Tuesday, April 14, 2009
How to Create Internet Marketing Success
When people decide they want to make money online they generally dive in head first and aren't really prepared for what is involved in setting up an income stream from the internet. We have all heard the saying that to be a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher or even a brick layer that there are certain things you simply must learn before you can ever begin to be successful - you don't just dive in unprepared.
This same strategy also applies to the internet marketing industry - even though there are unreputable people out there that would have you believe that you can do the job in your pajamas and with little or no effort at all. While it may be seen as a relatively easy concept internet marketing still requires you to follow rules and to be able to avoid certain pitfalls in order to become a successful internet marketer.
Although passion isn't the only necessary thing for you to make money online with internet marketing - without it your chance of success instantly reduces. If you don't have passion for the company or its products and services then you will not be motivated to do the work that is required to make an income online via internet marketing.
Many people who decide to attempt an online career with internet marketing will never make more that a few dollars, while there are a select few who will make a years salary in one month. Why do you think this is so?
The answer is quite simple: Passion. People who have passion for the company or the product they're marketing. Passion derives from the research you do about the company and it's services and products. The more research you do, the more interested you are in the product - the more your passion for it will develop.
Internet Marketing is not an overly hard task nor does it take up a lot of time. But it does take a lot of motivation purely due to your passion to get you started. There a several resources available to you to start your internet marketing career - the biggest one being the Internet search engines. You should first start off by researching the company whose services or products you wish to market. It should be a good solid company with excellent principles with top products that are sellable with your passion for them.
Having said that - if you cannot find a company with these attributes - simply move onto the next one, don't waste time. Once you have found the company that you feel passion about it is time to put in place all the other steps you must make in order to become a successful internet marketer - but remember if you don't find the right company to be passionate about then all the other steps you have to follow in internet marketing will bring you a lot of frustration and misery instead of creating success. This is a pitfall any internet marketer simply must avoid.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
How to Manage Your Reputation Online
If you've ever Googled your name, you know how important managing your reputation online can be. Each day, thousands of individuals are searching online for information about others simply by searching on Google or other leading search engines. With information being so readily available, managing your reputation is more important than ever.
How to Manage Your Reputation Online
Fortunately, managing your reputation online isn't all that difficult, but it does take work. Here are 7 basic steps you can take to ensure that your reputation doesn't become negatively impacted by what's being said about you online.
1. See where you stand. Start your reputation management initiative by Googling your name. Try it with quotes and with out (first and last name together). Look through each of your results on page one and page two of Google. Are there any there are are negative or you wish to remove?
2. Set up a Google alert. Visit Google and set up an alert for your name. After setting up the alert Google will send you and email to confirm that you wish to receive the updates. Accept the alert and each time your name is published to the Web, you'll know about it.
3. Contact website owners for name removal. If there are sites that include your name and commentary that is less than desirable, contact the appropriate websites requesting that the information be removed. More often than not, website owners will agree to remove your name and/or inappropriate information.
4. Purchase a domain with your name. Add sites and webpages associated with your name and watch negative search results get pushed lower on Google rankings. Visit GoDaddy or another provider of website URLs and hosting, and purchase a domain that contains your name. Even if your name is rather common, experiment with variations until your name can be established in the form of a dot com. Once you own a domain, publish a webpage with your personal profile.
5. Start a blog under your name. Blogger is a great tool for setting up your own blog which can be used to publish information about yourself. Popular blog sites are often picked up by Google and you can control the content. Be sure to sign up for Technorati after your blog has been published. Submit your blog for review and its popularity will increase, improving search rankings and continuing to push down negative search results.
6. Free press release. Use free-press-release.com or a similar free press release site to publish favorable information about your and your reputation. This form of reputation management is easy and costs nothing. Be sure to use your name throughout the release and in the release title.
7. Author articles in your field. Publish article relative to a particular topic or area in which you've done some work or have experience. Use article distribution serivces to build online references to your content. Make sure your articles contain an about the author section that links back to your main website.
There are a variety of strategies you can use to manage online references about you, your family, or others that need to manage their reputation online. Other online sites like Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, and Squidoo, offer ample opportunity to deliver favorable search results that can push unfavorable results down in search engine rankings. The key is to start today - proactively manage your reputation and put yourself in a favorable light.
Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert and founder of MarketingScoop.com. He has more than 13 years of marketing experience and has appeared on the TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. Michael is also the author of SEO Made Simple: Strategies for Dominating the World's Largest Search Engine and The Webmasters Book of Secrets: Improve Search Engine Rankings.
Thinking About SEO For A New Website
Are you launching a new website? There's no better time to think about search engine optimization than prior to launching a new site. By giving consideration to your on-page optimization factors, you can increase your chances of achieving top organic search results.
To prepare your site for easy indexing, be sure to follow these basis guidelines:
1. Design your site in html or similar format that minimizes the use of java script and flash. The more complex you make your code, the more difficult it becomes for the search engine spiders to read your content and prescribe the appropriate Google PR to your web page.
2. Make sure that your meta tags are coded properly and include the Robots.txt tag. Many individuals downplay the importance of meta tags. Although meta tags themselves won't drastically change the organic ranking of your site, they do create the display text users will see when your site appears in search results. If your meta tags are search engine optimized and compelling, you increase the changes of improving click-throughs.
3. Apply the proper tags to your page. H1, H2, and H3 tags are a great wall to call attention to your content and promote your keywords and keyword phrases. Try to use each tag at least once, but don't force the issues. You want your text to flow and appear normal.
In addition to ensuring that you've made your page easy to access and presented text that is optimized, you also want to consider other factors that can help long-term with your SEO efforts. So often, web designers get caught up with on page factors, that they overlook the requirements for establishing a foundation that supports long-term initiatives.
In particular, consider adding pages that you can add to over time that support link building and accessibility for search engine spiders. Be sure to include:
1. An html sitemap and an xml sitemap. Including a sitemap on you site makes it easy for search engines to access all of your website pages and index your site accordingly. Your sitemap should be in both html as well as xml. Although users would not access the xml sitemap, search engine spiders use this version to crawl websites. Additionally, key search engine submission resources like Google's Webmasters Tools require xml site map versions.
2. Include a partners page. Previously referred to as a links page, the partners page is essential for reciprocal linking. This strategy isn't as powerful as developing one-way links, but until your site has been assigned a Google PR, one-way links can be difficult to acquire. So begin your link exchange program with a partners page that allows you add or remove link quickly and easily.
3. Submission pages that encourage new content. One of the most powerful seo techniques is the addition of new content. Make it easy for your users to add or submit content to your website. When search engines see new content, they rejoice. Don't underestimate how important it is to make it simple for your browsers to add or submit content.
When focusing on search engine optimization, especially with a new website, follow the basic ideas outlined above. There are a number of other factors to consider as well. However, you should always start with a strong foundation - a site design that meets basic SEO standards but one that also supports your long range search engine optimization goals.
Monday, January 19, 2009
What SEO Consultants & Experts Know About WebSite Design
Having rich content and helpful information on your web pages is the second step. Reputable SEO Consultants and SEO Experts know that web site design is not a question of tricks.
Optimizing your web site for search engines is a key component to successful web site traffic and sales. Having your site at the top of search engine results is the first step in getting visitors to your site. Having rich content and helpful information on your web pages is the second step. Reputable SEO Consultants and SEO Experts know that web site design is not a question of tricks. It’s a question of search engine-friendly web site design.
Search engines return results based on many factors. Their formulas are complex algorithms that consider things like incoming links, keyword intensity, and web site popularity. SEO Experts know that the best way to rank is to provide what the search engines want: user-oriented content, common-sense marketing, and design easy for search engine crawlers to navigate.
SEO Consultants Know Search-Engine Friendly Design
SEO Experts know that search engines have some simple requirements, and they can help your web site meet those requirements. Here are some of the areas where SEO Consultants will help you maximize your site and increase your sales:
Keep your web page hierarchy simple. Your web pages shouldn’t be more than three or four clicks from your home page. This tells the search engine that your page is important to your content. If your visitor has to click too many times to get to the information, the search engine will assume it’s not really important.
Make your pages easy to navigate. A text-based navigation system not only makes it easier for search engine crawlers to move through your site, it makes it easier for your visitors to find what they need. A simple pyramid structure is best.
Avoid over-using web technologies. Search engines can’t read Flash or Javascript as well as normal content. If your important content is presented using these technologies, the search engines won’t find it. So use them sparingly, and be sure that any links embedded in them are also available through simple text links on the page.
Use unique pages in your web site. SEO Experts know that search engines will only rank one copy of a web page. So duplicate content gains nothing. And since the engines only crawl a sample of page on your site, duplicate content will literally waste the time they spend on your site.
Keep your pages short. Complex menus and Javascript only distract search engine crawlers. If you must use them, make them external to your HTML so the crawler can focus on your content.
To assure your web site gets the attention of search engines and web travelers, hire SEO Consultants to help you achieve the best web site design. These professionals will also help you create information-rich content that attracts targeted traffic to your web site.
Whether you’re improving an existing web site that just doesn’t get the traffic you want or a new web site full of promise, reputable SEO Consultants will ensure you’re getting the most for your time and effort.
articles by: Joel Mclaughlin5 Tips For SEO vs PPC Advertising
These changes have too dramatically impacted the business world by varying the process people browse for products, both business-to-business and B2C.
About 10 yrs ago, businesses extended to their consumers by expos, Publish publicizing, and additional conventional selling techniques.
Nowadays, folks embark on their browsing experience through looking upon the World Wide Web and, more specifically, SEs, particularly Google. In order to continue competing, businesses’ online sites want to be establish upon the internet and in SEs.
Online companies bear the chance to leverage the web to extend to buyers effectively and cheaply with aimed content that buyers look for, not dismiss as rubbish.
WWW Online companies must:
• Aim more prime traffic to their web site
• Seize visitants for leads
• Win over leads into buyers
• Analyse the activeness upon their web site to optimise internet selling exploits
The Net has altered the kinetics of the business existence, demanding an alteration of Previous commercializing methods to fresh marketing processes.
Age-old Marketing = Outward Marketing With stale marketing know-hows, you're Seeking to grasp a broad audience and go for more or less a microscopic share (generally 1-3%) to react. Calculating this a different way, 97% of your attempted marketing is pointless!
Age-old Marketing ways include:
• Wrong sales
• Teleselling
• Tradeshows
• Seminars
• Print advertizing
• Direct mail and email
The conventional Sales Funnel: Prospects Customers Sales is in control
Modern Marketing = Incoming Marketing
The manner people buy has changed dramatically, people now are in the controlling position of what info they Encounter and how they get it. The World Wide Web and the Growth of web sites like Google, Yahoo, MSN, digg, and del.icio.us have changed the can-do of how people buy products online. People nowadays are often more apt to acquire data about numerous different sellers, products, and industries all by themselves without having to interact with your affliliation or business directly. So, this mean by the time they actually reach you, they're a great deal further along in the purchasing process but you know often less about them.
The Modern Sales Funnel:
Fresh Marketing techniques include:
• SEO (search engine optimization)
• PPC (pay-per-click) advertizing
• Blogging and leveraging the blogosphere
• Buzz marketing
• Targeted landing pages
• Conversion tools
• Sophisticated analytics
Purchaser is in command
Customer and sales share control
Business-to-business purchasers commence in Google The Google Search Golden Triangle
If you haven't seen on yet, it's a heatmap of a person's eye movent accross a Google search result.
What you see there is the phenomenon called the Google Search Golden Triangle. People center on the highest natural results that fall under a triangle shape at the top leftmost corner of the computer screen.
You should prefer to aim as close as possible to this Golden Triangle as top natural results mostly translates into further online traffic.
Natural vs. Paid Search
There are 2 varieties of search results: paid results and natural (or organic) results. Paid results are the listings that involve a payment to the SE in order to list the link for specific keywords.
The most commonly utilized type of paid listings is called PPC (pay-per-click), this is where you pay each time someone or a person searching online, clicks on the link in your advertizement. The cost grows with the competitiveness of the keyword.
Google AdWords makes up one popular way of paid search advertizement.
Whenever you are about to do paid search listings, do it right.
Natural results are assembled by SEs’ web spiders and placed according to relevancy to the search conditions. This relevancy is estimated by measures such as extent of keyword match and number of web sites linking up to that particular website. It's a great deal more useful to be catalogued highly in the natural results than in the pay-per-click advertizements. Welfares of existing in natural results:
• No cost - natural results are listed founded on the search engine’s criterion of your relevancy and quality, not your advertizing bucks, so you do not pay a “fee” per click
• Acquire a lot of traffic - most people click the natural search results, not the paid advertizements
• Acquire visitants with a greater education - research reveals those who click on natural search results To a greater extent often have a greater level of education
• More durable lasting rank and traffic - SEs register your placing history, helping you rank highly in the time to come, and they just reassess your place every couple of weeks or months, leaving you to maintain your place longer
Tip to Understand Google If you comprehend how Google functions, you are able to utilise them to your advantage.
Paid (PPC) Results (25% of Clicks) Natural Results (75% of Clicks)
• Free • More traffic
• Smarter people
• Longer lasting traffic which equals more money in your pocket
Saturday, January 17, 2009
7 Easy Steps to Serious Money Online
Im a divorced mum of 3 who until recently was also juggling a part-time shift working job to support my family. The job was not working out the shifts were odd hours which made daycare near impossible to book for the kids...So I quit my job - not much choice when it was costing more to work than I was making!
So I needed to make money and make it fast to keep up the payments of living expenses, I tried several money making programs and was disappointed each and every time, I made ZERO dollars. Yet I spent alot of cash in hope that relistically I just didn't have and the stress of this obviously did not help my situation.
Luckily before I gave up I stumbled upon my last attempt, well all I can say is I LOVE IT, it WORKS, my life is turning around right before my eyes. Which is making my kids and I very happy and I feel most relaxed about the future now knowing I can make ends meet, everyones circumstances are different but we basically need similar things in our lives - like MONEY!
So we can GIVE UP or GET BACK UP I chose to find a way and that is exactly what I FINALLY found:)
By following the step-by-step plan you'll be able to start making money. And, unlike virtually every other system out there, you can start earning without investing in any paid advertising. This is THE REAL DEAL, it has worked amazingly for myself and YES I have tried many others with no success so you can imagine how excited I am now I have found the ONE.
The videos you can access reveal the exact steps you can use starting today that will allow you to start generating money without the need of your own website. As easy as that it REALLY is...
There are many places that teach you how to make money online, but this is the ONLY place that will teach you how to build a full-blown six figure a month business on the internet and give you every tool imaginable.
Want to make some extra CASH right now?
Want something simple and explained fully so anyone can understand?
Want your Bank Accounts to EXPLODE?
Want the easiest 7 Steps possible?
Want a guarantee?
Want to be happy? (only you can do that, but I can help)
Want FREEDOM financially?
Want something easy to become a SUCCESS?
Whatever it is you want I realise to make serious money is on that list, this is exactly the RIGHT way, also the easiest :)
I would not advertise this if I did not TRULY believe it WORKS
Go ahead and have a peek, I believe it can be the answer to your dreams :) as it has been for me!
Keep smiling and believing:)
Thanks for reading
Lisa
What About That Mysterious SEO?
Evidence has shown that only the first page or two will usually be browsed before the person searching will click on a site or click off the search. So, your goal is to be within the first two pages, preferably the first page.
You might think that the more times you repeat the word or phrase in your content, be it an article or web page, the more chance you have of being selected when a search is done. But, that is not the case. If you put the word too often, the search engine interprets that as a negative. Your article or web page will be considered as not having good content, but just being “stuffed” with the key word to get the traffic. The goal you have to increase your search engine traffic will backfire. Instead of increasing it, you will get your site rejected by the search engine.
What is the answer, then? How do you increase website traffic without risking losing your ranking? What is the key to getting this free website traffic? How can you utilize search engine optimization to increase your website traffic?
The key is to watch the keyword density. This simply means the number of times the key word or phrase appears in relation to the total number of words. You need to have the correct density to optimize your ranking. Too dense, and you risk rejection by the search engine. Too little density and you lose that search engine traffic.
What is the correct density? How can you insure getting the right density? The ideal keyword density varies from search engine to search engine, and also varies by the popularity of the keyword. Keywords that are very popular can carry a higher density without danger of being considered stuffing. Less popular keywords need less density. Density should normally vary from 1%-7%, but popular keywords can have a density above 50% without getting a good ranking or being considered stuffing. Correct density can be had by including the keyword or phrase one to two times per page. Also, most experts recommend using only one keyword per page, and to have at least 250 words of content.
To insure good search engine placement, focus on writing good content, including the keyword as needed, and don’t focus so much on density. Make sure the content you write has benefit related to the key word or phrase, without focusing so much on SEO, and you won’t go wrong.
Article Tags: density, engine, search
Read more articles by: Guido Nussbaum
SEO is About to Grow Up
SEO - Introduction Stage - Starting about 1998
Companies who were around in the introduction stage often had to build product awareness and develop a market for SEO. In the early '2000's, many of our clients had just build their first websites. This was a significant investment for them and they thought that now that they have a website, the online sales would just flow in. Many didn't realize that they had just invested serious coin into an over-priced business card. Because nobody could find them.
At this point, there was little consistency in the product. And as the algorithm got more complex, the SEO offering varied more. Some companies were offering to "submit to hundreds of search engines" (some still are) whilst others were offering usability, analytics and site architectural input in addition to on-page and off-page SEO.
SEO - Early Growth Stage - we're still just at the beginning of it.
In the early growth stage, smart SEO companies are beginning to think about building their brand and to increase market share. Demand is increasing as more customers understand the benefits of "getting found". There is some competition at this stage but because the market is broadening so much, competition is limited and there is still a huge amount of camaraderie within the industry. 10 years into it, it?s easy to assume that our industry is more mature than it actually is. We've only just begun.
Customer Implication
Demand has already started to increase but it is going to skyrocket. And it's going to come from all types of business from very small customers to Enterprise type of businesses.
Up until recently, the neighborhood dry cleaner didn't care if someone across the country found their website because they deal within a 5 km radius got very little benefit from optimizing their website. Now as local search gets much better, those local business will become much more serious about the opportunities online
It is also likely that we'll see a lot of growth from Enterprise clients. These clients previously resisted SEO due to the complexity of working within legacy back-end systems. As technology increases and back-end systems become less expensive for more capability, we're going to see companies replace their antiquated CMS's with SEO friendly options.
Another change that this stage of the product life cycle will bring is in our relationship with the client. As SEO becomes a bigger part of the mainstream marketing mix, our customers will become more and more knowledgeable about SEO (we?re already starting to see this).
We'll move from having a sales / consultative role to being a thought partner. Our clients will have a good understanding of what needs to be done but they'll outsource it to us because we're more efficient at implementing.
Competition Implication
With high growth in revenues, low barriers to entry, and no certification required, the SEO industry is prime for attracting any and all new entrants. There have always been new competitors. But the face of our competition is going to change greatly. Up until now competition has focused primarily on small start ups and web design firms who decide to add a search component. Some stick around but many are wiped out with the next major shift in the algorithm. This phase of the SEO life cycle is going to attract better capitalized, stronger competition from many sectors. These new entrants are attracted to SEO by the potential for profits not by the fit with their offering.
We are already starting to see traditional media firms seek to protect their eroding revenues by grabbing a slice of the online pie. But WalMart has shown us that future competition could be anyone. And it will be.
No all new entrants are attracted by dollar signs. There are also companies that are feeling increased pressure to offer a more well rounded package. As the integration of offline and online marketing services increases, customers are putting more pressure on agencies to handle the full scope of their marketing spend including the online component.
Although we're already starting to see increased competition, many existing Search Engine Optimization companies aren't feeling the pinch yet because demand is also increasing. One implication of increased demand coupled with new entrants to the market is the impact on supply. We're starting to experience a shortage of experienced SEO talent SEO talent is a scarce resources. And this scared resource is not yet being renewed at a fast enough pace. Whilst some colleges are starting to offer digital media / internet marketing diploma, these grads know very little about what it takes to optimize a website.
Moreover, what they do know is limited to theory. It?s one thing to know that links are important to ranking. Its an entirely different thing to know how to effectively build links. So what?
Who cares where we are in the product life cycle?
Although we've already experienced a lot of growth, this growth is nothing compared to what we?re about to experience. In this next stage of the SEO life cycle, we?re going to see shifts in our clients, competition and product offering. Knowing that this is coming, will allow you to prepare. If we know that face of our competition is going to change from other small to mid sized SEO's to large Agencies and Enterprise size companies in totally unrelated industries then we can prepare for this by determining how we're going to differentiate ourselves from the new entrants.
And if we know that there is going to be increased pressure on skilled resources then we should be developing in house training programs now. The future is now. And it's only just begun.
Article Tags: competition, seo, stageRead more articles by: Jennifer O.
Friday, January 16, 2009
12 Dynamic Techniques To Attract More Online Sales
1. Write your own e-book, create your own e-book, or both. Offering a personalized e-book as a bonus item on your website is a great way to add value to your customers and gain their trust for the additional knowledge you provide them.
2. Create a members only access section on your website. Instead of charging for the exclusive service you can offer it as an added bonus to further encourage the customer to buy your products.
3. Dedicate a section of your website for free classified ads. Then you could exchange banner ads with other affiliate websites in your product niche and continue to build financially rewarding partnerships.
4. Provide two variations of your e-zine so customers can choose if they want ads included with their e-zines or not. Because some people hate ads incuded with e-zines and this will give them the option they’re looking for.
5. Publish your e-zine only on your website. Provide it free of charge as long as your prospects can subscribe to receive it. This will grow your email list, and it will keep you in regular contact with your customers which in turn will come back to you in more ways than one.
6. When you sell a product package you could also sell advertising space. You could sell banners, inserts, flyers, booklets, post cards, brochures, pamphlets, viral e-books, and online ads for digital products.
7. Offer daily or weekly cash give-aways or coupons for returning customers or as a way to bribe someone to subscribe to your newsletter, increase traffic, and create a buzz about your online business.
8. Provide free digital downloads like valuable e-books to provide useful knowledge that applies to your target customers in exchange for referrals. If a customer refers 10 of their friends you will provide a valuable digital download. A key is to always emphasize the value of what you’re giving away for free. If you fail to show the value, your customers may think the freebie is a piece of junk.
9. Dramatically and quickly increase the up the number of people who join your affiliate program by offering your product for free to the people that sign up for a very limited time. Make sure if you put a limited-time offer on anything that you enforce it to create that sense of urgency.
10. Let e-zine publishers join your affiliate program for free in exchange for free or discounted ads in their e-zines. This is a great way to get highly targeted prospect to your online store fast.
11. Don't always focus on making sales on first contact but rather focus on pumping up your lists of leads in your autoresponder because sooner or later as you send out your newsletter you will solve someone's problem. When you solve problems, you make sales.
12. Never give up. "Persistance is the most powerful force on earth, it can move mountains," Albert Einstein said.
articles by: Timothy McGaffinThe Truth About Making Money On The Internet
The first thing, I can not stress this enough, never, ever, fall for that ad you see, that offers work at home data entry for a small start up fee of $10-$20. This is the oldest scam out there. You send them the money and they send you an e-mail with an attachment telling you to place an ad, telling people to send you $10-$20 for a start-up fee. This may the weakest pyramid scheme I have ever seen. At one time, I was so desperate. I actually fell for this. All I can say is, learn from my mistakes.
As you already know, there are thousands of get rich quick scams out there, all of them claiming their method is the only fool proof method to make money. What they don't tell you is they did not start off by making the income they claim overnight. Some of them didn't even make the income they are claiming to make now. It is not hard to use the "copy and paste" technique as you well know. It is also not hard to use Photoshop to prove their point. Not one of them will tell you about Clickbank, PayDotCom, or Commission Junction, which are easily found by doing a simple Google search, along with countless, other affiliate programs that are out there. Herein is the secret to their wealth. They want to make a profit off having done this already and call it their own “secret plan.” This isn’t a secret plan and it doesn’t take you spending your hard earned money on what you can find out for yourself.
Do it now. Type in "affiliate" in your favourite search engine now and see what comes up, page after page of information. The trick is to find how to use these numerous sites to your advantage. You will not get rich overnight. It takes a lot of hard work and effort. There is no simple answer to getting rich quick. But there are methods, if followed, will work for you.
I personally have used these methods to make money. These are the ones that I have found to be the best out of the thousands of scams out there today. The authors of these programs and their techniques are among the best on the Net, unlike the scammers out there who will give you information about these affiliate sites for a fee. That is totally ridiculous in my opinion. The affiliate sites are free to join. The only thing I recommend is to get a bit of help on how to use these sites to your advantage and start making money. It is a long road, and it does take patience. There is no overnight solution, but if you are willing to put in the time and effort required it is VERY possible for your dreams to come true.
articles by: Belinda Domrady3 Keys to a Viable Online Business
Answer: High levels of competition as this is the lowest cost of entry into the market!
I personally spent countless hours and a substantial amount of money staring my online business. I was smart enough, I guess. I mean I did well in university and made a good living as a project manager following my stint in the academic ranks. The problem was that I was working too much and too far from home. There had to be an answer to develop a steady income stream entirely online. There had to be a way to generate a good income and stay close to my family. I was determined to figure it out.
I purchased, downloaded and read countless eBooks touting anywhere from $100,000 in 90 days to $1,000,000 in a year. Like the good student I was, I followed the instructions to a tee (save the cheesy, hard selling, red letter web sites) and nothing. I spent money on key words with Google, generally letting Google’s Key Word tools select them for me as I did not and do not trust the third party web sites claiming superiority to Google, and why would I! The return was, again, ZERO, ZILCH, NADA, NOTHING.
I eventually found that the key to online marketing and building a sustainable online business with a steady stream of income closely resembled those learned in my Marketing 319 class in university. The online marketing and business success necessitate three things:
1. Niche identification
2. Niche market exploitation
3. Niche identification
You will note the repetitious nature of the cycle. This, unfortunately, is not as easy as one might think. In the online marketing realm, it is often even more difficult than in the bricks and mortar world due to the millions of intelligent competitors. Unfortunately for me, most of these competitors had far more time on their hands for the research and identification of the niches and the subsequent steps.
There are a few tried and true ways to identify the niche and, more often than not, it involves the same philosophy the Wall Street Traders hold dear; follow the herd. At the Click Bank market place one can easily identify where the herd is going simply by sorting high gravity and popularity of the affiliate products available there. Just go to www.clickbank.com and select “marketplace” and sort by “gravity”. This will tell you what the rest of the folks in the herd are going after in a frenzied state. Now, not all of them are niche markets, but a bit more Google research can help confirm or deny this.
Now that you have your niche identification, comes the second step; exploitation. This can be a bit tricky or not depending on your field of expertise. I strongly encourage people to avoid attempts at exploiting niches in which they have no expertise as the efforts, save the lucky few, generally produce results commensurate with the knowledge. If you have a background and physical therapy or personal training, for example, you can easily exploit health & fitness niches. I like my beer and sweets too much to delve into this, so generally stick to exploiting things that I know something about such as general marketing and computer & internet software, add-ons, technical papers etc. Get started with a plan to exploit your niche, execute and move onto the next step.
The next step, of course, is to repeat the entire process. It is can be cumbersome, but trust me on this one, it gets easier with each repetition. Hey, it’s not easy, but few things worthwhile enough to ensure that you get more quality time spent with your family while you work from home are.
articles by: Jason Steph
Affiliate Marketing Solutions
Here are some affiliate marketing tips that could help you understand the process better and effectively make money with affiliate marketing.
1. Having your own content pages on the web, it can be your own website and it will be the better choice, or you can build content pages on other websites like social networks (siqudoo, hubpages and stamblupon ) but it’s very important to write your own content as reviews and information about the affiliate products.
2. Writing and distributing articles, this way you establish your own identity on the internet, and people can find out how expert you are. With article marketing you can generate traffic to your website or web pages and you can increase your web page popularity. In either way using your links in the articles and in the resource box of the articles must be natural and you must invite your reader to click on your links to have more useful information from you.
3. Choose the best affiliate programs in your niche market, if you are willing to put effort promoting affiliate products, it will be easier and more profitable for you to promote the best affiliate products read the Best Affiliate Programs (http://www.arabian-affiliate.com/affiliate-programs/best-affiliate-programs.htm) report to have an idea of how to choose the best a ffiliate programs to work with.
4. Use pay per click marketing to generate traffic to your review site, with some products you can directly send traffic to your affiliate links from PPC search engines but it’s also recommended to send the traffic first to your review pages to help your customers make up their mind about your products.
5. In most cases people love to compare products and compare its features before purchasing, you can do so for them in your page and buy giving them more products and information about those products and compare a few products and point out the best product. And by best products I mean the best for your customers not your bucket.
6. One huge mistake affiliates make is trying to hide, they don’t want their visitors to know that they are affiliates and they earn commission from the products. People do not care if you are earning a commission or not, they know that they will pay the same price for the product no matter how they got there, even if they went directly to owners website they still have to pay the same price. But people care if you are trying to help them or help yourself; so think about helping your customers and the money will come.
7. Learn affiliate marketing, knowledge separate us in the affiliate marketing business and any other online business. To be successful you need to learn, the best example is the Arabian-affiliate, when he decided to join the affiliate and network marketing business, he started learning the English language first then he learned everything about internet marketing, I know him personally and I know he spent thousands of dollars in the process, and he told me once “investing in education is investing in myself, and it’s the best investment you can make”. And he is now one of the most successful affiliates on the net, and he now has his own team working for him.
So invest in your knowledge, learn everything about your business and be updated of every new technology on the internet. Signing up for newsletters can help you get some of the information. Read this Home Business Marketing Report (http://www.arabian-affiliate.com/Home-Business/home-business-marketing.htm) and all the other report on the Arabian-affiliate website.
8. Build a relationship with some successful affiliates, get to know them and contact them, most of them hate being contacted by phones but you can use the e-mail to contact them, you will be amazed of how they can help you, however they will invite you to join their programs but they can be very helpful. At first when I started working with the Arabian affiliate I thought to myself “he is an idiot” and I am a lot better than him and I know better, but with the time I learned that he knows how to lead, how to think small and get down to the lowest level of knowledge just to grape your hand and take you up step at a time to help you go up and reach a point of success where you can be left alone and be creative.
9. Another tip I learned from him is: to be a salesman you can duplicate, you can learn exactly what other affiliates are doing like him and thousands of other affiliate; but to be a supper affiliate you need to think deferent, you need to separate yourself from others by being creative, and develop your own ideas and strategies.
10. Use the pen and the paper. Write everything down, your thoughts, ideas and strategies; no matter how small, irrelevant or impossible it can appear to you at first. Some times when you go to sleep you will think of something, write it down before you loss it. And save all of your writing and check it frequently. An idea that you thought of 3 months ago can now make you thousands of dollars, because then it seemed impossible to convert into action but now it’s more than possible and can be easily done.
People have no idea what kind of treasure is hidden in their mind and they have no access to that treasure.
Affiliate marketing is one of the few businesses that could not be affected with the bad economy, it’s true that every business and any individual will be affected from bad economy, but with the time affiliate marketing business proved capability to be the lowest. People will keep buying and keep trading no matter what happens, they can decrease and limit these actions. And buying through the internet had proved to be easier and cheaper.
To be successful in business you need to think as a businessman and treat your business with the respect it requires.
articles by: Jossef Salman