This is a guest post on “How to write an ebook” by Nichole Weathers. In case you wish to guest post, read the guidelines.

Many people are choosing to write an ebook and sell them. Not only are e-books popular amongst customers, but, you, as the author, can avoid the hassles of paper publishing.   After you write an book, all you have to do is provide customers with a download link after purchase. Sometimes even that will be handled for you by a third party. Like many other passive income businesses, you do the work once and keep reaping the rewards for life.

If you are considering venturing into this arena of business and to write an ebook, read on.  I’ll walk you through how to write an ebook and then preparing it for publication.

7 Things to keep in mind before you write an ebook -

There are a lot of things that you should keep in mind before you start off to write an ebook. Careful consideration of these would ensure that your ebook is a success and that you are able to earn good money out of selling your ebook.

1. Before deciding to write an ebook, decide on the topic of your eBook.

   Pick a topic that you know a lot about, or something that interests you enough to learn more about. Some of the most popular e-books are ”How to” guides, such as a guide on how to flip web sites.

2. Research your chosen topic, even if you are a pro.

   You may come across new and innovative ideas that had not occurred to you. The more nuggets of wisdom you can give the reader, the better your book is going to be received. This may also impact sales of future books you may write.

3. Draft a general outline for your eBook, making note of the topics you want to cover.

   Think about what you would need to complete the idea or, task from start to finish. Think about what common questions the consumer may ask regarding this particular topic. This all should be covered in your eBook.

4. Proof your eBook to ensure it has all of the best information possible.

   Ask a trusted friend or colleague to read over it and offer constructive criticism. You want this book to be worth your asking price. If one person loves your eBook, they are bound to talk about it or even recommend it to others.

5. Consider interviewing other experts in that field.

   Ask them questions and include it as an added bonus in your eBook. Make references to experts and reputable resources.  Such references enhance the credibility of your own work.

6. Fix any errors in your book and prepare the book for sale.

   Add any personal images or royalty free images pertaining to the subject. Make an index and a bibliography.

7. Determine where you are going to market this eBook.

   If no one knows it exists, it is not going to sell. Amazon and other book dealers sell eBooks for writers. Consider starting an affiliate program (i.e. ClickBank) and have other skilled internet marketers market the book for you. Market it on your own web site, or consider investing in a web site on the subject with considerable page rank and traffic to market this book.  Add a link to your email signatures to your book. Post on forums with a link to your site or book. Think outside of the box when it comes to advertising your book. You can also consider marketing the book in your local community or in newspapers, or hand out flyers to local businesses.

To write an eBook is not as easy as it sounds. Many people lose motivation fast, since financial gains are not immediate. Other people may suffer the dreaded writer’s block. Use positive affirmations and don’t give up. Take a break if you get frustrated and peruse other books or articles for inspiration.  And keep reminding yourself that once you have written the book and finalized it, all of your hard work will pay off.

What does it take to be on top of the Search Engine Rankings?

Stupid question, isn’t it? A few of the newbies starting out on the internet can bash me up for a stupid question like this because they are the ones who struggle the most to get their websites on the first page of search engines. The GURUS do it so easily that most of their websites where they are promoting their affiliate products rank on the first pages of search engines. Consequently they sweep the money and the newbies go empty-handed.

If you have spent a bagful of money in buying at least a couple of courses or, ebooks that claim to teach you how to optimize your websites and blogs for the search engines, you might have by now learnt that it is not an easy task at all (at least not as easy as they claim).

One of the very important aspects of managing a blog is to optimize it for the search engines. There are numerous plugins that can help you do this, if your blog is on WordPress. All-in-one SEO is one of the most popular ones. People who are already using this plugin, will know the limitations of it. This plugin no doubt is extremely useful, but only helps you to work on the title tags, description tags, and keyword tags. But the fact of the matter is that SEO is not limited to these 3 things. It is a lot beyond the tags.

So how is it that you will optimize your wordpress blogs for your selected keywords? How will you, being a complete layman, know what all should you do to optimize your posts?

Thank god that you are on WordPress. WordPress gives us the options of using plugins and there are plugins for anything and everything.

So optimizing your wordpress blog is not going to be a difficult task now with this new plugin that is making waves in the Internet marketing arena. Even newbies who have absolutely “ZERO” knowledge of SEO can optimize their blogs for search engines with the help of this new plugin called SEOPressor.

What does SEOPressor do?

SEOPressor helps you with the on-page SEO of your blogs. To explain it in simple words, there are two aspects to Search engine optimization – the on page SEO and the off page SEO. On page SEO involves the tweaks and touches that we do to our pages in order to optimize them. The off page aspect is something that does not involve tinkering with your page.

SEOPressor helps you do this on page aspect of the SEO. What all is involved in this and what is it that SEOPressor does?

• Analyses Title, H1, H2 and H3 Tags.
• Analyses Keyword Density and Content Length.
• Analyses The Exact Placement of Your Keyword.
• Analyses Images and Links.
• Intelligently Bold, Italize and Underline Your Keywords
• Intelligently Add ALT Tag to Your Images
• Capable of Testing and Rating Each Post and Page
• Calculates SEO Score To Reveal Your On-Page Optimization
• Comes With Secret Algorithm That Correlates With Google

There are many other such aspects that are taken care off without even you having to know what they are, by SEOPressor, just by the click of a button.

And most important of all this is the fact that a better optimized page means better rankings and better rankings means more traffic and more money.

Hence, SEOPressor is one plugin that any wordpress user should have if they are serious about optimizing their blogs and making money from their blogs.

I could have written an SEOPressor review but I decided otherwise because this plugin comes with a 60 day money back guarantee and there is no reason why you will be at risk if you order it. What better review that using it yourself. By the way the blog that you are reading right now is using this plugin.

You can check out more about SEOPressor here.

This is a guest post by Shirley Kelly. You can check out the guidelines to guest posting here.

Internet marketing can be a scary venture for individuals who are new to how Internet marketing actually works. People often overlook the importance of marketing their website due to their lack of knowledge. However, the best way to overcome the fear of venturing into unfamiliar territory is to get educated about the things you have very little knowledge about.

Let us assume you have just finished creating a spectacular website that has all the bells and whistles. You are confident that visitors to your website will find it very useful and the overall objective of the website design has been reached. Nevertheless, in spite of all that, you are still left with the dilemma of how to draw visitors to your site.  When sound marketing techniques are not applied to a website it sits out in a part of hyperspace commonly known as the World Wide Web and gets lost amongst the thousands of new websites being launched every day.  It does not matter what type of website one might have. Whether it was designed to sell products or whether it is the most basic personal blog, if a website falls short in the marketing department, it will not receive enough visitors to make it worth the time and effort spent on maintaining an online presence.

With that being said, how can someone with little to no website marketing experience successfully promote a website? The basic and simply answer to that question is to educate oneself about what one should and should not be doing to market his or her website.

Learning sound Internet marketing techniques is akin to starting elementary school for the first time. Remember back to when you first laid eyes on that big red brick school building and how intimidating and scary it made you feel. Everything was new and unfamiliar. You wondered if you would be able to meet new friends or if the teacher was going to be mean to you. However, before long you learned your way around the grounds; discovered that your teacher was there to help you learn; you met new friends; learned how to avoid the things that will get you in trouble; eventually you became familiar with every aspect of your elementary school; And before long, you were graduating and promoted to middle school. Educating oneself about proper internet marketing techniques is very much like attending school for the first time. It is unfamiliar territory and everything seems daunting. There is a lot to learn but you will have others who are willing to teach you the ropes. Along the way you will learn to tell the difference between practicing marketing techniques that will get you in trouble and techniques that are conducive towards you graduation to the next level of learning.  In order to propel your website from the black hole known as the hyperspace of the World Wide Web to having a solid online presence, you must learn and implement sound Internet marketing techniques.

There are many online schools which offer Internet marketing courses designed to help beginners as well as further advance the knowledge of novice website marketers. If this option does not appeal to you, try joining online forums and blogs whose primary objective is to help others learn more about how to properly apply online marketing techniques.

Whether you decide to enroll in an online school, become a member of forums whose main focus is website promotion or participate in online blogs that write about Google friendly, time tested, Internet marketing techniques, is up to you. Just remember, knowledge is power and power is knowing what one should and should not be doing. Get educated about internet marketing techniques. You will be glad you did.

“Your PayPal payment of $xxxx!”

“You’re APPROVED…”

“Re: Your $100 guarantee…”

Have you come across these sentences ever?

I am sure you have seen emails with these subjects in your inbox, if you had ever shared your name and email addresses on any of the self-proclaimed GURU’s websites promising a free download of some information.

What was your first reaction?

It is increasingly becoming a trend to use these kind of subject lines in marketing emails that are delivered to you inbox. Does it really work?

The first couple of times it might work. But in the second instance you will surely unsubscribe from the list unless you are too lazy to do it. What people using such subject lines forget is the fact that email marketing is about building relationships and not spamming your prospects mailboxes.

One of the very important things to keep in mind in email marketing is the importance of a subject.

A subject sets the tone of your email. If your email should be read or, not, is determined by your subject. If the subject of your email is truthful and appealing your email opens will increase.

Constituents of a Good Subject Line -

What is a good subject line? What are the things that you should keep in mind when writing a subject line for your emails?

1. Keep it short – Follow the principle of KISS while writing your headlines. Keep it short and Simple. About 3 – 4 words is the ideal length. That comes to about 50 characters.
2. Summary – The subject should be a summarization of your email, yet should not reveal the complete secret.
3. WIIFM – You should always keep in mind the needs of your reader when you write your subject line. The WIIFM is one of the most important aspects of your email subject. This is the reason why your readers would read your email.
4. Urgency – Your email subject line should create a sense of urgency in the reader. They should not defer reading your email. Instead it should be the first thing to do on their priority list.
5. Teaser – The subject line should be a teaser. It should immediately catch your reader’s attention and should pique their curiosity.

It is extremely important to emphasize the benefits of reading your email. So your email should read out a benefit and create a curiosity in the minds of your readers. Don’t spam them. Instead give them quality content to read and tell them the actual reason for the email in the subject. If you are able to write a subject that can tell them the benefits of reading the email, they are sure to open it.

Photograph courtesy Luca Pedrotti

In one of my earlier posts we discussed about the importance of creating a Fanpage on Facebook. Facebook is the hottest thing in the world of Internet Marketing right now. The GURUS are cashing in on this phenomenon by releasing courses and ebooks on how to create a successful marketing campaign on Facebook.

Creating a Fanpage on Facebook is not a difficult task. All that you need to do is browse over to this page at Facebook and follow the simple instructions there. In less than 5 minutes you can create a Fan page. But, does it guarantee you success? Will this be the best Fan page to build your business?

Of course, not.

Had it been the case, all of the thousands of Fanpages on Facebook would been successful!!

In this article we will discuss about 5 such elements of a successful Facebook Fan page.

5 Elements of a successful Facebook Fan page -

Facebook offers a lot of customization options through the thousands of applications that are available online. You can create numerous different custom tabs and landing pages with the help of these applications. These are the key to a successful Fan page.

1. Custom Welcome Page – It is very important to create a relationship with your visitors and fans. The default welcome page for any visitor to your Facebook Fan page is your Wall. You might want to create a custom landing page for your visitors. You an design in using a simple HTML editor and paste it into your fan page using an application called as FBML.
2. Build a list – Your Welcome page should have a way of gathering names and email addresses. Facebook can be a good resource to build your lists. You can use Aweber to do this and integrate one of their scripts into your Welcome page by using FBML. The key to getting leads here is offer something of value to your visitors.
3. Upload your logo – Success at an Internet Marketing business is about creating a brand for yourself and a LOGO is one of the first things that an help you build a brand for your business. Once you have created a LOGO, use the same in your Facebook Fan page to brand your page. This helps you maintain uniformity in branding and also gives your fanpage a professional touch.
4. Links in your sidebar – Your sidebar is another important area that you should try to utilize to the maximum. One of the features of your sidebar is the option to display a few links. You can utilize this option to display links to your website, your blog and any other relevant pages about your business. This can help your readers navigate to your business pages including your blogs. Connecting with you fans is extremely important for the success of your fan pages. These links will help you connect with them.
5. Promote your Fan page – Most Internet Marketers shy away from talking about their fanpages and their online business to their friends and relatives just because of the fact that they might make fun of them. Promote your fan pages to everybody, even your friends. Your objective is not to prospect your friend, instead it is to make use of the viral feature in Facebook to connect to their friends. You should promote your fan pages on your websites and blogs as well. Link from anywhere and everywhere. Create as much visibility as possible for your pages. Another form of promoting your page is by sending updates to your fans. Being in constant touch is also a form of promotion.

These are certain basic things that you should do to ensure that you fan page is a success. There are a lot of application on Facebook which can further help you in your objectives. If you have a blog, you should use an application called as “Networked blogs” which can help you display your blog articles on your fan page.

The best way to find which application suits you is to browse through the various applications available and choose the one that best fits your business and its needs.

Automattic  – the creators of WordPress released their thirteenth major release code named as “Thelonious” and otherwise called as WordPress 3.0.

It is indeed worth the upgrade and the options of upgrading should already be available in your blog admin pages. So what is new in WordPress 3.0. Let’s take a quick look at it -

1. New Default Theme (Twenty Ten): One of the most refreshing changes is that Kubrick is gone and there is a new default theme called as the Twenty Ten theme. This is to go with the new theme APIs. Twenty Ten is a more modern and flexible theme that takes advantage of a lot of the new features.
2. A Newer and Lighter Admin Interface: WordPress 3.0 comes with a new administration interface. The new interface has contextual help on every page and has a light feel to it.
3. WordPress MU Merger: WordPress MU has now been designed into the wordpress administration in WordPress 3.0. This will let users create multiple blogs from a single installation.
4. WordPress URL shortener: URL shortening can now be done from within your blog as WordPress 3.0 has integrated support for URL shorteners including their own wp.me.
5. Choice of Admin name: You can now choose an admin name when you install a new blog and will not have to rely on the default “admin” username any more.

There are many other important updates in the new WordPress. You can watch the below video to learn more.

One of the major bugs that I found after upgrading to the new version was with the plugin “DB Cache Reloaded”. WordPress now has integrated a few new plugins which are probably conflicting with DB cache and producing the below error -

“Call to undefined method wpdb::get_blog_prefix() in /home/xxxx/xxxx/xxxxx.com/public_html/wp-includes/user.php on line XXX“

The easiest resolution to this error is to deactivate the “DB Cache Reloaded” plugin.

In conclusion I should say that WordPress 3.0 will change the way people blog. It is a welcome change – the admin interface and the contextual help and everything else. Upgrade and enjoy.

Internet Marketing is about making a living online. It is about starting an online business without the huge investments involved like in a traditional business. Then why should you be spending a fortune to build an online business?

It is true that you can start an online business with as little as $10.00. There are lots of stuffs that are available free of cost on the internet that you can use to build your online business. But how will you find these free stuffs?

Let me ask myself a question. Did I have to spend money on building my Internet Marketing business?

The answer is “Yes”. I spent a lot of money online and kept buying products after products, falling into the traps that the GURUS made for me.

But as I built my business, I realized one thing. You don’t have to spend a fortune in building your Internet Marketing business. You don’t have to buy everything that the GURUS sell in order to be successful.

Success in an Internet Marketing business is a simple step by step method and involves a few steps.

For eg: Step 1, 2 and 3. It is the exact same steps that different GURUS package in different forms and sell them for a few hundred dollars. Does changing the nomenclature from a decimal system reading 1, 2, 3 to a ROMAN numeral saying I, II, III really change the content of the steps? Not really.

Then why should you invest so much into the same repeated information. This is where I decided, I will start a blog and the purpose of DKSpeaks is to make available information at an affordable price (If there is a cost involved).

So coming back to the total investment required to start an online business. This is what I think an ideal investment should be. You might have a different opinion altogether.

1. A Domain Name ($9.99 per year) – You can get one for cheap at my domain store here.
2. A Hosting account ($4.95 per month)- You can get a hosting account at a very low price at Hostgator. In case you do not wish to spend on a hosting account, you can use Blogger, which is a free option and also provides you with a lot of customization features.
3. Micro Niche Finder ($99.99) – The best Keyword research tool. You can use the free alternative at the Google External Keyword Tool in case you do not want to make this investment.

If you noticed, you would have found that there is a free alternative to almost all the paid options. So you need not spend on the options that are costing you some investment, in case you are unable to afford it right now. Rather you can go with the free options for now and invest in the rest once you have started making some money.

In addition to all this, you will have to follow a good mentor who can guide you in your efforts to make money online. This is a difficult step because no body will give advice free of cost and mentoring means lots of advices. A free option to getting advice in your internet marketing efforts is to interact through a social media like Facebook or, Twitter. These are places where there is a lot of information shared and all of this is free of cost. You can ask questions and you will get responses to your questions because that is what social media networking is all about.

In order to help you in your Internet Marketing efforts, you will also need some guides on the basics of setting up an Internet Marketing business. These are available free of cost on the internet. You can also get a few of these for pennies from some resellers.

I am starting a weekend sale, starting this week and I will be putting valuable content on offer. These will be extremely valuable content made available for pennies and these offers will run for a entire week, after which I will change the prices to the normal. This is in an effort to help you build your business.

As a starting point, I am offering an extremely informative ebook on affiliate marketing written by Adeel Chowdhry – Affiliate Secrets Explained. This book covers everything from the basics to the details of affiliate marketing and is a required guide if you are starting off on affiliate marketing.

Let’s look at what is covered in this guide -

1. Selecting the Right Niche for you – Learn how to spot the moneymaker when you see one so that you don’t waste your efforts.
2. Setting up your site and making money.
3. Tips for tapping into the money market.
4. How to increase conversion and tips and tricks to do it.
5. Should you start a blog or, not?
6. Is search engine traffic important? How to get traffic from Google.
7. The secrets to gaining fast and free traffic.
8. Everything about SEO – Only things that are important and that you need to know.
9. Tools to boost you revenue.

There are a lot of success stories as well which will keep you motivated in remaining persistent with your efforts. After all, Internet marketing is about being persistent.

You can grab your copy of “Affiliate Secrets Explained” for only $9.95 today. Order your copy today!!!

Do you hate Internet Marketing?

Are your still reading this post, right now?

In all likelihood, you are on the verge of quitting your Internet Marketing business and is on a last bit quest to see if there is anything that you can do to save your sinking IM business!!!

That’s right. The fact still remains even if you deny it today.

I too, hate the Internet Marketing business for obvious reasons of mine. Having said that I should say that I am not a failure in the IM business. I am making a living out of the internet. My wife who had to quit her job and take care of my new born daughter is also now on the verge of becoming an independent business owner in the Internet Marketing arena.

So the question is, If I am not a failure and am making a living out of the Internet, then why is it that I hate Internet Marketing?

The failure rate in Internet Marketing is about 96%. That means only about 4% succeed in any online business. Why is the success rate so low?

The internet marketing business is about persistence. You are a failure only if you quit the business. If you remain in the business and do whatever is right, there is no reason why you should fail.

10 Things I Hate about Internet Marketing -

So what are the 10 things that I hate about the Internet Marketing business?

1. I cannot drive to work anymore – One of the biggest charms of starting on an Internet Marketing business, for me was time. When I read articles and posts and watched videos where Internet marketing Gurus were leading a lavish life, I was fascinated not by their houses or, cars. Instead I was fascinated by the time that these guys had because they did not have work a 9-5 job. They had all the time in the world to spend with their family. In my 9-5 job which would often get extended up to 14 hrs a day, I could hardly find time to chat with my wife. I hate Internet Marketing today because I cannot drive to my office anymore, because I do not have to.I love to hate Internet Marketing for that. I only drive for pleasure and that is all that I want.
2. No Investment – Internet marketing does not require huge investments like a normal brick and mortar business does. This is the biggest bane of the IM business. Since there is no monetary investments involved, people just don’t take it seriously. Since they are not tied down with the burden of investments, they prefer quitting than being persistent. I hate this aspect of the Internet marketing business. There should have been huge investments involved and people would not have quit it so easily.
3. Unbelievable income – When I first started on my Internet marketing journey, I was surprised to see the amount of money that people were earning. People kept showing their checks on their websites and I had a difficult time convincing myself that this could be true, especially if you are only spending a few hours everyday and that too at home. Most of the non-starters remain non-starters because they were not able to convince themselves that they could earn so much money online.
4. No Proofs can convince – This is an interesting aspect and I was also a party to it when I started. No proofs can convince anybody to start an online business. There are thousands of courses and ebooks released everyday and people buy it, read it and let it be there on their shelf to gather dust. No proofs can convince them into using these strategies to start an online business.
5. No Education required – I hate Internet Marketing because there are school dropouts out there who are more successful than I am and I hold a post-graduate degree and some other professional qualifications. Internet Marketing does not require any education. Even and absolute layman can also start a successful internet marketing business. All my degrees are gathering dust and I hate IM for that.
6. Overwhelming options – When I first started my online business, I had a difficult time deciding on what to do. There were so many options that a newbie would get overwhelmed by it. Affiliate Marketing, blogging, reselling, product creation, article writing etc. can all make money, if done correctly. But what to choose is a million dollar question. I hate internet marketing for the sheer reason that so many options at times makes it difficult for the newbie to decide on what to do and a wrong decision could end in his exit from the IM arena.
7. Free is the least opted for – Nobody would believe you, if you say that you can start an Internet marketing business for free, without having to invest in any ebook or, software. That is right!!! Successful Internet marketers keep saying this, still people prefer spending thousands of dollars on ebooks and software, which anyways they would dump deep down in their store-rooms after reading. In everything else that you do, you would prefer to look for anything that is free, but Internet marketing is one place where free is the least opted for.
8. Easily Misused Tools – There are thousands of tools out there that can help you build a successful online business. Social Media is one such platform. I have been using Twitter to build my business. But it is often observed that these tools are misused because of the sheer magnitude of reach that they have and because these are free of cost.
9. The Confusion of which Guru to follow – “GURUS” are plenty in Internet marketing. Every second day there is a new self-proclaimed GURU on the internet who would come out with a product of his. How to distinguish the genuine GURU from the fake one and whom to follow. This confusion is without a solution and often people end up following the wrong person.
10. I had to cheat on my wife – I had promised my wife that I would never love anybody else and I had to cheat on her. I had to break this promise because I fell in love again – with my computer and my Internet marketing business. But this is one cheating that my wife is also happy about because she is able to spend more time with me.

You cannot hate Internet Marketing!! You spend a whole night thinking for reasons you would hate an Internet marketing business but you will find none. All of the above reasons mentioned above are only reasons to love my online Business.

To be successful in an Internet Marketing business, all that you need is a bit of commitment and the determination to remain there and be persistent.

Is your business on Facebook?

I am sure you would not want to go through precisely the same thing that you went through about an year and a half when Twitter exploded and you were caught unaware (I assume you were in business then )!!!

When Twitter suddenly became the talk of the town, a lot of people were caught unaware and they found themselves missing the train. By the time they could jump into the bandwagon, the possibility of their success had diminished on account of competition from the big sharks.

It is the same that is happening with Facebook. All of sudden you find there are videos and books all over the internet that tell you that you have to be on Facebook, if you are to succeed. I am not sure if that is the mantra for success but I can be sure of one thing that you would find benefit a lot if you are on Facebook.

If you are one of those dreaming to be an Internet Entrepreneur, then my advice is that you should put your business on Facebook by creating a Fan Page.

What is a Fan Page?

This is what Facebook has to say about a “Page” -

A Facebook Page is a public profile that enables you to share your business and products with Facebook users. When your fans interact with your Facebook Page, stories linking to your Page can go to their friends via News Feed. As these friends interact with your Page, News Feed keeps driving word-of-mouth to a wider circle of friends.

Facebook pages are similar to that of a normal facebook profile but only differs in that it is for a website or, a business. It gives you access to create a profile for you business where your customers and prospects can interact and you can easily publicize your business without spending too much of money.

7 Reasons why you need a Facebook Fan Page -

Different businesses will have different reasons for creating a facebook Fan page. 7 reasons why you as an internet marketer has to have a Facebook Fan Page is as follows:-

1. A Fan Page is Viral – Just like a facebook profile that is viral and keeps attracting newer friends, fan pages too are viral. It attracts connections from your fans and virally builds a huge list of people who are following your updates and you website. Whenever anybody joins your fan page as a fan, this is published in their news feed and is available for all of their connections to read. This viral behavior in turn means lots of traffic to your websites.
2. Get a Quality Link – Facebook pages are public and is accessible to anyone who searches the internet. This could mean getting a link back to your website from an established website.
3. Send Updates to one who matter – People joining your fanpage as fans are actual followers of your updates. These are people who trust you and your brand and hence should be the ones who should be first informed of any update to your business. Facebook pages facilitates this. You can send a one click update to all of those fan for you business.
4. Flexibility – Facebook pages provides you with a lot of flexibility with the thousands of apps that are available. You can run a contest or, a poll or, even set up a small store in one of your pages with one of these apps. This gives you a better reach to an group of loyal readers and subscribers.
5. Fan pages help you build a Brand – One of the most important things to do when you start an online business is to build a brand for yourself. A brand gives you and identity and builds confidence in you and the products that you are selling. A Facebook fanpage helps you build this brand image.
6. It shows that you are updated – Yes, that is right! You have to remain updated with the trend and follow the trend if you wish to gain acceptance. Web 2.0 and Social Media is the trend. Twitter, Facebook, Youtube etc. are part of this changing trends and you have to be a part of it.
7. An alternate address for your Business – An alternate address is always important. When we as individuals ensure that we maintain an alternate address, why should our businesses not have one? Assume a situation where your website goes down for a few hours. Your business will have an alternate address at your Facebook fan page so that people can find you.

There could be many more such reasons to be on Facebook. Your reason might be a different one from that of mine. But the bottomline is that you have to be on Facebook and you have to have a Fan Page at Facebook for your business.

This is a guest post by Susan White. If you too wish to guest post at DKSpeaks, you can read the guidelines here.

It’s the most powerful tool in a marketer’s arsenal, but when wielded badly, it could turn out to be a boomerang that comes back to hit you in the face instead. Email marketing is one of the most widely used, and most misunderstood Internet marketing tool there is today. To be of any real use to a company, an email marketing campaign it has to be carried out effectively. It should be opened by the customer and perceived to be of value instead of being relegated to the Trash folder unseen, or worse, labeled as Junk or Spam. When you’re marked as a spammer by most people you send out email to, you risk being blacklisted and losing your reputation. To avoid such a situation, here’s what you need to do:

• Avoid sending out mass mails to random people: You may think you’re getting the maximum reach by sending out mass mailings to a number of email ids that you purchased from a third party. But if you knew the normal mentality of people, you would desist from such an action. Most people set their spam filters so that any email from people not in their address book goes directly to the Spam folder which is emptied automatically on a periodic basis. And even people who see such mail in their Inbox mark it as spam once they realize that it is part of a marketing campaign. Perhaps just 1 percent of the mail you sent out is opened, and an even smaller percentage of people respond the way you want them to. It is not worth being labeled as spam for this tiny amount of return on your efforts.
• Use retention emails rather than direct email: Direct email is seen as an in-your-face marketing method, especially if your mail pops up at inopportune moments and intrudes into the busy lives of people. Rather, allow both existing and potential customers to sign up for your newsletters and use these to provide them with the latest news and information about your products and services. When they’ve already interacted with you, they feel comfortable opening emails from you, especially if they’re intrigued by the subject line. If you are sending out direct marketing email however, ensure that you allow people to opt out with a link at the bottom of the page. This prevents them from labeling your email as spam.
• Ensure that your subject line matches the rest of the email: The biggest grouse I have against marketers is that they con you into opening their emails and clicking on the links in them. For example, an email I received from a national magazine (which I was subscribed to) announced that I had won free merchandise and that all I had to do to claim it was follow the link. And when I did so, I was taken to an online store where I could “buy” the merchandise, using a discount voucher. So in effect, I had to spend money on something I did not really need just because I was being given a discount voucher. Needless to say, I marked all emails from the marketer as spam after that. Email marketers must ensure that their subject line is true to what’s inside the email, because while they may con people once, they’re definitely going to get labeled as spam after that.

About the Author:

This article is contributed by Susan White, who regularly writes on the subject of High Speed Internet Service.  She invites your questions, comments at her email address: susan.white33@gmail.com