Why keep a plugin on your blog when all it does it junk up your site?

Commission Automator seemed like a good idea at the time if it actually worked as specified.  What it was supposed to do was write a new review post on a product.  Unfortunately, it did not write the post in the category I created for it and the post frequency is not as advertised.

So all those tweets that have been going out are driving me crazy and I am officially removing the blog posts that were created.

Why did I install it in the first place?  For the simple reason that I thought it might help keep the blog alive, since I seem to have little time to post on a regular basis.  Well – you betcha I will after this experience!

Why I Am Forced To Do This

I have contacted the support team several times on the issues I was having and have never received a response.  I kept checking my email inbox and junk/spam folder, but never received even a courtesy message.  What the hay?

Since I wrote the “book” on Internet customer service, you can imagine how this really ticked me off.

Hey – if it doesn’t work as expected or as advertised; if you don’t get a response to a cry for assistance, especially when they tell you where to go to get that assistance, then I pretty much have the right to write about my experience – right?

I really hate doing this, but they had a chance to make a customer happy and they blew it.  Nice idea for a product, but how about supporting what you created instead of just pushing out more products?

Hey – if you offer customer support, make sure it’s working!

What to Look For in a Web Hosting Company

Every web hosting company has reseller accounts.  This means anyone can resell the services to you.  But what happens when the reseller goes out of business?

That happened to me recently through a hosting company that I started using through a membership site of theirs.  Suddenly they were not responding to support tickets and their phone had been disconnected.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, I came across a blog post from one of their customers whose sites had completely disappeared on January 1st.  Her problem was even worse since she didn’t know how to recover her sites without a recent backup.

Shared Hosting
If you’re new to online processes, you’ll want to start with a shared hosting account.  This is affordable, but means you have other sites on the same server with yours.  This could be a problem if one or more of those sites suddenly become high-traffic sites and consume excessive bandwidth.  It’s good to know that you can communicate with your webhost and know they will address the issue if it becomes a problem for you.

Support Team
You’ll want to know that you can communicate with your support team and that they are qualified to answer your technical issues.  Many of the day-to-day issues can be supported by outsourced staff, but make sure more difficult technical issues can be escalated to more qualified technical staff what speaks English.

Data Center Location
Find out where the data center is located.  If it’s located in a hurricane path you could experience more outages than you anticipated.

Data Center Ownership
It’s vital for you to confirm that the website hosting company you select owns their data center and reports 99.9% uptime.

Servers
Most of the web hosting companies offering shared hosting use Linux and Unix servers.  This is what you want to use.  Some have the option of using windows servers – don’t do it!  These are the most unreliable servers and should not be used for business services.

Free Website Hosting

Most of the searches for website hosting are for free services.  This is a very bad idea.  Why?  Simply because you get what you pay for and with free hosting – you haven’t paid anything!  So how do you think they make their money?

• By collecting your personal information when you signup for an account and marketing other services and “get rich quick” programs back to you.
• By selling your eMail address to lead generation services
• By selling your personal information when available
• By displaying lots of advertising on your website dashboard and/or your site

Usually these free website hosting companies are into other businesses and use their free website hosting service to collect leads for those businesses.  Wouldn’t you rather host your website with a reliable hosting company that you know will be around?  I’d hate for you to wake up one day and find your site(s) gone!  This is a very real possibility.

Paid Website Hosting

Remember – you get what you pay for, so let’s look at the most reliable hosting companies.  These are the best website hosts I have used and recommend:

HostGator

These guys have been around for years and many marketers swear by their service.  I have found you either love them or you hate them.  Fortunately, I’ve never had the issues some of the haters had.  You can buy their “baby” package and host an unlimited number of addon domains.  This allows you to run several websites from a single account.  This also means you don’t have to point to the root of the domain.  Although this creates a sub-directory within your main domain, it is accessed in a browser window just like any other individually hosted domain so nobody ever knows it’s hosted on another account.

Addon domains do not have their own cPanel (web hosting manager) and can be more confusing to maintain.  Personally, I don’t like addon domains because they can affect the performance of all the other sites you have on the account.

Servers located in Houston, TX

Live Chat
Help Desk System
Toll-Free Phone Support
User Manuals
FAQs
Video Tutorials

IXWebHosting

Excellent customer service and hosting.  Unfortunately, they do not use cPanel as their web hosting manager.  If you are purchasing software to use on your website, you will find that most require or use cPanel.  Regardless, I found their dashboard quite difficult to use and navigate.  But – they’re hosting is hard to beat – NEVER had any issues with them.

The data center is located in Hopkinsville, Kentucky

Live Chat
Help Desk System
Local and Toll-Free Phone Support
User Manuals
FAQs
Video Tutorials

1 and 1

This is another best website host that does not use cPanel as their web hosting manager, but the dashboard is much easier to use than IXWebHosting.  One of the features I like about 1and1 is you have access to your eMail on the server through a web browser.  This makes it easy to pickup your eMail when you’re not at your computer.  Most other hosting companies make you go through cPanel to get your eMail.

Founded in Germany with server sites in several European countries and Chesterbrook, PA in the US.

The data center is located in Lenexa, KS in the US.  They have their own trained support staff located in Chesterbrook, PA.

FAQs
Help Desk System
Toll-Free Phone Support
Video Tutorials
User Manuals
Easy Setup Guides

There are many other hosting companies I have used, but refuse to review because many of them are already using major sites (like WordPress) to market their services.  I tried many of these that were highly recommended and for many different reasons, had to move all my sites to a new host.

There are many reasons you may not want to show the date and time on your blog:

• Information on your blog is timeless
• You want to encourage people to continue commenting
• You don’t post very often

Before removing the dates on your blog, realize that reader response is more prevalent when the dates are shown.

The first thing you need to know about WordPress themes is that each theme has their own set of files that control the aesthetics on your blog.  Therefore, if you have multiple themes installed, changing one theme DOES NOT affect the files in all themes.  Only the file(s) changed for the current theme are changed.  Therefore, if you have customized the files in a theme and then decide to change themes, you will need to transfer the customization to the files in the new theme.

Single Post

Let’s start with removing the date and time in a post.

Access Appearance; Editor; Single Post

Look for the loop to process all posts:

Within this loop, the following highlighted code needs to be removed:

In the above example,  “Posted by”, the author’s name and “on”  is printed before the date.

To be consistent, you may want to make these changes elsewhere on your blog.  Be sure to check these pages:

• Main Index Template
• Page Template
• Search Results
• Recent Comments

Test Your Changes

The last step is to view your blog and test every page you changed:

• Carefully review the main page on your site
• Use the search function and review the results
• Access one of the pages on your site
• Click on the archives and make sure everything looks OK
• Click on a post that has comments and review those as well

Making changes to your theme are not too difficult when you know what to look for!

And now you finally decided to go ahead and just do it!

But unfortunately, something goes wrong and you’re unable to access what you just paid for with your credit card.

What now?

Well, reputable online merchant sites understand many of the people making Internet purchases are doing so for the first time, and they understand these people will require assistance.

In anticipation of these issues, merchants have been proactive in establishing help desk support portals on their sites. The Internet support solutions customers are seeking to resolve their issues are commonly found in FAQs, or frequently asked questions, usually as a separate web page or system altogether.

And if the customer is unable to resolve the issue using the FAQs provided,  consumers can often search for a “Contact Us” or “Customer Support” link. This link is available to provide the dissatisfied customer with at least one way to directly contact the merchant for assistance. This is usually provided in addition to the FAQ support as online computer help.

By reading and following the procedural instructions, most customers can help themselves speed up the resolution process through their own actions.

Yes, it’s always upsetting when something goes wrong, but customer support systems or representatives cannot possibly read the mind of the consumer, and they cannot research a consumer’s issue or purchase history without the consumer first providing the correct information to the computer help desk.

For your own sanity, when contacting a merchant for customer service, provide as much information as possible about your what the problem is and how you’d like the problem resolved.  It’s the usual who, what, where, when and how that will get your issue addressed promptly, and fixed as quickly as possible.  Failure to provide the information to help desk support only delays the process.

What NOT To Do

I have a Support Desk that is staffed with a regular support person who takes care of help desk troubleshooting procedures for me.  This week Terry opened a new ticket that was submitted by Darrick.  Instead of providing the purchase information requested in the ticket template, the only information Darrick provided was “ebook!”  Terry knows people want their tickets resolved as quickly as possible, so she took the time to research the current purchases to see if she could find one for Darrick.

After finding Darrick’s purchase, she decided to reissue the download link for his purchase, since this is the most common problem people have.  Here’s the response she provided:

Hello Darrick!

I’m not sure exactly what the issue is since you did not provide much information. I’m going to assume you have not received your download. In that case, I have reset the download link and sent you a link. Please look for an email from grmbusinesssolutions.com in your email inbox or junk/spam folder. That email has the download link.

If additional assistance is needed, please reopen this ticket.

Terry
Support Desk

Well, it turns out that Darrick actually wanted a refund, although he failed to
put that in the ticket.  Now here’s the interesting thing, the0product Darrick
purchased is through one of my clients who uses my Support Desk services for his websites.  My client had spent over an hour on the phone with Darrick, patiently answering his questions and concerns after reading the eBook.  He told my client he was very interested in starting the business outlined in the eBook.  He never mentioned anything about wanting a refund!

Within a few minutes of receiving the ticket response from Terry, Darrick replied to the ticket with this…

Terry, FYI…….I was experiencing trouble figuering out how to apply for a
refund, and after I explained this to you, I find it funny how you quietly
disappeared. Here’s the deal. I’ve documented my correspondence with this
company, and filed a dispute with my credit card. We can draw this out for
months waiting to see how the dispute resolution dept sides, or you can
credit my account today. It’s your choice!

Here’s My Advice

The Support Desk (or Help Desk) provided by a merchant has been established and staffed to help you get a problem resolved.  The people who process the tickets have been trained in customer support procedures and their only concern is to h-e-l-p you.  Therefore it is not in your best interest to insult or threaten them in any way.  Their only recourse is to stop working on your problem and report the issue to management.

Do this – not what Darrick did…

- Follow instructions

- Provide required information and more if necessary

- Review the site for days of service and the time to resolve issues. You’re not going to get a response in minutes…remember, there are other tickets that
have been submitted ahead of you.

- Log back into a Support Desk (or Help Desk) to update your ticket when necessary.  Not every Support/Help Desk accepts a reply via eMail.  Read all the information inside your ticket to determine how to update your ticket information.

Well – that’s over five years ago and the Internet has progressed far since then with much more helpful information being provided to guide you through a purchase.  In fact, most reliable sellers now provide step-by-step instructions through the purchase, even what to do when your payment has been processed.

The Order Process

Here’s the general order process:

- If you are purchasing hard products, you will probably be using a shopping cart.  This holds your products just like a shopping cart at the market.  As soon as you’re finished shopping, you go to Check Out to enter and process the payment.

- If you are purchasing a digital product, you click on a Buy Button somewhere on the sales page.  The Buy Button will take you to an order page to obtain customer information and the form of payment.

- Once the form of payment has been entered, you are asked to supply the required information, such as credit card number or PayPal log in.

- After you have provided the payment details, the payment is processed and you should be given instructions on what to do next.  This may include 1) Click Here to Return to Merchant to obtain your download, 2) Click Here to receive your download – this is the actual link to your product to save on your computer, 3) Look for an eMail from – this directs you to an eMail that is sent to the eMail address you provided. This eMail will contain information about your order, including instructions.

When you make a digital purchase, you are added to the merchant’s customer
list.  To do this, the merchant must send you an eMail asking for your permission to add you to their customer list.  This eMail requires your confirmation and should tell you to click on a link that has been provided in the eMail.  This is called a double opt in and is required to satisfy the CAN-SPAM Act.  Once you give your permission by using the activation link, the merchant can send you other offers via eMail.  These follow-up eMails are not SPAM – you have given your permission by using the authorization link.  This is referred to as permission based marketing.

What to do When the System Hiccups

When you’re using the Internet, you’re constantly being passed through different systems that are connected together through routers.  That means you could lose a connection at any point in the order process.

Don’t Panic!!

Reputable websites have contact information on their site for you to use for questions and issues.  There are many different ways they can provide customer support and include:

- Phone
- Online Chat
- Help Desk Support
- eMail Address

Any of these methods will work, the only issue is how responsive are they and how fast do you need assistance?  If you are contacting your web hosting
company because your site is down, then you need immediate help.  Most hosting companies will have an online chat during regular business hours. This allows you to get assistance now in lieu of waiting for someone to respond to an eMail or Help Desk Support ticket.  Look for an option to get a hard copy of the chat in case you need to reference it later.

I really like using Help Desk Support because they usually have a Knowledge
Base of self-help articles that may resolve my issue without opening a ticket.
If you can’t resolve your issue, then open a ticket.

About Help Desk Systems

When you open a ticket with a computer help desk, you will have to wait for
your issue to be addressed.  This means there may be a lot of tickets ahead of you if it’s a busy merchant.  Expect to wait anywhere from 2 – 16 hours for a response.  This means you need to check your eMail to see of a response has been sent.  Look to see if the ticket resolution time has been provided on the computer help desk.  This should tell you what hours they work and if they are closed over the weekend.

Internet support solutions will vary from merchant to merchant.  You just need to know where to look to find assistance.  You’ll usually find this information on the merchant site as “Contact Us,” “Customer Support,” or something similar.  Just follow their instructions and you should have no problem getting your issue(s) resolved.

When doing business on the Internet, it’s important to brand yourself as an expert in a particular area.  People are looking for information and they come to trust people who present their credentials and pass along useful information.  This trust is built in the way you provide the information and your consistency in promoting yourself.

Your Credentials

I’m not necessarily talking about your education, I’m referring to your success in:

• A Hobby
• Heading up Committees
• Forming Groups
• Leading People
• Building a Business
• Your Writing Skills
• Your Organizational Skills
• Your Ability to Solve Problems
• Public Speaking
• etc.

Find what you’re good at and use that to build your personal branding.  How can you use that skill to help people in network marketing and to build your business?

Useful Information

People want to find ways on how to make extra cash to supplement their income.  Network Marketing is a low risk way for them to do that as long as they understand it’s not a sure-fire fast way to make extra money.  They need to know how network marketing opportunities work, how long it takes to start earning and what they need to do for network marketing success.

How can you help these people solve these issues?

Take the personal branding skill you have identified and write articles, blog posts, create videos, participate in forums and place classified ads to attract the people you want to recruit into your business.

Personal Branding Statement

Your personal branding should be consistent – you want to build a following with your name and your personal branding statement.  Imagine one of your business partners (your recruits) talking about how they got into their business and they mention your personal branding.  That’s what you want to occur due to your personal branding.

Here’s a few examples:

• John Doe – Organizing Skills for Success
• John Doe – Leading People to Network Marketing Success
• Jane Doe – Crocheting to Business Success
• Jane Doe – Small Building is My Passion

Don’t Hold Back!

One thing I learned entering the business world many years ago was that women at that time were not sure how to play the “business game.”  The major difference I saw in the successful business promotions were people who pushed for recognition got the promotions.

And who were getting those promotions?

Men!  Men enter the business world knowing how to play the game of business.  They’re not shy about claiming victories and announcing them to everyone.

Women, on the other hand, tend to wait to be recognized.  “It’s not lady-like to boast about your achievements.”  In reality, that’s the only way you get ahead.

So…don’t be shy about your successes – in fact, write about them and tell others how that success was achieved:

• How did you plan to achieve the success?
• How long did it take?
• What obstacles did you encounter?
• How did you approach the obstacles?
• What did you learn from the obstacles?
• How did you feel once you were successful?
• Is there anything you would do different in the future?

I can still remember the first purchase I made and accidentally clicked off the download page.  I was absolutely sure the site was a fraud, frantically looked for support and practically screamed for a refund.  After creating several digital products, some in niches outside of Internet Marketing, I too found customers frantically asking for a refund when they had issues with a purchase.

Here’s a few examples of good customer service on the Internet that can be used by website owners to address customer complaints and website visitors before making a purchase.

Customer Service Tips Before You Purchase

Internet Marketers provide customer support in a variety of ways:

• Help Desk
• Contact Form
• eMail Address
• No Support

Yes – you read that correctly – NO SUPPORT has been provided.  Or – one of my favs – what they do provide doesn’t work!

Before you make that purchase, be sure to check out the contact information that has been provided.  You’ll want to know that it’s current in case you actually have an issue that requires their attention.

Recently, I used the Internet to find a local electrician.  The one site that attracted me used a contact form to request service.  I filled in and submitted the required information and within minutes, I received an email informing me the information could not be sent.  So much for the professional website!

Internet Help Desk

It’s good news for you if you find the site is using an Internet Help Desk to assist customers.  That means the site has the ability to provide FAQs, Technical Support and a Knowledge Base or Articles for customer self-help.  This allows the customer to resolve the issue before having to open a support ticket.

Don’t assume these self-help features are being used.  I have found that most are not being utilized.  But don’t fret – as long as the help desk will allow you to open a ticket, you should be OK.

I say should because many website owners are not employing a support staff and don’t monitor their tickets every day.  If you can, look for information on their Help Desk system that tells you how long it will take your ticket to be resolved.  A common Help Desk requirement is to resolve tickets as quickly as possible, usually within 8 hours.

Realize that 8 hours is relevant – if they’re located in Australia and you’re in Canada, you could be waiting up to 15 hours before they pickup and resolve your ticket.  Good customer service training for an Internet Help Desk is to have a postal address listed on the site – be sure to look for this information.

Help Desk Best Practice

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) Look for a FAQ page or category on the Help Desk.  This is provided to address the most common customer issues.

Technical Support This section of a Help Desk will address the most common technical issues that are encountered by customers.  Some of these issues could be 1) Could not Download Product, 2) Could not Open Product, 3) Could not Install Software, etc.

Knowledge Base This section is usually provided to address common customer issues by product.  This information could be 1) to explain the affiliate program, 2) to explain the features of a product in detail and how they are used, etc.

Articles Not all Help Desk software provides all these categories.  Sometimes you’ll find the information in articles that have been categorized for easy access.

Tip on Help Desk Support

Need more information about Help Desk systems and building a Help Desk?  Learn more about customer service management and get my customer service tips.

Basically – they’re all correct.  To build a true authority site, you’d spend the better part of 1 – 2 years building a website and dripping it with enough unique content to be a true authority.

I’m going to show you what has worked for me and how you can do the same.

More Website Traffic Blueprint

The only way to drive free website traffic is by increasing the external links (backlinks) to your website.   I’ve already written about how the search engines rank a website and that’s by using backlinks as popularity votes.  The website with the most relevant backlinks for a keyword get placed highest in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

If you have a product to sell, you need to get visitors to your sales page.  But the search engines give popularity votes to content and authority sites.  So to move up in the SERPs, you need to write unique content and distribute it to:

• High Ranking Article Directories
• Blogs
• Squidoo Lens
• Hub Pages

People want information and use these articles to determine if you have what they want.  Use the “useful but incomplete” strategy, leaving your best information inside the product you sell.

Each of these sites must link to each other AND to your sales page.  Make sure you use keyword rich anchor text and not just the URL.  Using related keywords for related topics will increase your rating with the search engines.

After posting your articles, bookmark them to Web 2.0 sites using a site like Onlywire.

These unique articles you have taken the time to write will continue to generate a constant flow of traffic to your main website.

Extreme Website Traffic

Now let’s kick it up a notch and add a link from your main website to your blog.  Add the link at the bottom of your website for people looking for more information.

Add an optin form to your website with an AutoResponder series.  Every time you update your blog, send out a notice to this list and make them click through to your blog post.  This increases traffic to your blog and gives your list traffic more opportunities to click through to your main site and other links that are on your blog.

Website Traffic Analysis

I prefer to use the free StatCounter software because it provides me with more information about my visitors than other tracking tools.  One way to know your website traffic plan is working is to see return visitors.  My most successful sites generate about the same number of return visitors every week.

By tracking where the visitors are coming from, I know which authority sites are working for me.  If one of the sites is generating far less visitors, I’ll increase the number of articles I upload to that site.

By using a detailed tracker like StatCounter, you can identify:

• When Visitors are Leaving Your Site
• Which Search Engines are Sending You Traffic
• Which Keywords Visitors Used to Find Your Site
• High Traffic Authority Sites
• Low Traffic Authority Sites
• Popular Pages on Your Site
• How Long Visitors Remain on Your Site
• Returning Visits
• Visitor IP Addresses

By tracking this information, you can make adjustments to your site and the traffic you send from authority sites.

The key to free website traffic is controlling the traffic yourself through the hyperlinks you provide to keep the visitor on your sites.  The longer they stay on your sites, the better chance you have of making a sale!

What you don’t know is each time you download another file, you’re using more of your valuable hard-disc space.  Music and videos take up more space than eBooks and reports.   And if you’re working on the Internet building a business or offering your services, you’re saving even more information.

What would happen if your computer crashed and you did not have a backup of all your files?

I learned the hard way how long a new computer can last.  My first was a Dell just over 2 years old.  It died on a Christmas Day after going through a series of deadly “blue screen” errors on system start-up.  I had never performed a system backup!  I had pay-per-click ads running, no backup computer and I was down over a week.

Fortunately, I was able to find a really good local computer tech to get everything off the hard drive to build a new box.  But it came at a very high cost – over $1,000 to the computer tech and and another huge chunk of cash to PPC ads that I had just started running for the post holiday stampede.  You see – when placing new PPC ads, you need to bid high just to get your ads showing.  Once they’re showing, you can improve your quality score to bring the cost down.  Well – I wasn’t at that point yet as I had just placed the ads.  What a mess!

Computer Backups

Your computer operating system comes with the option to setup scheduled system backups.  These are scheduled by you on a regular basis to run at a convenient time when your computer is on, but not in use.

This is a convenient service, but it will only backup existing files to another location on your hard-drive, chewing up even more space.  The most ideal option is to backup your files to an offline device or use a service like Amazon AWS Solutions to backup and save your files.

Computer Backup Strategies

When selecting an offline device to store your backup files, you need to select one that is at least 5 times the size of your hard-drive.  Once you have your drive and your backup software installed, you’ll need to perform a full system backup to create a “mirror image” of your system on the offline device.

You’ll need backup software that will allow you to set a schedule for regular backups and that will also let you do a backup on-demand.  I always do an on-demand backup after I complete extensive work that I want to make sure I don’t lose.  I prefer Norton Ghost which is included in
NORTON 360 PREMIER ED 3.0-CD 1U 3PC MM.

Once your full system backup is completed, you’ll need to setup your backup software to run every day or week at the same time.  If you’re using your computer for business, I suggest running daily backups otherwise, a weekly backup will suffice.

Your ongoing backups should create a new recovery point every month with incremental recovery points within the month.  An incremental recovery point saves space as only actual changes to your data is written to the backup drive.  You can restore individual files by day or week and you can do a full system restore.

Computer Backup Devices

If you plan on cleaning off your hard-drive and storing files on your backup for later recovery, you’ll want at least 3 backup drives.  All you have to do is identify which drive will save your files to be recovered on-demand.  Then send all your system backups to one of the other drives.

Once one backup drive is full of system backups, install the third drive and direct all your system backups to the third drive.  Once the third drive is full, go back to the second drive and start using it for system backups after you have deleted all the files.

Using 2 or 3 drives gives you maximum backup capability for the maximum period of time.  There’s nothing worse than getting an offline drive that is too small and finding out you don’t have enough space to store even 6 months of data!

I prefer researching devices using online websites.  You can see which are the top sellers and then read the reviews.  For instance, I found one device that had very good user ratings, but then I read the reviews and found one fault with the device that was a deal breaker for me.

I recently purchased an external hard drive with 1TB of capacity.  A terrabyte is a thousand gigabytes of storage.  This was unheard of just a few years ago for in-home computing.  I highly recommend the
Western Digital 1TB My Book Essential USB 2.0 External Hard Drive.  This drive will hold:

• 440 hours DVD
• 250,000 MP3s
• 285,000 JPGs

It’s 30% more energy efficient, 6 1/2″ high by 5″ wide and 2″ deep which makes it the ideal size to fit almost anywhere.  One of the best features is the automatic setup – the software installs itself once it’s plugged in.  This means no disc to insert and no instructions to wade through.  You’ll also appreciate how quiet the drive is – I never hear it, unlike many others I’ve had.

Don’t wait until your hard-drive dies without warning.  Get a system backup plan installed and make sure it’s working.  This means going in at least every week to access the recovery files to make sure they’re valid.

Once you have an automatic solution, all you’ll have to do is monitor disc space!

Let’s first review a few definitions:

Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

Advertising is a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume more of a particular brand of product or service.

Internet marketing, also referred to as web marketing, online marketing, or eMarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet.

~ Wikipedia

Free Information

Yes – there certainly is free information on the Internet….and lots of it.  Some of it, like the information in Wikipedia is intentionally provided as a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.  There are also sites that provide free software, often referred to as shareware.  Most of this software provides people with a free trial period to use the software.  Once the software expires, you are given the option to purchase the basic package or to purchase an upgrade with added features.

In addition to these sites are vast arrays of article directories, blogs, Squidoo lenses, Hub pages and other sites that are built to provide information on subjects of interest.  Most of these sites are built around niches that are highly searched by people looking for specific information.  If people are searching on something, sites will be built to provide the information in the form of facts, articles or a personal point of view.

There are also plenty of websites giving away free software that is filled with viruses.  As soon as they are installed on your computer, a virus is initiated that continues to spread, slowing down your computer and collecting your information through keystrokes and files on your computer.  Most websites will check the software they give away to make sure it does not contain any viruses.

Website Expenses

Once a website is built, the owner of the site has ongoing expenses to pay, such as an annual fee for the domain name and monthly hosting fees.  For this reason, the owner must find a way to monetize the site to earn enough income to pay the expenses.  This is usually done with text ads the reader can click on for more information and with banners and graphics that advertise related products the reader can purchase.  Since the site owner needs to earn enough income to break even, the incentive is there to try and earn a profit.

Once a website is monetized, the site owner is then using Internet Marketing strategies to earn as much income from the site as possible.  As with any business venture, a website that does not earn enough to pay expenses will soon be out of business.

Internet Marketing as a Business

Website owners who have had success making money on the Internet strive to build a legitimate internet marketing business for long-term success.  They use a business model similar to direct marketing businesses to bring in new customers through a sales funnel.  The sales funnel is designed to bring the customer in with a free giveaway or a low-cost product to take the customer through a series of up sells to higher priced items.

As the customer progresses through the sales funnel, they move from the lower cost products to the higher priced products.  By keeping the customers on specific lists, the business owner knows what price point the customer is willing to pay.  If a customer accepts an offer to pay $75 for a product, they are moved from the lower priced list to the $75 list, etc.  They will now continue to receive higher priced offers as long as they remain subscribed to the list.

Free Versus Paid Information

If you’re searching for information on the Internet, why pay when you can get it free?  Well – that really depends on how much time you have!  If you’re not in a hurry, you can spend all the time you want collecting all the free information you can find.  Just keep in mind the first rule of marketing free information online:  useful, but incomplete.  Huh – what is that?

This is a common practice used by most marketers.  It allows the marketer to provide information the reader is searching for that is accurate and useful.  This internet marketing strategy allows the marketer to retain the “meat” of the information and sell it to the reader after the perceived value is attained.  This is exactly the same scenario used in magazines when portions of a book are printed to generate sales for the author.

When you purchase an information product, you are guaranteed to receive insider knowledge the marketer has to sell.  This knowledge was obtained in most cases through hands on experience and is therefore a valuable commodity.

Before you complete that purchase, make sure:
•    It contains the information you are looking for
•    You find a refund policy in case the product falls short
•    There is a Customer Service or Help Desk function to process customer issues

Next time you expect free information and find a price tag instead, you’ll be in a position to decide of the product is worth the expense.