Earn Money From Blogging

Internet Marketing On The Real

2007-06-03T21:46:00.001-07:00

The other day I was playing with a guy at my golf club, that I just joined (Never had time when I was working for someone else.) We started talking about our cable TV. If you aren't familiar with talking heads, these are experts who are educated to tell you what to think, based on books that they just read sent to them by the publishers.

Anyway, Howard said something that struck me right between the eyes. "I got so confused listening to theses guys and gals. Everyone has a different opinion of what works the best. Finally, I just figured out that it best to listen one. I might as well pick one expert, and listen to their advice."

Later, as I was driving home from the club, I thought about how appropriate Howard's comment was to Internet Marketing. Everyone's an expert. (Even those who haven't sold their first e-Book.) And there are a million programs, books, secrets, techniques and tactics that will work for you.

The problem is you can easily fall into a trap that golfers are victim of to much technical advice it's called "Paralysis by Analysis". That's where a lot of people are stuck. They keep reading, and it gets in the way of actually doing something. They can't swing the club.

I was guilty of this, too. I must have bought several hundred dollars worth of books and courses before I found what worked for me.

Fortunately, the expert I decided to follow was, in hindsight, an excellent choice. And by following his advice and listening to his ideas, I have built up a couple of successful income streams.

My point isn't that my "guru" is the right one for everyone. The point is to pick one or maybe a couple of people you really respect, and model them. Of course, make sure they are actually successful in their own businesses first. But when you find someone you respect and whose style you like, listen to their advice and follow what they recommend in their writings. The one that I follow is Jay Abraham.
Jay in my opinion is the king of Marketing!

Following this strategy can save lots of time that you would spend switching strategies and tactics. It avoids confusion and gives you a good point of reference from which to work. Only buy e-books and products that will save you time.

Affiliate Marketing- The 5 Step Simple Systems

2007-06-02T21:49:00.001-07:00

If you want to have a successful affiliate marketing business, it is important that you follow a proven system. If you have a proven system, it will save you lots of your time, effort and effort because you do not have to make the same mistakes that the rest have make before. This is a simple 5 step systems that you will be able to use.

• Select Market: You will have to find your own profitable niche market. It will be best to find a market where people have the cash to spend. You also will need to know what are the things that your selected niche market is looking for.

• Provide Offer: Once you have known what is your market is looking for, you will have to find suitable affiliate products so that you will be able to offer to your market. It is important that the product that you offer is related to the market that your customers are in.

• Generate Traffic: Once you have chosen your market and your product, you will set up a simple website which will be able to help you build your own list. The next thing that you will have to do is to generate traffic. If you are not able to generate traffic to your website, you will not have any visitors to your website which means you will not be able to offer your product to anybody.

• Monetize Backend: Once you have some customers who buy the front end product, you will want to make sure that you have a second product which you can offer to your customer. When you have built a good relationship with your customers' database, you will be able to sell them again and again.

• The last step will be to duplicate your system. Once you have found that this method is working for you, you can duplicate the exact system into another market. The more you duplicate the more successful affiliate marketing business you have. This will makes you lots of money by just duplicating the system.

These are the 5 simple steps which you can use for your affiliate marketing business. It is important that you have a strong foundations and basics before you start your business. When you have a good foundation and you are able to see your affiliate marketing business from the big picture, you will know more of the actions that you will need to do. So do apply these 5 simple systems.

3 Hidden Rules Of Powerful Niche Marketing

2007-06-01T20:43:00.001-07:00

While all niches are different in their characteristics, there are some rules that stay true to all niches. And although some might say that the money is in the list, the money is really in the niche! The niche you choose is your first stepping stone on your road to success.That's why it's important to spend time choosing the niche which is suitable for you, and brings in long-lasting profits.

The first rule in niche marketing is that you must define who your target audience is. You need to create a mental picture of who your customer is. Is he a young adult or a baby boomer? Is your potential customer base mainly female or male? You cannot miss this step because it defines your whole business model and what kind of products you will provide.

Next, you need to find out what problems your niche are having. Every product solves some problem in some way or another. It could be a craving or desire that needs to be fulfilled, or a niggling problem that goes on for years and years. If your product can solve any of these problems, you're definitely heading on the right track.

The third rule is to test your niche. I know it's a cliché, but you need to test the waters before jumping in! Conduct a survey to find out what exactly what customers want to see in your product. Do a market test for your product to see if it sells before going on a full-blown advertising campaign.

Lucrative Web Site Creation - 3 Keys to Make a Profit with Web Site Creation

2007-05-28T21:52:00.001-07:00

Creating web sites may sound like a difficult process. It may seem complicated, difficult, and it might be a daunting prospect. However, lucrative website creation is anything but difficult. Sure, it takes some effort, but so do most things that make money. Is you want to make a profit with website creation, here are some keys that can quickly and easily lead you to lucrative website creation.

1 Design is Key. Everyone knows that when creating a website, the content is actually second to the design and layout. Much like a periodical, a website thrives on the color, contrast, and images that create a specific idea and feeling in the mind of the viewer. For example, a business website should be laid out in clear, block like format, with high contrast (black on white, white on black, etc) and should use images sparingly. This seems professional to the viewer, and can actually enhance the website.

2 Use a Design Tool. For lucrative website creating, it is advisable to use a website design software. Dreamweaver, Adobe, and Arachnid are all useful choices. The fact is, even if you are able to do all the coding yourself, there is no reason why you should do so. It is time consuming, and you want to maximize your time, only doing specific coding when you must.

3 Advertise Your Sites. Create your own personal business page for website creation, and make it a stunning page. If your own page looks great, people will be that much more likely to hire you to create theirs, and will probably be willing to pay more. Also, include links to other sites you've created (and ask them to link to you) in order to let your potential customers see the successes you've already had.

Ecommerce Web Design Solutions - Keep It Simple

2007-05-27T21:48:00.001-07:00

Most of the web design enquiries coming through these days are requests for ecommerce web design solutions. Not only are we buying more and more of our products and services online, it would appear that many of us also want to sell online. Indeed, it's not only large corporate companies trading online nowadays. In fact most of the web design quote requests come from individuals trading from home. People are selling flowers, their own music cds, chocolates. So there is a definite market for ecommerce web design solutions. It is however a very particular market segment and offering the right product at the right price is the key to securing the ecommerce web design business.

The best way to getting the right product to market is to start with the target clients profile and needs. Although we do design complex ecommerce web design solutions for corporate clients, there is a large market for the smaller customers. These customers are looking for 3 key product features: bespoke web design, budget price and simple to use. What is budget price for a bespoke ecommerce web design solution? And how simple should the web design solution be?

The web design industry is very competitive and sales is very price sensitive. Targeting the budget web design industry can be tricky. Price your ecommerce web design too low and run the risk of losing money or appearing too cheap. Price it too high and you could miss out on a whole range of the ecommerce web design market. Indeed, even an individual potential web design customer selling from home would expect to pay a price for a bespoke quality web design. People know that they have to pay a price to get a decent quality ecommerce web design.

Remember also that individuals selling from home generally require a simple backend from where they can easily upload their products. A standard and adequate web design feature set would include a dynamic category list, individual product image upload , title, description and price update through a simple secure backend page. This is all most potential ecommerce web design clients require to start selling online. Occasionally some clients may require special features like a simple stock management system. This is usually optional and is charged as an-add on from the outset. Keep the web design quote simple, transparent and explain everything before taking payment.

Security is an important issue as well. The standard ecommerce web design solution uses Paypal secure site to take credit card payments so security is less of an issue. However, if a web design customer requires secure credit card transactions on his/her own site then it is vital to use a reliable merchant provider and an ssl on the web site for security.

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Web Hosting Features - What is Web Space and How Much is Enough?

2007-05-26T21:49:00.001-07:00

Web space or disk space is the total amount of megabytes or gigabytes a web hosting company gives you with your hosting plan. You probably already know that this space is used to hold the HTML and images that will be displayed on your website when your web pages are viewed, but...

What you may not know is that your web space also includes your website log files, FrontPage extensions, PHP files, CGI programs, externally linked CSS and Javascript files, and usually email accounts and emails as well as space for any databases.

Briefly, here's how your web space is used up:

Log files - a list of all requests made to your hosting company's website server by your website. Your log files tell where visitors are coming from, how often they return, and how they navigate through your site.

FrontPage extensions - FrontPage is website creation software from Microsoft that allows you to build and maintain web pages via a graphic interface. FrontPage extensions are script files that run on the web server to extend the functionality of FrontPage when your website is viewed. These extensions support features such as counters, data collection, e-mail processing, and database processing.

PHP files - PHP is a scripting language that can create dynamic web pages. Useful for form processing, data base access or for generating customized website pages.

CGI programs - stands for Common Gateway Interface and is a standard way for data to be passed between web applications e.g. passing data from an online form.

Externally linked CSS files - CSS, short for Cascading Style Sheets, is an addition to HTML that gives website developers more control over how pages are displayed. With CSS, designers can create style sheets that define how different elements, such as headers and links, appear. If CSS definitions are shared among pages in a website, they are usually stored on the web hosting server as a file that is then "linked" by the web pages that require them.

Javascript files - a type of computer code used to perform tasks on Web pages, such as incrementing a "number of visitors" counter or checking the input fields on a form for errors. If Javascripts are shared among pages in a website, they are usually stored on the web hosting server as a file that is then "linked" by the web pages that require them.

Email accounts and emails - web hosting plans usually include one or even several email accounts so you can create email addresses such as: sales@yourwebsite.com or help@yourwebsite.com. In many cases the emails stored in these accounts are added to your web space quota. Check with your web hosting company for details.

Database - a collection of data: part numbers, product codes, customer information, etc. Data is organized and stored on a web server that can be searched and retrieved by CGI or PHP programs.

Web space or disk space for your hosting plan is listed in megabytes or gigabytes. A megabyte (mb) is 1,000,000 bytes (1 million bytes) and a gigabyte (gb) is 1,000,000,000 bytes (1 trillion bytes). Even 1 megabyte might sound like a lot of space, but if you add up the size of each of your web pages and include all the files and data mentioned above, you will be surprised at how large the total can become.

And don't forget, you may want to host more than one website on your hosting plan. If that's your plan, you will need many megabytes or even gigabytes of web storage. Fortunately, disk space is cheap and most web hosting companies offer hosting plans that include hundreds of gigabytes of space.

Bottom line: If you are hosting one relatively simple website, you probably won't need more than 50 mb of disk storage. However, if you're planning on hosting a large website or multiple websites on a single hosting plan, then you should look for a plan with several hundred gigabytes of storage capacity.

You can estimate your web space needs by locating your website files on your hard drive and getting a total of the space used. This is easily done in Windows Explorer by selecting the folder or folders that contain your entire website and right-clicking. Select Properties and refer to the "Size:" display. You will get a total of the space used by all the files in the folder(s). Don't forget to add estimated space for emails and databases.

Finally, total the space for all the websites you expect to host on a single hosting account, add at least half of that space back again for growth and you should have a fairly accurate estimate of the space you will need for your websites now and in the future.

5 Tips To Starting An Online Business

2007-05-25T20:54:00.001-07:00

Everyday, people all over the world, make money running a business on the Internet. The Internet is a great way to start a business with little to no money. The following five steps will provide some suggestions on getting your online business started.

1. Register a website. This is the only expense that you will initially have and it's worth every penny. This is vital to giving your online business a professional feel and for less than $10 a month you can register a web address and get the pages hosted.

2. Create a blog. A blog is short for web log. It's an online journal of sorts that anyone can read and comment on. Some bloggers make over $100,000 a year by ad revenue. The most common source of ad revenue is Google. The easiest way to start a blog is through Blogger.com which is owned by Google and completely free.

3. Build your own industry specific news group. For example, a news group about sports equipment. You could run articles about the latest equipment that is coming to market. Sell ad space in the articles to sports companies. Also offer press release publication for a small fee to the industry.

4. Sell products from your website. This could be anything from homemade crafts to items that you purchase at wholesale and resell. One of the more common methods to do this is to get connected with a "blind shipper". Basically when someone places an order with your website, the request is sent to a warehouse and your label is placed on it.

5. Start your own online directory. While there are thousands of them out there now, most are poorly put together. The best web directories make a lot of money by charging a fee to review your website and if approved, listed it in the proper category. There are many scripts that you can purchase that automates the listing process, but I run my directory, Kahmer.com, completely by hand. Either way, make sure that you review every submission for accuracy and quality.

For more information on starting your own site, visit: www.RichKahmer.com I am involved in several of these strategies currently. Feel free to contact me with any questions.

What is Blogging Success?

2007-05-23T21:00:00.001-07:00

A lot of people wonder what makes a successful blog. Most of the time it becomes apparent to me that if someone is asking me that question, they don't know why they're blogging to begin with.

Success with blogging, and whether or not you have achieved it, will depend entirely on whether or not you have reached the goals you set with blogging to begin with.

What's that?

You never set a goal with blogging? You started a blog because it was the thing to do?

That's okay, we can fix that. Set some goals for what would make you think that the exercise of blogging was worthwhile to you. What do you want to do with your blog? Talk to your audience? Find out what their interests are? Increase sales?

Of course, blogging success isn't just about making money or getting more traffic. In fact, if you haven't connected with your readers you may never reach either of these ambitions through blogging.

Let me give you a scenario from my own life.

I know that many people get into blogging for the traffic. Well, I already had traffic when I started blogging, so it's not why I began to blog at all. Truthfully, I wanted to be closer to you.

I wanted to be able to share my thoughts about traffic, to give tips and ideas, to report news in real time, and do it in a fast, streamlined fashion. With blogging, every time I do a new post, every page of my site that is part of the blog updates to let anyone who happens by know that I had something new to say. And now that blog posts can be emailed automatically to subscribers, I have another outlet for those who prefer email to the web without doing any extra work.

The best part of blogging to me, wasn't the shift and increase in search engine traffic that I observed. That was a great side effect, partly because it was an effect I could duplicate for my clients.

The best part of blogging was actually getting my first comment. And the thrill doesn't go down with each subsequent comment I get. It makes the spam that sometimes comes through worth it as well. The interaction is by far the best part to me.

Ironically, it is that yearning to do the best for my customers that I can that made my blog popular, a traffic generation tool, and got prospects to opt in to my sales process. And this is how that relates to you.

In the back of your mind, you might have been thinking 'If I become a famous blogger, I'll have all this traffic, and then I can sell more of my product or retire on the advertising income.''

And it's true - with the right strategy, it's not entirely unheard of to get more traffic, more sales, or make money from your content. However, having this as your sole reason for taking up blogging gets in the way of writing content that is compelling to your reader.

A person who sets out to blog solely for traffic or money writes posts designed only to make money, which by its nature is a turn-off for readers.

Not to mention that getting to the point where your advertising income or the increase in sales from blogging will feed you is hard, daily work. Just establishing the basic traffic pattern will take you several months. Don't be fooled by the fact that you may have one hundred or more new visitors your first day, with a good strategy.

Your success with your blog and your goals for your site are still closely related. The first step to reaching any of those goals, is picking one, dissecting what it truly means and reaching it.

For example, if you want more traffic from blogging, you'll have to understand eventually what kind of traffic is created from blogging.

You may get new people, who read one thing and leave unless you connect to them in each post, and give them the choice to be reminded to return.

If you already have an ezine audience, you may get a group of readers who get to know you on another level, one that lets them get to know you as a person, which facilitates more repeat traffic, as they come to have more interaction with you, or to read what you say next.

With this, you'll have to be ready to give them some advice, a way to test what you say, and/or you'll have to learn what they discussions they want to read or participate in.

We could recreate various situations but they all boil down to the same message.

Getting more traffic from blogging means that you'll have to learn a bit more about the interactions that surround blogging, and why people read blogs to begin with. So will getting more sales from blogging

Internet Marketing from the Home Based Business Guru Chad Rissanen

2007-05-16T21:52:00.001-07:00

The author and founder of the industry breaking "$9 Solution",Chad Rissanen has hit the market with a bang! This revolutionary product discloses just how Chad turned a small $9 investment into an outstanding $27,000 per month.

"The $9 Solution" provides an easy to understand guide to internet marketing which includes a complete funded proposal system all set up under the direct response marketing approach. This all-around business in a box will bring meaning to the word
"Direct response"

When you are checking out "The $9 Solution", you can also gain access to his new "10 Day Marketing Success Guide." This 10 day action guide is loaded with bang-up advertising hints and expertise that will show you how to attract thousands of visitors and guests to your website faster than you can keep up.

Advertising techniques usually cost a lot of time and money, but now Chad has pooled them all together and put it into a simple and easy 10 day marketing plan. He reveals ways to generate unlimited business leads, Sponsor hundreds of reps and how you can use google adwords, blogs, articles, email marketing, and search engines to make a ton of wealth on the internet.

Now don't think that Chad's release of "The $9 Solution" doesn't mean that he won't stay dedicated and keep working just as hard keeping us up to date with all of the latest advertising and marketing
If you are looking to generate free leads, achieve instantaneous profits and drive massive traffic to your website, then Chad's system can work for you and your internet marketing business.

The 4 Reasons Why People Fail In Affiliate Marketing Business

2007-05-15T21:43:00.001-07:00

Affiliate marketing has been on internet for quite some time already and thousands of people around the world are making their income full time from their affiliate marketing business. But why are there so many people fails in their affiliate marketing business? This article will list the 4 reasons why:

1. The no 1 reason is they do not treat affiliate marketing as a real business. This is important because if you do not treat it like your own real business, you will not be serious about it. Most of them treat it as a way to make quick buck which is totally not true.

2. The reason no 2 is that they are not determined and patience enough. Affiliate marketing is like any other real business, it will require your time and effort to grow it. There will be times when you will face obstacles and problems. If you are not determining enough, you will just give up.

3. The reason no 3 is that some people think that by just putting 20 links to their own website, the traffic will come and they will make sales. Affiliate marketing will requires some work from you. There is no short cut to success in affiliate marketing. You will have to take action consistently to achieve your affiliate success.

4. The reason no 4 is they do not build their own list. This is the mistake which as affiliates should totally avoid. If you do not have your own list, you will not have a long term business. There is always a saying that says the money is in the list.

These are the 4 reasons why people fail in their affiliate marketing business. It is important to learn from people the mistakes that they have make before and make sure that you do not repeat it. When you are willing to learn, you will be wasting less of your time on making mistakes and more of your time doing productive things that will helps to grow your affiliate marketing business.

Web Site Design Tips - Navigation

2007-05-14T21:51:00.001-07:00

In this installment of web site design tips, I want to talk about what may very well be the most important part of web site design, navigation. Without an easily navigated site, your visitors can get easily lost and disoriented, ultimately leading to them leaving your site in frustration without getting the information that they need and without YOU making the sales that you want. This article will give you some basic tips for creating the navigation of your site. Hopefully, after reading this, you'll have a solid game plan in place for creating the navigation of your site.

The first thing about navigation that is critical to understand is that your visitors have to be able to find it. So many site developers create navigation bars that so blend in with the rest of the site that visitors have absolutely no idea where it is. After a few minutes, if they even stay that long, they leave the site in disgust because they can't find the page that they're looking for. So it is important to make your navigation bar stand out on the page. Don't make people hunt for it.

The next thing about your navigation bar is that you want things to flow in an orderly fashion. Web surfers are used to finding certain options in certain places. For example, the home page link of your site should be the first link on your navigation bar because that's where people are used to seeing it. Conversely, the contact us link should be the last one on the navigation bar, again because that's where most people expect to find it. By having your links thrown together in no particular order, this makes it difficult for what I call "seasoned surfers" to find things.

The next thing you want to do is make sure that all your navigation links are working. The last thing you want is for a visitor to click on your "products" page and be greeted by a 404 error. It is critical that you test every link on every page to make sure that it is functional. There are free tools online that you can use to do this. The whole procedure will take a matter of seconds. This is critical especially if you have a site with a large number of pages.

Finally, you want to include navigation to other pages of your site, internally within the text of your pages. For example, if you have a page on golf clubs and there is a mention on that page about the importance of choosing the right kind of "wood" and you have a whole page dedicated to nothing but "woods", make sure you have that word "wood" linking to the page on woods. This will not only give visitors additional ways to get from one page to another but also improve your search engine rankings.

Web surfers like to be able to easily get around a web site. We live in a fast paced world and people don't have the time to go around looking for links to things. If they don't find them, they're gone. So take the time to do the things I've mentioned in this article.

Your visitors may not thank you for it, but they're certainly stick around a lot longer.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

SEO Firm is the Perfect Source to Help You Make a Mark

2007-05-13T21:44:00.001-07:00

Search engine optimization is the most innovative and popular that can be used for promotion on the web. Everybody cannot be an expert in implementing several things at a time. So the best way to take care of the SEO aspect of any business is to hire the services from a professional SEO firm to handle the work efficiently in the proper manner. Any business owner would love to implement strategies that help him in making huge profits. However the only thing which they need to take care about, for SEO strategies they are undertaking is to ensure that they get the work done by the best SEO firm that is operating in the market. Only an expert will have a good reputation and due to the professional qualification the SEO firm will be better equipped to deal with any issues that are involved with this process.

SEO firm will take care of the different aspects that are connected with the whole search engine optimization process to help your business be popular on the web. The first thing that an SEO firm will have to take care of is the content that is present on the site. Keyword research is a vital element of search engine optimization and SEO firm must be in a position to do this by making use of the latest technology. It is based on these keywords that the whole search engine optimization strategies are carried out. In fact keyword research is the base of successfully undertaking any SEO strategy. Make sure that you have a copywriter to write content for your site. If you do not have appropriate, accurate and updated content on your site, chances are you may end up losing visitors.

Web usability and designing is one issue that needs to be handled properly by an SEO firm. The keyword rich content is no doubt a wonderful asset for any site, but the design of the site must be such that search engine spiders can easily come and crawl the site. Search engine recognition is the key for getting any kind of success on the web for being popular. It may turn out to be a tough task for you to find out a SEO firm that specializes making use of the latest technology to make search engine friendly websites. The whole purpose of having a web presence will be lost if the sites are not designed keeping in mind the criteria of all the major search engines.

There are several SEO firms that specialize in providing different types of search engine optimization services to their clients. If you look around you are sure to find one SEO firm in your city that will deliver you with the best services. Every business is different, so you must find out if the SEO firm is able to provide your business with tailor made solution of optimization. Your business is at stake and you must make sure that you undertake the best methods that will benefit your business.

Affiliate Marketing- Discover The 5 Affiliates Mistakes (Part 4)

2007-05-12T21:46:00.001-07:00

Now the 4th question that I have for you is do you think that in order to create enthusiasm to your site, you must use words like "Amazing, Fantastic and Unbelievable" as many times in your website as possible?

The answer to this question is also false. If you use these kinds of words the right way, it is true that you will be able to generate enthusiasm to your website. But too many of these "hype" phrases used in your website will in fact let the customer feel skeptical about you.

There is a saying that if it is too good to be good, it will probably is. The best way that you can do is to just tell the truth or your true personal opinion. If you feel that they affiliate products is really good, then you should tell your potential customers what are the benefits that they will get if they buy the product.

What you should do as a affiliate is to just presell the products. You want the customer to click on your affiliate link. You should just let the website do the selling for you. If the product is really that good, the testimonials will do all the advertising for you. They will decide for themselves how "Fantastic" the product is.

When you actually presell your affiliate products instead of hyping up your affiliate product, the customers will actually be willing to listen to you instead of feeling skeptical towards you. They will feel that you are a honest guy who is just recommending them a good product which might help them. They have the choice of whether they want to buy the product or not. Do not make the mistake of using the "hype" phrases too many times.

Affiliate Marketing- How To Start A Business For Less Than $50 Per Month

2007-05-11T21:45:00.001-07:00

Affiliate marketing can be separated into 3 big parts. The 3 parts are Product, Website and Traffic. This article will reveal how you will be able to have your own affiliate marketing business which will only requires you to maintain it at only $50 every month.

The 1st part is the product. The best thing about doing affiliate marketing is that you do not need to have your own products. There will be no product creation cost on you. All you have to do is to find a affiliate products that is related to your niche. Total cost incurred on the product is $0.

The 2nd part is the website. To have a long term business, you must have your own domain name and web hosting. You will be able to buy a domain for $10 which will last for one year. The web hosting will roughly cause you around $10 per month. You can get a good one at Hostgator which will enable you to host unlimited domains. The next important tool which you will need is a professional autoresponder. The autoresponder will cost roughly $20 per month. Total Cost incurred on the website will be roughly $35 per month.

The last part is the traffic. If you are doing a business on a tight budget, the best way to get the free and targeted traffic will be article marketing. Although article marketing will not require much money from you, you will need to invest the times to write the articles. Once you have written the articles, send it to the articles directories. The only problem with this method is that it will take time before you will see results. Be willing to write articles on a consistence basis to get the best results. Total Cost Incurred on traffic will be $0.

So this is the simple system which you can use to have your own affiliate marketing business for less then $50 per month. Although you do not have to spend much, you will still have to treat it as a real business. If you do not treat it like a business, you will not be successful that easily. As like all business, you will have to put in your time and effort to grow it.

Affiliate Marketing Is All About Relationship

2007-05-10T21:46:00.001-07:00

Relationship is a key to affiliate marketing success. There can be 100 affiliates promoting the same products, but the customer will only buy from one affiliates. What make this affiliate so different from the rest?

Let's say there are 2 people who are recommending the same product to you. The first person is your best friend and he tells you that he really has benefited from the product. The other person is a salesman you have never met before and he is promoting the same product to you. Now the question that I have for you is which person are you going to buy from?

The answer is you will definitely buy from your best friend because you trust him. The main key thing here is the relationship that you had with your best friend. It is because of the trust that you had in your friend that causes you to buy from him. Affiliate marketing is the same thing too.

When you have built a relationship with your customer already and you have earned their trust, the customer will be more willing to listen to what you have to offer. As they trust on your judgments, they will buy the products from you again and again. If you have a reasonable good size of customer database and you are able to build a good relationship with them, you will have a long term business.

So it is important for you as a affiliate to only promote products that is of certain quality and it will really helps your customer. It will take time and effort to build a relationship with your customer. But the relationship can be broken immediately if you are suggesting to them a very crappy products. You will lose the trust from your customer and they will not buy from you again.

So in order to have a successful and long term affiliate marketing business, you will have to build a good relationship with your customer. The skill of learning how to build a good relationship with your customer is really worth your time and effort to master it.

Imagine Making a Fortune with Affiliate Marketing

2007-05-09T21:49:00.001-07:00

Go on! Just for a minute imagine what it would feel like….what it would look like. OK now wake up. If you are anything like me then making a fortune with affiliate marketing is just a dream for you as it was for me until very recently.

I first came to the Internet looking for a way to make money online five years ago. I tried a bit of everything, bought every new make money ebook going, made a few dollars here, lost a few more there. Same old story!

Then a few weeks ago, quite by accident, I came across Travis Sago and his BumMarketing method which is more or less making money online with affiliate marketing without spending any of your own money to do it. Plus Travis' method is not another ebook that you have to pay for it is free.

So I started to put some of the bummarketing methods into practice and started to see results. Then Travis said to me that I should join Wealthy Affiliate if I really wanted to start making a fortune with affiliate marketing rather than just a few dollars. How could I say no?

Wealthy Affiliate or WA is a membership site which is run by two extremely wealthy affiliates Kyle and Carson. It costs $29 a month to be a member of WA and it is the best $29 I have ever spent. In fact it cost me nothing as I made several times that back in my first month of membership.

Some of the things included in WA membership are:

A six week course to get you started making money even if you have never made a penny before

Learning resources for beginner, intermediate and advanced affiliate marketers

Video training

A research center with Keyword research tools and ClickBank research tools – any one of these alone is worth the membership fee

And best of all the forum where you get to meet and get coached by Kyle, Carson and of course Travis.

I am so happy to have found Wealthy Affiliate and you will be too. I look forward to meeting you in the forum!

How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing Starting With No Money

2007-05-08T20:48:00.001-07:00

A lot of beginners who want to start making money on the Internet have limited resources.

Since I've been there too, I want to give you a quick guide to making money with affiliate marketing with almost no money. You could do this with nothing, but if you can come up with $20 (check couch cushions – or ask friends), then you can make money faster and set yourself up to succeed long term.

First thing you need to do is find yourself a product you want to promote. The key is to find a popular product that people are already searching for by name. One easy way is to go to a site like Clickbank and check out the gravity (grav) of a product. If it's over 80, then you've got yourself a very popular product and a good candidate for this system.

The next thing you want to do is review the product. While it's possible to write a serviceable review of a product just by reading the salesletter, you're going to do an exponentially better job of writing a review of the product if you're actually read it. If you're tight on cash, you can sometimes get yourself a complimentary copy of the product by emailing the owner and telling them you want to promote the product as an affiliate – it won't always work, but it's worth a try.

Okay, you've read the product and you're convinced that it's a good product? Great. Now it's time to get yourself a domain name (about $9) related to the product. For example if the product is called Widget Secrets, then you'd want to get a domain like WidgetSecretsReview.com. If it's a popular product, that domain probably won't be available, but use your imagination and you can always find a good domain.

Have your domain? Good, now get yourself some web hosting – which costs about $3/month. Okay, now it's time to write a review of the product and put it on your new web page. If you don't have an HTML editor, you can get a free one like CoffeeCup which will be just fine for your needs.

Now here's where the fun comes in. It's time to start promoting your website because nobody is going to come visit your site if you don't start promoting it.

At this point a lot of gurus out there will recommend you start driving traffic via Pay Per Click or other paid advertising methods, but since we're doing this on a very tight budget, I'm going to show you how are going to get traffic to your site for free.

The first thing you're going to do is go out and find three or four forums and register to start posting in those forums. Make sure that the forums allow you to have a link in your signature line. A lot of forums allow this, but some don't so make sure. Once you've registered, start posting in each one everyday. Answer questions that you can and contribute to discussions. Try to be helpful. You won't be doing anything to promote your new website except in your signature line. Don't think this means that you have to spam forums because that's absolutely not true.

The next thing you're going to do is start writing everyday. Everyday you should write 1-3 articles related to the topic your website is on and submit these articles to at least 3 different article directories. Use the about the author section to promote your new website.

Finally, start posting on free classified sites like Craigslist and start promoting your website that way as well. Do this everyday as well.

At first you may find that you're not getting a lot of traffic, but as you keep at this everyday (and the key is do ALL these things EVERY single day) you'll start seeing a snowball effect and you're be making affiliate sales in no time.

Affiliate Marketing - Why Must I Shorten And Cloak My Affiliate Links?

2007-05-06T20:51:00.001-07:00

If you have been doing affiliate marketing for quite some time already, you will realize that most the affiliate links that you will get from the merchant tends to be very long and ugly. If you are going to just use this link directly to promote, it will not look nice and professional. This article will explain why you must shorten and cloak your affiliate links.

There are 2 reasons why you must do this step. The 2 reasons are:

1. Affiliate Links tend to be long and ugly. You will face a problem if you are going to use the original link through the email. The longer links will tend to "break" or "text wrap". Many potential customers will not go through the hassles of cutting and pasting the links themselves if your links isn't immediately clickable within the email.

2. Affiliate URL tends gives themselves away. Many people will not the idea of clicking on a obvious affiliate link as they will feel that there are 3rd party making money off them. There will also be some dishonest affiliates and cheapskates out there who will exchange your affiliate ID with their own affiliate ID. You definitely do not want to lose your commissions.

These are the 2 very big reasons why you must shorten and cloak your affiliate links. The good thing is that you do not need to buy expensive software in order for you to shorten and cloak your affiliate links. You can go to www.tinyurl.com to cloak it. Do always remember to clock your affiliate link before you do any promotion.

8 Criteria That Affiliate Product Have To Meet Before You Promote It (Part 1)

2007-05-01T21:49:00.001-07:00

Before you even want to promote any of the affiliate products, it will be important that you check to make sure that it is an affiliate programs that is worth your time and effort to promote. What will be listed below will be the 8 criteria that the product must meet before you even consider promoting it. The 8 criteria are:

1. Does the affiliate program offer great and quality product? This will be important as you will want to make sure that the product is of certain standard. If you did not choose a quality product and you promote a lousy product to the customer, you will lose your credibility. It will be hard for you to do business if the customers do not trust you.

2. Does the affiliate program provide different affiliate promotional material? You will want to join a affiliate program that will provide you with all the resources that can aid you in your pre-selling of the products. Some of these materials can be banner, articles, classified ads etc that are already prepared to help in your marketing.

3. Does the affiliate program provide some kind of affiliate marketing training? Some of the affiliate program will make the extra effort to train their own affiliates on how to effectively promote the products. This will be good as you will be able to get free training and if you apply it, you will make some money along the way too.

4. Is it easy for you to make a sale? You will want to see whether the whole system is easy for you to make a sale or not. For example, you will definitely want a website that will be able to accept credit card payment.

These are the 1st 4 criteria that the product will have to meet before you even consider promoting it. The rest of the 4 criteria will be on the part 2 of this article. So do go and read it.

Forums for Marketing - The Right Way!

2007-04-30T21:48:00.001-07:00

Forums have great potential for marketing but this potential is blunted by some marketers, abusive use of this medium. You will notice that some threads have been started so that two or more forum members can pretend that they do not know each other (or that they,re not one and the same person, even); these members who are in cahoots with one another will then actively discuss the business and the site as if it were the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Forums can be used for marketing purposes, but there,s a need to prioritize the needs of the members who are in the forum because they wish to share their ideas as well as to get other people,s legitimate advice. These people are not in the forums so that they can be ,taken for a ride,.

The Right to Advertise

To have the right to advertise in forums, you should become a legitimate forum member. This is not accomplished by merely registering for membership. Forum members are only legitimate forum members when they actively participate in the discussion. Their posts must be relevant to the topic being discussed, they should make sense and they should clearly indicate the forum posters, intention to help.

In short, people who have a right to advertise in forums are those who are forum members first before they,re marketers. They are people who relegate their marketing intentions to the background and prioritize their duty to help other forum members. In another way of putting it, these are people who give more to forums than what they take.

The Right Way to Market your site

To help your marketing intentions along, you should join forums whose members you wish to become your customers. After that self-serving move, though, become sincerely involved in the forum community. Be an active forum poster. Try to respond to give your two cents, worth to every issue raised. Give your honest opinions and expert advice.

Sooner or later, people will learn to trust and respect you. They will begin to directly ask you about which products you are selling or services you are offering. These people will begin to look for your website and visit you there. By being willing to help, your credibility is greatly enhanced, and people who are seeking expert advice will flock to you and become your willing audience.

Avoid posting a link to your site or to your product in the body of your post. Only do so by request or if the post clearly warrants it. Do not hire ,pretend forum posters, with whom you will carry on a deeply biased discussion. It would be better all around to restrict your self-serving links to your forum signature (which most forums allow).

Online Business - Managing Your Life When You Work From Home (Part 4 of 10)

2007-04-29T21:51:00.001-07:00

Maintaining a Positive Attitude Is Good For Business

And the end result of managing your time properly should be fostering the right attitude for business. Here are six ways to build a positive attitude.

1. Be Committed

It took me a couple of years to reach the point I'm at now. I could have given up any time before I got here and I had a million different reasons for doing so. But I knew what I wanted and stuck it out. That's the first key to success.

2. Accept Challenges

Being your own boss and owner of your own online business can be scary and a bit intimidating. It takes guts to leave a 9 to 5 job and start your own online empire. It takes guts to have a dream and to go for it. You ultimately determine whether your business succeeds or fail.

3. Be In Control.

Keep your mind focused on important things. Set goals and priorities for what you want to do and accomplish. Develop a strategy for dealing with potential problems—and when those problems surface, feel confident in your ability to handle them. The worst you can do is fail.

4. Don't be too Critical

There is no use criticizing yourself once you've made a mistake. Saying "I should have landed that account or handled that situation differently" is not going to make any difference at all. It's just going to drain you of your energy and discourage you. Simply learn from your mistakes and move on.

5. Practice Makes Perfect

And stop worrying about getting everything right. It's not going to happen. If Time Warner can buy AOL, you can create a website that bleeds cash. Just keep trying.

6. Ask for Help

You want to work for yourself not by yourself. There is nothing wrong with asking for help. Don't think you're incompetent simply because you can't do it all. Professionals hire other professionals to do the job properly. Don't be afraid to bring in a specialist when you need it.

If I have to warn you that there's nothing more important than getting the work/family balance right, then the chances are you're going to learn the hard way. I went into this for the money. But there's no question that the greatest benefit my business has given me is the extra free time I have to spend with my family. I'm sure if I put that time into building more websites or creating more products, I'd make more money.

But there's more to life than money.

Online Business - Managing Your Life When You Work From Home (Part 2 of 10)

2007-04-28T21:47:00.001-07:00

When you have a family as well as a business, time in the office is time away from the family, and it's hard to know when to stop. You can easily find yourself in front of the computer at midnight and all weekend too. Sometimes working from home seems to be a double-edged sword. If you spend too much time with your business and not enough time with your family, the most important relationships in your life can suffer. But if you spend too much time with your family and not enough with your business, the success of your business can be in jeopardy. And, since your business is likely your main source of income, its success can also determine the wellbeing of your family. Tricky.

Fortunately, it doesn't take a superhero to make the work/ family division work. All it takes is some patience, a little savvy scheduling and a lot of willpower. In fact, if you have the time to read the following tips, then you have the time to do them!

Not easy to do, especially when you're just starting. But if something doesn't fit into your schedule and impedes on another activity you've already planned, just say "no." For example, if a client calls at six in the evening and pleads with you to have a teleconference with him at seven, but your son's basketball game starts at the same time, you're allowed to reschedule. Clients actually like to work with people who sound busy.

Latest Tips to SEO Friendly Blogs

2007-04-27T21:44:00.001-07:00

In order to run a successful online business blog, you will have to think about making it more SEO friendly. It will help you to gain more traffic and therefore encourage more sales. So just what exactly is SEO and how can you add it to your blog?

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it is used to make your website rank higher in search engines. You do this by using certain keywords that show your site on search engines such as Google and Yahoo. However, it can be difficult getting your website noticed on the major search engines as they usually prefer your website to have been up for at least a year or two and having it linked to from other websites, is also sometimes needed.

How to Use SEO for Your Blog

If you are looking to use SEO to promote your online home based business blog, you will need to take various factors into consideration. The first is that it is good to use as many keywords as possible to highlight your site, you should never use too many.

If you do use too many keywords, the search engines that you want to help you will actually ignore the site. They do not want you to overstuff your website with SEO content because if you do, it is likely not to be of a good quality. So, you need content in your website that reads well and has a good amount of keywords, but not too many.

The good news about a blog is that you can generally get away with using more keywords than you can in an article. This is because it makes more sense in a blog because it is shorter and it is a summary of whatever it is that you want to say. However, saying that, it would still be a good idea to limit the keywords and ensure that the blog does make sense with them all included. Hence you can improve your, internet business opportunity

Finally, the main thing to keep in mind with SEO and blogs is that you need to make any external links that you may provide relevant to your website. If, for example, you have a website about cars, it would be pointless having a link to site about office furniture. The search engines will pick up on all of the links that you have and they will simply push your website down the list if they notice anything funny about your submission.

SEO in your blog can help you to gain more business, make extra money and it can help you to get higher rankings on various different search engines too.

Basic Guide to Affiliate Marketing

2007-04-26T21:47:00.001-07:00

Basically affiliate marketing is a way to sell products and services, or generate leads for businesses online. Affiliate Programs are driven by Search Engines. Affiliate Marketing works because it allows people to take direct action. Affiliate Marketing works by placing ads on websites for the products and service people are searching for and want to buy. The way you make money as an affiliate is every time someone clicks though and purchases product from a sponsor�s ad placed on your site, you receive a commission.

Make no mistake Affiliate Marketing is Work. This is the number one basic concept to successful affiliate marketing that cannot be stressed enough. The harder you work, the more research into winning strategies you do, the more seminars you attend, the harder you work at being successful Affiliate Marketer the more money you will make.

Affiliate Marketing does require some investment. Affiliate Marketing is a business. The more time and the more money you invest in it the more successful you will be. Diversity is the key to being a successful Affiliate Marketer the more sites, or more programs you have invested in the more you will make.

The key to successful Affiliate Marketing is to drive traffic to your websites so visitors can click through and take the desired action. Successful programs will be those that are set up with tips techniques and tools to help you drive traffic.

Affiliate Marketing Programs make use of the entire internet, that means you do not even need a website to be an Affiliate, you can place affiliate ads on Blogs as well.

The nicest thing about Affiliate Marketing programs is that while they do take work, they actually generate what is known as passive income. Once the hard work is done on getting a particular program up and running besides for �routine maintenance, like having to �restock a vending machine� - Affiliate Marketing Programs can be a �set it and forget it� business model.

Affiliate Marketing - 2 -Tier And Multi-Tier Affiliate Programs

2007-04-25T21:46:00.001-07:00

What do you mean by 2 tier or multi-tier affiliate programs? Those who have a little experience in the affiliate marketing business will know what it means. It generally means that instead of being paid one time for your effort, you will also be paid a second or more if the same customers buy another product from the same merchant. I will explain to you in the following paragraph the details and where to find this kind of affiliate programs.

When you are involved in a 2-tier affiliate programs, your commissions will be from both the direct sales and from 2nd level sub-affiliates. You will only be paid once. For example the customer that you bring to the merchant�s website decided to purchase �A� products, immediately when he click on the order button, a one time offer will be shown to him to give him the option to buy �B� products. If the customer decided to buy both the products, you will be paid commissions on both the products. The thing that you have to take note is that you will only be paid once.

When you are involved in a multi-tier affiliate programs, you will earn commissions similar to the 2-tier affiliate programs, but you will also earn from your sub-affiliate�s affiliate. It is multi-level in nature. What it means simply is as long the affiliate is below you, you will be able to earn commissions. You bring in affiliate A, and A brings in affiliate B and B brings in affiliate C. As long as any of them make a sale you will be able to make commissions even though you did not personally bring in affiliate B and C.

The 1st website that you will be able to find this kind of affiliate programs is www.2-Tier.com. You will be able to find different kinds of 2-tier affiliate programs in different niches. The 2nd website will be www.MultiTierAffiliatePrograms.com. You will be able to find a list of multi-tier affiliate programs that you will be able to join.

I hope this article will gives you a better understand of what is the difference 2-tier affiliate programs and multi-tier affiliate programs. This will ensure that you will make the right decision in choosing the affiliate programs that suits you and your niche.

Ecommerce Web Site - Creating an Ecommerce Web Site

2007-04-24T21:53:00.001-07:00

If you wish to sell your products then you need an ecommerce website. This is the cheapest solution to having an online business. It works like a regular store but there are no problems and costs that usually go with setting up shop. The main difference between a regular website and an ecommerce website is that the latter is designed to perform only one function - sell.

Selecting the right web hosting service provider is also crucial because an ecommerce website means exchange of private financial data that must be kept secured. If the website is not secured then no one is going to buy anything from it. This means that the web server hosting your website needs to offer SSL encryption; this is the current standard of web security and must be prominently displayed on the website front.

Uptime is a major concern for ecommerce websites. This means that your website should never ever be inaccessible to anyone in the world. You must choose a hosting service provider that offers at least a 99% uptime guarantee.

In case the service provider does not include things like shopping cart and payment processing then you will need to plug them in yourself. This means that the host has to provide you with your own CGI-BIN folder. This is a folder on web servers where websites, by default, look for programs that are not built into the server. Shopping cart and payment processing are just two modules that will go into the CGI-BIN folder.

Keep the shopping cart and payment processing simple, efficient, fast, and easy to follow.

4 Surefire SEO Tips for Blogs

2007-04-23T21:59:00.000-07:00

Bloggers today are finding that they can not only write and publish their thoughts for free, but also can find themselves getting compensated for writing. This is because one of the techniques in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to create content that is rich in keywords, which is basically what search engines look for in ranking web pages in its search engine results pages (SERP) .

Here are some 4 surefire ways to make your next blog an effective SEO tool.

1. Choose a Theme (and Stick to It)

Most blogs never gain a real readership because it simply is a mishmash of a writer's thoughts, with very little coherent theme to bind the entire blog together. If the blogger does it for the sheer purpose of a journal, there's really nothing wrong with that.

However, as an SEO, a blog has to have a theme that will tie all the posts (individual articles) together. This is because instead of just looking for keywords, a search engine will also assess whether the page just happens to have a lot of keywords mentioned in the post or whether the entire blog is about the topic it is searching for. The former will rank less than the former in the SERPs. Given this point, it will do you well to pick a theme that you are interest and won't tire of writing about.

2. A Place You Can Call Home

Working alongside the idea of a theme, When creating your blog (whether with your own domain name or an a free blog site), give it a URL that has words related to the theme. For example, if you are going to blog about bonsai making, try to use words that are related to that in your blog's URL (such as www.bonsaienthusiast.com). Name your blog using words that are relevant to your theme as well. Search engines look at these things as well to determine how high your blog could possibly rank.

If you are blogging on a hosting site, it is possible to have your blog delegated into a proper category. This will help make a search engine easier to find your blog given that the category is strongly related to themes and search keywords.

On a related note, your individual posts should also be titled with words that are closely related to your theme. Again, working on a blog with a bonsai theme, one post could be titled "Miniature Trees: How to Get Started" while another one could be "Selecting the Right Pot for a Bonsai". This will give your posts a URL that is rich in keywords, which helps in a page's ranking on SERPS (but you already know that, right?).

3. Link And it Shall Be Linked Unto You

Another thing about blogs that SEO experts are finding to become a great advantage is the fact that blogs make it easy to link to other blogs, which in turn makes it easy for other blogs to link to you.

This is yet another criterion a search engine uses to rank a particular page in the results pages. The more incoming links it possess about the keyword in search will increase ranking status because the page shows that a lot of people think what you've written is a good source of information.

So when writing on your blog, be sure to take the time to read other people's blogs and other online articles related to your theme. Create links to them so that you point your readers to more information. This will increase the chances of other people creating links that will point to your blog.

4. Keep it Coming

Since blog content is so easy to create, search engines scour blog sites very regularly. That means if you keep on creating new content on a regular basis, search engines will have to keep up with what's new on your blog.

By regularly creating fresh content on your blog, search engines will tend to look to your blog first before others that are not maintained and renewed as regularly as you do. It helps in the rankings as well, which is the whole point of this article, right?

These tips are just to get started on using a blog for SEO. As you go along, you'll find more tricks of the trade that will help you push you up the ranks on SERPs. Of course realistically, don't expect to rank on the top 3 pages on your first try. But give it a few weeks. And for as long as you keep to the tried and true principles, it may not be that far until you've captured a good ranking for your blog.

Page Ranks and SEO for Beginners

2007-04-22T21:46:00.001-07:00

Getting a high Google rating - a good page rank number - is a critical part of bringing in free search traffic.

What is a page rank?

A page rank is Google's way of expressing the value and popularity of your page. Each page has a page ranking. It's not a site ranking, per se, although your site rank is usually considered the page rank of the top page.

The basic definition of page rank assumes that zero is low, and 10 is the highest possible rank. 5 is a decent page rank for any site. 7 and 8 are extremely popular sites. Google is one of the few at 10.

Search traffic is traffic resulting from someone entering search words into Google, and Google giving them a list of URLs which includes yours. And ideally, you want your site's URL on one of Google's first few result pages.

How do you know what your rating is?

It's easy to measure the page rank of your own site or any other site, if you install the free Google Bar. Go to Google and click on "more". One of the options is Google Tool Bar. Then just follow the installation instructions.

When you have your Google tool bar, you'll see a small white rectangle in that tool bar that is a bar graph. It shows the page rank of the site you're looking at. If it's all white, then that site has a rank of zero. If it's gray, then it's unranked. If it has a page rank above zero, you'll see a red bar extending across the rectangle in proportion to the page rank.

What does it mean to have a page rank?

A good page rank means that other popular websites link to you, and vote for your importance. (By linking, they are automatically voting for your importance.) And the value of their vote is determined by how well they are ranked. So you want a lot of popular sites to link to you.

Page rank is a complex calculation made by Google, based on the links that go to your site - and the sites that you link to from your site.

Some SEO experts say that when you link to other sites from your site, it is important to link only to high ranked sites - that is, a page rank of 5 or higher. It is believed by the Internet gurus that by linking to low page rank sites, Google thinks you're linking to a low value site.

How important is it to have a good page rank?

It's extremely important if you want search traffic. There's an entire industry called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, which is concerned entirely with optimizing the traffic to your site. Page rank is an important part of that. If you've got the budget, it would make good sense to research and hire an SEO consultant. If you don't have the budget, you can do it yourself.

If you're going to do this yourself, here are the steps:

1. Optimize your own site. That includes having a site map, having metadata done appropriately on each page (metadata includes key words and description), and optimizing the use of keywords on the page content. It also includes a regular schedule for new content on the site. For details on these features, check out Website-DoItYourself.

2. Email popular sites, and ask them to link to you. You can offer something in exchange, for instance a free ad or a link exchange. Use a link exchange if your site is compatible with their site, but not a competitor.

3. Entering your site into every search engine on the planet, even though possibly 4 of them cover most of the search traffic. These specialized search engines that no one has ever heard of, often have very good page rank. If they link to you, that's a win for your site.

There's more at Website-DoItYourself. But these steps will get you going, and start bringing more traffic - and a better page rank - to your site.

Nine Important Steps to an Effective Online Marketing Program

2007-04-21T21:50:00.001-07:00

1. Determine your goals for your website. How will you drive traffic to your website? Plan for this up front, while developing your website. If search engines are important to you, then proceed to step 2.

2. Allocate a budget to online marketing and search engines. It's as important as what you spend for designing and hosting your website. The budget you set will instruct these further steps you should take:

3. Optimize your website during design to perform well in search engines. Make sure it contains the correct density of keywords important in searches.

4. Make a commitment to keep your content fresh. Augment content as frequently as practicable, because search engines reward rich content.

5. Devote resources (your time or the money to hire others) to actively work on search engine placement. Monitor your ranking weekly or monthly in the major search engines for key search terms; this can be done manually or you can utilize automated software to produce a monthly or weekly ranking report. Even if you plan to focus on free "organic" rankings, plan to set up Pay-Per-Click accounts at Google and Yahoo. All companies that want traffic from search engines should consider PPC a basic cost, as essential as paying your monthly hosting bill. The budget can be as little as $20 a month … or much more, depending upon how aggressive you want to be.

6. Promote links to your website from your trading partners, in directories, through reciprocal links and discrete paid placements. "Link popularity" is highly important to search engine rankings. Monitor who links to you, and also who links to your competitors. Get as many links coming into your website as possible. Use viral marketing strategies, like posts or links from forums, bulletin boards, social websites like myspace and more.

7. Install a good statistics package. And review it frequently so you know what is happening with your website. Statistics will tell you if you are successful in getting people to your website. If you are having success in traffic but realizing few sales, that means you need to work on your "conversion" of website visitors by improving your products or improving the functionality and usability of your website..

8. Periodically measure progress in ranking and make adjustments to keywords and content as part of a regular maintenance program - at least monthly.

9. Submit your site URL to as many free sites as possible. Self-promote yourself by writing articles, placing ads on bulletin boards, e-zines, group sites etc.

DIY SEO vs. Hiring A Professional

2007-04-20T21:47:00.001-07:00

Simply put, Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of maximizing the traffic an internet web site receives from visitors. SEO technique is a multi-faceted process that takes time and effort to master with elements that include researching key terms and phrases, working to create a site that is search engine friendly, and spreading the site's message via link building and marketing.

SEO can be undertaken individually or by hiring a SEO professional or team of professionals. Some of the requirements of a SEO optimized site are creating unique content, linking with an online community of similar sites, creating a site that encourages linking, and maximizing monetary returns. There have been recent changes to how search engines rank pages and how they identify spam, so an up to date knowledge of how search engines work is necessary for successful SEO. The older techniques generally involved flooding the search engines with thousands of keyword optimized web pages. Today, the trend is to focus on higher quality information and judicious use of keywords.

There is no doubt that SEO techniques can be adequately practiced by the novice web master. There is also no doubt that an SEO professional can offer significant advantages SEO development. It is best to weigh both options against organizational goals in order to determine which option best suits developing needs. A SEO professional can offer years of SEO experience with knowledge of the latest techniques and search engine functions. A professional can generally offer industry contacts that have developed from years of networking that may greatly impact the success of your project. A professional can also offer their extensive knowledge about link building and can quickly resolve any problems that occur along the way. A professional can also complete the process significantly faster than a do-it-yourselfer.

A professional has much to offer the SEO process. However, there are advantages to doing it yourself also. The primary advantage of doing it yourself is that the site owner will retain complete control over the process. There is also the advantage of gaining profitable experience from doing it yourself as well as saving precious financial resources. Additionally, some individuals prefer to guide their own success (or failure) by doing it themselves. Anyone who does decide to manage their own SEO process should bear in mind that SEO professionals do offer consulting services to the do it yourselfer.

Raise 100 Positions by Cleaning Up These SEO Techniques

2007-04-19T20:53:00.001-07:00

Delete texts in alt tag

This is a true story happened to a SEO friend of mine. What he did was right in early SEO practice, however time has been changed. Google has changed its rules and some SEO techniques have to be updated. The alt tag of the first image of a website should be your most desire keyword phrase. That's right. Let's say the alt text is 'online bookstore'. My SEO friend put 'online bookstore buying' as the alt text in the second picture and 'bookstore for sale' as the third alt text...etc. That's not right. Every individual term should only appear once in your alt text, anything more than that would only harm you. The sad thing is that you wouldn't even notice it even though it is hurting you because you would not be banned overnight. Your ranking in some of your strong keywords with a lot of anchored links would not even have any changes. Guess what happen after I told my SEO friend to delete the repeated keywords which means if 'bookstore' is in the first alt tag, the other alt tags should not have 'bookstore'. 2 days later after Google cached the changed page, one keyword phrase raise form 180 to 75, another main keyword phrase raise from 33 to 10, and another main keyword phrase raise from 8 to 4. The other 3 strong keywords with a lot of anchored links remains the same, number 1. And that's not all. I bet there are so much different in the ranking of other keyword phrases too, but I have only checked 6 of them by hand in Google since Google doesn't like auto detection.

Don't optimize every page

Another SEO strategy is that: don't optimize every page! The main page and the sub-pages sometimes share very similar keywords. Take the bookstore as example. If the keyword phrase 'online bookstore' appears in your main page, your sub-pages would probably have the same term 'online bookstore' written. And you usually encourage other websites to link to your main page not your sub-pages. And you must be thinking Google would rank for your main page in the keyword phrase 'online bookstore' because you have a lot of links to this main page. However, you don't know what Google is thinking. This sub-page which has no inbound links rank in this phrase instead of your main page. This situation doesn't always happen, it is indeed rare. However, still it happens. You might be thinking 'I don't care, as long as it ranks.' What would really happen is your sub-page would rank very low because of lack of inbound links. So, the current ranking sub-page has to be de-SEO. After undo the SEO of the sub-page, such as bold text keyword phrase…etc, the main page is ranked for the targeted keyword phrase instead of the sub-page. And because the main page has many inbound link, it ranks much higher than the sub-page. As I remember, it jumped about 60 positions. Only optimize the sub-pages if you are getting links for these sub-pages. So once Google choose your sub-page to rank it would rank high.

Another reminder is that 'don't be afraid the lack of keyword density, only beware of too much keyword density.' I have seen a page only have its keyword phrase mentioned once and ranks number one in a very competitive term. Who? That's Wikipedia. After all, the quality of the content and the quality of links are the most considerable factors.

Taking Article Marketing (And Your Income) To The Extreme

2007-04-12T06:22:00.001-07:00

In one of my articles, I talked about the compounding power of article marketing.

One article posted in the article directories could bring you hundreds of visitors to your website for life. Two articles doubles your traffic instantly. Fifty articles....you get the idea.

I have been busily posting articles for the last few months. From my observations, the results are quite stunning. By posting 10 articles, you will get an average of 1000 people viewing your articles per month. So how do you get 1000 people to view your articles every day? You must have 300 articles circulating around. Is it difficult to churn out 300 articles? Not really. Just dedicate yourself to writing 5 articles every day, and in two months, you will have your 300 articles. This means 1000 potential visitors to your website every day.

It's not hard to write 5 articles every day. I take an average of 15 minutes to write one article. It's like anything else, the more you do it, the better you get. Soon, you'll be writing with your eyes closed (ok I exaggerate, but you get my point)

You can do this article marketing method in many ways. But the best way I find is to direct your visitors to a page offering a free incentive, such as a free report or a newsletter subscription. If you try to sell something, you conversion rates may be far lower. Once you collect email addresses, you can market to them for life if they subscribed and like your content. As you can see, the only way this can go is up. Your articles will remain in the directories forever, and you'll get more and more subscribers every day. Expect at least 50 subscribers a day from your 300 articles.

Blogging Outsourcing - New Web.2.0 Opportunity

2007-04-10T20:24:00.001-07:00

For the IT tasks an outsourcing company may need to use some specific software or hardware, while a blogger only needs a computer and a connection to the Internet. Of course, not only a computer. A good blogger must have good brains and surely appropriate experience. It is good to hire a journalist for the blogging outsourcing, however it is advisable to employ someone, who is familiar with blogs, and has some experience in writing or at least reading blogs. The employer is to develop a definite plan for the type of content, which needs to be present in the blog and think of how often the blog is to be updated.

Before starting his work, a blogger must get acquainted with your business and understand the specific nature of your organization. It would be wise to supply an outsourced blogger with leaflets, advertisements and the Internet pages of your company before he actually starts working. It is important to remember that blogging outsourcing, just like usual deals with immediacy and a conversational tone. . It's important that the blogger you hire understands this fact and is able to work at different time of the day.

Blogging outsourcing is a field, which is to be controlled by the outsourcer in order to prevent the possible misunderstanding. You may hire a perfect blogger; however it is still necessary to watch that he doesn't write about the things you don't want him to. There is a way to take care of it, unless the articles in the blogs have to appear instantly. The blogger can send his works to the employer prior to publishing them on the web.

The essence of blogging outsourcing lies in the communication. The feedback received from customers after is a really important factor in customer-and-business relationships. The bloggers reach their goals, when the right people get the right information at the right time. It also happens when the whole business considers the blog a reliable source of information. Blogging outsourcing does help to find out what clients think of what the business executives say and do. It is vital to have your blogger for receiving instant feedback from clients, because any serious company does spend a great amount of time and money on company insiders and analysts.

Blogging Secrets #53 - Make $100 Daily with Bum Marketing For Bloggers

2007-04-09T14:59:00.001-07:00

The Bum Marketing method was discovered by Travis Sogo. His method involves looking for low competition keywords and creating articles optimized for those keywords to make money from affiliate products.

In this article I will show you how you can use some of the bum marketing strategies to drive traffic to your blog. I've tested all this strategies and I am currently making about $100 to $200 daily using this method.

Why Using Squidoo Lenses Is Important for your blog Squidoo was developed by Seth Godin and is a very popular site with the search engines. Squidoo is currently under utilized by Internet Marketers. This means there are a lot of opportunities which you can take advantage before the mass of internet marketers come running to squidoo to make money from it. The fist thing you need to do is some keyword research.

Get the low competition keywords from your keyword research tool. Get at least 500 keywords for you blog. Create a lens for each keyword. Add you blog url and rss feed of your site to the lens. Once you have completed, publish these lenses.

Unlike a blog, search engine robots don't come running to index them. You'll need to submit the lenses to Google and Yahoo manually. There is a RSS feed on each of the lens, use the rss feed and submit to all of the RSS directories online.

Within a week your lenses will rank higher for the keywords and bring in your highly targeted traffic to your blog.

Why Create a $7 Ebook to generate Traffic to Your Blog? Another Bum marketing method is to create a $7 dollar product and give 100% affiliate commission to the affiliates that are promoting the product. This method was first discovered by Jonathan Leger in his famous $7 Dollar Secrets ebook. You need to capture the visitors with an opt-in list. While you are not making money from the front end you make money from the list you generated. Every once a while you can send the list with the latest updates on your site. After sending the email you just sit and watch the traffic increase on your blog.

Don't Bum All The Time and Use Wordpress I always suggest downloading and installing wordpress as a blogging platform. Wordpress is the most flexible and famous blogging platform online. The reason I suggest this is because you can have your very own domain name which must be keyword targeted and you can optimized the wordpress blog for SEO. An optimized blog always rank higher then normal blogs.

How to Get Optimal Results with Article Marketing Staying true to bum marketing method, you need to research low competition keywords and write articles which are optimized with these keywords. Write about 5 articles daily and you will have loads of traffic to your blog. Remember you need to optimize you articles with the keywords. A 2.5 % to 4% keyword density is just perfect for search engines. Look also for long tail keywords as they rake it more targeted visitors compare to the rest.

Using the techniques will increase your blog traffic and bring you more income as a result. Read our complete 100 Blogging Secrets to learn more secrets on how to drive more traffic to your blog.

Affiliate Tracking Software, Which One

2007-03-22T12:18:00.001-07:00

To make money, many online business owners are making the decision to create their own affiliate program. An affiliate program connects business owners with website publishers, who are often referred to as affiliates. With an affiliate program, an affiliate is compensated each time they use their website to generate a sale for their affiliate partner, the business in question. This partnership has helped to increase the revenue of many businesses and it can do the same for your business.

If you are interested in starting your own affiliate program, there is something important that you will need to obtain. That item is affiliate tracking software. Affiliate tracking software is used to monitor and keep track of businesses affiliates, whether there is only one participating affiliate or thousands of them. The information that a tracking software program will record outlines how each customer made its way to your website. If they were directed to your online store or website and made a purchase via one of your affiliates, the tracking software will make note of that sale, including the amount of it. This information is vital when it comes to time to pay your affiliates all of the money they have earned.

If you have decided that an affiliate program is right for you and your business, you will have to start searching for a software program. There are a number of different search methods that you can use. All of these methods should provide you with a number of results. However, for the best results, you are encouraged to try a combination of these methods. These popular search methods include, standard internet searching, online affiliate resource guides, and recommendations from other business owners.

A standard internet search is, perhaps, the best way to find affiliate tracking software. This is because almost all of the individuals and companies selling this software have an online website. Those online websites will come up in most standard internet searches, performed with the words affiliate tracking software. When examining these websites, you are not only urged to examine the price of the software, but also the features that it has. This is extremely important; you do not want to pay a large amount of money for a software program that you cannot use.

In addition to performing a standard internet search, you can also obtain information on affiliate tracking software by finding an online website or resource guide that is designed to assist business owners, like yourself. These resource guides often give you inside information on the world of affiliate marketing. In addition to valuable tips and helpful information, many of these online websites and resource guides give detailed information, including product reviews, on a number of different affiliate tracking software programs. By examining these reviews, you should be able to find a number of software programs.

It may also be a good idea to seek software recommendations for other business owners, especially ones that run their own affiliate program. Not all, but a number of these business owners would be more than willing to assist you anyway that they can. Obtaining feedback is important because many business owners may not only be able to provide you with positive feedback, but negative feedback as well. If you do not feel comfortable outright asking another business owner for help, you can find that help online. Similar to the above mentioned online resource guides, there are also online message boards designed for business owners participating in affiliate programs. By finding and visiting these message boards, you should be able to learn about numerous affiliate tracking software programs.

As previously mentioned, it is recommended that you use a number of the above mentioned search methods. The more research you do, to find an affiliate tracking software, the more results you will be presented with. A large number of results is helpful when looking for the affiliate tracking software program that best fits your needs.

4 Ways To Generate Quality Web Content

2007-03-21T14:17:00.001-07:00

In order for you to run successful web sites for your affiliate programs, you will have to start by finding or creating quality content. Articles about products offered on your web site, product descriptions, testimonials, and informative articles that demonstrate the uses and features of the products will be read by those who visit your site. Customers who feel they are spending their time wisely by browsing your site, will most likely make a purchase.

But how do you generate this great content? The good news is that you do not have to be a good writer; you just have to upload clear, concise writing that most people will understand. Below are four ways to generate content that will result in more sales.

1. Understand your product. If you understand your product, you will be able to write about its benefits and features. Writing an article will require you to write in a conversational tone that draws customers to the product and makes them want to know more about it. In order to save space, you do not have to place the entire article on one page. Entice the customer with a paragraph or two and then include a link to the rest of the article. This will allow the customer to browse your web site to see other products that are available.

2. Solicit customer testimonials. Once you have built an email list, you can send out an email requesting consumer input. Even if you only get two or three useable testimonials, this will be enough to help promote the products on your web site and increase sales. You will find that customers are usually pretty cooperative when it comes to giving their opinions about products they have purchased or the customer service they received.

3. Know your limits. If you do not feel comfortable writing your own content, you can hire a freelance writer, use free content that is available through article databases, or use materials that are provided by the affiliate programs you belong to. You can also learn to write web content by looking at other web sites to see what you like and what you don't.

4. Recycle your content. You should update your web content every few weeks, which means you will have a lot of old content after awhile. You can archive this content to make it available to customers if they want to read it, or you can take the content apart and rework it into an ebook or newsletters. You will only be able to do this with content that you own, however. Content that you wrote or paid for by hiring a freelance writer is content that you can use as you like.

Good content on your web site will help you make money online. It is important to not only educate your customers, but also give them enough information so they will feel comfortable when making important buying decision. Providing quality content is also the sign of good customer service and shows a higher level of professionalism for you and your business.

Can Blogging Make You Rich?

2007-03-20T10:23:00.001-07:00

Numerous people began blogs after hearing of others who are getting rich as a professional blogger. Many others question if becoming a rich blogger is actually possible or just a dream. That depends mostly on your definition of rich and how much effort your willing to put into blogging.

The modern web log, or blog, has evolved from the online diary kept by a few people to where it is today. While personal sites remain, many are topic specific with text, graphics, photos and links to other sites. Depending on the popularity of a given site, some companies are finding that placing advertising relating to the theme of the blog can target an audience displaying an interest in the subject.

There are also a few outlets which place random ads on your blog for you, and you get paid a referral fee, or sales commission depending on the company, for each sale that originates from your site. While the commission structure is usually not overly high, with several ads placed on your blog site, the commissions from several different ads can add up.

Affiliate programs are another good way to gain income from your site. By signing up with affiliate programs you can place ads of your choosing for companies of your choosing and receive a sales commission for referral sales. By combining several streams of income from your blog site, it is possible to earn enough of an income to make blogging your full time job.

Your Guide to Making Money from Any Website

2007-03-19T08:40:00.001-07:00

Have you got a website that you cannot find in the search engines? or Have you got a website that nobody ever visits? or Can you find your website name in search engines but you cannot search on your product or service?

You need help. I would like to shed some light on some very simple ways to increase your website hits, increase your quality of website visitors and turn your website into a cash cow without much effort. In fact what I propose should take no more than 15 minutes (absolute maximum) a day on average. The financial returns will come to you 24 hours a day when you follow this simple procedure.

Here are my Top 10 ways to increase your business revenue without breaking the bank and wasting precious time:

1. Optimize your website. Simply put this means adding keywords and phrases to your site that the main search engines can hook into. This is really easy to do.

2. Submit your website to all the mainstream search engines. Now this is not as scary as you may think. Doing it manually is downright crazy so we recommend using a search engine submission service that you will be able to submit to over 1000 search engines at a click of a button. The added bonus is you don't have to download and install software, you can do it all from the web.

3. Write articles. Brush up on your writing skills and share your website, your business and knowledge with others. Submitting your site via informative and helpful articles will increase your visability in search engines and in turn increase your business. Instead of submitting your articles to just one article site we recommend you use a submission service. This type of service also gets you out into the search engines and onto other sites really quickly and for minimal cost in time and money.

4. Join a mailing list. Mailing lists are dead easy to use and you don't have the risk of spamming people and getting yourself into trouble. A good mailing list has people who want your emails so you don't have to fear that you are annoying people. It should be completely free, no catches, no subscribing, no software to install - just pure free access to a terrific mailing list.

5. Get paid to have advertising on your website. It seems like a really difficult thing to do but now you can utilise programs to have advertising on your website. They give you the code to easily pop into your site and everytime somebody clicks on it you get paid. Best of all it costs you nothing to set up and you get paid every month.

6. Advertise in classifieds for free. There are bucket loads of classified sites out there but many are not much chop. We have spent 12 months trialing free classified sites to see which ones gave us the best value. The other thing we looked at was what sites listed our classifieds into search engines - really important.

7. Create business cards that promote your website. Printing business cards these days is surprisingly cheap and we have found one company that will provide you with free business cards.

8. Create a blog. Creating a blog is free. After you have created your blog you can promote the link through your website, include it in all your article, add it to your emails and more. What is even better you can earn advertising dollars through Adsense from your blog site and get your blog and website listed in search engines for free.

9. Join an affiliate program. This is particulary good if you have a website that customers can purchase directly from. What an affiliate program does is encourages other people to promote your business on your behalf increasing your exposure globally. They are really cheap to set up and utilise when compared with other marketing options.

10. This is a very simple tip and very obvious - add your website link to every single email you send out. Remember every email you send is an opportunity for promoting your business. Your email software will have an option to add a signature to the bottom of every email you send so you don't have to type it every time.

SEO and Meta Tags - That's Sooo 1999

2007-03-18T10:08:00.001-07:00

Jill Whalen of High Rankings® is an internationally recognized search engine optimization consultant and has this to say about META tags: "Changing or adding Meta tags on your site is neither a quick fix nor a slow fix. It won't fix anything and it won't have any effect on your search engine ranking."

It's true in 2007 that Google doesn't rely on Meta tags to boost your search engine rankings, but other search engines will use them as a starting point in categorizing, but not ranking, your site. That doesn't mean you should ignore Meta tags altogether when thinking about SEO, though. The keywords and phrases you use in your Meta description tag don't affect your page's ranking in the search engines but this tag can still come in handy in your overall SEO campaigns.

Each search result listed in Google gives the page title as a link to the site, the site description, and the site URL.

The description given with a search engine result is what humans read that lets them know what the web page is about and attempts to convince them to visit the web site.

If you haven't put a Meta description tag into your web page, the search engines will supply their own description. It would be a better idea to provide a description that will catch the reader's eye and do your best to covince them to visit your site.

To determine what description is coded into your web site, or your competition's web site, see my video How to View Source Code.

Increase your Website Visibility - Simple, Effective SEO and Search Engine Marketing

2007-03-17T10:44:00.001-07:00

Why You Need a Website

Even if you're not planning on selling online, a well-crafted site is essential for any business. Why?

Potential employees, Business partners and investors can find your business.

Now everyone search for information online prior to making a purchase

Your website is the first chance to give a good impression.

10 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Website

1. Your Business is Open to the World 24/7, 365 Days a Year

2. It's Your Online Brochure / Catalog That Can Be Changed at Anytime

3. Reach New Markets with a Global Audience

4. Improved Customer Service

5. Present a Professional Image

6. Sell Your Products

7. Promote Your Services

8. Gather Information and Generate Valuable Leads

9. Great way of communication

10. Great Recruiting Tool

OK, I know why I need a website. Where do I go from here?

I don't know how do build a website. My Uncle daughter knows Computers. She is so good at it. Always in front of the computer. Can I have her build the Website for my Business? No… why?

Your website speaks volumes about your business. It should says, "Hey, look, we take our business so seriously that we have created this wonderful site for our customers!"

Your website shouldn't say "Hey, look, I let my 15-year-old uncle's daughter design my site. Good luck finding anything!"

Find a Professional web design company you can understand your goals
How do I find a designer?

Search online, Yellow Pages, Directories online, Magazines, Newspapers

Remember a good website. Call them and find out who did their website.

Should I hire a local company?

What should I ask a potential designer?

What is the process? Initial meeting to understand your goals?

See examples, portfolio.

What is the cost and why?

Can they register Domain name and host the website

A good design company should give you suggestions based on your goals

Is the company specialized is anything specific or full service company.

Will they provide images?

Ownership. Find out if you can transfer the website if you are not happy

Visibility of the website in search engines

How long has the company been in business

Deadline for completing the site

How will a potential client find my site?

Search engine optimization

Pay per Click

Site submission

Building search engine and user friendly website

Online and offline marketing

Build a website you will be rich - myth?

A website is just like your printed material or business card

Promote your website online and offline

Talk about your website, include web address in all printed materials

Use website in your email signature

Advertise your website

6 Non Profit Internet Marketing Strategies

2007-03-16T13:15:00.001-07:00

Here are the top ways to build a relationship with your donors.

Attraction

Most non profit foundations run their relationship model on the foundation of a powerful relationship being trust. The issue with allowing trust to become your first variable in relationship building is that trust is usually not the first attribute that begins a relationship. The inception of any relationship is attraction. We don't walk up to people and ask, "Hey, can I trust you? Great! Let's go out sometime". If your website is outdated or not optimized for search engines you are instantly loosing hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations. More important, even if you have killer designs, with beautiful graphics, have you ever considered the location of your donation button? The location of your donation graphic, type of graphic you are using and link position is the single most important update you should be concerned with right now. If your non profit website is not attractive to your potential donor, you just lost an incredibly valuable opportunity.

you must have a modern day design in 2007. Don't expect a static website with outdated information to convert for you anymore.

Trust

Building trust online is one of the most studied and tested physiological methods of non profit internet marketing. Most people want to place the responsibility for trust in a relationship on someone else. They base their trust on how someone acts towards them. But, we've discovered that trust in a relationship doesn't start with your visitors; it starts with your foundation and how willing you are to open up and allow your visitors in.

Make sure you have your Guidestar and Verisign banners on your website.

Commitment

Is your foundation committed to providing regularly updated content? Remember my notes about the difference between a partnership and relationship environment? Partnership environment visitors look for one of three things on a website: entertainment, products or information. Non profits have content. We have information. We have to use that opportunity of providing information to tell a story so compelling that the visitor donates and enters our marketing funnel. Even if you do have a support group environment such as chat rooms, message boards and blogs, the initial visit is for current, up to date knowledge. Think about it for a second. If you are a non profit for cancer research, you are 1 of about 93,000,000 web pages (according to Google) competing for the same information. There is a good chance that you don't have any added information that another website provides unless you have up to date news posted on your website often.

Make sure to add news articles directly on home page.

Gratitude

The strongest relationship building technique your non profit foundation can have is to leverage your affiliates to give back to your donors.

Here is an example: Establish a small affiliate group that has allowed you to offer discounts to your members, keep them on reserve with out promoting it on your website. Don't allow any of your visitors to see you are partnered with them.

Send your donors an email with an affiliate discount code or link to say thank you after they donate. I like to wait a couple of days, but I know some non profit internet marketers that send it immediately after the donation is complete.

Chemistry

Chemistry is the elusive quality that will separate your donor from being a one time donor to being your best friend. The problem with physical chemistry and online chemistry is that the connection, that magical "a-ha" feeling is not as easily absorbed.

There is a powerful secret to leap frog this connection: Donor Testimonials.

Each donor has a story, and most are dying to share it with the world. They want to make a difference that is why they are on your website right now! Give an option for your donors to express their story, their gratitude or their experience with your mission and your foundation. If they permit, have a donor testimonial link directly in your navigation bar and have it lead to your donor testimonials. This is NOT the same as having a blog. These are specific emotional stories. You will be amazed at what kind of positive donor response, viral traffic and loyalty you get from your audience. It will immediately create an emotion and a response from your visitors.

This is a huge, huge money maker and will almost instantly connect your visitor to your foundation.

Responsibility

Successful relationships are based on both parties taking responsibility. As a non profit foundation, it is your internet marketing responsibility to let your donors know where your non profit foundation stands financially. This is not the same as linking to the BBC or Guidestar, and this could be the MOST POWERFUL TECHNIQUE YOU WILL LEARN TODAY.

Once a month send a separate email, outside of your newsletter, and let your donors know how much you raised that month. Thank them again for being a part of that successful month. You can even put a graph or data directly on your website, but I prefer to email it so I can become more personal and have the added option to have direct communication with that donor. You may think this would have a negative impact. Absolutely not! This incorporates the strongest elements in relationship building in one process.

How to Create Your First Blog

2007-03-14T19:25:00.001-07:00

I've been blogging now for about 2 years, and I'm amazed at the amount of traffic that I get from my blog and the number of people who tell me that they first heard about me from my blog instead of my website. The word blog is derived from the term "web log", or an online diary or journal. If the HBO series "Sex and the City" were being filmed today, Carrie Bradshaw would be a blogger as well as a columnist, I think. Why? As she experiences her revelations about life, love, and relationships, she could post them to her blog for the world to see and comment upon.

Blogging has opened website creation to almost everyone, as it takes very little know-how to get a blog up and running. In fact, many service business owners are using a blog platform as their primary website, with some of them creating static pages as you would find on a traditional website, while others are using the platform as a blog and are posting updates regularly.

There are several advantages to using blogs instead of ezines or traditional websites:

1. Search engines love blogs. The strategy that seems to be attractive to search engines today is regularly updated content. I can log-in to my blog at the beginning of a day and submit a post. Within 24 hours I'll get a notification from my Google alerts account that Google has indexed that post.

2. Content can be distributed quickly. If you instruct your visitors to subscribe to your blog via updating services like Bloglines or Feedblitz, they'll be notified within hours of any new posts on your blog.

3. Little web programming knowledge is required. Once your blog is set up, it's simply a matter of logging into your account, typing the info for you post, adding graphics or photos as needed, and publishing your post to your blog.

4. Reader feedback. Your readers can give you comments and feedback about your posts almost immediately after you log an entry. Blogs are a great way to engage your audience.

Are ezines and traditional websites dead? No, because people consume information differently. Some are auditory learners and prefer to hear the info (great audience for podcasting, an audio form of blogging), some prefer to receive updates as they are published (blog readers), while others like a stable, stationary medium to which they can refer when they're ready (readers who archive ezines or bookmark web pages).

How do you begin to blog? Here are 10 simple steps you can follow:

1. Blogging platform. The easiest way to get started is to use the free service found at Blogger.com or Wordpress.com. The ability to customize your blog is limited with the free services, so I urge my clients to subscribe to Typepad.com, which will host your blog for you on their servers, or purchase a hosting account where WordPress can be installed. The downloadable version of WordPress is located at Wordpress.org and is free of charge if you need to install Wordpress yourself on your hosting account. I use Typepad for my blog, so many of my examples will relate exclusively to blogs hosted on that platform.

2. Name. What do you want to call your blog? Blog names tend to be attention-getting and off-beat. However, for service businesses, I encourage my clients to use keywords important to their business when naming their blog. You will also want to acquire the .com version of your blog's name or your blog's name with the word "blog" attach as your blog URL. After you have set up your blog, your blog provider can give you more info about how to map your domain to your blog. (Note: You don't want to simply forward your blog to your domain name, as that impacts the URLs of your individual blog pages).

3. Look and Layout. How many columns do you want to display? Do you want links to static pages? What colors do you want to use? How about a signup box for a free giveaway? Should you use one of the templates provided or have something custom designed? Do you want your blog archives displayed? Do you want to be the only author or do you want to permit others to make posts, as well? There are many questions you'll be asked in the startup phase about the look of your blog. A Typepad blog permits you to change your mind about your layout at a later date. The best way to determine the look of your blog is to look at the layout of other blogs and determine what appeals to you.

4. Widgets. There are a number of widgets, or add-on programs, that you can incorporate into your blog. Check your blog software's site for more info about what features you'd like add to your blog. At a minimum you'll want to give visitors a couple of ways in which they can receive blog updates through various updaters, or feeder services, as mentioned earlier.

5. Comments. The newest sp*am making its rounds online is comment sp*am. Don't these guys have anything better to do? Set your comments to moderated, which means that you have to approve any comments to your blog before the post goes live. You'll save yourself a great many headaches and time by choosing to moderate the comments.

Once you've gotten this far, you should have a basic blog established and are ready to begin to blog.

6. Blog content. The time has arrived -- your blog is ready to accept posts. What do you write about? You can post content rich articles of interest to your target market, comment on a current event, answer questions from your visitors, present a before and after case study outlining how your business helped someone, etc. Keep your eyes and ears open for information relevant to your audience. I use my blog to bring forth info that doesn't fit well into my newsletter format or something that arises between newsletter issues. I post my ezine content to my blog, as well.

7. Posting frequency. Blogs are just like gardens -- they need watering regularly and require some care and attention. For maximum effectiveness, you need to post several times a week to your blog. I try and post 4 times per week in my blog -- 2 posts are items I run across or comment upon as noteworthy in the moment, and the latter 2 are the contents of my ezine posted over 2 days. And, respond to reader's comments when they arrive -- blogs provide a great forum for ongoing discussions.

8. Blog traffic. In the same way that you publicize your website URL on everything that you do, you can similarly publicize your blog. Submitting your blogs to blog directories is another way to get traffic. A very comprehensive list of blog directories, RSS Top 55 has been compiled by Robin Good, http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/. Searching out blogs that appeal to your target market and making comments to those posts will also drive traffic to your blog. Another trick is to post your blog on social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, and del.icio.us.

9. Measure the results. Some blog programs, like Typepad, have built-in statistics so you can view details of your blog traffic. Some of the feed/updater programs have built-in statistics as well, or you can install a metrics program as an add-on to your blog. Review your statistics regularly to determine how much traffic your blog generates.

10. Rinse and repeat. Don't let the novelty of blogging wear off. Blogging is effective only if you continue your blogging efforts regularly over a long period of time. I know of several individuals who have gotten book deals from their blog and radio and TV interviews as well. Just think -- your blog might be your ticket to fame!

Every service business can benefit from blog technology. Few other marketing strategies provide the quick immediacy that blogging provides.

Review Of Blogging Miracle

2007-03-13T17:15:00.001-07:00

It has been a long time since a quality blogging guide was released and to be honest I find it difficult to believe that nobody has released a guide to incorporate all the new changes at blogger.com after it was bought by google. All the guides you will find at places like clickbank do not even contain any of the new features of blogger and so are seriously out of date.

Well that has changed with the release of blogging miracle and I fully expect there to be some more releases over the coming months as making money online with blogger is in my opinion still the easiest way to go especially for beginners. I am going to assume that you all know what blogging is but maybe what you do not know is how easy it is to earn money from blogging and although you may not make millions it certainly makes me a healthy income.

So to blogging miracle. This ebook has just been released by a little known internet marketer David Beasley who nevertheless has been making significant sums from adsense and affiliate marketing using just blogs both the free kind like blogger and the hosted variety like wordpress. This ebook sticks to the former although many of the chapters can be applied to any kind of blog, wordpress, joomla and of course blogspot.

The initial chapter discusses the concept of blogging, the benefits, how it works and some really illuminating insights into the future of blogging which actually got me thinking about how I was going to go forward with my own blogging empire! The next chapter discusses adsense and its application in connection with blogger. You probably will know much of what he discusses here although once again he has a couple of interesting ideas. If you are a complete beginner this chapter is very important.

The next few chapters are all about setting up and optimizing the new blogger and all its new features. He walks you through the entire process from start to finish including all the little tweaks that will vastly improve the performance of your blog. He also talks about the best way to post and pays particular attention to the new template options which opened my eyes, and I thought I knew what I was doing!
It is very important that you get these settings right or it can effect your blogs visibility both to humans and the search engine bots.

The remaining chapters (there are over 100 pages!) deal with seo subjects like where are the best places to submit your blog, working with other bloggers, as well as standard seo practices like article submission, press releases, keywords, meta tags etc. These topics are covered elsewhere but as this is a brand new release it has got the latest info and concepts. The last chapters were of particular interest to me as it discusses the newest blogging concept the vblog. Video is starting to dominate the internet marketing scene and blogging is no acception.

In conclusion I would suggest you take a look at this ebook whether you are an experienced blogger or a complete newbie who does not know the difference betwwen wordpress, joomla and blogger. It is a pretty big ebook by todays standards and does manage to avoid page filling fluff pretty well.

What Can You Get in Social Bookmarking?

2007-03-12T04:27:00.001-07:00

Social bookmarking has been in existence for a long period of time now. People continuously discover a lot of new concepts as they learn about the world of internet marketing.

People also discover new ways to generate traffics to websites and blogs. Social bookmarking, an organizational process that grew further by creating list of websites that you regularly visits.

Just a piece of advice, do not try to cheat or deceive the systems. You will definitely find yourselves on a worse situation if you try to, so better not; it is for your own good. In terms of social bookmarking, cheating is quite tempting, in order to try to manipulate the system to make your website be on top. Actually, you do not have to cheat, just work on it. There are some ways in order to make your website be on top.

You see, if you have good and valuable content, naturally it would rise to the top; all you have to do is writing valuable content and publishing it.

Social bookmarking is already becoming popular and efficient to users to get and obtain necessary information or particular subject they need. Social bookmarking, by means of marketing and opinion, can be on the top. But of course, social bookmarking, can never replace search engines, by the web users are realizing a new way to excavate web pages that they could never discover by other ways.

Social bookmarking is a way to show what interests you and share it with others. There are a lot of social bookmarking sites such Wirefan, del.icio.us, Blinklist, Blogmarks and a lot, lot more. So you can take your time to examine a variety of social bookmarking services. It is for free, so definitely, there will be no harm to try it out. Indeed, these services are for free.

You can take some time to know more about social bookmaking and learn about the social bookmarking capabilities and the services it possesses. You can also find out if the systems can suits your needs.

But I believe these systems can certainly suit your needs, especially to those who rely on the internet for information and linkages. Surely, social bookmarking offers features that make users tend to visit the website every now and then. So anyone can grab on the opportunities you can get through these services now provided for you. Yes, social bookmarking is popular nowadays, and because of its continuous popularity, social bookmarking will definitely be here to stay. So all you have to do is learn to use social bookmarking, in order for your website to gain exposure and visibility. You got the opportunity, so you better to know more about it and gain information on how to use it.

Information is very important, so a lot of people use the internet to gain what they need. But of course, if you tend to use the power of social bookmarking, you have to bear in mind that it requires responsibility in order to gain high. If you desire to make your website and webpages to be on the top rank, you have to consider making valuable contents. You see, users need valuable information, so if you can provide that to users, your website will generate traffic.