take off. For this reason alone, I always recommend that if you're new to the online world, you need to first join an Internet based network marketing business at least to learn. Rest assured, no one will be selling you half-baked truths when their success ultimately depends on yours.

No matter which model you choose, make sure you understand the basics, and stop listening to and buying things that are not applicable to your business. Information overload can stop you before you even get started

Chitika For Website Marketing

2010-06-09T19:08:00.000-07:00

Although Chitika has been around since 1993, not many pople were aware of them in the website marketing business, in fact, I myself didn’t realize of there existence until I saw people start bragging about how much money they were making of off them, even over Adsense.

So, what’s the big deal? You may ask. Well that’s pretty simple actually, Chitika has invented a revolutionary ad-type called eMiniMaills. These eMiniMalls are banner sized shopping cart displaying items that you choose by keywords, and you get paid for every click on the ads.

Chitika introduced eMiniMalls in June of ’05, but people really started to utilize them quite recently, and started to realize the true power that they held over the common consumer. From most, if not all, reports that I’ve seen, most people’s Chitika earnings have surpassed there Adsense earnings by a large amount, and this is no small feat.

Now that I’ve made you all aware of how it all works, and true power of eMiniMalls, let’s get into the nitty gritty. You’ll obviously want to start out with a website, or a blog, in fact, any median will do, and is needed. You’ll then want to sign up for an account here. (https://chitika.com)

Now that you have an account, you’ll want to create the adds that you’ll be displaying on your site, this is almost like your creating your adsense ads and the same rules apply, we’ll discuss this more a little later. Unlike adsense you can’t save color schemes so you may want to write the colors down so you can use them in the future for any other ads.

When deciding colors for your adds, you’ll want to try your best to blend them in to your existing website, color wise. It has been proven that those people that have successfully blended there ads into their site via good colors, have has a higher click-through-rate, and thus higher earnings. Try your hand at this and see how it works out. If you’d like an example of how I did the colors compared to my site, you can visit Super Justin.com. (http://www.superjustin.com).

Another important factor to take into consideration is ad placement, I find that the better ad placement, the better click-through-rate. It’s hard to determine which would best suite every site, because every site is different, so you’ll want to test this out as much as you can through trial and error. Some key things to consider is that you’ll want to have your ads in high traffic areas, such as menus as well as site articles.

In closing, don’t forget to use chitika’s great referral program after you sign up, and give your friends and relatives, so you can earn money from them as well. Click here to sign up. (https://chitika.com)

A Website Without Online Marketing: A Fruitless Tree

2010-06-08T19:06:00.000-07:00

Nowadays, many people save money to quit their day jobs in hopes of achieving their own customized version of the American Dream by starting what is commonly known as an e-commerce business or a "dot com" venture. They then proceed to spend the savings of their labor on great looking, functional and hopefully practical websites. However, a large percentage of such venturesome warriors that take the initiative to quit a steady job and embark on the bumpy road of e-"self employment" do not end up reaping the fruits of their courage.

The initial phases of website development both financially and emotionally drain the average venturous individual to a point that at the end of the process they are impatiently waiting for miraculous profit to be pouring their way. In reality, this seldom happens since there are thousands of such individuals both from the past and the present on the very same path striving to prosper. In order for a website to be profitable, it would have to contend in the race for traffic against hundreds of thousands, or even millions of competitors.

It is possible to attract visitors to your website via countless means however the best and the most efficient are what have been rounded up under the roof of Online Marketing. Online or Internet Marketing addresses the concerns of all those website owners that are astounded at the low returns on their investments. It helps strategize a plan to increase the popularity and traffic of the website and tackle the issues of low profits. The most important aspects of Internet Marketing are as follows:

Spreading the Word: Since other online venues require a relatively longer initial period of time to yield results, it is quick and efficient to spread the word about your website via submitting articles and news releases to be published. An informative and useful article will intrigue other website owners to syndicate the article hence exposing your website to the visitors of their own websites. On the other hand a carefully prepared news release if published at the right time will drive major media publishers to run stories on your website which in turn will expose your website to a very wide base of potential visitors and in turn converted customers.

Networking: Propagating the word about your website is a great way to jumpstart your internet marketing campaign, however you need stability from within to be able to sustain your website's popularity. By partnering or simply having a relationship with websites in and out of your industry you will be able to increase your website link base and provide a one-stop solution for your visitors. You can achieve this by being an active participant in online forums, chat sessions and even seminars not to mention offline venues such as business mixers and conferences.

Search Engines: Once you have created an initial surge of visitors via press releases and worked on networking to maintain your traffic, your website will be seasoned and ready to benefit from a very precious medium that lets targeted visitors come to you rather than you going after them. Search engines are inundated with searchers looking for products and services in virtually every single industry and category imaginable. By using keyword popularity tools you can find out approximately how many people search for keywords relevant to your website on a daily basis. Once you find the keywords that would bring valuable visitors to your website, then you can target them by optimizing your website. This process is referred to as Search Engine Optimization which will be discussed in much more detail in future articles.

Refining the User Interface: Refining the User Interface is certainly one of the most ignored yet extremely important aspects of owning and operating a website. You can be getting hundreds of unique visitors on a daily basis to your website yet making less profit than a direct competitor of yours with half the traffic. The secret lies in your user interface consisting of elements such as forms, navigation, contents, links, buttons, customization, localization and more. By using these elements in the correct places and at the correct time and constantly monitoring your visitor retention and conversation rates, you can not only increase your conversation ratio and therefore your profit but also maintain a larger visitor base potentially creating word of mouth and return business.

The above are the main areas in which you have to be active in order for your online marketing campaign to be successful. However it is sometimes not possible to achieve the best results in all areas without rigorous research and extensive training. This is where internet marketing firms come to your help in devising and implementing a successful campaign. Internet Marketing is virtually the only way to turn your investment of time, patience and money into measurable profit that could get you closer to achieving your goals and fulfilling your dreams. This is why I invite you to read my future articles where I will be providing more detailed information on each of the above categories as well as information on how to find do-it-yourself information and shop for internet marketing services.

Aggressive Internet Marketing Made Possible

2010-06-07T19:04:00.000-07:00

Aggressive internet marketing means full-blown marketing and promotions that exceed any businessman's expectations. A business needs fierce internet marketing. No more, no less. But to make it low cost? Is that even possible? How can something so aggressive be affordable?

Luckily, you can avail of inexpensive aggressive internet marketing if you just look hard and good enough. Be keen and alert and know what's going on in the online industry. The following questions will help you discern if your chosen internet site to do the marketing fits the bill.

1. Does the company offer free website design?

Even if you know your HTML, it is still more advisable if a professional team does it for you. Some internet marketing sites offer free web design to make sure that your site's needs are met. It's a must that marketing is integrated to the web design. If the company requires you to pay more than fifty bucks for the web design, then so much for straight-forward internet marketing! Look somewhere else!

2. How many keywords does your web site cater to?

Having too many keywords or key phrases to focus on will make your page ranking drop. Creating smaller web pages with content that emphasizes only a few keywords will serve Internet marketing endeavor better.

3. How search engine-compatible is your website?

Internet marketing is coined "aggressive" only if it is a hundred percent search engine-compatible. There are about 10 major search engines online and your site has to work accordingly with them. Find out if your internet marketing site is expert on search engine optimization.

4. Do you know your competitors?

Affordable aggressive internet marketing pushes your business forward by taking note of your competitors. Analysis and evaluation of the competition is mandatory to figure out your shortcomings and advantages over them. If this feature is excluded from your internet marketing plan, you're getting a mediocre deal.

5. How efficient is the monthly marketing plan?

Usually, you're asked to pay a monthly fee for the marketing plan. For a marketing plan to be efficient, it must zero in on the following things: webpage development, link exchanges, web content, updates and technical support. Of course, also included are the standard SEO, competition analysis and keyword density.

If you've procured the right answers for the previous questions, then you can finally say: "Now that's low cost aggressive internet marketing."

8 Ways To Make Your Ads More Effective

2010-06-06T19:03:00.000-07:00

I don't know everything and if I have learned one thing about doing business on the Internet it is that the more you learn the more you don't know. However, I have been doing business on the Internet since 1999 and I've managed to carve out a successful enterprise for myself with several profit streams. The largest percentage of my marketing and promotional efforts has been conducted through one simple method-Ezine Advertising.

These are the 8 important lessons I've learned regarding Ezine Advertising and Marketing Success:

A common mistake many advertisers make is to attempt to do too much, or rather sell too much, in one ad. Sure you have lots of great products but you can't sell them all in a few lines-at least not individually. Instead focus on the benefit your customer can achieve from all your products and promote that! People are much more likely to click on a link that BENEFITS them than a link that promises to sell them something.

For example, "Help your child reach their maximum potential" instead of "Try our many reading, writing, math, shapes and colors programs"

More importantly, tell the customer "what your product or service is going to do for him."

It is important that you identify your Unique Selling Proposition before you begin your advertising program. This will determine which Ezines (or markets) you target as well as what you should include in your ad copy. Who will be interested in your product and why? What benefits does your product offer them?

Don't go for the sale in your ad! You are at a disadvantage because you can't list all your products' wonderful benefits in the space allowed. Also, there is only a small percentage of any Ezine audience that is ready to buy your product at the exact moment they view your ad. Yes, maybe they should be, but most people today live in the moment and if this isn't the time they want to buy then they aren't going to buy, end of story.

But it doesn't have to be the end of the story. If you go for the soft sell approach your target consumer is much more likely to click on your link and then you've got the chance to go for the hard sell-again and again!

Here's an example. I'm selling a product called the Preschool Prep Power Pack. It's an educational CD for preschoolers. Now I could go for the hard sell in my promotion and I would make some sales but a lot of people who really might be interested won't even look at my site and product. However, I've chose to go the soft sell approach. Instead of selling my product in my ads, my ads offer two FREE items. I offer a free newsletter (Preschoolers Learn More) offering tips about preparing preschoolers for kindergarten. This is my target market for my product. The folks who subscribe also receive a free ABC-123 coloring book. Why wouldn't the parent of a preschooler subscribe, right?

But what's in it for me as a business person? A lot! Think about it. I now have the freely offered contact information for my target market. Now I can regularly email them information about my product. I'm confident they will buy eventually because my product provides a solution to something that concerns them-or they wouldn't have subscribed in the first place!

Another common mistake is not giving your ad campaign enough time to work.

Studies show it takes prospects an average of seven exposures to your promotion before they take the bait. Even after they have clicked through to your site visitors may need to visit your site as many as three times before they buy from you. So make sure you keep that offer in front of them. That means it may well pay to take the long-term package versus a one-shot ad.

People run through their emails rapidly and delete things they wish they hadn't. Make their wish come true! Give them a second, third, fourth chance. The formula is--when you're sick and tired of it, the public is just beginning to hear it.

Just because you've bought ad space doesn't mean you have to utilize every pixel or character-space. Short, punchy lines that do not use up every available space are more effective. Think about the reader scanning down the page or screen. What will catch their eye and make them stop scanning and actually read? White space is your friend so don't squander it. Use it to set off your important message.

Make sure you apply the same principal to your urls and e-mail addresses as well. Nothing can make an ad look more cluttered than giant web addresses with a complicated string of numbers and letters. If you have to use an address like that (perhaps for your affiliate code, for example) then it might be wise to use a redirect. There are numerous free services out there (http://snipurl.com for exmple) although perhaps it might be a good idea to use a page from your own web site with a redirect programmed in

USE YOUR HEAD

Your headline is the most important part of your ad. This is usually the line that determines whether the skimming reader will stop or skip ahead.

Some of the proven headline formulas include:

1. Ask the reader a question: "Are you worried about filing your
tax return this year?"
2. Tell the reader how to do something: "How to buy a
car without getting a lemon."
3. Provide a testimonial: "Big Al saved me $200 last month. Thanks, Cindy Lou from Paducah, Kentucky."
4. Make a command. Turn your most important benefit into a commanding
headline. "Stop rushing through life." "Make more money this month." "Feel better about yourself."
5. Important news makes a good headline. "Max Electronics just went international!"
6. Start the clock: "Buyers who act before midnight Tuesday will save an extra $50!"
7. Give the reader something free: "Free whatsit for the first 100 visitors!"

DON'T FORGET TO TELL THEM WHAT TO DO!

It sounds almost ridiculous, but simply giving clear, specific directions about what you want the reader to do can increase the response to your ads.

Click here to find out more: http://whatsit.com

Subscribe by emailing subscribe@whatsit.com

Visit http://whatsit.com today to save!

SET YOUR BUDGET

One of the most difficult things to decide for any business person is how much money to spend on promotion. There really is one simple way to determine the answer. How much is a customer worth to you? That tells you a great deal about how much you can afford to spend on advertising.

The simple formula to calculate the net worth of a visitor is: Net Profit divided by Conversion Rate.

First, what is your net profit on an average sale? Let's say $10 to make it easy. (Hey, I'm an English professor, I need to keep it simple!)

Then consider what your conversion rate is for visitors to become customers. Let's say one visitor out of 50 becomes a customer. (This makes your conversion rate 50 as you need 50 customers to make a sale)

With this example, a visitor is worth $0.50 to you. ($10 divided by 50)

So if you spend $100 on an advertising campaign that draws in 1000 visitors then you made $400 on that campaign.

SET REALISTIC GOALS

This issue is really about control. Yes, if you could control things that you would have a high sell through but that isn't always going to happen. In fact, for most advertisers that isn't going to happen. However, if your goal is to capture customers then you are much more likely to match your goal or even exceed it. And in the end a customer is worth a lot more to you than a sale because a customer can represent many sales over years to come-sales that were fairly easy to achieve.

As frustrating as it may be, advertising is usually about long-term versus short-term benefits. Your ad simply serves as a lure to draw people into your site or long-term promotion. Once you've pulled them in then you need to sell them. So it is not really fair to judge an ad campaign on simple sales.

The success of an ad campaign should be measured by one or two elements only-first, how many people followed up on your offer (click-through rate) and second, how many of those visitors were you able to convert into customers (conversion rate).

Over time you will be able to judge where the weak link in your chain of customer creation exists and work to fix it.

Low click-through rate? Then it is probably your offer. You are not giving readers enough incentive to follow through. What is in it for them to click on your offer? Remember you are selling benefits!

Low conversion rate? Then perhaps you are not attracting the right sort of visitor. Target your incentive (the free offer, for example) to match your target audience. See my example in SOFT SELL.

7 Critical Reasons Why Marketers Use Mini-sites!

2010-06-05T19:02:00.000-07:00

The use of mini-sites has become the mainstream for most internet marketers. Some people claim mini-sites to be “trendy”, while others know they are here to stay.

Their use is not just a fad, mini-sites out perform every other type of website in the history of the internet as long as they are used wisely.

Here are 10 critical reasons why we see them in use everywhere we surf:

1) They can be created quickly! Any marketer will tell you, if you don’t know already, time is of the utmost importance when selling any product. The quicker a sales letter, order page, and product gets in front of buyers, the faster you make profits.

2) They can be generated easily! Why waste precious time and effort struggling to create a massive informational site to sell a product? Think about it. A person can have a mini-site up and running in a matter of a couple of hours. Wow, less frustration and stress to make solid profits! What a concept!

3) Mini-sites are cost effective! Everyone wants to save a buck these days, especially with the way our economy is going. The price of gasoline and oil alone is causing inflated rates for just about everything we buy.

Why pay the extra $300-a couple of thousand dollars to have a webmaster or designer create one for you when you can build your own free?

That’s right! There is free software on the net like Mozzila for instance that you can download and use to generate mini-sites.

FYI, in most cases you can generate a site and have it up and making profits,
subscribers or driving traffic to one of your other sites, before a professional can place you on his or her schedule.

4) Mini-sites have a primary focus! They focus on one objective — usually to call a person to act — to subscribe to a newsletter, click an order button, or click a link on a site referring them to a product.

The more narrow the focus the less confused visitors will be. I know from experience and from hearing other marketers say, it is easier to keep the visitors attention and call them to act when we only give one choice at a time.

Remember, there is great wisdom in this statement when you generate any website.

5) You can test headlines and sub-headers faster! If the sites can be built quicker and easier, don’t you believe they can be tested faster to see what works and doesn’t work? It sounds like a big “cha-ching” to me!

6) Mini-sites can be tested for search engine optimization quickly too! You don’t
have as many pages to go through— the fewer pages you create, the more time saved so you can do other things like write articles or create another site you can sell products or link to.

As long as your sales letter and so forth has good content, Meta tags, descriptions, and keywords your site can be optimize more efficiently and get better rankings.

7) Mini-sites are so easy and quick to create you can generate many for different purposes! I use them as a means to make different streams of profits and lists.

Here is an example: I may have 2 or 3 for the sole purpose of gaining subscribers to different newsletters describing the use of the products I’m selling, while I have 5 or 6 others that promote affiliate products or my own.

I interlink them with each other and with other high-traffic sites making them more attractive to search engines.

If you are tired of wasting time, energy, or money on your websites and want to make profits or get subscribers faster, try spending a one time fee on a good program that shows you step-by-step how to set up and use mini-sites. It will be the best return investment you can make.

Look at it this way, it can be like having your own energized bunny where you can create, and create, and create some more to serve whatever purpose you have in mind and not spend another dime paying other people to do it for you.

© All rights reserved.

Article may be freely distributed in its entirety! Absolutely no selling or altering content including the links provided.

Is Freeware Safe? How To Be A Smart Downloader

2010-06-04T23:18:00.000-07:00

More and more people are learning about the awesome resource on the Internet known as freeware. Freeware is the shorthand term used to describe free software. Yes, freeware is an amazing resource and I have been an enthusiastic user and promoter since I learned about it years ago.

What I found interesting, though, were the number of people I spoke to about freeware who said that they would never use it because they heard that free software contains viruses. My first thought was that this was just not a true statement. I have been using freeware for years and have never been infected.

However, after giving the idea more thought, I realized that such a concern is not without merit. Because I’ve been online since the time of the old BBS systems, I’ve learned whom I can trust and whom I need to stay away from. But to a lot of people, downloading software from the Internet is a scary idea.

How does the average, non-technical person know what is safe and what isn’t? If you do a search on Google for the term freeware, more than 170 million pages are returned. The problem is that if you just start downloading software that looks good, you can get yourself into a lot of trouble.

Yes, freeware can contain spyware, adware, trojans, back doors, key loggers, bots or viruses. So, you should be concerned. However, even though we know that anytime we drive our car we run the risk of an accident, this concern does not keep us from driving. It just means that we must be aware of the threats and know how to avoid them.

So how do we know how to avoid dangerous software? We can try freeware websites, but some sites will list any and all freeware that they can find just so they can say that they have the largest collection. Some sites list only a subset of freeware by sticking to the popular versions. But popular does not always mean the best and this still does not guarantee safety.

If you want to be a smart downloader, I have found that there is no substitution for old-fashioned research. There are two sources you need to find to gather enough information to be an informed consumer of freeware. The first source is message boards -- also known as forums or news groups.

Message boards are a great place to learn about people’s experience with a particular piece of software. Believe me when I say that if someone is unhappy, they will eagerly let everyone know about it. But be sure not to read only one or two people’s experiences. Some people just don’t know what they are doing and even though their own ignorance may be at fault, they are quick to blame the software.

The second source of information is websites that test a wide range of software themselves before posting and sharing it with the world. You would think that everyone posting software would do this. But as stated earlier, most are concerned with quantity of software and not quality. So how do you find a website that you can trust? Part of it is just knowing the history and the background of the different websites and this, again, is learned via research.

Because of my passion for freeware, I have tested hundreds of programs over the years. I then started listing only the best freeware on my website for friends and family to use. When you are ready to begin your research I encourage you to browse my website vbmark.com by clicking on the link in my bio or "About the Author" section at the bottom of this article. At least be sure to bookmark the site for future research.

There is a lot of great freeware out there but you need to be a smart downloader. Do your research.

10 ways to advertise online (and where to get started)

2010-06-04T18:59:00.000-07:00

Most business owners fully understand that not advertising is the surest way to kill your business.

However they are also bombarded by so much information and so many choices they quickly lose track of what options are available to them.

There are a number of cheap and easy online advertising options available to you.

1. Ezine Advertising

Ezine advertising is one of the best ways to reach your future customers because it is often inexpensive and flexible as well as offering you the option to match the ezine audience with your product and ad. It also often offers a double benefit--your initial ad plus longevity in the ezine archives.

2. Text Links

This simple tool is often overlooked by many. It is simply one of the least expensive and yet most powerful advertising option available. You can often buy text links for under $10 and the link will not only promote the specific site or page you choose but also connect it with the specific key words that will benefit you the most.

Text links also provide a double bonus. You can attract immediate traffic from the host site as well as achieve better search engine ranking which will further increase traffic.

3. Pay per click advertising

Just like it sounds pay per click advertising is simply paying for specifically targeted traffic. You can monitor and control these advertising programs very closely and tweak your ad copy and the key words that you are sponsoring. This can be a very expensive option but doesn't have to be if you plan carefully and watch closely.

4. Email marketing

Despite ever-increasing vigilant attempts to stop spam, we all know that email marketing is still alive and well. While it is foolish in the extreme to risk your business, web host, or internet connection, by sending out spam you can still use email marketing as a way to reach out and touch your customers and your future customers.

You just need to make sure that no one receives mail except the people who ask for it. People are still willing to sign up for mailing lists--especially if you have something to offer them in return for sharing their email address. Sponsor a contest; give away an article, ebook, or tutorial; or offer a discount and you will have people sign up willingly.

Then if you don't abuse the mailing list you will have the opportunity to reach them again and again!

5. Banner Ads

Banner ads have a bad reputation. In part because of the proliferation of banner farms that killed all the banner swap programs (or at least made them completely ineffectual). Also we all have memories of those hideous banners flashing across the top of so many web sites.

Banners have come along way since then and a cleverly designed banner can be a real asset to any advertising campaign. Also don't forget that you don't have to use one of those big giant banners that span the width of the screen. You can use smaller simple ads that can fit easily into the sidebar or special box on a web site so they can suit the design and work more effectively.

It is also important that you pay close attention to what sites you will choose for displaying your banner. IE. A site about web development for your web hosting service ad or a site about parenting for your ad promoting your potty training book.

Many text link and pay per click advertising vendors also offer the option of banner ads. Similarly many ezine and newsletter publishers sell space on their sites.

~~ Sell Your Knowledge ~~

These next five advertising methods are all free or relatively inexpensive because you are trading something of value -- your knowledge and expertise -- in return for advertising.

6. Publish a Newsletter

Creating your own regular newsletter or ezine offers you all the advantages of ezine advertising and email marketing offered above.

7. Publish a Blog and RSS Feed

While publishing a newsletter or ezine isn't that difficult it is much easier to create a blog and make its content available via RSS feed. This can offer you the benefits of regularly updated material for your web site which will be attractive to visitors and search engines alike. It will also help establish you as an expert in your field.

I personally like using WordPress on your own site but many web hosts now offer blogging services and there are many free blogging sites around where you can create a blog on their site.

8. Write Articles

Take some of the material you have generated for your newsletter and/or blog and share it with others. Make it available in one of the many free content directories available on the web. This not only helps to establish your credibility but the contact info you provide in your resource box (which will run every time someone else publishes your material) will bring in both direct traffic as well as search engine attention.

9. Create an Ebook

Once you have enough material generated from your newsletter and blog then you can package it into a convenient Ebook and give it away. Make sure to collect names and email addresses and offer a coupon or discount to bring people back to your site!

10. Post in Forums

If you have the time you should start your own forum but even if you only have a few minutes a week to spare for this effort then it can be well worth the effort. Don't offer blatant spam posts but find a forum where you have something to offer. Make sure that you include an appropriate url and description for your forum signature and you will attract the double benefit of traffic and search engine attention!

No successful advertising campaign embraces one single method of advertising and no single method of advertising works for everyone. Advertising cannot be treated as a one-size-fits all proposition. However you know what your business needs and can offer--mix and match methods and make sure to track your results--to optimize your choices.

10 Marketing Strategies for Sports Betting Sites

2010-06-03T18:58:00.000-07:00

So you have a new sports betting site and you were hoping to compete with the established sports book sites, how do you go about letting the world know the site exists?

In the old days new sports gambling sites would simply just start aggressive Pay Per Click campaigns. With today’s Internet the search engines no longer allow gambling sites to advertise and that includes a ban on search engine PPC. Removing this type of advertising forced the online gambling providers to come up with other ways of increasing their popularity.

There are a number of strategies you can try in order to attract potential members to your sports betting sites.

1. Optimize your site for higher ranking in the organic searches. This is a tough one seeing as the competition is very steep. Don’t use questionable tactics, just be honest with your SEO and optimize the pages for the content that is actually on each page.
2. Generate topical content well in advance of the sporting event that you would like to promote. Generally speaking, search engines can take 3 to 12 weeks to find new pages so unless you are really up on how to get the pages indexed quicker, give new pages plenty of time to be discovered by the search engines.
3. Allow other sites to use your topical content in exchange for a text link back to your site. Doing this allows you to gain extremely valuable one way text links that will help to increase your link popularity. Just make sure you choose the text for that link carefully and the site posting your article maintains credit to you as the writer.
4. Post articles from other sites. Make sure that the article you post on your site is full of keyword rich text and optimize the page that contains that article for the contents of that article. When done properly this can greatly improve your chances of being found in a search engine for that articles topic.
5. Add a Forum to your site and create categories that promote the events that your site specializes in. For instance, if your site is based out of Europe you might want to make a bunch of categories based on Soccer such as Soccer Injuries, Soccer Trades & Rumors etc. Doing this will generate keyword rich, topical pages that eventually will be indexed by the search engines. The more active you’re Forum, the greater the chance of creating countless pages that the search engines will love.
6. Join forums on other sites and actively contribute to them. You see when posting to other forums your signature is added to the bottom of your post. In your signature you have an opportunity to place some text that could be used to promote your site. Also, some forums will allow you to place text links within the signature. Be respectful and do not stuff the signature with too many text links.
7. Add your site to as many directories as you can. Some directories can take a long time for inclusion, the DMOZ for instance, so you should apply to them as quickly as you can after launching your new sports betting site.
8. Reciprocating links can be helpful as long as you carefully search out potential linking partners. Make sure that the sites you are linking to are quality sites that you yourself would actually spend time on. A good rule of thumb is this – if you would bookmark the site others would probably bookmark it as well and therefore, the site would be a good site to trade links with.
9. Offer affiliate programs to other webmasters. If you offer affiliate programs make sure that you actually pay your affiliates in a timely manner. You would be surprised at how many sites actually don’t treat their affiliates very well. Treat the affiliates like the limited partners that they are and that level of respect will more than likely result in your banners and text links gaining better placement on the affiliate’s websites.
10. Purchase banner space on sports related websites. This can be an expensive proposition so you really need to take care in selecting the sites you want to buy banner space on. Don’t base your decision on Alexa ratings alone as these can easily be skewed. Also be wary of sites stating Hits and Impressions as their verification on traffic. The best stat to base you purchase on is monthly unique visitors and don’t take their word for it, use an independent third party tracker for unbiased results.

Just like everything else in life there are no guarantees but if you adopt some or all of the above mentioned marketing strategies, your site should see improvements over a short period of time.

To All Internet Marketers - How To Get My Business

2010-06-02T18:58:00.000-07:00

More and more people are realizing that the Internet offers great potential to set up a healthy business for pennies on the dollar. This is good news for internet marketers - but it also means that they need to lift their game.

Why? Because the would-be "netpreneur" has access to way more training than ever before. It's possible to get up to speed very quickly on what is needed to get started online. This, in turn, means that people quickly recognize what offers true value and what does not. They see so many sales letters that they become, to a certain degree, immune to the typical hype. They're willing to spend - but they want value for money. They want to be treated like intelligent and discerning adults.

So here's a message to all 'gurus' (and aspiring gurus) who are keen to get their share of the dollars waiting to be sent flying their way via cyberspace.

1) What does it take to make people want to buy "you" rather than some other internet marketer?

2) What might make people want to unsubscribe from your list?

3) And what pushes them into asking for a refund?

What Makes People Want to Buy?

- They buy if they can see that a product will give them new knowledge and understanding.

- They buy if the purchase will speed up business growth.

- They buy if a product will automate a task that eats into their time. (People quickly learn to spend their time on marketing and product creation, rather than repetitive tasks.)

Tip: Once newbies have been exposed to a few sales pages, it's not long before they learn to look beyond the sales hype. They study a sales letter carefully to work out what the product will "really" offer them. (Do they need this? Or will it duplicate something else they own?)

They also learn to look for value for money. Some higher-priced products are worth every cent. Some cheaper products add very little to what they already know.

(Note: Savvy internet marketers already realize that if they put together online interviews offering truly valuable information, they are far more likely to attract and keep new customers. A quick example: Jane Smith listens to a one-hour audio interview on search engine optimization and traffic. She finds out some really useful information she has not so far heard anywhere else. She decides that this guy knows what he's talking about and shells out a couple of hundred dollars for his products.)

What Makes People Want to Unsubscribe from a List?

- Getting four identical emails trying to sell them the same product, because the sender hasn't figured out how to move them from one list to another after they buy.

- Getting a 'canned' email sounding full of excitement about a new product or service - which turns out to be a duplicate of the email they get from six other marketers who are affiliates for the same product.

- Getting email from a product creator about anything under the sun because you bought XXX product from them. If your customers sign up for a newsletter, they expect mailings.

What Makes People Want to Ask for a Refund?

In the past, buyers tended to shrug and write off a bad purchase. But increasingly, people are prepared to stand up for their rights. If they feel they have not received value for money, they will ask for a refund.

So what makes them decide to ask for their money back?

- Software that doesn't work as it is supposed to.

- Physical products (CDs, DVDs) that don't work on their systems.

- An e-book that is full of content easily found in an hour's net-surfing.

- An e-book that has skimped on content or that has been poorly written.

- An e-book that not only skimps on content but is full of links to up-sells to get the 'really valuable' information, or is full of affiliate links.

The last case, an e-book full of affiliate links or links to an up-sell...is something you should be giving away free as part of your viral marketing campaign. Charge for it and you risk your reputation for being a source of quality information.

Other things that bite into your customer's valuable time.

- MP3's that are streamed from a website rather than being downloadable.

- e-books that are in ".exe" format only, so the customer can't print them out in one 'hit' (and can't access them on a Mac computer).

Give your clients anything that they can listen to or read away from the computer. Most of them spend enough hours a day at the keyboard already. They'd rather load an audio interview
into their MP3 players and listen while they go for a walk or relax in the sun. They'd prefer to print out an e-book and read it or mark it up while sitting in an easy chair.

Please, please don't tether them to the computer!

And finally, about those "name squeeze" pages. People are very quickly getting tired of having to give up their email addresses just to get to a sales page. Do you want them to buy or not? These days, unless there's a huge buzz around the Net and they want to see what it's all about, prospective customers are just as likely to click the 'back' button on their browser, or close the window and leave.

After all, there's always another internet marketer waiting to sell them a product. Probably one very similar to yours. Marketers who respect their client's time and intelligence are the ones who will get their loyalty - and their cash.

Top Internet Marketing Techniques

2010-06-01T18:57:00.000-07:00

The Internet offers many means of affordable marketing, often with full-color imagery to go along with text. And multimedia components add some spice to the mix and increase online visitors and purchases. Here are some top Internet marketing techniques to help increase your sales and income.

1. DIRECTORY - Create your own directory on a specific industry topic, placing your own ad or banner along the top. Then invite others to add their website links via a link exchange program, listing themselves in your directory. This will result in lots of free advertising for you as your directory expands with links across the World Wide Web. Enter “link exchange software” into your favorite search engine for help with setup.

2. TEACH A COURSE – Write out a simple step-by-step instructional class in your area of expertise. Then break it up into smaller segments and set them up in an autoresponder as email messages with your ads included at the top and / or bottom of each message. Invite website visitors to sign up through on online form or email subscription address offered through the autoresponder service. Then as people sign up, they will learn more about you and your products and services.

3. EZINE EBOOK – Forget about small daily or weekly ezines. Try publishing one large monthly e-zine as an e-book format, preferably an Adobe .pdf file. Include a large number of articles with each issue and regularly featured areas like inspirational quotes, industry tips, favorite sites and advice from the pros. Also insert full-color graphics, multimedia components like audio file links, if you like, and ads. Then you can charge a monthly rate, with an annual discounted package purchase, and sell advertising spots.

4. TIP OF THE DAY – Set up your own Tip of the Day targeting your own area of expertise, relating to your own products and services. You can set it up on your website in a targeted box, via autoresponder, a blog, an RSS feed, an audio file or others means of communication. Add your own ad along with your tip for whichever product or service you want to target or maybe even your own online store for all. This will gently remind your target audience where to go to learn more.

In summary, by using Internet Marketing techniques customized to fit your own products and services, you can reach out and increase your website traffic and purchase opportunities. Internet marketing can mean a more affordable way to grow your business.

The Secret To Getting Indexed In Yahoo

2010-05-31T18:55:00.000-07:00

Getting indexed in Yahoo has become very difficult in the last few months. The indexing robot, Yahoo!Slurp, has become erratic. For some sites, the robot will view all pages, but only add a few to the Yahoo database. For other sites, sub-domain listings actually start disappearing! So, what’s the secret to getting indexed?

Pleasing Yahoo!Slurp

The secret to getting indexed in Yahoo involves constant updates to your site. The updates, however, have to be done on both the site and through Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. Here’s how you go about getting indexed.

The first step is to start a blog for your site. You can build a blog on your site or use a free service. I prefer blogger.com because it is easy to use, but you can use whatever you like. Once you have your blog up, you should make entries that correspond and link to content on your site. For example, I will post this article on my blog, Moshing Search Engines, and link it to the article page on MarketingTitan.com.

To supercharge the impact of the blog, you should also link to a site map on your site. If you don’t have a site map, make one in HTML. The Yahoo robot will definitely follow it and index the pages. Don’t rely on the xml site map strategy Google is promoting.

Once you have the blog up with content posted, you must turn the blog into a real simple syndication feed. Again, you can use your own system. I prefer to use a free service because I really don’t have the time to waste on such things.

Feedburner.com seems to work find and is simple to use. Opening an account with Feedburner is so easy, I am not even going to explain it. At the end of the process, feedburner will kick out the link for your RSS feed. Here’s where the magic begins.

If you have a yahoo email account, you need to access you’re My Yahoo page. If you don’t have an account, get one! Once you are on the My Yahoo page, do the following:

1. Click the “add content” link in the upper left hand under the search box.

2. When the new page opens, click the “Add RSS by URL” link on the right of the “Find Content” search box in the upper section of the page.

3. Enter the exact link provided by Feedburner and click “add.” Do NOT add the url for your blog.

4. Click the “My Yahoo” tab at the top of the page and refresh the page.

At this point, you should see your feed at the bottom of the page. If you don’t, be patient. Yahoo is sometimes slow, so just try it again in an hour or so. When the feed is added, you should see the name of your blog and the title of each post under it. Yahoo can take up to a day to add new posts, so don’t panic if they don’t show up immediately.

Once you’ve completed the above, Yahoo will follow the links in the blog and index the pages on your site. If one of the links goes to a site map, you are in business. As an added bonus, Google will do the same thing. Let’s look at an example.

We are currently building NomadJournalTrips.com, which has been up for about a month. Roughly 10 to 20 pages are being added each day. Nomad Rick’s Ramblings is the blog for the site and the feed is included on four “My Yahoo” pages for various email accounts. Yahoo has indexed 95 pages and is about four days behind the page additions. Google has indexed 151 pages and is adding to the index every day. The blog and RSS feed are solely responsible for getting these pages indexed this quickly.

Depending on the size of your site, the process can take a few days or a couple of weeks. Every time you add new content, slap it into your blog with links. In no time, you will be taming Yahoo!Slurp.

The Internet offers a tremendous marketplace

2010-05-30T18:54:00.000-07:00

Many people think that the Internet offers a tremendous marketplace, while others will question the extra effort and money to purchase and design a website. Some of the money-making values of having a website are summarized in the following paragraphs for your consideration.

1. If you have a local group of customers and want to expand to the neighboring areas, states or even, countries, without spending massive amounts of costly advertising money or even leasing more company space, then the Internet can work very well for you. Niche markets (small groups of customers scattered about that are interested in a very specific item or service) also work very well on the Internet.

2. As a business owner, you need to provide a map and directions to your store for your customers and enable them to look up specials, discounts, limited merchandise, or varieties and prices of each item you market. For instance, let's say you sell cheesecakes and you would like to spend less time on the phone explaining the different varieties, how many people the different varieties will serve, prices, and availability. Here's how this could work online for you. You would provide a secure, encrypted order form thereby collecting the person's credit information as well as their address, phone, and email information. They would list their preferences as to varieties and sizes of cheesecakes. This form would be sent directly to your email or to your fax so that you would have the items ready for the customer to pick up that day or the day they designate. You would have the cheesecakes shipped for those that cannot make it to your store. When a customer returns to order another product from your website, they would not have to fill out most of the form as it would already be in your database.

3. You build their confidence when you show customers that you have their best interest and shopping convenience in mind when you open a website and properly maintain that website with new and updated information. Customers will appreciate being able to read about the owners, the store's policies, the service after the sale, and any other items you think would develop a rapport to allow them to do more business with you. Having a website allows your company to develop its style and branding and develops a sense of security for the customers in doing business with your firm.

4. A small operation can look just as important as a large corporation. A website builds confidence and value into your products and services and allows you to receive orders you may have missed without being on the Internet.

5. If you do advertising on the radio or TV, newspapers or direct mail, having a website gives the customer a place to review what you tell them in the ads in much more detail. Every ad should reference your website so customers can view the details at a time and place that is convenient 24 hours a day seven days a week. You can quickly change and update information on a website without the expense of printed materials.

6. You can do any promotion online that you can do offline and much cheaper. Coupons, money-off sales, discounts, employee recognition, limited merchandise you want to move, all these can be marketed on your website. Keeping the website up-to-date can be provided by your webmaster at a very nominal fee.

I hope that you can see from some of the above points that having your own website is necessary in today's marketplace for any small or medium-sized business as well as any at-home business. Customers are out there looking for you and you need to take advantage of where they are looking and, right now, that is the INTERNET! Since your competitors have a website, they are perceived as being more up-to-date. The ease, convenience, special online savings, information about your company's mission, your services, your ability to communicate with customers are all important reasons for having a dynamic online website. Online marketing will only continue to grow...WILL YOUR CUSTOMERS FIND YOU ONLINE?

The Chicken or the Egg and the Internet Marketer or Site Designer

2010-05-29T18:53:00.000-07:00

An age-old question is, “Which came first? The Chicken or the Egg?” In ecommerce, the same question can be applied to site designers and Internet marketers.

Before we settle the answer, we need a few parameters. For purposes of this discussion, a marketer is some formulating and creating Internet marketing strategies and campaigns. This includes search engine optimization. In using the term “designer”, we are throwing a bigger net to include programmers and people writing html.

Introducing the Designer

After deciding to start a site, most businesses will hire a designer or design team as one of the first steps. Intellectually, this makes sense. We need a site, thus, we need someone to build it.

Introducing the Marketer

After a lot of time and money has been spent on the design of the site, the first thought is given to marketing. Books are purchased, online articles such as this are read. PPC is often discovered and, typically, the business decides this looks easy and starts pursuing campaigns. The site starts making sales, but at a loss or a rate that can’t be increased despite a variety of tips. Frustration sets in and professional Internet marketers come on the seen. At this point, things start to get very ugly.

The business interviews a number of marketing professionals. All of them offer services, but on the condition major and expensive changes be made to the site. At this point, the business owner decides one of two things, the marketers are wrong or the designer is incompetent. Both views are wrong.

Holding Hands

Which came first? The marketer or the designer? Neither!

An effective site design combines the practical needs of the design team and marketer. While a designer will create a database to facilitate the showing of products, the marketer will want the designer to keep database parameters out of the sub-domain URLs. Other issues that must be jointly addressed include meta content, load times, abandonment issues and landing pages.

Both design and marketing have to be addressed at the outset of the creation of a site. There is simply no other way to approach an overall e-commerce effort.

The Art of Using Blogs to Their Full Marketing Potential

2010-05-28T18:52:00.000-07:00

As an Internet entrepreneur, you're more than likely aware of the ability of blogs to increase the bottom line of your e-business. Most everyone who sells online, either their product or someone else's, or runs a blog that they have monetized with ads from Google Adsense or some other source does some kind of blog advertising because it is free and eventually gets indexed by the search engines, especially when using Blogger.com blogs. However, there are a few ways that you can really use blogs to enhance your business online, and these tips can be used whether you are selling products on your own site or simply running your own monetized blog.

The first thing you need to think about when generating new blog entries is "how do people know that I have any/new content available here?" Luckily, most blog servers and software automatically create RSS site feeds (in the form of a file called atom.xml) that can be sent to the many RSS feed servers available online. Think of it is an announcement to the world through Really Simple Syndication that an update has been made to your blog and everyone should come and check it out. These updates are then posted on thousands of other websites and seen by people who are watching the site feeds for up to date news. This benefits you in two ways: First, it gets automatic traffic flowing into your site (you posted your web address in your blog post, didn't you?), and second many sites will carry your blog post creating one-way links to your web site. And just in case you don't know, one way links are the most powerful types of links to have.

However, doing so manually can be slow and extremely time consuming. There are many major RSS feeds available online, and posting your blog to each one each time can take forever. Fortunately, there is an easy way to automate it; a little piece of software called RSS Announcer. (http://www.easyrssannouncer.com) To use this software all you do is point it to the URL of your atom.xml file (which is created automatically with virtually all blog software and can be found in your setup), choose which RSS feeds you want to post to, and hit a button. The rest is taken care of for you automatically, and your blog posts are then syndicated across many thousands of web sites. Do you think that might make a difference in the number of visitors to your site?

The next important part of running a blog is always having new and fresh content for visitors to check out. When someone comes to your site or your blog, you want them to keep coming back, and one of the best ways to do that is to constantly update content. The problem is that even the most prolific of writers can't write more than one or two articles a day, and if you start running several blogs the amount of writing can quickly become overwhelming. I have run as many as 18 blogs at a single time and there's no way I would ever be able to create enough new content to keep users coming back. This is especially important if your blogs are monetized with Adsense advertising. Let's say, for instance, that you run a blog about Home Mortgages because it is a subject you know a lot about and are passionate about. In order to produce income you include Adsense on your site, and visitors to your blog read not only your content, but also see ads relating to Mortgages. Some of these visitors are going to click on your ads and generate income for you. In fact, if you're really good, 20% or more of your visitors will click on an advertisement and put money in your pocket. Soon some money starts coming in and you decide to put up another blog about Refinancing. After a while the blog starts to take off, and more Adsense revenue starts rolling in. At some point, you will find yourself trying to run so many blogs that there is no way you can write enough content for each of them.

Fortunately, there's an answer for the problem as well. It comes in the form of a piece of software called RSStoBlog. (http://www.dimasenterprises.com/rsstoblog.html) RSStoBlog will automatically, on a schedule that you decide, post relevant content to your blogs either from News sources, RSS Feeds, or search engines. If you're running a blog about Mortgages, instead of constantly writing new content for your blog, you can automate the posting of Mortgage information to your blog every day, several times a day. How does this benefit you as a blog owner? First, it relieves the burden of having to come up with so much original content by yourself. Second, it will send a "ping" to all the blog directories on every new post alerting them of new content at your blog. Third, if you are running a website relating to your blog, you can post the URL's of different pages of your website in your blog content, and those pages will quickly be indexed by the various search engines.
Have you seen those advertisements about "get your site indexed in 3 days for only $XX"? That's how they do it: add your page to a blog and ping the directories. If you're unfamiliar with this technique it is called Blogging and Pinging, and it is great for getting sites quickly indexed. RSStoBlog lets you do this quickly and easily. For all that it does, RSStoBlog is very under priced. It is definitely worth checking out if you are serious about marketing your websites or monetizing your blogs.

The last problem I'd like to address is that of link building. We all know that one of the keys to a long term search engine optimization strategy is high quality link building. This can include reciprocal links, purchased one-way links with related web sites, or even free links with unrelated websites. Many search engine experts agree that having some links, even if they're from sites totally unrelated to your own, are better than no links at all. Links to your site are like "votes" that the search engines see as your site containing real content. I assume that the people who run search engines feel that someone who takes time to build links to their site actually wants the site to stick around a while. However, as usual, link building can take a long time if it is not automated in some way.

Now, you're probably scratching your head and wondering "what does that last paragraph have to do with blogs?" Well, once again a piece of software comes to our rescue to automate our link building. It is called Blog Link Generator (http://www.cheapbloglinkgenerator.com), and can be used to quickly create hundreds or thousands of one-way links from blogs relating to your website (or even your own blog). It does this by searching for blogs relating to keywords that you input, and automatically posting to those blogs with a message from you and a link to your website. Let's say, for example, that you have a website or blog about Car Insurance. You enter the keywords "car insurance" into the software, and it will search through many thousands of blogs relating to car insurance and on each of those blogs post a message from you saying something like "I really enjoy car insurance blog. I have a website relating to car insurance you may find interesting at http://www.whateversite.com. Please come and visit when you have a chance." This is a piece of software you can use as little or as much as you want. There is no shortage of blogs on just about any topic imaginable, so creating one-way links to your site or blog on nearly any subject becomes extremely easy. Believe me when I say that you will quit before the software does.
So as you can see, there are several ways you can add to the power of blogs to bring more revenue to your e-business. Whether it is getting more people to know about your site or simply automating tasks that would normally consume too much time, software products are available to free up that time so you can get to the business of doing more business.

Suggested Resources:
http://www.cheapbloglinkgenerator.com
http://www.dimasenterprises.com/rsstoblog.html
http://www.easyrssannouncer.com

Yours in Success,
Dewo M

Stop, Relax and Prosper – The Forgotten Formula for Business Success

2010-05-27T18:51:00.000-07:00

Everyone’s looking for: the new angle, the undeveloped niche, the ‘vein of gold’ just waiting to be mined. Anything seems possible if we just work harder, better, faster than the next marketer waiting to capitalize on an opening.

You know you can do it but you feel you need that extra effort, greater insight, that flash of inspiration to just show you how. What if you could just do a little more, a little faster, a little better ....

This is the mindset we have been programmed to accept. One of ‘more effort = greater reward’. We believe that with constant effort and determination, we will naturally attain our goals.

But this is only half the truth and, on its own, is a recipe for ultimate failure. Sounds harsh? Well it should! That’s how we’ve been taught to react.

We strive forward, working ever harder, searching ever deeper and pushing ourselves, both physically and mentally, to an ever-increasing extent. We stay that little longer at the PC, do that little bit more research, read that extra report, filling ourselves with information, searching for new ideas.

The result of all this unrealized pressure is ‘STRESS’.

Now, I hear you shouting at the screen, “I’m not stressed! I can work hours without getting uptight and still perform. Who does this guy think he is?”

Please allow me a moment to explain what I mean.

It is very true that we all need a certain amount of stress in order to become motivated and grow; so what is the problem? We all have internal stress coping-mechanisms that were originally developed to cope with potentially life-threatening situations, the so called “fight or flight” response.

However, these biochemical changes are all too frequently brought into play by other factors nowadays, from meeting deadlines or receiving bills to worrying about the solution to a new project. When this occurs and the body is placed in an almost constant state of alert, the adrenal glands become depleted and we become tense, tired, irritable, even depressed and especially unfocused and so less productive.

Almost all of our bodily functions can be affected. This includes: digestive disorders, weakened immune system and a whole host of other physical problems.

We thought we were just working harder but in reality, when we reach this point and are not releasing this tension, we are achieving less - and that’s never a good state of play.

By allowing yourself the time, and I’m talking about just a few minutes here, to stop, breathe deeply and relax effectively, you can soon reap the rewards. You become more focused, more inspired, more effective and more motivated.

Time is a commodity that is in short supply – use it effectively. Make a powerful investment today - stop, relax and prosper.

SEO or PPC: Which One is Right for You?

2010-05-26T18:50:00.000-07:00

There are two major search engine marketing strategies in use today: SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay-per-click). Both strategies are entirely different and it is tough to decide which one or which combination is right for you.

To decide which strategy is best for you, consider the basics. It is easier to judge the pros and cons when taking the big picture into account. People will continue to battle for the top search engine positions. Search engine marketing is undoubtedly one of the best sources of targeted traffic.

As people continuously try to find new and unique ways to get additional traffic to their web sites, the SEO industry continues to grow. PPC refers to advertising on a search engine that charges on a per click basis whenever a visitor clicks on one of your ads. The order of ads is usually based on bidding prices, meaning that the advertiser who bids the highest price per click will be listed first. These sponsored listings are known as PPC listings.

SEO tries to change your search engine ranking by looking at a number of factors including link popularity, Page Rank and so on. If your web site is search engine optimized then obviously you are more likely to have a good ranking in the search engines. A well-optimized and marketed site will be listed in the top results whenever a person searches for related keywords. One of the best benefits of SEO marketing is you don’t have to pay for any clicks! So, how can we decide which method is better? Both methods actually serve different purposes. However, one is likely to be a better fit for your business than the other one.

PPC

PPC traffic, rankings and results tend to be more stable and predictable than SEO, and, combined with its low cost, this makes PPC one of the more popular ways of advertising. Most companies try PPC before they try SEO, because it’s seen as more stable. In many cases PPC lets you rank well on the search engines, without having to do the tedious work involved in SEO – no finding link partners, posting links, creating content and so on. As long as you have the budget for it, the ranking is yours. Another advantage is that the listing will get posted when you want it and not when the search engine gets around to it. With PPC’s popularity growing day by day, the market is also getting competitive. You will find that CPC’s (costs per clicks) are steadily rising, and for a common man it is getting tough to invest much. As with most auctions, the more people bidding on PPC, the higher the prices get.

SEO

The main benefit of SEO is that it does not cost per click. The disadvantages are that the traffic to your website is more unpredictable and requires a lot of work. With SEO, you have to adapt and constantly change strategies as search engines change their algorithms. SEO is also slower than PPC, as many search engines don't list new sites. So what should you choose? Well, it depends on how much money you are willing to spend, what your time line is, and what your return on investment is. If you have cash then PPC should be your first choice, as it produces fast results. PPC can also be used for testing the effectiveness of web sites. If you have time and money to invest in long-term results, SEO is an excellent option as well.

All and all, the best marketing strategy is typically to go with PPC in the short term to get immediate traffic and analyze conversions. SEO should then be taken with a long term view in mind, so you can reap the benefits of free traffic later on.

Popular Viral Marketing Techniques

2010-05-25T18:49:00.000-07:00

Viral Marketing is all about giving away your own free product or service along with your ad copy (contact information, link, email, etc.). In turn, recipients of your free product are allowed to pass it along to their own clients, prospects, visitors and others as a freebie. This is a quick way to multiple your marketing at no extra expense and without extra effort on your part.

Here are some popular viral marketing techniques to follow:

1. Ebooks – Share your no cost ebook with your website visitors. Include a nice full-color ad for your most popular product line with links to your website and email. Tell recipients to share copies of the ebook with their own site visitors and other contacts.

2. Software - Share a trial or “lite” version of your software with your website visitors as a freebie. Don’t forget to include that ad for your most popular product line with links to your website and email. And tell recipients to share copies of the software with their own site visitors and other contacts. For help creating software, hire help from online bid sites like Elance.com.

3. Web Host – Offer to host small business web sites on your server at no charge. In exchange, place your own banner ad at the top of the site for viral marketing. You can setup a fold for their site and they can choose their own domain name and have it redirected to that folder.

4. Templates – Design your own website or other templates, include your own marketing information on them and give them away as free downloads or as an electronic package. Grant permission for recipients to pass them along.

5. Articles – Write articles about your industry. Include your website and contact information in the byline and grant permission for others to publish as long as they keep the byline in tact. Then people can use your contact on websites, in ezines, newsletters and other places where once again, viral marketing will speed the spread of information about your business.

6. Discussion Board - Set up a Discussion Board on your website with your banner ad attached at the top. And invite others to link to it and use it for their own sites.
In summary, by using viral marketing strategies, you can reach out all over the Internet with much less effort. See which methods work best for you and repeat them as often as needed.

Online Selling Using Cause & Effect To Gain Success

2010-05-24T18:48:00.000-07:00

There is nothing more than I enjoy than marketing products on the net. Products which have been thoroughly researched and 99.9% of times are exactly the one that I myself use. I use the net each and every day and update myself with exactly what is happening online. All of those little changes, which most times result in big changes. And I meet these by adjusting my campaigns and ideas accordingly. I also love receiving those constant spam messages into my email inbox what a great way to monitor exactly what others are doing. Overall in the research I have done over the past few months here are a few points I would like to address, that will have a direct cause and effect impact on your own online business promotions.

It stuns my senses just how many scams and dodgy products are currently doing the rounds. It is a disgrace and all that it achieves is to directly wipe consumer confidence away from products which actually have a genuine worth and value. There is absolutely no benefit in promoting a product or service which does not have real value or effect. The internet has gained over time this reputation for making a simple quick buck. This is very far from the truth, but there are quite a few people out there who believe this point, and are doing there best to really make those quick bucks at any price. But these type of actions do have consequences and most of these fall back right into the lap of genuine sellers.

If you sell online in any form you really need to ask yourself one question How Long Do You Plan To Operate In Business Online. If your answer is, Forever! Then you have a future. If the answer is, Not Long At All. Then go ahead and just give up right now. I will let you in on a simple truth and it costs nothing! There is absolutely no way to make an easy dollar online, not one way at all. I have seen every scheme and idea in the book and this idea of 'An Easy Buck' an idea promoted fairly widely in most dodgy sales pitch's, is simply not possible. Nor is it possible I might add in offline world business practice.

It is good advice that a degree of knowledge is really a must needed commodity for potential buyers, before they purchase. This action needs to be provided by sellers, in the form of direct product information. A fancy sales pitch without real product information just doesn't work online. Customers are cautious before spending online already, firstly because of internet security risks and secondly because of the fact they have seen all the gimmicks before. Truth in advertising works online and this is something sellers need to be totally aware of, when marketing there own products. Truth is an absolute online asset, ask yourself the question, would I purchase the product I am selling. And as important are the 2 words, Online Trust.

Customers should be advised to always check their rights and/or the sellers background before purchasing online from any seller, check a sellers online sales policy, about us or contact us page. And if you buy a product you should always have the ability to ask for a refund, within due reason. Consumer confidence is an essential ingredient for good online buying experience. I myself have purchased products with which I have been far from happy. I contacted sellers and have received no response back, so I have had to contact the credit company I purchased the items though re: pay pal etc. And then a sellers response becomes automatic, because there is a negative action in result for the seller.

This type of action is called leverage. If you are unhappy use leverage, but buyers really should not need to resort to this type of action. This is exactly what separates the good sellers from just the plain bad, and exactly one point which ruins consumer confidence which directly effects everyone who operates in real online business. My advice, always follow your sales up with a question, asking for any feedback from your sales. Make sure the customer is pleased with the level of service and product you supply. The customer is number one and always should be treated with this exact respect. If you are serious about long term online success then this type of action is more than necessary. And always remember if you get any negative feedback, fix or negotiate the problem immediately and effectively.

The sharks and internet get rich quick artists have a short life span online, but as soon as one disappears another replaces them. Their actions do put the spotlight onto genuine sellers and we need to be wary of this and act accordingly. Being aware of potential changes and actions of others that may have a direct negative effect on our business provides us with a real option to make our online opportunities more successful. Turn a simple negative into a positive and this is an approach that we can always use no matter where in life, to make things simply better. The only substance that will make you a success in any form is plain hard work. There is no substitute for hard work, and if you already understand this exact fact you are on your first steps to reaching success already.

Keyword Tracking

2010-05-23T18:47:00.000-07:00

Keyword tracking allows a site owner to know what keyword searches are resulting in sales. Search term information can be logged into a database and presented to web site owners in a meaningful format. This data can be used to see which keywords are producing the most sales per search and to determine where to focus web marketing.

What Search Engine or Web Site

Knowing what search engine a sale has originated from allows site owners and marketers to know where their efforts are paying off the most. Good tracking and analysis software will also show what web site referred visitors. Knowing what sites are sending the most visitors allows site owners to give special attention to ensuring this traffic continues and increases. Knowing what referrers are generating the most sales further allows a site owner to hone his or her marketing efforts toward site referrals that result in the most sales.

What Keyword Was Searched For

Knowing what keyword searches are resulting in sales on a site allows the owner to focus more on those words. Perhaps you are marketing your site for two main keywords, "air hook widgets" and "air hooks." Using keyword tracking that traces keywords down to the sale ensures that you will know if searches for "air hook widgets" convert into sales more often than visits resulting from searches for "air hooks."

Sales Conversion Ratio of Keywords and Return on Investment

Tracking keyword searches through to sales allows site owners to determine the return on investment. If a web master spends $100.00 on the pay-per-click keyword "air hook widgets" and sells $1000 worth of product, his or her return on investment is likely very good. If the same web site owner spends $100.00 on the keyword "air hooks" and sells $200 worth of product, it is likely that the return on investment was not as great. Of course, if the markup or profit on one product is greater than on another, this must be taken into account.

Cost of Keyword

If a web marketer is using pay-per-click engines, knowing exactly what has been spent on a keyword, and what the return was, allows money to be put where it will do the most. Keyword searches, unlike many advertising mediums, are targeted by the viewer. For this reason, in addition to the accurate return on investment feedback, keyword marketing can be very worth the cost.

Added Benefit of Branding

Marketing your site by keyword in pay-per-click engines means that you will only be charged if a person clicks through your ad to your site. Pay-per-click ads and organic search listings have the often overlooked added value of showing the ad or listing many times over in addition to the clicks the ad or listing receives. Only a small percentage of people are likely to click on a keyword ad or search result listing, yet your ad or listing will be visible time and time again to people searching for terms you have bid on or marketed, increasing your site branding. Nonetheless, care should be taken to generate a compelling key word ad or page description, since in most cases you will want to receive as many clicks as possible.

Conclusion

In conclusion, if you are spending money on search engine marketing, it is often well worth the effort to track your keywords through to sales. Without tracking your keywords, you will not know where your efforts are paying off. By tracking your keywords, you are able to put your efforts where they are paying off the most.

Internet Marketing – Short Term Strategy

2010-05-22T18:46:00.000-07:00

After spending a lot of time and effort on building a site, many wonder where they should start with Internet marketing. Site owners can be bombarded with pitches about marketing and it is hard to sort out what should be done. In this article, a short term marketing strategy is discussed.

Short Term Marketing Strategy

The single best short term marketing strategy is pay-per-click marketing campaigns. A “PPC” campaign simply involves placing advertisements on the results pages of search engines. In essence, you open an account with the PPCs, develop a list of keywords and create ads for those keywords. The two best PPC platforms are Google Adwords and Overture.

Google Adwords lets you place ads on Google search results. In addition to its own search engine, Google also supplies search results to AOL and other sites. When you create your ads, you can choose to place your ads on “content” or “search” results. Select only “search” results until you are sure the advertisement and your site coverts traffic into revenues.

Yahoo purchased Overture a few years ago for 1.8 billion dollars. Overture places advertisements on search results for MSN and, ta da, Yahoo among others. To build your ads, you search for keywords from a list provided by the PPC and create individuals ads. It can take a long time, but it is worth it.

Which PPC is Best?

Both Google and Overture have serious benefits. Google will send more traffic to your site than Overture. Getting your ad in front of AOL users is particularly advantageous because AOL users are buyers. For whatever reason, they simply seem to be more amenable to buying what you’re selling.

If Google is so great, why use Overture? In many ways, Overture has serious advantages over Google Adwords. One of the biggest advantages involves the size of ads.

To effectively run a profitable PPC campaign, you must get the maximum bang for your buck. One strategy for doing this is to qualify your traffic by explaining details in your description. If you only carry one model of a product, say that so money isn’t wasted with people who are looking for a different model clicking on your ad. With Google, you only get two to three words in your title and 8 to 10 in your description.

PPC advertising is a tremendous short term marketing strategy for a number or reasons. First, the advertising gets traffic to your site immediately. Second, it allows you to test the ability of your site to convert traffic into dollars. If conversions are low, you can modify the site and get immediate feedback.

If its time to get working on your marketing, research the PPC possibilities. Google Adwords and Overture have a lot to offer.

Internet Marketing – Long Term Strategy

2010-05-21T18:43:00.000-07:00

Once your site is up and running, the best method for getting immediate traffic is pay-per-click search engine marketing. Although you have to be patient, you should also be focusing on search engine optimization as a long term strategy.

Search Engine Optimization – “SEO”

Search engine optimization, or “seo” as it is better known, is the definitive long term Internet marketing strategy. So, what is it? Seo simply refers to taking steps to make sure your site appears high in non-paid search results on Google, Yahoo and MSN.

The reason seo is considered a long term strategy is…well, it takes a long time. If your marketing is focusing on highly competitive keywords, such as “Europe travel”, there is so much competition that you could be looking at two or three years before getting top rankings. The time period is really a factor of how fast you can build links. Sometimes you can move up within 6 months, but sometimes it takes a few years.

Is it worth it to wait for 2 years to get into the top five for “Europe travel”? There are over 2,000,000 searches a month for the keyword phrase. What do you think? If you offer a service or product related to traveling in Europe, how much money would you make if even 1 million people visited your site each month? Think about that.

The Big Three

There are three, and only three, search engines that matter when it comes to seo – Google, Yahoo and MSN. What about Alta Vista, etc.? They simply don’t have enough traffic to make them worth pursuing.

There are four keys to seo. First, you must research the amount of traffic various keywords are receiving. Second, you must modify your site to include the exact keywords phrases in the meta tagging and text. Third, you must add and add and add content to your site. The more content, the more the big three will like your site. Finally, you must trade links with other sites that have content related to your site.

The keys to pursuing a seo marketing strategy are discipline and patience. Let’s take a quick look at each.

You must have the discipline to stick with your seo effort when you are seeing no results. The desire to throw one’s arms in the air in frustration is going to be strong. Just remember that every step you take today will pay off down the road.

Patience balances feelings of frustration and you are going to have a lot of those. Look, it is going to take a long time, so resist the urge to whine. Stick a sign up over your desk counting off the months or have a regular exercise routine. If nothing else, you can day dream about all of the free traffic you are going to get one day.

Search engine optimization is not for the weak of mind or impatient. If you can stick with it, this long term marketing strategy always pays off.

Internet Marketing Success With Joint Ventures

2010-05-20T18:34:00.000-07:00

There are many ways to make money on the internet. All methods however, come with a price-tag. For starters, you will probably need to purchase basic business software and relevant learning materials. Planning and developing your ideas will definitely require dedication and perseverance all along the way.

One of the best methods for getting started is to partner with other internet marketers so that you can reach larger target audiences.

These joint ventures or "JV's" can take-on many different forms. Some are as simple as promoting each other's newsletters, while others may be more complex partnerships with cross-promoting of complimentary products. Some JV's even involve starting entirely new projects from scratch.

Joint Ventures are a powerful tool for expanding business in many areas. So, what is stopping 'you' from using this technique to expand your business?

For many new internet marketers, starting a JV can be a frightening task, especially when it comes to contacting other internet marketers.

Too often, many internet marketers appear to be "spamming," when they are really just seeking other JV partners. Here are some tips that may help you along the way:

1. Get to know your potential JV partners.

If you start emailing everyone on your list of potential partners, chances are you will be considered a common spammer. You won't get the partners you want, or even worse, may destroy your reputation in the process.

Instead, subscribe to your potential partner's newsletter and check out their websites and blog. Get to know them a little bit before approaching them with a proposal.

2. Go slowly when approaching potential partners.

Let's face it, everyone likes a little flattery. When contacting your potential JV partner, treat them like your "first date." Be courteous and complimentary. Tell them the things you like about their business. Join their newsletter and tell them you think it is awesome, and why. You will be surprised at how much attention you receive by using a little well placed flattery as you proceed to develop your relationships with potential JV partners.

3. Your financial estimates should always be realistic.

Don't promise what you can't deliver. Be honest with your potential partners. Explain your proposal and benefits in realistic terms, but don't hype. Be honest, open and sincere.

Getting a Joint Venture off the ground doesn't have to be scary if you start by following the three simple steps given above.

Get going and get growing today!

Internet Marketing Secret

2010-05-19T18:34:00.000-07:00

If you are trying to sell a product or service on the Internet, then you are probably doing so through an affiliate program. You signed up as an affiliate (usually for free) and they gave you an affiliate ID (user name or number). They may have even given you a basic marketing package which includes text ads, banner ads, and solo ads with a link to your affiliate sales page. All you have to do is use these tools to get traffic to your affiliate sales page.

Well that sounds pretty easy, doesn't it? This process actually works too, except that your probability of converting your traffic into sales is very, very, very low. In other words, you may have to have thousands of people to visit your affiliate sales page before you ever see your first sell. Now those aren't very good odds, are they?

Unfortunately, that is what most people do. They spend a lot of time, effort, and money getting all of those people to that affiliate sales page and then they finally make a sale and earn a referral fee or commission. But wait, it can get even worse. Let's say that you made one sale and earned a $10 commission. That's great, right? Well not really, because in the terms and conditions of your affiliate program, you don't actually get paid until you have accumulated at least $20 of commissions. So get back to it and get another sale and finally get paid. Good grief!

Don't quit! Internet marketing is a great way to make extra money, but you have to know some of the secrets. Here's one. "Don't advertise your affiliate program directly." You must use a four step process.

Four Step Process

1. First, you must provide something of value. The easiest valuable thing that you can give away is information. An informative email course, special report, or ebook are all great ways to give away free information.

2. This step goes along with the initial step above. Don't give away your free information until you get an email address. You must capture the name and email address of your prospective sale in order to be able to implement the next step.

3. If the information that you are providing is good and helps people, then you will earn some trust. If someone gives you some information that saves you time, money, or effort; then you are going to closely read anything that they send you - as long as the information is still valuable. This is why it is so important that you get that name and email address before you start giving away your information. Now you can keep the information flowing through an occasional email to your prospect.

4. Finally, if you have been providing valuable information and earning trust from people, it is much more likely that they will buy something that you recommend. This is especially true if you can convince them that what you are recommending will help them and that it is worth their money. The easiest way to do this is to recommend something that you have actually purchased and use yourself. Just tell them how it helped you and why you think that it was worth what you paid for it!

Internet Marketing For Sales Leads

2010-05-18T18:33:00.000-07:00

NO matter what business you are trying to build online, you will need sales leads if you are ever going to make sales, and sales leads are what you are trying to generate if you are marketing on the internet. In order to survive, any web site needs a steady flow of qualified leads.

The aim of any lead generation campaign is to build your mailing list. Internet marketers often say "the money is in the list", which is totally true. A list of responsive buying customers that trust you is worth its weight in gold!

While spam filtering has lessened the impact of email marketing, it’s still a viable means to getting your sales messages out there. In theory, email is marketing is free, although of course its costs you in terms of your time. The theory behind email marketing is that by using a "hook" such as a free product or some other incentive, you can "funnel" interested parties onto specific products and services.

When you consider generating leads via an email campaign there are basically three avenues you can explore: email signatures, joint ventures and safe lists. One word of warning though, and that is avoid spam at all cost, one spam complaint can seriously damage your online business. You should familiarize yourself with the laws concerning spam, and at the very least ensure you include a un-subscription link in ALL your marketing emails. Due to spam, it is advisable that you avoid buying leads, no matter how reputable the company, buying leads can easily lead to a spam complaint, you have been warned!

In its simplest form, email marketing is a matter of putting a signature in all your emails that contains a link to your main product.

If you are looking to vastly increase your list quickly then a joint venture (JV) may well be the key you need. In its simplest form, in a JV you supply the product and a fellow marketer supplies the leads and you share the profits. Hopefully, you will then get the emails of your fellow marketer’s customers, so you can then mail them with further offers.

When considering a joint venture there are many considerations you have to think about, but the main one, before you consider contacting anyone about mailing to their list, is "what's in it for THEM", not "what's in it for me". NEVER write to a fellow marketer unless you can offer them something of value in return for their help, and that is not necessarily just a share of the profits, be inventive!

Finally you have safe lists. A safe list is a list of people that have agreed to receive marketing emails in return for being able to send their own marketing email. The value of this form of marketing has never been that good. After all you are trying to sell to people who are only interested in selling to you!

You can use pay per click advertising such as overture or Goggle adwords to advertise your site and draw in interested leads.

One other highly effective way of generating interested leads is posting in forums that are related to your area of business. Include a link to your site in your signature and people interested in your sphere of business will often click it if your forum post was interesting.

Three other popular sales lead generation techniques are submitting articles to ezine publishers and article directories, press releases and testimonials for products in your target market.

No matter what lead generation technique you employ you will need a way to capture your leads email address when they arrive at your site.

The traditional method has been to use a pop up or pop under which contains some incentive to get someone to sign up. With the invention of pop up stoppers their effectiveness has dwindled and therefore unstoppable pop ups (also know as hover ads or slide in ads) have evolved. This new generation of pop ups are built into your webpage and as such cannot be stopped. Simply do a search on Goggle for "unstoppable pop up" and you are sure to find a software solution to produce these types of pop ups for you.

The other alternative is to use what is called a "name squeeze page".

In essence a name squeeze page is a web page whose sole purpose is to capture an email address.

They generally contain a small amount of information about the product or service you are selling as a "teaser" for the reader and will contain a sign up form, with a message like "to find out more simply fill in the form to be immediately directed to further details on this amazing product".

A name squeeze page not only helps build your list, this information can also be used with certain software to help personalize your site for your visitor, a technique that has been shown to increase sales. Again, simply do a search for name squeeze page generators.

No matter how you generate sales leads there is one thing always to bear in mind, and that is to be effective your leads must be in your targeted market. If, for example, you are selling internet marketing products, then it's no use advertising on a site that is all about scuba diving!

When you start to build your online business, ensure you include a well thought out sales lead generation strategy from the beginning. Do not make it an afterthought; this should be in place from the very beginning if you want your business to be a success.

Best Internet Marketing Solutions Without Overspending

2010-05-17T18:31:00.000-07:00

The Internet has made this world an open enterprise. It has become important for companies to further expand their market and their consumer targets. Engaging to Internet Marketing maybe a risk for people who wish to be involved with this type of business.

Ensure that most of your target consumers will surely acquire your product. Consider the best products which will definitely capture their interests and needs. This means that you need to identify specifically who these people are, their location and financial level in the society. Have a marketing knowledge and skill to achieve your goal in the field of Internet marketing.

At the present, you can use varied Internet Marketing Solutions that is being offered by companies which can be your tool for support to your consumers. This solution maybe email marketing, search engine optimization or creating web pages or sites. Since you need to maximize your return profit, you need to choose Internet Marketing Solutions that will help you achieve this. These marketing techniques will not cost much since they are very self-explanatory, thus, learned easily.

Email marketing is a common Internet marketing Solution. This is a cost effective way of communicating and interacting to your consumers, driving them to visit your website and check out your products. It may be in a way of marketing articles, leading them to forums or newsletters. A newsletter has an advantage of expanding your consumers as more and more sign up on it until you can have a bulk list of emails.

Another great Internet marketing solution is through websites. This is a good promotion strategy to employ since you can display all the necessary information for your target consumers. The website should capture their interest and be complete since every transaction, from inquiry to payments may take place. All correspondence that will be done online must be well-facilitated by the features of your website.

Another Internet marketing solution is search engine optimization. This is a type of service for your website that you can make use of in order to raise the number of visitors to your site. Once a consumer uses a search engine, your website will rank high in the list of searches which in return will increase your site's traffic.

Considering these Internet Marketing Solution, there are different companies offering software products containing one or all of these solutions. It would be a great opportunity to try one of these which will match your financial capability and expected return profit.

10 Resourceful Things You Can Do With A Product That Doesn't Sell

2010-05-16T18:29:00.000-07:00

1. Sell the reprint/reproduction rights to the product. You could make money selling other people the rights to reproduce and sell the product. People are always looking for new products to sell.

2. Giveaway the product for free from your web site. Just because it won't sell doesn't mean people won't visit your web site to get it for free. They may see another product you sell and buy that one.

3. Try auctioning off the product at an online auction. You may make part of your investment back. If you're lucky, you may even make a profit because people sometimes get into bidding wars and will bid a higher price than the product is worth.

4. Use the product as a free bonus for another product you sell. This will increase the perceived value of the product you're selling. People will feel they're receiving more for less.

5. Contact businesses with the same target market and see if they would be interested in using your product as a free bonus for their product. You could place your ad on the product and get free advertising.

6. Sell your product to businesses at wholesale cost as a promotional product. Businesses are always looking for products they can giveaway to their customers with their advertising on the product. You could make part of your investment back.

7. Barter your product to other businesses for things you need for your own business. You could trade for their products or services. This will save you money and help make up for your profit loss.

8. You could create an online contest so people could win your product. This will attract traffic to your web site. You also could get free advertising by listing it on online contest directories.

9. If you decide to giveaway the product for free, allow other people to giveaway the product for free. Place your web site ad on the product. This will spread your advertising and attract even more people to your site.

10. Ask businesses with the same target audience if they would be interested in combining your product with their product. You could then sell them together as a package deal and split the profits. You may have better results selling your product this way.

22 Questions to Ask Before You Use Any Shopping Cart System

2010-05-15T18:29:00.000-07:00

You can use traditional methods to sell products such as direct mail, catalogs and advertising. However, if you have a great online presence, the entire world is your marketplace at a fraction of the cost of most traditional methods. To easily sell to this worldwide marketplace, you need a great shopping cart system.

Choosing a shopping cart system is perhaps the most important single decision you'll make in your online marketing career.

This is because you will be stuck with the decision for a long time.

If you buy into a system that isn't adequate, it can cost you money--big money--because it won't maximize the amount of money spent by each visitor.

There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of off-the-shelf, free and alternative products out there vying for your money, time or both. And most of them are junk.

Don't suffer like I did. I learned the hard way. When I started on the Internet I couldn't find a decent shopping cart program, so I took one that was highly recommended by my ISP (I now know the only reason they suggested it was because it made them the most money. They didn't care if it was the best one for me or not). What a headache! The system wouldn't do anything but take the order, but you had to have a PhD in computer science to work on it.

Here are 22 questions you absolutely, unfailingly must ask anyone trying to sell you a shopping cart. If you don't hear positive answers to the majority of these questions, put your wallet back into your pocket and evaluate the next option. Don't get stuck with a crappy shopping cart, even if they give it to you free.

If you have a poor shopping cart, get rid of it. I know that hurts, because you may have spent lots of time and money getting it going, but a bad one will cost you many thousands of dollars by waiting to replace it later rather than sooner.

Oh, and one more thing: if you hear the shopping cart programmer answer one of the questions below by saying, "Well, we could make it do that," run away even faster, because you're going to get stuck with a big custom programming bill with no guarantees that the cart is going to work the way you expected.

Every question below is very important when it comes to having a quality shopping cart system that gets more money out of the same number of visitors.

1. Will it calculate shipping and tax?

2. Does it handle specialized shipping like FedEx and UPS?

3. Will it automatically deliver hard goods and soft goods (e- books and other digital products) in the same transaction?

4. Does it offer customizable "Return to Shopping" pages without needing custom programming? This is important so you can send your customers to the most likely product they will buy next. Standard carts just send customers back to the main catalog, which forces them to search for related products. This is both irritating and time-consuming. Any delays in finding what they want could mean a lost sale, when they finally throw their hands up in disgust and move on to your competitor's site.

5. Does it offer customizable "Thank You" pages based on what the customer just bought? These are pages where savvy marketers put affiliate links and other offers specifically related to the customer's interests. When a customer clicks on one of these links and buys something from someone else, you get a commission.

6. Does it deliver receipt and confirmation e-mails automatically? The customer wants to know immediately that the order went through. If he or she is unsure, you are going to have to field many wasted e-mails and phone calls letting the customer know everything is OK.

7. Does it allow multiple order and dropship e-mails? In many cases, several different people in your organization and/or outside your organization need notice of an order. Again, you don't want to have to do this manually.

8. Does it have a Web-based administration page so you can work on your cart from any computer that has Internet access?

9. Does it include encryption technology and a secure server? Many companies make a fortune by sucking you in with a cheap or free cart and then make money on selling you an overpriced secure server.

10. Does it deliver easy output to your accounting software? You want to be able to import and export data easily between the cart and whatever programs you have that need to share the customer and sales information.

11. Does it have its own associate/affiliate program or is it easily compatible with other major brands of associate software? An affiliate program lets other people promote and sell your products on their Web sites. You don't pay them unless they sell something. When I tried to get an associate/affiliate program to work with my old cart, it cost me six months of down time and untold amounts of money lost because it wouldn't work. The associate program people blamed the shopping cart people and vice versa. But ultimately I was left holding the bag.

12. Does it have integrated up-sell modules? The ability to offer more related products to customers making a purchase makes me a small fortune each month. We call it, "Do you want fries with that?" If you don't have this ability, you are leaving many thousands of dollars on the table from people who would have spent more if your cart just gave them the chance.

13. Does it have an integrated sales and prospect database? In the old days I would have to print out orders and then retype them into ACT or some other database program. A good shopping cart system eliminates all this hassle and potential for error and gives you instant access to your sales reports and clients.

14. Does it have broadcast e-mail capability? Good shopping cart systems are able to manipulate your customer database instantly and send e-mails to any segment or sub-segment of your clients and handle unlimited e-mail magazines. Again, in the old days I would have to be genius enough to pick out segments of the database, export them to a file, import them into a mail program and then an hour later send the darn e-mail. Now this is all done in a few seconds.

15. Does it have mail merge capability? The e-mails sent are personalized to the recipients in any number of ways. Their names can be popped in to the subject line and in various portions of the body of the e-mail. You can merge "what they bought," "when they bought," "where they live" or just about anything that will make them feel the e-mail was just for them. Virtually all studies show that mail merge gets a much higher response than plain broadcast e-mail.

16. Can it handle coupons and other discounts? You can make a deal with Joe Blow that everyone coming from his Web site gets an automatic discount -- either a percentage or dollar amount. This makes Joe look great to his visitors and makes more sales for you. Here's a secret: Joe is your affiliate and makes money on the sale too, so he's got a great incentive to keep your discounts and coupons in front of his visitors. Good shopping cart systems can automate all of this and also handle any quantity discounts you offer.

17. Can it work for multiple Web sites with no extra fees? When I first started I had to get a separate (and expensive) license for each site and a separate merchant account too. Not only was this a great deal of expense, the hassle with installation every time you wanted a new site to go up was enormous. Modern carts can sell bras on one site and bibles on another, and no one knows the difference. The carts run on their own servers so there is no expensive installation and set-up is immediate.

18. Does it have unlimited and fully integrated "sequential" autoresponders? This is one of the most powerful features when it comes to Internet marketing. This feature follows up automatically over and over again to your clients and prospects to provide them customer care and to sell them more products and services. You can even provide free or paid e-mail courses, and each part of the course is delivered automatically.

19. Does it have ad tracking tied into actual sales? Simple ad tracking can be had all over the 'Net, but it is pretty much worthless unless it is tied to actual sales. This is called the "conversion ratio." Your cart system should be able to tell you how many people clicked on a particular promotion and how many people bought. This is the only way you can determine if an ad paid off. Good carts will also automatically split test one of your sales pages against another and tell you which page sells more. You keep the page that sells more and get rid of the page that sells less.

20. Does it have a pop-up box builder? Even though many people hate popup boxes, they work. I use them judiciously to make all kinds of offers, and I have the sales figures to prove they get more money out of the same number of people. If you know how to use them properly, no one gets upset.

21. Does it have a printable off-line order form? Believe it or not, many people are still afraid to put their credit card numbers into a Web site. I still get lots of fax orders and phone orders. If you want to maximize your sales, your cart must take these kinds of orders easily.

22. Does it provide free training? You'll need training in both the basic set up of using your shopping cart and determining your online sales strategy, so that you maximize the amount of money spent by each customer.

You may not understand what all the above questions mean right now, but I can assure you they are important in putting more money into your bank account. If you want to know even more about this subject, you can download a free e-book, How to Pick a Shopping Cart System That Makes You Money at ECommerce with Shopping Carts.

You Attract Who You Are On The Internet!

2010-05-14T18:28:00.000-07:00

Being online is not only about getting your piece of pie, it's also about what kind of pie you are getting. Your company is often being measured by many other business people online. There are many ways that people are keeping an eye on you.

- Search engine placements
- Number of incoming links
- Alexa ranking
- PR Rating online
- Website growth
- What others are saying

The reason why people do this is because, we are all looking for other great companies to tie into. Marketing online is about creating a network of advertising to come back to you. The more you put out there, the more you'll have coming in.

On another note, the quality of what you put out there is very important as well. You are more likely to have your advertising ad viewed by many people from a very popular website, rather than a newbie. This is why many of the top websites in the world offer advertising to the public. There is money to be made.

As an entrepreneur, you should always be looking for ways to connect your business with others online. This is a crucial step so many seem to neglect to do. Maybe you feel it isn't that important, or maybe you don't know how to start.

Connecting people online is more simple than you think. It comes down to finding other like minded people like yourself and combining your services or products together. For instance, let's say you sell "shoes online". Try finding "Shoe repair shops" that will work with you to bring both your visitors together.

So now that we know why it's important, let's also take a look at how you can get the better half of the pie every time...

You attract what you are:
Can't be more right when it comes to online. When someone is researching online to connect with others, there is no personal feel to it, it's simply information so we tend to go for the facts. Like I mentioned above, people are trying to measure your success. Why are they trying to do that? To determine whether or not you have made your website as successful as theirs. It's as simple as that. If you work hard and end up getting medium-to-good-success online, on the same note, you will attract websites that measure up to yours.

The beginners & players:
When starting out, you want to find websites within your field that have also just started. This way, you both can grow together. On the flip side, if you've been around for a while, getting other websites attention won't be too hard for you. People will either listen up real quick or not at all by the measure of your success online.

Sad Reality:
In some respects, this method of connectivity seems much like a rally for BMW's and another rally for NEON's. There is rarely something that fits in the middle. If you now have medium success online, it is still a little tough to make successful websites want to connect with you and the newer websites are now knocking on your door.

In Conclusion:
Keep plugging away at everything you are doing online. What you put out there will come back in equal amounts. - Law of the universe.

Hope this article helps you out!

Read more of Martins articles online here:
http://www.smartads.info/newsletter

What's A Niche and Can I Find One Too?

2010-05-13T18:25:00.000-07:00

When I came upon that little word -- Niche -- I wondered, "what is this thing called a Niche -- and most importantly, can I find my own niche too?

What is A Niche

Well, A niche, is a service or product , that fills an unmet customer's need -- that is more of a speciality. You are not competing with the masses for a sale on an ebook or an affiliate tool. Instead, you carve out a small corner of the market for yourself on the Internet.

Well, the definition was simple, however, finding a niche that I felt comfortable with was going to be a chore, because I wanted to avoid the affiliate programs -- and if possible find a company that privately carried their own affiliate program -- without the quota's and the many rules.

How to Find A Niche

When I started looking for a niche market, I started to make a list of my hobbies, what I liked to do, what I was interested in and what I was familiar with -- to help me brainstorm. If this little task does nothing else, it will definitely give you an eye-opener to who you are.

Anyway, when the dust finally settled I realized that I wanted a niche where it would assist others -- perform a service of some sort, and would compliment my current website. Not very decisive, but I had a direction.

Then it happened, just by chance, or maybe it was divine intercession -- anyway, I received a personal email from one of the assistant manager's from DentalPlans -- stating that she liked my website and wondered if I would be interested in becoming an affiliate.

I looked at their website and the affiliate plan -- and I knew that this affiliate program was for me.

Here's What DentalPlan Offers

1. High conversion rate -- 1-5% percent conversion ratio from click thrus.

2. Commission -- $40 to $50.

3. Extremely high EPC.

4. Partner through DentalPlans private network -- Your affiliate manager will answer any questions you may have --- one on one assistance.

5. You can promote on-line or off-line or both.

6. Full 365-day cookie. (If you go through DentalPlans program)

7. Paid monthly.

8. They work with affiliates more closely -- will create custom creatives such as: landing pages, banners, pop-unders, emails, editable templates to fit on your website.

9. Free Web templates (standard and editable), banners, affiliate links

10. On-line tracking of stats

11. Multi-tier possibilities (Need to ask about it)

This is what I or any affiliate is looking for in a program! If you would like to join, you can go to my website at http://www.myaffiliateplace.biz/Affiliate_More_Affiliate_Opp.htm or if you
would like to look at one of their editable website's go to
http://www.myaffiliateplace.biz/Affiliate_mydentalwebsite.htm and look around.

Anyway, I found my niche -- it compliments my affiliate website.

So yes, you can find your small corner of the Internet and find a niche product. But always remember -- even though this may have seemed difficult -- your chore is not over -- you must market, market and market.

To you success.

Dewo M

Successful websites don’t set out to sell

2010-05-12T18:24:00.000-07:00

What are websites? Are they sales tools for vendors and service providers, or are they electronic guidance for potential customers? Put simply, are you selling or are you helping?

Your answer to this question may determine the success of your website. So think carefully…

How we define what a website is all depends on which side of the fence we’re on. I suspect that most – if not all – vendors and service providers would say their website is a sales tool. But this is a fundamentally flawed perspective. Adopt this position, and sooner or later you’ll pay for it.

To really understand what a website is for, we need to think about who the Internet serves. It’s tempting to think cynically and argue that it serves commercial interests, but that’s getting the cart before the horse. The Internet serves buyers and information seekers. That’s what most people use it for.

What your visitors are really looking for is a website that helps them. A website that helps them buy when they want to buy. Helps them understand when they want to understand. And – most importantly - a website that helps them decide when they want to decide.

So if you really want to build trust, credibility, authority, and site loyalty, helping visitors is the way to go. Of course, that’s not to say you have to do it for free. We’re all in business to make money after all. In fact, the main aim of many of your visitors will be to buy something. But it’s important that you focus on them, not on you. For example, your visitors don’t want to know what you have to sell. They want to know what they can choose to buy. If your primary focus is sales, your visitors will pick up on it.

To generate revenue from our websites – either directly or indirectly – we need to build them to help our readers. Don’t start by asking “How can I sell?” Instead, start by asking “How can I help?” (Even “How can I help them buy?” is a step in the right direction.)

We need to build our websites from the ground up to be a form of online help. Think of your website as a cousin of the online help provided with Microsoft Office. (If you think of Microsoft’s help as the slow-witted cousin, you’re on the right track…)

I worked as a technical writer in the software industry for 9 years, writing and managing online help for software programs. And the key to successful online help is to always try to answer one simple question: What does the reader want to know? We knew they wanted help, but did they want reference information or how-to information? Did they want to know how to get started or how to get out of trouble?

Sure, when you’re writing for a website, the subject material is different, but the question is still the same. What does your reader want to know?

Obviously, the answer to this question will be different for everyone, but there are some common questions you can ask yourself which might help you decide…

- Who is your audience?
- What time of the day are they most likely to be searching?
- Are they searching from home or their workplace?
- Are they the business owner or do they have a boss looking over their shoulder?
- Are they relaxed or in a hurry?
- Are they spending their money or someone else’s?
- Are they looking for something which will make their job easier?
- Or are they looking for something which will make their job possible?
- Are they trying to solve a problem or avoid a problem?
- Are they looking for a budget solution or a ‘best of breed’ solution?
- Are they looking for something with all the bells and whistles or something which focuses on one thing only?
- Are they looking to buy immediately (just as soon as they know they’ve found what they want)?
- Are they comfortable with internet purchases?
- Are they the final decision maker or do they need to convince someone else as well?
- How much do they know already about your subject material?
- How much do they want to know?

Whether you do some real research or just make some educated guesses, it’s important that you know your visitor very well. Then, and only then, can you help them. And only when you help them will you start to realize the true sales potential of your website.

Happy writing!

Search Engine Wars - Quality Searches Vs Quantity!

2010-05-11T18:21:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Wars - Quality Searches Vs Quantity!
By: Martin Lemieux

It is no secret that Google and Yahoo are on a continuous battle to win our hearts and get everyone to convert, but is converting someone really a matter of the quantity or the quality?

Let's take a look at some top key searches and compare them with some search engines online. I will outline a few things for each search result:

1) Search Engine
2) Number of results found
3) Quality & content of the top 10 sites
4) What you find going beyond the first 10 pages

Each section will get ranked out of 10 points for quality (information taken on August 26,2005).

=
Starting with my all-time favorite search term: "INTERNET MARKETING"
=

Google.com
- 99,000,000 results
- 10/10 on quality
- 10/10 Past 10 pages still delivers top quality results

Yahoo.com
- 281,000,000 results
- 7/10 on quality. There's no reason to list a "Hotel Marketing Firm" & "Building websites". The #1 spot was reserved for Yahoo marketing.
- 9/10 Past 10 pages, it is very generic for business, not specific.

MSN.com
- 93,661,176 results
- 10/10 on quality
- 10/10 Past 10 pages still delivers high quality results. I am surprised and give MSN two thumbs up for their attention to detail.

=
Moving onto the search term for "BUSINESS NEWS"
=

Google.com
- 627,000,000 results
- 10/10 on quality
- 10/10 Beyond 10 pages delivers high quality & local news centers.

Yahoo.com
- 1,260,000,000 results (wow)
- 10/10 on quality
- 9/10 Beyond 10 pages. There are still some sites that should never be there.

MSN.com
- 381,631,054 results
- 8/10 on quality - Some aren't related at all and brand new sites as well.
- 10/10 beyond 10 pages. Their results seem to tighten up and get better.

Let's now take some more "local" search results to see deeper and more targeted results...

=
Moving on to the search term for "WASHINGTON UNIVERSITIES".
I hope to find the "University of Washington" come up #1 or thereabouts.
=

Google.com
- 22,700,000
- 10/10 on quality (www.washington.edu is #1)
- 10/10 beyond 10 pages. The results still deliver "university" topics.

Yahoo.com
- 143,000,000 results
- 9/10 on quality - The top spot is reserved for Yahoo on Washington University in St. Louis. There seems to be a strong battle going on here on which university to list.
- 10/10 beyond 10 pages. Content is specific and relevant.

MSN.com
- 34,442,536 results
- 9/10 on quality - Again another battle going on and washington.edu is #10 tilting on the verge of page 2.
- 10/10 beyond 10 pages. All related to Washington & University living

Let's now get even more specific than that... For this search term I will be using something very local that I can relate to and give a better analysis.

=
Moving on to the search term for "HAMILTON ONTARIO CANADA".
=

Google.com
- 3,700,000 results
- 10/10 on quality - Great job
- 10/10 beyond 10 pages - Anything goes but is directly related to Hamilton.

Yahoo.com
- 14,900,000 results
- 10/10 on quality - Almost the same as Google but a couple of different choices.
- 9/10 on quality - Some results are found by keyword stuffing their pages.

MSN Local *New (http://search.msn.com/local/)
- 1,280,405 results
- 9/10 on quality - Getting some random placements & keyword stuffing
- 10/10+ beyond 10 pages - Many local companies well listed in the results.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Let's now take a look at these results as a total. Out of a possible score of 80 points, here are the total scores for each:

Google - 80 points
MSN - 76 points
Yahoo - 73 points

Total search results delivered:

Google - 752,400,000
Yahoo - 1,698,900,000
MSN - 511,015,171

And people wonder why Google is the king of searching?! But wait, without even noticing the results, as I totaled the final point standings, MSN came up in second place! In my study, I tried to be as neutral as possible.

How is it that Msn & Google have 50% the amount of results shown in Yahoo, but outrank Yahoo in quality?

In conclusion:

Even though Yahoo delivered a report stating that it has over 19 billion search items, what does it matter when you're still trying to figure out how to deliver all that content? MSN & Google seem to know exactly what to do with their results. They don't seem "off the wall" at all. If Yahoo is to step up and be crowned the search king, I really think that they need to refine the amount of search terms they have, to match the quality of search results as well.

Yahoo has major potential to outreach Google but they still have a lot of work ahead of them and by the time they figure things out, Google may even step up their game even further and wow us all on some other search plateau.

Providing Information Will Boost Your Web Site

2010-05-10T18:20:00.000-07:00

I was at a meeting the other day when one member of the audience came up to chat to me after I had given my presentation. 'I agree with what you told us,' she said, 'but it only applies to some people. After all in my business there's nothing I can turn into an ebook.' Within a minute of chatting to me she had developed two ideas for ebooks.

Now, I'm not saying I'm some kind of miracle worker. However, often I discover that many people who run their own business can't see the wood for the trees. They are so tied up in delivering solutions to their existing customers, they can't see what else might be possible. As an example, I was talking to a chap from the Midlands the other day who runs a plastic mouldings company. He said to me that my ideas for ebooks only work in the service industry and they they couldn't possibly work within his sector.

A few minutes later we had developed an idea for an ebook which he is now going off to get written. As a search term, "plastic mouldings" gets around 45 searches a day in the UK. At the moment his web site gets almost none of those searches; instead his web site exists as a brochure to people in the know - largely existing customers. What this means is, his web site is missing important traffic that could provide business.

So, now he is writing an ebook on the theme of 'how to use plastic and save the environment'. He will be making this available free of charge - but he could add future ebooks for which he will charge, such as 'how to specif icy projects using plastic'. Now, he's not going to become a millionaire selling such ebooks. But the free ebook will attract traffic he might otherwise have lost and the paid for ebook will finance his Google AdWords campaigns. The result will be much more traffic to his web site at no cost, perhaps even at a profit. Suddenly, my chap from the Midlands realised that the key to unlocking the future success of his company was selling information.

Like many people, he has begun to realise that Internet users are mostly searching for information. We sometimes forget that when the Internet really started to take off, just ten years ago, it was called 'the Information Superhighway'. Nowadays, it is largely the 'brochure superhighway'. Having a web site which is just a brochure for your business is only going to get you so far. To take that next step upwards to greater online success you need to be trading in information.

Much of the information you provide could be free; but it needs to be practical, useful information targeted specifically to particular groups of people. Some of the information you provide could be sold; that will provide you with an additional income stream you previously might not have thought about.

Information marketing is an essential component of any business online these days. Without marketing information you will not gain as much success as you would do. Indeed, I spoke with one marketing guru the other day who has dramatically changed his business, based on just two months of testing online. He had one web site where he tweaked the keywords and did all the optimisation tricks he could. He had another web site which he didn't optimise but for which he wrote several articles and got them published widely around the Internet. Guess what? The information won hands down against optimisation; more links, more clicks, higher ranking.

Providing information is essential online. Whether it's in the form of ebooks, specialist web sites, email courses or traditional books and reports is neither here nor there. You need to be in the information business to attract interest in your main business.

Marketing Your Business - How Do I Adapt To The Internet?

2010-05-09T18:19:00.000-07:00

The way we do business is changing rapidly. From VOIP, video conferencing, email support, telephone answering services, and the almighty internet. As a business owner we are faced with hundreds of decisions our parents and grandparents never had to contend with.

Some of you keep hearing from other business associates that internet marketing is the greatest method of increasing business and building a foundation for customer support. The only problem is, you've just learned how to send emails to people! Never mind learning about SEO, web design strategies, content analysis, pay per click, ROI, etc!

Do you hire an SEO company or do you learn yourself?

Investing time into your company is what we business owners do best but, in many cases, when it comes to learning new methods we quickly open our wallets to anyone out there who seems like the right person to help with your situation. This is the worst possible decision you can make.

Diving into the internet marketing community with your wallet open will result in a disaster if you aren't properly trained on how to spend your money wisely. The key is not to hire an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) company to take your money and promote your business behind your back. Try finding someone who offers you their "training services" in order to train yourself or someone within your organization to learn more about what is required online, how much effort it entails, and what pitfalls to avoid.

As a business owner, if you blindly search online and pick a company, you have no idea what you could be getting yourself into. There are no secrets to promoting your business online, only a lot of hard work. That being said, anyone with a computer can easily learn how to get their company high search engine rankings. Search engines don't look to see whether or not you're running a scam. No, they are concentrated on delivering relevant results for your search terms.

Old Fashioned Marketing Tactics:

In the old days (and still practiced today), business owners would devise their own marketing plan through print media, business cards, postcards, flyers, brochures, newspapers, magazines, TV ads, and radio ads. By doing this, the company could track their results by trial and error and really find out what truly works for their industry.

Old fashioned marketing is a simple trial and error process. So is the internet. Unfortunately, all too many business owners don't have a clue how to start their own internet marketing process and they fail to even put their foot in the water. Instead, many business owners simply hire anyone they can find that seems reputable and then turn a blind eye and say; "Here's my budget, you are the professional, you tell me what to do". This is simply preposterous. You've worked so hard to get to where you are now by learning and adapting and as soon as it comes to marketing your business online, you simply shut down.

I hope that this article has awoken some of you. Don't be afraid to dive into the internet's vast realm of marketing potential. So what if you fail the first time around. When we started out, we had no idea what we were doing, 3 years later our website ranks higher than many other internet marketing companies world wide.

The ULTIMATE secret to internet marketing is simple...

A concept I call "T.I.M.E."

T - Try and try again
I - Internet changes all the time
M - Marketing opportunities are around every corner
E - Eventually you too can succeed

Think of it this way (Illustration only)

Here is a timeline of your internet marketing campaign:

Start date - Research only: June 7th, 2005
Hired a website designer - August 31st, 2005
Website Complete - October 15th, 2005
Website launch - October 20th, 2005

Started an internet marketing campaign - November 1st, 2005
Started a Pay Per Click campaign - November 10th, 2005
Made a sale - November 15th, 2005

Increased our website's link popularity - January 1st, 2006
Website gets hit by the Google Sandbox Effect - January 20th, 2006
Increased our Pay Per Click campaign - February 5th, 2006

Made some changes to the website - February 21st, 2006
Increase the website's link popularity - February 28th, 2006
Got listed in the Yahoo directory - March 3rd, 2006

So here you are 10 months out of the gate and your website may still be "locked in the Google sandbox" ( Search for "Google Sandbox" in Google for an explanation). Your link popularity is just starting to grow a little bit. Hopefully you haven't tried to link to everyone you can find and are actually linking to companies that are directly related to your business. Your PPC campaign is doing good. People are finally starting to come through Yahoo & MSN search results. You can sometimes find your company in the 200th spot within search results in Google and you are now wondering why this is taking so long.

Welcome to the world of marketing your company on the internet!!!

This timeline representation from above is just something to show you how "T.I.M.E." is the key of success on the internet and all we are required to do is keep plugging away and keep learning more every chance we get.

For most people who simply open up their wallets, they would have learned nothing in those 10 months and for everyone else starting an internet marketing campaign, those who didn't simply just open their wallets, their websites are probably 10 times further than yours!

In Conclusion:

Learn more about how to increase your marketing campaign on the internet. If you have to, hire someone in-house who can learn for you and give you updates on everything. If you truly need to hire an SEO company make sure it's for the right reasons like "starting and finishing a marketing campaign with you learning in the process", or "enhancing a campaign that is already in place", or "to revise your website's conversion rate" or "create a impactful key word optimization campaign", etc. Take your time and use "T.I.M.E." to increase your business slowly but effectively on the internet.

I hope you've enjoyed this article!

Internet Marketing Tips On Getting Your Web Site Spidered Quickly

2010-05-08T18:18:00.000-07:00

The world of internet marketing is a highly competitive place. As a beginning internet marketer there are some basic things you should know about how search engines spider and index your web site. Unless the search engines find your web site and index it, there is no way the general public will know that it is there.

After you have created your web site and chosen the products or services you want to provide, you will be ready to get your site listed with the search engines. When developing your marketing strategy, it is important to include a plan to get your web site spidered quickly. In order to get your site indexed you must let the search engine spiders know you are there in the first place.

You may have wondered if there are ways to lure the spiders to your web site other than manual submission. The good news is that many SEOs recommend the following methods rather than submitting your pages directly.

The best way to get your site spidered quickly is to link your web site to another site that is already indexed, that is related to your site, and that is spidered frequently. Having your site mentioned in news releases, blogs, and so on can get your site your web site spidered very quickly, sometimes within days.

You can also use the more traditional methods including posting in forums and providing articles for the various article directories. If you choose this route, be careful not to spam. Follow the posted rules, give helpful answers, and do not go overboard on your "sig file". Private forums are not always indexed, so make certain that the forums where you post display recent posts and are listed in search results.

No matter which method you choose to get your web site spidered, you will need a good site map. A site map lists and links to all pages on your site. If your site consists of over approximately one hundred pages, consider using a multi-page site map. Make certain that every site map page links to all other site map pages. You should have a link to your site map on your home page and preferably on each of your pages. You should make sure your web site pages are simple and free of useless clutter.

Getting your web site spidered quickly is the most important thing you can do to achieve success as an internet marketer. Using the methods suggested above can be very helpful in getting your web site indexed.

How To Start With Absolutely Nothing And Create Wealth online in 30 Days or Less.

2010-05-07T18:17:00.000-07:00

Without a doubt, if you asked me, Shane if there was only 1 marketing strategy that you could use on the Internet, what would it be? Without hesitation I would say joint Ventures. Joint Ventures are easily the most lucrative Marketing Strategy ever invented and if you learn to do it right, will likely be the ONLY marketing strategy you will ever need to use.

A Good Internet Joint Venture is your shortcut to success. It can send you more qualified internet traffic rushing to your site in the shortest amount of time than anything I've ever seen! And it can mean bringing your product to market without spending one single penny of your own money!

In it's simplest form, Joint Ventures have to do with 2 businesses (or more) joining forces to leverage off of each others success, assets and/or expertise. There are hundreds of different variations but let me just give you one simple example:

One variation of a simple type of joint venture partnership used most frequently would be where one business provides a product for sale, the sales message and the product delivery while the other business provides the recommendation for that product to their own list of subscribers/prospects and receiving a commission based on the sales generated through that recommendation.

The benefits are great. You can build your subscriber list, leverage off of your partners infrastructure like using their existing servers, software etc where you don’t have to pay a dime. If you pick the right JV partner, you can acquire instant credibility and reputation with their customers and lists. Credibility sells. Let me give you an example, if you created a book on "how to acquire real estate", you could certainly make MANY more sales if you JV'd with Donald Trump and put his name on the book as the co-author, building your reputation and increasing your credibility at the same time. Are you starting to see the incredible power of this strategy?

Now I know that some people may think that Joint Ventures are difficult to do,but if they are telling you this, then I wouldn’t take anything they tell you at face value because they’re either lying to you or don’t understand it themselves.

Let me show you how easy it is. Here’s typically what I do when rolling out a new product. In this example, let’s pretend that I just completed a new ebook on Penny Stock Trading and have setup a web site with an affiliate program. I would go to google, do a search on keywords like "penny stock", "penny stock trading", "stock market strategies" etc..you get the picture. The top sites on the first page are typically your target partners because since they appear on the first page you can bet they have lots of business, traffic, subscribers and customers. I would visit each site to make sure that they are right for my product and then I would first send them a very brief email asking them if they would be interested in marketing my product in exchange for a high commission as an incentive.

Typically in this email you should briefly introduce yourself and your product. Describe your product and the benefits it would offer to their Newsletter subscribers, customers and/or web site visitors. Ask them politely if they wouldn’t mind responding to you asap and provide your contact information if they are interested in marketing your product. Also very important, you need to give them access to this product FOR FREE!..so that they can review the product and feel comfortable about endorsing it. These site owners have spent years building their business, lists and cultivating their lists to be very responsive. Any endorsement they do to their huge lists could mean thousands of dollars in your pocket for very little effort.

then, go thru the same process for all the other appropriate sites under that keyword and send JV proposal letters over and over again. Then repeat that process for other relevant keywords until you're finished.

Understandably, this can be a very time consuming task which is why I developed a piece of software that will automate this whole process for me at http://www.jvmining.com. I can now get all of this done in a matter of minutes!

Remember if just a few of these super affiliates decides to market your product you’re golden. Once they contact you all you need to do is setup their affiliate account and commission. This will ensure that their commission will be calculated properly when they endorse your product to their list. If you send these offers to just 10 sites per day, Within a week you’ll be on your way to making thousands of dollars per month, all for 5 hours worth of work and at NO COST to you. Isn’t that easy?

That's all there is to it.

How to get your customers to trust your website

2010-05-06T18:14:00.000-07:00

Research reveals three important facts:

1) The Internet is one of the most important sources of information.

2) The trustworthiness of the Internet is declining.

3) Customers will come back to your site if they trust it.

In the face of a declining trust in the Internet, there’s definitely value in creating a website which can be trusted by your visitors. But how do you do it? That’s what this article is all about.

But first, the research…

According to a recent major study, "Ten Years, Ten Trends", conducted by the Center for the Digital Future (http://www.digitalcenter.org), a leading authority on the impact of the Internet, the Internet is still seen as one of the most important sources of information, but people are placing less faith in the reliability of that information.

These findings are supported by earlier research. American Express found that 73% of people use the Internet to gather information, and Lyra Research found that 48% of people use the Internet to find work-related information as opposed to 7% who use magazines. When it comes to reliability of information, A.T. Kearney found that workers take so long trying to find information that it costs organisations $750 billion annually!

But never fear! All is not lost. It is possible to stem the tide – at least as far as your own website is concerned. According to Nielsen NetRatings, helpful website content develops site loyalty. The average person visits no more than 19 websites in the entire month in order to avoid information overload – they tend to rely on the sites that they can trust to help them.

So how do you make yours one of those sites? How do you inspire trust in your visitors?

The answer is simple – make your website copy trustworthy!

Following are 8 steps that’ll put you on the road to a trustworthy website.

STEP 1 - Always include your contact details

Always! This includes an email address, phone numbers, fax numbers, and address. Without these details, you’ll look like a fly-by-night operation.

STEP 2 – Tell us who you are

Dedicate a page of copy to the people who run your company. You don’t need to say much – just provide a little history. Talk about their work history, career highlights, education and qualifications, etc. And it never hurts to include a little personal information as well. Let your readers know who you are.

STEP 3 – Know it & Show it

It’s not enough that you know what you’re talking about. Your readers have to know you know it! This normally means including a little bit of technical information or some other titbit that potential customers will recognise as expertise. (And always check your facts before publishing. If possible, include statistics or some other form of research results.)

STEP 4 – Include samples & testimonials

Of course, if you’re going to talk the talk, you have to be able to walk the walk. Validate your claims by including samples of your previous work (if applicable), and testimonials from some satisfied customers.

STEP 5 – Something for nothing

Nothing inspires trust more than an offer of something for nothing. But you have to make sure that ‘something’ is helpful. And make it doubly clear that it really is obligation-free. Nothing undermines credibility faster than the suspicion that there’s a hidden catch.

STEP 6 – Avoid advertorial style web copy

Don’t go on and on, page after page, repeating the same thing using different words. Make your point and make it quickly. Don’t insult your visitors’ intelligence by implying that they’ll believe you if you just say it often enough! If you use advertorial style web copy, you’ll seem more interested in yourself than the business solution you’re offering your client.

STEP 7 – Avoid hard-sell web copy

Once again, don’t insult your visitors’ intelligence. Hard-sell web copy can give the impression that you’re more interested in the sale than the business solution. Sure, create a sense of urgency with your web copy, but don’t overdo it.

STEP 8 – Talk benefits not features

When you talk features, you’re talking about your product or service - you’re talking about you. When you talk benefits, you’re showing that you’re interested in what the customer needs. Talking benefits is one of the best ways to engage your customer. (For more information on writing about benefits, see http://www.divinewrite.com/benefits.htm and http://www.divinewrite.com/webbenefitwriting.htm.)

Websites can be a great way to engage your customers and make sales. But you have to make sure your visitors trust what you say. And that means getting your web copy right.

Of course, it’s not ALL about the website copy. Obviously you also need a website design that inspires trust (see http://www.izilla.com.au, http://www.hothouse.com.au, http://www.mc3.com.au, or http://www.digital-tsunami.com for that).

Happy writing!

How do the work home gurus make 4k a day?

2010-05-05T18:13:00.000-07:00

A: They make sure that their links pop up, on the first page of the search engine’s search results. They are gunning for the top 10, search engine results, on all of the popular search engines. They know the tricks, they know how to pick the keywords, and they know that the easiest way to make money on the internet is to let the search engines do the hard work for them.

Don’t buy anyone’s how I got rich program, because they won’t really tell you how they got rich. If they're rich it is because have the web site that can be easily found using he search engines. It is as simple as that!

Most marketers will send out thousands of emails, and post their ads in ezines, solo ads, they write blogs, ect... These people spend a great deal of time on the internet trying to push their affiliate’s products. If they concentrated 1/3 of their efforts on what the gurus concentrated on, they would be spending more of their time at the beach on some exotic island, than on their computer at home.

Q: How do you get a guru to run?

A: You tell them that you just did a search on yahoo using their keywords, and they weren’t on the first page any more. Waaaahhff

Get your web site ranked higher. Get it on the first page of the search engines. Do this and you can start selling your secrets to the marketing dummies. Just like the big dogs do! Here is how you can do it. Download this free trial software and get
your website ranked higher. Let the search engines do the hard work for you. Take this software for a test drive. Download IBP free!! Read the guide before you get started.

http://www.axandra-web-site-promotion-software-tool.com/

If you do not have a product or a web page to promote. Get started here
At http://www.internet5kincome.com/pips.html. This is a great way to get your feet wet. Just make sure that you get ranked well on the search engines

Find Your Niche - the Internet Marketer's Goldmine

2010-05-04T18:11:00.000-07:00

If you haven't heard the word 'niche' being batted around by Internet Marketers then you haven't been listening. Finding a niche has become the antidote to competing in overly saturated online markets.
What is a niche?

According to Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary a niche is described as "a place, employment, status, or activity for which a person or thing is best fitted... a specialized market".

Have you noticed that despite the closing of many businesses in these harsh economic times, the local hobby train store is still around? That the 'hole-in-the-wall' eatery is thriving? Or that trends such as scrapbooking can start with a bang and still close within a year when four similar businesses start up in the same area?

The online business world reflects the same trends as experienced in the offline world - often with faster turnover and startup rates. Those who promote a product or site that targets a small, select audience can tap into a market that is otherwise not being served. Despite the limitations of the client base, the targeted nature of the business creates a devoted and active market - the aim of any business.

HOW DO I FIND A NICHE?

Finding a niche requires diligent research. Whether you have access to software that harvests and sorts information or you take a manual approach you must first start with ideas.

With a pen and paper (or computer, if that's more comfortable) brainstorm a list of businesses, products and industries. Create a list of keywords and phrases you think would be used by individuals looking for these items online.

Use a software program such as Wordtracker or a free resource such as the Overture Keyword Selector Tool to find keywords for your niche that have a high amount of traffic.

Although a program like Wordtracker makes it easy to find details such as how many sites compete for that market, you can also do your own research.

Concentrate your attention on question phrases such as "how do I..." or "where can I...". These questions will clue you into potential markets that need servicing.

Next, look in Google Answers. Type one of your keywords into the search area. What questions are being asked and how much are people willing to pay for answers? If you find a group of keywords with a high number of questions then enter these words in your browser's search engine.

What sites come up? Do they provide answers or solutions to the problem? How are they making money? Can you see an opportunity to service these individuals?

Finding a niche can open the door to a profitable online business. Research the market and be certain that your product or service is valuable to this group. Find forums or groups that target this audience and pay close attention to their concerns.

If you can help these people you WILL make money. The best of both worlds!

Do You Need to Learn Computer Programming To Be A Successful Internet Marketer?

2010-05-03T18:11:00.000-07:00

The answer to the question, ‘Do I need to learn programming?’ is:
It depends. It depends on what exactly you mean by programming.
You need to know a little bit of web programming like HTML and
Javascript so that you do not need to depend on someone else for
additions and editing your work (if you intend to build your own
website). Those two languages are some of the basics that
everyone should know.

If you’re referring to software programming then the answer is:
No you do not need to learn programming. You do not need to learn
it to get ahead as it is usually the concept or the idea which
can make you money and not a programming tool or language.

Further, the world is getting more and more specialized. In order
stay in tune with it, you need to find your niche and build with
it. Nobody can be good at everything. It's about delegation.
Unless you plan to become a professional programmer, and getting
a formal education for it, leave development up to other
experienced developers.

Additionally, from a practical standpoint, it is dangerous for
everyone to try to do web programming. Some of the coding, for
example one of the variables the tell-a-friend script pulls from
the form is openly included in the message it sends out. The
problem with that is if someone who knows what they’re doing,
with regard to programming gets a hold of it, they could easily
recode the tell-a-friend form into an open spam relay. It is a
script with a major hole just sitting there waiting to be
exploited. That's the risk you run when you don't understand the
ramifications of every line of code. If you do not have the time
or desire to learn serious coding, and some basic code security
techniques, you will only make life harder for other netizens and
in the end, for yourself.

So unless you plan to become a professional programmer and take
the time to study these things, there’s really no need to learn
programming. Rather, hire someone who is a professional and let
them do the work for you. Finding a professional programmer is
easy too. All you need to do is visit http://www.rentacoder.com
and put out a bid for your project. You'll get programmers from
all over the world quoting on your project. Entrepreneurs use
them all the time and have wonderful results. Hiring someone is
not only far more effective, but it leverages your role as the
project manager and takes you out of the creator mindset.

Build Your Online Database With Bonus Giveaways

2010-05-02T18:10:00.000-07:00

Anyone who depends on building a database with online subscribers knows this is becoming more difficult by the day. Primarily, the competition for the consumer’s attention is fierce. Today’s consumer has become much more demanding and savvy when it comes to buying products online or signing up for “stuff.”

Smart marketers realize the power and profit that comes from a strong alliance through joint venturing. JV’s can be one of the smartest marketing moves any online marketer can make.

Something that has become very popular in recent months is where one person or company sweetens the offer of the product they are selling with lots of bonuses. The bonuses can be their own information products or those of others who understand the benefits of this type of campaign. Of course, there is no charge for the bonus products.

There are two primary ways to participate in a JV of this nature. One is to simply give the PDF file to the person who is selling a product. The seller gives the PDF directly to the buyer. The advantage to this is your bonus product gets seen by others. The disadvantage is you don’t get access to the buyer’s contact information.

The other option is to require anyone who buys a product to go to a link provided by the bonus giver. The link is connected to a page with a form that the consumer fills out. They must leave their name and at a minimum, their email address before they can download the bonus.

When offered the opportunity to partner with other online marketers I usually jump at the chance. However, I the campaign I am most likely to join in on is the one where people sign up to get my bonus. Additionally, I do all I can to make sure the person I partner with is reputable.

Here are the primary benefits to participating in a joint venture.

- Expanded market reach
- Gain name recognition within that market
- Increase credibility through name association
- Build a database with minimal effort
- Create incredible value for the consumer

If you are looking for ways to increase your database, reach, credibility and visibility while providing more value to your market, consider joining forces with other progressive thinking entrepreneurs. It could be one of the smartest business moves you make.

Building Skills in Information Marketing will Boost Your Business

2010-05-01T18:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was sitting on a train going into London when I thought I’d take a look around the carriage just to see what everyone was doing. I wanted to make a mental note because my five year old son always asks me ‘what happened at your work today Daddy?’ So I put my newspaper down and took a look around me.

The chap beside me was reading a book about selling, the woman on the other side of the aisle was using her computer and the two men opposite me were discussing a presentation they had seen. Then it struck me - everyone around me was an ‘information consumer’. Everything they were doing involved the consumption of information that somebody else had provided.

Now that shouldn’t have surprised me too much. After all, that’s what I do - I sell information to people. But it was the train journey that reminded me how much information people are buying. They are getting it from books, online, in meetings, via reports - all sorts of ways. We live in an information society nowadays.

That means there is an opportunity for you. Whatever business you are in, you deal with information - and people will pay you for what you know and what you have experienced.

Just six months ago my main business was speaking at seminars, conferences and running workshops. Now I’ve changed the way I earn my money by selling the information I used to give at talks and meetings directly to people who would otherwise be in my audience. And I am doing that online. People can download my talks, or they can buy ‘ebooks’ I have written about the subjects I specialise in (business psychology, if you must know). And it’s working.

In the past year, the Internet has gone from being just a source of referrals to my business, to being the prime source of my business. Last year about 2% of my income came from the Internet; now it's 95%. And the switch has been because I deliver information online.

Many businesses, however, do not take advantage of the huge consumer thirst for information. Instead, they just provide brochures and catalogues online. But what Internet users want is the information and the knowledge that exists within businesses.

So, to enhance your business and to ensure that your company succeeds online, make sure you provide information and knowledge-based products, such as ebooks and audio files. That way you'll be tapping into the consumer demand for information. You will be able to make money out of selling the information you normally keep only for your customers. With the Internet you can now sell that information to anyone.

Building Community Websites Equals Success Online

2010-04-30T18:07:00.000-07:00

In this article I will discuss how important is it to build community websites rather than straight forward sales pitches. Selling online is about bringing people together, not about stuffing products down your visitors throwts and expecting them to buy from you.

We have conditioned our minds all of our lives to accept advertising billboards, radio ads, newspaper ads, commercials, and all sorts of other advertising materials wherever we go. The same applies on the internet. This "conditioning" has enabled us to see past all the ads and look directly for the pertinant information that we are seeking.

People who are new to the internet are more likely to click on your ads for no apparent reason but to simply search and keep searching. Others that have beed online for years now, tend not to pay attention to as many ads on a daily basis like they used to.

If you are serious about making money online without having to spend too much of your budget, create a "community online". It is in our nature as human beings to want to belong, or to be involved within a community setting. Communities come in all shapes & sizes and are not limited to gender, race, nationality, or religion. A community can cater to whatever topic you wish and welcome whomever you desire.

Same concept applies to your website!

Building a community within your website is the key to increasing your business, keeping visitors coming back, and keeping your advertising budget in the bank. Show your visitors that you aren't just here on the internet to sell them something. For example, we (Smartads), we are here to teach what we know about internet marketing. By teaching, we too learn more, gain more business, and attract new visitors.

RESIDUAL TRAFFIC IS THE KEY!

As i've always mentioned to my clients & readers, getting people to your website is the easy part. Anyone with a $500 credit card can get traffic to their website, it's keeping them there and getting your visitors to come back on their own time is what makes owning a website a dificult proposition.

Visitors always come back to communities they can relate to!

I always to go back to internet marketing communities online like:

www.webpronews.com
www.sitepronews.com
www.searchenginewatch.com

and so on... There are many internet marketing resources available for business owners. We are fortunate to have access to the vast amount of resources that we do, in order to increase our business & to increase our knowledge.

More resources online also increases competition. There are literally millions of websites out there and many of them might possibly be your competitors. Without building a community, people won't remember who you are, or what it is that you do. Infact, if you are spending all of your money on banner ads, pay per click advertising, affiliates, and other marketing areas online, and at the same time you aren't paying attention to increasing your home base, when your advertising budget runs out so too will the bulk of your traffic.

If your website isn't good enough, your sales won't be good enough. Granted; building a website can be very time consuming but just remember that you don't need to create an empire over night. Just a little here, a little there, and before you know it, it all adds up to something you can be proud of. Over time, your website traffic will constantly be increasing.

PLEASE NOTE: If you stop advertising, your traffic won't grow. Growing your website is all part of the whole plan.

What do we need to create a community website?

You always want to add extras to your site that interest you. By doing so, you will also attract people with similar interests and help to bridge the credibility gap online.

You can always add these to your website:

* Personal blog
* Helpful tips
* Mini-ebook courses (on how to be a better client for you)
* Other people's articles
* Chat forum (requires a lot of maintenance & promotion)
* Free business directory listings
* Family albums for users
* Fun online questionnaires
* Mind benders
* Games
* Contests (with actual prizes)
* "How to" articles
* Government resources
* Local community resources
* Support local companies & vice versa

I think we can now get a sense of what building a "community" website means. The key is to take your industry (even if it is boring), and teach someone about what it is that you do. The internet allows us to take in more information than we could ever imagine. There is always someone out there who wants to learn about your industry.

The key is to add on a little at a time. Talk to your web designer. Try and find unique little ways to build a community website online. Ask people what they look for within your industry. After time, you will know what it takes to keep creating more for your company online, and your wallet will love you for it.

Just remember the more you build, the less your advertising budget will be when you get there. Just keep it up until you get there, don't give up on yourself, your company, or your future.

I hope you've enjoyed this article!