secret internet marketing

AdSense Tips - How to Make More Than $100 Every Day With AdSense

2009-07-16T00:44:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't it be nice to be generating more than a $100 a month in passive income from the magic Google AdSense program - that would be more than $3000 a month which would provide a pretty decent income for some people.

The reality however, is that many AdSense publishers see AdSense as a way to making some easy money online

but after a month or two they soon realize that it's not going to be an easy way to get rich online.

So what differentiates the big AdSense earners who earn in excess of $100,000 a month from those publishers who struggle to make the $100 threshold to generate a payment.

Well there are a number of factors which include the usual common practices for maximizing your AdSense earnings as follows;

Ad Placement
Ad Blending - Fonts, Colors, Background, Border etc
Ad Sizes
Website Traffic
Website Niche or Topic

However, notwithstanding the above, one of the biggest factors that is directly proportional to your AdSense revenue is time.

In other words the older your website or blog, or the longer you have been publishing AdSense ads on it, the more chance it has have increasing its daily AdSense revenue.

Ok, this could be related to traffic, because as time goes by, the more the website gets tweaked, the more links it gets and the better it ranks in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) and so on.

So what this means is that unless you have instant traffic to a your high paying niche website, you will probably have to be patient to realize that $100 a day AdSense revenue.

The author, a university graduate, is continually exploring alternative ways to do business on the internet for entrepreneurs

Easy Make Money Online Opportunity: Does It Exist?

2009-07-05T22:39:00.001-07:00

Do easy and genuine opportunities to make money really exist online? Forget the hype that chokes the World Wide Web about making overnight fortunes that is only designed to get folks to part with their hard-earned cash. We are talking here about a real opportunity on the web that will make you cash without too much effort.

Actually the truth is that these opportunities do exist in plenty. The big challenge is being able to find them. How do you pick them out of all the hype and false promises?

To start with it has to be the kind of opportunity that has a track record for a product that people need. Then it must be easy to run and earn cash from. This will enable the affiliate to then put in the extra effort required to make them some very serious money.

Let us start by talking about the most successful online opportunity and affiliate program on the web today, which neatly falls into this category. We are of course talking about the Google Adsense program where all you have to do is post ads next to your already created web content. The program has millions of affiliates and thousands all over the world successfully earn a regular income from Adsense.

But there are also a handful of other similar easy-to-make-money-online opportunities out there. Some of them may even prove to be easier to earn serious money from than the Adsense program. It really depends on how the whole program has been set up. Some amazing ones focus a lot of attention on ensuring that those who participate end up being as successful as possible and earning a significant income consistently every month.

The truth is that these kinds of programs are not so difficult to find, especially if you happen to know exactly how to seek them out.

There are a handful of examples of an easy make money online opportunity that you can check out.

Easy Make Money Online Opportunity: Does It Exist?

2009-07-05T22:39:00.000-07:00

Actually the truth is that these opportunities do exist in plenty. The big challenge is being able to find them. How do you pick them out of all the hype and false promises?

The truth is that these kinds of programs are not so difficult to find, especially if you happen to know exactly how to seek them out.

There are a handful of examples of an easy make money online opportunity that you can check out.

Blogging Communities Turn Faceless Strangers into Close Friends

2009-07-02T21:07:00.000-07:00

I've been searching the Internet for blogging sites for a fair while now and recently I came across a whole blogging community, which has grabbed my interest greatly. It's called Joe User and it's a site that many bloggers all around the globe are partaking in. It is very well organized into categories such as Best Articles, Newest blog entries, Top blogging sites, New sites and Most hit-on bloggers. The blogs range from very personal life introspection to serious analysis of current affairs in the media.

The aspect that has appealed to me the most is the very personal type of blogging community. Many people are talking about their feelings and issues about life with people that technically they have never met face to face. However, the type of camaraderie I've 'witnessed' as a bystander has truly amazed me. These people talk to each other as though they are extremely close friends, and the strange thing is I think this is the reality.

When one person has something important happen to them in their life, up to 100 or more comments will arrive under their blog entry with advice and information as well as emotional support from their blogging friends. Of course there are some differences in opinion, but the general perspective seems to be one of a positive approach to humanity. People are really spilling out their souls to each other, and then accepting criticism as well as discussing possible solutions to problems. I just find this to be truly inspirational, a human community or 'tribe' that has formed simply because of the Internet's existence.

These people must spend a lot of time communicating with each other. Some are writing new entries everyday, as well as articles and conversations. The conversations usually happen in the 'comments' section where one can see that these people often stay up into the late hours of the morning, blogging to each other back and forth. The amount of love shared by these arbitrary acquaintances is astounding. One could perceive the whole experience as a form of therapy but I think it is much more than that. I believe this is a sign of a revolution. The coming of the New Human Tribe has begun.

If random bloggers can evolve into a community of people who trust, respect, and are intimate and united with each other this says a lot for the human condition. People are tired of the segregated, separatist reality of countries, cultures, races and religions. These group blogging sites, or collective on-line journals as I now like to think of them, are symbolic of the future connectedness of all of humanity. It may take a hundred years, or a thousand, or maybe only fifty, but it definitely looks like there's hope yet for the warring, greedy humans. One day we all may be 'one' again in our minds as well as our physical forms.

About The Author

Jesse S. Somer is a human who is working to help the New Human Tribe come together by means of the Internet communicative process. www.m6.net

Blogging for Profit Using AdSense

2009-07-02T20:53:00.000-07:00

This article is designed to teach you how to profit from blogging, writing to a website in the form of regular posts, without spending anything. The keys to this idea lie in two of Google's programs, Blogger.com and AdSense.

The first obvious step is to find a niche. While it is possible to have a general interest blog, it may not be as profitable as targeting a specific subject (click here to read the logic behind targeted advertising).

Once you settled on a subject you like, its time to set up your blog. Blogger.com is great for beginners. Not only is it free (and free of ads, unlike most free hosting services), it has integrated support for AdSense (more on this later). For now, pick a suitable but catchy name and choose one of the pre-made designs.

Of course, now you have to start making posts to your blog. There are two main types of posts. The most common type of content on blogs seems to be commentary plus a link to the actual news source or website of interest. Then there are original content posts which will have others link to you (much like you do in your commentary posts). Either way, make sure its interesting to have readers coming back.

Now its time to apply for Google's AdSense program. AdSense is a pay per click program which matches ads to the content of your page. Every time a visitor to your site clicks on one of these links, you receive a small amount of revenue (the minimum advertisers can bid for a link is $0.05, of which you receive a percentage. Many phrases can have bids as high as several dollars per click).

The content of your site determines what ads appear, and therefore how much you will ultimately make. The placement and appearance of ads, however, can have just as great an impact on how much you make.

There are a few tips for maximizing ad revenue. First, the appearance of the add itself is important. Google clearly labels all its units as advertising, but allows you to determine the colors of the links and the background. It is important that this match the look of your site. The more blatant an ad is, the more likely it is to turn off visitors. Just as important is the location of the ad units. They should appear on the top half of your page, and preferably on the left side. This insures the ad is viewed by most visitors.

Having covered the basics, its now time for you to experiment to discover what works best for your new blog. The best part is, it costs nothing to try.

Chris Rivers is a writer for www.ClickForDeals.net. Visit the site to learn more about maximizing profits through affiliate and pay per click programs. Articles appear on the site exclusively one week before they are syndicated.

Must-Have Marketing Materials for Start-Up Businesses

2009-06-29T02:31:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, when a business is just getting started, advertising is one of the first things to be left on the backburner. While it is very important to get your name out into the public, when you are scraping to pay the bills and stay afloat, marketing quickly becomes an expendable expense. There are, however, a few marketing items that are absolutely essential for a start-up business to invest in if it expects to survive. No matter how the budget stands, these items are must-haves, and all expenses should be set aside to make space for them. Business cards, postcards, a letterhead and brochures are marketing materials that you absolutely cannot do without.

Business cards are the first marketing item that many small businesses have trouble getting by without. Whenever you meet an individual who is interested in your business, it is essential to hand them a business card. Every customer served well should leave your company with a card. Every local establishment that will allow it should have your business card on its bulletin board. Very simply, a business card will do wonders for word of mouth advertising. While that alone is not enough to make your company flourish, it can keep you afloat while you settle in.

A good business card can be difficult to design, but there are a few basic tactics to help you decide which path to take. The first suggestion is to keep it simple. Too much text, and an excessive design can clutter your card and distract your consumer from the important information. Stick to the essentials when it comes to text, and keep visual flair simple. The second suggestion is to include something to make your card stand out. Whether it is an especially attractive logo, a slightly unconventional material, a creative, but still functional shape, or an excellent use of a unified color scheme, your card needs to stand out in some way. The third suggestion for business cards is not to settle for something cheap. While it is tempting to skimp a little here and there to save money, it is crucial to establish your company as a professional organization. Having a high quality business card is a great step towards accomplishing that goal.

A second important basic marketing item is a postcard. Postcards are great because they are simple, cheap and easy for potential customers to keep. Use postcards to announce your company’s grand opening, and have the postcard act as a coupon when brought in with the customer. You could also consider running a contest through the postcards. Whatever you do, make sure you have a direct benefit to your customer when it comes to the postcard. It needs to be more than just a business card. Make sure you give the person who receives the postcard in the mail a reason to keep it hanging up on the bulletin board, or on their refrigerator. Beyond that, keeping all basic company information on the card and taking advantage of how cheap they are to mail by sending one to everybody in your area will ensure that you will not have wasted your money.

Letterheads and brochures are two other important marketing devices for your start up business. Letterheads exude professionalism, and a good one will get the attention of consumers and make them think of you in a similar way to how they think of major companies in your field. Giving that sense of establishment to your new company will help your potential customers develop an essential trust with you. Gaining the trust of consumers is especially important for a start-up business to become successful. Brochures can help you develop that sense of trust and professionalism further. In many cases, customers will want to see tangible results of your services before they will trust you enough to give you their money. Having a brochure with sample products, testimonials and other similar items is a great way to give potential customers that sense of security that they need. A brochure can be one of your greatest tools to turn potential customers into satisfied customers.

Maintaining your budget as a start-up business can be one of the hardest tasks you will face. Balancing funds coming in with those going out can be daunting and can easily leave you tempted to cut spending to a minimum. While that can be a wise conclusion, there are certain elements of marketing that are undoubtedly must-haves, and should never be cut. Business cards help you reach new consumers, and establish your professionalism. Postcards can get your name out to the masses, while also giving people a direct reason to visit you on location. Letterheads and brochures give you the chance to establish a sense of trust with customers, furthering your professional reputation. These four elements of marketing are things that a young business can just not do without.

by: Nick Kakolowski

4 List Building And Email Marketing Tips That Work Like Gangbusters

2009-06-29T02:21:00.001-07:00

List building is one of the most effective ways to make money online and build a rock-solid foundation for your business. The more quality subscribers you have, the higher you will earn when you promote a certain product.

But it’s not about accumulating as much subscribers as you can, and then bombarding them with ads and promotions. If that’s the only aspect you’re focusing on, then your list building efforts are a waste of time.

Here are some red-hot tips to help build a list who will trust and like you, and to establish your credibility with your subscribers. Most important of all, these strategies would make your list more willing to buy anything you promote that is beneficial to them.

Tip # 1: Create An Exceptional Squeeze Page.

The more people who signs up to your list, the more prospects you will have. So the first thing to consider is to build an excellent squeeze page that catches their attention and entices them to give their name and email.

Some experts suggest that having eye-catching graphics can boost your opt-in rates, while some advise to focus on the copywriting aspect and the benefits they will get upon subscribing. There are no hard and fast rules. The only way to really know what works is to test, test, and test.

But despite different recommendations, make sure you create a professional-looking squeeze page that is easy on their eyes. This is the first real impression you make with a prospect. Even if you have minimal graphics, you want to make your customer “attracted” to your site and confident enough to spread the word to others who might benefit from it.

The average person does not spend more than three to five seconds on a website that is not pleasant to look at, or does not offer what they want. So make sure your squeeze page looks decent and offers something beneficial in exchange for their subscription.

Tip # 2: Build Friendly Relationships.

Building rapport and good relationships with your list is necessary to secure a profitable business in the long run. Getting the trust of your prospects is a high priority.

Many marketers hard sell their products immediately when someone subscribes; this is not a good idea. A single one-time offer could be a lucrative idea after they opt-in; but it has to end there, at least until you’ve given them enough valuable content and information to build trust and credibility.

Studies by sales and market research companies, confirmed by the top professional sales people, have shown that it regularly takes seven or more communications before potential patrons make a purchase. Make every one of them count.

Want to give value and earn at the same time? Send a free helpful e-book branded with your desired links. You could also ask them to read articles that they might find interesting. Post these articles on separate webpages; and in these article pages, you could insert Google Adsense and/or include your offer after the article.

Another way you could give value without being too promotional is to subtly put a soft sell message in the P.S. portion of your email. It’s best if this P.S. complements your non-promotional content.

After you’ve given enough value to your subscribers, you’re ready to earn big time and send solo promo emails. But you should still maintain the right balance between sending content messages and promos. Some marketers suggest sending 2 to 3 content (or semi-content) emails for every 1 promotional email. But each case is different, so you need to test and analyze your unsubscription rates for every email you send out.

Tip # 3: Give Them The Special Treatment.

Most people hate being sold to. But here’s a way to make your subscribers love you despite promoting to them:

Give them huge discounts or coupons they can avail on your products. If you’re promoting an affiliate product, ask the owner to give your subscribers an exclusive discount. Persuade the owner by telling him that the quantity of the sales will offset the reduction in earnings for each product sold. If the owner is hesitant (and if you’re feeling generous enough), you could even suggest that he reduce your commissions in exchange for giving your subscribers the special deal. Even if you’re earning less per product, the number of units sold could multiply many times over.

If offering a discount, coupon or rebate is impractical, you could give away special bonuses when they buy through your recommendations.

Your aim is to satisfy your customers to the best of your abilities. If you do that, they will continue buying from you, because they know you’re looking after their best interest.

A good reputation will drive in more traffic and customers, as your clients will spread good things about you or your products, and recommend you as a reliable source. Just as in a brick and mortar business, treat your customers well and they will in turn treat you well.

Tip # 4: Let Other Companies Promote To Your List.

Apart from selling your own products and recommendations, you may also use your list to earn additional profits. How? Allow other companies to put an ad in your mailing for a fixed fee. This works quite well if you have a newsletter, where you could insert sponsor ads. This doesn't mean sell to the competition, but a company with a product that compliments yours. You are basically renting email space to another company that will market to your list.

But the big question is… would it be better to promote your own recommendations, or earn a fixed income by letting other companies advertise to your list? It depends on your purpose. Many gurus suggest promoting your own recommendations (especially if your promotion has been tested to convert really well). But the downside is that there’s no assurance of how much you will earn. By letting others leverage from your subscribers, you will earn a fixed income (but in this case, you’re limiting your earning potentials). Again, it’s best to test and analyze your results to see which will bring the highest profit margin for you.

Hope these list building and email marketing tips help bring your business success to the next level.

by: Jeremy Gislason

4 List Building And Email Marketing Tips That Work Like Gangbusters

2009-06-29T02:21:00.000-07:00

Why I Love The Affiliate Marketing

2009-06-21T23:48:00.000-07:00

Why I love the Affiliate Marketing? I suppose that I don't have to explain what is Affiliate Marketing. I found out about it accidentally, when I bought a laptop and I started to surf the web, although I wasn't looking for something like that. But I imagine that it is impossible to surf the web and not "hit" an affiliate marketing offer like "work at home and get rich over night without doing anything".

Why I love the Affiliate Marketing? Because there are so many offers and some of them are so extremely funny, that I don't need any other show to start every day with a good mood. I love the imagination of these guys. When I see titles starting with "unheard, unseen, amazing, unbelievable, ultimate, extra, ultra, monster, typhoon, secret, top secret, unbeatable, shadow, commando, ninja, greatest, biggest, safest, day job killer, fire your boss, underground, black hat, etc.", I am attracted like a magnet to see what's all about. When I see something about "deadly mistakes", I am the first one who reads them, because the nature made me a coward creature, I have no hero stuff, I love my own life too much for loosing it because of a "deadly mistake" I could make on my website. Each and every of this offers teaches you how to get rich instantly without effort, from your home, in your undearwear or out of them, from your kitchen's table, from your basement, from your bed, while you sleeping, from so many positions ands placements, that makes me wonder why there are still people who work normally, from "nine to five". And the funny thing is that these titles are really catching.

Why I love the Affiliate Marketing? I signed up with Twitter three months ago, I didn't moved a finger and I have more than 700 followers. I am honest with myself and with them and I follow back each and every Twitter user who follows me. And God, I love to follow them! When I see updates like "I Just Increased My Followers By Using The Twitter Method X", tweeted by someone who gots only 7 followers, I imagine that the "X method owner must be proud by the effort of the poor guy. Who wouldn't be proud by such publicity? Anyway, his effort was rewarded. He increased miraculous the number of his followers from 7 to 8. My sensitive heart wouldn't allow to hurt the feelings of a guy who is struggling so hard. I must confess that I have sinned once me too. Some guy offered me an infailible system to gain thousands of followers by offering an ebook as incentive to retweet my free giveaway ebook, and the result was... I leave you to find a word to describe the result. I gained one follower, myself, and that because I tested the system. But the technique was infailible. I won the prize, the ebook that I was offering. When I see some guy who has only 23 followers but he already posted 294 updates, I lose my control. I can't stop laughing. Sorry for those guys, anyway, I won't give names, but if I would want to make a joke I wouldn't be able to imagine such one. The record was a guy with 700 followers and 2954 updates. Not even famous tweeples with 30.000 followers are not so productives. I take off my hat in front of this guy, he must spend more than half of his life on Twitter.

Why I love the Affiliate Marketing? Because I see offers teaching you how to increase your sales by up to 912%, no more, no less. Such precision astonishes me. Because I see offers teaching you how to make each and every day 4.987, 65 dollars, no more, no less. (Actually, I am disposed to give up any time at the 65 cents, I would be more than pleased with the rest). Because I see offers teaching you how to increase your mailing list with 678 subscribers each and every day, no more, no less. And not any kind of subscribers, only hungry subscribers, ready to buy from you with the price of their life, no matter what crap you are selling. You have to agree with me that there is a huge difference between ordinary and hungry subscribers, and I find normal that everyone prefers the last ones. I am waiting impatient the day when someone will try to teach me how to increase my mailing list with 3,33 subscribers, and, frankly, I wouldn't be very surprised if I see that. I saw so many things, that nothing can surprise me easy. And the curious thing is that this numbers really work. There were tested and the statistics show that prices like "47, 67, 97" are converting better than "50, 70 or 100", and the difference is not the 3 dollars less. I imagine that it's something psichologic. Of course, even these guys were beaten by someone who tryed to teach me how to make money online without selling nothing!!!

Why I love the Affiliate Marketing? Finally, because I make money with Affiliate Marketing from home, although not that easy how these guys claim, I am not rich but I live decent, I don't work from "nine to five" to some capitalist who exploits me, instead I spend about 14 hours per day on my laptop to be able to ensure my "financial security", but, when I look back, I love what I am doing, I am having fun. Maybe my sence of humor is higher, I don't know, but I have fun reading all these things, and makes my "work at home" job easier. If you want 4.987, 65 dollars per day, the WWW (worl wide web) is at your disposition, just try to make them instead of spend them. If you want to make money online without spending money for that, but you don't expect to get rich over night or to watch the money floating around while you are sitting and doing nothing, than visit my site and you will find out how I use only online free methods to make some (not much) money online.

by: Ion Andrei

About The Author

The author saw the daylight in Dracula's country Romania, and now he is established in Valencia, Spain, near the Mediterranean Sea.

The author is running a website, "Affiliate Marketing Step By Step", at http://www.affiliatemarketingsearchenginesupport.com/, where you can find detailed documentation on how to start a home business at no cost. You may find out also interesting things on his blog, "I Am An Affiliate!", at http://www.jks-andrei-ion.affiliatemarketingsearchenginesupport.com/

You will receive a lot of tips and gifts related with the Internet Marketing.

How To Analyze Website Traffic

2009-06-21T23:28:00.000-07:00

Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be an invaluable tool for a number of different reasons. But before you can make full use of this tool, you need to understand how to interpret the data.

Most web hosting companies will provide you with basic web traffic information that you then have to interpret and make pertinent use of. However, the data you receive from your host company can be overwhelming if you don't understand how to apply it to your particular business and website. Let's start by examining the most basic data-the average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

These figures are the most accurate measure of your website's activity. It would appear on the surface that the more traffic you see recorded, the better you can assume your website is doing, but this is an inaccurate perception. You must also look at the behavior of your visitors once they come to your website to accurately gauge the effectiveness of your site.

There is often a great misconception about what is commonly known as "hits" and what is really effective, quality traffic to your site. Hits simply means the number of information requests received by the server. If you think about the fact that a hit can simply equate to the number of graphics per page, you will get an idea of how overblown the concept of hits can be. For example, if your home page has 15 graphics on it, the server records this as 15 hits, when in reality we are talking about a single visitor checking out a single page on your site. As you can see, hits are not useful in analyzing your website traffic.

The more visitors that come to your website, the more accurate your interpretation will become. The greater the traffic is to your website, the more precise your analysis will be of overall trends in visitor behavior. The smaller the number of visitors, the more a few anomalous visitors can distort the analysis.

The aim is to use the web traffic statistics to figure out how well or how poorly your site is working for your visitors. One way to determine this is to find out how long on average your visitors spend on your site. If the time spent is relatively brief, it usually indicates an underlying problem. Then the challenge is to figure out what that problem is.

It could be that your keywords are directing the wrong type of visitors to your website, or that your graphics are confusing or intimidating, causing the visitor to exit rapidly. Use the knowledge of how much time visitors are spending on your site to pinpoint specific problems, and after you fix those problems, continue to use time spent as a gauge of how effective your fix has been.

Additionally, web traffic stats can help you determine effective and ineffective areas of your website. If you have a page that you believe is important, but visitors are exiting it rapidly, that page needs attention. You could, for example, consider improving the link to this page by making the link more noticeable and enticing, or you could improve the look of the page or the ease that your visitors can access the necessary information on that page.

If, on the other hand, you notice that visitors are spending a lot of time on pages that you think are less important, you might consider moving some of your sales copy and marketing focus to that particular page.

As you can see, these statistics will reveal vital information about the effectiveness of individual pages, and visitor habits and motivation. This is essential information to any successful Internet marketing campaign.

Your website undoubtedly has exit pages, such as a final order or contact form. This is a page you can expect your visitor to exit rapidly. However, not every visitor to your site is going to find exactly what he or she is looking for, so statistics may show you a number of different exit pages. This is normal unless you notice an exit trend on a particular page that is not intended as an exit page. In the case that a significant percentage of visitors are exiting your website on a page not designed for that purpose, you must closely examine that particular page to discern what the problem is. Once you pinpoint potential weaknesses on that page, minor modifications in content or graphic may have a significant impact on the keeping visitors moving through your site instead of exiting at the wrong page.

After you have analyzed your visitor statistics, it's time to turn to your keywords and phrases. Notice if particular keywords are directing a specific type of visitor to your site. The more targeted the visitor-meaning that they find what they are looking for on your site, and even better, fill out your contact form or make a purchase-the more valuable that keyword is.

However, if you find a large number of visitors are being directed-or should I say misdirected-to your site by a particular keyword or phrase, that keyword demands adjustment. Keywords are vital to bringing quality visitors to your site who are ready to do business with you. Close analysis of the keywords your visitors are using to find your site will give you a vital understanding of your visitor's needs and motivations.

Finally, if you notice that users are finding your website by typing in your company name, break open the champagne! It means you have achieved a significant level of brand recognition, and this is a sure sign of burgeoning success.

by: Nelson Tan

About The Author

Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind Internet Mastery Center. Download $347 worth of FREE Internet Marketing gifts at http://www.internetmasterycenter.com

How to Start an Online Home Business: What is Needed to make Money Online

2009-06-16T00:02:00.000-07:00

Some believe it easy to start an online home business, but without having a handle on what is needed to make money online, they will fail like the rest of the 99% that try building a home business on the internet. There are things you must know and ‘tricks of the trade’ that will make the difference between success and failure.

The fact that only around 1% of those that start an online business succeed should be indication enough that there is more to it than just the will. There is also the attitude, information and knowledge. Let’s have a look at each of these.

ATTITUDE

Attitude is important. Your online home business is a business, not a hobby, and it should be treated as such. You have to discipline yourself to work to a plan and targets: set monthly, weekly and daily targets, and if you take time off for the school run, or to watch that TV program, then work later until you have met your targets.

Targets should be set so that you achieve so much in a certain time, and when you meet them all your business is so much stronger and on course for success. Newcomers to internet business will likely need some help with that to start with, but you should quickly get into the swing and be able to formulate your own online business plan and set targets to achieve it.

Don’t look upon your income as spare cash: look on it as your income, even if you still have a regular job. Most that are still learning about what is needed to make money online have a day job, although quite a few are unemployed. That’s why they are trying to use the internet to make a living.

by: Peter Nisbet

INFORMATION

Knowledge comes from the information you are given. There is a lot of information online, but information is no good on its own with knowing what information is useful and what is not. You must also know how to use the information provided to you. Simply being told that keyword research is essential for the success of your website will not help you to carry out that research properly, and arrive at the right keywords for which each page on your site should be optimized.

You have to be told how to carry it out and how to apply it to your online home business. Not only that, but too much information can be just as bad as insufficient. You can suffer what is referred to as ‘information overload’. You have all the information you need to be successful, but there is so much of it, and how do you put it all together to formulate a coherent business plan?

No! Information is all very well, but you have also to find out how to use it, and how to get your information in small bites as you need it: not all at once and become confused.

KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge comes from information. There are a lot of intelligent people that start an online home business, but fail because they have no idea of what is needed to make money online. There is a lot to learn, and most of the currently successful internet marketers have spent a great period of time in learning. Many had to lean, because internet marketing was new when they started, and they set the standards and level of knowledge of their day.

Now, however, there is a lot of information available online but you have to know what you are looking for before you know what to search for! How do you get a website started up? There are several steps, including:

* Decide how you are going to make money: by selling a product, providing a service or some other way.
* What form will that product or service take.? Do you have to create it yourself or sell, on commission?
* How do you choose a domain name?
* You have found out that you should carry out keyword research but how do you do that properly?
* How do you buy and register a domain name, and then use it on your website?
* How do you start up a website?
* How should your website be designed?
* How do you go about designing and constructing it?
* How do you advertise your website?
* How do you get your site listed on Google and other search engines?

And many, many more questions to be answered and things to be learned. We have barely scratched the surface with the above basics. Without that knowledge, however, you don’t have hope of succeeding with an online home business, and you will be like the 99% others that fail to make money online.

The best way for most people to learn, and the way that most appear to prefer, is just like being at school. You are not given the entire alphabet to learn at once: you learn a letter at a time. The same with learning how to start an online home business and make money online:

1. How to choose a money-making or internet marketing technique.
2. Find out how to formulate a plan, and set regular targets
3. How to choose the right product.
4. How to get a website started up.
5. How to get your products on the site, and how top set your site up to collect payments and deliver the product.
6. How to promote your product and website.
7. How to set everything on autopilot and get onto your next project.

That is just one of a good sequence of events, whereby you are provided the information in easily digestible pieces that come together to provide you with a viable online home business that will not only help you to make money online, but also work as the basis for a massive internet empire that could one day see you earning 7 figures online.

About The Author

If you are interested in more information on how to start an online home business then check out http://www.marketing-membership.com that provides you with information and training in small pieces each month, but also with the opportunity for you to proceed and learn at your own pace.

Introducing Some New Thoughts About Working From Home

2009-06-15T23:31:00.000-07:00

Technology is evolving at a rapid rate. And if you do not keep up with the rate of change it could easily leave you behind in its wake. One of the results of this technological improvement is the way people communicate with each other and the world around them. The revolution in communication has lead to newer ways of doing business. Working at home is one such phenomenon that has been made possible by the advance in the field of communication technology. The phenomenon has gained wide acceptance in the past few years as a novel way of doing business.

Working at Home has changed the need for commuting to an office and working. Whether it is working for someone else or completely for yourself it is a growing theme in today’s fast paced world. As the term in itself implies, it means that people work right from their homes using sophisticated equipment to communicate with others. There are home based businesses that don’t even require people to step outside of their homes except to withdraw money through the ATM machines. Such is the power of the latest technology. And there are some instances that people do not even step outside of their home. They can do all transactions including money right at home.

There are a great number of different businesses that people can do from home. Writing, editing, graphic designing, software developing, multi level marketing, tele-marketing, taking up agencies for travel business, ticket reservations, providing human resources to companies and organizations, and debt collecting agencies – the list of things that can be turned in to business from home is virtually endless. People also are setting up successfully small industries for manufacturing items such as: soaps, candles, stuffed dolls, and homemade foods.

There are equally large numbers of services that can be offered from home including: secretarial services, book keeping, accounting, legal advice, real estate consultancy, management consultancy, interior designing, garden landscaping, and carpet cleaning. People have successfully started careers and made a living by working at home. Transcription, data entry, buying and selling on ebay, and home inspection jobs have fetched people a lot of money to make a decent living, not just paying the bills. With the growing numbers of people on the internet today the numbers for people actually making a living just by working from home is also exploding.

People that know how to repair mobile phones, TV sets, computers, and other appliances can conveniently start working from their homes. Women form a sizable chunk of the work at home population. There is still a significant population of women that are stay at home moms. This gives them the extra time that they can spend in setting up a home business. They also find their skills at stitching, embroidery, knitting, and dress designing profitable in running a home based business. People having experience or having the qualities to offer customer service can work for big companies’ right from their home. Virtual assistance is also fast becoming popular in this area.

Getting frustrated by the rigors of the corporate world many people are quitting their regular jobs and beginning to work from home. Of course the present economy is not helping much either with all the companies laying people off. With downsizing being the trend everywhere many people has no other choice. Many become successful and some do not. It all depends on the attitude and aptitude of the person working from home. The rules that govern the possibility of success applies to succeed in a home based business as well. You do not have someone there telling you must work so you must have the discipline to make yourself work. If you want to succeed you must have the drive. Working from home makes certain things easier, but the bottom line still remains the same. Hard work always pays.

Simply getting seduced by the idea of working at home shouldn’t prompt people to quit their regular jobs. The move should be calculated and be made after calculating all the risks involved. People should find their niche and determine if they have the self discipline to make the idea a success. It becomes easy to succeed with hard work and determination in home based business. There are many different types of work available out there for someone who has the discipline to drive themselves to success. And even though working moms are fast becoming a large part of the work from home force, it is quickly changing with today’s economy for everyone.
by: Randall Drake

Three Effective Ways to Promote Your Offline Business Online

2009-06-15T00:52:00.000-07:00

When the going gets tough, the tough…go online!

That’s right. Even today in these tough economic times, there are cost effective, recession proof ways you can market your business, which will make you tons of money and cost you next to nothing.

No matter what type of business you own, you can get laser targeted, high quality traffic and leads from the Internet. Think about it. There are people, thousands of them, surfing the Internet right now looking for a solution that your business provides. They just don’t know you exist. But if they did, then you would be making significantly more money that you are now.

If you advertise your business in the local paper, you’re going to spend a few hundred dollars. The yellow pages is even more. A print ad could run into the thousands, easily.

Direct mail might be a solution, but then you have to buy or rent the mailing list. That’s at least a few hundred, if not more. You’ll have to have your offering written. Unless you’re a competent copywriter, you’re talking about a few hundred, easily. Next, to get any sort of volume, you’ll need to print a few hundred of your letters or cards, pay first class postage to mail them, and even then you can assume that only about 1% to 3% of your recipients will even care about your offering. So, if you main 1,000 letters, you can assume that 10 to 30 people who got the letters are even in the market for what you’re advertising. You’re paying $10 to $50 per lead…not sale, but lead!

Whereas, if you know how to harness the power of the Internet, you can get people who really are interested in what you have to offer, and who really do need your product or service and are more than willing to pay for it, to come find you!

There are tons of ways of doing this, but let’s basically talk about three.

1. Pay-per-click. You know the $50 lead, above. Well, for only pennies per click, you can get Google to place ads in strategic places around the web where your prospects are likely to see them. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad. You can get a real, bona fide lead for pennies!

2. Blogging. Or if you want to get leads essentially for free, you can build a blog yourself or hire someone else to do it for you and Google will bring you traffic…for free!

3. Finally, You can combine the above two strategies and a few others and not only have targeted, interested prospects visit your website but also give you their email address along with permission to market your products to them! Wow! Your prospects will not only be reading your ad copy, but they will be wanting and expecting you to send them more information.

You can do all of this for next to nothing! Now, that’s recession proof marketing.

by: Brett Schaefer

Identifying Brochure Problems

2009-06-14T22:54:00.000-07:00

Are you having trouble with your color brochures? Did you spend all that time, money and effort in brochure printing only to discover that they are not giving you the results that you want? Well there are several key factors why brochure printing can fail. In this guide, we will share with you some tips on how to identify these possible problems and correct them.

Do an opinion survey: The first thing that you need to do to identify any problems with your brochures is to do a survey. Look for the people that you gave your brochures to, and ask them a few questions about their reactions to it. Also, try to find other groups of people to give your brochures to, and then ask them immediately afterwards of their opinion about it. If you gather data that is large enough, chances are good that you should see a growing trend where your brochures fail to impress your readers. This should be a key factor on how to improve your brochure designs on the next printing run.

Re-analyze your target readers: Next, you may want to study once again your target readers or target market for your brochures. You may discover suddenly that your target market is inappropriate for your brochure, or that your brochure content is not ideal for your particular target market. This can be a common mistake for brochure printing, since some people just assume immediately what their target readers like while actually not researching what those are. So try to reanalyze your target reader’s wants and needs by looking at market research data about them.

Revise distribution techniques: You may want to check your distribution technique as well if it is indeed effective. Did you just hand out your brochures to people on the street? Did you mail them to several addresses in a mailing list? Or maybe you just left them behind in public places. Try to review these techniques if they are indeed effective and people are picking them up and reading. If you look closely enough you should identify key problems that make a certain technique not work. For example, you may be mailing brochures to the wrong kind of people or the public places that you leave your brochures to are not really where you target market is. So revise your distribution techniques accordingly and try other methods to see if those others can work better.

Find another location: Also, you may want to look at your distribution policies for your brochures. Sometimes brochures can fail because they have been given in the wrong locations. Try to determine who the most common type of people that pass by your distribution zones. Also if you mailed some of your brochures, try to see the demographic data on the neighborhoods that you sent them to. You may discover that your brochure message will not really be interesting or be well received by the people in your distribution area. When this happens, it might be a good idea to shift your distribution efforts elsewhere.

Use multiple concepts: Finally, you may want to branch out to several design concepts for your brochures and test them out separately. By testing multiple concept designs for your brochures, you should be able to identify which design works, and which does not have enough of an impact to customers This should be the last step in troubleshooting the problems on your brochure since this basically decides if you will change your whole brochure or not.

Hopefully by the fifth type of check, you should already identify the problems inherent in your brochure. Just try to be patient and methodical about analyzing your brochure problems so that you can identify it and rectify is as soon as you can. With some determination and hope you should be able to turn your brochure printing around before any kind of permanent harm is one for your business.

For comments and inquiries about the article visit:
by: Janice Jenkins
http://www.printplace.com/printing/brochure-printing.aspx, http://www.printplace.com/printing/full-color-brochure-printing.aspx

Can You Really Have a Successful Internet Business

2009-06-10T00:16:00.000-07:00

A lot of the information that you see floating around on the Internet right now is about how you cannot have a successful business on the Internet if you don't have an e-mail list. As a matter of fact, it has been said that 95% of all online businesses fail because of this reason. While some of this is true, I personally do not feel this is the sole reason why so many businesses fail.

We are a country and a world that has developed into a "I want it right now" mentality. We want our riches right now, we want our businesses to be successful the very minute we put them on the Internet. We want everything to happen "right now!" Instant gratification is another name for this. People think that by having a business online they won't have to do anything.

If you work for eight hours a day while working for someone else, why wouldn't you put forth the same effort for your own business? Advertising and marketing will not get done by themselves. You must be willing to do the work that is necessary every day. If you want to work from home, you actually need to work!

Part of the reason that many online and offline businesses fail is due to lack of persistence and lack of time. You cannot open up a store and expect people just to flock in. Before you open your doors to the public, there is usually a massive advertising campaign to let everyone know that you are going to be opening and on what day. You put flyers on cars, take out ads in your local newspaper and tell everyone you know that your store is going to be open! It took months of hard work to get your inventory and to set it up on shelves, etc., so you would not want all that work to go to waste by not letting people know about your shop.

The same must be done for an Internet business. Yes, it is good to have a large e-mail list to send information out to, but most of us who start an online business don't. So you need to get other forms of advertising promotions. Go online and look for places to advertise for free. Google and Yahoo are wonderful avenues to get this information from. I can't tell you how many sites I was able to submit to just by doing a search of "free classified ads" on Google alone. Always take a portion of your day and set it aside for advertising.

Another good form of advertising is through the traffic exchanges. Be careful though and make sure that a majority of your traffic exchange memberships are with manual exchanges. You want people to see your website, your ad, etc. and if you belong to a lot of auto surf sites, more than likely your ad is just flashing up to an empty chair. Many if not most people log on to their auto surf site and let the pages flash on by while they do other things around the house. You want your website seen for at least 20 - 30 seconds. This is especially true if you have a lot of detail on your website. I have seen websites on some of the 15 second sites that never fully load before the timer is out and the site never gets seen. You want people to see your site and you want them to have time to capture an impression in their minds about your product or service.

Don't be afraid to subscribe to newsletters and e-zines. Believe it or not, these publications are full of information that you would otherwise not get. Many if not all editors also love giving out free information as well. I cannot tell you how my knowledge has increased by being a subscriber to many assorted newsletters and e-zines. Just remember to join with publications that are of interest to you.

You might like the ones that have to do with marketing, advertising and online businesses. But if you have a product that is geared towards animals, you may want to join publications that have information that is about dogs or cats. No matter what, the knowledge you gain from these materials is incredible. I don't read all of them cover to cover, but I do look at each one and read the articles that I believe will help me the most. And if I browse through the newsletter and there doesn't seem to be any information that I am looking for, I just delete it and move on to the next.

Write articles about things that you know and submit them to newsletters and e-zines. This is another wonderful avenue to get advertising for your site. You need to make sure that when you submit your articles that you are submitting to sites that are relevant to your subject. People who are reading the e-zines don't want to read about animal training if they joined because the e-zine is about marketing techniques.

The most important thing to remember about all of these marketing and advertising techniques is that they will not bring success to you overnight. It takes persistence and time. I cannot stress this enough. You have to persistently look for new ways to get your site seen. You have to submit articles every day. Even if you just write one article and submit that article to 5 different e-zines or newsletters a day, after 30 days, you have submitted to 150 different avenues. You need to surf the traffic exchanges every day. Don't forget to really look at the sites as well because sometimes you will get great ideas for your own site by seeing others.

You will actually see an increase in the number of people visiting your website in approximately 30 days or so. But always give your business at least one year to really get going. It takes that long just to get the kinks worked out and ideas implemented. Don't jump from one business opportunity to another. Find one that you will enjoy and truly like to work with. If you don't like the product, find another. There are enough businesses and opportunities out there for you to find one that you really like. After all, you will be working every day to make this a successful business venture and you don't want to be working with a product that will eventually make you dissastisfied.

Don't forget to actually work! So many opportunities tell you that you can make 1000's of dollars by doing nothing at all and that simply is not true. You never get anything by doing nothing. Even when someone wins the lottery he paid a dollar, therefore he did something! Each day do something that is going to benefit your business. It can be submitting an article or submitting to free classified ad sites. But make sure you are putting forth the effort to do these things. Your website will not be able to do it for you. Bill Gates and Donald Trump did not get wealthy by doing nothing! They did a lot of hard work and put forth the effort to get their products known!

As I said in the beginning it is persistence and time that will lead you to success. Your persistence and time in advertising, your persistence and time with e-zines and even your own persistence and time in gaining knowledge will do this. It is hard work and anybody that tells you differently is just trying to get some money out of you. Always take the time to correspond with your customers and people who work with you as well. Keep in contact and don't forget to help people! Offer them free resources, offer them free help, and offer them whatever it takes for them to be successful because in the end that will make YOU successful.

Much luck and success to you in the future!

Carolyn is a single mother of two and runs a successful online business. She has been doing this for about a year and enjoys the all of the benefits of working from home. She also publishes an online ezine each week to help benefit those who are working to establish a successful online business. macarolyn.tripod.com/ezine

The Top 10 Essentials for Your Pay Per Click (PPC) Success

2009-06-07T21:46:00.000-07:00

Whether you're looking to do Paid Search Advertising yourself or to hire someone to do that for you - you should know what makes a Pay Per Click campaign successful - or you will end up suffering.

Paid search advertising may look deceptively easy to do. Countless times small business owners decide (and correctly so) that PPC is going to do wonders for their business and 'dive' right into it...

Unfortunately most of them don't really educate themselves enough on what to do and how to do it, and then they end up spending a helluva lot of money, with little to no results. Next they declare that Paid Search Marketing doesn't work and then they're out!

Alternatively, the small business owner hires an overpaid, over-promising PPC management firm, and lets them do whatever they like - not knowing what to be aware of in order to make sure he's getting the best possible results for the best price...

Well - despite the doom and gloom scenarios above, I'm here to tell you that PPC works for most businesses!

It works very well, and can be one of the best, quickest, most cost effective and best tracked medium of advertising/promotion there ever was... Sure, there are other ways you can market your business, but if you know how to, and if you want almost immediate results that are fully tracked - then PPC can't be beaten.

OK, let's get to the top 10 essentials of Pay Per Click marketing:

1. Know your market place

It's as obvious as daylight, but people still go into PPC without doing their research. Bear in mind that you may know your market place offline, but when you consider the internet - it may be a whole different environment. So make sure you look into it - even if you have to pay for professional research - it will be worth your while.

If you're letting an agency manage your paid search, then make sure you ask them about your market - make sure they have done their homework thoroughly.

2. Know your target audience

Again an obvious one - and yet again people don't do this step properly. Don't just list out a bunch of demographics about your prospective customers. Get into character - engineer 'real-life' people profiles (avatars), describing everything about them.

Creating about 3 customer avatars for your business, will help you understand your customers, and thus you'll be able to anticipate how they behave. Knowing how they are likely to behave, will allow you to setup a VERY effective PPC campaign process, that will guarantee you success.

Remember - your customer just wants to feel understood, then if your product/service is good - they will buy.

3. Know what you want your visitor to do

In other words decide - do you want a prospect visiting your site to:

- call you to make an appointment?
- email you with more info about themselves, before setting up a consultation?
- click on the "Buy Now" button on your landing page?
- sign up to your membership site?
- sign up to your free newsletter?
- download a free report?

The clearer you are about what you want visitors to do, the easier it will be to entice them to do just that. If you don't tell your prospects what it is they need to do to progress this visit to something that is of benefit to them, they will click away, most likely to never be seen again...

4. Know how they look for you & your product - i.e. understand searcher intent

This one's not so obvious. Only very good paid search marketers know that keywords have different intent behind them. In other words, if a searcher on Google types in "running shoes" they are highly likely to be doing some preliminary research on what types of running shoes there are.

If the same searcher typed in "running shoes reviews" - then they are likely to be still researching - but they now know that they will buy - when they find the shoe that appeals to them.

A prospect with 'buying' intent, however, will likely type in "buy asics gel kayano running shoes" or "asics gel kayano stockists". You get the idea...

5. Start small - grow big later

This simply means that it is better to find the most suitable keyword phrases for your business, and run with that small group first. This will allow you to test the 'waters' and it will help you keep control of your budget.

Later on, when you know what works and what doesn't you can add other phrases to your heart's content.

6. Split test your ads

It is amazing how many people don't take advantage of this feature on Google AdWords. Split - testing will give you a constant way of improving on your ads. Your ad is the 'window' to your sales... so you cannot afford not to be constantly trying to make it better converting than before.

7. Use landing pages (LP)

Landing pages are powerful when using them correctly. They allow you complete control of what your visitor experiences. I always recommend that if you are only wanting one result from your prospect you should use LPs. But if your resources and knowledge are limited, then at least make sure you are leading the searcher to the most search-relevant page you have on your site.

8. Track everything

This says it all - even if you don't know how to, or with what - find someone that can help you. Outsource this job, or simply head over to Google and read all there is on their Analytics service. In some cases this is perfectly sufficient.

9. Listen to your stats

Once you have your tracking working, make sure you look at your stats to see the results. I recommend you look at them once a day in the beginning - depending on the size of your campaign, the amount of traffic your keywords are getting, and the amount of money you've budgeted to spend.

Once your campaign is working and making you profit, you can start looking at it less often, but at least once a week. Also make sure to optimize it regularly on the basis of your stats.

10. Learn consistently and constantly

Learn from your successes, your failures, your competitors' successes and their failures too... I have a document template that I use for all my campaigns called - Lessons Learned. It's only through experience that you will be able to progress and optimize any paid search campaign.

Well - hopefully you'll find the above list of PPC essentials very useful. Of course there are a lot of other important points to consider, like daily budget, competitive research, and return on investment requirements, but the above 10 will be able to start you off in a very strong way.

Bear in mind that whether you're managing your own PPC campaigns, or you're hiring a professional to do it - you can use the list above to make sure you're getting the best out of your campaigns.

About the Author: Anita Chaperon is an experienced Paid Search Marketing professional who has managed multi-national campaigns with large budgets for a variety of small and medium businesses. For more information on how to make paid search work for your business, visit Consultjing.com.

The Entrepreneurs Strength and Curse

2009-06-03T19:44:00.000-07:00

Bringing New Products to Market

Otherwise known as the idea train, an entrepreneurs' way if thinking is her biggest strength and, if not carefully managed, could be her biggest curse.

I probably have a new idea every day. And at the time I have it, I usually get so excited that I think it's the next best thing. In mind, at that time, I have just made Steve Jobs look like an amateur.

If I actually acted on all my ideas, my company would have imploded a long time ago. One can stretch a company too thin where it begins to lose focus. I started in this direction a few years ago. A member of my team made a comment to me that was very enlightening. She said, "I feel as though lately we are growing like a shrub instead of a tree."

It was a very powerful statement and made me think about pruning the shrub so we can grow like a tree again. And we have.

Now when I have ideas, I present them to my managers first to flesh them out. This can be a frustrating experience because entrepreneurs and managers think differently, thank God. If he's smart, the entrepreneur has surrounded himself with detailed managers who can say no to him when appropriate. Most entrepreneurs don't like their ideas to be grilled and possibly put on hold or nixed for the benefit of the company. So, he will give his managers the right to set him straight if the idea is not the best for the company at that time; or needs to be altered/killed.

Of course, I can do whatever I want within my own company. But in my mind, it's not my own company. If I don't have the buy in from management and the rest of the team the idea will never take shape.

So here is my 10 step plan on how to entrepreneurs can deal with their ideas:

1) Marry well. Your spouse should be the first one to tell you if the idea has merit or if you're smoking something. You can save your team a lot of time if your spouse can nix the idea first. My wife has a special talent to see through my special"forest" and if I am in "DaveLand" with one of my ideas, she'll let me know. "DaveLand" is actually a great place! The sky is red and there is fun everywhere (and great food), but it's not for everybody...

2) Hire well. It's obvious, but some ego maniacs surround themselves with minion-like people. I have empowered my team to challenge me and let me know when I am getting off course. If I did not do this years ago, my idea train could have derailed the company.

3) Develop a process to discuss ideas with your management team. Form a R&D committee or just have a discussion at your weekly manager meeting

4) Explain the opportunity or problem to solve and see what they come up with first.

5) Present your thoughts at a very high level. Don't get tactical yet. Just the 50,000 foot view.

6) Be calm. Don't try to "sell" your idea. Stick to discussing the opportunity in a calm, rational way and let the conversation flow. If your managers feel they are being sold an idea, their BS meter may go off. This could really change the direction of the discussion.

7) Ask them to pitch the idea back to you. Then ask, "What does it look like when we, as a company, execute this idea really well and so that it doesn't strain the company?"

8) On a white board, brainstorm all the reasons why you shouldn't move forward with the idea. Then, list all the reason why it's a good idea.

9) Listen half as much as you talk.

10) Be ready to walk away from the idea, or alter it.

It seems like a lot to go though, I know. Many entrepreneurs might be reading this and saying, "Bull! The reason I started a business is to do whatever I want, whenever I want!" That may work if you are a one man show. But if you have people working for you, you'd be smart to rely on their intelligence to guide you. Hopefully, that's a big reason why you hired them.

Another big reason to go through this process is the actual execution of the idea. Traditionally, entrepreneurs are builders of ideas but not always great at seeing them through. You'll need your team to embrace the idea if you expect them to execute it well.

Bottom line; make sure you allow really great passengers on your idea train who can help you drive.

Enjoy your ride.

by David Mammano

Dont Put All Your Promotion Eggs In The SEO Basket

2009-06-03T19:40:00.000-07:00

One of the most frequent questions I get asked by my clients is "What is the best way to promote my site?" If a brand new webmaster asks me that question then I will take as much time as I can possibly muster to answer their request, before they learn about and put on the SEO and ranking blinkers so many webmasters wear with pride.

Allow me now to state the obvious, the success of any website is in direct proportion to the amount of visitors it receives. If success is about visitors then why on earth would any intelligent business person devote 95% of their promotion time and budget to a single method of advertising their site?

Imagine for a moment you are the advertising executive for a large automobile company. Your company has just released the most economical car ever and your job is to make sure everyone knows about it.

Which of the following would you do?

1. Place a full page ad in one or two car magazines, then spend the next year rehashing and tweaking the wording of that ad, because it wasn't creating the sales you wanted.

2. Advertise in every magazine and newspaper you can find, start national TV advertising campaigns, make sure you have slots on every commercial radio station in the country, advertise on billboards, in cinemas, sponsor sporting events and what ever else you could think of.

It doesn't take a genius to work out the second idea is a much better plan. Now this may come as a shock to you, but the major search engines are not the only source of visitors to your website. Many SEO gurus are quick to point out to you that search engines are the only way to achieve substantial traffic. That is simply not true. One disturbing idea promoted heavily by the SEO world recently is that "Links are dead" My answer to that idea is, if links were dead then there would be no web.

Links are how people travel the web, whether they are text links, banners or email links to visit any site you need to click a link. Google itself is one enormous searchable link database.

Let's states something even more obvious. Google is not the only site on the web that links to other sites. There are directories, there are banner exchanges, and the big one there are hundreds of millions of other websites. How many of those carry a link to your site?

For any keyword or phrase on the major search engines there are millions of sites vying for just 10 first page places. Are you really devoting all your promotion time to SEO with those kinds of odds?

There is also much talk of the value of links, and nearly all of it is based on the value of links in a search engines eyes, and how that will or will not improve your rankings. STOP!!! You need to get this!!! The value of a link is how many times it gets used, clicks and visits NOT rankings.

While many will object to this statement SEO is nothing more than educated guesswork, why do I say that? Simple because Google, Yahoo and MSN do NOT tell SEO experts how they order their results. Just the opposite they regularly change how their results are ordered to stay one step ahead of the SEO experts. Why do they do that? Because they do not want their results manipulating period! They want one thing, to deliver accurate search results.

Don't take my word for this, go and get the words from the horses mouth here.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Notice the all the advice is geared towards building your site for visitors not for search engines.

If you really want to build steady long term traffic to your site, then advertise your site in every legal way you can. Yes it requires time and a consistent effort. As a wise man once said " The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary". In closing, how many of the following have you used to advertise your site? If you haven't done them all maybe you need to.

Have you:

Listed your site in a couple of hundred directories?

Exchanged quality visible links with at least 200 sites?

Exchanged banners with sites in your genre?

Started a small pay per click advertising campaign?

Written articles to do with the genre of your site and offered them to other sites for free inclusion in their newsletter or on their site?

Had your site reviewed by a review site?

Donated a product or free membership to a competition on another site?

These are only a few promotion methods that will bring visitors to your site. There are many many more if you use your imagination. This is also advertising that will not be undone in one minute by a Google algorithm change.

Am I saying don't optimize your site? NO I am saying don't rely totally on SEO for your traffic.

Are you putting all your promotional eggs in one basket? If so, isn't it time you stopped and gave your site the best chance of success.

Gary McHugh is co author of HonestLinks.Net, a site dedicated to teaching webmasters to exchange links that bring traffic. He also runs his own web design and hosting company 2001web.com

Marketing Your Web Site

2009-06-03T19:31:00.000-07:00

Congratulations! Your Web Site is finished! Now what? Your first instinct is to submit to every search engine possible and leave it up to them to bring traffic to your site. Despite what you may have been told, it doesn't happen quite that way. Yes, you will need to submit to the search engines, and they will eventually bring traffic your site. It will take anywhere from 3 - 6 months for a search engine to even get you listed. After that another year or so to make it to the top of the listings, that is, if you are extremely diligent in promoting to them monthly and following all the different rules for each search engine.

There are several ways to market your web site yourself. Your marketing efforts will yield more results than any other form of marketing.

Include your URL on the following?

Business Cards - I cannot stress enough the importance of putting your URL on your business cards!
Letterhead - also on envelopes.
Anything your company uses such as statements, invoices, order forms, etc.
Anything that your company publishes or advertises.
Anything your company prints and sends out to people such as fax cover sheets.
Include a plug with your Phone Message Service like: "visit our web site at yourwebsite.com."
Window stickers and Bumper stickers.

Basically put your web site address on anything you would put your company name on.

Check your Chamber of Commerce. Find out if they have a web site you can add your URL to. Find out if your town has a Visitors Information center. Find out if you can list your business with them. Also find out if you can leave brochures or business cards at the center for people to browse when they visit.

Include your web site URL in your email signature. This way your site URL is being sent to everyone who receives an email from you or anyone in your company.

Keep the lines of communication open with your web designer. Remember it will take a joint effort to make your web site successful. Be willing to provide information your designer will need in the creation of your site.

About The Author

Lynn Holter is owner of www.elldesigns.com. I have have years of experience with web site creation, re-design, search engine optimization, and web site marketing. I provides my clients and web site visitors with personal and excellent customer service. For more information please contact me at lynn@elldesigns.com.

How I Made $10k in Just 4 Weeks Selling $10 Ebooks

2009-05-19T21:39:00.000-07:00

I am writing this press release to all the Internet Marketing rookies like me! Well, now that I think about it, you are probably not like me. I am a 57-year-old Internet Marketing grandmother who lives in a small house in upstate New York.

Anyway, just this past December I was financially desperate. I won't tell you my whole sob story, but the bottom line is that I was out of money and still had $1000s of bills to pay each month!

I was a branch manager at our local Citibank and when the mortgage crisis hit I was one of the many innocent victims of the corporate greed that created much of this mess. I lost my job and in just a few short months all of my savings were gone as well. Finding a job in the industry was a lesson in futility so I was forced to re-invent myself.

By chance I started reading Your Portable Empire by Pat O'Bryan and that's when I decided to try Internet Marketing.

Shortly thereafter I started looking around on the internet. I bought a couple of ebooks that taught me what to do. I literally followed the instructions, WORD FOR WORD. One book was about how to write articles and ebooks and the other was about generating traffic to your website.

Here is my encouragement to you! I had never done this before! I was a writer and I had a laptop, but that's about as much as I could bring to the table. On top of it, I had virtually no money! So I had to make things happen on a shoe-string budget!

I ended up spending less than $100, wrote and started selling two eBooks of my own . . . and within just over 4 weeks, I made more than $10,000 with Internet Marketing. What I’ve since learned is that this is even more amazing since the two eBooks I wrote and I sold were both priced at only $10 each.

Here is what I did:

1. I wrote about a subject that interested me.
2. I got an inexpensive web hosting package and made my own blog(very easy).
3. I built a free WordPress blog at wordpress.com
4. I created a Squidoo page and pointed it to both my blogs.
5. I wrote about the subject and created about 10 posts. I kept adding more and more content throughout the process.
6. I wrote my first eBook and priced it at only $8.
7. I wrote a few articles and submitted them to free article directories.
8. I wrote another eBook and priced it at $10.
9. I continued to post to my blogs in addition to answering emails.
10. Within in a few weeks, I was on page 1 of Google(not nearly as hard as I thought)
11. I opened an account with PayPal to handle the transactions (no cost)
12. I stayed focused even though some days weren’t as encouraging as others.

So now that I’ve had this first experience, I am totally convinced that focused work and determination can create an income through Internet Marketing. Truly, I just wrote about a subject close to my heart. I sold to common men and women who were looking for information – not internet information, but information to help them in their lives.

I was honest, respectful and gave excellent customer service to everyone who contacted me. I learned how to put together an email list and now I am working on ways to sell products to my more than 1400 buyers!

There is still a lot I don’t know. I continue to experiment and learn everyday. I’m excited about the future and encourage each of you reading this post to stay focused, spend your money wisely on good quality tools, and BEGIN!

If a grandmother living in the middle of upstate New York and can make $10,000 in just over 4 weeks on her first Internet Marketing offer, then anybody can who is willing to follow the same or similar steps for success! I have no doubt!

If you would like to read more come visit me at http://www.allwealthandinfosystems.com/home

by: Betty Wiley

Affiliate Marketing Programs - Can This Be Your Online Money Maker?

2009-05-19T00:20:00.000-07:00

First of all, let's clear one thing up right now....affiliate marketing programs can absolutely be a real online money maker....but, they are not a quick and easy free ride to unimaginable riches. Sorry. I know you wanted to hear otherwise, but only an inheritance or a lottery win can provide unimaginable riches with no effort. And if you don't have any rich, doddering old relatives tucked away somewhere, forget the inheritance. As for the lottery.....well, we all know that while it can happen, the odds are against you, and worse....you have no control over any of it!

So although you do have to exert effort, dust off and use your imagination, and even learn some new skills (gasp!), you can use affiliate marketing programs to make cash online and maximize your earning potential. While it is not necessarily quick or free, affiliate marketing is one of the simplest and most effective ways to make easy money online today.

Just to clarify in case you don't already know, affiliate marketing is an agreement between a merchant (retailer) and a website owner (you). The website owner (affiliate) uses their website to promote the merchant's products by linking to the merchant's website. The merchant pays a commission to the affiliate on all sales generated by the affiliate. So whenever a visitor clicks on that link on the affiliate website and makes a purchase, the affiliate is paid a commission.

Affiliate marketing programs are a win-win situation for both the merchant and the affiliate, because the merchant is exposed to a wider market in which to advertise his product or service by the affiliate's efforts, and the affiliate does not have to warehouse or create his own products. The merchant can have an army of affiliates promoting his products at no cost to him, so literally thousands of merchants representing every imaginable type of product are more than willing to participate in such affiliate marketing programs.

Ok, ok....I know....how can this be my online money maker? What's in it for me? There are actually some quite compelling benefits to online money making opportunities such as affiliate marketing programs for those with the right entrepreneurial spirit, so let's outline what those are:

- Work From Home

I can think of many reasons this would be appealing. You hate your job. Your boss hates you. Everybody at your company is probably going to be laid off. You can barely pay your bills and need to make some extra income. You want to be fabulously wealthy. You have always wanted to be self-employed. You want to raise your children yourself, rather than let a babysitter or daycare worker witness their first word, first step.....you get the picture. You are retired and your social security and/or pension payments just aren't cutting it....plus you are now bored just sitting in your rocking chair all day. Or, most important of all, you_______ (fill in the blank). Your own reasons are the best ones of all.

- No Sales Experience Necessary

That's right, there is absolutely no sales experience necessary because you aren't selling anything. You are merely directing buyers to the merchant's website, where they make the sale....and then pay you. Since your responsibility is simply to find prospects for the merchant; you don't have to worry about inventory, order processing, product shipping, customer service support, returns, blah, blah, blah. These are all the duties of the merchant. Yes!! And....most affiliate marketing programs offer excellent support, free marketing materials, and even training.

- Make Cash Online

Perhaps the best benefit of promoting affiliate marketing programs is the opportunity to increase your income. You can be an affiliate marketer even if it is only a sideline business; but with your own affiliate marketing business, you can easily earn either extra income or expand your efforts to make it into a full-time income if you wish.

- Minimal Start-Up Costs

Since you are selling other people's products, there are no warehousing or production costs for any products you sell. Your only costs will be for an internet connection, domain name and a website. Some say that you don't even need a website, but it is probably easier and more professional looking if you do spring for that expense. And affiliate marketing programs are almost always free to join.

- Minimal Risk

Another benefit of promoting affiliate marketing programs is the minimal risk involved. If the product you decide to promote doesn't turn into an online money maker, you aren't obligated to a losing proposition. There are no long-term binding contracts tying you to any products, so you can easily stop your promotion of a product that isn't working for you and select another program.

- Own Your Own Global Business

Because of the global reach of the internet, you can easily find thousands of prospects worldwide who are interested in the products you promote. By having such an enormous market base, you can attract more prospects, and thus maximize your potential to make easy money online.

- It Is FUN

Why not create your own online money making opportunities by promoting the hobbies or interests you already love? There are thousands of products and services you can choose from to promote, so why not make money online by promoting products in which you already have an interest? You can find affiliate marketing programs for virtually every product under the sun, so surely there's a product or service out there that is relevant to your interests.
by: Jacque LaMantia

5 Tactics Real Affiliate Marketer Must Use to Succeed

2009-05-18T23:09:00.000-07:00

For the last past days, months, years affiliate marketing has become very popular. Nowadays there are many of online business plans one can implement. But, affiliate marketing really stands out among all of them because it does not require lots of investment.

A well experienced affiliate marketer can make thousands of dollars a month. Due to this condition here, online, appeared other programs that can boost his or her commission each and every month. So, what does in fact affiliate marketer must know and must have to succeed and to grow his or her business from day to day?

To have answers to all this question in affiliate marketing is like to have a "golden case".

Here are five steps which will assist you in your affiliate program. This steps will show you how to succeed from day to day with less and less effort and investment.

1. Compensation from each sale.

You should now how much you will get from each sale. This is very important. No one would like to spent more time and get less for it. There is always a chance that you can waste more of your time on promoting then on selling products. Hence, you should stick to the market with high commission paying rate and with a many products in it.

2. Website traffic.

Always try to find out previous traffic of website. If it is between first 100.000 top websites, that means that that product is having a good traffic rate, and it can also means that it is already having many affiliates . If this website placed under 500.000 top websites, it can have less traffic, hence less affiliates promoting it.

What you really need to do to find out weather this or that product is good for promoting is to test.

The best way is to buy it yourself and to test it. After you will make sure that the product is worth promoting ask for money back and start selling it. There is also another tactic, try to do online research on certain product, read people reviews, find out what other people think about the product. But remember people are different, so even if the product is really good, there is always a possibility that you can find bad review about it.

Combining of both tactics mentioned above will bring you to "win-win" product.

3. How often you will receive your payment.

Different websites have different interval between each payment. You can get your cheque every week, two weeks or month. Also, good thing is to find out what amount of commission you need to rich to get you payment. Some of the websites have a fixed amount you need to rich to get your payment. In the other hand, others paying you after each sale of this or that product.

Try to stick to those which you think will compensate you effort and investment on time.

4. Now personally the owner who is running a web site.

Personalization is one of the best thing in any kind of marketing. It would be great to contact the owner of the website before promoting his or her product. Hence, you can build long lasting relationships of trust and respect. And in future, if your business partner will create a new product in the same niche market, you can be the first who will now about it, which means more sales for you.

5. Does the website provide affiliates with free content for promotion?

This is a great question to ask any product owner you are going to promote. Especially, if you are just starting your affiliate business this question is going to save your time.

Try to use any help in your business, even if wouldn't like the content, you can always redo it yourself, add something, make it more unique and interesting for your subscribers to read.

Many affiliates missing this technique, so you will outstand out of many just by using the technique mentioned above.

At the end of the day, remember, those small but very effective tactics are going to save hours of your time.

by: Yevgeniy Dorofyeyev

Internet Marketing – Best Way towards Online Success

2009-05-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

Today becoming an internet marketer is a dream of everyone to earn money and to become successful. We all either want to known as Mr. Internet Marketing like Dave Davis, Matt Cuts etc. Internet Marketing should be your main objective like starting your own online business, cost involved in starting your internet marketing business and the minimum cost involved in it.

Let us compare between an online marketing with the offline (hard core) marketing business. First of all online internet marketing requires less amount to start up your business whereas in offline business it requires lots of money, funds, space, time and all. You need to have 5Ms - men, machine, material, money and methods whereas in internet marketing only hosting cost, one computer or so. It does not require paying salaries to the employees.

Internet Marketing requires specific skills to implement it. If you know the tricks and you need to continuously change your tricks or secrets in the internet marketing. You can earn a lot in less than a year or less than in 6 months whereas in offline business it requires a lot of time to reach your ROI.

Through internet marketing you can reach globally in lesser time. You will get much traffic to your website that leads to higher ranking of your site in search engines.

There are many ways to earn money through online internet marketing and they are as follows –

• Search Engine Optimization - is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural search results.

• Pay Per Click Marketing – It is an internet advertising in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked.

• Affiliate Marketing – It is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts.

• Social Media Optimization – It is a set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites.

• Online Reputation Management – It is the practice of consistent research and analysis of one’s personal or professional, business or industry reputation as represented by the content across all types of online media.

• WebPR – It is a way in which you can get your message out online. It is used to connect with customers and enhance brand awareness, exposure and SEO (search engine optimisation) efforts using various online channels like article directories, press release sites, industry related sites, online newsrooms, blogs, forums and social media.

• Online Copywriting – It is the use of word to promote person, business, opinion and the idea.

• Web Analytics – It is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage.

• Mobile Marketing – It is also meant to describe marketing on or with a mobile phone. While the Internet and the personal computer have had a profound impact on the world we transact in, it is the mobile phone that presents an exciting opportunity for even more of the world to access the benefits of these inventions. It is easy to learn, handle and to carry with varied features installed in a small instruments.

• Viral Marketing – It is also known as word of mouth marketing which aims to result in a message spreading exponentially.

• E-mail marketing – It is a tool for customer relationship management.

• Online advertising - The main purpose of this is to deliver business messages to attract customers.

These are the various internet marketing methods; if you follow or adopt any one of these you can earn a lot of money. There are various methods and techniques are involved in it. If you learn any of these techniques in detail you can earn a lot of money.

10 Persuasive Triggers To Plug Into Your Ad

2009-05-12T23:35:00.000-07:00

1. Most people want to win over others. Tell your
prospects how their family or friends will admire
them if they buy your product.

2. Most people want to associate with others that
have the same interests. Give your prospects a free
membership in a private chat room just for them.

3. Most people want a clean environment. Tell your
prospects that you'll donate a percentage of your
profits to help clean the environment.

4. Most people want to eat good food. Give your
customers free coupons to a nice restaurant when
they purchase your product.

5. Most people need or want new information to
absorb. Give your customers a free ebook or tip
sheet when they purchase your product.

6. Most people want to avoid or end pain. Tell
your prospects how much pain and problems they
will avoid or end if they buy your product.

7. Most people want to gain pleasure. Tell your
prospects how much pleasure or the benefits they
will gain, if they purchase your product.

8. Most people don't want to miss out on a major
opportunity that they could regret in the future. Tell
your prospects you'll be raising the price shortly.

9. Most people want to have good health and live
longer. Give your prospects free coupons to a
fitness club when they buy your product.

10. Most people want to belong to something or a
select group. Give your prospects a free member-
ship into your club when they buy your product.

Source: Free Articles

Marketing Strategy - How To Increase Your Profits From Articles

2009-05-12T23:31:00.000-07:00

Here is an article marketing strategy for you to follow which will outline some techniques you can use immediately and dramatically profit from. If you have been online for some time you are probably aware that article submission or article publishing is one of the most effective and profitable ways top Internet marketers utilize. The reason why is because it works so well.

Writing and distributing articles is my #1 way to drive pre-targeted traffic to my sites. Besides that, search engines love fresh content and what better way than submit articles and to post or archive your articles on your own article directory which you should have implement on your own sites. Better yet, writing and submitting unique content articles rather than submitting the same articles will produce more traffic, back links, and higher rankings. Although this can be difficult and time consuming writing hundreds of versions of unique and different articles, most of the article submission software available can only submit the same article to different article directories. Article Pro Software is one piece of software I can highly recommend that will automatically submit unique articles saving you valuable time. It is not an article spinner or content creator that submits gibberish. You write the articles and it does the rest.

Sometimes writing articles can be intimidating and you may feel that this is really not your cup of tea. One option is to buy PLR or Private Label Write articles or have ghostwriters write articles for you. Both are fee related services. From my experience PLR articles can be a great source of content for your website to build content and feed those hungry search bots looking for fresh edible content. There is one catch to these articles, which I will cover next.

If you do decide to go the PLR route, it is highly recommended that you go through and alter them or modify them in such a manner that they do not read the same as the original article. Keep in mind that these PLR article are being bought by many other would be "content seekers" so you need to make them different or else you will be submitting duplicate content. If you have been following my blog and articles you will know the suffering that follows.

The major keys to profiting from article submissions are to write articles filled with useful information and are of great quality. Adding your resource box to the end of your article is where you develop your traffic and back links. A simple, catchy one-line phrase will do the trick. For example "Click here for the latest hot article marketing strategies! http://www.yourwebsite.com" should do the trick. Don't overlook trying a few longer resource boxes; say 4 to 5 sentences long. I have had great success with those as well.

Before publishing your articles, be sure and do a spell and grammar check on them. It does not convey professionalism when your articles are loaded with spelling and grammar errors. Some of the major have a spell check already built in, but I usually draft my articles in notepad and then copy and paste into Word where I can run a check on them before submitting. This is somewhat of an extra step, but a valuable one that does not take long to complete. Not only that, but you can learn a lot form going through the spell checks yourself.

Publishing your articles to the top ranking article directories and to your own Website or Blog are two great ways to get your articles exposed on the Internet. If you do not have a blog yet you may want to look into it. They are usually free and can serve as another Website for your own self-promotion. As previously mentioned, unique content articles are a major advantage over your competition. Article Pro Software can create unique articles for you to distribute not only to it's internal list, but you can also use those unique articles to copy and paste into the major high ranking article directories e.g. Ezine Articles, Isnare, and Go Articles which require manual submission.

In closing, article writing and submissions is a great article marketing strategy that can yield huge profits if done correctly. There are other important factors that also contribute to article success which I will cover in future articles, but if you follow this article marketing strategy you will be ahead of your competition separating you from the field.

To Your Success!

Source: Free Articles