10 Tips for Copywriting Success

While video and multimedia technologies are rapidly expanding, the Web remains a largely a text-oriented system. Text utilizes far less space than video or audio, and remains the go-to medium for the majority of the web’s public content. This means that there is a lot of copy on the web, so a savvy copywriter should be on the lookout for any technique that will improve the material he puts forward.

Tip 1 – Know Yourself

This piece of advice has been kicking around for several thousand years, and it has persisted for a reason – people make better decisions when they know their strengths and limits. If your writing lends itself to narrative structures, find ways to tell stories about the product, perhaps in the form of a testimonial or an interview. If you aren’t capable of writing technical articles, don’t try to bluff it.

Tip 2 – Improve Yourself

The web changes, language changes, people change, products change… in short, everything changes. This is a good thing. Improvement and training are important changes that everyone must go through in some degree if they want to remain relevant. You may want to consider enrolling in a writing course, study new SEO and copywriting tips, pick up a highly rated style manual, or continue refining your skills in some other way.

Tip 3 – Target Your Language to the Audience

There is always an audience. Whether writing a letter specifically to one individual or composing for a website to be viewed by international customers, take the time to find out who your audience is and tailor the writing accordingly. Academics will have different writing standards than a DIY auto repair services, and neither will appreciate receiving articles targeted to the other.

Tip 4 – Write Coherently

Compare the following two statements:

* The Large Hadron Collider, created and maintained by CERN in Geneva, is designed to locate and study the Higgs-Boson particle, which will provide insight into the origin of the universe.

* CERN intends to use the Large Hadron Collider to locate and study the Higgs-Boson particle in an attempt to gain insight into the origin of the universe.

The first sentence is full of asides and parenthetical statements while the second conveys the information more fluidly. There are times when asides and references are important, but as a general rule, take any opportunity you can to simplify your writing. Your message will be stronger and clearer for the effort.

Tip 5 – Write Specifically

Again, consider this ambiguous sentence; “Anti-nuclear protestors released live cockroaches inside the White House Friday, and these were arrested when they left and blocked a security gate.”

While it seems innocuous enough on the surface, this statement does illustrate the problem with ambiguous grammar. Good copywriting is precise and unambiguous. Here it comes across as funny, but if your customers aren’t coming to your site to laugh, go with a clearer example.

Tip 6 – Write Concisely

Strunk and White’s ‘The Elements of Style’ sums this up as ‘Omit needless words.’ Stick to short, clear paragraphs and sentences. Elaborate where needed, but focus on efficient writing that gets the message across without pointless extras.

Tip 7 – Start Strong

Journalism focuses on a technique known as the lede. In short, this is all the relevant detail of the story conveyed in one sentence, and it always comes at the start of the article. “A local man was arrested today in connection with the recent kidnapping of a foreign exchange student.” Notice it doesn’t give names or quotes, just the hard-core facts. While online copywriting rarely needs to emulate this exact approach, it still illustrates a key point; good articles present their best facts quickly while hooking the reader.

Tip 8 – End Strong

There are countless examples of writing that start out with the proverbial ‘bang,’ only to wander off pointlessly. Focus your writing on its key message and make sure the final statement is as strong as the first. Write your beginning statement and ending statement at the same time and make sure the article is always leading toward that killer end sentence that ties the article up in a powerful way.

Tip 9 – Read

While this partially falls under the idea of improving yourself, it’s also a specific example that deserves its own mention. Read constantly. Read good articles and bad, seeing what works and what does not. People who are widely read write better than comparable writers who don’t read as much.

Tip 10 – Write Constantly

Copywriting is a talent like any other. Daily practice with writing will expand your ability to try new ideas and reinforce good habits. Even if you have no copywriting assignment at the moment, browse the web looking for websites in your area of expertise, and see if you can’t improve their copy. Then you can either consider it free practice, or perhaps give the authors a call to see if they’re interested.

Conversion Secrets

Once you’re online business website is live, generating targeted traffic is your next hurdle. But to maximize your online success you need to go beyond traffic generation. You need to focus on web site conversion. Many online marketers spend lots of time and money on traffic generation. And they fail to pay attention to website conversions.

Here are 7 website conversion secrets to help you get more customers and make more money. Period. Lets start…

Conversion Secret #1

Pay attention to the buying experience. Put your self in your buyer’s shoes. How would you rate your site? The most important rule of thumb is to make everything drop-dead easy. No hoops allowed! Minimize the number of clicks in your ordering process. If they have to register… make it a one-step process. I recently read that up to 40% of ecommerce shopping carts are Abandoned without an order because the order process was confusing.

When your customers get confused, they get frustrated or angry and then they leave. Not sure how you’re doing? Be smart. Test. That’s the only way. Or contact your customers and ask them to rate their buying experience at your site. Just find out and you’ll know! Very simple.

Conversion Secret #2

Optimize your site structure. Sounds easy enough. And it is! But you’d be shocked to know how many marketers Don’t. Make it well organized and stupid simple to navigate. Prioritize your themes and sub-themes and structure accordingly. You have less than 6 to 8 seconds to capture your visitor’s attention and get them interested. Most people don’t sit there and analyze. They respond to unconscious feelings and the famous ‘gut’ feeling.

Conversion Secret #3

What is the goal of your site? Your conversion goal? What is the purpose of the page they’re on? I hope you have thought about this. If not… do it now! Do you have 12 options for them to click on? Ever consider they might get confused because there ARE so many options? You can have many options for them. And if you do then it’s critically important to have a very clearly defined navigation structure.

Conversion Secret #4

Make sure your site or page loads fast! The faster, the better. You know how impatient we’ve all become. Your site needs to be fully loaded in less than 6 to 8 seconds! Fully visible. Research shows again and again that up to half of your visitors will Leave if your site is more than 6 to 8 seconds to load.

Conversion Secret #5

Do you have an effective and clear call to action? Here’s something that has been known for many decades. Courtesy of direct mail pioneers who came way before the internet. But it’s still true! People need to be told what to do next.

Absolutely still true. Don’t be afraid to ‘politely’ inform them of what to do next, or just what to do! Tell them! Don’t expect the website visitor to know what to do next. You can alleviate fears of the unknown by telling them, in some fashion, what their next action will do. Click to order your product… click here to register for your free download, etc. People need to be reassured and you’ll do that by telling them what result will happen from their next action.

Conversion Secret #6

Do you have a strong message? This is different from call to action. I’m talking about a clear, strong, and consistent message throughout your page. If you’re talking about a particular product, theme, service… whatever it is, stay on topic and focus on it.

Conversion Secret #7

Test, test, and test again. Increasing your conversions takes time and is an ongoing process. There are lots of programs available to do this. Find out how much time people are spending on your pages. What do they click on? Find out what’s strong and improve on it. See if you can expand on it. Find out what’s weak and see if you can improve on it.

Your profits will soar if you do only half of what I’ve shown you here today. But why would do that? Do All of them. And there’s even more to be learned. Failing to work on your conversions is like running on half empty, or running on misfiring cylinders. So don’t do it!

Make Your Ezine Make You Money

Writing a regular ezine (online newsletter) can sometimes feel like hard work. So if you’re putting in the time and effort to give your readers valuable content, consider implementing at least a few of the strategies in this article to help your efforts pay off in profits.

Here are 4 ways to help your ezine make you more money:

1. Self-promote

Besides giving valuable content in each issue of your ezine, don’t forget to add a little self-promotion as well. After all, it is one of your best marketing tools, and you want to make sure that you’re letting your subscribers know what products and services you have available for them. It’s best to do this in a separate section of your ezine, instead of in the copy of the article you write for your readers. A short blurb about you and what you offer, as well as a bit about one of your products and services with a link to more information is all you really need to do.

A tip: If space allows, consider adding one or two short testimonials from your clients/customers who are raving fans, too.

Depending on the method through which you are publishing your ezine, you can track how many times your links are clicked on, which gives you valuable market research information about what your readers are interested in finding out more about.

2. Give Options

If you are a service professional, know that there are many people who would like to hire you one-on-one but that option doesn’t fit into their budget just yet. If you offer them other options, and promote those offerings in your ezine, you’ll turn some of those prospects into paying clients.

For example, if you coach or consult one-on-one, consider offering a group coaching program with a price point that would be much more accessible than your private fees would be. Or take your knowledge and package it into an ebook, or a series of teleseminars, or an ecourse, and price them reasonably. Then promote them in your ezine.

3. Offer specials

Your readers may find the content of your free ezine valuable and would really like more, but they might need a bit of encouragement to buy from you. So give your subscribers a special discount on something you offer, with a time limit for purchasing (which really does encourage people to “act now”).

For example, offer a 2-for-1 deal on your ebooks, or 20% off one of your programs if they register within a week. This strategy will move some of your readers from the “free” part of your funnel into the “fee” part of your funnel, which is exactly what you want.

4. Offer recommendations

I get so many questions about the services I use in my business that I periodically give recommendations in my ezine. These products and services are ones I truly believe are of high quality, because I have used them personally or because they come highly recommended to me by my mentor coaches. Some of these I am a reseller of (an affiliate), meaning I make a small commission on every sale I refer, and others are products and services I love and know would be of value to my subscribers.

Don’t forget that your number one priority with your ezine is to provide valuable content for your subscribers. Proportion 10-20% of your content with promoting you and your offerings, and you will be working smarter and not harder.

Also remember that with each issue you put out, you are building trust and rapport with your list, becoming known as an expert in your niche, and gaining lots of exposure (especially if you submit your ezine articles to article submission services), all of which are so important to the overall success of your business.

The Benefts of Professional Article Services

Professional article services can provide you with effective article marketing campaigns that can turn a failing online business into an unexpected success by giving you the time to focus on the more important aspects of your business.

This is not to suggest that you cannot write articles yourself – of course you can – but it can be time-consuming to write in a manner that attracts readers, keeps them reading and then compels them to click the links in your resource to reach your website.

Sure, you can do that yourself, but do you have the time? Probably not, since the majority that are developing their online businesses want to spend their time doing that and expanding their range of products or services. What time is left to write compelling articles and submit them? Next to none!

Article services can do that for you – not only write your articles but also submit them. However, there is always an associated cost, and you have to determine what the cost of your article services are in respect of the benefits you receive. There are two basic ways of looking at this, and while it is not possible to quantify them for individual cases, you can at least consider them with respect to yourself, individually:

1. Saving Time

It takes time to write a good article. Those that claim to teach you how to write a great winning article in 15 minutes are taking nonsense. You might write 300 words about your product, but that won’t impress anybody, and won’t be accepted by many of the important directories that require a minimum 500 word count or even more.

Also, can you write compellingly? Can you persuade a reader that your product is better than the next guys without being allowed to mention your product or even your website? That doesn’t seem very easy, does it. You won’t learn that skill quickly! How long will it take? I know people that work for an hour or more on a 500 word article just to get the spelling and grammar right!

Spelling is extremely important, and any errors in these days of spell checkers will be regarded as unacceptable and careless, but no spell check will tell you that ‘there’ should be ‘there’ or ‘to’ should be ‘too’. In spite of what you have heard, grammar also counts with a number of people. An article with no errors in its grammar will attract more visitors to the link on the resource than the same article full of schoolboy errors. That’s a fact, not an opinion!

So, how long will it take you? Figure that out against the cost of the article from a site offering professional article services. If the money spent is worth the time saved, then it makes sense. If not, then it doesn’t. Your choice, but it is a logical and economic one as all business choices should be – not based upon opinion but on facts.

2. Now for the benefits

Until you are aware of the its benefits, you will be unable to determine the real benefit of the time you will save by using professional article services to help with your article marketing strategy. There are four main benefits:

* You can have your articles published on ezines and article directories. For each of these that accept your article you will receive a share of the PageRank of the web page on which your article is published. The Page Rank cited for the Home Page of the article directory is irrelevant – that is immaterial because the ranking points you receive are related only to the page on which your article is published, and also the other links leaving that page. However, it improves your Google PageRank score.

* Contrary to what many believe, visitors to article directories read the articles. You can get several hundred people reading your article each month if the title attracts them.

* Many people use published articles as content for their websites. This is particularly popular with those that use Adsense and other contextual advertising systems to monetize pages on their sites. To do so, they must also include your resource that publishes your website links, so you get Google PageRank points from the links back to your website from the page on which your article has been used.

* Naturally, anybody visiting that other website can click on your links and visit a page on your website. That page must lead readers to a page that relates to the topic of the article you have written, and also contain a link at least to your home page.

All things considered, when you take into account every benefit that a successful article marketing campaign can provide for you, then using professional article services might make sense rather than trying to do it yourself.

A professional article will be more likely to attract readers and keep them on the page till they click on your link. After that it is up to you, but the same service can also be used to provide the content that will them keep the visitor on that page and perhaps even purchase your products or services.

Is it worth it to you? That is for you to decide, but just as you would consider professional SEO services, advertising services and emailing services as possibilities to help you market your business, so article marketing is an aspect of advertising that good, professional article services can look after for you, leaving you to do what you do best. Make money!

Top Five Ways Your Virtual Assistant Can Help You Make More Money

1. Ezine

An email newsletter will help you get prospective clients into your marketing funnel. Your VA can format the plain text and HTML versions of your email newsletter. All you need to do is write your primary and filler articles each week and forward those to your VA to format and send the finished product out to your newsletter list.

2. Media

Have your VA research an industry-specific media list . This value of this list is in developing relationships with these media contacts so that you’re the expert they immediately think of when they’re doing a story on your area of expertise.

3. Article Marketing

Write once and have that article work for you again and again. Have your VA submit articles you’ve written to online article databases to increase the number of links back to your website and to send more visitors to your website.

4. Strategic Alliances

Once of the quickest ways to grow your business is by creating strategic alliance or joint venture relationships. Have your VA research potential strategic alliance or joint venture partners who provide a service to a similar audience or whose client base could benefit from your product or service.

5. Product Development

Got recorded interviews sitting around gathering dust on your hard drive? How about information you’ve created for presentations that you’ve never done anything with? Have your VA coordinate the transcript and audio editing of any recorded files you might have and help you polish those into saleable products. Your VA can also help your format printed material into an ebook, ecourse, special report, etc. and before you know you, you’ll become an information marketer!

5 Reasons Why You Should Start Using Article Templates Right Now

Are you a small business owner or internet marketer who’s pulling hair out, grinding teeth and wiping sweat from your brow trying to figure out how to write articles that drive targeted traffic to your website?

Well, then it’s a good thing you’re reading this article, because I’m going to give you the power to get out of that dark, cold, gloomy corner and see the light.

* How?

First, I’m going to explain in detail what article writing templates are – and how they can help you overcome your writer’s block. Then, I’m going to give you an opportunity to get 3 of my instant article writing templates for free! These article templates are guaranteed to help you write articles faster – and in many cases, you’ll be able to write articles in 30 minutes or less. So keep reading.

* What Are Instant Article Writing Templates?

Article templates serve as a blueprint for building great articles in a particular style. They provide the guidance and inspiration you need to quickly and easily build an incredible inventory of high-quality, original articles.

For example, when you get my instant article writing templates at http://www.StartWritingArticlesFaster.com you get worksheets that guide you throughout the process.. Each template is in chart format. All you have to do is put the information that’s in your head and put it exactly where I ask you to. Once the template is complete, all you have to do is copy each section and paste it into a new document – and you’ll have a finished article.

* 5 Reasons Why You Need to Start Using Instant Article Writing Templates Now

1) Inspiration

Are you stuck at the gate?  Are you confused on how to begin your article? Are you stuck for ideas? Just browsing through through article templates will help you spark an idea for your next set of articles.

2) Speed

Are you thinking in your head right now – It takes too much time to write articles. That’s because most of your article writing time is spent staring at a blank, white screen. Then, you focus a tremendous amount of time trying to organize your ideas in a flowing manner. But, when you use article writing templates, you’re given a structure and format. So you can write articles faster. Rather than spending time on creating the proper structure for your articles, you can now invest the time you save into writing new articles!

3) Ease

Using the right instant article writing templates make it easy to build high-quality articles that are designed to inform readers while also driving traffic back to your website.

4) Clarity

Since these templates have been well thought out in advance, you’re articles will flow smoothly and have a clear introduction, body and conclusion that will make your articles clear and easy to understand.

5) Style

I can’t tell you how many of my article marketing clients sacrificed speed for quality. They had NO flow, NO organization, NO easy transitions. If I had submitted their articles as-is, their articles would not generate results. So, for the last couple of years, I’ve worked hard to solve these article marketing problems that hinder your chances of getting more prospects and sales online. I’ve analyzed hundreds of articles that I’ve written for my blog, for my newsletter and for article submission. I spent hours reviewing all of my client’s articles that I have proofread, formatted and optimized so it can get published on top websites like About.com, I looked for clear patterns and structures that you can use to write your articles right now. You want to use proven article templates that are designed specifically to give you an article layout and structure that insures an attractive, easy-to-read article that’s almost guaranteed to get results.

* Where Can You Get Instant Article Writing Templates?

Now, if you go to http://www.TryMyFreeArticleTemplates.com, I’ll give you 3 of my article templates for free! All you have to do is enter your name and email in the provided box, and you’ll immediately receive the article templates download.

Article Templates That Will Help You Attract More Clients Like Magnets

Some business owners attract clients and customers like magnets. Their marketing seems effortless. They don’t advertise. They haven’t made a cold call in years. They charge more. They’re regularly asked to speak at conferences and are featured in newspapers and magazines. Their articles are found on top websites and ezines. They’re invited to be guest bloggers on very influential blogs. And, everyone knows their name, and they get all the business they can handle.

It’s almost as though they were famous.

Their names come to mind when people are looking for a particular product or service. They get more business – not only more, but the right kind of business. Unlike you, they don’t have to work so hard to get it.

Why?

Because they have become a thought leader in their industry. You can too if you start writing articles with the idea of becoming a thought leader.

3 New Article Templates for a Thought Leader WannaBe:

Article template #1 – A Little Bit of Controversy

An article stating a controversial opinion can attract interest and readers if it is written well and based on facts and if it avoids inflammatory statements or personal judgments. Although “controversial” implies disagreement, you don’t have to use words that intentionally create divisions among readers and set one group of readers against the other.

Your goal as a thought leader should be to tell the truth, even if it’s uncomfortable or challenges common assumptions. Make controversy a side effect of your article rather than its goal.

Article Template #2 – Predictions

It’s generally believed that authors who make informed, reliable predictions gain credibility in their field. Good predictions are based on knowledge, experience and an ability to recognize and explain trends, developments and signals. They provide a glimpse of what lies ahead and are highly sought after by those not yet in-the-know.

Using this article template, you can quickly tap into your particular knowledge and expertise to generate articles that are both enticing and provide a high-value insider perspective for your readers.

Article Template #3 – Traps and How to Escape Them Article Template

We’ve all been trapped from time to time on almost every plane of possibility, whether it was a physical, mental, emotional, spiritual or financial challenge.  With this article template you get to save the day with your expertise by delivering the “escape plan” followed with a Resource Box where they can learn how to further escape from the trap.

Now, I’d like to help you escape your challenges of becoming a thought leader so you can start attracting more clients and customers like magnet. So, I’m going to invite you to claim 3 of my instant article writing templates for free at http://www.TryMyFreeArticleTemplates.com

This way you can start writing articles more articles, faster. And, then submit your articles to become the expert in your field.

5 Types Of Titles That Can Get More People To Read Your Article

You probably already know that article marketing is a great way to get your story in front of people that can benefit from it. It helps to drive targeted traffic to your website and is the beginning of the relationship that you build with your customers.

But in today’s fast paced world where visitors take only about 4 seconds to scan a webpage, you are competing with thousands of other article writers so you need to write a compelling title that draws in readers like a magnet so that your article stands out from the crowd.

Here are 5 different types of titles that are sure to get more people “clicking in” to read your article:

A) The Question Title

People are curious by nature, so phrasing your title as a question can cause an irresistible pull for them to satisfy that curiosity.

But not any type of question will do. You need to use an open ended question – one that compels the reader to click into your article to find the answer. This is a question that has more than just a “yes” or “no” answer.

For example, you might want to use the title:

“Do You Know The 1 Trick That Will Stop Your Dog From Jumping?”

As opposed to:

“Do You Want To Stop Your Dog From Jumping?”

See, how the first title peaks your curiosity more? What is the 1 trick? Do you know it already? Even if you do, you feel compelled to click into the article to see what the author knows that you might not.

B) The List Of Tips Title

Another great way to get people to click on your title is to formulate your article into a list of ideas or tips. For some reason people love a list of tips. Not only will that help make your title compelling, but having a list format in your article with subheadings for each “point” on the list is a great way to structure the article itself and makes for easy reading.

Almost any topic can be written as a list, you just need to think vertically instead of horizontally when writing your article.

Then once you have the topic and the number of “points” on your list, you simply write the title in this format:

“X Ways To {Solve Your Problem}”

So, you might try something like:

* 10 Ways To Help You Lose Belly Fat

* 5 Ways To Get Your Dog To Obey You

* 6 Tips For Growing Bigger Tomatoes

…. And so on

Does this type of title work? Well, it enticed you to click into this article, didn’t you?

C) The How To Title

Let’s face it, most people are surfing the web looking for information on “how to” do something. Whether it’s buying a product or trying to figure out how to do something related to a hobby, or clearing up their acne, there’s a “How To” for it.

So why not just give them what they want?

* “How To Teach Your Dog To Sit”

* “How To Choose The Best Laptop”

* “How To Clean A Saltwater Aquarium”

Think about what you search the web for – wouldn’t an article with the title of “How To” followed by your subject matter be something you would want to read?

D) The Benefits Title

If you can, you should try to work your benefit into every title – even the other types listed on this page. But sometimes, it’s just not feasible to combine these different types and you might want to simply use the benefit as your title.

Benefits are very powerful because the illicit emotion in the reader. Benefits are what make people pull out their wallets and buy.

Yet, a lot of people confuse features with benefits and end up highlighting the wrong things!

A benefit is something that you can feel – that makes someone’s life a little better, less painful or easier. A feature is something about the physical product or service.

For example, someone who has insomnia doesn’t want a list of herbal remedies or relaxation techniques, what they really want is to get a good nights sleep. The “good nights sleep” is the benefit.

So, you would want to use a title like:

“Get A Good Nights Sleep Tomorrow By Using These Relaxation Techniques Today”

Tell them what the end benefit will be and you’ll have more people clicking into your article to learn how they can realize that benefit for themselves.

E) The Why Title

They word “Why” grabs attention – after all, who doesn’t want to know “Why”? Using “Why” in your title can turn a boring drab title into one that commands interest in your readers.

Consider this title:

“A Memory Foam Mattress Helps Ease Back Pain”

Now add the word “Why” in the front:

“Why A Memory Foam Mattress Helps Ease Back Pain”

Which one seems more interesting to you?

Using “Why” is actually one of the easiest ways to make your titles more engaging. You can add it to almost any title you currently have and make that title more interesting.

The next time you write an article and are considering the title, try to fit your subject into one of these types of titles and I think you will see that you get a better click through rate into your article.

But, of course, the title is only the first part of getting the visitor to your site. Next, you must deliver on the information you promised in the title by answering the questions or listing the tips indicated and, of course, making your article body and resource box compelling enough to get the click to your website or offer.

By using an irresistible title, you’ve done the critical first step of getting the reader into your article – the rest is up to you!

Article Submission: Services How To Find A Good One

So, you’ve finally made the decision to make your life easier by employing the services of an automatic article submitter. That is a very wise decision, because if you choose the right service you can save a ton of time and vastly increase the effectiveness of your articles.

When you’re evaluating article submission services, keep these tips in mind:

1) A referral from someone who has actually used the service is your best bet in finding an excellent article submission service

If you haven’t been referred by anyone, check the website of the article submitter you’re investigating and look for testimonials. If the service is good, its customers should readily volunteer their recommendations for it.

2) Look for a service that has stood the test of time

In the online world, a service that is 5+ years old is a veteran one, and the longevity of the service speaks to its stability.

3) Is it known for its customer service?

When you need help, you want to know that you can get timely and accurate answers. When considering a friend’s referral or testimonials that you are reading about the article submitter, is the business’ customer care complimented?

4) You will want to use an article distribution business that has professional editors on staff who review each and every article

Why? You want your article to be pre-screened for any obvious issues that might prevent it from being accepted by publishers.

5) Does the service update their distribution network on pretty much a daily basis?

The distribution network is the list of publishers to whom your articles are sent. Having a well-maintained list is crucial, as these types of lists can go out of date pretty quickly if they are not attended to regularly.

It’s a perk if the service has a good reputation with publishers. If the publishers directly request to receive articles from the article submitter, then they are much more likely to approve your articles for publication.

6) How many article submission are you allowed?

The most flexible option would be unlimited submissions, although I must caution you that when you are submitting automatically you need to submit far fewer articles than when submitting manually. Usually 8 articles per website is enough when submitting automatically to a large network of publishers.

7) How about scheduling your articles?

This type of feature allows you to submit your article and then have it be distributed at a later date. This is particularly helpful if you are going on vacation and want your article marketing campaign to continue when you are away. Many people also like to submit all their articles at the beginning of the month and schedule them to be distributed at various dates throughout the month.

Can you “trickle” your article distribution?

Normally when you submit through an automatic article submitter your article would be sent to the entire distribution network all at one time. However, there are SEO benefits to having your article submitted to a few publishers a day, perhaps over the course of a month or so.
This creates a more organic accumulation of links, which Google appreciates. Check to see if the service you are interested in will allow you to submit in this “trickled”
fashion.

9) What kind of article spinning features are available?

It’s great if a service allows you to create article variations so that the same article is not sent to every publisher.

10) Is the article submitter committed to ongoing education?

Most article submission services concentrate on the technical aspects of article distribution, rather than on teaching their customers how to improve their article marketing. If you find a service that offers ongoing training, that is a plus!

It may take you a while to find the article submitter that works for your unique needs, but it’s worth the time and effort to do this investigating. The more information you can gather about the service beforehand, the more likely you are to be satisfied.

10 Useful Tips To Attract People To Your Web Site

Combinations of two or more of the tips below are being used by many successful sites today. Use your imagination and see what you can do with them. Because there are so many web sites on the internet today visitors are spread quite thinly and web traffic is one of the scarcest commodities on the internet today. Without it your online business does not exist:

1. Give people a free subscription to your newsletter

Almost everyone is publishing a newsletter nowadays so it is important to give something extra with the free subscription. You need to set yourself apart from the other internet marketers out there. This might be done by offering a gift or free advertising when people subscribe.

2. Provide visitors with new and original content

Your content will be more attractive to your visitors if it is up-to-date or original. You could also offer people the option to reprint the content in their newsletter or web site. You will need to change your content frequently if you do this. But the benefits are worth the effort. The search engines will love your site and keep coming back. Your site will rank highly in their results and your visitors will keep coming back for the latest updates.

3. Use PPC directories

You can advertise in pay per click directories. With PPC you only pay when some one clicks on your link. If no one clicks you pay nothing. This method is very good if you are selling a product at your site. It is easy to assess the cost of each sale and measure you success.

There are lots of PPC sites out there now. Google and Yahoo! are not the only ones. You can often get a better deal at these other sites depending on the competition for the keyword you are using. Shop around. There is probably a site out there with your keyword going cheap. But, Make sure that it can deliver the traffic. You can do this by checking its Alexa rank. If it is not getting much traffic itself, how is it going to direct traffic to you?

4. Give visitors a free ebook

You could write your own and include an ad in the ebook linking to your site and allow other people to sell it or give it away. If you don’t want to take the time to write one, you could ask other writers permission to use their articles and assemble an article eBook. Or commission an eBook. There are plenty of writers around willing to write a fresh eBook for you at a fair price.

5. Hold free online classes or seminars

They could be held in your web site’s chat room. The idea of “live” information will entice people to visit your web site. You will become known as an expert on the topic.

6. Offer free consulting to your web site visitors

You could do this via e-mail or by telephone. People will consider this a huge value because consulting fees can be very expensive. Use a separate business line if you use the phone or you will have calls coming in to your home phone around the clock as the world turns. If your site becomes known for this service you may need to employ people to help keep up. If this happens you can bring in a two tier system whereby you have a free service and a paid service offering something extra.

7. Give visitors a free entry into a contest

The prizes should be something of interest or value to your visitors or relevant to your site’s topics. Most people who enter will continually revisit your web site to get the results. Do not be discouraged if the first one or two contests do not set the world on fire. The word has to get out. People will talk to their friends about this site that is running this great contest, and before too long your site will have a name for running contests. There are people out there who really go for that sort of thing and will visit your site regularly.

8. Let visitors download free software

It could be freeware, shareware, demos etc. You could even turn part of your site into a free software area and let other people sell it or give it away from this area. You do not need to produce the free software yourself. There are plenty of sources on the web. All you have to do is link to them. If you gather a significant amount of software of a type relevant to the topic of your site you will make your site a valuable resource for your visitors and they will keep coming back to get more.

9. Offer free online services or utilities

They could be search engine submitting, copy writing proofreading etc. The service or utility should be helpful to your target audience.

10. Give your visitors a free membership to an online club

People like to feel that they belong to something, why not your online club. You could also give away a free newsletter for club members only. The members will very likely want to contribute a large part of its content making it easy to source articles. If you offer them a link back to their own site your members will be queuing up to put content in your newsletter.

It goes without saying that all of the above should be relevant to the topic of your site in order to be of interest to your visitors. Do not keep changing the topic of your site. I see this happening all too often. The webmaster has a site for three months or so and becomes disheartened because his site not taken off as he hoped, so he decides to try a different topic.

Doing so he / she loses the regular visitors he / she had and has to start at the beginning again in the new topic. Also, the search engines will very likely be slow to change to the new topic, confusing everyone who visits from there. It may also affect the PR of the site as the new topic may initially be viewed as unrelated content.

The Ten Most Effective Ways To Promote Your Website

In a nut shell, this is what I’ve found that will help promote your website. These methods are very effective. Keep this blog post as a reference and make sure you are doing all these things. Ok here it goes:

1. Adwords (or any search engine ads at all)

Of course we all know that Google is the top dog but there are many other decent search engines that will get you the same good traffic. For $40 bucks a day I get over 100 unique hits on my website. Every little bit helps

2. Blogging

Even if hate to write, just post relevant information regarding your site just make sure you give credit to who wrote your blog post. Oh and link on your blog post like crazy. I didn’t believe in this method at first but trust me I have learned the ways of the blog.

3. Mailing List

This is a tough area. Its like you need money to make money. But in this case you need email addresses to send emails. Do your best in trying to provoke your customers into signing up for your mailing list. Offer something for free (not a free newsletter) something legit. This will help you by encouraging repeat visits. Its better to keep the same visitor than trying to get new ones, plus it’s easier. Oh and it’s good for word of mouth (which is still the best way to advertise)

4. List, Register & Sign Up!

Spend at least one whole day signing up for every freaking search engine, directory and relevant search site you can. The more you name and website are out on the internet, the better you are ranked by the search engines

5. Links

Ok this is tricky, yes you want your link on as many websites as you can but even better than that is getting your website linked on a website that is really big. If you are officially linked to a big website that will look very good to search engines. Think of your link as a vote to get you to the top of the search engine. And think of a big website and your link like a campaign contribution. That’s right, get the big guys behind you and they’ll help you climb your way to the top. It’s all about who you know.

6. SEO

If you don’t know what this is, then learn. SEO (Search Engine optimization) is very important. The whole point to internet marketing is to get to the top or as high as you can on search engines. They are the number one way people find things on the internet. So in order to help your chances make sure you website is riddled with good keywords, relevant ones. If you are having a hard time with this, follow this logic: If you are online and you wanted to find a website like yours, what would you do? What would you type into a search engine. Ask yourself that question and then ask that question to everybody you know. That way you get a better understanding on what people are searching for.

Also add meta tags like keywords, descriptions and alt tags to all your pages. You can do this all at the end if you want.

7. The No Brainer

Just make sure your site looks good. If you have a crappy looking website then chances are no one will want to stay. For instance if you never cleaned your house do you think new guest will want to sleep over. Nope. And if you suck at making a website look awesome enlist a professional or someone with a clue to help.

8. The Little Things

Do these little things to your site: Add a “Tell A Friend About This Site” Button (For word of mouth, the best marketing), Add a “Bookmark Us” button to your site, give away free stuff, lure customers with contests, make jokes, get an RSS Feed (if you don’t know what that is, then learn, if you are a website designer then you should already know), put some fun things to do on your site to get people to stay. Case in point: Your having guest over for coffee but your TV is broke, all your board games are missing and you just recently started not talking to anyone, your guest will want to leave because it’s boring and it sucks.

9. Get On Myspace or Facebook

If your website is looking for a younger audience then get on anyone of these site and make friends will as many people as you can. Spend hours a day doing this. Make sure your page is chock full of ways to get to your site. This will boost traffic like nobody’s business.

10. Last But Not Least

Be consistent. If you want to have a high traffic website ,then you need to dedicate yourself to the cause. You need to be on the internet doing these things every single day. It’s just like exercising or dieting, if you don’t stick to it everyday, you will fail. But I have faith in you, do as the Romans do.

Four Powerful Ways to Keep Your Customers Informed

These days, it’s hard to walk down the street without seeing some sort of news headline or hearing about the latest story. With instant messaging, internet on our phones, and simply talking to our friends, we are constantly bombarded with the latest updates. However, when it comes to your website, you need to act in the same way. Though you might not be able to report on anything catastrophic on your website, in order to be memorable, you do need to start looking at ways to keep your customers informed:

1) Mailing Lists Do Work

Though many websites have eschewed the use of mailing lists to inform their customers, when done right, these are highly effective reminders for customers. The key to doing these mailing lists well is to get the mailing lists on your own – don’t buy them from marketing groups. While it’s true you will get longer lists from the marketing groups, you might also be getting a lot of negative feedback from people who didn’t want to receive your information in the first place.

On your website, create a way for interested visitors to sign up for a weekly email from you. All they should need to do is to give you their email address and their first name and they can find out what’s new with your site each week. This email shouldn’t be a sales letter, but more of a note about what’s going on and what people might want to stop by your site to see.

2) eZines are Still Going Out to Customers

To extend on the idea of a mass email list, you might want to look into making a magazine for your mailing list, or an ezine. This piece of information should be longer than your weekly email, but it should also contain some sales language about things that are coming up for your business.

This is the perfect way for you to update and inform your visitors about your market, while also showing that you are knowledgeable about your chosen business. Try talking about new findings in your market, for example, if you are selling nutritional products. Think about ways to give your site visitors something that they might not have learned on their own.

3) Daily Blogging is a Fun Avenue

Of course, if your business is a little less formal, you might want to opt for a business blog. This can be from the point of view of yourself or perhaps a fictional worker in your company. By simply talking about the latest news and what it means for the site visitor, you can create a modern dialogue that allows you to show your casual side, while still being informative.

You can also talk about loyal customers or about new innovations to products that are in the works.

4) Try Sending Out a Press Release

If all else fails, the press release is still the best way to rest the maximum amount of potential visitors that want to see your site. However, since these releases are generally send to a larger audience, it’s harder to target the customers you really want to target. If you can, you might want to try to submit the press release to publications that your target audience will be looking at as well as posting it on your website to help spread the word about a new product or service.

When it comes to informing your customers, you need to make sure you explore as many possibilities for doing this as possible. While you don’t want to be the only thing on your customer’s mind, you do want to be one fo the top ten.

The 10 Best Ways To Promote Your Website

To make money on the internet you need an effective marketing plan. So here are the best marketing tips that you must follow to make your website a powerful magnet for traffic and sales:

1) Banner Advertising

Although many marketers already know about pay-per-click advertising, very few are purchasing guaranteed banner click-thru’s that are available on hundred’s of sites. Look for sites that cater to your target market and look for, or ask for, their advertising rates. Slowly but surely most of the sites that sold banner impressions are starting to offer performance advertising in the form of pay-per-click.

2) Write articles

Writing Articles is an excellent way to promote your website and best of all you can get recognize as an internet business expert. You can submit your article to ezine or article directory.

3) Exchange links

Exchanging links is one of the best method for getting web site traffic and ranking higher. When you start a site you should exchange many as possable links with sites that are Related to Your site. Robots are eager to find new links and fresh information.

4) Mailing List

Having a mailing list can bring wonders to a web site, not only will it help bring old visitors back , but they will send the newsletter to their friends (If they like it).This is like gold for you. The only real purpose for a consumer website is to capture leads and to sell products. Send out a monthly e-zine that offers FREE valuable information and mentions similar products they may be interested in. Search Engine Optimization It is no secret that search engines are the number one traffic generating method for driving visitors to web sites. Search engines are very useful in helping people find the relevant information they seek on the Internet. The major search engines develop and maintain their own gigantic database of web sites that can be searched by a user typing in a keyword or keyword phrase in the search box.

5) Search engine optimization

(SEO) is the process of studying the search engines in an effort to determine how to get your web site to rank high on user searches. Depending on the statistical information reviewed, search engines account for over 80% of the visitor traffic to web sites.

6) Free online forum

One forum can be about “Online Business”. Another forum can be about ” Joint Ventures”. When people join those forums, make sure that they need to come to your site first and log in from there, if they want to log on and post on the forum.

7) Market Statistic

You can use features on your website such as visitor polls, online surveys and your website statistics to find out what your customers like more and how they feel about certain aspects of your business to determine how you can improve your product and the way you do business.

Free Advertising

There is alot of Free Advertising on the Internet. There is Classified Ads. Free For All Pages (FFA), Ezine, Article Submission and Newsgroup of course and many more.

9) Blogging

Blogs are a relatively new and popular way to publish content on the Internet. They allow the blogger to publish content; very quickly and get feedback from the people that read it. Because they are new and content is created regularly, search engines love indexing them – and if search engines love them, you should too.

10) Real Syndicated Content

RSS marketing is a tool used by many on the Internet to deliver articles, advertisements, emails, customer support responses, ezines to clients and potential clients.

Tips for Increasing Online Sales

I’m going to let you in on a very dirty secret:

There is one question that is being dodged by experts in EVERY market. Answer that question and you’ll corner the market, be worshipped forever and get more customers and sales.

If it was that easy, why aren’t other experts answering these questions?

It’s because they fear an informed audience. That’s outright silly! But, we’re not going to tell them that. While your competitors run scared, you’ll be getting more sales since you’re going to follow the steps I outline in the article below. You will educate your targeted audiences, get more website traffic, teach people how to buy from you and increase your sales.

Now, are you ready?

Step 1: Find the questions that are being dodged by other experts in your industry

I can’t tell you what these questions are. It will vary from industry to industry. . So, how do you find these golden questions to answer?

* Go to Yahoo Answers and type in your keyword. Examine the questions carefully and see which ones keep popping up. If people are asking the same questions, that means that people have the same questions. There’s a need that’s NOT being fulfilled.

* Go to forums and watch what your audience is discussing

* Survey your clients, customers and list of prospects

Step 2: Answer the questions in as many formats as possible

For each question create a blog post. Do NOT date these blog posts – you will see why later on. Once you create your blog post, expand it into an article. Then, turn your article into a video, special report, podcast and audio interview. You should also create online press releases. If you need help with writing your articles and blog postings, I have templates that will help you write your articles in 30 minutes or less. Just go to http://www.StartWritingArticlesFaster.com

Step 3: Answer the Questions in As Many Places As Possible

* You should submit your blog posts to as many RSS feeds as possible

* You should bookmark your blog posts using Digg, Technorati and De.li.cious

* You should submit your articles to the top websites, ezines and article directories that accept article submissions. We can do this for you at http://www.IWantMoreProspects.com

* You should submit your videos to YouTube and Viddler. You may even want to think about investing in the TrafficGeyser.com video submission service

* You should post links to your blog, articles and videos on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and Linked In.

* You should post your articles on social marketing websites sites like Scribd and Squidoo

* You should submit your press releases through PR Web or Webwire. If you use Webwire.com, all you have to pay is $20. But, I do suggest comparing the two services and see which one matches your needs.

* Videos teaching people how to buy from you or how to use your product should be on your website.

* When people opt-in for your special reports, ebooks or other free offering, you should have an auto-responder series that gets people to go back to your blog or website. If you have lots of blog postings that answers your prospects’ top questions – all you have to do is create a summary for each blog posting and send people back to your blog every day. This way each blog posting will get the visibility it deserves. And, by not showing the date, these postings become evergreen.

Follow these steps and you will increase website traffic and get more sales, because you’ll be educating your prospects, answering their questions and teaching them how to buy from you.

Why Your Legitimate Online Businesses Websites Need to be Self-Hosted?

To establish a presence on the web it is vitally important that your legitimate online businesses websites are maintained. Unfortunately there are many small businesses who don’t realize the necessity of having self-hosted websites and they tend to use the free alternatives instead.

So let’s take a look at why self-hosting websites are so much better for establishing your own online presence.

1. You Get Your Own Domain!

With free hosting you do not get to use your own domain and owning your own domain is vital in establishing a good web presence. Some of the reasons why this is so are; you don’t ever need to worry about the content on your website where as when using free hosting, if they stop operating for any reason at all or go out of business you will lose everything on your site.

They also have the right to dictate what you put on your website and this includes the advertisements, plus they can put their own ads on your website and they don’t need your permission to do it. When the ownership of your domain name is yours then you have total control over where people can find your website.

2. Freedom of Functionality

When using self-hosting the choice of software is yours alone and that means that you can make the decision about what type of software will best serve your needs. This includes the kind of software you choose to use on your blog to connect to possible customers through social media. With free hosting you do not get this choice.

To have the flexibility to run your legitimate online businesses the way you want, never even consider using free hosting, in fact you need to ascertain that the paid hosting company you decide on is of good quality if you wish to have flexibility with the way you operate.

3. Your Online Businesses will look more Professional

If you expect people to take both you and your online businesses seriously then YOU must also take your business seriously. When you use free hosting what you are saying to anyone who visits your website is that it really is not worth their time. Free website hosting companies are using your website to advertise their own products and this will automatically detract from your own business opportunities.

Once people leave your website chances are pretty good that they are not going to return to take advantage of any of your services or products that you have on offer.

In case you haven’t noticed yet, everything we have discussed up to this point comes down to one thing – Control.

Why would you want any other company to have control over your legitimate online businesses website? Self hosting not only gives your website a more professional look but it also allows you to make your own choices to create the website exactly as you want it to be.

Unless you are willing to treat your business seriously don’t expect that anyone else will do so. Free hosting will never give you the same advantages that self hosting will and in order to brand yourself and your online businesses you must have a professional and flexible website.

Five Essential Elements Every Business Website Should Have

Although business owners and marketer’s are coming to recognize the importance of having a website for their business, how those websites are being designed and built is still very much a problem. In most cases, a website that replicates an online brochure is what most businesses have. The result thereof is ultimately a poor return on investment for the (often large amounts of) money they have spent on the site. Here are five essential elements that every business website should have:

1) Sign-up Form

Having hundreds or thousands of visitors to your website every month is no use if you are only capturing the details of a small percentage of them from people who actually inquire. What you need is a sign-up form that offers a freebie (a free report of interest to your visitors), a newsletter or something similar. This way, you are able to capture the details (name and email address) of the visitors to your site, as well as build your list of prospects.

2) Highly Visible Contact Details

The purpose of your a small business website is generally to encourage inquiries, which will ultimately lead to sales. It is therefore essential that your website has your company’s contact details clearly displayed on every page. Ideally, you should place the contact details in the header, or in the top right area of the page. Also, try to provide as many contact formats (telephone, fax, email, Skype) as possible.

3) Dedicated Sales Pages

This one is a little tricky, depending on your business. Ideally, you should try to have a separate page for each product/service, or group of products/services. This allows you to focus on marketing each product or service’s benefits, features, and so forth to its specific target market. It also gives you the freedom to provide extensive information on each product or service, as opposed to merely providing a product name or model number. Furthermore, this additional content assists in terms of search engine optimization (SEO).

4) Testimonials

Why should anyone who visits your website trust what you have to say about yourself? You are, after all, trying to sell yourself online. It is therefore always wise to feature testimonials on each sales or product page. Ideally, you want to place testimonials about each product or service on their respective page. I usually recommend placing them down the right-hand side column of your page, but it all depends on your layout.

5) Blog

You may think that blogging is some weird, new age concept that only the “arty” and creative people of this world indulge in – you’re wrong. Setting up a blog allows you to write about anything related to your business, for example: new products or services, events, how-to’s, insights and opinions. Be sure to feature a “subscribe” option on your blog, so that you can build that database of prospects as well. Blogging also assists from an SEO perspective, by continuously adding fresh, original content to your website, which Google loves.

As an added bonus to these five essentials, I always recommend using an analytics or tracking program, such as Google Analytics (which is free), to track the goings-on of your website and assess how much and where your traffic (visitors) is coming from. As with anything, commit to learning about the topic, in this case, internet marketing, and keep an eye out for new trends that may benefit your business’ website.

Strategies for making your Fan page a success

* Make your Fan page a resource

Consider your customers interests. What information do they need? Post articles and links to useful information on your wall. Your Fan page is an opportunity to showcase yourself as an expert. Provide these things for your customers and they will return to your page again and again.

* Connect

Interact with customers. Make use of all of the Facebook tools. Respond to comments. You may not want to list your entire product line. A sample on your fan page could lead new customers to visit your website for more. Spamming is always a bad idea, but targeting offers to customers who show interest can lead to increased customer loyalty.

* Be human

Pictures and personal information put a face on a company. As long as you present an image that enhances your business, personalizing your Fan page is a great way to get followers.

* Be present

Fill out your profile completely. Keep article, photo and video content current. It’s not enough to throw up a page and be done with it. Make sure to respond to customers who become fans. Create a group for your business. You can also participate in groups related to your business.

* Innovate

Facebook moves fast. Don’t be afraid to try the latest thing. Explore webinars, and other interactive media as options to improve business relationships.

Creating Facebook fan page is great first step toward integrating social media into your marketing plan. Don’t forget to provide links from your website to your Fan page. Make sure to connect your Facebook fan page to other social media so your network will grow. In no time your Fan page will be the central hub of your successful online marketing campaign.

How to Use Facebook to Promote Your Business?

Today one of the most popular ways to market any business online is using Facebook. Facebook allows you to put your business in front of thousands of people using different tools and if done properly you can establish a relationship and credibility with a large number of people who in turn will visit your website and purchase your products and services.

* Facebook Marketing Begins with Your Profile

The first thing you need to look at when you start marketing on Facebook is your profile page. Does it look professional – at least to your professional contacts? If you are using Facebook as a social site as well then you can use privacy lists to determine who sees what and so still ensure that your professional contacts see a professional profile. It is from here that most of your other Facebook marketing techniques will flow.

* Using Facebook Pages to Promote Your Business

In addition to your profile page you can also have a number of ‘Facebook Pages’ which are specifically for advertising your business and building your list of professional contacts (or fans). Facebook pages can generally include more advertising as it is all about your business.

For starters you should have your business name as the title, information about your business (such as what you do, when you started, etc.) and some contact details and your website address.

As with Facebook profiles you can also add applications that further extend the usefulness of these pages for marketing.

* Facebook Groups

Once you have set up your profile and pages you may want to consider either joining a few Facebook groups or setting these up yourself. The advantage of joining groups is that they already have a membership that you can advertise your link to. The benefit of starting your own is that you will have more flexibility in how the group is run. Whichever way you decide to do it, Facebook groups are useful for promoting your website and business. Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads are the new Google Adwords. They are a PPC form of advertising that is quickly gaining popularity and holds a number of advantages over Adwords such as better targeting based on information entered into people’s Facebook profiles.

* Facebook Connect and Integration

Integrating your website with Facebook and using the Facebook Connect features can also help to improve your visibility on Facebook and also make your website easier to join and more exciting. Allowing your visitors to comment on Facebook using your website or to share links from your website on Facebook can help to spread your message virally.

* Facebook Applications

Another popular tool you will find people using to promote their business (or even as a business in itself) are Facebook applications. Creating an application can allow you both to make money through the application itself as well as sending people to your website. Depending on the application you create and how you market it this can become very popular and even create a viral marketing effect.

Facebook is an incredible internet marketing tool and you should consider using it to promote your business using Facebook profiles, pages, groups, ads and their integration features and applications.

YouTube Marketing Tips to Grow Your Business

The world’s biggest online video-sharing service, YouTube, is the perfect place for marketing campaigns to shine, if only marketers know how to grab the spotlight. The community is diverse, and its population huge. YouTube marketing can increase sales and widen brand coverage by using this innovative platform to connect and capture existing and potential customers.

But despite the huge market base, not all campaigns flourish in YouTube. Many companies’ YouTube marketing campaigns sizzle at the beginning and fizzle sometime thereafter. What’s the secret to staying power at YouTube? Let’s find out.

1. Quality and quantity of content

A large fraction of company or brand videos at YouTube are of the “flash-in-the- pan” variety, which means that they were initially uploaded as part of a viral marketing strategy. As time goes by, the channels are left untended and un-updated. This is a waste, because the initial videos should have been followed with more and more good content, to sustain the campaign and reap the results.

Video production technology is at its peak these days, providing the tools to create engaging videos, and lots of them. However, video quantity is a function not only of technology but also the quality of content. Companies that create fresh perspectives on a regular basis capture audiences better.

Regular content can come from current events or news related to the brand. It can also come from interviews with experts, endorsers, and even ordinary brand users. The delivery of such useful content can increase brand loyalty and confidence through time.

2. Market for wider coverage

YouTube marketing carries a deep potential for widening the customer base, for many reasons. The first is YouTube’s international audience, and the other is the cultural diversity. With the right content, marketers can capture a slice of this population to boost any marketing campaign.

Here are some ways to do this:

* Categorize videos according to audience preference. This segmentation refines the target audience population through a tailored communication aimed specifically to appeal to a group of audiences. The long-term result is an accumulation of searchable videos that are continuously viewed by common-interest users.

* Cultivate a subscriber base that views and returns to view the uploaded videos because they find value in unique and useful content.

* If possible, publish in as many international languages as possible. This widens the coverage more than when publishing only in a single language such as English.

Marketers should bear in mind, however, that building a wider market base through YouTube marketing takes time and patience, as much as it does using other channels.

3. Offer an expertise

Shying away from blatant self-promotions, a subtle yet very effective YouTube marketing strategy is to build a reputation through videos with have useful and practical information.

YouTube is not only full of entertaining videos, there are also many educational presentations or documentaries that impart knowledge and skills to users. Audiences view these videos to learn from the expertise of the company or brand.

How-to videos where notable experts are dishing out innovations and providing clarity on particular subjects are frequently viewed in YouTube. The experts may be well-known industry gurus, or the company’s president, or even a simple employee.

The secret to this YouTube marketing approach is sincerity and conviction in the message. This sincerity connects with audiences and makes them trust the information that they were provided with.

Good Process Makes Good Partners

1. Broad Strokes

Take some time to think about what you’re trying to accomplish with your website or web project. Hone in on how your project fits with your business, your industry and ultimately your customers. If the project is for internal use, how does it fit with your staff? Your website is ultimately about a business or marketing solution that solves a problem or set of problems. What are your trying to solve? What are you trying to accomplish?

2. Who Are You?

Help your web development company understand your business and your brand. If it’s a new website or a redesign that reflects a new look, it’s helpful to have some of your promotional materials, logos, letterhead, etc. available for the discovery meeting. You want to convey who you are as a business and how you present yourself to the world. The company or web developer you are working with should be interested in this and be able to summarize it back to you. If you’re a new company tackling small business website development for the first time and don’t really have too much in the way of branding or logos, don’t sweat it. A good website design company should be able to work with you to create design elements that reflect who you are or recommend a copy that specializes in logo or branding for business. Keep a list of websites you encounter where the web design speaks to you. The important thing is to reach a good design consensus.

3. Remember Your Audience

As your thinking about your business website development project, focus on your website visitors. Who are your customers? That’s ultimately who the website or web development project is being created for. Who is going to be using the website and how are they going to be using it? What’s the goal? Are you looking to generate leads from your website, automate your ordering process, sell products online, allows customers or staff to access certain information? Since you are the voice for the end users of the site, make sure and give them ample consideration during the discovery process.

4. You Don’t Have to Do It All At Once

The beauty of the web is that it is a dynamic and flowing medium. Your website can evolve in phases and you don’t have to accomplish everything in Phase I of your web project. You can brainstorm without barriers about what you want. Then, hone in and decide where the best starting point is. This is an area where an experienced web developer should be able to provide guidance. Perhaps phase I of your business web development project will be a new site creation that focuses on good design and offers essential content about your company and your services. It might include a newsletter subscriber “call to action” box on each page. Phase II might be the addition of an online store that allows customers to view order history and create reorders. Phase III could integrate added functionality to the store like the assembly of certain components, detailed reporting or a place for customer reviews. For small business web design and development, budgetary constraints have to be contended with. A website can be a work in progress and grow with your business. Breaking the project into digestible pieces can not only help you in getting better insight into what the priorities are but it can also help in spreading out the cost.

5. The Devils in the Details

You don’t need to know every detail in advance in terms of how the project will look. A good business web designer or developer should work with you through the process to draw out those fine points. It is useful to give some thought in advance to as many elements of the project as possible, particularly where projects involve interactive customer-based websites. To that end, it can be helpful to sketch out the step-by-step flow of what you’re trying to accomplish and how information flows. You might have a crystal clear idea in your head regarding how each element should look and behave. Putting it on paper helps communicate it to the web company. Or, maybe it’s a bit murky and setting the pencil to paper can be extremely helpful in clarifying your own ideas and objectives. Whether designing a new site or redesigning an existing site, jotting down a site outline is a great starting point. What are the key sections of the website? What content do you want to include for your visitors and where do you want them to go? During the initial discovery meeting, the objective should be to do a lot of fact finding. The more details you can provide the web development company, the faster and more effectively you can bring your vision to fruition.

6. Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff

While it is very useful to put some serious thought into the project for your initial discovery meeting, the nature of business web design and development projects is that many fine points will be shaped and forged as the project development unrolls. That’s why an integral part of the process should involve the web development company staging your project on the web (preferably in a staging area of the web company’s server). Then, as steps are completed and the project moves forward, a consensus on the final result is maintained. Small adjustments as the project progresses are common and expected. As long as all of the key points are in place, don’t feel like you can’t adjust minor details as things move along. With that said do keep in mind that major revisions or additions to project development can add hourly labor and impact the cost. Make sure you understand how much “adjustment” space you’re allowed without incurring additional costs. If you have a change or addition that is going to impact the bottom line on the proposal, request that you be notified in advance and have full veto or approval before work proceeds.

* Conclusion

The best way to ensure that your web development project doesn’t miss the mark is by preparing for the process and selecting a small business web development company that can help you to realize your vision. Hopefully, this guide will serve as a useful tool in the creative and development process. It was designed not only for small business owners and managers but to be shared with the website developer or designer you ultimately engage. The process of good web development is about reaching a consensus defined by budget, vision, technical requirements and good communication. The blending of those elements serves to lay the groundwork for success with your project and a final result that realizes your vision and serves your business.

The Android Phone

Google and T-Mobile have teamed up to create a new breed of cell phone. The T-Mobile G1 is the world’s first Android Phone. An “android” is traditionally defined as a robot with human qualities. Perhaps the name was chosen because of the capabilities of this new phone.

It’s known as the T-Mobile G1 Android, the Android Phone, the G1 Phone, or (more informally) the Google Phone.

The G1 Phone integrates fully with your Google accounts. Here are a few of the features and capabilities of this new cell phone:

* An Android phone allows you to browse the Internet just as you would on a normal computer.

* It allows one to run several applications at the same time, on one phone. You can switch between applications, and you can also be notified when something new occurs on one of those applications.

* It allows you to chat and share photos on applications such as Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, etc.

* It allows you to copy URLs and share them with friends via a chat line, using a simple touch-screen interface.

The following Google applications can be accessed and used directly by the Android Phone:

* Google Maps

* YouTube

* Gmail

* Contacts

* Calendar

* IM (Instant Message)

All of these Google applications will be available to you with a single logon – and they will be automatically synchronized with the web. What that means is that any change you make in one of your google accounts from your phone will also show up the next time you log on from any other computer.

For example, when you are out and about with your phone and you meet a new contact, you might want to save their contact information. All you do is save it into your Google Contacts on your G1 phone. That information will be available to you online, in your Gmail account, and in any other applicable Google account, accessible by any computer in the world.

Any information you save on your phone in this way will appear on your computer as well – and vice-versa.

If you lose or break your phone, your data will still be there waiting for you on your Google account, which you can access from anywhere in the world. And there is no need to worry about your information being stolen, as its password-protected.

Here is another example of the a use of a Google Android phone. Once you have a contact address saved into your Google account, you can easily find that location on a map – using Google Maps, of course. And what’s more, you can access street level events in any area where this is available.

This makes it a breeze to get directions to a new location! Simply find your contact on a a map with a couple of clicks, and use a street-level view to find your way if needed!

Another example of the use of the this phone is the integration of the cell phone with your Google Calendar. Any event you save on your Google Calendar will be available to you on your phone, wherever you are. So you can access your schedule easily, on the go and from anywhere, as long as you have your phone with you.

No more schedule books! And you can probably say goodbye to those tiny notebooks and pads of paper you carry around to save your information.

What’s more, once you save information on your Android phone, there’s no need to transfer it over after you get home. Its all there, safely stored on your Google account, for ready access whenever you need it.

Niche Marketing Strategies

Niche marketing is essential for any good internet marketing campaign. Niche marketing is easy enough almost anyone can drill down to the micro niches where money can be made, but some people aren’t doing necessary niche research before hand. The key components to finding these money making micro-niches is proper research and careful selection. So how do you select a niche? Here’s 3 simple niche marketing strategies.

1. Follow Your Strength

Remember in school when you had to do a presentation and the teacher was assigning topics and you got stuck with one you weren’t exactly happy to do research on?

Don’t relive those feeling with picking your niche. Select something you are passionate about or at least would enjoy doing research on. It’s important to select a niche you have a natural strength in because following a strength will give you leverage and make your work seem less like work.

Selecting a niche you have no interest in will reflect to your customers or clients. Lack luster enthusiasm or information about a niche will equal lack luster sales.

Though, when you have a strength in a particular field it shows through not only in your writing and the amount of value but it helps give you an edge over your competition because you know where to find your target audience and exactly what their looking for when it comes time to market to them.

2. Look to Mainstream Media

Turn on the TV, open a magazine, and watch talk shows. You can get a ton of ideas of profitable, hot niches just by flipping through a magazine while standing in the check out line at the supermarket or studying television commercials during your favorite show. You can even log onto Google Trends to see what the latest trends are online.

There are many clues beyond the internet which will indicate good niches. Many of the advertisers you see in magazines and TV also operate affiliate programs so be sure to check out advertisers you’re interested in.

3. Do Your Keyword Research

Keyword research is essential when selecting a niche marketing or any other type of marketing. Do not skip researching potential keywords to target. Research a possible niche with a keyword tool and investigate if your niche will be profitable.

Does it get a fair number of searches per month? Are there more searches than there are competing websites? Also, see if there are advertisements running along the side of the search results of your main keyword, that’s another indicator the advertisers may very well be making money in that niche.

Look for indicators in a potential niche will be profitable. Keyword research can be fascinating, but be sure not to get too involved with research or you might not get anything done.

Niche research can be fun and it should be like anything else you do online. Not only is it fun and relatively easy, but finding the right niche can also create a nice part-time or full-time income. Just remember follow your strength, look for hints of profitable niches from the real world and always do your keyword research with proper keyword research tools. With those three niche marketing strategies in mind you’ll be your way to becoming a niche marketing wizard.

Directory Submission: The Key to site Promotion

Most website owners fail to differentiate between a directory and search engine, failure to do so has resulted in failure to harness the powers of Internet directory effectively.

Search engine uses the spiders – (an automated software program) to locate and collect data from web pages for inclusion in a search engine’s database and to follow links to find new pages on the World Wide Web. While directories depends on human editors, who in most cases examine every single new listing before they are added to their directory. Most major search engines these days use links from human edited directory to measure the quality of the site they index. That is why you should place emphasis on the type of website or directory you list to and how to do that effectively.

However, there are some significant differences between the two link sources, Directories have only one purpose in life and that is to provide links to other sites. Directories are an established source of authority in regard to various subject matters. Being listed in directories serves as a level of measure as to the site’s worth.

A Directory Submission Service, in my opinion, is a company that will submit your website to directories. Now, the client must be careful when selecting a company. Many I have seen say something along the lines of “We submit you to over 800,000 Search Engines and Directories”. This statement alone lets me know that they are not trustworthy. We can all fire up ANY free/shareware submitter and boast the same statement. What I LIKE to see, when checking my competition, is a listing of directories they will submit to. And, of course, no one can guarantee inclusion.

There are several ways you can submit your RSS newsfeed to directories. The first, obviously, is by hand. You can get a list of the directories (http://www.rss- software.net/rss-directories.php), then go to each website and add your feed manually. Since there are many RSS directories, this can take quite a while. To save the webmaster time, two ways of automated directory submission exist.

While the article directory submission site is growing, granted yes, they may not get as much traffic as the big guys. But that means that the visitors that they do get, are more likely to see and READ your article. This means your article can find its way to ezines that want unique and fresh new content.

Search Engine Optimization is a fuzzy art in which the rules and techniques change as quickly as the Internet changes. Nonetheless, a good SEO consulting expert will always be able to help move your website towards better search engine placement, greater visibility, and consequently higher levels of targeted traffic. When it comes to choosing any professional — a dentist, doctor, travel agent or hair stylist, it may take you a couple tries to locate the right SEO professional for your business, but it’s usually better to focus on what you do best, and hire experts who spend all their time staying informed and practicing effective website promotion.

How to use the Google Trends Website

The Google Trends Website was made public in 1996 but many marketers on the Internet don’t know about it. Some know but don’t understand it and so don’t get the benefits out of it that are possible.

The Google Trends website is a service offered by Google to users that want to get some fantastic data about keyword searches in the Google search engine. For example if you wanted to know how popular Levi jeans were over the past 6 years you could type in “Levi Jeans” and get data that would show you the search trend for Levi Jeans. It will not only give you the search trend but you can begin to focus the searches on country, city or even by language.

For anyone looking for a Niche to market and make money Google Trends is something they should not do without.

* How to use the Google Trends website Practically?

a) PPC Marketing

If you are primarily a PPC marketer Google Trends is going to help you in your geo-targeting. I was involved in a niche that was hot in the United States but it gradually tapered off in the USA but got real hot in the Japanese market and so you set up your Adwords campaigns to target Japan. Thank you Google for saving me money on advertising and making me money by knowing where the buyers were.

b) Spying on Competition

To the right of the trends graph there are a list of links that show you articles that are ranked high for the keyword that you chose. Look over those articles, get some ideas, spin it and submit it. Have you seen our page about Online Article Marketing?

c) Hot Trends for Bloggers

Google Hot Trends is a separate service and URL. When you are blogging you are in need of content and if you want to have something relevant to your crowd that is timely with world events or something else you can use Google Hot Trends to see what is real relevant. Not long ago Tiger Woods went through his hardship with his family and the reporters. If you type Tiger Woods into the Google Trends website you will see the spike that was created over the bad press. I would not use Hot Trends to determine a niche because it is only reporting the hot things that are very current and as we know, news is changing all the time.

d) Keyword Analysis

The Google Trends website should be a part of your keyword research in conjunction with a program like Traffic Travis (download Traffic Travis for FREE) and the Google external keyword tool. Google trends will save you money from choosing keywords or a niche that is no longer active in a particular country that you may be targeting.

Another cool part of the keyword analysis that I should mention is something I saw in a webinar. The Google Trends website was used to compare “table tennis” and “ping pong”. Which do you think is more popular? Which country would you think either is more popular? Curious? Well I am not going to tell you. Go to the Google Trends website and check it out for yourself. While you are there play with it and see if you should alter some of the marketing that you are doing.

Remember that this is only Google traffic and does not account for the traffic on other search engines like Ask, Yahoo and Bing. Clearly Google dominates as a search engine and gives a good picture of what is most likely taking place in the other search engines.

How to Increase Google Page Rank

Visit any internet marketing forum and you are bound to find at least a few discussions on Google page rank. But what exactly is Google Page Rank and what do you need to do to increase it?

First of all Page Rank is a value that Google assigns to a web page based on the importance of the page. It is determined by the number of incoming links to that web page and few other factors including the page rank of the page giving the link to you.

There has been discussion recently asked to the importance of page rank. However one thing to consider is this, if Google thinks page rank is important than page rank is important.

Remember Google gets over 65% of all the search traffic on the Internet every day. If you were to take 10 websites that were all optimized for the same keywords, typically you would find that the page with the highest page rank would rank higher in the search engine results than the other pages.

* So what are the best ways to increase your Google Page Rank?

1. One of the first things you should do is aim to increase the numnber of backlinks that you have pointing to your website. This fact alone can increase your link popularity and ultimately increase your page rank. Combined with that is the fact that the more back links you have pointing back your website for more potential traffic you will get from it.

2. As well as increasing the quantity of links to your website you should also try to get your links on high quality web pages. This means getting your link on pages that are ranked as high or higher than yours. When you do this some of their page rank can be transferred to you which ultimately helps increase the page rank of your site.

There are lots of ways to increase your page rank, but the most common methods are posting in discussion forums that have a high page rank, article marketing, submitting your site to directories, commenting on blogs and distributing press releases.

You should also try to get some deep links in addition to the links to your home page. Deep linking means linking to internal pages on your website as opposed to always linking to your homepage.

There are many other methods that you can use to improve your page rank, but any time you spend on getting links is well spent!

It is worth noting that the page rank displayed on the Google toolbar is not up to date. Although Google is always internally updating the page rank of web pages, the toolbar page rank is only updated every few months.

You should also be aware that just because a web page has a low page rank it doesn’t mean that getting a link on that page isn’t worthwhile. The page rank could increase on the next toolbar update.

Finally, it is worth remembering that a good Google Page Rank on its own is not necessarily going to mean lots of traffic. You also want to ensure that you have chosen good keyword phrases and have optimized your website.

3 Important Questions to Ask Google Analytics

With dozens of free web analytics tools available in the market, Google Analytics stands out because it provides data like no other tool does. Just add a few lines of JavaScript code to your website’s footer and you have access to a vast amount of metrics you can slice and dice.

This data is useful to develop and implement fresh website marketing strategies and understanding the behavior online of your web visitors.

But before diving into Google Analytics, prepare a list of the most important questions you want answered from this tool:

1. What do you want visitors to do on your website?

Every website has a purpose. It may be to provide information, build a brand or sell products online. Set your goals for the website and build it accordingly.

The Goals category of Google Analytics helps you to understand the number of goals achieved in a day, week or month. All you need to do is set your goal URL in the analytics settings and watch the data pour in. The funnel visualization sub category provides this type data:

* How many visitors completed my goals?

* How many visitors abandoned the goals to move onto other URL?

* Which internal pages did visitors came from to the goal webpage?

2. What is the Visitor doing on the Website?

Analysis of this data enables you to track the visitor’s action on the website. You can find out whether the visitor completed the goal you set. Accordingly you can make the changes which will reinforce goal completion. The content category in the left sidebar of Google Analytics provides important data:

a) Top Content: It contains a list of the content viewed by the visitor, arranged in descending order. This lets you know the most popular pages of the website and how to leverage them.

b) Top Landing Pages: These are the pages visitors land on, before going ahead and browsing the website. You can view the browsing path for each webpage and find a pattern.

c) Top Exit Pages: It contains a list of web pages which failed to generate interest among the visitors and lead them to exit the website. Revamp the exit pages with these details and aim to convert them into your top content pages.

d) Site Overlay: The Site Overlay opens a new web page which contains a small progress bar over every link. This bar shows the percentage of the number of clicks on that link. As the number of clicks on a link increase, the percentage of the progress bar increases.

3. Where is the Visitor coming from?

This is one of the most important data elements you can work on to get insights into the visitor. The ‘Traffic Sources’ category displays the websites and keywords which send traffic to your website. This category can be segregated into:

a) Direct Traffic: This contains the number of visitors who came to the website by entering its URL into their web browser. Direct traffic is also used to determine the popularity of the website.

b) Referring Sites: Referring websites are the ones which link back to a website using some content and a link. The visitors get referenced from the source website and land on the target website using the link provided. Referring websites can be used to judge the success of social media marketing techniques.

c) Search Engines: It contains a list of the search engines which send traffic to the website. Google Analytics also lists keywords which were clicked upon by the visitors. A high percentage of visits from search engines indicate a successful search engine optimization strategy.

The answers to the above questions coupled with custom reports and segmentation provide rewarding insights. These metrics can be used to model the website around the desired goal and achieve higher conversions.

“5 Tips on How To Use Google Sidewiki Efficiently”

Google launched Sidewiki on 23rd Sep 2009 as a part of its toolbar. Google Sidewiki appears as a sidebar in the browser and allows visitors to comment on any webpage. Its main aim was to collect useful information on any webpage from people around the world and therefore lead to better user experience.

For example, a person searching for a local restaurant can see its review in the sidebar by the previous diners.

Google Sidewiki comprises of an algorithm which pulls out the most useful and valuable comments from its database. This ensures that a visitor will see the most relevant comments on a webpage. Listed below are 5 steps for using Google Sidewiki efficiently.

1. Get Started With Google Sidewiki

Sidewiki is available in the options tab of the Google toolbar. Simply download the Google toolbar and select the option to integrate Sidewiki using the checkbox. It appears as a blue sidebar in the browser which slides open when you click on it. Google Sidewiki works perfectly well in Firefox. Although, Google’s own browser, Chrome seems to be having some issues in integrating Sidewiki.

2. Add Comments on Useful Webpages

Adding comments in Google Sidewiki is extremely easy. You need to log in to your Google account and click on the “Make an Entry” link which appears at the bottom of the sidebar. Enter your comments and publish. It is advised to add something which ads more value to the content. If your comment is relevant to the topic, then it can be placed on the first page of Sidewiki for that web page, unless you are the website owner.

3. Claim Your Position At The Top Of All Comments

If you want to place your own comment at the top, you need to verify ownership of the website by using Google Webmasters Tool. If verified, as the page owner your entry is placed at the top entry for that page. The top slot can be used to leave a note for anyone who is yet to comment.

4. Share Your Comments With Everyone

Each comment in Google Sidewiki has the option of being shared on Twitter, Facebook or emailed to any user. This enables everyone to read the Sidewiki entries without using the Google Toolbar. This option is very useful if your web page has received some great comments from visitors. Sharing these comments will pull readers from others streams like Twitter and Facebook onto your website.

5. Flush Out Negative Comments By Blocking Sidewiki

Google Sidewiki does not provide an option for blocking or deleting negative comments on a webpage. Many users have expressed their displeasure with Google for not providing an option for this purpose. If your web page is inundated with negative or irrelevant comments which are harming your website, you can block Google Sidewiki. This can be done by switching from normal http:// to secure https:// pages.

Google Sidewiki is not the first of its kind. One of the first commenting add-on, Third Voice was launched way back in 1999. AddATweet and Kutano are plug-ins which can be installed on your browser and let you tweet comments on a webpage.

Despite many competitors, Google Sidewiki has risen to become the most popular commenting tool of its time. Start your week by experimenting with this comment tool.

How to get Started With Google Analytics

* Set up a Google account

If you do not already have a Google account you will need to set up an account to continue -click on the link “Sign-up Now” and complete the requested information.

Once your have established an account, login. Click on the “Sign Up” button and you are on your way. It is important to note before proceeding that you must be the owner of the website that you are wishing to track or have the permission of the website owner.

Blog sites such as WordPress often will have resources that will allow you to place code on your particular Blog page(s).

* Setup Google Analytics

You will be directed to a couple of input forms that will ultimately provide you the coding to produce tracking data for your website.

- General Information – On this page you will be asked to submit your website’s URL, a name to serve as a domain identifier and finally your country and time zone. (You can elect to identify your locality based on your physical location or your target audience/primary user location.)

- Contact Information – This will simply request your name and your physical location.

- Accept User Agreement – Naturally, Google will request that you approve their Terms of Service. If they are acceptable to you check the box and click on “Create New Account”.

- Add Tracking – Finally, Google Analytics will produce a Javascript code for your domain. This should be added to each page of your website at the very end of your page coding between and .

* Tracking your website

Once you have inserted the information onto each page, you will return to the Google Analytics page. Click on the link for the website you are wishing to review. This will bring you to the main “dashboard” and provide a wide range of general information including – daily usage, bounce rate, new visits, geographic locality of users, most viewed pages, etc.

You can receive more detailed information by clicking on various menu items. Detailed information will include specifics like what browser your visitors were using, by what means they accessed your page (directly, search engines, etc.), what keywords were used when accessing via a search. Google Analytics offers an area for users to establish goals to focus on specific areas of interest and particular campaigns.

Google Analytics is a powerful tool which offers the user such a wide range of in depth data the greatest risk is becoming overwhelmed by the amount of information received.

Google Adwords for Your Internet Based Business: The Upside and Downside

When people need information on any subject today, the first place they will look for it is on the internet. One of the best things to come out of the internet revolution is the search engine and the most popular search engine is Google.

Having the internet and Google has made for a quick and easy method of finding out whatever it is that you want to know. Not only does Google make it very easy to search for information but it also allows for fast growth of an internet based business for anyone who chooses to use Google Adwords as a means of advertising.

If you have never heard of Google Adwords this is a pay-per-click program that was started by Google ten years ago and it can be used to generate traffic to your website and increase the number of sales that you make. The way it works is that an internet business owner will pay Google for the amount of exposure Google gives them on the search engine.

There is an upside as well as a downside to using Google Adwords that you should be aware of before jumping in and using this type of advertising:

1. On the upside Google Adwords reaches an enormous audience. According to fairly recent research approximately 65% of all internet users will resort to Google when searching for information of any kind.

With this type of exposure one would automatically assume that by using Adwords advertising on Google your website would be displayed and bring interested buyers to your website, people who will purchase the products that you have on offer.

The advantage of this is that even if you are running your business on a limited budget you can still get your brand out there at least in the online world. By setting up your adverts and your landing pages correctly you are likely to not only recoup your advertising outlay but make a good profit as well.

One other good thing with using Adwords is that you only pay per click. In other words Google will only charge you when someone clicks on your link so no clicks no charge. Remember though that the position of an ad on the Google search page is dependant on the budget you specify and that is something else to think about. If you set the budget at 1 cent per day don’t expect your ad to be positioned in a prominent place as budgets can go as high as $100 per day and those people are going to get much better exposure.

With Google Adwords you have the flexibility to make alterations according to what you prefer – this is something that you cannot do with other forms of advertising and it only takes about 15 minutes to set up an ad on Google Adwords so it is no big deal to make frequent changes to it if you so desire. You also have the option of a multitude of languages and this allows you to cater for a niche audience.

Here is the downside!

One of the biggest downsides to using Google Adwords is that you will not be able to get any information on how well your competitors are doing. Google has a policy of not sharing this information and this can make it a bit difficult to strategize the best way to advertise effectively.

The other downside is that with Google Adwords you are very limited with the amount of copy space that you can use. You have only seventy characters with which to catch to prospective customers’ attention and this can be very difficult to achieve at times.

Even though there are these downsides when using Google Adwords it can still be a very profitable method of promoting your internet based business as it gives plenty of exposure especially with the internet being as overcrowded as it is today.

GoogleApple War: What does it all mean?

For those who have been living in a cave, Google recently bought AdMob, the small but highly innovative mobile advertising company for the extremely inflated price of $750 Million. That is the gross national product of the country of Kiribati, a small country made up of a bunch of atolls. While AdMob hadn’t quite made anywhere around that amount of revenue, Google wanted to gobble it up before someone else did and to have a quick way to access the growing revenue stream available on Mobile Applicatications. Part of this strategy was to be able to access the significant population of IPHONE users. However, recently Apple came out with new developer rules that will prevent ADMob and Google Adsense from being displayed on iPhone applications… and thus a significant issue with ADMob’s revenue stream. However, perhaps things aren’t as they seem…

Let’s make this really clear, Apple is looking to break into the advertising and eventually search market. Google, as the all encompassing leader of search clearly dominates the market. However, they recently also decided to get into mobile market with the Google Android system, which while itself doesn’t make that much money for the company, the offshoots such as the product development, application development, google interfacing and even their own google nexus phone has been a significant success. In fact, according to most reputable reports, the open-source android phones are taking over as the dominant force in the market, pushing out Apple. Apple, ain’t happy about their market share being taken. They saw themselves as dominating the mobile space for a long time to come. Don’t forget also that Apple had actually wanted to buy ADMob, but the $750M price tag was way too high – they bought a competitor with just as much revenue and potential, it seems for a significantly lower price tag of $250M.

While some people might say this is a stab at Google for getting into “their business”, there is much more here than meets the eye. Apple has no reason to actually allow Google Adsense onto their applications – because they don’t make a single dollar from those ads. Since Apple is making their own system, they need to ensure that the only way to run advertising on the system is through them. It’s pretty damn simple – Google already has an extensive database of advertisers, and they would easily overshadow any attempt by Apple to compete with them even on their own platform. This wouldn’t fare very well for Apple, if in a year a report came out that not only was Google Android overtaking Apple iPhone, but that the predominate type of advertising on the IPHONE was actually Google.

What is strange about this mobile advertising war is the investment versus the actual possible revenue being made. Everyone is talking about mobile advertising on applications and application development as if it is the “end-all” of advertising and will take over advertising left and right. However, people ten years ago pushed application advertising and ad-supported applications as the method that would take over interactive advertising. Now it’s almost impossible to find any program that actually does this and the predominate type of advertising is in the browser.

I honestly think that this is a very possible future for mobile also. As mobile devices get bigger, as the web integrates with mobile more and more, there will be a growing seamless interaction between the two mediums. In fact, if you think about it, a great portion of the “internet” users are really “mobile” – laptops are a “mobile” device of sorts, and they have become smaller and smaller, while phone screens have become bigger and bigger. At some point in the near future they will meet in the middle and we will have laptop/netbooks that are nothing but combinations of mobile phones, laptops that do everything. Most people that I know who have android phones and iPhones spend quite a bit of their time, browsing the web using it as a “little computer” of sorts and see all the banner and other type of ads made specifically for the websites.

So, does this war really matter? Perhaps for the short term, but within a few years, I can’t see it will really matter except to corner a very small part of the marketshare. Mobile as separate entity, with its own features (mobile billing, mobile applications) will become part of the entire interactive, internet, web-process. No one actually believes that ADMob was worth $750M, but sees it as one chess piece in a greater strategy that both these companies have to dominate the web. This has little to do with “Mobile”.

Making Money Online With Google Adsense

For most bloggers, Google AdSense is the first and easiest way to start making money online. But reports of how much money you can actually make with it vary widely across the board. While popular bloggers have had a great deal of success with it, smaller blogs often find AdSense to be frustratingly limited. This discrepancy has been perpetuated to the point that many bloggers now believe that to make money with AdSense, you need to have a lot of traffic.

While that’s not exactly wrong; your site’s traffic has a great impact on how much you can earn from it; it’s not the whole truth either. Most importantly, you should not give up on AdSense because of this, because, as famous bloggers themselves have proven: when it works, it works like a charm!

In order to make money with AdSense, you first need to understand how it works. AdSense is a simple ad-publishing tool that can be incorporated into a variety of online mediums and displays ads based on the keywords within the existing text on the page. Every time a visitor to your site clicks on an ad published in your data, you are paid some money. Hence it is called PPC or Pay-Per-Click Advertising. This is usually a figure in cents or pennies, and the exact figure depends most of all on how competitive and profitable your keywords are.

* Types of AdSense

AdSense is available for web content (on blogs and web sites), for search (as when you add a Google search bar to your blog and visitors click on a sponsored search result), for mobile content (for mobile-version web sites and pages), for feeds (so that you can display ads even within your RSS and Atom feeds), and for video, parked domains and mobile applications.

* How to Make Money With AdSense

1. Understand how AdSense Works

In order to make good profit from AdSense, it’s not enough to just sign up and start publishing ads. First you must know its rules – so that you don’t break them – and its payout method – so that you can develop your strategy accordingly. Take a look at Google’s AdSense center to begin learning.

2. Choose profitable keywords

Even if you already have an existing web site, in order to make money with AdSense you need to choose the most profitable keywords within your niche. If you plan on writing your own content (as opposed to hiring freelancers or copywriters), it is also crucial that you know something about the subjects of those keywords and can research and write useful material on them.

3. Create useful, keyword-rich content

Once you have chosen your keywords, you can actively start creating content while keeping those keywords in mind. Don’t start keyword-spamming, because users will not find your site useful, and while they might click on an ad just to get away from your page, that’s not a profitable or traffic-building strategy. If your content doesn’t make sense, you also risk getting banned by Google; not just the AdSense program but the search engine too!

4. Place your ads strategically

The placement of your ads within your content really matters. The optimum placement will of course depend on your design and the placement of your text. You also have the choice between image, text and video-based ads, and how well one works for you will depend on your readership, the type of your content and primarily your existing web design. Many WordPress themes and the like come already enabled for displaying ads, but don’t let that prevent you from trying different options and choosing for yourself which one has the best ROI.

5. Build traffic

The more traffic your site has, the more users will click on your ads – it’s that simple. Traffic building is a whole another blog post, but remember that it goes hand in hand with creating useful, keyword-oriented content!

Making money with AdSense is easy – once you understand the program and follow some simple strategies for maximizing your profits, it’s truly a program you can “set and forget”!

The Power of Google Analytics

Internet marketing efforts need to be tracked so you know if you are using your resources wisely. Google analytics is a good, free tool you can use to track traffic sources, conversion rates, etc.

Make sure you have Google analytics or some other type of analytics installed on your website.

- Traffic Sources

You want to know where your traffic is coming from and where it is not coming from. This will help you allocate your resources properly. Google Analytics is able to track where your site visitors are coming from, where they go on your site, etc.

A few examples of where your traffic may come from:

- Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc)

- Pay-Per-Click campaigns

- Twitter, Facebook, etc

- Articles and press releases that include links

- Websites that have your links

- Etc.

Having this information can help you have a more effective Internet marketing plan.

- Easy Come, Easy Go

It is easy to find out where the traffic comes from and what page they leave from. Both of these pieces of information are valuable. Knowing them can help you identify if your Internet marketing strategy is working.

The page people enter your site on is important. You want to make sure they arrive on your website on a page that has a focused message for what they are looking for (most websites have multiple entry points, each focused on a different search term). Pay careful attention to what page your visitors land on and make sure it is well designed and well written.

The page visitors leave your website on is also important because it may identify a problem with your site. If you find that a certain page is the primary exit point you want to see if there are any technical or other issues with that page that make people leave your site.

- Conversion Rates

Though it is important to learn about where your traffic is coming from it is more important to know where your sales are coming from. Conversion rates in Google Analytics are tracked by traffic source. You can see where your actual buyers are coming from so you can put more emphasis on those resources.

Google Analytics is important to add to a website. Learn about your website traffic, conversion rates and more so you can make important tweaks to your Internet marketing strategy. It’s free to use so all you have to do is go for it.

Time Spent In The Google Sandbox: Still Important To Success

Google denies that they sandbox new websites. Yet, webmasters and SEO gurus alike have been frustrated to no end by the sandbox effect noted when a new website is launched. Google does acknowledge that there may be something in the algorithm that penalizes new websites and gives them lower rankings until they have proven their value. The reasons for such a filter are many and include keeping people from putting up multiple sites with links to one another when one website is what they need. Whatever the reasons behind ending up there, time spent in the Google Sandbox is still important to success.

Whether it was a conscious decision on the part of Google owners or not, they have written into the algorithm a set of filters that manage to establish the quality of a website using time-based indicators. These indicators include the age of the web site or domain, the age of different backlinks and inbound links to the site, and other factors. One important feature to note is that not only new sites are found in the sandbox. Older sites that suddenly get a rush of inbound links are often sandboxed while the value of the links is established.

With these points in mind, many who have paid for SEO services and still ended up in Google Sandbox are wondering what they can do to get out. Sadly, the only true way to climb out is to be patient. Time is actually on the side of those who are in the sandbox. There are several reasons for this.

The first reason is that time spent in the sandbox allows the website owner to work on tweaking any problem that is found with the site so that it is 100 percent ready when page rank climbs to a point where new visitors are coming in large numbers. This is the best time to test and fix any programming errors noted.

The second reason is that it allows you to work on the content of your site and any related sites linked to it. On the internet, content is king and Google is no different on that score. New, keyword optimized content appearing regularly with links that go back to a site that has been sandboxed catch attention and increase the odds of getting out sooner. Of course, these links must be relevant to the material on the website to be of any real value.

It gives webmasters time to establish relationships with others that are considered authorities in their fields. These authorities can include links to a site in their own pages. If these individuals are recognized as authorities in their fields, the value of their links increases dramatically.

Trust is an important part of any business relationship. There are some sites on the internet that are trusted more than others. Links from these sites are seen as more trustworthy by the search engine, and can help boost page rank quickly.

Ideally, you should try for a trifecta by seeking out relevant links from sites owned by recognized authorities in the field who have been deemed trustworthy by Google and users doing business with them. These links can combine in an exponential manner to boost a page ranking significantly regardless of the page’s age.

Another trick to consider is not limiting yourself to Google when performing SEO operations. One can be in the Google Sandbox and still get good organic results on other search engines such as Yahoo or Ask Jeeves.

You can also optimize for more long tailed keyword phrases. The sandbox effect only seems to affect sites that use highly competitive keywords. Therefore, if you sell an item that can be described in the keywords, the longer keyword phrases may help increase page rank. Of course, you must choose keywords that users are likely to type into the search engine.

In a nutshell, to take advantage of these time-based indicators, you should:

1. Get links that deliver the most trust, first.

2. Start your website today and also begin your link-building task as well

3. Target quality 4-in-1 links. This means going for links that are Relevant, Authoritative, from Trusted sources and from High page rank pages.

The Google Sandbox is real, despite denials from Google. These filters are part of the algorithm that assigns page ranks and they do penalize new sites that use competitive keywords. They also penalize established sites that enter into link farming agreements and try to manipulate the rankings artificially. The filters are age related for the age of the domain, the age of the links to the pages, and other factors.

The time spent in the Google Sandbox is important for the success of any web based business. To be more precise, what is done during this time is important. This is an opportunity to work out any bugs in your website that could hurt business. It is also an opportunity to establish high quality relationships with other site owners who can provide links to your site that are relevant, authoritative, from trusted sources, and coming from pages that are ranked highly, allowing you to take advantage of their rank until your own comes into being.

Google Instant Means The End Of SEO

Initially, Google’s new Instant Search system could mean a major change in how web surfers look for information online. Instead of typing a search query into Google and then hitting return, and waiting for a list of results, Googlers now see a dynamic list of results as they type. Google considers this a positive step forward in the development of searching. Google claims this new style of response will save between two and five seconds per search query. That potentially means 11 hours are saved every second. but does anyone other than Google really care?

The internet marketing community, however, will never be very enthusiastic about Google Instant. SEO consultants, who try to get sites listed at the top of Google’s organic search rankings, and SEMs, who battle for their clients’ sites to be placed near the top of Google’s Adwords Sponsored Listings, have been blogging and tweeting as if Armageddon is here.

The SEO community is paranoid at the very best of times, and perhaps with good cause as: a small change in the Google algorithm can determine the future of many websites. In this instance, however, the reaction is not necessary, essentially the results are the same, the sole change is you can see potential results of each word as you type it in, so if you are typing in ‘Italian restaurant’ you will observe everything Italian prior to getting to the restaurant results and then you will have to include your location unless you are very flexible about your travel arrangements, so in fact long tail key phrases are far from dead.

And this time round the latest Google scare is ‘much a do about nothing’ or will it be? There isn’t any denying that Google’s original innovation in search transformed how the Internet worked and made the business of finding stuff considerably quicker and easier. It also created an enormous market – one Google still dominates – that allowed companies to market us things depending on whatever we had entered in that box and all was well, for a while.

But something happened. Social networking, social media, whatever you want to refer to it as… suddenly, content was coming right at us, without us even looking for it. We couldn’t escape it. Several hyperactive egotists in each community began curating content and spewing it out to their friends. People were sharing photos, stories and links so we found that we were spending less and less time foraging around for things and increasingly more time sitting back and allowing it to wash over us.

Fast forward to 2010, and we’re being assaulted by more stuff than we could possibly consume. Facebook, Twitter, and email are shoveling pictures and video down our throats more and more quickly. Feedback loops enabled by sharing and retweeting functions imply that each of us has now changed into an over-sharer as well as an over-consumer. If you are not confused and over loaded with information, you soon will be.

Google Instant Search for Marketing

Google recently introduced their “Instant Search” feature which starts to populate search results the instant you start typing into the search box. At the same time, Google suggests alternate search terms as you type to help narrow your search without forcing you to enter entire search phrases.

The main idea behind this new feature is to save users a few seconds on each search and cut down on misspellings for search terms, business names or product names. Users may not notice much difference in their overall experience, however, for small businesses and online entrepreneurs, this new search method carries a few interesting ramifications.

Since Google clearly ranks as the “900 lb. Gorilla” of the online marketing world, acting as de facto gateway to the Web for millions, any change to their system makes businesses nervous. Many have expressed concern that this latest change will force users of Google’s AdWords program, the search giant’s lucrative pay-per-click marketing arm, to pay for more expensive keywords.

They reason that since the most popular search terms appear in the search box first, and that most people will opt to accept Google suggestions, those most popular searches will carry the highest click prices. In other words, businesses that depend on Google to show their ads fear that Google will force them to pay more money by recommending more expensive keyword searches.

I disagree.

The suggested search term feature actually appeared on Google quite a while ago, and all that’s really changed is Google starts to display the actual search results AS you type. With the old 2-step process, Google made suggestions as you typed and then you clicked the search button to see the search results.

Instant Search just creates a FAST way to see the results for different search variations without forcing you to click the button each time to see those results. This process makes it simple to see the results, change your mind, and not wait for the results each time you change the phrase.

My experience shows that most people always start with a broad search and then narrow it by including more descriptive terms (often called “long-tail” keywords) to better find what they want. This new process won’t change that.

In fact, it will give people more chances to refine their searches on-the-fly by providing Google more details of what they want. Instead of posing a threat, I believe this new Instant Search feature creates an opportunity for any business to perform high-speed market research to look for possible opportunities and trouble spots.

The following four steps will help any small business use Google’s new feature for instant results.

1. Go to Google and search for your business as if you were a consumer.

2. Make a note of the keyword suggestions Google offers as you type.

3. See if those suggestions give you any ideas for your own marketing (since they should represent the most popular phrases).

4. Note which competitors show up and where you appear in relation to them.

These 4 simple steps make a great barometer for taking a read on your local market, fast.

Who appears consistently?

Who shows up hit-and-miss or every once in a while?

Who shows up in Google Maps?

If your competitors show up and you don’t, you’ve got some work to do!

Bottom line: as a small business, use Google’s new Instant Search to quickly get the big picture when it comes to your business, industry, and local competition.

The Buzz about Buzz

If you haven’t treated yourself to a lovely shiny new g-mail account, then you are missing out. Not only does it have endless memory, quick processing of large attachments, and a lovely search function of deleted e-mail; it also has a super cool new function called Buzz.

Buzz functions like many other popular networking sites, but it has a few new perks. Instead of friend-ing someone, like on Facebook, with Google’s new Buzz you follow them. So you want to get as many people following you as possible. Start with friends, family, and people you network with regularly on other social web-sites. Now for the cool part: any website that you have attached to your Buzz account generates posts via Buzz. Websites that you can attach to Buzz include Google Chat Status, Picassa, Flickr, posted via Buzz@gmail, Google reader, and Twitter.

Once you have connected any of these websites to Buzz, anything you post on the other website automatically appears as a post on Buzz. Anyone who is following you will be able to see these posts. You get twice as much exposure with half of the effort. You can post information about events, a sale your business is having, or a gig your band is playing. Buzz will get the information out.

Buzz also has some other nifty features, similar to other networking sites. You can comment on someone else’s post or a post of your own. You can like a post. You can re-share a post, e-mail a post to anyone (whether they have Buzz as well or not), and finally, and probably the most cool, is one of your contacts is online and has their G-mail account open you can reply to the post by chat, which is conveniently built into G-mail’s website.

- How Does This Affect Pay Per Click Marketing?

Buzz taps into Google’s AdSense program with a more refined algorithm. If someone clicks on an add while on a Buzz screen, then the logic states that their friends might also like similar ads, articles, and websites. This adds a powerhouse punch to pay per click advertising. Much like harnessing the power of Facebook, PPC advertisers now have new avenues opened before them. Unlike fishing on particular keywords, potential customers are assisting in the event. Using this analogy it is like having fish help teach you how to fish.

This sort of advertising momentum can take your marketing campaign to the next level. Couple this with analytics tools and your PPC approach will be unstoppable. All PPC Google ads permits companies to set their advertising budget down to an exact dollar amount. In fact, the minimum required daily budget to advertise with Google through PPC Ads is one dollar. As always, the advertiser only pays when an ad is clicked, and Buzz doesn’t change that, it only helps to harness the power of social media for the purpose of ad refinement and dissemination.

Tips For Google Adwords

One of the best Google Adwords tips I can give you is to not consider this a do it yourself type of traffic tool. Adwords has many elements to it and if you want to make more money than you spend you will need to find someone, or some course, to teach you how to get the most out of it.

Pay Per click (PPC) can work exceptionally well at getting hordes of very targeted traffic to your website virtually instantly. Of course, you may be asking, if it’s so good, why doesn’t everyone use it?

That is the crux of the matter. PPC is not an easy thing to learn how to do. It will take time and you need to be willing to invest not only the time but the money too. You will need to carefully test and track various elements of each ad that you place. In the start you will spend way more money than you will earn.

Another challenge is that Google isn’t really worried to much about you or your advertising budget, they are more concerned that their searchers get what they are looking for. The searchers on any of the search engines are the real customers and if they don’t find what they want they’ll go elsewhere. That is why Google wants to make sure to keep them happy by providing them with just what they’re looking for.

To do this, Google will periodically change the way they do things. They will rewrite an algorithm or make other changes and if you’re not right on top of those changes you can find that the ad that once made you a lot of money is now costing you a lot of money.

Here are a few tips that you can use to optimize your PPC campaigns:

1. Find a course or a mentor who can teach you the ins and outs of PPC advertising. If you try to just jump in and figure it all out on your own you had better make sure you have a lot of time and very deep pockets.

2. Carefully choose the keywords you use. Don’t even try to compete for the one or two word keywords since they will almost always have so much competition you’ll be spending way too much per click. Instead focus on the keyword phrases that have 3, 4, or 5 words in them. These ‘long tailed keywords’ can fly under the radar yet still get you some decent click through rates (CTR’s).

3. Always test your ads. You can do this by having several versions of each ad running at the same time. Find out which headlines get the most clicks. Which body text gets the most clicks, etc. Keep testing until you’ve got a winning ad. When testing make sure you only change one element at a time otherwise you won’t know which change really made the difference.

Out of all the Google Adwords tips I can give you the one I think is the most important is to find someone to show you the ropes. PPC is effective if you know how to do it right, but if not it can very quickly become a money pit.

Google’s Need For Speed Means You Need to Check Your Website

Not too long ago Google released a new search tool “Google Instant.” Google Instant tries to speed searches by anticipating what you are going to type next based on what you have searched in the past. When you start typing Google offers you a selection of results and you can watch the results change with each letter typed. Google claims that it will save 3.5 Billion global seconds a day! I don’t know about you but I feel better knowing that I won’t be searching for the same thing fifteen years from now.

Putting aside the privacy issues and the file Google has on each and every one of us, let’s look at how this will affect your website and your search placement. In that same Google interview they stated they will pursue all options to shorten search times. At the top of the list was site load times and robot read times.

We already know there are rules to govern the code to content ratio, keyword density and placement, and content quality but this rule goes right to the foundation of every website. This rule speaks right to the background code, which by the way, has changed a lot over the years. Under this new rule the load and read speeds of your website will have a direct affect on your ranking.

How do you know if your website needs to be updated?

1- Web code standards and browser capabilities have advanced a lot in a short time. If your site is pushing five years since the last tune up, it is time to look.

2 – Was the original site written with outdated or obsolete WYSIWYG software? These are notorious for adding tons of erroneous code (Google already penalizes for this).

3- Copy placement. Search bots only read so many words in to a website. It is important that these be the important words. We call that “strategic copy placement.”

4- On-page optimization. Is your website easy for Google to find and more importantly, understand where you want to be listed? Older sites have little or no optimization at all. This is especially true with WYSIWYG and templates.

How do you fix this problem? Sorry, there is no short answer. The best thing to do is find an experienced website designer and get an evaluation. Not an artist turned developer but a good design / code / search optimization team. I have argued this point many times in the past and won’t go into here. But, other than the graphic design there are two other components to a website. These two parts together are the most important components. First, the way the site is written and second is the search optimization, which includes current market research.

What the code should look like, again that is too deep to cover here. We coined a phrase a couple of years ago “search engine positive code”. This is how your website is presented to the search engines. You need to give it to them the way they want it. This is now critical to website placement and that is important in this competitive environment.

Once you have the evaluation tackle it one step at a time. You can re-do the code with minor changes to the design. Another option is to just re-do the index page. The occasional overhaul is part of the normal evolution of maintaining a website. Technology changes and you have to also, you can bet that your competition will.

Seven Things You Never Want To Say To A Potential Customer

Unless your goal is to scare potential customers away, never say these seven things to them.

1. Never say to a potential customer: We don’t accept credit cards – Your customers expect you to accept credit cards – when you tell them you can’t – you immediately disappoint them and give them a big reason not do business with you!

These days, most businesses do qualify for a merchant account from their bank or at the very least qualify to open a WorldPay account. (We’ll cover that in another article.)

Bottom line – you are not really in business unless you can accept credit card payments.

2. Never say to a potential customer: Please allow 28 days for delivery- When your customers are ready to buy, they usually want the product immediately.

If you tell potential customers they have to wait 28 days before they can get the product, most will go somewhere else to buy. Even if customers have to wait just a few days, or in some cases, a few hours (i.e. to access to a subscription web site or download an eBook/Software item), they will often go away without placing the order.

Bottom Line: To avoid losing customers, make sure your products are available for immediate shipment. Be sure to offer next day shipping when possible. And never offer products that require customers to wait 28 days for delivery.

3. Never say to a potential customer: No questions allowed! – Often customers will want to speak to you before placing an order. But if you don’t include a phone number in your ad or on your website, it is like saying ‘no you can’t call us and ask questions!’

Not having a phone number where customers can reach you before the sale often discourages the sale itself.

Bottom Line: Always include a phone number in all your ads, web site, press releases, and sales letters.

4. Never say to a potential customer: We aren’t interested in your call – Incoming calls to your business should always be answered – either by a live person, or by a professional voice mail system.

Never let phone calls go answered. Doing so immediately causes doubt in the customer’s mind. They begin to wonder, “Is this a real business? No one seems to ever answer the phone. Maybe I should place my order with another company.”

In my office I have a voice mail system to answer all incoming calls that Nadine and I can’t personally answer. When we are out of the office during business hours, we forward our office phones to our mobile phones. This allows us to take business calls whenever they come in, wherever we may be.

The same is true with fax calls. Potential customers expect you to have a fax machine – all real businesses do. If a potential customer wants to fax you a question, a sales order, or anything else, you want to be able to receive the fax.

Bottom Line: Make sure your business phones are answered. During business hours the phones should be answered by a real person, and a voice mail system after hours. If you can’t afford a voice mail system and stand-alone fax machine, then configure your computer to answer your phone and receive incoming faxes for you.

5. Never say to a potential customer: We don’t have a web site – these days, customers expect you to have a web site. And they expect to see information about your company, your location, the products you offer, support materials, and more at that web site.

If you don’t have a web site, your customers might find a competitor who does.

Bottom Line: Almost all businesses should have a web site. The website should have a professional design, be easy to use, and provide the kind of information potential customers will be looking for.

6. Never say to a potential customer: Sorry, I don’t have a business card – it continues to amaze me how often I am asked for a business card by potential customers who I come in contact with in non-business environments.

For example, recently whilst I was buying a new car, the salesman asked about the kind of business I ran, and after hearing the explanation he said, “I know someone looking for that kind of software. Give me your business card and I’ll pass it on to him.” And he did, and we got a call from someone who may turn into a customer.

Bottom Line: Make sure you have business cards with you wherever you go. You never know when you might find a new customer. (Make sure your business card has your name, your company name, your web site address, your email address, and a brief description of the kinds of products or services you offer).

7. Never say to a potential customer: Yes, our product can do everything you ever wanted. That can’t possible be true – no matter how great a product or service you have, it can’t do everything.

If a potential customer asks about features your product doesn’t have, be honest. Tell them that you haven’t included the feature, but it is a good suggestion and you’ll consider adding it (if that is possible).

Whatever you do, don’t mislead potential customers about what your product can and can’t do. Be honest about it – customers do appreciate honesty. You can avoid disappointing customers by being clear about what your product can or can’t do.

Bottom Line: Better to lose a sale than to create a disappointed or angry customer. If your customer is looking for a feature that you don’t include in your product, tell them so.

Breaking Down the New FTC Endorsement and Testimonial Rules in Layman’s Terms

Over the last several months, I’ve had numerous individuals e-mail me complaining they didn’t fully understand the new FTC Endorsement and Testimonial Rules, and how it applied to them.

That’s not surprising, since government rules and regulations at both the state and federal level are notorious for not being written in layman’s term.

With that in mind, I decided to write an article about the new FTC rules in language I’m sure everyone can understand. Let’s get started:

On December 1, 2009, new FTC regulations that govern the use of endorsements and testimonials to promote products went into effect.

FTC  regulations now require all endorsements to disclose any “material connection” between the vendor and the advertiser.

For example, suppose you are an affiliate marketer who owns a website that provides reviews of products that you promote. If your reviews about those products are favorable, by law, you must disclose the fact that you are receiving a commission from the sale of those products.

These new rules apply even if you receive a free or complimentary product and are asked to review it. Under the new FTC rules, you not only have to disclose the fact you got the product for free, the onus is on the vendor who provided the product to make a sincere effort to insure you make that disclosure.

In addition, under the new rules, advertisements featuring consumers that give the impression that his or her experience with a particular product or service is “typical” when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the “real” results that consumers can generally expect.

In other words, if you don’t have clinical data to prove or substantiate the type of results you claim consumers will generally achieve with your product, the FTC now offers you two alternatives — either furnish such data or stop using “success story” testimonials altogether.

To be fair, the FTC clearly states, the new rules are administrative interpretations of the law, intended to help advertisers comply with the Federal Trade Commission Act; they are not binding law themselves.
That means any law enforcement action challenging the allegedly deceptive use of testimonials or endorsements, the Commission would have the burden of proving that the challenged conduct violates the FTC Act.In closing, while the burden of proof may indeed rest with the FTC, you also don’t want to give the Commission a reason to come after you either. I can assure you, a fight with the federal government and all its vast resources is a fight you can do without.

How to Satisfy Small Business Clients?

A lot of us web business gurus tend to miss something important: Most money changes hands in the real world, not online. Depending on who you ask, U.S. online sales total $200-400 billion annually. Not bad, right? Sure, but the total of all transactions in the economy works out to $14 trillion or so. Online sales, impressive as they are, only account for two to three percent of the total economy at best.

Most of my clients are small businesses with fewer than 100 employees. One thing the proprietors have in common is that they do not spend much time online. Whether the client is a dentist or a pet groomer, the only thing they care about is that their online presence brings warm bodies in their doors, preferably warm bodies with credit or insurance cards at the ready.

Those of us who spend a good portion of our lives tilting the plane of cyberspace in favor of our clients’ businesses tend to lose sight of the real world. You know the one – the one you can actually smell. Conversely, our clients tend to regard cyberspace as a distraction or a frivolity because they are caught up in the day-to-day drama of running their businesses.

My clients and I live in different worlds. I actually have paying customers whom I’ve never met in person and, quite frankly, I don’t care to meet them. All I care about is that their checks clear and that they are pleased with the results of my efforts. For their part, all they care about is the influx of business that occurs after I “do my thing.”

So what is my “thing” and how do I do it? There are elements of the secret sauce that I simply will not reveal without being paid a handsome sum, but I will give you a basic sketch. In fact, I’ll give it to you step-by-step:

1. Listen to what the client wants in the real world but tune out what they say about the web because they generally don’t know what they’re talking about. I always bring the conversation back to the real world. “So Fred, the flashy website with all the nifty widgets and gizmos sounds cool, but the ultimate goal is for the phone to ring, or perhaps I’ve misunderstood…” They know what they need in the real world, but you are the expert when it comes to web design, SEO, social media, PPC, video marketing or whatever else you’re going to do for them. The only exception to this rule is when they have a very specific business need for a web application that will streamline their operations. If a physician tells me she wants patients to be able to schedule appointments and pay their co-pays through the website, that is precisely what I give them.

2. Talk turkey early in the game. Ask straight-away about their budget, and tell them what to expect within those constraints. If their budget is $500 a month, show them how you will generate an extra $2,000 in sales for them each month. The worst thing you can possibly do is promise them the moon if their budget will barely buy a dead Soviet satellite. A lot of times, I gain clients by offering to do a small project on a small budget so that they can get a taste of the potential before committing to a bigger campaign.

3. Design a custom plan and never – ever – use a cookie cutter. Small business people are often visionaries. Learn as much as you can about their philosophy, their customers, their products, and their plans for the future. Build a web campaign around that. Make it about them, not you.

4. Execute the plan. You’ve done this a thousand times. You know it will work. Now do it.

5. Track the results. This one can be difficult. I can say with total honesty that every single client I have ever worked with has seen an increase in business within a very short time of my efforts. I can also say with honesty that they often chalk it up to coincidence. That is to their detriment when the contract period is up. It feels awful, like you’re pulling the rug out from under them. The funny thing is that they do not chalk the resulting decline in business up to coincidence and often come begging at that point. Best to avoid this, however. Track results. Show them how their increased website traffic or video views correspond to increased sales. It makes the renewal process much more pleasant for everyone involved.

This deserves an article of its own, but it needs to be said: Getting warm bodies in the door is not the same as gaining maximum exposure. SEO does no good if the site tells the wrong story. Viral content can be effective, but only if the message is clear and the target market reached. Helping small businesses is all about delivering the message that the business owner wants to deliver to the people that want to hear it.

Remember that while you and your client inhabit different worlds, one thing you do have in common is that you want the same end result. Focus on achieving that, and everyone will be happy.

How To Find The Perfect Price?

How To Find A Price That Sells Lots ….

How do you decide the best price for a JV product?

I’ve read a lot of very complicated, scientific theories on this. And I’m not sure any of them work. So here I’m going to run through a few very simple tips which I think you will find very useful.

Firstly, you need to know the economics of your business. You’ve got to know the price of your product and all your other overhead costs – like mailing, fulfillment and your partner’s JV commission. And you’ve got to add on a little bit …. well preferably a lot …. as a profit margin. It stands to sense that your perfect selling price has to be at least what all those amounts add up to.

Now what about the price in terms of marketing pull. Well, although it seems logical, charging the lowest price you can afford to charge is probably not the best strategy. You have to understand a bit about your product and your customer to know how price pushes their buying buttons.

To give you an example: I’ve seen modern art for sale in fashionable, posh-part-of-town art galleries at $250, $350, $500 and even more. Presumably someone must buy them, because those sort of upmarket businesses seem to do very nicely thank you. Then again, I’ve seen much the same thing up for sale in discount stores for $15 …. but they just sit gathering dust for months. You see, there’s something about the fashionable gallery environment that attracts the higher spending customer and persuades them to spend more on what they want. It’s just the same for lots of other JV-related products.

With every product there will also some level of price resistance. Together with various price points which the customer is happy to buy at. In the information manual and DVD business the first price point might be $29.95 – a point where sales drop off if you go beyond it. However, once you pass that point there might be no significant difference in sales conversion rates between $39.95 and $79.95. That means that if you can’t price it at $29.95 you might as well price it at $79.95! There are other variables of course, such as the exact contents of the package, but many times it works like that.

Every product or service has its own range of price points. You have to take some time to find out yours.

What about ‘full pound’ prices – $30 versus $29.95 or even $29.99. This is one of those great marketing talking points. Often I find that a price ending in .95 works better than .99, .89 works better than .95 and odd pound figures almost always outsell even pound amounts.

If you sell on installment terms or finance you might not headline on the total price at all. I have seen lots of courses sold on offers such as ‘3 Monthly Payments Of Only $27.89′. In these cases, it’s important to get the installment price right rather than the total price. (Which in this case is a totally bizarre $83.67, but you might well find that it works very, very well.)

I will, however, make this very important point: The skimpier the sales job you do the lower you cap your price. And if you’re very limited in terms of time and space then the price gets a lot more important.

Try this great technique for seducing your customers! If you think your price seems a bit high and you want to make it look fantastic value then consider using price comparisons, like this ….

In top brand designer stores you’ll probably pay $180 to $200.

In popular discount stores you may pay as little as $49 to $69.

But our direct valued-customer price is just $27.97.

OK, so let’s try and summarise the secret of great JV pricing in just four simple points:

* The economics of your individual business decides your lowest possible price.

* Knowing your product and your customers will tell you how little they would like to pay – and also how much they will pay.

* Know your individual price points. Testing will help. If you can’t stay within one price point you might as well push your price up to the next one.

* How you present price can make a difference.

SaaS-eCommerce Sites: Twitter Case Provides Critical Lessons in Administrative Security

In June, 2010, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) settled charges that Twitter’s micro-blogging site had engaged in lax security practices that amounted to “unfair and deceptive trade practices”.

While previous cases brought by the FTC for lax security procedures focused on lax electronic controls, the Twitter case focused on lax administrative controls. Webmasters of SaaS and ecommerce sites who fail to learn and apply the critical lessons of the Twitter case do so at their peril.

- Twitter Case Facts – Two Hacks

The FTC’s complaint against Twitter alleged that lax administrative controls for data security permitted at least two hackers to acquire administrative control of Twitter resulting in access to private personal information of users, private tweets, and most surprising – the ability to send out phony tweets.

Here’s how the hackers got access to Twitter. According to the FTC, hacker no. 1 was able to hack in by using an automated password guessing tool that sent thousands of guesses to Twitter’s login form. The hacker found an administrative password that was a weak, lowercase, common dictionary word, and with it the hacker was able to reset several user passwords which the hacker posted on a website that others could access and use to send phony tweets.

Hacker no. 2 compromised the personal email account of a Twitter employee and learned of the employee’s passwords that were stored in plain text. With these passwords, the hacker was then able to guess the similar Twitter administrative passwords of the same employee. Once into Twitter, the hacker reset a user’s password and was able to access the user information and tweets for any Twitter user.

- Twitter Settlement Lessons

The FTC noted that Twitter’s website privacy policy promised: “We employ administrative, physical, and electronic measures designed to protect your information from unauthorized access.”

Focusing on Twitter’s administrative controls (more accurately on the lack thereof), the FTC alleged that Twitter failed to take reasonable steps to:

* Require employees to use hard-to-guess administrative passwords that they did not use for other programs, websites, or networks; * prohibit employees from storing administrative passwords in plain text within their personal e-mail accounts;

* Suspend or disable administrative passwords after a reasonable number of unsuccessful login attempts;

* Provide an administrative login webpage that is made known only to authorized persons and is separate from the login page for users;

* Enforce periodic changes of administrative passwords, for example, by setting them to expire every 90 days;

* Restrict access to administrative controls to employees whose jobs required it; and impose other reasonable restrictions on administrative access, such as by restricting access to specified IP addresses.

* The FTC settlement included (among other things) the requirement that Twitter set up and manage a comprehensive data security policy that will be reviewed by an independent auditor periodically for ten years.

- Conclusion

The FTC represents consumer interests to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices. Privacy and data security have been high-priority issues for the FTC, as evidenced by the 30 cases brought over the last few years for lax data security practices.

In its investigations of data security cases, the FTC looks at 2 standards:

* What the FTC considers as “standard, reasonable” security procedures, and

* What a website’s privacy policy promises to consumers regarding data security.

If the website’s actual data security practices do not measure up to either of these standards (a worst-case scenario would be the failure to measure up to both), the FTC concludes that the website has engaged in lax security practices that amount to “unfair and deceptive trade practices”. A complaint and costly lawsuit may follow.

The reason that the FTC publishes the results of its settlements is to provide lessons to others regarding what the FTC regards as an “unfair and deceptive trade practice”.

Do you know if your site measures up to the two standards?

The Eternal Debate: Apple Mac vs. PC

In this world where technology rules, no business can survive without a computer. Not only that, but it is also necessary that computers are updated to keep up with new technology being released every year. So which computer is the best for your office based business?

When buying a computer, the main thing to realize is what you will need in terms of the business requirements, then do a little research to find out what suits your requirements best.

Not wanting to be simple, but we have to start somewhere!

So, there are two different types of computer processors, PC and Apple Mac. PC stands for Personal Computers and is the term used to refer to all computers that are IBM compatible. Most software available on the market, especially games software, is PC compatible though because the PC is so common; it is also beset with virus problems while Apple Macs do not encounter the same degree of problem areas.

Apple Mac computers are for the most part well designed and look more stylish than the majority of the business targeted PCs on the market. A Mac is widely used by designers and photographers and most computer savvy users believe that the Mac is a much better computer, with improved audio and video software compared to a PC. This isn’t to say it is best for you business, as individual company needs do vary. For example if you are storing lots of images on your computers, a Mac may sound like a good option though if you don’t intend to edit the photos or do not particularly need to see those images in such high quality, then a standard PC with a good processor and lots of memory may suffice.

Though the Mac is easier to use, it can be difficult to train up employees that have been used to using a standard PC. It is worth noting that a lot of computer experts are only experts in PC and only a few specialize in Macs.

Though it is seldom that Apple Mac breaks down, when it does, it can be difficult to find someone to fix it and it can be expensive visiting the Apple stores for repairs, so these computers don’t always allow for a small budget.

There are many more software programs available for a PC; this may be the reason that so many companies take this option. And with personal computers being available at most office suppliers, it makes it an easy all round option – Mac’s are generally only sold by stores authorized by Apple and there aren’t many specialists that deal with them, hence the price.

We couldn’t possibly tell you which computer is best for your office based business, though we hope that you carry out good research and spend your budget wisely!

Taking Action on Parked Domains

Internet marketers and business owners who invest in dot coms tend to purchase the “org”, “net” or “info” variations and misspelled versions to prevent competitors from using them. These parked domains may be worth thousands of dollars someday if developed into thriving websites using an affordable site building service.

* Benefits of monetizing

Maintaining a huge collection of names is a cash outflow that can be costly when you consider the renewal registration fees that you have to pay for them annually. Balance the outflow by monetizing them to promote cash inflow. Here’s what you can do with them:

* Increase their resale value

Keyword names and those with suffixes other than “.com” don’t always sell well, if at all, in the resale market unless these point to active and thriving websites. Your strategy should be to build and develop multiple websites, generate traffic and sell products on them so you can easily resell them in bulk when you’re ready to unload these names.

* Start a business

Sell your own items or promote affiliate products on your sites. With sales automation tools, your websites can turn into passive income streams so you can earn while aging your domains.

* Build and lease

Offline businesses and traditional brick and mortar establishments often need websites with relevant keywords and visibility to jump start their entry into the Internet. You can fill this need by activating your domains, building sites and optimizing them with your target niche in mind and then offer to lease them for a few years and give them the option to buy the site and name at the end of the lease period.

* What you need?

You will need the following to monetize your parked domains:

1. Website
2. Content
3. Traffic
4. Products and
5. Enough time for aging

If you’re an Internet marketer with advanced skills, aging websites is something you can do on your own, but could be overwhelming when you’re looking at a vast collection of about 30 to a hundred names.

If you don’t have the time or the skills for aging your own websites, why not follow the lead of domain experts who outsource this task and use a reliable service to do it for them? An experienced outsourcer will take care of building, adding content, optimizing and feeding fresh articles to your sites for you to get the best return on your investment.