Now consider some facts. Most people in the world are not users of the Internet. Let’s repeat that. The vast majority of people who you want to reach don’t use the Internet. It doesn’t matter how well you optimize your web site, they simply will never find it.

Here’s another fact. Some of the best Internet marketers make most of their sales ‘offline’. They sell their books, CD-ROMs and so on at seminars, workshops and conferences. Indeed, for many ‘Internet marketers’ these ‘offline’ sales represent the bulk of their income.

So what do these facts tell us? They show us that ‘offline’ promotion is more important than online promotion. You may be able to optimize your web site to get high rankings in a search engine. But that doesn’t mean you’ll reach the vast majority of people who could buy your product or use your information.

This was confirmed recently by one study that showed most people go to an Internet address (URL) after having read it in a newspaper or magazine, been given it by a friend or colleague, or having heard it being mentioned by someone speaking at a meeting or on TV. In other words, it seems that significant numbers of people who get to your web site will do so having heard the URL somewhere outside the Internet.

You can get many people visiting your web site, even if you are not ranked highly by the search engines. You can do this in two main ways:

1. Write articles for use in regular publications – newspapers, magazines and so on. Always include your URL in the article and you’ll get millions of people to notice your web site address.

2. Speak at every opportunity. Make presentations to business clubs, chambers of commerce, local societies – you name it, you should speak at it. Every time you speak, announce or your web site address.

Although these are the two principal ways of gaining offline publicity for your web site, don’t neglect your business stationery, posters, car stickers and so on. The more your web site address is visible outside the web, the more visitors you will get regardless of how kind the search engines are to you.

It is easy to get caught up in something like Twitter. It is almost like a video game. Your quest is to engage people and get them to follow you. The only problem is I have seen people use it so voraciously that they forget they need content to direct their followers to. What good are five thousand followers if you have nothing to offer them? Next time you find yourself spending an hour on twitter, think about how much more effective a new blog post might be. You don’t have to keep up with every tweet, just log in when you can and join the flow. Make a deal with yourself; don’t log into Twitter until you have a new blog post up, then when you jump into the conversation you will have something to share.

Social Bookmarking is another potential time sink. I know people that will submit to every bookmarking service you can imagine. Digg, Stumbleupon and Reddit I totally understand. I even get why people use Mixx and other semi-popular services. It is when people start getting into sites like Nujij, BobrDobr, Mr. Wongs and etc… that I start to wonder when diminishing returns sets in. In the time it takes you to do all of that social bookmarking could you be creating more content? Instead of submitting to every single social bookmarking site, maybe it is more helpful to submit to just the big guys. Then you can spend the rest of your time creating content that you can once again submit to them.

I really think people sometimes lose site of the important things. Promoting your blog is without a doubt an integral part of being a blogger. Traffic rules, right? In my opinion, the quickest way to traffic is through more content. More content means promoting your site is easier because you simply have more to promote. Instead of five articles receiving Digg traffic, you can have 50. Every blog post you make has the chance to go viral or rank in the search engines as well.

Take the time to reevaluate the results you are getting with your promotion. If you have hit a plateau then it is time to up your content, not your promotion. Give it a try and see how effective rededicating yourself to content creation can be.

Seo can be very complicated, but you can also utilize a few simple techniques and while you won’t get the full benefit, you will still see a benefit.

If you want to get the full effect of an active seo marketing campaign you may want to consider hiring a company to do your seo for you. Having access to a professional who will take care of all the day to day issues associated with your seo will free you up to take care of other areas of your business.

An effective seo game plan will require virtually a full time commitment since the search engines base all their results on complicated, and ever changing, algorithms. It would be virtually impossible to keep on top of it on a day to day basis and still run other aspects of your business.

Since many online businesses simply aren’t that knowledgeable about seo you can really pull away from a lot of your competitors if you get a little help. With so many billions of websites all clamoring for attention, you will need all the help you can get to allow your website to shine through all the dust.

When you set out to find the right company to work with there are some things you want to be on the lookout for:

1. Any company you are considering hiring for your seo should provide you with the initial website seo analysis. Basically they will look at your site and determine what strengths and weaknesses you may have. This will help establish a starting point and clarify what you need to work on.

2. The company will help you choose the best keywords for your site and product. This is crucial, everything hinges on choosing the best combination of frequently searched and low competition keywords. If a mistake is made here, the whole campaign will be in jeopardy.

During this step the company will also analyze the sites of your competitors to see what keywords they are ranking well for. This can help them achieve a clearer picture of just what needs to be done.

3. Now that the keywords have been chosen, the on site seo can begin. Optimizing certain areas of your site such as the Meta and heading tags will be the primary focus at this stage. This is the most complicated part of the process, there are many areas on your site and things that can be done to get the greatest impact.

4. Once your site is all “shiny” and seo ready, they will manually submit it to the major search engines.

5. Of course, now that your site has been optimized and submitted, you want to make sure that all these changes are really working. That’s why you need to take the time to track your site and results. Having quality, reliable tracking software is a must and should be provided by the seo company.

Keep these tips in mind when you start looking for your own search engine marketing solution and a company to help you put it all together.

There are many great markets you can make money in online. But you will save yourself a lot of time and effort if you don’t try to go toe to toe with the ‘big boys’.

For example, lets say you want to make money in the weight loss market, which is an extremely competitive market. Why make your life harder than it needs to be by trying to go straight on against millions of competitors? That’s just silly.

Instead, why not find a ‘little’ sub section of that market where there will be much less competition but still enough interest for you to make a very nice living (and remember, this is just one website. You can repeat this method as many times as you want and have dozens of niche websites all making you money).

So, instead of focusing on such a broad term as weight loss, why not find a niche that targets “middle aged women and weight loss”? Or how about “teenage boys weight loss”? See what I mean, you are still in the weight loss market but you are targeting a more precise sub section of the market instead of trying to throw a net over the whole ocean.

Doing this will make it so much easier to make money online. It will just make your life so much simpler and you can find a great list of highly targeted keywords that you can rank for a lot more easily than you would if you went with the broad weight loss terms.

To find highly targeted keywords for your niche all you have to do is to use the free Google Keyword Tool online. Start by entering a broad search term related to your niche, say weight loss for moms. The tool will give you a list of up to two hundred variations of that keyword.

Some of the variations will work, some won’t. But it will give you a great place to start. From there you can drill down even further until you have a nice big keyword list to work from.

You also want to make sure that the keywords you choose are highly relevant to your website. Don’t choose a bunch of keywords that have a high monthly search volume if they are not highly relevant to what your website is all about. The traffic that you get won’t be very targeted and your conversions will suffer.

Finding great niche keywords is one of the most important tasks you can master to have a successful online business. Good keywords may take some time to find but when you do they are like money in the bank. Use the free tools online or invest in some down loadable software, it’s up to you. Just make sure you know what you need to look for and the difference between a good keyword and a not so good keyword.

Cost will depend on how you wish to use the video to market your business. If, for example, you simply want to use a video on your website, it will not cost anything. Just the uploading of the video into the website. If you want a more professional looking video for your website, there are plenty of companies out there that provide this service for much less than text advertising. You can have a slick ad or you can have one that is home made. Sometimes, the home made videos tend to stand out more.

It will cost you slightly more to have your videos featured on other websites where you advertise. More than a banner ad or a line ad. But again, how much is your business worth to you? If you want to see how effective this media is, test it out.

If you have a small business and want to advertise for free, there are plenty of places on the internet where you can post your videos. They will also give you stats on how many people have viewed your video. On some websites, the videos are rated.

There are many professional companies that can help you out with video advertising. They can offer everything from creating the video, uploading onto the proper websites to even using it in e-mails to your clients. Many businesses keep a data base of their clients. If they dont, they should. From time to time, they have sales or promotions and wish to contact their clients by e-mail. E-mail is very inexpensive. Actually, it is free. You can either hire a professional to e-mail your clients your advertising video or do it yourself to save even more money.

Writers are gaining publicity for themselves by using videos on writing websites. They upload a video of themselves and talk about their work. This is an excellent way to get people to read your work, particularly if you are on a site that pays you for page views. You can do this in an interview format, or simply have someone film you talking about yourself. This is free.

You can also promote yourself or your business on YouTube for free. Or MySpace. Camcorders have come down significantly in price. Many are around $100 or even cheaper. Each year, the price goes down and the quality goes up. They are easy to use and the contents can be uploaded to your computer with ease. Then all you have to do is decide where you want to advertise. If you are advertising a small business, your art, or even a political cause, you can put it on a site that offers free video uploading. When you compare the cost of video advertising on the internet to an actual commercial on television, you are talking apples and oranges. Video advertising is much cheaper and even small businesses can afford a professional agency that can take care of this for them.

How many of you get e-mails from businesses that you have previously done business? Most of you do, I would suspect. Even if you clicked on their ad by some mistake, they will contact you via e-mail. As said previously in this chapter, e-mail is free.

Now, imagine that you get an advertisement from a business that has a very funny video attached to it? You will be entertained and not forget about that business. It may even prompt you to take a look at their sale or new promotion.

I saw one of the most effective and clever uses of advertising on the web recently. I was taking a look at shower filters. Instead of just a website, like most of them, that featured shower filters and explained the advantages of having one of these gadgets, this one had a scene from the movie Psycho. Yes, the shower scene. The caption was Remember when the only thing you had to fear about the shower was. and then it stopped. We saw the familiar scene of Janet Leigh in the shower and Mother coming through the door with the knife. It was clever, entertaining and certainly caught my attention. In fact, this was the company that I decided to purchase the shower filter from.

How much did this ad cost them? A little more than a regular video ad. The film Psycho is not in the public domain so they had to pay synchronization rights to the producer to use this on their website. But synchronization rights on film, even the internet, are based upon seconds. They did not have to pay for the rights for the entire film, just a brief portion of the shower scene.

If you have a clever imagination, you can film your own video that will attract attention to your project in the way that this shower filter company did. You can purchase synchronization rights from film producers if you want, or you can simply make up your own video. Also, be aware that many films made prior to 1962 lie within the public domain. This means that they are free to use. Clips can be obtained from all over the internet, or can be downloaded from your television or DVD player. You must make sure that the film is in the public domain, however. The way to do this is to check with the United States Copyright Office. There is also much information about which films lie within the public domain on the internet.

No, it is not expensive to advertise using video on the internet, particularly if you are advertising on your own website or e-mailing your customers video advertisements. Just make sure that the advertisements are not too long or it may bore the customer, no matter how entertaining it may be. You do not want to go more than 30 seconds.

If you decide to use an internet advertising agency, they can keep track of the amount of customers who view your video and make sure that they are placed in the proper venues.

The cost is not that much more than banner ads and may be well worth it. Banner ads are sometimes clicked on by accident, giving false stats. A video ad, however, can be managed where the person has to click on to the play button to view it. Once they begin viewing, chances are that they will continue to do so. Either way, at least you will have an honest count of viewers when it comes time to pay Google or whoever you are using for your internet advertising. In a way, the difference in the quality of the views more than makes up for the price difference in advertising.

There is a lot of debate about what is better: writing for the search engines (making your articles search engine optimized) or for humans. I say, why not do both?

You can use your articles to not only inform your readership and provide them with valuable information, you can also get the added benefit of using your articles to drive free search engine traffic. increase the amount of free organic traffic you drive to your website.

Of course you need to make sure that you don’t skew too far into the seo realm so that your articles are stuffed with keywords and are virtually unreadable for your readers.

In order to get the best of both worlds your first step will be to identify those keywords that drive a lot of visitors and don’t have exceptionally high competition.

Make sure you consider keywords that are related to your niche but may not be the most popular searched for keyword. Try to get creative and don’t hesitate to use the free keyword tools online to expand your list even further.

Now that you’ve got your keyword list, it’s time to start writing your seo article. You don’t have to stuff the article with keywords to get a great benefit. As a matter of fact, if you put in too many keywords it can actually hurt you. Your article must read naturally.

The first place to put your keyword is in the title of your article. That is the first thing the search engines will see.

After the title you will want to include your keywords a few times in the article body. How many times is enough? Well that depends on the length of your article but a good rule of thumb is to include it in the first paragraph, the last paragraph and once or twice more. Try to strive for a keyword density of no more than 3%.

While there is some debate on the best article length, you must have at least 250 words. I personally wouldn’t go much higher than 500. That is a good range because it provides a lot of information without becoming too long and boring to read.

If you are writing articles to drive traffic to your website as well as provide your readers with good information, than remember it is a numbers game. The more quality, keyword focused articles you get in circulation the more traffic you will get.

Many of these keyword optimized articles can continue to drive traffic for months or even years to come. That’s a big bang for your time and well worth it.

You don’t have to choose between writing an article for your readers and writing for the search engines, you can do both with one article. Use your keywords properly and you can get both benefits from just one seo article.

Google Adsense

Adbrite

Chitika

Kontera

Clicksor

CPA (Cost Per Action Advertisers) – With these sites your web traffic must click an ad and then follow an action (usually a purchase):

ClickBank

Commission Junction

Linkshare

ShareASale

Max Bounty

Amazon

CPM (Cost Per 1000 Impressions) – With these companies you will earn a set amount of money for every 1000 displays of an ad. Note – most of these sites require a certain high amount of traffic per month before they will approve your site.

Burst Media

ValueClick

Tribal Fusion

If you want to start monetizing your current website, or build a website that is monetized from the start – check out the options above and you are sure to find some sort of offer that you can use to make some money.

There is only one way to climb a mountain: step by step.

Now think of writing your E-Book in the same light. You must create it step by step, and one day, you will take that last step and find yourself standing on the summit with your head in the clouds.

The first thing you have to do, as if you actually were a mountain climber, is to get organized. Instead of climbing gear, however, you must organize your thoughts. There are some steps you should take before you begin. Once you’ve gone through the following list, you will be ready to actually begin writing your

E-Book.

Beginning Steps to Writing an E-Book

First, figure out your E-Book’s working title. Jot down a few different titles, and eventually, you’ll find that one that will grow on you. Titles help you to focus your writing on your topic; they guide you in anticipating and answering your reader’s queries. Many non-fiction books also have subtitles. Aim for clarity in your titles, but cleverness always helps to sell books as long as it’s not too cute.

Next, write out a thesis statement. Your thesis is a sentence or two stating exactly what problem you are addressing and how your book will solve that problem. All chapters spring forth from your thesis statement. Once you’ve got your thesis statement fine-tuned, you’ve built your foundation. From that foundation, your book will grow, chapter by chapter.

Your thesis will keep you focused while you write your E-Book. Remember: all chapters must support your thesis statement. If they don’t, they don’t belong in your book. For example, your thesis statement could read: We’ve all experienced insomnia at times in our lives, but there are twenty proven techniques and methods to give you back a good night’s sleep.

Once you have your thesis, before you start to write, make sure there is a good reason to write your book. Ask yourself some questions:

Does your book present useful information and is that information currently relevant?

Will you book positively affect the lives of your readers?

Is your book dynamic and will it keep the reader’s attention?

Does you book answer questions that are meaningful and significant?

If you can answer yes to these questions, you can feel confident about the potential of your E-Book.

Another important step is to figure out who your target audience is. It is this group of people you will be writing to, and this group will dictate many elements of your book, such as style, tone, diction, and even length. Figure out the age range of your readers, their general gender, what they are most interested in, and even the socio-economic group they primarily come from. Are they people who read fashion magazines or book reviews? Do they write letters in longhand or spend hours every day online. The more you can pin down your target audience, the easier it will be to write your book for them.

Next, make a list of the reasons you are writing your E-Book. Do you want to promote your business? Do you want to bring quality traffic to your website? Do you want to enhance your reputation?

Then write down your goals in terms of publishing. Do you want to sell it as a product on your website, or do you want to offer it as a free gift for filling out a survey or for ordering a product? Do you want to use the chapters to create an e-course, or use your E-Book to attract affiliates around the world? The more you know upfront, the easier the actual writing will be.

Decide on the format of your chapters. In non-fiction, keep the format from chapter to chapter fairly consistent. Perhaps you plan to use an introduction to your chapter topic, and then divide it into four subhead topics. Or you may plan to divide it into five parts, each one beginning with a relevant anecdote.

How to make your E-Book “user friendly”

You must figure out how to keep your writing engaging. Often anecdotes, testimonials, little stories, photos, graphs, advice, and tips will keep the reader turning the pages. Sidebars are useful for quick, accessible information, and they break up the density of the page.

Write with a casual, conversational tone rather than a formal tone such as textbook diction. Reader’s respond to the feeling that you are having a conversation with them. Break up the length and structure of your sentences so you dont hypnotize your readers into sleep. Sentences that are all the same length and structure tend to be a good aid for insomnia!

Good writing takes practice. It takes lots and lots of practice. Make a schedule to write at least a page a day. Read books and magazines about the process of writing, and jot down tips that jump out at you. The art of writing is a lifetime process; the more you write (and read), the better your writing will become. The better your writing becomes, the bigger your sales figures.

In an E-Book that is read on the screen, be aware that you must give your reader’s eye a break. You can do this by utilizing white space. In art classes, white space is usually referred to as “negative space.” Reader’s eyes need to rest in the cool white oasis you create on your page. If your page is too dense, your reader will quit out of it as soon as their eyes begin to tear.

Make use of lists, both bulleted and numbered. This makes your information easy to absorb, and gives the reader a mental break from dissecting your paragraphs one after the other.

Finally, decide on an easy-to-read design. Find a font that’s easy on the eyes, and stick to that font family. Using dozens of fonts will only tire your readers out before they’ve gotten past your introduction. Use at least one and a half line spacing, and text large enough to be read easily on the screen, but small enough so that the whole page can be seen on a computer screen. You will have to experiment with this to find the right combination.

Of course, don’t forget to run a spell and grammar check. You are judged by something as minor as correct punctuation, so dont mess up a great book by tossing out semicolons randomly, or stringing sentences together with commas. (By the way, that’s called a “comma splice.”)

Last of all: create an index and a bibliography. That’s it! You’ve written a book! Now all you have to do is compile and publish your E-Book online, and wait for download request from your website visitors!

The people who arent on the Internet at all should be a prime concern if youve got an online consulting business that deals with helping companies improve their online images. Of course, most of the time youre used to having clients come to you to request your services, but being proactive on your part can reap great rewards. Not only is this a mostly untapped source of revenue, but also most businesses can benefit from any sort of online presence, even if its something as simple as a Twitter account. If you can introduce web-wary clients to these easy to navigate tools, youll be able to build a steady business relationship with them and help them take it to the next level when they feel comfortable.

Of course, the first question to ask is thus: how do you, an online consultant, get in touch with companies who arent online at all?

The simple answer? Go local.

You likely know of a few hole in the wall spots around town that arent likely to have a very strong Internet presence, if they have one at all. Consider actually physically going to these businesses yes! Get off the Internet for a moment and see if you can talk with the owners about their online marketing potential. Of course, acting like a door-to-door salesman might not be your style, but consider working through contacts to see if you can speak with the owner on a more friendly level, rather than walking straight up and offering your services. Not to say that the blunt approach wont work sometimes you might be surprised with how often it will but being able to work through connections will often make the process easier. And once you have one client under your wing, its amazing how fast word will spread.

The old adage think globally, act locally is so true in the case of online consulting companies working with offline customers. Youll need to think of terms of the Internet which is a worldwide endeavor but also bring your local knowledge and connections into play as well. When you combine these two initiatives, youll be surprised at how powerful they can be.