Goran Duskic
Online marketing, Google, hosting, game serveri - GEM Studio

Will Reynolds 

We, as marketers, spend our professional lives striving to gain as much visibility for our clients and/or products as possible, so it seems silly to think that being No. 1 can actually be dangerous to the health of our businesses - but it’s true, it can be, especially when it comes to paid search engine marketing. But wait…isn’t paid search marketing the new “thing”, the holy grail of Internet Marketing? Not necessarily.

Paid search is a great tool, and when planned, executed, and analyzed properly it can lead to a very high return on your investment. Be warned, to get the most from paid search marketing you need to leave your ego at the door, and get over your I must be #1 complex.

Usability
Success begins at home, as they say. A good way to be sure paid search engine marketing pays off for you is to be sure your own site is clean and easy to navigate. You can spend millions on paid search marketing and never see even the slightest return if your site annoys users with things like flash intros or difficult navigation.

People want the Internet to be fast and easy, and when it isn’t, they get frustrated and look for alternative sites that are. If the sites ranking above you are hard to use, slow to load, or just plain unprofessional, don’t outbid them to rank higher in the search engines. Become obsessive about usability, and all of your marketing that focuses on driving users to the web site will have a greater impact.

Keyword research & follow up
I recently typed in “buy office supplies online” in Overture, only to find that the No. 3 advertiser is paying a max bid of $1.50, while the No. 4 advertiser is paying a max of .56 cents! That is potentially a dollar more per click.

Further, the No. 4 advertiser only sells ink, not pens or staplers, just ink for printers.

Taking the example above, why would I as a marketer in charge of search engine marketing for a printer ink store, pay .56 cents for users typing in “buy office supplies online?”

If someone is savvy enough to type in “buy office supplies,” they are probably savvy enough to also type in “printer ink,” if that is what they actually wanted.

People don’t type things in search engine boxes that they are not looking for!

Don’t make the mistake of realizing a good ROI in paid search marketing for the terms most applicable to your business, and then try to extrapolate that out to terms that are borderline and are not 100% applicable to your business, many marketers make that mistake, and the result is that ROI on pay per click marketing efforts takes a nosedive.

I bet the ROI on terms for printer ink was good, and this marketer may have assumed that they would see a similar result if they targeted other generic terms, this is not the case.

Humility
In search engine marketing, there’s nothing wrong with being second, fifth, or tenth in the results. Remember, the Internet is a research tool for a vast many of users, the less commoditized your product, the more likely your potential audience will dig through numerous options to research multiple companies BEFORE they make a decision.

When is the last time you were looking for a product or service on the Internet and bought it from the first site that came up in a search engine without at last checking a few other sites too? You may buy products like pens and paperclips from the first place you see, but this does not happen in service businesses, or for products with moderate to high price tags.

Check your ego at the door. Being No. 1 in the search engines does not make a product or service the best - it means that organization paid the most to be there, and many Internet users know this. (Be advised: This is not the case with Google, however, where click-through does have an affect on rank).

Don’t take being #1 in a search engine as a life or death thing! If the success of your business hinges on ranking highly in search engines, you need to re-evaluate your marketing plans. Paid search marketing should be only one piece of the pie.

Copyrighting and Testing
Here are two questions:
· When is the last time you swapped copy on a paid search ad?
· Did you track the results?

One of the great things about Internet marketing is it allows the marketer test and switch gears on a dime.

More marketers take advantage of this opportunity.

Think of at least three features of your product or service; use a different product feature once a month for three months, without changing other factors. At the end of the three-month period, take a look at the impact on conversions or other important metrics.

Which feature highlights resonated best with your audience?

Maybe as another test you can create a splash page so that when a user goes from your paid ad to your web site they get a page with a specific message, test your conversion rate with and without a splash page, maybe you could try different copy or layouts of your splash page too.

You may have to devote some months for isolated testing (not testing too many features at one time). I think we all know that paid search is here to stay, so testing for 3-6 months is worth while if what you learn about your audience affects your paid marketing approach for years to come.

Analysis
Finally, many of the pay-per-click search engines are allowing you to get conversion metrics on your keyword buys by just adding some code to your task completion page. It started with Findwhat and now the other major players have followed. This is a free service, for now, on the big pay per click engines, USE IT!

If you are not using the conversion tools from the various PPC search engines, then use your analysis tool to look for trends in user behavior that comes from PPC search engines, are they more likely to convert, or less? What about the abandon rates for those that come in through paid search listings?

Learn your audience segments, you just may find that users coming to your site via paid search have a different set of needs & expectations than users that come through print ads or e-mail.

Setting up a paid search marketing campaign is easy, making sure you are targeting the right terms, at the right costs is the difficult and time consuming part.

Paid search marketing is in a frenzied state! Marketers are paying a lot of money, and not doing the follow-through.

Next time take a look at this checklist below, if anything, it will act as a sounding board for your paid search efforts.

Paid search strategy checklist:
Do you know which specific keywords are most profitable?
Are the words you target exactly what your business offers?
Do you know which paid search engine is the most likely to convert?
Do you know the cost per click at which terms become unprofitable?
Have you tested new ad copy? If yes, have you analyzed changes on conversions and other business metrics?
Do you always pay to bump yourself up to #1 without first looking at the sites above and below you?
Copyright Will Reynolds www.willreynolds.com

by: Jason Lam 
Keyword research is an integral part of any SEM initiative, whether it may be PPC or SEO, so it’s important to do it right. Its also important to do it right from the start, Google spiders (the bots that indexes web pages) can takes up to months before they cycle to your site, so if you target the wrong keywords initially, it could take months to fix.

We’ve briefly listed the top 5 things to consider before you begin your fun journey of keyword researching.

1. Define your targeted pages

You should recognize what goals you want to achieve. If you are looking to sell cars, you want to optimize the pages containing information on a specific type of car or pages containing content that will lead them to buy a car. Pages such as the About Us page, History page probably won’t need optimization since no one is specifically searching for those pages. Make a list of the pages you feel would provide a lead for your business, and target the keywords on those pages.

2. Speak the way your audiences speak

While the correct term to describe your product may seem obvious to you, you need to speak your audience’s language in order to show up for their searches. For example, if you are selling “GPS navigation systems”, a person may have searched for GPS systems. It may not be the most politically correct term (Global Positioning System Systems), but if that’s what everyone is using to find the item you are selling, you may need to consider it as a keyword to target.

3. Know your competition

Sure, ranking number one for “cars” would drive up your web traffic exponentially. But what are your chances of obtaining that ranking? Typically, one word keywords are extremely difficult to optimize for because millions of pages on the web are already well optimized for it without even knowing it (unless you want to optimize for kukukabo)

If you are in a very competitive industry (in the internet world) such as gaming, gambling, insurance and such, you may find it helpful to pin down your keywords to a more niche and targeted level. For example, if you are selling cars in Toronto, you may want to combine “Toronto” with “cars”, or if you are targeting a specific demographic, you may want to include that it in keyword. You may find that the competition for that term drops significantly, thereby, increasing your chances of success.

By increasing your presence for these targeted key terms, you are in a better position to optimize for more ambitious keywords in the future.

4. Using the right tools

By no means are the following the only tools you should use, but they are some popular free keyword research tools that are simple, straightforward and ideal to help you get started in keyword researching.

Overture Keyword Selector Tool

- Type in your keyword and it will show you some popular related searches and its search volume during a one month period

- Be cautioned however that the words within each keyphrase are rearranged in alphabetical order. For example, if you search for New York Horse Racing, it would show up as Horse New Racing York

Google AdWords Keywords Tool

- Type in your keyword and it will show you the search volume, competition levels, synonyms and display some useful data for budgeting when setting up your PPC campaign in Google

NLC Keyword Competition Index

While this is currently in development, we are providing a tool that shows you the competition you face for each keyword. This index will help you determine your chances of success at optimizing for each term. The NLC folks here are using it internally and its one of the best things for Search Engine Marketers since sliced cheese. We will provide more details to this tool in our blog in the future, so stay tuned!

5. Snoop on your competitors

After having a good set of keywords, go ahead and search for them in Google. Take note of the top results, if they are selling or promoting what you are, these are competitors. Browse through their site and keep an eye out for keywords they are using. It may help to view their Meta tags and description by going into the page source code (View > Source).

6. Smooth Integration with page content

PPC

While in PPC, you have the freedom to target more broad terms and loosely related terms, you must also consider that people who have clicked on your ad are expecting to see what they searched for. If your site has no relevance to what they keyword was, you probably just wasted $0.50.

SEO

When choosing keywords for SEO, you need to be much more selective. Remember, you will need to put these keywords on your page, and if you want to do SEO well, these terms are probably going to be in very prominent areas on your page. Make sure these terms make sense and can fit well into the context of your content.

Remember, when doing keyword research for SEO initiatives; do not ONLY aim for the terms with highest search volume and lowest competition. While that is generally a good rule of thumb, you must not forget the main point of search engine optimization, you are delivering more web users to your site, but you will ultimately need your web content to speak to your potential customers, so using keywords that make sense, and are related to your content is just as important as choosing obtainable keywords.
About The Author

Jason Lam is a member of the Search Engine Marketing group at non-linear creations, Jason has a wealth of experience in everything SEO, PPC and SEM while working with many clients from varying industries.

http://www.nonlinear.ca/pages/search-engine-marketing-toronto.htm
http://www.nonlinear.ca/pages/organic-seo-services.htm

by: Eric P. Martin 
It’s been a little over a decade since I was first introduced to the internet. I can remember how slow small businesses were to adapting the new idea of marketing their products and services in a way they never had seen before. Even for some larger corporations, it took awhile for them to accept the new concept of e-commerce. I guess no matter how profitable an idea maybe, it still will take a couple of years before the larger population can become comfortable with it. Ironically, I find small businesses are in the exact same place they were 15 years ago as an affiliate with VM Direct.

VM Direct - a streaming video company out of Las Vegas, Nevada. VM Direct, is a streaming media service provider offering web-based technology services: Video email, blogging, video instant messaging, podcasting, and live broadcasting. Their all-in-one media packages start as low as $9.95 per month.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I had a few hours of free time to dive into the achieves of VM Direct’s weekly newsletters. As a new affiliate, I wanted to learn more about how other VM Direct affiliates are using the products as marketing tools for their small business. Immediately, it became apparent how a small business can take advantage of this new technology and have a competitive edge over their competition by simply implementing streaming video into their current marketing plan.

Video Email

Word-of-mouth advertising is the least expensive marketing tool a business can use in marketing. What better way to get people talking about your business than to use the latest technology like video email? Let’s imagine for a moment, that you meet someone at a business networking event. After a few minutes of small talk, both of you exchange business cards. Monday morning, you put your new contact information into your database. However, rather than making a typical follow-up phone call, you decide to send a quick video email expressing how much of a pleasure it was meeting them, and how you look forward to calling them later in the week. What type of impression do you think that email will leave with that new contact? During the course of their day, they might receive a few dozen emails. However, which one do you think they might remember? Could the impression from your new form of communication be so strong that they will forward your video message to someone else in the company, creating a bit of viral marketing for you along the way?

VM Direct web-based video email application incorporates a custom design function for its subscribers. There are three places which users can put their own advertisements; the header, the card, and the footer. Both the header and footer act as banners which are positioned above and below the video screen. The card acts as a business card where subscribers can advertise a simple message. Users can easily upload their custom graphics and have readers click on the graphic icon to open up another webpage of their choice.

Video Newsletters

Successful businesses, both small and large, understand the power of having a database list. Rather than sending a two-page newsletter to opt-in subscribers, the sender can have messages sent to every subscriber in a new, refreshing email format. Think of it as having your own “60 Minutes” weekly television show. How many of your competitors has their own weekly video show?

Personally, I still have a number of email newsletters I’ve yet to open. Many of those email newsletters have given up hope themselves, as they wait for me eventually open or delete them. Shamefully to say, some date back as far as four years ago. I keep promising myself that I’ll get to them one day. I can honestly say, I’ve yet to let a video email I’ve received go unopened.

Live Broadcasting

Incorporating live broadcast into your marketing, opens up an untapped realm of possibilities. I didn’t know the many applications in which it could be used until I watched some of the live broadcasts that were created by Razor Stream’s Chairman of the Board, Richard Kall. Every Tuesday, Richard Kall broadcast his show live over the internet called, “Summer Chat with Richard Kall.” For about 30 minutes, from his home-office in Las Vegas, he offers words of encouragement to new affiliates that have recently joined VM Direct family, and shares his insights on building a home-based business from his years of experience in the network marketing industry. People from all around the world can log onto the broadcast, even if they are not an affiliate with VM Direct. At the moment, I happen to be watching a video Richard Kall recorded on November 11th, 2006. All live broadcasts can be achieved. So whatever time subscribers broadcast their live show, it’s easily accessible for others viewers to later watch if their scheduled didn’t permit them to catch it live.

We’ve come along way from being habitues of those now antiquated bulletin board services. We’ve become comfortable with instant messaging and text messaging. As the advancement of new technology continues, I imagine that one day cellphone users will have streaming video coming into their cellphones. I am just as confident that small businesses owner will eventually start to take advantage of the applications and uses of streaming video as more and more companies start using it to market their own products and services. I only hope they get to use it before their competition does.
About The Author

Article written by Eric P. Martin. Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. Eric P. Martin is currently a part-time, pre-journalism college student at Harold Washington College in Chicago, Il. He’s also an affiliate with VM Direct. To learn more about VM Direct services or business opportunity. please visit http://www.chicagovideoemail.com or contact via email at epm1013@helloworld.com for a example presentation of the video email application. 

by: James Saunders 
Did you know that you can dramatically increase the number of visitors that come to your site on a daily basis from Google?

Web Content (Mass + Keywords) + Links = SEO

Image Text or Javascript?

Question: Navigation is based on images, again if these are images of text?

Answer: Search engines obtain links very considerable and only read text. they like to match the topic of the target page to the text in the link that pointed to the page. Avoid Javascript.

What to do: Use text only navigation. the text and containing elements can by styles with CSS to set up them look like images, give a background image, or at least rearrange them look a little fancier. The optional is to ensure that there is some text based navigation elsewhere on the page.

Gains: Search engines will be able to match the topic of the target page with the reputation (link text). A higher relevancy is better. Ensuring there is text on the page will also help the visually impaired who use text only browsers in conjunction with braile output devices or text to speach software.

Links, and Link Relevancy

Question: You want lots of links to your website?

Answer: Although links may be great for visitors and search engine spiders, the true appraise of the link may not be fully clear to you. Visitors are unlikely to click on irrelevant links and search engines hate them. Reciprocal links (you link to me, and I’ll link to you) can be of use when associated, but carry less weight in the search engines than one way inbound links.

what to do: Avoid link farms (pages of links, for the sake of links), treat reciprocal link requests with anticipation and stay associated.

Gains: Spending time and thought on your link profile will ensure natural growth of links. Search engines hate anything that looks artificial, or anything that could be interpreted as ‘Search engine Trick’.

Duplicate Content

Question: A webmaster copies content from another website, or sets up numerous sites which are identical, or very similar. Does this mechanism works?

Answer: search engines apply echo content filters to the search results. Although the idea of increasing the market share is a bona fide idea, thousand similar sites is not the way to go about doing it. Efforts put into the secondary sites will be forfeited.

what to do: endorse all of the pages on each of your sites are unique. Querying a search engine for an exact match of long strings of text will show you if the content is bring up elsewhere. If a webmaster does have facsimile pages and wishes to avoid any penalties or filters, the webmaster must choose one page to have the other identical pages redirect to. Redirects are covered later. You may also use random RSS Feeds that are mixed before show up on each page. The RSS have the ability that are always have fresh content but only if you mix 3 or more RSS feeds you will get a unique result and not what all the other sites have that are using the same RSS feeds.

Gains: Your efforts are not wasted, time and money can be saved. Always Fresh content from the RSS Feeds.

Numerous Sites

Question: Following on from identical content, there are numerous sites. A single webmaster has a certain number closely themed sites, all inter-linked and hosted on the same IP address.

Answer: This is seen as search engine Frame-up, the linking structure and numerous sites just isn’t natural. Penalties can apply.

what to do: Such site structures can work if set out properly. this means that each site must reside on it’s own IP address where, at least, the C class is different. IP address are covered later.

Gains: Increased market share, effectively linked and spiderable sites, no penalties applied.

Unfriendly URLs

Question: The URL (web address) of some of your sites pages look like domain dot com/product.php?id=2346&category=665&sid=f29a3483270cc10b3783706916216e3a

Answer: Search engine spiders are getting better and following and indexing these form of, but not all of them. The spiders are scared of getting caught in an endless loop of identical pages with 1000s of different URLs. they are also off putting to your site visitors who could surely remember mydomain dot com/products/cars/boostvalves.

what to do: Use Search Engine Friendly URLs. If you are running the Apache webserver on Linux enabled server use mod_rewrite to translate the URLs into something nicer.

Gains: Higher chance of being indexed by more of the search engines, keywords in your URL, higher chance of being clicked on in the SERPs.

Redirects

There are two main redirects, based on the HTTP specification

301 - moved permanenty

302 - moved temporarily

You should use 301 redirects where ever possible. this can be done in your server side scripting, eg

Code: php

header(”HTTP/1.1 301 Found”);

header(”Location: w w w newdomain dot com/”);

redirects can also be set up in your .htaccess file, if you run the Apache web server

IP addresses (C class)

IP addresses are the numerical addresses of computers connected tot he internet. For ease of reading they are broken down into four parts, each called an octet as they contain 8 bits of data when written in binary form. An example my be 62.85.68.114. in this case the C class is 68 (and everything up to it), so if you have a few sites hosted on this IP they would all have identical IP addresses. If each had a single IP address that started 62.85.68. then they all share the same C-class IP address. As the allocation of IP addresses within a server involvement is usually configured so that each server has it’s own C-class; this means that a search engine knows hat all sites on the same C-class IP address are all located on the same server.

Your competitors might not be standing still; neither should you.
About The Author

James Saunders is the owner of TrafficBoosterPro, the SEO software which makes Unique Content pages Quickly and Easily! Software that bring massive Traffic from RSS Feeds in AutoPilot, now in it’s 2nd revision at http://TrafficBoosterPro.com.

by: Ian Simpson 
You want to start an online business, but don’t have your own product to sell. But you do have the option of starting with affiliate marketing - selling other peoples’ products for a commission. Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money. In just the last few years, affiliate marketing has become a very powerful force in ecommerce. Everyday, thousands, if not millions, of merchants rely on affiliate marketing to drive their businesses.

So, is online affiliate marketing right for you? Well, you will never know unless you take the necessary steps. If you don’t try, then you cannot expect to succeed. Make today the day that you commit to changing the direction of your life. However, like any other business, whether it’s online or off line, affiliate marketing cannot guarantee you success unless you work at it.

As with any business start up, and affiliate marketing is no excpetion, you will need to spend some money on the basics to get you started. However, through proper budgeting, your initial outlay can be reduced. So, you need to decide how much money you can afford to invest in your affiliate marketing business. There are some expenses that you will have if you want to be successful and there are others that you can put off until the time that you start earning income from your affiliate products. Some items that you will need to budget for are:

Domain Name. The domain name should relate to the subject and keep your domain name simple and easy to remember. There is quite a span between the low-cost and the high-end cost of domain names. If you shop around, you may even be able to find something less expensive. But make sure it’s a well-established company! You don’t want to lose your domain name once you have decided on it! You will likely get a better deal if you register your domain name for two or more years in advance. Namecheap.com and Godaddy.com are both excellent domain providers.

Website Hosting. Web hosting fees will vary dramatically between hosting providers. Set up a comparison chart and write down each company you are considering. Some companies offer rates as low as $2 a month, while others charge over $100. The highest rates don’t always translate into the best service. Some of the lower-priced hosts offer a reliable, stable environment that allows your website to be accessed around the clock for years. Hostgator.com provide quality hosting at reasonable prices. Shop carefully and if possible avoid free hosting which can be unreliable.

Merchant Account. You don’t have to invest thousands of dollars to open a merchant account. Find a merchant account vendor through a local financial institution, like a bank, and discuss the possibilities that will best suit your business and your customers. A merchant account will let you start accepting credit card payments for customer purchases, which will enhance the shopping experience for most customers and earn your company a progressive reputation. Never assume you will have extravagant monthly charges when you open a merchant account. Shop around, ask questions, and compare costs to get the best low cost merchant account available for your business. Your customers will thank you with repeat and additional business.

Software. You will need to track your expenses and income from your affiliate business and the simplist way is to use Miscrosoft Excel or similar program. Seeing your expenses for the whole year is a great way to keep them under control. What is the final total? Does that seem extreme? Remember, this is for an entire year. Keep it in perspective. If you intend to have a real business, you must treat it as a real business.

Advertising. The best marketing tip you will ever hear is to advertise your product or business. In today’s market, anyone in business knows that advertising is the backbone to their success. Even with the greatest product on the planet, a product that you know everyone needs and wants, without advertising, it’s just an idea going nowhere. Make sure you check out the best ways to advertise your business. It can be a fun, profitable, and easy experience with the right tools.

Education. Ongoing education is going to be extremely important to your affiliate marketing success. You will not have to purchase a lot of educational materials if you don’t want to. There are many free resources, such as newsletters, that you can study. Sign up for a few newsletters and use the information to gain experience.

Affiliate marketing can be a a great way to create a business on the internet but you will need to learn and understand the basics before you set off on your online adventure. Choose your affiliate programs carefully and make sure that you get the support and backup from the affiliate program.
About The Author

Ian Simpson reviews and writes about software and informational products on the internet. Further affiliate business advice can be found at http://information4income.com/sfpr. 

by: Dr. Roberto A. Bonomi 
Niche marketing is a simple concept, that can help your business to gain an advantage, even in very competitive online categories.

You know that 20 percent of buyers consume 80 percent of your product, so the idea is that you could sell much more products with much less effort if you can identify that 20 percent and find others like them.

People that’s interested in it, and consume your product, can be thought as a market niche.

So the idea behind the niche marketing is to target, communicate, sell and obtain feedback of your best customers.

Consumers are becoming each day more demanding because their choices trend to expand in this global economy that we live now.

So the idea behind the niche marketing is the need to satisfy and keep that part of the market that really want your product or services.

But not any niche market will be good for you, you need to estimate the size of your target or niche market.

It should be big enough to sustain your business year after year. Once you have identified your niche market you need to have information about your niche market’s size, and the numbers that you need to know are not only the total size of the niche market but, the size of the niche market that’s interested in your products, the size of the niche market that your company can reach with advertising and then distribution.

When you decide to pick a niche market you need to be sure that you are going to have enough sales volume and profitability, and you also need to know how strong are your competitors to attract your niche buyers away from your products.

And you also need to have an idea of how many competitive products are going to be offered to your potencial niche marketing prospects.

You might think that the niche maketing was invented to help the new or small companies, but even the large ones have embraced the niche marketing idea, and keep on trying to divide their market and target it with different offers.

And you know why?

Very easy to answer!

If you are interested in buying a dog, would you care for a shampoo advertise?

You need to offer dogs to the people that want dogs and shampoo to the ones that want to wash their hair, you need to make niche offers to your niche market and then you will maximize your selling chances.

Those that repeatedly use your products, your “heavy users” are the niche market that you should try to dominate.

You should divide the whole universe of your potential buyers, into different segments, based on different factors.

Your can divide them by age, by family size, by gender, by economic status or by geographic locations.

It all depends on: what are you going to offer them?

All these niches need, or are interested, in different goods and or services. And the question is: Do you expertize or have a special knowledge in a certain niche?

For example you might be an experte selling used cars, of fixing bicicles, or writing articles, etc.

No matter what niche market you can cover, you can always atract that specific kind of people to your web site and that’s exactly what you have to do.

If you are trying to sell a mass articles, unless you are so creative that have a unique aproach to the products, it can be very tough to market them.

This is an interesting point, you can have a very special niche article OR a very special niche aproach to an article.

The result is the same: look for a very targeted traffic to your web site and you will sell well.

The same that happens to mass articles it happen to some niche markets: they are tough to reach.

So you must narrow the focus of your site, the more narrow the focus, the easiest will be the niche marketing.

There should be tons of oportunities in your field of interest, if you narrow your focus.

But if your business is broad based, then niche marketing is not for you, you should develop a good affiliate’s program, then thousands of affiliates can work the search engines, reaching for their particular niche, and then offer your goods or services.

Theme based content sites are perfect for niche maketing and for making good profit from the search engines.

If you sell dogs, then it won’t be difficult to find a niche for dog’s food, dog’s shampoo, dog’s brushes, etc.

Once you define your niche you must look for the most profitable keyword for that niche, then determine the demand and the suply for that niche market, and this will give you the profitabilitty of each keyword (How to Sell on The Web teaches you how to do it).

When you have chosen the most profitable keywords for your niche market, you only have to start writing good content web pages.

My last words: before starting your niche marketing business, make sure that your niche market it does exist on the web, that’s big enough to produce continuous good profits, and that’s within your reach.

Writen by Dr. Roberto A. Bonomi
About The Author

Dr. Roberto Bonomi is a successful e-book writer that shares his home business experience at: http://intmarketing.easy-home-business.com And you can post free your own articles, or find free articles for your web site or ezine at http://articles.drbonomi.com.

by: Eugenijus Sakalauskas 
The following article covers a topic that has recently moved to center stage–at least it seems that way. If you’ve been thinking you need to know more about it, here’s your opportunity.

Since the advent of the information technology, the Internet had been a valuable commodity to most people. Here, they find ways on how to earn more money even without having to spend more capital on building a business.

Nowadays, many business people are realizing the importance of email marketing. Through emails, an online business can market their product directly through their customers.

Generally, the main purpose of email marketing is to reach their target audience as quickly and as direct as possible. They need to reach their target market so as to promote their products and services that would benefit their customers.

However, some businesses use email marketing in order to maintain their contact and relationship with their customers.

The reason why email marketing has grown in such unprecedented rate is based on the fact that people in the virtual community are always hungry for information. They subscribe to information that they are interested in.

On the other hand, not all people are willing to subscribe to such information. They may be interested on your products once but may no longer be interested to buy again. Moreover, when you continue to send those emails that do not have their permissions, you can be accused of spamming.

Today, spamming is a serious offense especially in the world of information technology. Because the Internet is such a wild place, most authorities regard the privacy of each person as valuable and they continue to uphold this thinking even on the Internet.

With this, the creation of opt in list had gained tremendous acceptance. Because of its viability and feasibility to most online businesses, a lot of people have realized how important opt in lists are in email marketing.

Basically, opt in list refers to the list of email addresses of people who have agreed to subscribe to your mailing list. In this way, you can freely send emails that entail promotions, brochures, new product announcements, and every aspect of your marketing campaign.

Hopefully the information presented so far has been applicable. You might also want to consider the following:

When you build an opt in list, you do not only increase the probability of being successful in email marketing but also boost your sales and profits as well. This is because building an opt in list will give you the chance to stay in contact with your customers by getting their email address.

In this manner, you can continue to promote your products and services in which they are interested in because they have opted to subscribe in your mailing list. Hence, whatever it is that you feed them, chances are, they will most likely respond positively.

In reality, building an opt in list is actually letting the people realize the charisma and magic of email marketing. In this way, spams will be avoided, if not eliminated, and will not ruin the positive image of email marketing.

With spamming, email marketing becomes a disgraceful activity in the Internet. But with opt in list, online businesses can continue to boost their businesses through email marketing without having to worry about being accused of spamming.

In building opt in list, there are two types to be considered. The first one is the single opt-in and the other one is the double opt-in or the confirmed opt-in.

In building single opt-in list, online businesses would simply use a “sign-up tag” in their web sites so that every time a person visits their website, he or she can opt to subscribe in the business’ email list.

On the other hand, a confirmed opt-in list or double opt-in entails a confirmation message after the customer had subscribed to the particular web site’s email list.

Usually, the confirmation takes place by replying on a system-generated message that asks for a confirmation of the subscription or by clicking on a link that entails the confirmation of the customer.

Whatever type of opt in list you would prefer, each has its own pros and cons when it comes to email marketing. But nevertheless, both are designed to give your online business the best solution possible in order to generate emails and permissions without having to get into trouble.

Indeed, email marketing is such a profitable business in the Internet. But it would not be complete and will never succeed without the help of the opt-in lists. These two must always go hand-in-hand in order to be successful in the virtual world of Internet marketing.

As your knowledge about email marketing continues to grow, you will begin to see how email marketing fits into the overall scheme of things. Knowing how something relates to the rest of the world is important too.
About The Author

Eugenijus Sakalauskas is an established ezine publisherand direct marketer on PNP.com Subscribe to my FREE e-course “Power up Your Profits by Packing Your Email Marketing With More Punch” Send blank mailto:pnplistbuild@getresponse.com or visit http://www.pluginnetproefit.com and get 18+ free bonuses.

by: Wan Assad 
Have you ever thought how a simple article has gigantic capability to boost your marketing effort? For certain, this fact is constantly ignored by most marketers, assuming articles are nothing except as tool to highlight specific content for public viewing and better be left for public to judge. Not more than that. However, if you spend your time, judging from another point of view, you will soon realize that an article represent your form of business, in a preliminary way.

An article contains uncounted valuable information either on general topics that we read daily in our local newspapers, but not to forget some articles are directed to specific readers. What I am saying is articles which contain specific information related to health, fitness, properties, religious etc. These forms of topic basically have their own readers that share the same interest, wishing to expand their knowledge further pertaining particular issues. These are called your targeted clients – in form of global clients.

You as an individual, tend to psychologically write articles related to your interest. A farmer won’t argue among themselves on issues related to medical instruments and/or a mechanic won’t be interested to read on how to sell a digital products. Articles written by you natively will have direct correlation with your business nature and more precisely, what contains in your web sites. The same concept applies to those readers. Whoever reads your articles are those who interested to know more about the topic highlighted by you. Fortunately, most of these readers will become your qualified targeted visitors who will register for your newsletter, and more importantly, buying your products.

So, how can a piece of article able to help you market your business further? Generally, you won’t produce articles just to be part of your web contents or even worst, part of your portfolio. However, you tend to disseminate it to as many readers as possible. The fastest and most effective method of reaching these potential readers is by submitting your articles to directories! Since most directories don’t impose a single dime on you, your articles can form your content as virtual brochure. And, what does it means? Free advertising, of course! By publishing your articles, these are the great benefit you, as webmaster will achieve in return:

- Getting more qualified visitors.
- Better exposure towards your web site.
- Increase search engines popularity.
- Increase your reputation not only as an author, but also as webmaster.

Do you know that your qualified visitors tend to visit your web sites after they have partially and/or fully read your articles? This is due to the nature of human themselves, more influenced by words rather than pictures. Present your most valuable information in the way they want it. Sooner or later, they are one of your regular customers.

So, you provide the readers with the most useful, fascinated contents but how they are going to visit your web sites? Include your web address at the bottom of your articles to enable them finding your web site shall they wish to learn more on your products or services. By not inserting your web address is the biggest mistake made by any author.

“Oh, I heard this fact somewhere but it’s all rubbish!” Well, not really. To prove this fact, you may have a sit and take a piece of paper. Start writing an article pertaining something unique, valuable and precious related to your business. Include your web address as well and you shall watch how it helps you. You will be surprise that not only you are getting more visitors but the search engines started to love you more!

Hold a minute please. Did I hear you said “search engines”? How can articles boost search engines popularity? The answer lies on the web address you included at the bottom page of your article. The URL will eventually produced ‘one way links’ to your web site – one of the most crucial factor of getting your link popular among search engines, especially Google. By globally published your articles, you are by no mean, creating your network with other web sites.

Now, have you realized how a piece of article can boost your marketing efforts without paying a dime? So, start writing your articles now!

Enjoy promoting!
About The Author

Wan Assad is the administrator of http://www.directpins.com – a place for web beginners to start their web development process. More articles including those from other reputable webmasters can be found at http://www.directpins.com/article_index.html. This article is allowed to be reproduced but no alteration is permitted.

by: Inder Saini 
Putting up a company would of course require a lot of things, to get straight to the point, you need a capital. To make money requires money as well. But of course, with the versatility the internet offers, there are many ways you could find that could help optimize the potential of your site or business in generating traffic.

While there are ways to jumpstart your traffic flows, many sites don’t have the resources that others have to generate more traffic for your site. Well, you don’t have to spend a cent; all you need is the proper mindset and a lot of eagerness. You also must have the drive and perseverance to do hard work and research to generate more traffic for your site.

How sweet it is to have more traffic for your site without spending a single cent. Now it’s a sure thing that many sites have articles that offer tips and guidelines in how to generate traffic using only free methods. Because it is possible, you don’t need to speed a single cent, it may take time, to say honestly, I’m not going to beat around the bush with you. You get better chances by paying for your advertisements, but at least you get a fighting chance with some of these free methods I’m about to tell you.

Take advantage of online forums and online communities. The great thing about forums and online communities is that you can target a certain group that fits the certain demographic that you are looking for. You can discuss about lots of things about the niche that you represent or offer. Another great advantage is that you know what you are getting into and you will be prepared.

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

You can also make use of newsletters. Provide people with a catalog of your products and interesting and entertaining articles. If you make it really interesting and entertaining, more people will sign up for your newsletter and recommend it to other people. The more people who signs up for your newsletter, the more people there will be that will go to your site increasing your traffic.

Another great idea is trading links with other sites. You don’t have to spend a cent. All you have to do is reach an agreement with another webmaster. With exchanging links, the efforts both sites do will benefit both sites. Every traffic that goes to the site could potentially click on the link of your site and visit your site as well. This works well especially when both sites feature the same niche.

Write articles that could pique the attention of people that have interest in your product. Try writing articles that will provide tips and guides to other aficionados. Writing articles that provide good service and knowledge to other people would provide the necessary mileage your traffic flow needs.

Many sites offer free submission and posting of your articles. When people find interest in your articles they have a good chance of following the track by finding out where the article originated. Include a link or a brief description of your company with the article and there’s a great probability that they will go to your site.

Write good content for your site. Many search engines track down the keywords and keyword phrases your site uses and how they are used. It is not a requirement that a content should be done by a professional content writer. You could do your on but you have to make content for your site that is entertaining as well as informational. It should provide certain requirements as well as great quality.

Generally, internet users use search engines to find what they are looking for. Search engines in return use keyword searching in aiding their search results. With the right keywords, you could get high rankings in search engine results without the costs.

All of these methods and more will drive more traffic to your site for free. All it takes is a bit of effort and extended man hours. Learn all you can about the methods depicted here and you will soon have a site with a great traffic flow without the usual costs that come with it.
About The Author

Inder Saini always had a great passion for the internet. Active affiliate marketer since 2000 and has done deep research on the affiliate and internet marketing. Has helped hundreds of small internet business owners in many ways.

http://www.DigitalinfoStore.com

by: Wayne Van Dyck 
There are a plenty of things you can do online and of all the things you can do online, there is one that you should definitely know how to do. MARKET YOUR OWN BUSINESS ONLINE!

Now with the incredible power of the Online World to reach millions of people, online marketing is definitely an amazing tool that every business should utilize. The simple fact that advertising is can be very low cost and sometimes even practically free. The ability to get the results of thousands of dollars in free publicity is practically unheard of in the business world today. Only recently have more and more people figured out how to utilize the ever exploding online world to market their business ventures.

There is probably isn’t a business in existence that wouldn’t benefit from free publicity! The fact that properly utilizing free and low cost advertising raises net profits to unbelievable levels! Using any or all of the major online services can help you market your business efforts.

Let’s begin with plain advertising. For example, on AOL, they will let you place classified advertisements for free! They have a variety of classifications and categories to choose from. By placing some of these free ads you can generate some very quality leads that can turn into sales. If you are an excellent marketer you could sell something straight from your free ad.

There are other services that offer free advertising from time to time. When they do charge for classified ads it is usually a very low cost, and they are still a great deal considering how many people may see them. When you place any ads you should always “track” your ads. This means put something in each individual ad that will tell you, if you get any business from it, which ad it came from. This way, you will probably find that some sections are better producers than others, and you will want to concentrate on these sections and not the ones that weren’t making any money.

To track an ad you could make them request a certain “report” for more information. You should give each report different tracking links for each ad. Such as: “ask for report #1tv” , this way you would know that this request came from the ad on television, for sale category, and so forth. If they send you an order straight from the ad, make them give you an order #, which would be different for each ad. THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE WHO ARE ADVERTISING ONLINE ARE NOT USING THESE AD CODES!!! THIS IS A MAJOR MARKETING MISTAKE!!!

If you do not track exactly which ads are making money, then you are wasting your time by continually placing ads in “loser” categories that don’t provide any sales. ALWAYS keep track of every ad you place. Make a note of what it said, where and when it was placed. You will be pleasantly surprised when you analyze your “ad data” and see some positive trends developing. Just repeat these trends and it will help you to make more money!

Wouldn’t you like to have a name list of several hundred (or even thousand) people who might be interested in the particular product or service you are selling based on their jobs or interests? Wouldn’t that be great!? Well, you can! And the Online Services supply this service as a part of your regular membership.

This little unknown tool is called the “Member Directory!” You can do searches in the directory for other users with certain characteristics. For example, if you were selling fishing equipment, you could do a search by “fishing.” All of the people that were registered in the directory and had listed fishing as one of their hobbies would show up on that search list. You could now send each one of those people an e-mail message telling them about your product or service, it’s just like using a mailing list, but you have no postage! (*Make sure you check with your online service to see if they allow unsolicited email.)

The bottom line is that you “test” and record the results of your Online Marketing efforts. Then just repeat the steps that are making you money and expand on them to reach more people. You should conduct split-testing on your site. A method were you have two different pages, performing the same function but with different copy so you can tell which one is converting better.

You will also find hundreds of articles on the World Wide Web. By searching one of the WWW search engines like Webcrawler you can find all the information you can read. Use search strings such as: “online marketing”, “internet advertising“, “selling online“, and so on.

You can also find many books on the subject at your local bookstore or being advertised online.

About The Author

Wayne Van Dyck is a former venture capitalist and builder of offline technology companies. He is the founder and developer of Simple Money Machines. Simple Money Machines is all the money making technologies in one, easy-to-use, hosted application… enabling non-technical people to set up online businesses in less than 30 minutes. It’s made for people with 9-5 jobs, retired folks, stay-at-home moms and college students. To get a FREE copy of “STARTING A HOME BUSINESS MADE SIMPLE”, go to: http://tinyurl.com/ykyoqx.