Marketing

Many people will tell you that to get your web site noticed you need to ‘optimize’ your site for the search engines. You are then led up a path where you have to keep changing your web site as the search engines change their ways of listing things. As fast as you ‘optimize’ your site, Google and the others have moved the goalposts, meaning you have to keep optimizing over and over again.

Now consider some facts. Most people in the world are not users of the Internet. Let’s repeat that. The vast majority of people who you want to reach don’t use the Internet. It doesn’t matter how well you optimize your web site, they simply will never find it.

Here’s another fact. Some of the best Internet marketers make most of their sales ‘offline‘. They sell their books, CD-ROMs and so on at seminars, workshops and conferences. Indeed, for many ‘Internet marketers’ these ‘offline’ sales represent the bulk of their income.

So what do these facts tell us? They show us that offline promotion is more important than online promotion. You may be able to optimize your web site to get high rankings in a search engine. But that doesn’t mean you’ll reach the vast majority of people who could buy your product or use your information.

This was confirmed recently by one study that showed most people go to an Internet address (URL) after having read it in a newspaper or magazine, been given it by a friend or colleague, or having heard it being mentioned by someone speaking at a meeting or on TV. In other words, it seems that significant numbers of people who get to your web site will do so having heard the URL somewhere outside the Internet.

You can get many people visiting your web site, even if you are not ranked highly by the search engines. You can do this in two main ways:

1. Write articles for use in regular publications - newspapers, magazines and so on. Always include your URL in the article and you’ll get millions of people to notice your web site address.

2. Speak at every opportunity. Make presentations to business clubs, chambers of commerce, local societies - you name it, you should speak at it. Every time you speak, announce or your web site address.

Although these are the two principal ways of gaining offline publicity for your web site, don’t neglect your business stationery, posters, car stickers and so on. The more your web site address is visible outside the web, the more visitors you will get regardless of how kind the search engines are to you.

Most of the Internet Marketers seem to think of website promotion as just submitting to search engines, directories, link building and advertising in ezines or banner exchanges.

It is a known fact that most people in the world use most of their time off-line. They read newspapers, magazines, listen to radio and watch TV, talk with their friends, neighbors and family. Not all the time is spent surfing on the internet.

To ignore the value of off-line marketing is to leave 65-70% of the money to be made from your websites on the table.

Some suggestions for creating an off-line advertising/publicity campaign are :

Let your local papers know that you have an unique product that will benefit the local community and you are able to help them save time, learn more and be more effective in their daily lives. This could lead to an interview with a local reporter or even with a national with your website product as a featured item and will drive people to at least see what the buzz is about.

At the very least it will create an awareness of your domain name or product in their sub-conscience mind.

Try finding a local business that is related to your product and offer them a discount voucher to give their customers for your product.

Take out small ads in local or niche magazines to advertise the product. Some ads are relatively cheap comparable to a solo ad in a main ezine.

Try handing out flyers with a special offer in the high street or find shops that would allow you to leave them on the counter for customers to pick up.

Try sending a fax broadcast to businesses that could benefit from your product. Some companies have lists of fax numbers and can send out the fax for as little as interview each.

If you can develop an unique twist or benefit of your product or service, then you could become newsworthy and even get an interview with a local reporter, who can write a better article than any you could put together for their readers or listeners.

Investigate the possibility of sending out Press Releases to the local media. Send them your product for review. Get a well known celebrity to endorse your product.

I am sure you can think of many other ways to use off-line marketing, other than sticking notes on lamp-posts to create an awareness of your site.

Good luck

Without traffic, a website will struggle to fulfill its purpose, whether it is to inform, entertain or to sell. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques are important because a website or blog that is optimized is more likely to be found on Google, MSN or Yahoo. This in turn leads to more traffic. It is in the selection of these techniques that the differences between white and black hats can be seen.

In the old Western movies, the one wearing the white hat was seen as the good guy; the one wearing black was the bad guy (and the one wearing gray was the shifty guy who did whatever benefited him). In the world of SEO, these terms have significantly different meanings - although some people take the moral viewpoint that the white hat is still the ‘good guy’. On the other hand those who follow black hat techniques would say that being black hat is about competing with the search engines while white hat is about competing with your fellow webmasters.

White hat is the term used to describe techniques and methods that fully comply with the Search Engine guidelines (or as some like to say it is ‘doing everything Google tells you to do’). For example, writing original articles for your site would be considered white hat, while the use of software to generate thousands of pages of content automatically would be considered black hat.

Of course, nothing is that simple in reality and there are numerous areas that would be considered gray. For example, using some form of content generation software to modify PLR (private label rights) material to generate pages lies somewhere between these two extremes.

Admittedly, automatically generated black hat sites can generate some serious short-term profits. However, the search engines are getting smarter with their algorithms and when they discover the use of black hat techniques will generally de-index the pages of a site so that it won’t receive any more traffic from that source. In particular, if the software being used for automatic generation leaves telltale signs, known as a footprint, the process of de-indexing can be rapid. The other main problem is that many of these techniques generate content that the search engine spiders love, but are useless for humans (although it can make for a laugh to try to read some of it).

White hat techniques focus on developing content that is original and useful to both spiders and people. The main drawback with white hat strategies are that it takes longer to reach your desired goal, but the results can be significant when you reach there. The other nice thing is that there is much less chance that you will be de-indexed by the search engines and that your site, and any profits generated, will be around for the long haul.

You have finished building your own website. You have introduced your company and presented your products and services. You have added propositions and promos to catch your target audience’s attention. You think you are doing everything “right”, but all your promotions have failed to produce growth in your new internet business.

When it comes to website promotion there are many options, but maybe you’re missing the “key” to the “best” promotion. Here are some things to consider:

- If you have started to promote your web site, keep it constant. If you promote your site with persistence, it will catch your audience’s attention.

- Be patient. Try each different promotion until you find the best.

- Free promotions such as search engines and directories would give your web site the deserved traffic you always wanted. Make sure to check your web site’s ranking to know whether or not this type of free promotion is right for you.

- Make a deal with other web sites on trading links which could help both web sites. Make sure to use words that could easily interest the audience.

- Find free classified ads web sites that could boost the promotion of your web site. Most of these classified ads web sites provide powerful marketing features and are an extremely fast way of getting your products or services on line.

- Free and low-cost internet banners are spread all through out the World Wide Web. Banners that pop-up at the top of a page or in a separate window would automatically catch your target audience’s attention.

Free internet advertising is a perfect way to make your products or services known to millions of prospective Internet customers. The probability of someone needing your services or wanting to buy your products is very high. There are free services out there that may suit your services, products and web site…you just need to find them! Go to work - Browse the internet for the best free internet advertising and learn how to take advantage of what you are able to find.

If at first you don’t succeed…try, try again! Analyze your techniques, keep track of your customers and learn what works. Then be ready to try new methods and repeat those methods that are already working.

It has been said that the best things in life are free and this saying also applies to the many forms of free advertising that are available on the internet. Give this form of advertising a try and you also may become a true believer in the power of free internet advertising.

Selling on Ebay is probably the easiest way to start your own home business. In fact, the reason eBay is successful is that they make selling so easy and inexpensive. Even if you’ve never had any experience with selling on eBay before, in a matter of minutes you can get registered and start buying and selling.  And if you are planning a work at home business you can become very profitable working as little as 10 hours per week.  For more information Click Here…

Is it still possible to make a good income with Google Adsense? After all, there was a report circulating this past fall that said Adsense was dead.

Adsense took a beating a short time ago when Google made some changes. But it is still possible to make some extra money with a Web site or two. It is even possible to make a good living with it.

What You Need

You need a domain name, a hosting account, and a niche topic. Preferably the niche is one that you know something about. That makes it easier to fill it with content.

If you want to make a good income with one or two Web sites then good content is a must. Your goal is to create a site that attracts people and keeps them coming back.

There are sites on the Internet, created by people just like you that are getting thousands of visitors a day. The content is written by the site owner who cares about the subject. They are passionate about the topic and write from their heart.

These sites have grown in popularity simply by word-of-mouth and maybe some simple search engine optimization tactics. Good content will get noticed, although optimizing for the search engines helps.

Getting Traffic to Your New Site

Before your site can become popular through word-of-mouth you need to get the first visitors to your site. How do you let people know about your site?

Free tactics include posting in forums or blogs and putting your URL in the signature, posting on Answers.Yahoo.com and again putting your URL in the signature, and writing articles and submitting them to article directories. These are all free, and they work very well.

Here’s a hint: Write an article each week for each site. Do that consistently and you can’t help but get traffic. It’s a great way to get backlinks, too, which is very important in getting ranked high in the search engines.

For further education (and for examples) visit StevePavlina.com and JackHumphrey.com/fridaytrafficreport. These are two sites that get thousands of visitors a day. They are using the blogging software put out by WordPress, which is free.

Blogs are a simple way to build a Web site. Anyone can start one, and then tweak it as they become more experienced. Jack’s site didn’t start out looking that cool. He’s done some major changes to it in the last year.

Steve’s site looks very plain, but that doesn’t bother the millions of people who regularly visit his site. They are coming for the content.

That simple-looking site is earning Steve several thousand dollars a day in Adsense, [tag[affiliate products[/tag] and donations. Yes, people actually donate to sites that offer them good content for free. Steve uses a WordPress plug in for collecting donations from visitors who want to give him money as a way of saying “thank you.”

A free forum that can provide a great education on the topic of Internet marketing for any newbie is available at Forum.DigitalPoint.com. Be prepared to spend hours there searching through all the posts that give good tips on how to make money online. You can also sign up for free and post questions.

The basics of how to make money online have been described here, along with some examples to study and a forum to learn from. Now it is up to you to get started.

Whatever you do, don’t put it off. You can’t earn money online by just reading about it. You have to take action.

Sounds like a virus and that is a bad thing, unless you think about how a virus works in your body or on your computer. Basically, once you get one, unless you do something to stop it the virus grows.

Now apply that thinking to , since growth is exactly what you want. Imagine if you write an ebook you give away to three friends each and they give it to… get the picture? It will grow like wildfire! Soon you have 100’s if not 1000’s of people exposed to your ebook.

With careful planning, your ebook just happens to have products and services you recommend, and just so happens you are an affiliate marketer. Simply include your affiliate links and watch the results. You will see growth from places where you have never been to!

Like most things, viral marketing has its drawbacks. People actually rob affiliate codes and modify them to rob your commission from you. And just like a virus, there are remedies. One is called cloaking and it’s simple as pie. There is cloaking software, there are page re-directs, and it all works like forwarding. What generally happens is you create these links like this:

http://www.domain-name.com/word

When it is clicked on, the link actually goes to
http://www.thelongeststringofwordsandnumbers.com/

Cloaking does two things; Hides the 3″ long affiliate links companies make you use, and hides the affiliate code from thieves, and yes they are out there and you have been warned.

But the advantages to viral marketing far outweigh the disadvantages. Just make sure that where you host your pages, or the software you use to build your web pages can do re-direct type forwarding.

Let other people spread the ebook around. Use an auto responder to deliver your ebook automatically. Offer it on your web site. Give it away; do not sell it because you will limit how many people want it. The more that get it, the more clicks to affiliates and the more sales you make.

You will need ebook or web site content, so unless you are a professional web copy writer, you may need some help. One best idea is to find base articles and re-work to suit. To have a starting place is a tremendous advantage and great time saver too.

So do not be afraid to jump out there and become an author or a webmaster, maybe even both. Ebooks and information are hot commodities. When you market them virally, nature takes over and it spreads.

Have you ever received an ebook from someone else that bought it, and the intent was for each reader to purchase the book? It’s quite natural to share and that is the beauty of viral marketing. Growth comes naturally and easily, but you have to get started now, it takes time to work.

Once the virus affect of viral marketing kicks in, the only thermometer you will be using is to make sure your margaritas are cold.

If someone were to ask you what the foundation of your Internet Marketing business endeavors consisted of, would you have an answer? If you find yourself hesitating for even a moment, then it may be time to review this age old concept and analyze how it impacts your online ventures.

From a very early age, we were all taught that a building is only as strong as its foundation. This analogy was usually used when teaching a life lesson - whether to enforce the importance of a strong foundation in matters of family, emotions, friendships, education, or business endeavors. And for brick and mortar businesses, the concept of a solid foundation is usually not lost on most people either.

When it comes to online marketing however, this principle often eludes Internet Marketing Professionals. The apparent reason is the vast amount of options and diversity of revenue streams that are available and the ease of their implementation.

Because it is much easier to institute an online business than a traditional brick and mortar, the importance of creating a solid foundation is often overlooked in the swiftness of the inception of new niche products or marketing efforts.

In Internet Marketing circles, you frequently hear a lot of talk about the importance of focus, and this certainly touches upon the concept of creating a solid foundation; but just being admonished to maintain focus is not going to suddenly manifest a solid foundation for your online pursuits.

The idea behind a foundation is to uphold the entire structure. When Internet Marketers are told to focus, what should really be stated is the importance of focusing on the foundation. Not just focusing on a given product, or a specific project or a dedicated niche. To the contrary, the foundation of your online business is the glue that holds your products, projects and niches together.

You don’t have to look far to see the effects of a lack of foundation. In fact, all you have to do is listen to the panic that ensues every time Google has one of their infamous algorithm changes. This is akin to putting all of one’s eggs in one basket and has caught many a marketing guru in the proverbial cross.

With Internet Marketing, the prospect of laying a proper foundation is a double edge sword. On the one hand, it is not advisable to jump from one project to anther; but on the other hand, it is critical to stay current with trends and technology. While trying to maintain a balance between these two, you walk a fine line in establishing a solid foundation that will be both dynamic as well properly grounded.

Whether you have been marketing online for a while or are just beginning to assess your place in the Internet Marketing world, take stock of the direction you are going and where it may leave you in the months and year to come.

For example, when choosing a niche, by its very definition it is based upon consumer demand. And that demand is largely dependent upon current fads, available technology, market need or some combination of all three. Regardless of whether you choose to serve that niche through email marketing, affiliate programs, blogging, or authority sites, in each instance you will be rising to meet the current trends.

So using the above example, a typical scenario would be to capitalize on a niche topic like MP3, podcasting, or something similar. However, the moment that technology makes these things obsolete and replaces it with the latest and greatest electronic wonder, the profitability of this niche would swiftly decline.

If however, you choose a niche such as consumer electronics or audio video equipment, then your foundation would remain much more solid and have the ability to stand the test of time. Establishing yourself as an authority in the consumer electronics niche — albeit through promotion of iPods, MP3s and podcasting today — gives you the reach for incorporating anything else that may turn to favor tomorrow.

These are the types of things that need to be considered when addressing a proper foundation for your Internet Marketing endeavors. Utilizing this method of reasoning will insure longevity and to do otherwise will insure only short term success at best.

Viral Marketing is all about giving away your own free product or service along with your ad copy (contact information, link, email, etc.). In turn, recipients of your free product are allowed to pass it along to their own clients, prospects, visitors and others as a freebie. This is a quick way to multiple your marketing at no extra expense and without extra effort on your part.

Here are some popular viral marketing techniques to follow:

1. Ebooks – Share your no cost ebook with your website visitors. Include a nice full-color ad for your most popular product line with links to your website and email. Tell recipients to share copies of the ebook with their own site visitors and other contacts.

2. Software - Share a trial or “lite” version of your software with your website visitors as a freebie. Don’t forget to include that ad for your most popular product line with links to your website and email. And tell recipients to share copies of the software with their own site visitors and other contacts. For help creating software, hire help from online bid sites like Elance.com.

3. Web Host – Offer to host small business web sites on your server at no charge. In exchange, place your own banner ad at the top of the site for viral marketing. You can setup a fold for their site and they can choose their own domain name and have it redirected to that folder.

4. Templates – Design your own website or other templates, include your own marketing information on them and give them away as free downloads or as an electronic package. Grant permission for recipients to pass them along.

5. Articles – Write articles about your industry. Include your website and contact information in the byline and grant permission for others to publish as long as they keep the byline in tact. Then people can use your contact on websites, in ezines, newsletters and other places where once again, viral marketing will speed the spread of information about your business.

6. Discussion Board - Set up a Discussion Board on your website with your banner ad attached at the top. And invite others to link to it and use it for their own sites.

In summary, by using viral marketing strategies, you can reach out all over the Internet with much less effort. See which methods work best for you and repeat them as often as needed.

Many mothers and fathers find that the financial demands of a family requires two incomes. However, when the cost of child care combined with transportation and other necessities of work end up voiding the financial benefits, some parents decide that the best way to make ends meet is to care for their own children while working from home.

Taking this step has both benefits and drawbacks. How are they best handled so that all responsibilities are met and you and your children are happy?

——— Have a Schedule

Creating a schedule for your workday is important in balancing the limited time available for work and children. Your children may not have all your attention all the time, but setting aside regular intervals of dedicated time for them will make your day, and their’s, more pleasant.
When planning your time, use it wisely. For instance, making meals could be done quicker if you do it yourself, but it will become an activity and entertainment to your pre-schooler if they are involved. Using evening, early morning and nap time for work is also wise.

Your children will accept their ‘free time’ without you more readily if they know that they do not have to pry you from your work to get attention. Using intervals of time for them will assure your children of your interest and love while enabling you to complete work as undistracted as possible.

——— Get Out Of the House

If possible, take time every day to get out of the house. A walk around the block, a trip to the mall, or a visit with friends.

It is beneficial for you to step away from the demands of work and it is good for your children to have your undivided attention.

——— See People

It is far too easy to get caught up in balancing work and children while neglecting your own needs. See people. At the park or with a neighbor, you need adult interaction to clear your head and refresh you.

——— Share the Load

Whether that means hiring outside help for some of the child care or housework, or just having a supportive mate who recognizes that working from home is as time consuming as working away, do not plan to work, care for children and do all the housework without assistance.
It is not easy to work from home with young children. The pros and cons should be carefully considered. However, if you feel it suits your family then your children WILL thank you. You will enjoy many aspects of your children that other parents miss and your children will benefit from knowing they always have a parent home for them.