Tuesday, August 14, 2007

How To Start An E-Commerce Business

The dot.com boom of the 1980s permitted legions of people to cash in on the mushrooming availability and popularity of the Internet but when the bubble burst, there were those who did not cash in but instead ended up owing the bank a small fortune. Those who profited were also those who were able to find a way of starting an ecommerce business without a bank loan. Granted, some might have dipped into their credit cards or homes equity, which is only marginally better but by and large they only invested that which they knew they could afford to lose.


At this point in time potential web entrepreneurs are a lot more hesitant to march to the bank and ask for a loan to fund their ecommerce business. They have learned from the mistakes of others and perhaps they are already so strapped in their personal finances that they know adding another monthly payment will send them over the abyss. Those who are able to not take out the loans in order to invest them in a shiny new ecommerce opportunity will also be those who will live to try another day. The others who may or may not succeed will require years some even decades to financially recover from a failure.


It is important to understand that you do not need to start an ecommerce business with a bank loan. Instead, there are alternative ways of funding your entrepreneurship and those methods might in the long run be safer. For example, you will need a great computer and the latest software to make your presence known on the Net. While it is tempting to buy the latest and greatest machine, find out if you can simply upgrade that which you already have.


Usually you will be able to do so for a fraction of the price that a new system costs. If a new computer system is indicated, wait until special sales events come up and take advantage of them. Refurbished units and used machines which are for sale on many of the major auction sites are also a good idea. Similarly, do not worry about having an office to start out. You spare bedroom will work just fine until the money begins to roll in. It is important that you do not spend money on items which will do little to further your business.


Thus, if you are making and selling e-books, an office is unnecessary. Advertising, packaging and other incidentals can all be tackled at a shoe string budget until your business grows to such an extent that you can get a bit fancier. While it is tempting to ask for money from the bank, remember that you will need to repay this money no matter what. Starting an ecommerce business without a bank loan makes more sense in the long run, since you will be able to finance the next phase of your business with the monies you earn from the current phase.


Source : http://www.articlesbase.com

How to Get Internet Advertising Cheap!

How do I get internet advertising cheap? Awesome question. Well lets start off with free internet advertisement and then move to cheap internet advertising.


Free Internet Advertisement

Among the best ways to get free ads for your site online are link exchanges. While frowned upon by some I have found them to be extremely successful. The basic concept of it is "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours". You put my link on your site and I'll put yours on my site.


Sounds easy enough right? Well it really is.

To get started with this link exchange concept you will need to create a links page on your site. Decide up front whether you want to put text links, or image links. Image links require banners and may make your links page load slow, while text links load faster and often don't take away from the overall look and feel of your site. I would suggest text links. In order for this free internet advertisement scheme of ours to work you need to find sites you would like to place your link / or ad on. It's always best to put your link on a page of similar content. The reason for this is simple; If you run a website for "Beach Volleyball Lovers" and you put your free advert on a site for Russian Hockey Fans you probably aren't going to get many people clicking through to your site. So find a site that is similar to yours and contact that person via email and say something like hey I run such and such site, and I would like to exchange links with you. The more people you contact the more internet advertisements you get.

Once you have that Free Internet Advertisement / Link exchange stuff down to a science it may to time for you to purchase some cheap or affordable internet advertising


Cheap Internet Advertisement

My 2 personal favorites on the way of internet advertisement companies are the 2 giants; Yahoo and Google.

Google Adwords and Yahoo Publisher are my current solutions to internet advertisement on the cheap. Yahoo currently has a .10 CPC(cost per click) minimum on all ads. Google on the other hand does not. It's possible to put ads on Google syndicated searches for .01 CPC That is as cheap as it gets. However if you want the ads on their search engine search results I believe there is a .05 CPC minimum. Either way Google seems to be the cheaper of the two companies as far as the advertisement goes.

Another concept I would like to touch upon is "branding" or getting the name of your company out there. If you sell antiques and put an ad on Google, it may be displayed 1,000 before it is clicked. That means your banner or ad with your Sites name was displayed 1,000 for .05 cents. Well.. dam that's a deal. Eventually people will start to associate your sites name Bubbas Antiques with quality quality antiques. Believe it or not people branding is what sells. If you are thirsty and see 2 pops (sodas) on a table one says Pepsi and the other says Bubbas cola you are most likely to buy the Pepsi.


So again there are many ways to get internet advertisements cheap or free. All you need to do is get out there and do it.


Source : http://www.articlesbase.com

How do I make a Mobile Device Website?

Mobile Devices like the BlackBerry and Pocket PC are becoming ever more popular. People are moving away from the office so that they can become more productive.


As this trend continues it becomes even more popular for the webmaster or business to have a website that is friendly to a mobile device.

It's best to retain those web users and maybe even gain a few new one in the process. Website's specifically engineered for mobile devices do just that.
Why can't mobile devices use the same website as pc's and mac's?

Well the main reason is that the pages are way to large. Most websites are made to be viewed at a 1024x768 resolution or at least 800x600. Well the BlackBerry 8730e has a resolution of 320x240. It's the equivalent of looking at a map through a pinhole.

So what needs to be done? We need to lower the resolution of the web page. Because we can't expect 90% of your users that are on PC's to look at a tiny website on their screen we need to create a duplicate site.

There are a few solutions, but the best one in my opinion is to do it by hand. 1st consider why someone would be viewing your website from a mobile device? There are a few main reasons 1.Looking for email address 2.Looking for phone number 3.Looking for location 4.They want to know more about your company

OK. I'm getting ahead of myself here. So we must create a second website for mobile users. Most people choose to go with the mobile.yourwebsite.com approach. I think that creating a subdomain is probably the best and fastest way to deal with the situation.
Creating Subdomain for Mobile on Apache Web Server

If you are running your site on an apache web server chances are that it has cpanel and in cpanel there is a create subdomain icon/text. If this is the case go there and follow those directions. It will then create a folder on your site like so. http://www.yoursite.com/mobile/ and when users go to mobile.yoursite.com it will show the contents of the mobile folder.
Creating Subdomain for Mobile on IIS Server

Creating Subdomain on IIS Server is a little more tricky that on Apache. First you must create a folder in the inetpub called mobile. Then you need to add new website by right clicking My Computer going to Manage and then Services and Then IIS then Web Sites. Create a new website naming it Mobile Site, then make sure that the properly / Home Directory Tab is showing the contents of the mobile folder. Then go to the control panel and select network devices and right click your network connection and go to properties. Then click the advanced button and make sure the tab is on IP Settings. Add an IP address (a new one not the same one as your other site) and then save all that.

Now you need to NAT the incoming request for mail.yoursite.com to that internal ip address. I may have skipped a step or two but i thing i have all that covered. If you have questions just google "Subdomain Setup IIS Tutorial"

Now back to what we where talking about earlier, making a few pages specifically for the mobile device browsers You need to create at least 4 different pages

* Email Directory
* Phone Directory
* Location
* About

If your organization is not that large you can probably compress Email / Phone directory into 1 contact page.

These pages need to be minimal. Minimal text, minimal tables, minimal pictures ect. Also NO FRAMES, NO JAVASCRIPT, and NO FLASH as most mobile device browsers can't read any of those.

Assuming that everything has wen 't well you should have a mobile friendly website that can be viewed by any user anywhere. Make sure to post a link on your main page linking to the Mobile Page, and give it out to your customers as well.


Source : http://www.articlesbase.com

Leverage Web Directories To Boost SEO!

The pioneer of the web directory would have to be dmoz. The big benefit of Dmoz is that it is an open source link directory By open source I mean it is free to get into. It is not easy to have your site included in Dmoz but I recommend that every give it a shot. The websites that do get included will surely see reap so big benefits. It's not unheard of for webmasters to purchase domain names just because they are indexed in Dmoz.


Internet link directories are websites that have a sorted list of websites by specific categories. Internet directories are mostly used to find information on a specific subject


Directories have their initial category and are then split into a subcategory. Under the category of computers, for instance, one would find several subcategories for hardware and software, the Internet, hacking, ethics, education, computer jobs, algorithms, robotics, and virtual reality, to name a few. Each of these subcategories would be divided further into sites providing more specific topics.


Internet web directories are also used to help a webmaster improve their seo. Directories are useful to webmasters as quality backlinks. This is how they help build a web sites link popularity.


There are many different types of link directories such as general directories. The other directories will focus on a specific niche. If you are going to use web directories to help you build backlinks submit to as many as you can. Getting a link placed in a general web directory is good but if you can find one that relates to your niche it's even better. If your website is in a niche topic, using a niche link directory can allow you to get traffic that is highly targeted.



99% of directories and edited manually by a human. Just about all search engines will use website bots to index and add your website to their engine. The best part of a directory is that they are easy to maintain and create. It does not take much effort to create a quality directory. These are just a few reasons they have become a favorite source for webmasters.


Directories follow different processes for submitting links. The directory can ask you to register before submitting a link. Some will let you submit a free link but it can take a long time for you listing to show up. The fastest way to get listed is to pay for your inclusion. While getting your site listed in a popular link directory may cost money, it is well worth it. In addition to this, you will find that your site will begin receiving traffic much faster.


Try and submit you site to only the best link directories to get a good return on your investment. Having your site included in such a directory would give it the benefit of being listed as a quality site, as well as ensure high rankings. Submitting to directories is one of the most commonly used methods to improve a websites seo and PR standings. Your website will become much more visible, and this will allow you to gain larger amounts of traffic. The last benefit of submitting to directories is that you will now be able to sell quality advertising space.

Articles Source :http://www.articles-hub.com


The Importance of Incoming Links

When you to go google, and type in a search term, well say for example "make money online". The most revelant search terms will show up. How do you get those spots?


Some people will argue with me here the single most important factor is the incoming links. There are a few types of different incoming links. I personally have had 3 websites rank on number 1 for google.


1. One way links: One way links are just that. You have a website giving you a one way link to your website. These are valued the highest of all the links coming in. How would you go about getting these types of links? There are websites out there that offer that. Go to google and type in "one way links" You'll get plenty of results. It never hurts to do a little research on the sites before accepting their terms.


2. Reciprical links: These are links that would exchange with someone, and the most common type of link. How would you go about getting these? Simple, you just ask. Send them an email with your name your website, telling them you want to link. Put the link on your site first, and let the webmaster know where it is. If they don't respond contact again in a week. Still no response, delete the link.



3. 3 Way Links: They are 3 different websites all 1 way linking to each other. For example: Site A,B,C... Site A Links to B Site B Links to C Site C links to A. If this is confusing, draw it out on a piece of paper in a triangle shape, and you will see A--B B--C C--A.


Another important thing to remember is to link to websites that have the same theme as yours. Incoming links can't hurt you, but your out going links can. If you have a website about dogs, you don't want links coming in from Debt Companies, get it?


Of course there are a few other things that contribute to getting a high ranking page, but I'll go over that at a different time.


Articles Source :http://www.articles-hub.com


Downloadable Audio Books: Demand Up And Prices Down

Yes, audio books demand is growing very rapidly and the industry has a hard time delivering what consumers demand. And the increased demand means for consumers that prices are coming down as quantities increase.


One has to distinguish between the physical product audio book, that is delivered on cassettes and CD's and the digital audio book that can 'only' be downloaded from the Internet. But let's first look why the demand has increased that much:


The hectic lifestyle most of us are forced to lead leaves little time to sit down and read a book. Commuting, heavy work schedules, the kids, different daily chores use up a lot of time. There is simply not enough time left to pick up a book and sit down to enjoy it....


On the other hand we all have time in the day when we are not really busy mentally, where the brain is in 'idle' or has at least a lot of spare capacity. Whilst you are occupied with work that demands that you use your eyes (and hands), the mind would be glad to get decent and stimulating input. Just think traffic jam, weeding or cutting the grass, or any other manual chore and housework that use up hours every day, or jogging, working out - any type of sport that mostly occupies the muscles.


An audio book, read by a professional narrator who is telling you the story, is an ideal way to 'read' books that you wanted to read for a long time, but that lack of time did not permit. Story telling has a very long tradition and with the new technology, it is gaining popularity again.


"For many people, listening to an audio book is an opportunity to hear an author firsthand," says Mary Beth Roche, president of the Audio Publishers Association (APA) and president of Audio Renaissance, a New York-based audio book company. "It's like having the very best lecture series, not just in your own town, but in your own car or home." - and at your command, they'll read when YOU are ready to listen.


Audio books used to be thought of as limited special products for only the blind and sight impaired or for kids and lazy people who either can not or do not want to read themselves. This has dramatically changed over the last few years. A survey of the Audio Publisher's Association has found that the average listener to audio books is about 45 years of age and has an average yearly income of more than $50'000, at least a college education and often more advanced degrees. And these people are very Internet savvy.


In short: These affluent middle aged internauts are the ideal customers for on line audio book shops. Downloading an audio book is like picking up their email for these customers and they appreciate the ease of purchasing a new novel in form of a down loadable audio book, be it for their iPod, Zune or other MP3 player.


"Middle-class, well educated, and smart, that's a great demographic to have," says Eileen Hutton, vice president of editorial for Brilliance Audio, one of the oldest publishers of audio books.


Roche says there is no data on sales for the industry as a whole. "We are just beginning to send out surveys to compile sales information, but individually, members of the Association boast of annual sales increases in the double digits," Roche adds.


Audio book sales are increasing so fast that the audio book industry is not able to keep up with the demand. Creating an audio version of a book is more costly and time intensive than printing. More often than not, an actor or a professional narrator has to be hired to narrate the book, and there's the cost of the recording studio, a production crew, post production and packaging ( that applies to conventional audio books on CD - Down loadable audio books don't have that cost attached.). A large saving can be made by making the audio books available as down-loadable audio file. This is also reflected in the cheaper prices for audio books that are down loadable directly from an on-line audio book store.


The peak sales season for audio publishers are in the spring as Americans prepare for those long driving vacations or basking on the beach, and before the Christmas season, when people are shopping for holiday gifts. Sales start to be a lot more even though, as people routinely pick up audio books to feed their MP3 players.


Audio books are especially good for children who hate to read because of problems in school. That way they are familiarized with the adventure of using their own imagination to paint their mental pictures of what they hear, rather than just staring on the TV screen. Also, if they have the book and the audio, reading along can help to overcome reading problems:


"Librarians and teachers have been using audio books for years in the classroom, but parents aren't making the logical connection at home," says Amanda D'Acierno, director of audio publishing at Random House. "It's been proven that listening and reading go hand and hand. If children can hear the spoken word and follow along with the book that helps them. Listening is much more in tune with the way humans learn than sitting down and reading a book."


People who for some reason or other don't have the reading skills they should have, but are intellectually fit can listen to audio books to continue their education and listen to self help audiobooks, language course audios etc.


Articles Source : http://www.articles-hub.com

Making Money with Blogs - Blogging Isn't Just for Online Diaries Any More

At first blogging was strictly used as a tool for online diaries. Then blog and ping came along and people began making money with blogs. Then in 2006 tag and ping was introduced and blogging became an even more formidable tool in the hands of internet marketers.


Today many of the most well-known internet marketers have their own blogs which they use to keep customers informed of what's happening. Many marketers use a blog as a way to promote their upcoming product launches and to dialog with their visitors. By leaving comments visitors and customers can interact with the blogger, using the comment box to ask questions, give testimonials, and let their thoughts be heard.


Anyone, whether experienced or internet newbie, can set up a blog, make a post, and have search engines spidering their site within minutes. Visitors can be coming to their blog in less than a day.


Blogging Tools

There are lots of great tools for bloggers to use. Many of these tools are free. Blogging software such as Wordpress combined with a multitude of plugins, tag and ping, RSS, and social bookmarking work together to making blogging a phenomenal way to get your product or information before the public.


There are plugins that put tagging on steroids, such as Ultimate Tag Warrior. There are plugins that help you put video on your blog with a simple line of code, such as Fallen Media Plugin. And at least one plugin, Akismet, that takes care of spam comments.


There are plugins that create a static home page on the blog, similar to a home page on a static web site. If you don't want a home page, perhaps you would like to make a permanent post that stays at the top of the main page. There is a plugin that will do that called Adhesive. There is also a plugin called Adsense Deluxe that simplifies placing Adsense ads on the blog.


Favorite Wordpress plugin downloads can be found at:

Headzoo.com - some of the best plugins for Wordpress

Wp-Plugins.net - has an amazing number of plugins for Wordpress

There are also free themes available for you to use with your blog. A theme is the look of the blog. If you are using Wordpress, check out Themes.Wordpress.net for an unbelievable number of free themes you can download and use for your blog.


The Importance of a Good Ping List

First of all, if your blog is keyword-rich, the search engine spiders will visit your site's quality content, especially if you update and ping your blog regularly, once a week at the very least.


For lists of possible sites to add to your ping list do a search on the term "ping list" or visit these two sites: SeoBlackhat.com/2005/09/05/rss-ping-list/ and InternetFamous.net/2007/list-of-ping-services.html.


Submitting Your Blog and RSS Feeds

Two more ways to get more traffic to your site is to submit your blog and your RSS feed to sites like Technorati and Ice Rocket. A great list of fifty-five such sites can be found at MasterNewMedia.org/rss/top55.


There are many sites where you can submit your blog, such as Technorati and Icerocket. There are also sites like these that include feed aggregators that will syndicate your RSS feeds. Or you can use a service like RSS Submit to submit your RSS feeds automatically.


Conclusion

This is just a quick rundown of the tools available for bloggers to generate traffic to their blogs. Of course, new tools are being created all the time. Last year tag and ping and social bookmarking became popular.


Now we are in a new year with new possibilities. Whatever happens, blogging is continually gaining in popularity as a way to make money online.

Articles Source :http://www.articles-hub.com

Google Adsense - Make Money With High Paying Keywords

If you are a website publisher looking for a fast and easy way to make money, Google Adsense program is for you. Posting relevant, text-based Google adsense ads on your web site's content pages will earn you money every time someone clicks on them. Many people are now realizing that this is a good way to make money.


How much you will earn per click depends on how much the advertisers are paying for the keyword. Keyword is the most important factor. If the keywords the advertiser have chosen are high paying keywords, you could earn more dollars per click. On the other hand, low paying keywords will earn you just a few cents per click.


Start making money out of your website using Google Adsense now:

1. Sign up for a Google Adsense account.

2. Insert the Adsense code into the web pages. Google Adsense ads will start to appear after that.

3. You start to earn money when visitors click on the Google Adsense ads, this will range from a few cents to a few dollars per click.

4. You can log in to your Google Adsense account to check your statistics.
a) go to adsense setup
b) select channels
c) select Adsense for content and click on URL channels
d) Add in all the URL of your web pages. (If you have many web pages containing AdSense ads, this will help you to monitor the clicks on different pages.)


Once you start to make money from this website using Google Adsense Program, you may want to build as many sites as possible to maximise your earning. Of course there are other factors that will affect how your website will perform, you may learn it step by step in a later stage.


Articles Source :http://www.articles-hub.com

Article Marketing And Article Submissions Are The Way Of The Present

In today's online world, article marketing and article submissions are starting to be even more and more in style with so many webmasters beginning to become conscious of the many pros of writing and submitting articles. The issue that many of these site owners have is that they simply do not have enough time in the day to write and submit several articles. It's at this point that an article submission service comes into play.


Of course, you want to choose the right service, and here is a simple tip for you. Be sure that the article submission service offers manual article submissions.

Now more than ever, article marketing websites and directories are claiming higher and higher record breaking submissions of well written articles. Search engines are now placing much more weight on one way inbound links to your website. One of the best ways to attain those links is by writing unique articles. That's why today people are devoting more and more of their time writing these informative articles. Actually, this is a practice that all webmasters should get in the habit of doing as it is an excellent way of accumulating these one way links.


Should you use an article submission service?

Like I said before, many of us do not have the available time to allocate to article marketing. Because of this fact, a new service has arrived where individuals or companies are thrilled to submit your uniquely written articles to numerous article directories, which is more often than not at least twenty, for a fee of course. A good few of these people and companies also offer article writing and submission services, whereby not only will they submit your article, but they will also write it for you. This can free up all the time that you currently devote to article marketing. Now you can use that time to help grow your business.

There are several sites on the web that offer these article submission services, and they all pretty much submit to the same article directories. Of course, you want to be sure that your articles are getting submitted to the best of the online directories, like ezinearticles.com.

Of course, you shouldn't focus your entire internet marketing campaign on article submissions. There are many other techniques you can use to attain inbound links and thus drive traffic to your site. One of these techniques is directory submissions. The idea is the same as article submissions, you submit your site to many online directories that categorize your site and display it, similar to yellow pages.

Another technique is text link ads. These are ads that webmasters will put on their site linking back to your site. Usually, you will have to offer them something in return. Sometimes, this is money or some other form of payment. Others, it's a reciprocal link which goes to a web page of their choosing.

It is important to accumulate as many backlinks as possible, since they will help you drive traffic to your site and help push you up in the search engine rankings. But, that's for another article. However, it's safe to say that you should be putting a major effort into getting backlinks.

Because of this, article marketing has already become incredibly popular, however it is my opinion that soon enough it will become substantially larger and a must for anyone trying to achieve high rankings in the search engines.

The best advice I could give is to start writing right now and if, like many others, you don't have enough time, find someone to write for you for a fair price. As in many other areas of life, the harder you work the more the reward. Well, at least the smarter you work.

This holds true on the internet as well, you can't write one article, or have one written, and expect to see a drastic improvement in your sites traffic or search engine rankings. Set your sites on writing half a dozen articles per week, or so, and you will see a huge difference in your site traffic after a few months and possibly even before then. I know it sounds like hard work, but remember there are always ways to work smart. Sometimes it's as simple as having someone else work hard.

Time is money and it's important that you know what your time is worth. For example, if your time is worth $250 per hour, and you can write 3 articles per hour, each article is costing you $80 or so.

In my opinion, it's pretty easy to justify the cost of article writing and article submissions due to the added time it frees up which can be spent on more profit generating activities.


Article Source: http://www.myarticlemall.com


How to Write for the Web Successfully

Online readers love free information. They scour the internet daily looking for specific information to solve their problems, help them be successful, live longer or get healthy. You should join the information revolution too! Publish your free helpful solution-oriented articles to the web.


But wait! There are a few things to keep in mind when writing for the web. Long paragraphs are usually acceptable for print media; they are not for the web. If you want to write articles that web users will love to read and put to use follow these 7 simple tips:


1. Make your article scan ready. A study by Jakob Nielson publicized as guru of web page usability by the New York Times published that only 16 per cent of his test users actually read the copy they found online; 79 per cent of them simply scanned it. Your impatient web readers will want important information to jump out at them.

Some practical ways to make your text scannable are: headings, sub-headings, bulleted list, numbered lists, easy steps and/or typeface variation. For example, compelling headlines are considered an art. Are you drawn to the author's article as "How to Write Web Articles" or "5 Tips to Write Winning Web Articles?"


2. Keep it short. Get and keep the attention of web readers by delivering short messages. You put effort into gaining your web reader's attention; now make their click worthwhile with brief compelling copy in bite sizes.

Start with the conclusion. Your readers may not make it to the end of your piece to get it. Web readers don't want to get bogged down in long blocks of text. So get to the point early and use the rest of your article to support that main point.


3. Make Your Title Sizzle. Dull titles will not capture your readers interest. It will make your article fade into the sea of other boring articles listed in article banks these days. You have to create a title that will reach out and grab your reader by the collar.

To get your article read, start with a sizzling title. Make it short. Create interest. Include the main benefit or solution in your title.


4. Talk to Your Targeted Audience. Your information is not for everyone. Avoid generalities. Choose a friend or family member that's interested in your topic. Write your article to them. Writing to a friend will make your copy personable and friendly.

You won't come across as a fussy hen, do this, do this, don't do that. You will connect with your readers as a friend giving advice. Your article will do a better job of building creditability for you. Creditability inspires trust and readers only trust their friends.


5. Add substance. Resist fluffing your articles. Include practical valuable information in your copy. Everyone loses when you don't take the time to impart substance. It increases the reputation of the web being an unreliable source of knowledge. Additionally, lack of substance will block your road to profitable referrals.

Do the research and/or draw from your knowledge and experience to illustrate. Your stories and real life examples will meet your reader's need for practical information and connect with their emotion. It's a known fact emotions will move people to action. Whether you desire them to act by signing up or making a purchase, add substance and improve your reader responses.


6. Make it web professional. Create a more web professional look by using short sentences then format your page to approximately 65 characters per line in email and 75 for web page. Long stringed sentences that stream from side to side of the web page look visually unprofessional. Select a layout for your article from several short article formats that include the how-to, tips list, question-answer, problem-solutions and interview.

Make your introduction and summary short but do add one. Your web readers don't want just a list of boring facts and information. They want to connect with you by reading your personable introduction and practical tips with a definite ending or summary. Remember excited readers become enthusiastic buyers and enthusiastic buyers will refer your product or service to all their friends.



7. Use your keywords. Thread your keywords throughout your short article as naturally as possible. Otherwise your copy will sound stiff and dull. To gain visibility on the search engines, your site must be "indexed" by their robotic software.


In its most basic form, they must be able to compare the code, keywords and other Meta tags with the actual content of your article. From this they reach a conclusion regarding the context of your article. This and other factors will affect how well your article or web page places in the search engines.


You may use these guidelines for all kinds of web copy. The same elements of using keywords, making your article professional, adding substance, keeping it short and making your copy scannable will improve the quality of your articles. Practice the above simple principles and write winning articles to distribute on the web everywhere.


Article Source: http://www.myarticlemall.com

The Top 10 Tools For Monitoring The Success Of Your Website

1. Google Analytics

Google Analytics has become the preferred option among frëe statistics programs. Like any other stats program, Google Analytics provides data on the number of visitors, and page views, referral sources, entry and exit pages, and more. Unlike most other programs, Google Analytics includes the ability to track and monitor pay-per-clíck (PPC) campaigns. Other useful information includes the geographic location of your visitors, their internet connection speed, and their screen resolutions. You can sign up for Google Analytics at:


2. Google Webmaster Tools

Want to know how the largest search engine in the world sees your website? Google's Webmaster Tools will give you loads of information such as the pages that are indexed, errors found by the Googlebot (dead links), your search engine rankings for specific search phrases, your anchor text on inbound links, internal and external link data, and robots.txt and sitemap data.

By knowing how Google sees your site you will find some basic items that you'll need to change in order to reach your maximum potential in search engine traffíc. You can sign up for Google Webmaster Tools at:


3. SEOmoz's Page Strength Tool

SEOmoz is one of the leading search engine optimization (SEO) firms and their website provides a wealth of information through their blog, articles and tools. Their Page Strength Tool shows you the "relative importance and visibility" and the "potential strength and ability of a page to rank in the search engines." SEOmoz provides a quick way to get a basic look at the strength of your page. The Page Strength Tool can be used at:


4 Sitening.com's SEO Analyzer

Sitening is another leading SEO firm with several valuable tools on their website. The SEO Analyzer differs from SEOmoz's Page Strength Tool in that it checks the internal structure of your site to determine how well it is constructed (in terms of search engine optimization). The structure of a website is the framework for a good SEO campaign, and Sitening.com's SEO Analyzer will help you to build the right framework. Sitening.com's SEO Analyzer can be found at:


5. Mike's Marketing Tools

MikesMarketingTools.com has two tools that every webmaster should use regularly. The Search Engine Rankings Tool will show you where your site ranks in several of the top search engines for a specific word or phrase. You can save time by using this tool instead of visiting each search engine and clicking through the search engine results pages to find your website.

The Link Popularity Tool will quickly show you how many inbound links each search engine recognizes for your site. Inbound links are a major factor in search engine rankings and each search engine recognizes a different number of links. From this tool you can also clíck through to see the specific pages that are linking to you. To use these tools visit:


6. Summit Media's Spider Simulator

The spider simulator shows you "how a search engine reacts to your pages and what can be done to boost your usability." Search engine spiders see web pages much differently than human visitors do. A page may look attractive and well-designed to a human visitor, but a search engine spider may not be able to find what it is looking for. This page is a great tool to assure you that your site is built for maximum search engine results. The spider simulator can be used at:


7. SelfSEO Page Speed Checker

Your average website visitor will have a very short attention span. To have the best chance of making a positive first impression on new visitors your page must load quickly enough that they do not leave right away. SelfSEO has a Page Speed Tool that shows you how long your page takes to load. The tool allows you to enter multiple pages to chëck at one time. It is a good idea to compare the load time of your page against pages from several other websites. Try entering your homepage and the homepage of several of your competitors. If your page loads considerably slower than the others, try to make the file smaller by reducing the number and size of images or by cleaning up the coding. The Page Speed Tool can be used at:


8. Dead Links Checker

Having dead links on your website can frustrate visitors and damage your search engine rankings. However, checking all the links on your site manually is not realistic. Fortunately there are a number of tools online that will automate the process. The W3 Link Checker will crawl through your pages and report which links are broken. To use this tool visit:


9. GoogleRankings.com

GoogleRankings.com will show you which words and phrases appear most frequently on your website throughout the text of the page, title, headings and meta tags. This is a useful tool to be certain that your pages are optimized for the words and phrases that you are targeting.


10. FeedBurner

If you publish a blog, FeedBurner's service is a must have. Feedburner will provide you with statistics regarding your blog's feed and you can give your readers the option to subscribe by email instead of RSS. There are a number of other features that you can read about at FeedBurner. With FeedBurner you can always see how many subscribers you have and how many of them are clicking through from your feed to your site.

Article Source: http://www.superfeature.com

Importance of Website Submission in Directories

To make website link popular and get top ranking in search engine result pages, submission of link in directories is very important. There are many directories on the net from general to specific with their own link submission processes. Before submitting website in directories, it is essential to have appropriate key phrases, rich text that accurately describes your website. Select most appropriate category for submitting website.


Submitting to directories requires some extra work of optimizing page and also patience. Your search engine ranking will improve for this extra effort by search engine submission. The concept of directory submission has grown popularly and is very important in recent years. The person having website is constantly looking for increase in the amount of traffic directly received and their rank with search engines by website submission. Search engines use a formula to calculate where a website appears based on certain keywords that are searched. One of the factors in determining search engine marketing is the number of back links a website has.


A back link is basically a link that a directory submission will give a website owner. A back link refers to any link coming from any other website to one's own website. Even small websites can have hundreds of back links coming into their site. Back links can be attained in many ways, but the easiest way to obtain quality back links is through directories. Back link help for driving traffic to the website and improving the web site status in search engines, it can also raise another score that has grown in important, in search engine’s PR scores. Google PR rankings are widely used by website owners when evaluating a website. A Google PR can translate into more advertisers being willing to advertise on a particular website, more websites being willing to offer links to the website, and more people visiting the website in general.

Directory submission services is simple and free as well as paid options are available for submitting. Paid options allow benefits as better placement, allowing for more click-through visitors from the directory to your website.Both free web submission and paid web submission methods have their advantages and offer website owners the ability to increase their back link.

Website Submission is a simple process, you need to fill some information and it will just take few minute depends on directory you are submitting in. By filling out a few forms, the directory owner will then accept it. Rejection only occurs if you have fill incomplete information in the form and, once accepted, that directory will provide a quality back link for website.


Important Tips for submitting website to directories

Submit your link to the most appropriate category related to your website and nature of business It is very important when you submit your website in directories; you should select the category related to your business and industry. There are various directories available for different industries for example chemical, electrical, import and export, consumer durables and many more. Therefore first step is to find appropriate list of directories related to your business, and then category of your product. It is very essential to get more potential traffic to your site.

The major online directories like alibaba, Industrial Product Finder have mostly all main categories like agriculture, Automobiles, Construction, Electronics, Energy, Food and Beverages, Health, Mineral, Packaging, Printing, Textiles, Transportation. You can also give details for your products. To submit in such directories and in appropriate category will give good result for getting natural and business oriented traffic to the website related to your product category.


Free Submission in directories take time for listing

If you are not paying to be in the directory then your link listing has a less priority than paid listings. Directory owner give first preference to the paid member and as per data available for the particular search. The paid members listing come in first priority and then free members. In case of not availability of paid member’s data for particular search then there are chances of free members for good listing in search results.

It can take several months after search engine submission to get into some directories and therefore need some patience. The time taken for directory for listing site depends on each search engine or directory. A few search engines index a site almost immediately. Some engines or directories take weeks or longer.


Keep a log of Directory Submission

It is very useful to keep a log for submission details of your website in various directories. Write the name of the directory and the date of web submission into a log book. This prevents you from submitting in a same directory for more than once. When your link gets listed in the directory mark it off in your log.


Article Source: http://www.superfeature.com


How To Achieve Higher SE Rankings

If you are brand new to the internet, you perhaps have countless inquiries about Search Engine Optimization and how it works. Search Engine Optimization is a technique used to achieve top results in the search engines anytime anyone is searching for your business or product. Traffic to your online page from the search engines is already targeted. Visitors arriving at your website from search engines have typed in a keyword significant to your web content, as a result they are already interested in your goods or service. This is the very best resource of potential consumers you might experience.


SEO Elite Version 4.0 has gained popularity for giving more features than any other search engine optimization marketing tool. This marketing software program affords swift results, and all those who have paid for this software, have vouched for its performance. While using this marketing software program, it is a guarantee that you can be able to advertise your product or your company to the greatest level on the internet. SEO Elite may conceivably be observed as Brad Callens breakthrough product. Upon its initial release it gave us users the likelihood to climb the rankings of the search engines by the use of a number of crafty techniques. In a number of ways SEO Elite was the ultimate spy marketing tool, the capability to see who is linking to whom and to then get connected with the owners of particular web content all through the application itself was groundbreaking. Use it to identify how to build a subsequent linking structure that nails all the top ten search engine listings. Place that into action and take pleasure in the sales that stream in.

You're about to discover in detail how to obtain and sustain high search engine rankings. In addition, you'll know everything humanly possible concerning your rival's linking lineup and you'll know accurately why they rank so good in major search engines like Google and Yahoo. Most importantly, you'll free up hours your time from doing the labor of handling a link campaign. That's worth more than ten times your investment in SEO Elite Version 4.0. What's more, the explosion in traffic and marketing that'll come in can more than pay for SEO Elite Version 4.0 many, many times over.


SEO Elite Benefits:
Right away decide on which websites you to contact and SEO Elite can assemble their contact information for you!

Directly decide on which online pages you to contact and SEO Elite will gather their contact information for you!

See if you have "disturbed pages" preventing them from ranking successfully.

See which link partners are cheating you and have got rid of your link from their web page without you knowing!


SEO Elite Features (just a few of many):
Realize how any page ranks at the top of the Search Engines. In addition to that works for the the major search engines like Yahoo, Google, MSN, Altavista and Alltheweb. At last, the keys to possess top-10 listings are yours in just a few seconds with SEO Elite Version 4.0!


Analyzes plus compares detailed search commands on Google to the "regular" Google search rankings such as "allinanchor, allintext, as well as allintitle". This will help you grasp which field you really need to better optimize; whether it might be your anchor text surrounding your links, the quantity of times the keyword can be found in your text, or the number of times your keyword could be established in the title of each online page.


I have found that SEO Elite users are some of the most successful people working online. While SEO Elite Version 4.0 offers more features than any other Search Engine Optimization Software product available today, it's not the features that the users are most proud of; it’s the results that they achieve time and time again. I’ve seen these results since my first purchase of SEO Elite and Keyword Elite in March of 2006.


SEO Elite Reviews:
"Brad, SEO Elite is incredible", "Took client's site to a page 1 ranking for many of their selected keywords!", "I am now ranked #1 in Google for the term, only bracelets!", "SEO Elite has helped me to rank #1 for the phrase "business practices"

I think you could believe me when I say; those SEO Elite Version 4.0 reviews genuinely speak for themselves. To take a look at additional customer testimonials, visit http://www.seoelite.com/testimonials.htm.


Article Source: http://www.superfeature.com


Top 5 Link Building Expert Strategies

Link Popularity is a greatly misunderstood subject among webmasters and online business owners. The major search engines have developed complicated algorithms that rank web pages for relevancy and quality. In determining relevancy, the search engines tend to measure on page factors such as relevant content. For determining quality, the search engines have moved towards inbound links and their quality as a measure of a website’s importance. The rise of link popularity, as a measure of the links pointing to a website, is founded on the belief that great sites will naturally attract many links and content poor sites will have difficulty attracting any links. While Google is the front runner in giving importance to link popularity, other major search engines such as Yahoo, MSN and AltaVista have also given importance to link popularity, making it a critical component of your search engine strategy.


1. High Page Rank – While Page Rank has been somewhat discredited among the elite of the search engine optimizers, the fact remains that Page Rank is by far one of the most viable methods of determining the importance of a web page. Page Rank remains an important, but not a defining element towards establishing link popularity.


2. Permanent Links – Google puts a small restriction or penalty on new websites. This penalty, in part monitors the “age” of the inbound links of a website. This draws on the importance of getting permanent links to increase your link popularity. It will work on eliminating your Sandbox penalties while maintaining the reputation you have built.


3. Site Quality – The quality of a website, as determined by the search engines, is a major factor, along with Page Rank, in establishing the importance of a link.


4. Reciprocal Linking – This is definitely the fastest way to get a ton of links pointing to your website. As long as your link directory is broken down into themed categories, you should most definitely trade links with the other website. You should always trade links with another website no matter if they:

- Have a PR0 page. If you trade links with them, chances are, they’re also actively building links, so this PR0 page will soon be a PR3, PR4, and even more.

- Over 30 links on a links page. Any link will help your rankings, as long as the website you’re exchanging with is not banned. (Gray Google Page Rank).


5. Natural Link Building - The building blocks of site to site linking, as search engines understand and define it. Search engines justify using link popularity as a ranking tool with the idea that good quality sites will naturally attract links.


Article Source: http://www.superfeature.com

How To Make A living Online With Affiliate Marketing

Announcing how a super affiliate makes $1,000's every week. Now he is showing people like you and me how he does it.

He has covered everything in his in-depth book, outlining everything you have to know to succeed.


1. So you want to get into affiliate marketing. This is very competitive so you'll have to know some insider tricks first.


2. One of the most important points is to know where to find the best products. Digital one's have proven to be the most popular as they can be downloaded immediately by your customer. People love receiving their product straight away.


3. Next you should have a lead capture page, building your list is imperative if you want to succeed in this business. Having a good squeeze page allows you to capture a prospects name and email address. Which you can mail over and over again, but don't over do it.


4. All top affiliates have a good auto responder, it's an email software that is essential for anyone doing business on the net. There are heaps out there, just do a Google search, the most popular ones are, Aweber and Getresponse.


5. People won't give you their name and email address unless there's something in it for them. So what you do is, give them something for FREE, like a FREE report or a PLR product you might have lying around on your computer.


6. When they've signed up, don't just ignore them. Keep in touch and every now and then send them something free. This will keep them trusting you.


7. You will now need to get your site out there for all eyes to see. You can use Google Adwords or another search engine. Or banner marketing, I myself like article marketing, it's FREE and can generate a lot of traffic for you. You can find more on article marketing at:www.squidoo.com/secrets-to-articlemarketing/


8. Search for some marketers with the same niche, then contact them and do a deal with them to promote your site. You could maybe offer them some percentage of the profits to make it enticing. This is called Joint Ventures.


9. Don't forget, look for your products on sites like, Clickbank, Commission Junction, which are some of the favorites. Check out the percentages they offer. Above 50% is good, a lot now offer 75%. Choose the ones on the front page as they are the most popular.


10. Now, once this campaign is going 'gung ho' repeat the whole process. At this stage you should know that there are programs that help you do all of this. By joining a solid site that has a proven track record, you're going to fast track your ability to get up and running. So where do you find one of these sites, well, check out my resource box and you'll find out.

So to succeed at affiliate marketing, you have now seen what is needed. The steps are quite involved but help is out there if you know where to look. Check out my resource box to find out more.

You can use this article on your site, ezine, blog or whatever, so long as you include my bio box below.


Article Source: http://www.superfeature.com

Blog Advertising, 8 easy ways to profits

A blog is like a web page that is updated regularly. But, a blog can be much more than that. If you want to start a business and has a small budget, than there are a lot of ways blogging can be useful.

On your blog you can put your sale pitches, Articles, web page links, and what ever, out where everyone can see by publishing them on your blog. You are than paid A commission for the sale.


1. The blog idea is great if your business is affiliate progroms. You put various links, banners products, and or whatever your affiliate program consist of on you blog. Your
vistors click on these links and buy your products.


2. Another good reason for using blogs when starting your business is blogs is A whole lot cheaper than web sites. You can set up a blog for free. You don't need to buy a
domain name, the cost of designing A web site, monthly cost of hosting and etc.


3. Blogs has picked up speed in the last few years. Blog marketing now days is the way to go, as of cheap advertising. Creating a blog and setting it up cost next to nothing, comparing to web sites. Including A RSS feed means you can keep in touch with your customers and prospects without having to email or write them. Blogs are easy to updated on a regularly bassis. Blogger.com has free bloggers and free hosting.


4. Discover How to use free Blogs And A zero dollar advertising budget To Consistently Generate Thousands Of Dollars A Month from blogging. Easy blogging means getting your mine on it. Make up your mine to do it. Get advice from the experts, the ones who are already making fortunes, More on this later.


5. To make an extra profit with your blog you need to intergrate Google Adsense on your blog. Adsense is the google program that pays you when someone clicks on the little ads that has been placed on your web site using the adsense cord provided by Google. Their are lots more contextual programs you can use in your blog, including Yahoo, msn, Kanoodle, Chitika and more as well as your own affiliates links. Another way to benefit from blogging is setting up back links to your blog pointing to your other blogs or web sites.


6. A blog is not the same as a web site. The posting are
presenting prospects with interesting bits of information about your topic or products. Posting regular will get
the attention of your market and build interest in your product and establish your expertise. Offer subscriptions to your blog, your prospects can receive your recent
posting in their email. Many blogs will let readers post comments, this provides for feedbacks and enables you to clues as to what your market wants.


7. You can build traffic with blogs several ways, through the blog provider, search engines, links to your web site or sites, 'pinp'your blog, this tells of your update and the search engines will pick it up. Link to your business web site, this will increase traffic to your sales page. Add an RSS to your blog, which allows other web site to run the content from your blog. When you post
to your blog the information will be updated on the sites thats featuring your RSS.


8. Blogging has A lot less technical problems, less knowledge is needed for blog operation. Blogging has an extra edge over the competition because its real time, no waiting. Vistors can post their comments and suggestions to your
site. Be sure to post answers to all questions or problems in a quick manner.In summary, blogging is a great business tool and should not be overlooked. It is very helpful to beginner internet marketing because it is very cost
effective and has no
boundaries. Add your own creativities and you will have establed a successful internet business.


Article Source: http://www.superfeature.com

Start Your Business And Make Money Online Free

As I started to make money online free, one of the things that I have came to realize was that there is way to much hype in this business. I am sure you have notice how so many marketers tell you how you can start making thousands of dollars a week with little or no effort by following there secret system to success. It’s all hype, and so I won’t be one on those internet marketers pushing that line to you.


What I will tell you is that you can make money online free but it will take work on your part. It will also take a little lowering of your expectations. That is why I have named this report “How to make Your First Hundred Dollars Online.” Once you know how to make a hundred dollars it becomes easier to make that second hundred and so on.

In this report I won’t waste a lot of time on fluff. I will get right to the point as to what you need to do in order to accomplish the one thing all internet market want to accomplish and that is getting paid for doing what you do online. So let get started.


Plan Your Steps

If you really want to make money online free you must remember this one thing and that is you must start with research and planning. By starting with a plan you will be able to eliminate many problems you would normally face otherwise.

Take time to determine what things you wish to accomplish. If you expect to make money online free then plan your work and work your plan. Doing it any other way will lead to costly mistakes that could be detrimental to your hopes of ever building a solid online business.


Build Your Business Around Your Interest

The initial step in building a successful online business is to find a niche area where you have interest or passion in. Here's how you can accomplish this:

1) Brainstorm some of the best niche concepts that you believe will work for you. It's much easier to build your successful online business if you love what you are doing.

2) If for some reason you can't find a passion of your own then, create one. Find a niche that interest you and dig into it until it becomes your passion.

3) When all else fails, go for the money. Research to find out what niches are popular and make money. Find out what people want and sell it to them. You will greatly increase your chances of success by doing so. There are a many places where you can go to find out what sells. Start out by doing alittle surfing. Perform some keyword research. You will soon find something to catch your fancy.


Determine Your Target Audience

Once you have determined your niche, it is time explore who your audience is. Your audience may affect the design and content of your web site. Answer the following questions:

1) Who do you expect to visit your web site?

2) How will they find your web site?

3) What are their ages, gender, education, etc.?

4) What is your audience looking for; information, products, services etc.?

5) What do you desire them to do once they reach your web site; request information by signing up for something or, ordering some product or service?

6) What will you use to entice and convince them to stay or revisit your web site?

If you answer these questions and other similar to them your will have taken a critical step in the development of your make money online free business. These question will help you to focus on what important steps you must take to build, maintain and promote your business. In the end they will help you to increase your web site revenue, maximize your marketing spending, improve you web page customer conversions, increase your brand awareness and reinforce your customer loyalty.


Article Source: http://www.superfeature.com


Common Errors that Kill Search Engine Ranking

Tricking the search engines just does not work. The search engines do not look kindly upon webmasters who attempt to deceive the search engines about the content contained on a webpage.



1. Cloaking

Cloaking a website is a stealth technique used to provide a copy of a web page to search engines while providing an alternate copy to website visitors. The website copy provided to the search engine is optimized and not always reflective of the real content contained on the webpage.


2. Hidden Text

Another deceptive tip that will result in a search engine ban, is done by incorporating text into a website that is not visible to the naked eye, but is visible to search engine spider. There are two ways that underhanded webmasters might attempt this, the first is by changing the font color to match the web page's background color. The second fallacious way of deceiving the search engine using hidden text is by using a single character like a '.' period as a link. Black hat webmasters might attempt this as a way to increase their websites link popularity.


3. Bad Links

While this is not as much a deceptive practice as an indication that the webpage content has been abandoned, links to webpages that no longer exist is an indication to search engines that the content is no longer relevant.


4. Lack of Meta Tags

A website that does not make use of title and description tags, will not result in a ban but could impact the ability for a website to rank well. The title and description of a website should be different on each and every web page.


5. Navigation Mistakes

Navigation should be "spiderable". Do not use javascript or flash navigation, search engines can not spider javascript menus. Adding a site map link is just not good enough, if you do not use conventional navigational techniques, the pages within your website will not always be indexed by the search engines. Navigation should be logically structured, links should not be hidden too deeply within the website or the content contained on the buried pages will not be considered relevant and will not rank well.


6. Valid Code

Observing the conventions of HTML are a necessity, if a webpage's code is invalid, search engines might 'choke' and be unable to follow the links or code. Be sure to properly open and close all HTML code. Valid HTML is critical.


7. Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is a technique where a long list of repetitive keywords, sometimes related sometimes unrelated to the webpages content is used to trick search engines into thinking the webpage is relevant. Rarely is this effective and it is unlikely that it will artificially inflate a websites ranking for any length of time.


8. Avoid Session IDs

Webpages within a website that uses session IDs or "ID=" in the links will not always be recognized by search engines. It is assumed by many search engines that when ID= appears in the URL, that the webpage does not contain unique content and that the webpage is not in need of indexing. Avoid using ID= on dynamic or static web pages.


9. Nice Neighbors

Avoid listing the website in link farms. Search engines are firm believers that you are like the company that you keep, links should be solicited from reputable sources. Links from spammy websites will not help a website rank well.

Many will say that there are no rules to search engine optimization, they might be right, but the fact remains that webmasters can influence their search engine ranking through the tips above. Attempting to trick or fool the search engines is a sure fire way to become banned. Search engines have the ability to provide a consistent and steady stream of traffic to websites, that stream can become a trickle if you attempt to deceive.


Source : http://www.goarticles.com

5 Most Effective Ways to Drive Laser-Targeted Traffic

Highly targeted traffic is one of the most important entities in the internet universe. Any website owner or administrator recognizes the importance of driving traffic to a website. The success of any website does not rely entirely on the site itself. You may have a terrific idea for a website, offer an excellent product or service, or have an exceptionally designed site with superb content, but if you do not use the right strategies to advertise, your site would not attract the high traffic you need. Attracting targeted traffic is a task that should be taken seriously for any site to succeed or make a profit.



But what if you don't know how to get traffic? What if you don't understand the basic ways that traffic is generated?

Generating traffic is just like anything else in life. You have to understand the basics before you can move on the more advanced techniques.


Here are the 5 most effective ways that I use to drive Laser-Targeted Traffic to my site


1. Set up blogs at wordpress.com or blogger.com and add content related to your product. Add links back to your website.

Write good content for your blog. Make sure that the content for your blog is entertaining as well as informational. It should provide certain keywords targeted to your market as well as great quality. You can create this content yourself, use private label content or you can hire a professional content writer. The choice is up to you.

Keep in mind when adding content to your blog that the search engines track down the keywords and keyword phrases in your content then index your pages based on how they are used.


2. Write articles that grab the attention of people that are interested in the product or service you provide. Try writing articles that will provide relevant information and tips that will make them want to visit your site for more. After your have composed your article submit it to article directories with a link back to your site or squeeze page.

Many sites offer free submission and posting of your articles. When people find interest in your articles they have a good chance of following the track by finding out where the article originated. Include a link or a brief description of your site/product with the article and there is a great probability that they will visit your squeeze page.

Again if you don't want to write the article yourself you can use private label content or hire a content writer.


3. Trade links with other sites. This method may seem a bit out dated but it is still a very effective way to get free traffic.

If you don't want to hunt down link partners yourself there are many services that will do the hard work for you. Just do a quick search for "link exchange" and you will find many options.

Keep in mind you don't have to stop at links - you can also exchange articles, ads or even product recommendations.


4. Use traffic exchanges. It is similar to link exchange but on a different level. Most traffic exchanges give you credits when you view other people's site or ads. Then those credits are used when someone views yours.

This way, both benefit from each others efforts to generate traffic. The other sites visitors can go to your pages and know more about your site as well as theirs. There are many free traffic exchange programs available. Just use your search engine to find the one that's right for you.


5. Take advantage of online forums and online communities. The great thing about forums and online communities is that you can target a certain group that fits the certain demographic that you are looking for. Another great advantage is that you know what you are getting into and you will be prepared.

With online communities and forums you can build a reputation for your company. Show them what you are made of and wow them with your range of expertise about the subject, with that you can build a reputation and build trust with the people in your expertise and knowledge.

Usually you can add a sig file with a link back to your site in your forum posts. As your post count and reputation increases, so will the targeted traffic to your sales or squeeze page.

Source : http://www.goarticles.com

Small Business Advertising Online Make Your Budget Count

Advertising online is the first thing marketers think of when their business is prepared to launch. Building a website that places their product or service on display for the world to see is a lot easier than getting the world to actually want to see it.


To get the world to take notice requires a certain level of advertising innovation and most marketers dont have it and subsequently do it wrong.


Perfect online advertising campaigns should be focused on investing as little as possible, while getting as much as possible in return. The professionals understand this. Amateur marketers usually dont grasp this until they have sunk thousands of dollars into campaigns that only generate a few dollars if they are lucky. Thats called going into the red but let review. OK, Alright, you know what a banner ad is and you think you know what you want it to say. That is a start, but it is only a start. There are other more pressing things to consider. The banner ad is a very important piece of the advertising puzzle but where you place it makes all the difference in the world. In the brick and mortar world of real estate, businesses seek out buildings for their operations based on where it is located. Businessmen and businesswomen often attribute success to location, location, location.


The same reasoning must be applied to online marketing banners. Where you place it is as important as what the banner actually says.


Now, in the brick and mortar world hot locations are very expensive to acquire. This is simply because the owner knows that it is a hot property and sets his/her prices accordingly. Hot online properties are no different. The laws of supply and demand drive their prices upward to the point that small businesses just cant afford to compete for those spots. So, if you have attempted to get noticed online with a budget of less than 100 dollars, you undoubtedly have found that you are out of luck.


The pathway to overcoming unfriendly advertising pricing structures is to be innovative in your ad placements. Look for websites that are just beginning and scoop up the ad spaces as if it were a hot stock ready to explode.


The idea behind this is that mega sites have to begin somewhere and the next multi million hit website may very well be an option for your ad now, before it goes insane. Whats good about this is that these sites are just getting started and their rates are greatly reduced for those advertisers that are acute enough to begin advertising before the site gets hot and the prices start rising. Some of the websites that know they will grow to be huge will actually let advertisers who get in early lock in the low rates they start off with. This means that an ad space that can eventually see 1 million impressions per month can be locked in for rates commonly seen on non popular sites. Online advertisers gain ad spaces for 10 bucks per month while others are paying thousands of dollars per month to be in the same place. Unless you stop your ad at some point, you get the benefit of a much more expensive marketing campaign for a lot less money.


As afore mentioned, supply and demand drives the price of advertising up very quickly. You have to find the websites that are destined to take off and get in BEFORE they go big. Many small advertisers wait around and end up competing with the big boys once the property goes hot. Stop doing that. You cant afford it.


15,000 bucks per month verses 10 bucks per month is a big difference.

My advice to advertisers is simple. Stop following the herd when it comes to advertising online.


Open your mind to what the internet has to offer not what your competitors have limited themselves to. One such hot property is TypoBounty dot com. This site is changing the way advertising online is done and offering more benefits for advertisers. Advertising sites like this appear to have all of the necessary draws to go big relatively quickly.


When advertising, always look for the road less traveled and follow the trail before it becomes a super highway. This way you get all of the benefit of the travel before it becomes a high priced toll road congested with competitors.


Article Source: http://www.superfeature.com

Marketing And Advertising Making The Most Of Impressions, Small Business

Marketing and advertising is the life blood of business. Without it, business ventures would simply be unproductive. If no one knows about your product are service, they certainly cant buy it.


Having said that, there are many marketers that seek to market and advertise their products, but dont gain the response they seek.


They apply all of the marketing principles they have learned by observing others and still arent able to break through the seemingly impenetrable barrier between them ad success.


What these marketers dont know is that the people they are watching are either pumping in large amounts of cash to get noticed or they are failing also. If what I have written so far seems to correlate with what you have been experiencing, this is where you need to pay the closest attention. You are not alone.


At first glance, that statement seems to assure you that philosophically there are others in the same failing marketing tactics boat as you. While there are many that are failing at marketing just like you are, that really isnt what I was getting at.


When I say that you are not alone, I mean that there are more people trying to get the attention of the same people that you are. These other marketers may not offer the same type of product that you offer but they are all competing with you nonetheless. See, ATTENTION is what every product marketer wants for his or her product or service. Unfortunately, ATTENTION is governed by time. There is only so much time in a day that a potential customer can devote to considering a product and every marketer in the world is fighting for that small block of time slot in the potential customers mind.


This window of time is so important that to miss it often means the marketer looses the sell. Compounding the problem for advertisers and marketers that find themselves in an ever-growing competition for the ATTENTION window, is the fact that the attention window is not a stable block of time. It shrinks and grows erratically as the potential customer deals with the vicissitudes of life.


For instance, lets take a person that plays golf a lot. That is the perfect person to send a sales pitch for a new style golf club right? Not necessarily. What if you pitch the sale on August 19 and he is dealing with problems with his son getting into trouble on that same day? His golf game is a very low priority at that point and his window for carefully considering a product is very small or non-existent all together. I am not saying that it has to be something quite that drastic. It could also be something as simple as the potential customer being tired after having worked long hours. I am just making the point that timing is very important in marketing and advertising campaigns. It makes a very big difference in how deeply your product will be considered and how much time the product sales pitch will be given by the potential customer.


When a potential customer is distracted by the desire to learn more about his/her original search engine search, they dont pay attention to ad placements that interrupt them. Here is a test, on the last 3 websites that you visited, what did the banner ads on those pages say? Cant remember? That is exactly my point. You didnt ask for those ads so memory of them is difficult to maintain. OK..here is an easy one. On your last search engine use, what was the top 5 domains that appeared on the ads to the right of the search results page? Still nothing? Again, that is my point. We instinctively tune out and forget those ads because subconsciously they are often interruptions to what we really are looking for. Dont limit your ad placement to that type of attention seeking. If you do, you have a high chance of mediocre results.


When internet users are interrupted by an ad, most times they ignore it, other times they click over and click back in seconds. The pattern of visiting a website and only staying for a few seconds before leaving can be noticed in the website logs. When this is happening to your website it is frustrating, to say the least, because you know that it takes more than a few seconds to read the information that you have provided about your product. Then, what happened? The ATTENTION window shut very quickly and that customer was long gone before you could grab their attention.


In the above analogy, how long the attention window remains open is crucial. How crucial is it? Companies spend billions of dollars per year researching and implementing plans to prop that window open and hold that window open long enough to have their products and services carefully considered and remembered. Much of that money is wasted testing flawed theories. Thats enough bad news. Lets get to the part where I tell you the solution to this problem. The solution is simple. First, avoid following the herd when it comes to marketing. In its self it is not a bad thing. It is just that many marketing and advertising campaigns have failed due to attempting to make a big splash using already over-saturated marketing techniques. Remember, only so many ads can successfully get through the attention window. The task is to get the potential customer to see your ad coming and fully open the window until your product has been properly consider.


The art is to be innovative with your marketing efforts. For instance, a new advertising website TypoBounty dot com uses a patents pending method called error marketing to create and maintain the open window scenario. By conditioning the visitors prior to them arriving on the advertisers website, TypoBounty dot com helps advertisers receive more attentive and focused web traffic. The potential customers come looking for an error on the advertising web property for a small reward. In an effort to find errors, they read every word on your website, resulting in them staying longer and catching the full impact of your sales pitch. The customer remains focused on understanding what you have to say and offer and the ATTENTION WINDOW remains wide open longer for interaction with the customer.


To summarize be innovative and be willing to embrace the new marketing techniques early in the game or you will find yourself in the same spot in a year from now. Catch advertising angles while they are new and reap the benefit of boldly going where noAwe you get the idea.


Article Source: http://www.superfeature.com

Direct Response Advertising, Is Everybody Really Doing It?

The direct response advertising business is a $250 Billion dollar industry. Yes, Billion with a capital B. Yet people think they are not affected by direct response - until you find a George Foreman Grill in their kitchen. Even the most unsuspecting people are roped in by DR advertising. This is why it is a growing industry for medium to small business owners to get their products and services sold.


Many of products you use today got their initial launch through DR advertising: TheraBreath; OxyClean, the Ab Roller®… and the list goes on.

Ironically, many people think they know nothing about it and are not affected by it. It is the most unsuspecting, yet highly workable, marketing method today. Why? TV. A newsblaze.com article Why You Can't Ignore the Power of Direct Response Ads to Boost Sales, cites television as reaching a whopping 98% of the homes in the U.S.

And according to a study from the Electronic Retailing Association, called The Evolving Role of Direct Response Television in Multichannel Marketing Execution, multichannel marketers are growing the DRTV industry. (Multichannel marketing is offering customers more than one way to buy something -- for example, from a website as well as in retail stores.)

Bob Francis, the Vice President of Commercial Production for Event Management Services, Inc. is a pioneer in the world of direct response. With 25 years under his belt in the DR advertising industry and accolades like having been the creative genius behind the well-known 8-Minute Abs campaign, when Francis comments on what it takes to be successful in DRTV, people listen.


To hit it big with DR, one needs:

- A product that has mass appeal
- A good ratio between hard cost & retail price
- An irresistible, generous offer -- give away way more than what the consumer pays for (Victoria Principal’s skin care line is a great example).

An added advantage is to have a consumable product. “Once they [consumers] like it, wear it or use it and get compliments three days in a row, you can guarantee when they run out they will buy it again.” says Francis. “Consumable products have lifetime customers.”

DRTV is not just for celebrities. Today’s small to medium businesses can reap the rewards. The benefits include:

- Building brand name recognition
- Retail backup – in other words, take your product with proven DR advertising and sales backing it up, that retailer is already ensured they have a product that is going to sell in their stores.

What’s the ultimate goal of DR advertising? Going to retail. George Foreman made millions before taking to retail. Jane Fonda’s videos were once sold via Direct Response – now you can even rent them at video stores.

Francis’ acumen lies in not only writing, producing and directing Direct Response ads, but also in assessing what products are viable candidates for this type of marketing approach. He imparts his knowledge to entrepreneurs from many different industries nationwide at marketing boot camps organized by Joy Gendusa, CEO of PostcardMania, and Marsha Friedman, CEO of Event Management Services, Inc.

One factor Francis claims he loves is disabusing entrepreneurs of the misconceptions of direct response advertising. DR advertising is very workable today because:

- The costs of production is low
- With the advent of cable TV, media time is inexpensive
- You can target your audience with cable like never before

“You can’t just utilize one channel of advertising these days,” says Francis. “DR advertising coupled with an aggressive web and retail presence can boom your business.”


Article Source: http://www.superfeature.com

Thursday, August 2, 2007

Going Viral To Promote Your Business

As an online business owner one of the many tasks you are required to under take is that of business promoter.

With several thousand new web sites being started every day the typical site owner has to be aware of the many different avenues that are available to promote their site.


Some are more traditional than others such as search engine optimization and submitting your site to directories related to your particular niche. Others take a little more imagination to implement.


One such tactic is creating a viral report or ebook.

This has nothing to do with passing a virus to the computers of unwary surfers.

Going viral simply means that the report or ebook is given for free with the encouragement to the reader to pass it along to others who may be interested in the subject matter which is covered in the text.

This can usually be accomplished by offering an incentive to the reader through a gift, bonus item or monetary reward.

In most cases the viral concept works in conjunction with an affiliate program where an affiliate link is embedded into the report itself or through an email from an autoresponder.

When used with an autoresponder it is usually with what is called a tell a friend script.

These are basically scripts that automatically place a piece of code into a link in an outgoing email. The reader is rewarded when entering the name and email address of three or more friends. When the link is clicked on by the recipient the click is credited to the person who referred the respondent.

Another method used is with what is referred to as branding software.

In this scenario the report or ebook is written with one or more clickable links that lead to either a sales page or a squeeze page.

Squeeze pages are simply pre sales pages that are set up with an autoresponder form on them so that visitors will leave their name and email address.

This is an incredibly useful tool that puts interested prospects into a sales funnel and allows the site owner to contact them with follow up messages at set intervals.

However some links will simply lead prospects directly to the sales page which then adds a cookie to their computer for tracking purposes.

When a sale is made the affiliate who sent the prospect then gets credited with the sale and gets the commission.

Rebranding software is a great tool because it can be used with PDF documents which are widely used on both PC and MAC platforms and are hailed for their security. This means that you are reaching a bigger audience than if you were to use software designed for an EXE application.

By writing good informative reports and short ebooks with brandable links and encouraging or rewarding readers to pass them along, you too can build a large viral marketing system that can bring prospects for months and possibly years to come.


Source http://www.articlesbase.com

Viral Marketing On The Internet

Many internet marketing gurus will push the idea of "viral marketing" in order to bring traffic and increased sales to your marketing ventures. Viral marketing is simply a form of marketing that
"facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message." In other words, it is establishing a marketing campaign that simply spreads on its own, and the internet has become the perfect venue for marketing campaigns to spread like a virus.


Every time an email is forwarded something, every time someone sends a YouTube video to a friend, and every friend request that is sent on a social network, individuals are participating in the idea of viral marketing. Because the overall success of a viral marketing campaign is determined by the interest of the recipient, any successful venture is built around the hope that those who find it will pass it on to others. If the recipient, reader, or viewer appeals to what is being said in the email, video, or other form of presentation, there is a strong chance of passing it along to others.

This forum of marketing can progress at an incredibly fast rate. As more people forward the information, the message is distributed to more people who then have the opportunity to pass it along to others as well.

Viral marketing, when implemented correctly, can be an excellent way to facilitate the branding of a name or product. In the internet marketing community, providing a good piece of information in the form of an ebook can spread very quickly and earn credibility for the creator. This idea is increased when resell rights are provided for the given ebook.

The most important ingredient to a success viral marketing campaign is to arouse curiosity and/or humor to a piece of information. Curiosity will cause a reader to dig deeper into a topic and be more receptive to the marketing message. Humor and/entertainment help one to establish a good rapport with the reader and, more importantly, causes others to pass the message onto others.

While the concept of viral marketing is nothing new, the internet opens up new opportunities for people to tap into its power. On the internet information highway, quality pieces of information, funny videos, and any thing popular will spread like wildfire. By creating something of value and distributing it correctly, the internet can work in your favor to make your marketing campaigns absolutely viral.


Source http://www.articlesbase.com

Mobile commerce - The next big thing

Wherever you might be in the world, and whatever your business, chances are you have not missed the most important prediction since the internet first appeared – the internet will be mobile.


You've probably seen all of them; the handsets and other devices that let their users log in and browse the web at the click of a key or even a tap on a display (as is the case with the latest uber hyped device: the iPhone). People are today checking emails or browsing for the latest cinema listings, wherever you turn. The internet is simply on its way to become something you can access wherever you are.
How does this apply to you though, as a small or medium sized web owner, you ask?

The answer is quite simple. Once the growing ache of the mobile internet has started to settle, and people get more comfortable with their mobile internet features they will start also to demand that they can do their shopping on the road.

For those web businesses who have already stepped out into the "unknown" of mobile interfaces and development difficulties, you may learn that it is not an easy time to enter, unless you are ready for a bit of an uphill struggle.

While we know that the mobile devices are out there and ready to b used (actually, more people in Europe and Asia have mobiles than have desktops and notebooks), the web businesses are not quite ready to step up to the challenge it seems.


Why?

Because while there seems to be an urgent demand or even requirement for businesses to sign up for a mobile domain, many have no idea how to go from there. Developing a mobile site, optimizing it and then promoting it seems like a whole new science to most.

Around the creative agencies, you are starting to see the service of "creating mobile presences" show up. But it is not yet in the mainstream offering. Maybe because it is a process that requires skill in using applications to deliver real time mobile content, or displaying current offerings of services or products in an entire new kind of interface.

Today there is probably no emergency-like requirement for an online business owner to get a mobile domain (like .mobi). But, the benefits of having a mobile domain is that a very savvy mobile audience will recognize your efforts. And, you may boost your image significantly as a result.

But is it really that different from just building a website? Can't I just use what I already have?

Yes and no. It is different. And you should (if you are smart and serious about taking the leap) start from scratch with a new site, just for mobile users. Kick and scream all you want, there are no shortcuts.

Now, I'm not saying that the processes or technologies are any different from the traditional world-wide-web, but if you will to sell goods or services through a mobile interface you need to make sure all your ecommerce processes are quick enough for the mobile devices, and of course accessible. You also need to make sure the wireless transport layer security provides enough encryption and that your servers (hosting your commerce) support the WTLS protocol.

So, you're thinking now that you can get help with all of the above – what next?

Don't forget to make sure your site is optimized for mobile search – and of course that it is compliant with mobile standards (not too heavy site, jump links that work etc etc). Then go ahead, hit the ground running with your marketing and PR efforts like you would to any of your media or customer interfaces.

Sure, it's early. Sure, it's still in a very emerging phase. And sure, it's hard to find the tools and skills you may need to get there and be successful. But what's more sure than anything else, is that the mobile internet is coming. The question is just when, and if you are going to be there or not.



Article Source: http://www.myarticlemall.com