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Internet Marketing By Accident - The Article: Click here to read more. This is a different angle on internet marketing. Some of us, no most of us, just don't know what we are doing and get lucky. As I heard it from one internet marketer for instance, "I'm not technically inclined and don't know anything about search engine optimization". So why does he show up prominently in Google for over 500 search terms? Like I said, it has to be an accident.  Len Labels: marketing Every business needs to do everything it can to stand out from the crowd, to differentiate itself from the competition. This is a major challenge for companies that sell substantially the same thing as their competitors.The average business does not have the resources of a multinational corporation that often uses its substantial marketing muscle to buy market share or to drive competition out of the marketplace. Big business also uses its deep pockets to flood various media with advertising, making them a pervasive presence. The Web has always been an egalitarian environment where smaller companies could present themselves using the same techniques as the big boys, and if these companies did it well they could stand side-by-side with their competitive behemoths. One thing that small and medium sized businesses should take some comfort in is that many large corporations are notoriously poorly run, relying on brawn rather than brain to get the job done. Many survive because over time they have acquired huge resources, become oligopolies, or they use predatory marketing practices to stifle competition. As the Web becomes more and more a multimedia environment, corporations are starting to use their financial resources, and inventory of commercial assets and programming (not to be confused with computer programming), to deliver their marketing messages. The question is can smaller businesses compete, and if so, how? Slipstream Marketing Dr. Max Sutherland, a Marketing Psychologist and Professor at Bond University, has written about a concept he refers to as 'slipstreaming.' Anyone who is familiar with motor racing or even bicycle racing understands that slipstreaming is a drafting method where a racer tucks behind a front-running rival reducing wind resistance and saving fuel and energy, and with a quick move, the challenger can slingshot past the race leader. The clever implementation of slipstream style marketing campaigns can allow you to blow by your competition by using the momentum of well-known and instantly recognizable campaigns. Slipstreaming references a collective audience memory, a kind of shared consciousness. Skillful execution draws ínstant recognition and an "Oh I Get It!" reaction without a lot of wasted setup or groundwork. "Give Me The Same Thing, But Different!" The key of course is how you make your version different. What's the twist? Blake Snyder, a Hollywood screenwriter and author, writes about entertainment executives' constant refrain, "Get me the same thing, but different." What Snyder has learned and what he preaches is that movie moguls understand it's easier to get people to go to a movie they understand and that was already a success, but the trick is making the new version different, that is different but the same. If you think slipstreaming is an easy way to be creative you're wrong. Being different but the same is not as simple as it sounds, but success can depend on it. Done poorly slipstreaming comes off as lame and imitative, but done correctly you appear clever and cutting-edge, and more importantly you deliver the marketing message in a way your audience will remember. There are an endless variety of things you can slipstream: personalities, icons, slogans, music, advertisements, news events, pop culture phenomena, movies, television shows, commercials, and sporting events. Personalities One of our favorite personality slipstreaming techniques is the use of voice-over. It can be implemented as part of a video campaign or as a stand-alone feature. We have used sound-alike actors to portray Rod Serling, Sam Elliot, Steve Irwin, Paul Winfield, Tom Brokaw, and many others. What makes this approach so valuable is that most people will relate to the voice as someone they know, or are familiar with, but not immediately recognize. This method captures people's attention with the familiar sound of a famous voice but without the cost of hiring the celebrity. Often the voice does not even have to be that close to the original, it's the cadence, delivery, tone, and scrípt that makes people sit-up and take notice. Cutting through the jungle of advertising noise is a challenge for everyone in business and this technique is a very effective method of getting heard and being remembered. Television Shows Another slipstream technique we've used is to play upon the audience's knowledge and familiarity with certain television shows. We have created Web-videos, written scrípts, added dialogue and composed music that reminds people of the old 'Twilight Zone' series and the popular A&E show, 'City Confidential.' Commercials One of our most successful Web-promotion campaigns was the 'Multimedia Versus SEO Campaign' where we took advantage of the well know Macintosh Versus PC television commercials. Nobödy needed an explanation or setup to understand what was going on in the commercials. We basically slipstreamed Apple's television campaign. Slogans Slogans are another resource for slipstreaming and if you think only small companies slipstream, think again. The A&E Network used the slogan "Time Well Spent" for many years, while The Comedy Network slipstreamed it with their own twisted version "Time Well Wasted" - the same thing, but different. Music With the popularity of Hip Hop music, the milk marketing board developed a series of commercials with dairy farmers rapping to a catchy Hip Hop tune well prancing around their farm animals. Hip Hop was also slipstreamed by Smirnoff in their Raw Tea campaign and 'Tea Partay' viral video. Pop Culture With the popularity of poker and the World Poker Tour, we developed a Mike Sexton style character, host of the television show, for one of our projects. We've even created nostalgia radio-style audio pitches that hark back to the olden age of radio plays. Movies We created an entire campaign for a client based on the idea, "Life Deserves A Sound Track" where everyday situations were described in dramatic style with familiar voice-over announcers, which was our take on Will Ferrell's hit movie 'Stranger Than Fiction.' Sports We've created presentations using the personas of famous sports figures like Hall of Fame pitcher and broadcaster Dizzy Dean and Mel Allan. We created scenarios and scrípts using the voices and personas of World Champion racecar driver Jackie Stewart and one crazy scrípt fashioned in the style of college basketball analyst Dick Vitale. Conclusion As you can see from these examples, there are an endless number of ways to take advantage of the public's shared experience. So the next time you need to come up with a new Web marketing campaign for your company, think like a Hollywood mogul: Come Up With Something That's The Same, But Different. About The Author Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, www.136words.com and www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246. Technorati Tags: businesses marketing practices slipstreaming smaller campaign advertisements marketing campaigns Labels: advertisements, businesses, campaign, marketing, practices, smaller The new efforts of marketing are quickly migrating to online efforts as more and more companies realize that to effectively reach their target audience they must go to where the customers are, and that is online. Being able effectively to spread your word to the right areas online is much easier, quicker and more effective than attempting to reach them through traditional means.Using affiliate marketing a company can have one of their advertisements placed on a web site with no cost, paying only when results are achieved. The ad are placed on various sites and when a visitor to that site, goes through it and buys something from another site, the site hosting the ad receives selling commission, the amount of which is agreed to by seller and the site owner. Most companies have found this to be an ideal way of increasing their ad presence on the internet, being able to have much more exposure than paying for an ad. With paid advertising a company buys ad space and hopes for a return on their investment. When they place an ad on an affiliate site, they pay for the space based on the amount of the return. This can work out well for both parties because the site hosting the can look as though it is receiving paid advertising. People browsing the web has no idea how the advertising got there, it just knows it did. Advertisers also maintain control over which sites their ads appear on, and may not want their name associated with sites that carry advertising for other companies that may be deemed to have no redeeming qualities. Additionally, they may not agree with a site’s business methods or message and reject an offer to have their ad posted there as well. Traditionally, inclusion of a web site into a company’s network marketing plan was determined largely based on the traffic of the website to get as much exposure as possible. However, as companies begin a more targeted approach to advertising, they may look a web site of higher quality and with a mission similar to their own, presuming they would attract the same type of visitor more often, increasing the number of visitors that click through to their site. Another means the new network marketing online is helping businesses is they are able to offer distributorship opportunities to people with little or no experience to place their ads for them on their own web sites, paying commissions on sales as well as training them to host additional distributors and giving them a share of their sales as well. This is referred to as multilevel marketing and is growing in popularity as more people realize it is different that the older pyramid schemes and perfectly legal. The other advantage to network marketing online is feedback from the ad can be almost instantaneous with a company having the ability to change the direction of their advertising at a moments notice. Technorati Tags: online target audience advertisements network visitors businesses affiliate marketing Labels: advertisements, affiliate marketing, audience, businesses, marketing, network marketing, online, target, visitors Network Marketing: What Is It?Basically, network marketing is a variation of conventional marketing strategy. In network marketing, your efforts are two-fold: you seek to sell products or services, but you also seek to recruit people who can do the same work you are doing. You earn commissions based on the number of people you can get to sign-up, as well as the volume of sales you produce. If you are looking to get into network marketing, the least of your troubles will be trying to find a network marketing program. They are all over the place, in just about every conceivable variation and form. So much so, in fact, that one has to exercise caution when choosing a potential program to join. An industry as lucrative as network marketing inevitably attracts charlatans and people of unsavory character. Thus, one must be careful which particular MLM program to join. Duplication is the Key While some network marketing programs are better than others, but they share one thing in common: they all depend on the power of duplication to generate profits. The one thing that you can do that will assure your success in the network marketing game is this: duplicate yourself. We don’t mean a literal duplication, of course. What it means is that you should try to find people like yourself and sign them up in the program you are involved in. If they are as intelligent and dedicated as you are, you will soon find that your success is increasing exponentially. If you have to, you can train your people and help them along the road of their own success. Making It Work What you should not attempt to do is to come to the network marketing game without having a clue. As we already mentioned before, network marketing is a field rich with scam artists. If you are ignorant, you are basically asking to be taken advantage of. While it will take some effort on your part, educate yourself on the nature of the business and do what you can to get some sort of competitive advantage. Take sales training, practice public speaking, and maybe cultivate more contacts – anything that can give you an edge. Don’t underestimate the power of training your own people either. The people you are able to recruit and train will the foundation of your future wealth; therefore it is worth your time and effort to educate them on the finer points of network marketing. If you fail to communicate your system to your recruits, then you have failed – your rewards will not grow. But include them in your success, and they in turn will explode yours. In a mutually beneficial situation such as that one, there are no losers. Technorati Tags: network marketing strategy mlm program training recruit success Labels: marketing, mlm, network, program, recruit, strategy, success, training There are thousands of people every year that leave the corporate world and decide to run an internet business online. This can be a great way to gain personal and financial freedom. But just because there are a lot of people that are successful doing this, it does not mean that it is an easy process. Running an internet business online takes a lot of hard work and determination. Unless you are one of the lucky ones that really hit it big, you will have to work day and night to make your internet based business a success.Besides the will to succeed, the most important thing that you will need in order to run an internet business online is a quality computer. Remember, everything that you do involving your business will have to do with your computer. To get on the internet you will need your computer. The same goes with filling orders, tracking orders, and invoicing. Without a top quality, reliable computer, you will never be able to run a successful internet business. In addition to your computer, you will also need to have a website that promotes your internet business online. Sure, you can use more traditional forms of marketing such as direct mailers and ads, but by having a website you will be increasing your chances of success. With a website, customers will be able to quickly learn about your site, and if they are interested they can also place orders right away. There are companies that are successful without having a website, but in order to run an internet business online you will need to have one; there is know two ways about it. When you decide to run an internet business online, you do not get the right to work without a business plan! Many people think that just because their new business is going to be primarily internet based that they do not need a business and marketing plan. Even though you may be able to sneak by without having these, you will not be able to expand successfully. By having a business and marketing plan in effect, you will know the direction that you want to grow your business. At the same time, you will also have plans on how you are going to go about marketing your new venture. Starting an internet business online does not have to be a difficult task. Every year people take on this task, and every year there are people that turn their business into a success. If you are organized from the beginning, and know exactly what you want, you should not have any problems getting started. There is nothing holding you back, get started today! internet business online success marketing computer Labels: business, computer, internet, marketing, online, success Having very young children and a demanding career is often very difficult to manage. More often than not, one has to choose between going to the office and staying with the kids. For most people, working to earn a living is unavoidable since they also need money to pay the bills and buy necessities. However, when it comes to earning a living, one doesn’t really have to leave the home and go to the office form 8 to 5. Network marketing home business can help people earn enough money to sustain a comfortable lifestyle.Network marketing home business was first introduced in the Philippines in 1940. Way back then, manufactures would approach independent distributors to do direct sales marketing. The idea was to promote the products of the company at the end consumer. How does one earn money from a network marketing home business? There are two ways upon which a person can earn money from a network marketing home business. First, you can earn direct commissions and discounts from all the items or products that you sell or consume. Note that in network marketing, the merchant will ask you to sell its products services and in most cases, you will get as high as 30% commission based on the total amount of products that you have sold. The more products and services that you sell, the more money you will earn. The second way for you to earn money through a network marketing home business is to recruit other members and build a team. The nature of network marketing so provide that if you is able to recruit other members, you will earn commissions of all the sales generated by those new members that you have recruited. In most instances, you can earn as high as 10% commission on the total amount of sales generated by the people you have recruited. What is more interesting about network marketing is that you can also earn commissions on the sales generated by the people recruited by your recruits. For instance, if you recruit A and A recruits B, you will still earn commissions on whatever sales generated by B. On the other hand, A will also earn commissions on the sales generated by B. In most cases, you can earn commissions up to the 8th generation of recruits. However, the amount of commissions may vary from level to level. For instance, you may earn 10% commission on the first level of recruits, 8% on the second level of r recruits, 6% on the third and so on. Most companies that offer Network marketing home business opportunities also offer some bonuses to those distributors that are selling a good number of products. For people who want to stay home with their kids, the network marketing home business is indeed a very good opportunity to earn good income while staying at home. [home][business][network][marketing][income][money][internet][opportunities] Labels: business, home, income, marketing, money, network, opportunities Have you been looking for the right home-based business? If you have been looking for the right home based and have not really decided on what business you want to engage in, you might want to check those home based network marketing opportunities on the internet. Although you might have heard some negative stories about internet home based network marketing, there are actually a lot of good things in this type of business. Note that in the past years, there have been lots of people all over the United States who have earned considerable income through home-based network marketing.When it comes to choosing the right internet business for you, you should really do some extensive research first before you decide whether or not such business is right for you. Note that there are many factors that could affect a business endeavor. There is no such thing as luck in business, only hard work and persistence. Yes it is true that you can be lucky once or twice but luck will not really see you through if you are engaged in a business. How to succeed in the home based network-marketing business In every business endeavor, hard work and persistence are the main ingredients. During the first few months of your internet business endeavors, you can expect a lot of trying times. Since you are still new to the business, you can expect to go through the trial and error process. In most cases, the trial and error process could be very frustrating that if you are not really determined to succeed, you may most likely to quit during the first few months. To succeed in your chosen filed of business, you must be willing to undergo a lot of failures and move on. You cannot really expect to get things right on your first try so you just keep on trying until you have mastered the craft. If you are hardworking and persistent enough, you will soon reach your destination. Always remember that the best way to reach you destination is to keep on going and staying in the same direction. Aside from persistence and hard work, you should be a good team player to make it big in the home-based network-marketing business. Note that the network-marketing program is designed to work best with a team. This means that when you are engaged in the home based network-marketing business, you will need to recruit new members to get earn more income. As the network marketing program would allow you to earn commissions of the sales generated by people you have recruited and those people whom your recruits have recruited to become members of the network marketing program, being a good team player is very important in order for you to succeed. [home][based][business][opportunity][network] [marketing][programs][best][internet] Labels: based, best, business, home, marketing, network, program Transferring traffíc and popularity to a new domain is a painstaking process that no one on the web appears to be immune to, or so Topix.net has realized. Topix.net is a leading news aggregation resource that has been in the news lately because they are planning to move their site from Topix.net to Topix.com after purchasing the .com for a cool million from a Canadian animation company.The Wall Street Journal wrote this article explaining how damaging a seemingly simple process of switching from .net to .com could be for Topix LLC. The author goes on to explain such a switch is usually fraught with ranking drops while the major search engines notice and respond to the changeover. The fact that switching addresses will cause problems is not news in the SEO world; however, I thought Topix.net's situation was a great opportuníty to review what one might expect when switching domains. Switching Shingles Switching a domain is tantamount to changing physical locations and it should be treated just as seriously. The following are the steps to take and consider when switching domains: 1. You must install a site wide 301 (permanent redirect) on your old domain to forward all human traffíc to the new domain and inform search engine spiders that your website has permanently moved to a new location. For information on how to implement a 301 redirect here is a great tutorial. 2. Google is the biggest player and likely the most significant driver of traffíc to your website. Keeping that in mind you will want to notify Google of your switchover as soon as possible by registering the new website within Google Webmaster Central and then submitting a fresh XML sitemap. Google representatives are very clear the only way to minimize the impact of a domain changeover is to give Google's automated system as much warning as possible to limit downtime. 3. Find the most significant inbound links that point to the old domain and selectively contact the site owners requesting a link update to the new domain. TIP: Discovering which sites to contact first can be done using a combination of top referrer statistics, and search engine backlink reports. I don't recommend taking this step unless you find a few sites that stand out as massive traffíc drivers as this process can be frustrating due to lack of response; after all, changing a backlink to your site is likely low on a webmaster's priority list. 4. Send out a press release far and wide explaining the move to the new domain. Feature the domain prominently in the release to begin the task of re-branding. 5. All email addresses will need to be forwarded to their respective addresses on the new domain. Ensure that anyone emailing the old address is forwarded to the new one BUT they should also receive an automated notice to change their contact records to reflect the new email. Leave these email forwards active for a short time to catch the most important emails and then turn them off and delete the old address accounts to avoid encouraging sp@mmers. 6. On the new domain don't forget to implement a 301 redirect for the "non-www" traffíc so they get forwarded to the preferred "www" version of the domain. For more information and background on this topic please visit the following tutorial "301 Redirect of Non-WWW to WWW URLs". 7. If you expect a severe drop in traffíc you can expect a drop in salës. In this regard you may want to ramp up or start pay per clíck marketing to minimize the damage to your bottom line. How Long Does a Domain Transition Take? Generally a popular website will experience the least amount of downtime because Google will take notice faster due to the many entry points (inbound links from news articles, etc.) this type of site usually has. It is also more to Google's benefit to ensure that a credible and well-trafficked website is kept high in Google's results to ensure users receive the best results possible. Using a popular website such as Topix.Net as an example, I would expect a 2-week to 1-month turn around at which time traffíc would be back to approximately 85% of what it was. Sites that are less popular will really need to do their homework and ensure they have informed Google in every way possible of the transition. The transition back to normal traffíc for sites that carefully transition their website should be in the realm of 2 to 6 months. "What If?" The Worst Case Scenario What should you do if your traffíc drops dramatically and after a few weeks or months it still has not measurably restored itself? Google actually recommends you post your issue on their online user support forum. Apparently Google engineers occasionally take pity and help out; maybe you will get lucky. I also recommend visiting the more authoritative search engine forums (such as Search Engine Watch, iHelpYou, etc.) and requesting help. There are a lot of incredibly talented SEOs on these forums that are happy to provide assistance. WARNING! If you must conduct a domain transition be sure to plan it during a historically slow time of year to minimize damages. For example, it would be a mistake for a B2C to switch domains before the Holiday Season rush. In Conclusion Do not switch your domain unless you have no other choice because no matter how popular your website is domain switchovers are far from enjoyable. After all, even losing a single week of significant traffíc for a popular site could cost many thousands or even millíons of dollars. On the flip side of the coin, less trafficked websites (i.e. Mom and Pop sites, small B2C websites, etc.) usually experience a longer wait time so they experience a different type of pain. Fortunately, you now know there are ways to mitigate the potential harm to your bottom line, just don't forget to follow the rules and your switchover will be a lot more effective and ultimately less painful. About The Author Ross Dunn is the founder and CEO of StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. Based in Victoria, BC, Canada, StepForth has provided professional search engine placement and management services since 1997. Ross is a search engine optimization and placement expert with over 9 years of marketing experience and is a Certified Internet Marketing and Business Strategist (CIMBS). Blending his experience in the art of web design and search engine optimization, Ross offers a unique and informed perspective on obtaining top search engine placements. Ross can be reached at ross@stepforth.com. Labels: domain, marketing, pay per click, search engines, SEO, traffic, website I've been blogging now for about 2 years, and I'm amazed at the amount of traffíc that I get from my blog and the number of people who tell me that they first heard about me from my blog instead of my website. The word blog is derived from the term "web log", or an online diary or journal. If the HBO series "Sex and the City" were being filmed today, Carrie Bradshaw would be a blogger as well as a columnist, I think. Why? As she experiences her revelations about life, love, and relationships, she could post them to her blog for the world to see and comment upon.Blogging has opened website creation to almost everyone, as it takes very little know-how to get a blog up and running. In fact, many service business owners are using a blog platform as their primary website, with some of them creating static pages as you would find on a traditional website, while others are using the platform as a blog and are posting updates regularly. There are several advantages to using blogs instead of ezines or traditional websites: 1. Search engines love blogs. The strategy that seems to be attractive to search engines today is regularly updated content. I can log-in to my blog at the beginning of a day and submit a post. Within 24 hours I'll get a notification from my Google alerts account that Google has indexed that post. 2. Content can be distributed quickly. If you instruct your visitors to subscribe to your blog via updating services like Bloglines or Feedblitz, they'll be notified within hours of any new posts on your blog. 3. Little web programming knowledge is required. Once your blog is set up, it's simply a matter of logging into your account, typing the info for your post, adding graphics or photos as needed, and publishing your post to your blog. 4. Reader feedback. Your readers can give you comments and feedback about your posts almost immediately after you log an entry. Blogs are a great way to engage your audience. How do you begin to blog? Here are 10 simple steps you can follow: 1. Blogging platform. The easiest way to get started is to use the frëe service found at Blogger.com or Wordpress.com. The ability to customize your blog is limited with the frëe services, so I urge my clients to subscribe to Typepad.com, which will host your blog for you on their servers, or purchase a hostíng account where WordPress can be installed. The downloadable version of WordPress is located at Wordpress.org and is frëe of charge if you need to install Wordpress yourself on your hostíng account. I use Typepad for my blog, so many of my examples will relate exclusively to blogs hosted on that platform. 2. Name. What do you want to call your blog? Blog names tend to be attention-getting and off-beat. However, for service businesses, I encourage my clients to use keywords important to their business when naming their blog. You will also want to acquire the .com version of your blog's name or your blog's name with the word "blog" attached as your blog URL. After you have set up your blog, your blog provider can give you more info about how to map your domain to your blog. (Note: You don't want to simply forward your blog to your domain name, as that impacts the URLs of your individual blog pages). 3. Look and Layout. How many columns do you want to display? Do you want links to static pages? What colors do you want to use? How about a signup box for a frëe giveaway? Should you use one of the templates provided or have something custom designed? Do you want your blog archives displayed? Do you want to be the only author or do you want to permit others to make posts, as well? There are many questíons you'll be asked in the startup phase about the look of your blog. A Typepad blog permits you to change your mind about your layout at a later date. The best way to determine the look of your blog is to look at the layout of other blogs and determine what appeals to you. 4. Widgets. There are a number of widgets, or add-on programs, that you can incorporate into your blog. Chëck your blog software's site for more info about what features you'd like add to your blog. At a minimum you'll want to give visitors a couple of ways in which they can receive blog updates through various updaters, or feeder services, as mentioned earlier. 5. Comments. The newest sp*am making its rounds online is comment sp*am. Don't these guys have anything better to do? Set your comments to moderated, which means that you have to approve any comments to your blog before the post goes live. You'll save yourself a great many headaches and time by choosing to moderate the comments. Once you've gotten this far, you should have a basic blog established and are ready to begin to blog. 6. Blog content. The time has arrived -- your blog is ready to accept posts. What do you write about? You can post content rich articles of interest to your target market, comment on a current event, answer questíons from your visitors, present a before and after case study outlining how your business helped someone, etc. Keep your eyes and ears open for information relevant to your audience. I use my blog to bring forth info that doesn't fit well into my newsletter format or something that arises between newsletter issues. I post my ezine content to my blog, as well. 7. Posting frequency. Blogs are just like gardens -- they need watering regularly and require some care and attention. For maximum effectiveness, you need to post several times a week to your blog. I try and post 4 times per week in my blog -- 2 posts are items I run across or comment upon as noteworthy in the moment, and the latter 2 are the contents of my ezine posted over 2 days. And, respond to reader's comments when they arrive -- blogs provide a great forum for ongoing discussions. 8. Blog traffíc. In the same way that you publicize your website URL on everything that you do, you can similarly publicize your blog. Submitting your blogs to blog directories is another way to get traffíc. A very comprehensive líst of blog directories, RSS Top 55 has been compiled by Robin Good. Searching out blogs that appeal to your target market and making comments to those posts will also drive traffíc to your blog. Another trick is to post your blog on social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, and del.icio.us. 9. Measure the results. Some blog programs, like Typepad, have built-in statistics so you can view details of your blog traffíc. Some of the feed/updater programs have built-in statistics as well, or you can install a metrics program as an add-on to your blog. Review your statistics regularly to determine how much traffíc your blog generates. 10. Rinse and repeat. Don't let the novelty of blogging wear off. Blogging is effective only if you continue your blogging efforts regularly over a long period of time. I know of several individuals who have gotten book deals from their blog and radio and TV interviews as well. Just think -- your blog might be your ticket to fame! Every service business can benefit from blog technology. Few other marketing strategies provide the quick immediacy that blogging provides. About The Author Online Business Resource Queen (TM) and Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps self-employed service professionals learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their expertise on the Internet, and get more clients online. To sign up for more Frëe tips like these and claim your Frëe gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at http://www.GetMoreClientsOnline.com. Labels: blog, blogging, business, coach, marketing, online, resource, search engines, social bookmarking, strategies As clíck costs rise, many companies who are already investing in active pay per clíck marketing campaigns are looking toward hiring a search engine optimization company to supplement their marketing portfolio in order to íncrease their exposure and reduce their advertising spend. In some cases, frustrated by clíck fraud and increasing clíck costs, marketers are using search engine optimization to completely replace pay per clíck marketing. However, these companies will often try to evaluate search engine optimization using the same methodology that they had used for pay per clíck - by figuring out the cost per clíck.In almost every case, a campaign created by a reputable search engine optimization company will eventually garner lower per-clíck costs than pay per clíck marketing for any industry. Yet using cost per clíck to compare the effectiveness of these two separate disciplines is comparing apples to, well, anything other than apples. The crucial difference between these two approaches is that pay per clíck marketing is more of an advertising ínvestment, while search engine optimization is more appropriately likened to an ínvestment in infrastructure. While both have their merits in terms of increasing a company's online exposure, it is important to understand the differences in the respective investments and to determine why cost per clíck is not a fair indicator of the perförmance of a search engine optimization company. Pay Per Clíck Marketing Advertising investments of all kinds, from billboards to print ads to television spots to pay per clíck marketing, all share a common trait. They exist in the public eye for as long as a company is willing to pay for them. Stop paying, and they disappear. True, a print ad may continue to exist for a while after it runs (until the newspaper or magazine gets recycled, at least), and a television spot may get attention if it wins any awards (or winds up on YouTube). But a pay per clíck marketing campaign will simply vanish as soon as the budget is cut. This means that when a company reduces its advertising spend in this arena, it loses all of its exposure immediately. What does this really mean? Well, for one, it means that figuring out the average per-clíck costs of a pay per clíck marketing campaign makes sense because everything happens in real time. A pay per clíck campaign will begin nearly instantly after a company signs up and pays, and it will vanish just as quickly when the company ceases payment. In other words, there is a clear delineation of when a campaign begins and when it ends. This delineation is important, because it excludes many other potential factors that muddy the waters when you try to apply this same ROI analysis to a campaign created by a search engine optimization company. Search Engine Optimization As said previously, utilizing a search engine optimization company can be likened to making an ínvestment in the infrastructure of a business rather than an ínvestment in advertising. This is because with search engine optimization, there is no clear delineation of where the benefit from the campaign ends. If a business stops paying its search engine optimization company at any point after the campaign has been launched (presuming they have hired a decent search engine optimization company), there will continue to be results from that campaign for an extended period of time - usually many months or even years. Of course, it is not recommended that any business actually quit an ongoing SEO campaign because a good search engine optimization company will always be expanding and honing that campaign over time to make it more successful over the long term. However, budgets get revisited and revised. Decision makers can change. And if the budget for SEO does get cut, a business will continue to see results for long after. How, then, can you determine value on a per-clíck basis? The simple answer is that you can't. It should be noted that while maintaining ongoing results after payments have ceased is a big upside to search engine optimization, the inverse downside is that an effective campaign put in place by a search engine optimization company can take some time to implement, and the results may not appear for weeks or months. A search engine optimization campaign takes patience, effort, and, most of all, time. If a business needs its marketing campaign to be up and running immediately, pay per clíck marketing is going to be a better short-term choice. Conclusion It is important to recognize the innate differences in pay per clíck campaigns and search engine optimization when trying to quantify results. A pay per clíck marketing campaign can have a definitive beginning and end, which makes cost per clíck a good way of determining ROI. Yet the results gained from hiring a search engine optimization company, although an SEO campaign can take much longer to implement, will outlast the results from a pay per clíck campaign if a business ever needs to cut spending. And this is where the notion of analyzing the effectiveness of a search engine optimization campaign on a cost per clíck basis breaks down. About The Author Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue Search Engine Marketing, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld. Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, Cirronet, and DS Waters. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantëe of your company's search engine perförmance. Labels: business, campaign, marketing, pay per click, search engine optimization There can be no good commerce without proper marketing. Marketing campaigns are a must for businesses wishing to boost their salës. Online marketing has become more and more a distinctive and important aspect in the development and evolution of any company, big or small, which aims at reaching a specific range of potential customers.With the emergence of Google's AdWords service, online marketing has changed. It is now possible to target potential customers more accurately than ever, taking into account that Web search is the second most used online application after e-mail. Google search results: Organic vs. Sponsored links (Google results for "sell software online") What is AdWords? AdWords is Google's tool, meant to help you advertise your business. It can be used to create simple, yet effective ads that will be displayed to people performing online searches for information related to businesses such as yours. Basically, a Google AdWords campaign is one way of doing online keyword-based advertising. At the core of any pay-per-click campaign lays the commercial links (the ads) associated to keywords, displayed on the right side of the result page when a Google search is performed. What Google offers is actually placing certain Web sites on top of all the results for a specific search (i.e. keywords). Against a fee, naturally. These sites are placed systematically on the right side of the result screen and marked as "commercial links" so that the user is not mislead, since Google's goal is, above all, to maintain the credibility of its search engine. The AdWords ads are very simple. They come in a variety of formats, amongst which the most common are the text format and the image format. There can also be animated ads, video ads, mobile ads, etc. The text ads usually consist of: An ad title (up to 25 characters, including spaces): must attract users that may have an interest in your products or services Two description lines (up to 35 characters each, including spaces): should be clear and compelling enough to convince the user to visit your site The display URL (up to 35 characters, including spaces): this is where the user will be directed when clicking on the ad. 15 Most Common Errors in an AdWords Campaign Don't assume that this is an easy task. It's not. Remember that Google is a tough nut to crack, but with the right set of tools and a lot of hard work and dedication, it can be done. Therefore, it is good that before creating a pay per clíck campaign, you have a clearly established goal. According to this goal, begin creating your AdWords campaign. As with Search Engine Optimization, AdWords campaign management is a must and must be done properly. There are many aspects that can be overlooked. Some of the most common AdWords campaign mistakes come from superficiality or insufficient knowledge about the targeted market and the way the Web works. Among the worst mistakes being made in such cases are: 1. Bidding too much in order to be placed on the top position Even if this seems like the best choice, being "Number One" in this case is not necessarily the best. Keep in mind that Web users are accustomed to searching, and they usually don't stop at the first ad. And, since they are first prospecting the market, it is highly possible that you only get an unqualified clíck. It seems that being no. 3 in paid search is one of the best (i.e. profitable) positions. 2. No geo-targeting Try to relate to the potential customers in your area first. They are more likely to take their business to a local company. Add, for example, the name of the town or of the area where your company is in your ad and the effects will be noticeable. 3. Bidding on broad keywords Broad keywords are very likely to take your CPC (cost-per-click) to a very high level. Therefore, try to brush the keyword líst that you wish to use for your PPC campaign and retain only highly searched-for keywords. Those are worth bidding for. 4. Boring content Don't say what others have already said. Be creative. Be fresh. 5. Non-relevant landing pages Make sure that when the Web user clicks on the URL in the ad, it will take him/her to a relevant page. You don't want the user to get frustrated by not finding the desired product/service advertised in the ad. 6. Directing users only to the home page Unless you have a really cool Web site that captivates users and makes them browse through it for endless minutes, they will get frustrated if they have to search throughout the site for what they need. You should send them directly to where they will find what was advertised. 7. No keywords in the ad text Do insert your keywords in the title and description of the ad. Nevertheless, remember to keep an eye on the clarity and relevance of the ad. Visitors must understand exactly what they will get when clicking on it. 8. Not tracking the results You should monitor the keywords that you use in your Google AdWords marketing campaigns. The most at-hand tool is Google Analytics, built into the AdWords interface. You should be able to see and rule out the keywords that are not helping you get the desired ROI (return on investment). 9. Same bids for the content network AdWords gives you the possibility to have two separate campaigns, one for the content network and the other for the search network. You should set different bids for the content network. Otherwise, the CPC will be much higher than anticipated. 10. Suggesting that what you offër is frëe Don't try to lure visitors with false statements. All you'll get is irrelevant traffíc and no conversion (or not significant enough). 11. Not identifying the uniqueness of your product/service Identify what makes you and your product/service unique, what makes you stand out from the large crowd of competitors. Find the keyword(s) that supports this uniqueness. 12. Failure to create multiple ad groups and ad campaigns Don't fall into that trap. Unorganized campaigns will fail to produce the expected results. Group all the single ads that target related keywords. If you're advertising more than one product/service, it's best to have the ads grouped by category. Also, don't use just one campaign. Split your ads into separate campaigns. You will be able to see which of them gives you more satisfaction in terms of conversion rate. 13. Failure to test with more that one ad Don't limit your advertising campaign to just one ad. It may not contain the best keywords. Create more ads and see which one works best. 14. Not using targeting options for keywords Broad matches may or may not improve your conversion rate. But if you use the keyword targeting options, you may notice significant improvements. The targeting options are the square brackets - [blue tulip] - and the quotation marks - "blue tulip". Also, you can use the negative character (minus sign) in order to specify certain keywords for which you don't want your ads to be shown: -tulip. This will also prevent you from paying for such words. A penny saved is a penny earned, they say. 15. Not using company/brand name keywords Don't leave out the name of your company or of a brand you've created. You wouldn't want the competition to make profitable use of it, would you? So, when you plan on creating an AdWords campaign, try to keep an eye on the aspects mentioned above. There is too much at stake to afford bad internet marketing campaigns. What's In It For You? To make it short (taking into account that your Google AdWords campaign is a good one): an improved conversion rate. After all, this is what you were aiming for. If you only take a look at the possible AdWords campaign mistakes mentioned above, it is easy to figure out the disastrous consequences of a poorly managed advertising campaign. Ultimately, it can put you out of business. On the other hand, a well-directed and properly instrumented pay-per-click campaign can go a long way. You gain notoriety and make a profit. There are so many ways in which you can save monëy when creating an AdWords campaign. If you manage to avoid the above-mentioned mistakes, you will surely notice an íncrease in your salës or amount of contracts for your services. Editorial Note: Drop by the SiteProNews Blog to read regular posts by two of the Web's top SEO writers, Jim Hedger and Jerry Bader, or listen to The Alternative on WebMaster Radio, the new weekly, hour-long live broadcast hosted by Jim Hedger, covering the world of independent search engine alternatives and, of course, developments at the Big 3. About The Author Adriana Iordan is a Web Marketing Specialist at Avangate B.V.. She has in depth knowledge of internet marketing services and website analysis applied to the software industry and e-commerce development. Avangate is an eCommerce platform for electronic software distribution incorporating an easy to use and secure online payment system plus additional marketing and salës tools. Webmaster's note: Visit http://www.moxie-drive.com/google-adwords-made-easy to learn more about finding profitable keywords. Labels: advertising, adwords, based, best home based business, campaign, Google Adwords Made Easy, keyword, make money online, marketing, online marketing, organic marketing, profitable keywords I'm going to do something different. Instead of discussing just one aspect - such as teaching you how to set up an email marketing campaign or give you an email marketing template - I'll be sharing some tips and tactics that I've learnt over the years while managing my newsletters.Not all strategies are created equal. For example, implementing Tip #1 might not increase your bottom line by much if your newsletter doesn't integrate the tips very well. On the other hand, if your current crop of subscribers were acquired from those cheap holiday mega-giveaways, you might be surprised to learn how much an effect Tip #4 can have on the profits generated through your newsletter. You might already know a few tips from this list - that's good, because now you know you're on the right track. In essence, these are the specific aspects of your newsletter strategy that you should "check" regularly to see if you're doing them (and doing them right). And make sure you monitor your own results to find out what works and doesn't work - you are bound to learn something every time you send out an issue (assuming that you're continuously plugging away and testing things). Below are my Top 10 practices and tactics that I've picked up over the years: 1 - Readers Come First People care less about you and more about themselves. In each issue, review each section with the specific criteria of usefulness to the reader. If it's not at least a 3 out of 5, either ditch it or push it to the end of the issue. In fact, you might try to structure your newsletter by sticking in what you think is most useful to the reader at the top, and working downwards from that. 2 - What Have I Done for You Lately? Depending on how frequent your newsletter issues are, you will need one new "big thing" to keep the publication fresh. Whether its in the form of a new service, a tool or a free ebook / report, make sure to provide something valuable (on a large scale) to your subscribers periodically (say every year, or every 6 months). You could even put the offering on a new website, and thus generate rapid publicity (and free links) to your site as a result of such a promotion. On a side note, be on the lookout for several new tools and services that I'll be announcing - a keyword tool (Keyword Elite) and an article writing service are just two of them. Stay tuned. I'm very excited to show you guys! 3 - Quality Source of Subscribers It's absolutely critical to the success of your email newsletter to figure out where your new subscribers will come from. Many subscribers to SEO Elite come from the thousands of inbound links to its home page, many more still arrive from the search engines and others are acquired through syndicated articles across a network of reputed sites. 4 - Keep It Simple, Very Simple That goes for layout, sentence structure, copy style and editorial guidelines. Readers in this medium need to "get it" fast. If you try to get them overly involved with complex schemes or hard-to-understand copy, you'll lose them. It's like radio, in a way. It's very easy to lose someone's attention in radio because there are no visuals. Online is a lean-in, rush-to-read-it medium. People lean forward into their computer monitors, usually with a very specific intention. Serve that intention or something very close to that intention - with speed. If you're building your online presence through podcasts (audio blogging) and/or vidcasts (video blogging), this advice applies in spades. Make everything easily accessible, and allow for a link to a page that helps out first-timers or people who are having any trouble. 5 - Pick Your Email Service Provider Carefully Read their white papers on email marketing and take it for a trial spin before committing resources. See which businesses similar to yours use a similar service - call them up and see what they have to say about that service. In short, do your homework before you leap. You don't want to be caught in a situation where you build up your list through one service provider before realizing that there's another email service that offers better terms, is more scalable and generally more suited to your needs. 6 - Show Your Face I'm guilty of not following this advice on the SEO Elite newsletter. However, understand that the Internet is (still) a pretty spooky place. Showing your face, rather than some slick graphic, is a good bet. People like to know there's a human at the other end of the line. 7 - Put the Subscriber First Even if your email newsletter is complimentary, first serve the subscriber as though he/she was paying for your product. If you don't, your readership will sense you have other agendas and lose their loyalty. Give your readers everything you have, and don't hold anything back. It's important you give MUCH more than you receive... so give them every ounce that you have in you. 8 - Make Your Newsletter Indispensable If your newsletter becomes a must-read, other sites will point to you, which will increase your standing in search engine results and bring you even more traffic and subscribers... but you must first be such a solid resource that other sites can justify pointing to you as that industry's "go-to" resource. 9 - Subject Headers Rule No matter who is in the "From" field, you know you need a compelling subject header. Keep it short, sweet and direct. No hyperbole or overly "sales-like" material. I've seen the very same solo email campaign draw 20% better response rates (and more) using a different subject header. BTW, I notice my subscribers love "How To" subject headers. It makes sense. After all, people who read an SEO newsletter are always interested in knowing how to do things or how to do things better. Never, and I repeat, never use the subject line: "Article 107 of 182" or something along those lines. Use something intriuging. Nobody cares if this is Article 107, or whatever the case may be. The purpose of the subject line is to get people to open the email. 10 - Never allow others to pay you to advertise in your newsletter Every once in a great while, it's ok to do a little advertising in your newsletter, but if you decide to do this, it had better be either for your own product OR for a product that you are a direct affiliate of. Wasting your 1 mailing containing an advertisement for something, on someone else's ad is a big no-no. You could earn far more money AND chances are you could be telling your subscribers about a much more helpful product if it's one you picked out yourself. Make sure that you review your publishing strategy and find out if you're not implementing any one or more of these tips - they could make a significant difference to your bottom line. Advanced Email Marketing Strategies Labels: affiliate, campaign, email, marketing, newsletter, strategies, tactics, tips 2007 is in full swing and there have been some CRITICAL CHANGESto the way you need to market your business to make money online... changes YOU must know about! And I am not just talking about one or two little changes! I am talking about massive changes that include... How Google, Yahoo!, and MSN have changed and how to get (or even just maintain) top 10 listings! Maximizing your profits from email promotions and making sure they get to your customers’ inbox and not get you labeled as ‘Junk’! How to make money in the Pay-Per-Click search engines... even after the big guys keep changing the rules and most business are losing big! What web design strategies and salescopy techniques are working in 2007 (many of last year’s strategies don’t work anymore... do you know which ones?) Advanced technology that you must start using BEFORE your competitors steal your customers with it. … and the list could go on! I am not trying to scare you out of doing business online , I just want to make you aware of the realities of making money on the Internet in 2007. Now after that little rant, I do have some GOOD NEWS... I have gone to bat for my customers and subscribers to make sure you have ALL of the latest tools, tips and strategies from one of the MOST SUCCESFUL Internet marketing Gurus in the world! To find out who and what I am talking about please take five minutes and read the following webpage... http://www.moxie-drive.com/SecretsToTheirSuccess This could be the most valuable five minutes in 2007! All the best, Leonard Bartholomew P.S. When you go to http://www.moxie-drive.com/SecretsToTheirSuccess pay attention to how many people are using this system… there are some incredible stories that you can learn a ton from! Labels: marketing Welcome to the third lesson in the email marketing series. Today, we'll set up a template email marketing plan (one that is simple to follow and understand) before diving headfirst next lesson into a bunch of advanced email marketing strategies and tactics.Last time, I started off with saying that people shy away from email marketing because they don't know how to do it. Almost as bad is the lack of an effective plan. In fact, there are so many questions to ask in email marketing before you send out even one issue of your newsletter because of what's at stake – thousands of dollars in profits, your company's reputation, customer confidence – that its no surprise to see big companies spending a lot of money just to get email marketing right. So…what does an email marketing plan consist of? A strong content base. A newsletter template. A strategy for acquiring subscribers. A publishing schedule. An advertising plan. Let's look at each individually. A Strong Content Base. If you want to gain and maintain subscribers, you must have something valuable to offer. Usually that comes in the form of expert knowledge, unless your business is in providing the latest news about a particular subject, in which case your newsletter can write itself (although if you don't include any original content, you'll lose subscribers fast). Email marketing is most successful if you make the commitment to give something valuable to the subscriber first. Everything I've said so far about building trust applies here in spades. Make sure you offer something unique and useful to your readers. Publishing Schedule. A major debate in email marketing is the question of frequency – how often should you send out your newsletter? Daily? Weekly? Once a month? The truth is, there's no set formula for this. Instead, the answer lies in your business plan – what you want to achieve from your email marketing, and what sort of relationship you expect to build with your readers. If your newsletter is a “how-to” resource (like this one), you may consider weekly mailings (or twice a week, if possible). The problem then becomes content generation – do you have enough new topics to cover in your next newsletter, and can you write two newsletters in a week? My advice would be not to settle for anything more frequent than a weekly newsletter, and depending on your business model, you might even want to opt for a biweekly or monthly newsletter. On the other hand, some marketers totally ignore such guidelines and publish irregularly , whenever they please (or whenever they have something useful to say). If you're undecided, you might want to try that approach until you can figure out what's best for your particular list. Newsletter Template. Most email marketers prefer to include the whole newsletter within the email. This however raises a whole set of problems – email deliverability becomes a major issue, as long emails (especially ones that talk about making money) trip spam filters on most email networks. Another problem is how your newsletter is displayed – if you have an HTML formatted newsletter, it might break up or display incorrectly. Worse still is the case with images – many email providers (including GMail) don't display images by default. Such issues can seriously downgrade the visual impact of your newsletter. And of course, bandwidth becomes an issue if you have a medium to large list. Sending a 100k image-laden, html formatted 1000+ words newsletter to 20,000 is, despite being an exaggerated example, stupid. Third party list management tools can often charge you for high bandwidth, and you don't want to incur unnecessary costs. The alternative strategy is to use the emails as a short reminder to the subscriber that a new issue has been posted, and then to post the issue online on your website. This allows you to create a visually appealing, aesthetic newsletter template and by directing subscribers to your website, you've already confirmed that they are interested in what you have to say – the click-through rate immediately becomes an important metric for you to gauge how successful your marketing is. No matter which approach you take, keep your template simple and professional – the focus remains on the content, not on the design. Getting Subscribers. To make your newsletter worth your time (and for it to help you make money), you need to build your list . Usually this amounts to a flurry of activity and a mad rush for a lot of subscribers when you start off your newsletter, and then it tapers off into a steady stream of new signups. What's important is to have a definite plan in place for getting subscribers (in other words, traffic to that landing page). It usually means that you'll be spending some money, unless you happen to partner with other sites in your niche and syndicate your content, or you manage to achieve top search engine rankings (which you SHOULD be doing by now, if you've followed this newsletter). If you need to spend money on building your list, consider this – each subscriber has a specific value attached to him/her. This value can be calculated like this: The amount of money a subscriber (on average) spends on buying your products during the time he's on your list. The average amount of revenue you get through newsletter advertising per subscriber. Add those two numbers up (remember, these are averages), and you've got the monetary value of each new subscriber. This calculation gives you a ceiling amount you can afford to spend per subscriber . To illustrate, here's an example – if you earn $15,000 from a list of 3,000 people by promoting just one product in the last three months, then your subscriber value is $5 (15,000/3,000). Of course, this number is for a confirmed subscriber, so if you were running an AdWords campaign with a hypothetical 5% conversion rate on your landing page (good landing pages usually have a conversion rate of over 10%, although it depends on the relevancy of the traffic as well), you can spend at most 25 cents per click – not a bad amount. Your subscriber value can rocket upwards if you use backend sales and market more than one product to your list. Advertising within your newsletter also counts for a lot, and should be able to give you enough “cushion” to allow you to spend money to get subscribers AND turn in a tidy profit. Advertising Plan. If you're running a newsletter, I strongly recommended that you run some from of advertisements in them (your OWN advertising of some sort). As long as what you display is relevant to your readers' interests, you are bound to profit from the exercise. Also, make sure you map out how frequently you send out purely promotional offers to your list (assuming you take that route). Hitting a list with too many offers too quickly can backfire on you – on the other hand, you can and should send multiple mailings about the same product to ensure a maximum response rate from your list. It's a tricky balance, but as long as you make sure you focus on providing value first, you'll do fine. As I've been saying all along, email marketing is serious business with amazing marketing possibilities. Create a specific email template and then map out your email marketing strategies before you start. That's all for today. In the next lesson, I'll wrap up the email marketing series with a set of email marketing strategies that the top gurus will charge you hundreds of dollars for – stay tuned. Labels: marketing Just when you believed you had all your SEO tactics figured out, the web goes and changes on you. Not just the rules of the game but it takes the whole web platform right out from under your feet and changes it. What's a poor webmaster to do?Web 2.0 changes the whole ballgame. It not only places the Internet user squarely in the middle of things, but it gives that user the means and power to create and manipulate data. Web 2.0 dramatically changes how we view and use the web. Actually, in many respects, it creates a whole new Internet. What Is Web 2.0? Just what exactly is Web 2.0? What does it mean? Is there a precise definition that all webmasters can get their heads around and understand? Not really, many believe Web 2.0 is just another one of those contrived buzzwords, signifying mostly marketing hype! However, perhaps the simple definition can be found in the word "you"! Time magazine probably summed it up best by making reference to the "you" in user generated content. Web 2.0 is basically all the platforms that give us this brave new user-powered interactive Internet, generally referred to as 'social media'. Web 2.0 can be seen or manifested in such sites as YouTube, MySpace, Del.icio.us, Digg, Squidoo... Web 2.0 uses scripting languages such as Python, Perl PHP, RSS... to construct interactive platforms that websites can use to create all this user-generated content. Many refer to these evolving formats and scripting platforms under the name AJAX and no this does not refer to the popular cleaning agent under your kitchen sink! This AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScrípt and XML) comes from Google and takes web based interactive programs such as Google Maps, something that's usually associated with desktop applications, but is now being applied on the web. If you have used Google Earth, you will realize how powerful and revolutionary these new applications can be, not to mention, they are a whole lot of fun. Where Did The Name Web 2.0 Come From? Many point to Tim O'Reilly, the constant innovator of many technological changes on the web. O'Reilly has been at the forefront in discussions and conferences on the nature and substance of the 'meme' open source platforms dominating the new social media. How all this new media plays out is anyone's guess, but all webmasters should optimize their sites for this new Web 2.0 and take full advantage of all the SEO possibilities presented by this brave new Internet. Here are a few SEO suggestions you can try: 1. RSS/Blogging: You must place a blog and RSS feed on all your sites. This is a fairly simple procedure to do with frëe server-based programs such as Wordpress. Having a blog and RSS feed will place your site into the whole tagging process. Each category you create in your blog will be seen as a tag by such sites as Technorati. RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication' and your RSS feeds will get your content distributed across the web. A simple and easy way to tap into the new Web 2.0 universe. 2. Create some Google Juice!: Join as many of these highly interactive sites as you can: MySpace, YouTube, Del.icio.us, Digg, Wikipedia ... my favorite is Squidoo, where you can create Lenses on different topics that interest you. User driven content that's utilized by all the major social media sites. Of course, link back to your sites in your posts and creations in these user-created content havens and watch your PR ratings go way up. 3. Use Interactive Scrípts: Place interactive JavaScrípts and platforms on your own sites. Have membership forums, polls, blogs, feedback forms, user-contributions... to build unique content driven sites. Become the spider! 4. Tagging (Folksonomy): Be constantly aware of the tags (keywords) you're creating with your blogs and sites. This can have a very beneficial effect on your traffíc and rankings. Closely relate these tags to the content on your sites and build higher rankings in all the major search engines. 5. The Long Tail: Especially important for affilíate marketers, you need to cover special niches where there is less competition and content. These narrow niches make up a large portion of the whole vast web, creating content in these unique areas will get your site included in the search engines a lot quicker and keep them there a lot longer. 6. Holistic Web 2.0: Be constantly vigilant in placing your sites in the whole 'Interactive Game', building links and partnerships with the important YouHubs: MySpace, Del.icio.us, YouTube, Digg, Squidoo... the more connections you have, the more your own sites will prosper. Be The Spider! No doubt, Web 2.0 will play an ever increasing role in the development and evolution of the web. Make sure your sites are optimized and in the 'You' game. Create blogs, RSS feeds, interactive forums, membership areas, user-generated content and truly make your sites interactive havens in their own right. Just remember to tag everything and your sites will reap the benefits of this new Web 2.0 generated SEO gold rush. About The Author The author is a full time Internet Marketer with numerous sites on the web, including two niche sites on Internet Marketing. His main site is Internet Marketing Tools. For the latest and most effective marketing tools try: Marketing Tool Guide Copyright © 2007 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed with box intact. Labels: internet, marketing, search engine optimization, SEO, social networking, web 2.0 The advertising says it’s an easy home based business, but is it really? After all, creating a successful network marketing business takes a great deal of work. For those who have never been involved in any kind of a network scheme, you definitely have a lot to learn about this type of business opportunity. It is not, contrary to what you may think, a business that will sell itself without any help from you. Certainly, once you have spent the time to build the network and have everything in place, that will happen, but it may take anywhere between six months to six years to accomplish that.The most important thing for a newcomer to this kind of business to understand is that easy does not necessarily mean that there is no work involved. What it DOES mean that it’s easy to learn how to do the business and become successful. It is not something that is going to happen overnight, or even in the next month or two, but if you stay consistent in your efforts, you will become successful. No, it isn’t easy in the respect that you can join a network, sit back, and do nothing, but in time, if you build the network correct, it will earn money for you. At that time, you can choose to continue building the business or to sit back and reap the benefits from the net work you have already built. Based upon the things you can be called upon to do in most other business, network marketing is rather easy. After all, you don’t have to worry about a building, office staff, inventory, or anything of that nature. In fact, with some of the online network marketing schemes, the upline or corporation handle the shipping of products for you, which leaves you free to work on the more important aspects of your business such as recruiting new members and working with those you have recently brought into the network. How soon can you expect to see something for your efforts? That depends on you as an individual. The more effort you extend into building your business, the quicker it will happen for you. Even in network marketing organizations where the downline is placed for you, there is still training and promotion that you must do in order to keep everyone focused and to bring more people into the network. This type of business is definitely people-oriented, and the more people in the network, the more successful the network is going to be. On the other hand, since it is a people oriented business, if you do not work well with people or are not comfortable with the idea of training and mentoring those in your network, this is not the type of business in which you want to become involved. Home Based Business Opportunity Labels: based, business, easy, home, marketing, network, opportunity As with all innovations, we soon become wrapped up in the newness, the easy access, and the excitement we feel with something that has not existed for us before now. Internet marketing" is no exception. Online marketing does have its pitfalls in spite of all the good things it offers. We often put more store in something new than it is really worth. Below are some of the things that internet market lacks.Replacing the traditional form of buying and selling is not going to happen with internet marketing. Pretend for a minute that you are looking for a new car. You go online, look through picture after picture and find one you like and can afford. That's where you stop. You can't touch that car, nor can you take a test drive. You have only a small idea of what the car will be like when you drive it. Are you going to pay potentially thousands of dollars for that car, or will you go to a local car lot instead, where you can get a much better idea of what you're buying? This is a major limitation to internet marketing for many items. Another frustrating fact of buying online is dealing with lost connections and websites being down. You can't do what you set out to do. You end up having to wait or take a drive to somewhere that has what you need. Shopping online isn't always doable. You aren't going to make tons of money in little or not time on the internet. Granted, a very small number of people have been lucky enough to develop a money-making endeavor, but these are the exception to the rule. There are a larger number who have failed miserably at online businesses. Most of the business realities of the brick and mortar world still apply to the virtual world, you still will have to put in endless hours and effort to make it succeed. Internet marketing, finally, is not static. As the world itself changes and grows, so will the world of internet marketing. Technology will change and the government will make more laws to control what happens online. You can't count on what is today to be around in its present form ten years from now. Labels: marketing If you're dreaming about starting your own successful Internetbusiness but you don't have any cash to invest up front, I have great news for you! I've just been talking to my friend Derek Gehl over at the Internet Marketing Center... As a favor to me, he's offered to let me send you a "like new" set of his popular training videos, "The Internet Millionaire's Protégé Bootcamp," which contain the exact system he's used to earn over $60,000,000 online. It seems he has a small stack of these training videos sitting in his warehouse that got *slightly* damaged in the shipping process... ... A few scuffed DVD cases... a few little marks on the inside... but otherwise they're practically brand new. They're not quite pristine enough to sell at the regular price, though, so he's agreed to let me offer them to YOU for a HUGE $100.00 discount. But please note: these copies contain the exact same information that people have already used to start Internet businesses worth $100,000... $250,000... $2.5 Million... and MORE! So if you're willing to overlook the odd scuffed case, then I can send you one right away! This is your perfect opportunity to start your own highly profitable Internet business and earn a life-changing income, WITHOUT a big upfront investment! But this offer is strictly first come, first served. Derek only has 279 copies available, and he expects them to be gone in 24 hours! So don't hesitate. Claim your "Like New" DVDs at a $100 discount by following this link: http://www.marketingtips.com/protege-video-likenew/t/876427 Labels: marketing
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