You Know Youre Too Ethical When

Writen by Judith Kallos

Yeah, TOO ethical!? Lately, with some of the issues I've had to deal with in my day to day business activities it seems I am one of the rare few who is concerned about proper ethics and naturally is inclined to react with integrity.

The last straw was when faced with a dilemma of one of my client's competitors "cheating" for positioning online by using tactics obviously against the terms of service for most search sites, in this case Google. I explained that they had great listings (only one slot below the cheaters) and that our plan was for long term successes while the other guy's could end at any moment. I then had to listen to this client lecture that I was too ethical when I would not use these same tactics to help gain listings for their site. They then commented "We'll have to work on you!"

Work on making me less ethical? Work on getting me to agree to break the rules? It seems as of late my solid methodology of strong business staples, knowledge acquisition and long term strategizing seems to be making me a real PIA. See, I am not one of those who will say what a potential client wants to hear just to get the call back stating "send us a contract." Nor do I cater to the hype and online schemes of quick results or easy income just to book another billable hour. Silly me.

How about all those online auctions where the item's price is $1.00 only to find out they charge you the balance of the product's cost in "shipping and handling" fees? I sure wish eBay would nip that in the bud! Shipping and handling should be shipping and handling, not a combo of the product's price just so the seller can be listed as the least expensive – when in fact they are not.

I contacted one such seller online about this strategy and was typed to as though I was the idiot – "do the math" he said. Is everything online turning into the best man wins that figures out how to use deceptive practices or sugar-coat reality to the point of making your teeth ache just to make a buck? On second thought, don't answer that...

I've been doing this long enough to know all the red flags, hype and pitfalls. And some of them do work in the short term - with certain demographics. I also know the right way to do things and that if followed you will succeed - but you may not have the instant results all the fast, cheap and easy noise online claims is possible. When you deviate from the line of what is right, it will always hit you in the back of the head. Yes, sooner or later – sometimes later – but what comes around always does go around – even online.

I may have lost a client to an unscrupulous "black hat" SEO firm using trickery and linking schemes to inflate results for the near term. But for the long term, these issues as well as many others I run into are simply not in my character to cater to when I know what is right – and I won't.

You know you're too ethical when:

=> You give your clients the details and real-world view of what is required to achieve online success – whether it is what they prefer to hear or not.

=> You do not minimize what is involved in efforts, time or cost to reach their goals.

=> You are clear and realistic about your own skill set and only offer services you excel at.

=> You provide referrals to other juried businesses whose expertise is outside your realm of experience.

=> You charge a fair price for your offerings reflecting the quality of the product/service offered.

=> You point out to clients in detail when their goals are unrealistic and why.

=> You don't hide your product's actual cost in other "fees".

=> You have your terms, policies or modus operandi available online for client review 24/7 and you back them up.

=> You back up your work, offering refunds when necessary and don't charge to remedy oversights or errors on your part.

=> You do not buckle to clients or customers who demand you deviate from what you know is right just to get their business.

=> You don't e-mail anyone without their explicit permission to do so - period!

My business is all about ethics and integrity in an industry of hype and misinformation. I've not signed every potential client that has come my way, but that is O.K. I know that for those who are smarties and hire me that they made the right choice for all the right reasons – not because I was willing to compromise my ethics, cut corners or break the rules just so either of us could make a buck. In the long term, we both succeed.

It's so nice to be able to look at my cute little face in the mirror each day when I go home. For those who haven't been able to do that lately, add a dose of integrity to your life – you might find honesty refreshing and actually freeing compared to sinister deception for commercial gain.

"Never give in! Never give in! Never, never, never. Never -- in anything great or small, large or petty -- never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense." ~ Winston Churchill

About the Author:
Judith Kallos is an authoritative and good-humored Technology Muse who has been playing @ http://www.TheIStudio.com for over a decade. Check out her popular Technology Cheat Sheets @ http://www.LearnAndThrive.com

Two Steps To An Investmentfree Online Empire

Writen by Joseph Pattison

If you're like most of us, you're not on a budget that allows you to spend massive amounts of money on advertising for your Internet marketing campaign. With that in mind, let me show you a fairly simple two-step formula for profiting online with little or no investment.

How much does it cost you to write an informative Internet marketing article? The only cost is a little time, but essentially it's free. The key is to write as many articles as possible, not just one or two.

After you've written a number of articles, go ahead and submit these to the top twenty article directories, as well as the top twenty ezine article directories. Be sure to follow their submission guidelines. I recommend you format your sentences at no more than 60 characters per line to meet the requirements of these different directories.

At the end of each of your articles you will include a resource box that entices your readers to click through to, not your website, but your free blog! Remember how I told you this method would be investment-free?

For a general idea of what a resource box looks like, take a look at mine at the end of this article. Offer readers a benefit for clicking through to your blog, and they most assuredly will.

You can create a blog in minutes by going to blogger.com. Then continue to do what you've been doing already; keep writing articles. Devote half of your time to writing articles for submission, and half of your time to creating quality content for your blog.

On the side of your blog, create links to the five to seven best products that offer affiliate programs that you are signed up for. Include them under a heading that is most appropriate for your topic.

Include "sleeper links" to merchant sites that you can earn affiliate commission from. Don't create blog entries that are nothing more than product pitches. Make your blog entries informative, and tie in subtle endorsements to products that help to meet their needs.

For example, read the sentence a couple of paragraphs above where I told you that you could "create a blog in minutes by going to blogger.com". Simple, isn't it? As a general rule, don't include affiliate links in more than 30-40% of your blog entries. If you do, your visitor will feel like you're trying to constantly sell them.

Besides, if your blog entries are information-rich and informative, they will keep reading and eventually run into one or more of your affiliate links anyway! Chances are that they will likely click on one of your affiliate links located on the side of your blog page as well.

While you will eventually want to get your own website, if you are on a shoestring budget, this is the best method that I am aware of for profiting without spending a dime, or selling your own product. By creating quality content on a regular basis, repeat visits are virtual guaranteed, and the more articles you submit, the higher your affiliate commission will be!

**Attn Ezine editors/Site owners** Feel free to reprint this article in its entirety in your ezine or on your site so long as you leave all links in place, do not modify the content and include our resource box as listed below. Feel free to substitute your referral link in place of ours in the resource box. Thanks!

Wanna learn how to generate thousands of highly targeted visitors, absolutely free? => http://www.iwantchoices.com

Do Free Online Classified Sites Really Bring You Customers

Writen by Dale Calvert

The question is…DO FREE CLASSIFIED AD SITES REALLY WORK? The answer is yes and no. I know that is not the answer you wanted to hear, but it is the truth.

Let me try to explain further. All marketing is numbers! The more advertising methods you are using in the market place, ultimately the more website visitors you will have and the more sales you will make.

With that said, a few years ago when we rolled out our web cash leads program (http://www.WebCashLeads.com) we had associates using every method possible to drive traffic to their affiliate sites. There is no question that the best 2 ways to drive traffic to any website is with Pay Per Click Search engines such as Google and Overture along with solo ads in marketing ezines.

However FREE classified ad sites will work, provided that you are promoting a product or service that ADVERTISER can benefit from. Please re-read that statement. You must promote a product or services that A D V E R T I S E R S want!

What I am really saying is that not that many consumers actually visit a lot of the FREE advertising sites on the web, but a TON of Website owners see ads while searching to make sure their personal ad appears on the site. Does that make sense?

So if you can promote a product or service that website owners can use your chances for clicks and sales increase dramatically. I can tell you dozens of success stories from marketers that have used FREE classified sites to market their products and services. I can also share with you dozens of horror stories from associates who have wasted hours posting to FREE Classified Ad sites with little or no results.

So should you use FREE Advertising Sites are not? After all it can be very time consuming to post to these sites? We personally post to FREE advertising sites every week, and we make sales weekly. However we have a secret to our success.

We use a completely automated Classified Ad Blaster that allows us to submit unlimited free ads to over 50,000 classified ads sites with just a couple of clicks of the mouse! That is right we can submit our ad to over FIFTY THOUSAND free classified ad sites in less than 5 minutes!

With those kinds of "numbers" no wonder we get a lot of website traffic and sales weekly from FREE Classified Ad sites. You can work hard, or you can work smart. In all businesses time is money and marketing comes down to numbers. Our submitter allow us to go post on huge numbers of boards in less than 5 minutes, we think it makes much more sense to approach marketing with FREE classified ad sites this way, than trying to submit our ads 1 by 1, what about you? You can get all the details about the classified ad submitter we use, along with several other great promotional products at www.Tunza.TipForSuccess.com

We wish you much success in your Free Classified Ad, advertising efforts.

Dale Calvert is a self-made marketing millionaire who specializes in helping people become successful in their marketing efforts. You can find out more about the products and services he offers at http://www.DaleCalvert.com

Product Endorsement Joint Ventures Short Sweet N Successful Part 2

Writen by Chonticha Marijne

Once you've found an Internet marketer who is interested in partnering with you, you can give them access to the product for their review and lay out the rest of the plan. The split should be 50-50, after deduction of payment processor fees. Unless you own the product or it can't be found readily elsewhere, you should offer it at a significant discount. The list owner should send out the initial email and any follow up messages. As an experienced marketer, they will know how write an endorsement that is more editorial in style rather than blatant sales copy. The key is to offer the target audience help in solving a genuine problem, rather than trying to sell them a product outright. The people on the mailing list know and trust the list owner, so there are no spam issues to contend with and the JV partner does not have to disclose their valuable list to you. If you agree to offer the product at a reduced price, then it is highly recommended that you set up a separate web page so that you do not lose any orders at the regular price on any existing web pages.

Trust is required between the joint venture partners. To keep things above board, make sure that you provide proof of earnings, for instance by sending your JV partner a screenshot of your sales. If you select PayPal as your payment processor, then you should ensure that you use a separate email address that is unique to your JV to track your earnings. You can also set up a counter on the JV sales page to give your partner a rough idea of the number of visitors and possible earnings and you should also track the clickthroughs to the site with an ad tracking tool. When you've transfered your JV partner their share of the earnings, please make sure that they provide you with a receipt for your income tax return purposes.

If you're not yet convinced of the power of the joint venture, let's take a look at the most obvious benefits:

*A JV can be the start of a long lasting business relationship.

*A JV can increase your credibility if you choose your partner wisely.

*A JV is a low-cost, low-risk method to increase sales.

*A JV can lead to new customers, new leads, new subscribers.

*A JV can net you quick profits within a short time frame.

*A JV can offer you a new distribution channel.

Be sure to treat your joint venture partner as a valued equal and always think long-term. Satisfied partners are more willing to repeat the collaboration in future and good business relationships are invaluable! Provided you do it right, a joint venture will boost your online earnings with a vengeance. Once you realize how profitable and easy it is to set up a joint venture, you will want to replicate the experience over and over again.

Copyright 2006 Chonticha Marijne

Chonticha Marijne enjoys growing her online business from home in Gouda, the Netherlands. Her blog http://www.e-Abundance.com/blog offers articles, tips, tools and freebies for the Internet marketer as well as her popular report "106 Amazing List-Building Tips". This article is copyright © 2006 by Chonticha Marijne and may be reprinted in its entirety as long as both byline and copyright statement are included.

Write Your Heart And Soul If You Want To Sell On The Internet

Writen by Deanna Mascle

Yes, you are going to have to write to run your ebusiness. There is simply no way around it, but it doesn't have to be painful drudgery and you can do it even if you feel you lack writing skills.

You are going to have to write because one of the best ways to set your web site, blog, newsletter and/or ezine apart from the thousands of others your customers may experience is to get personal. Share your experiences and your life.

You don't need to share every intimate detail but sharing small glimpses into who you are and what makes you tick will help your visitors understand why you selected this niche -- and that will open them up to becoming your customer.

You are also going to have to write because there are some pages of web content that no one else but you can create.

Finally you are going to have to write to help market your ebusiness (more on that later).

However there is help available to you. You can hire writers to create content for your site, blog, or newsletter or you can use free content that is available through content directories such as http://NowLearnMore.com . You don't have to go it alone and even if you feel comfortable writing you might find a good selection of additional material can be a real asset.

I have been working as a professional writer for more than 20 years so obviously writing doesn't scare me, but the writing demanded by electronic media is different than that demanded by more traditional print publications. And these differences make it easier on those who don't feel as comfortable with the written word as I do.

~ The first difference is length. Most of the time you only need to write a few hundred words for a page, post or message.

~ The second difference is formality. Internet writing is more casual and informal so you don't need to worry about grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure as much as you might in other venues. Many readers are scanning so they won't even notice your small errors. You should strive for the cleanest copy possible but don't sweat the small stuff too much.

~ The third difference is personality. As I mentioned above personality matters. Let your heart and your interests dictate what you write about and the readers (and customers) will come. What you way matters a lot more on the internet than how you say it.

If you'd like to know more about "How To Start Your Own Ebusiness On A Shoestring" you can sign up for Deanna Mascle's free tutorial or read her advice about Small Business and Ecommerce.

8 Excellent Ways To Sell Your Backend Products More Successfully

Writen by William Johnston

A back-end product is a product that you attempt to sell to your customers after they have recently purchased a related item from your business. Selling back-end products is an extremely effective way of boosting your profits. It is a lot easier to sell products to those who have already bought from you than to seek out new customers. Of course, it is extremely important that you have a steady flow of new customers but it is also important to keep up with older customers and always be looking to lead them to make another purchase. If you make transactions on your website a good experience, older customers are very likely to look to do business with you again. It is your responsibility to persuade them to make that decision. Here are 8 ways to sell your back-end products more successfully:

1. When you ship the first product to your customer be sure to leave a leaflet all about your back-end product. Make the leaflet bright and colourful so that it is not thrown straight in the bin. Promote your back-end product in great detail, telling the reader how it will benefit them.

2. Give your customers a free surprise gift when they buy their first product. The most effective gifts are ebooks because they are very cheap to product and are very easy to distribute. Attach an ad for your back-end product to the free gift. Your customer will be in a positive frame of mind due to the free gift he has just received and so is likely to look at your ad.

3. After your customers purchase, take them to a 'thank you' page. On this page you could promote several back-end products you have. Make your customers feel good about themselves and so keep on congratulating them on making a good purchase. People like being told that they have made a good decision. If they are made to feel this way they might be persuaded to make another purchase.

4. Start your own 'customers' only ezine'. Let anyone who has made a purchase from your site sign up free to this ezine. As well as offering quality content in this ezine you could also promote your back-end product in every issue. This way, customers will see your back-end product offer on a regular basis.

5. If you sell expensive products then a great way to bring a customer to make another sale is by sending them a card on their birthday or on holidays. Put a small advertisement inside the card. Although sending a card sounds ridiculous, your customers will be touched by how you have remembered their birthday.

6. If you sell electronic products, like ebooks, then be sure to include ads promoting your back-end product within. You can be sure the reader will see your ads because they will be trying to extract all the information out of your ebook for the best value for money. If your ebook is well written and interesting, then your customer will be very interested in purchasing again.

7. Create a 'customers' only' area of your site. Fill this area with interesting content and some free downloads to really boost this area's traffic. Then, subtly add ads promoting your back-end products around this area. Be careful not to load this area with ads because otherwise customers will recognise this and will not return.

8. Send your customers a thank you email after their purchase and include your ad for your back-end product. Try to disguise the fact that your email really is an ad. Make it look like you are trying to do your customers a favour by showing them additional back-end products which they might like or might benefit them.

For more information on this subject or about making money online go to http://www.info-ebooks.co.uk

100s of free ebooks and software products are also available at this address. Gain free access to these by sending a blank email to:

infoebooks@freeautobot.com

Thank you for reading

William Johnston
(will@info-ebooks.co.uk)

How A Coaching Niche Focus Leads To Online Marketing Success

Writen by Kenn Schroder

Many coaches fail to market their practice online.

Here's what happens:

• They put up a web site, but don't get much traffic.
• Their web site doesn't convince visitors to contact them about becoming a client
• They try Google Ads, but fail to generate clients.
• They try to get links, but aren't sure where to go, and other sites aren't very interested in linking back.
• They try to optimize their site for search engines, but don't get very good rankings.
• They try to network in forums and discussions, but those efforts only provide minimal results.

Why do they get minimal results?

There are many reasons, but a major, underlying culprit is due to lack of a focus - not having a niche.

Having a niche focus means providing very specific services for a very specific target audience. This can be done in many ways, including selecting a specific industry to serve, targeting a geographical location, and choosing specific demographics.

For example, Kathy Malone is a career coach for people transitioning from military to civilian life. You can see that her niche is defined by people in the military. She gets even more specific by focusing on those who are transitioning into civilian life.

When you don't have a niche focus, your online marketing efforts suffer in the following ways:

• It's tough to know the right keywords to focus on to increase the chances of being found by searchers.
• It's hard to find an audience who will be interested in your services.
• It will be difficult to get links from other web sites because your general coaching practice isn't as interesting or unique.
• You will have a lot more competitors and substitutions (products or services that indirectly compete with you) -especially online where anyone can compete.
• When people come across your business online - through articles, postings, or searching - they won't connect with your message.

Taking your practice to the Web is like taking a big fish from a little pond to the ocean.

There is a lot more water you can swim around in, but there are also a lot more big fish.

The good news is you don't have to become a bigger fish. You can find the right pool of water where your business can thrive.

How a niche focus helps you online:

• It's easier to find the right keywords which lead to higher rankings on search engines.
• Your web site is more attractive and engaging.
• Getting links is easier because your web site will appear to be more unique -which is attractive.
• You will close more sales that come through your site because you are perceived as a specialist instead of a generalist.
• Your case studies & testimonials are stronger because they are more specific and relevant.
• If you advertise, like using Google AdWords, you will have more success because your ads will get more attention from qualified prospects and less attention from sub-ideal prospects.

Some Examples of Successful Coaches with A Niche

Juliet Austin of JulietAustin assists "helping and healing" professionals who are struggling to attract clients.

She says, "About 50% of my clients come through search engines. Usually, they begin by signing up for my newsletter and then hire me within 1-24 months. My site comes up on the first page of Google for most of my keywords partly because I have a focused niche. In general, having a niche helps bring qualified prospects to my site, so they are more likely to become clients."

Deborah Brown-Volkman of SurpassYourDreams helps senior executives, vice presidents, and managers who are overworked and are looking for a new job or career.

She tells us, "A focus on career coaching helped me optimize my site so I can get top position for searches in my field. Even though I do use speaking and networking to grow my practice, 65% of new clients come from the Web, 25% from referrals, 10% from talks and people I meet at meetings."

Mentioned earlier, Kathy Malone of FrontLineCoaching helps people who are transitioning from military to civilian life.

She explains, "... my niche focus helped me research and discover good keywords, military transition coaching. I built my site around them and now I have #1 ranking on Google, Yahoo and MSN. The inquiries I get from the site are already qualified as my ideal clients, so I enjoy a 100% conversion rate. Because my site is niche focused, people know what I do, what service I offer, and what it costs. I never have the stress of 'selling' anything."

For advice, she says, "... to develop your niche, it's best to start very narrow and deep - you can then expand from there."

While this article doesn't go into how to niche, here are two tips to get you thinking:

• Focus on something that you are passionate about. For example if you love working with high school kids who are trying to figure out what to do with their lives, then you may want to focus on them.
• Look at your existing clients for some hints. Which ones do you enjoy working with the most? Which ones can you help the most?

Establishing a niche focus is a great way to increase your appeal to prospective clients in your offline marketing, and it's almost essential if you want to make a big splash online.

Kenn Schroder helps coaches who are struggling to attract clients. He helps you use the Web to attract clients, grow passive income, and free up your most valuable asset - your time! Get your FREE report and FREE weekly newsletter on web marketing for coaches at CoachingSitesThatWork!.

The Long Sales Letter Should You Use It In Your Advertising

Writen by Dina Giolitto

If you're a web marketer and you've done your homework, you've probably come across the Long Sales Letter in your internet travels. Top web marketing experts like Yanik Silver, "The Copy Doctor" Michel Fortin and countless others use it to pitch their comprehensive instructional kits. You may have even made a purchase based on what you read in one of these letters.

Powerfully persuasive, the Long Sales Letter employs carefully targeted copy to draw the reader in, emotionally identify with them, create a need for the product, and incite them to make an immediate purchase. The Long Sales letter, in all its verbosity and sensationalism, gleams with promise. It appears the surefire way to make sales come pouring in.

But is it? Should you fork your hard-earned cash over to a copywriter who will create a hypnotic and riveting sales letter that goes on for pages and pages hyping your product? Should you grab for your credit card and buy one of those comprehensive teaching packets that tells you everything you ever wanted to know about writing a Long Sales Letter yourself?

Answers often come in the form of questions. Here are some questions I typically ask my clients:

What are you selling, and how much does it cost?

Does the product you offer on your website fulfill immediate short-term needs?

Or is it something that might help someone reach a long-term goal?

Items that satisfy immediate yearnings for a low price don't require a rousing speech to attract buyers. What these products do require is visibility. How funny would it be to receive a letter in the mail from the CEO of Bubble Yum, urging you to buy his product! Totally unnecessary; Bubble Yum does a fine job of selling itself on the "impulse buy" rack by the supermarket check-out. Music CDs and clothing are things that don't cost huge amounts of money, and virtually sell themselves. Your customer will know in a matter of seconds whether they want what you have. In such a case, skip the letter. Instead, showcase these items in a high-traffic area where they will be seen.

Who are you marketing to?

I did some work recently for an e-greeting company who had me writing a long and persuasive letter. I posed the question: "How much do we really need to convince people to buy these e-greetings? Either people will like them, or they won't." My client in turn made a good point: the sales letter wasn't needed to toute the actual product on the site. But it would certainly come in handy for potential affiliates and promoters. The sales letter was a handy tool that depicted us an intelligent group of people with a knack for selling - and that could very well be the driving decision for those who might want to represent us. So yes, a sales letter may actually work to your benefit, depending on the audience you plan to address.

Would your product or service be considered 'an investment?'

An investment is a possession acquired for future return or benefit. Items that offer long-term benefits cost more money. They promise a brighter tomorrow; an investment for the future. They also require more convincing to get people to buy them. I recently met a career coach who features a goal achievement system, in the form of an e-book, for purchase on her website. Her e-book is moderately priced for its category, and well-written in my opinion. Would I advise her to use a sales letter to pitch the e-book? Yes, but I'd make the letter an overview of her entire service offering and not just about the e-book.

The trick is to convince people that a career coach will help them reach their personal and professional goals, which in turn will do wonders for their career, bolster their confidence and improve their quality of life. If you can sell them on this broad concept, then they'd likely sign up for career coaching sessions, and at the very least purchase a goal achievement system e-book. With your sales letter, you can build a case for maximum investment, and at the very minumum, make a few supplemental bucks with a supporting product.

How much information can you fill your letter with?

As much as you have to build a solid argument. Start by openly addressing the customer's frustrations and fears. "Are you tired of throwing away money on lukewarm ads that just don't sell?" The reader is hard-pressed to disagree. Next comes the aspirations; the hope for a better tomorrow: "Imagine an ad campaign that can triple your sales at a minimal cost to your business!"

Pose your company as having solution; the secret key, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. "Watch your sales rate explode!" "Discover the secrets that successful marketers know!" They're not really secrets and nothing is literally going to explode, but such language creates a sense of excitement and urgency. Build your credibility with testimonials and success stories. "Bob Luken had this to say about our system:" (list testimonial). "Marla Thompson lost 49 pounds in three months thanks to our weight loss program!"

Finally comes the call to action: "Buy now, and get on the path to a more properous tomorrow!" "Click here to start saving immediately!" A word to the wise: once you make your point, wrap it up. Beware the hypnotic effects of repeated ideas and words, and endless streams of mind-numbing copy. Not everyone succumbs to such trickery! I speak for myself when I say that after four or so paragraphs, the reader is likely losing interest. At this point, one of two things may happen. They will scroll all the way to the end and click BUY NOW, or they will grow disgusted and leave your website.

How strong of a message do you require?

The flashy, all-I-need-now-is-a-megaphone Sales Letter doesn't work for everybody. Take the hospitality industry, for example, which calls for a bit more subtlety and finesse. You don't want to appear frenzied or desperate to make the sale, or you may scare away the customer. Strong language can do just that. Some Lengthy Sales Letters use what I consider marketing brainwashing tactics. The brainwashing comes when you start repeating what you've already said, but in a slightly different way. Or when you follow the formula I've outlined in the previous paragraph, but do it no less than 12 times in the body of your letter. This is a form of "loud" advertising in itself!

If you ask yourself the right questions, you'll get a better idea for whether a Long Sales Letter, or any other type of advertising strategy you might have learned about, is the best approach for your own company. Be honest with yourself during the questioning process. It also helps to "put your feet in the consumer's shoes." In my ten years as an advertiser, one thing rings true as far as I can see: the more aggressively you push your products and the "busier" the ads, the more lowbrow or "low-confidence" consumer you'll attract. As a general rule, when creating ads, less is more. So if you have a good point to make, make it in the best way you can, but don't go to extremes. If your ads are always long-winded, bold and frantic, you'll attract plenty of attention. But it may not be the kind of attention you want.

Copyright Dina Giolitto 2005. Use with permission.

Liked this article? Have more of the same emailed to your inbox each month. Sign up for the Copywriting and Marketing Ezine from Dina at Wordfeeder.com and learn to write search engine friendly web copy and market your web based business for free.

Three Core Reasons Why Web Site Content Increases Your Web Site Traffic

Writen by Kenneth Doyle

It is now a well established fact that people primarily use the Internet to search for information on specific topics to solve specific problems. Now (of course) there are other ways the Internet is used too.

However, primarily, the Internet is an information delivery medium. It is NOT a "sell" medium (even though that happens). It's simply a matter of identifying the mediums marketing "logic" to work out how best to use it to sell on it.

In essence people on the Internet are looking for content that is relevant to their purpose, need or problem. They typically are not looking for marketing ploys.

Now, there are a number of ways to increase this content, Including having a search engine optimization company provide you with keyword rich articles. There are three primary reasons why more web site content increases your web site traffic.

The first reason more web site content increases traffic to your web site is that content articles tend to be focused on a specific topic. This focus will naturally lead to the repeated use of a specific keyword or phrase. The natural and repeated use of this phrased leads to higher search engine rankings, naturally.

Search engine rankings are the way findings/ results come back to an Internet user when they search for a 'solution to their problem' via a search engine.

If someone searches for the term dogs they will get many millions of pages of results. The order in which these results are displayed on the screen depends on a number of factors including how frequently the term is mentioned on the site and where it is mentioned on the site, and the exact phrase the user typed into the search field on their favorite Search Engine.

In other words, if you get the SEARCH key phrases right, and you continue to create content focused on that topic, you will ALWAYS be on the top of the search engines for that particular phrase.

The Internet is a content driven medium, thus the web site with the most (focused) content within a specific theme will always win.

It's as simple and as complicated as that.

Of course there are other offsite factors such as back linking and RSS etc, but this is not the focus of this article.

Research continually shows that people tend only to click on the first ten results a search engine offers them. Increasing your web site content will help you become one of these first ten web sites (within specific key phrases). This means more people than you ever thought possible will be clicking on your site in no time simply because of your top ten ranking for a specific keyword or key phrase.

Not only will you be closer to the top of the search engine rankings with more content, you will also be indexed by more search engines. This could mean that something like ninety percent of all Internet users seeing your web site in any one given Internet session for a specific key phrase.

The second reason more web site content increases traffic is more complicated. If you have strong, well written content on your site, you increase your credibility with customers.

Suddenly you are no longer a company selling homemade dog food; you are somebody who can offer knowledgeable advice about anything a responsible dog owner needs to know including house training, leash laws, and sleeping problems.

This increase in credibility not only makes people believe what you have posted to your site, it also makes them want to stay at your site LONGER to read the rest of your content articles on a topic about which they are PASSIONATE and ACTIVELY searching for on the Internet.

The more keyword focused content articles you have on your site the easier they will find you and longer they will stay there.

Keeping people on your site as long as possible is the key to selling your product to them.

You simply have more time in which to pitch them your product or service (in multiple ways) and thus close more sales. Not only will they stay at your site longer when your site has more focused content they are far more likely to return to your site the next time they search the Internet for information that's within your topic.

For example, if you are selling refilled printer ink cartridges, and you have content on your site which relates to all things printers you have a far better chance that someone might stay to look at a few of your other articles on your web site.

However, the next time they need digital photo printing tips, chances are good that they will remember what great content you offered them during their last Internet session, and they will return directly to your site just to read more of your topic focused content.

This means you have their complete, undivided attention for an even longer period of time this time. Moreover, if they are returning to your site on a regular basis, chances are good that they will recommend the site to other users like their friends and relatives which will mean even more traffic to your site.

The final way more web site content increases your web traffic is that it increases the probability that advertisers and reciprocal link exchangers will be attracted to your site. Reciprocal links are exchanged by web sites that have similar interests. The more relevant topics you are able to list, the more chances you have of someone with similar interests attempting to link to your site.

This could greatly increase your web site traffic because not only will people be able to find your site through search engines, they may also be able to find your site through other sites. And, advertisers are looking for sites that encourage customers they want to do business with. More keywords will mean more customers for you, which can mean more advertisers for you, which can mean more profits and visibility for you.

No matter which reason you choose to add more content to your site it will always increase your web site traffic.

This can only mean good things. Continually adding keyword focused content to your web site is one of the best ways to grow your web business. You can have these keyword rich content articles written for you, or you can write them yourself.

Whichever way you choose to go here be sure that your articles are well-written. Badly written articles will do little to increase your web site traffic, and most likely will affect your credibility.

Kenneth Doyle Is A Writer And Internet Marketing Consultant, Find Out About His SEO Article Writing And Submission Service Gets Thousands Of Prospects To Read YOUR Offers, Here... *SEO Article Writing Submission Service*

How To Buy Advertising

Writen by Jess Huffman

Few things are as uncertain to a new home business owner as where, when and how to buy advertising. If you've started to research your advertising options you are already painfully aware of the costs involved. Costs that can, literally, put you out of business if not controlled. Yet, without some form of regular, effective advertising your business can stagnate and starve to death. How do you know what is right for you? In this article we'll look at some options, and some ways to measure effectiveness, that should keep you in the money and out of trouble.

Will Your Customer's See Your Ad?

Advertising is sold based on its reach. If a newspaper, for instance, has a circulation of 100,000 subscribers, ad space will be considerably more expensive than a newspaper with a circulation of 10,000 subscribers. The first reaches ten times more people. Reach can be confusing, however, and it is more accurately an indicator of selling price to the publisher than anything else. As the buyer you must first consider how closely the demographic profile of the publication's readers matches that of your customer before you worry about the reach.

Demographic profile may seem like a complicated concept. In this case it simply means the "people" (demos=Greek for people) characteristics of that publication's subscribers. Their income, age, gender, and education levels to name a few of the common demographics measured. Most first class publications gather this information and make it available as part of their sales presentation. Smaller, or less professional publications may have incomplete, or even no, data. If you can't get, or determine, the demographics of a publication's readership its probably a good idea to pass on it as an advertising medium for your home business.

Cheap Isn't Necessarily Inexpensive

Often new home business owners see cheap advertising, especially in smaller publications like community newspapers, or association newsletters, and think its a good buy when compared to ad space in larger publications. While the two publications in question may look like apples and oranges, there is a way to convert the apples to oranges and make a reasonable comparison. Simply divide the cost of the advertisement by the total number of projected readers. This will give you a "cost per view" of your ad in each publication.

Here is a simple example of the conversion at work. The Daily - circulation 100,000 -offers you a business card size ad, for one week, at $1000. The Community Weekly - Circulation 5,000 - offers you the same size ad, for one issue, at $50. Which is least expensive?

If you divide the $1000 cost of The Daily's ad by 500,000 (thats 100,000 circulation times the 5 days it will run), you get a projected cost of $.002 per view. If you divide the Community Weekly's cost of $50 by the 5,000 circulation (the ad runs once - its a weekly) you get a cost of $.01 per view. The $50 ad is actually five times more expensive.

This is a hypothetical example, of course. There are many things to consider like the fit of the Community Weekly's demograhic compared to The Daily, and the fact that the Community Weekly will likely have a few more views than the initial 5,000 subscibers. That's because it will sit in a few waiting rooms until the next issue comes out, but this isn't usually enough to make a big change in the cost per view.

Tracking

The most essential tool in your analysis of ad price and effectiveness is tracking. The cost per view, and demographic match are crucial in making your initial decision to try a publication. The acid tests for continued advertising in any medium are cost per call, and cost per sale. Two important measures you can't get without running some test ads and carefully tracking the response rate for each advertisement you run.

There are many ways to track response rate. The ad can request that caller ask for a specific individual by name. When a call comes in for Mr. Bishop, for instance, you know they saw the advertisement in The Daily. You can ask that orders be directed to a specific department. When an order arrives addressed to "department CW100" for instance, you know that order came from your ad in the Community Weekly. A less exotic, but very effective method, is to simply ask each caller, "Where did you hear about us", and then enter the answer in your tracking software.

Once you have your tracking results use the same type of calculation you emplyed in determining the cost per view before you ran the advertisement to arrive at a cost per call and cost per sale. Divide the cost of the advertising by the number of calls it generated to get the cost per call. Divide the number of closed sales that originated with the ad by the cost to arrive at the cost per sale.

In the end, it is cost per sale that matters. No matter what the cost per view, or cost per call work out to be, your best advertising medium will always be the publication, radio staion, or TV station that provides the lowest cost per closed sale. You can't find that out, however, without running a test ad campaign and good tracking.

Jess Huffman is a Business Consultant and Coach working from his home office in Calgary, Alberta. Jess has helped hundreds of people successfully start their own work from home businesses.

http://www.home-business-and-entrepreneur-tools.com

How To Sell More Of Your Products Online

Writen by Biana Babinsky

If you run an online store selling products, such as tools, jewelry, makeup, gifts, clothing, or any other products, you make more money when you sell more products. Since the objective of any business is to make money, online store owners know that the more products they sell, the more money they can make.

"How can I sell more of my products online?" is one of the most common questions I hear from my clients is. Here are several tips that will help you sell more of your products online and generate more revenue:

- Show off the products in the best possible light. When people buy a product, they want to know what the product looks like. If someone is buying a couch, they want to be able to see if that couch would fit with the rest of their furniture before actually buying it. If someone wants to buy a piece of jewelry, they want to see what the jewelry looks like before buying it.

Therefore, the best way for you to convince your web site visitors that your products are right for them is by showing the products in the best possible light. Have high quality, detailed pictures of your products on your web site so that people are convinced that they need your product as soon as they see it.

- Make your web site easy to use. If someone comes to your web site to purchase your products, make sure they can find exactly what you are looking for. Your web site should have clear and concise navigation that is exactly the same on every page of the web site.

An easy to use navigation ensures that your web site visitors find what they are looking for on your web site and purchase it.

- Optimize web site for search engines. Another good way to drive more customers to your web site and increase your online sales is by optimizing your web site for search engines. Search engine optimization is the process of modifying web page content and meta-information to improve the search engine ranking of the page. Meta-information includes certain HTML tags (title, heading, emphasized text, keyword and description meta-tags), as well as the internal (links between pages on the same site) and external (links between pages on different sites) link structure of a web site.

Optimizing your web site helps you improve your search engine rankings and drive more targeted traffic to your web site.

- Create a blog to promote your business. A blog is your business diary, in which you share the information about your business, your new products, different ways of using your products and much more. Your blog is an excellent tool to let the world know about your business and your products, to connect with potential customers and promote what you have to offer.

In order to bring the most online traffic and make money with your blog, make sure that your blog consistently and create blog posts that are of interest to your past as well as potential customers. Regular posts that are interesting to read is what will keep your readers coming back and buying from you.

The Internet is a great place to sell your products. When you know how to market your business online, you bring more web site traffic, get more product sales and make more money.

Biana Babinsky is the online business expert and author who has taught hundreds of people how to sell their products and make more money online. Learn all of her online marketing secrets in her Complete Online Marketing Course at http://www.CompleteMarketingCourse.com

Link Popularity Reports

Writen by Henry James

As link popularity is one of the most important tools you can adopt to raise your search ranking, you need to take apt steps, from time to time, to stand ahead your competitors. And the one way, you can assure the effectiveness of your link popularity, is by getting your link popularity reports made. But how can you get them made? Link popularity reports can be achieved with the help of certain software and services.

Now to understand why you need to develop link popularity reports, you can continue reading this article further.

The link building reports are important as they make you aware about your link popularity for different search engines. There might be a case where you get the highest link popularity for one search engine but the number is not that good with the other search engines. It would certainly be horrendous for you. So, you should always avoid putting you in any such situation. Thus it is paramount for you to be always alert of your link popularity situation among the top search engines. And by getting link popularity reports made, you would certainly get a complete access to the total information of links on your website.

It is equally important for you to understand the various aspects of link building before you hire any services for getting these reports made for you. The link popularity of a website depends on a number of quality links it has. A website can have in-bound, out-bound or reciprocal links. Out of these, inbound links are the most important ones for the effective link popularity. All the major search engines give you good page ranking according to the high number of inbound links.

Similarly, you can also exchange reciprocal links with the various websites related to your business to raise your link popularity and achieve the targeted traffic. Perhaps, the exchange of links is the best internet marketing tool for quick link building. Moreover it is usually free of any cost.

Whatever links you chose for your link building, the key remains that the links added should be the quality ones. They should be optimized well for attaining the top page rankings among the major search engines.

Even after you have optimized your website aptly, you need to get the links reports made. For, these link popularity reports would make you aware of all the types of links you are connected to. You can engage a service provider for this job. The service provider will give you complete details of your links. Time-to-time reports will keep you abreast with the latest developments in the cyber world.

Many times your link is added to some other websites without your permission. You are fortunate to get the information about all the websites linking to your website with the help of link popularity reports software. The software confirms the number and domain names of the websites linking to your site.

The market is loaded with some great link popularity reports software for you. The software can be purchased from a number of software stores. You can order it online as well by submitting the online purchase form. In fact the online purchase will also offer you with good discounts along.

Internet is a huge network. If you do not make persistent efforts on your own, you are likely to be lost in this big cyber world. Link popularity reports provide you a great indication of the internet presence of your websites. So do not lag behind and always keep you well-informed.

About The Author
Henry James Discover advanced link building and link popularity tools and resources as a Member of: http://www.Link-Advantage.com.

Ghost Writer Services How To Guarantee That Your Investment Pays Back When You Hire These Services

Writen by Christopher Kyalo

Ghost writing services are quite affordable online. Unfortunately this does not guarantee that everybody who hires ghost writer services will end up happy at the end of the day. In fact many webmasters and blog owners usually end up bitterly disappointed at the end of the exercise.

To avoid this disappointment, there are a number of key things one should always look for when hiring ghost writer services.

Ghost Writer Services Must Be Based On Sound SEO Techniques

Just study a number of successful web sites and blogs and you will quickly find that behind the success of most will be sound SEO techniques in the generation of all content at their sites. Ghost writer services that ignore SEO (search engine optimization) techniques like the use of keyword phrases capable of attracting search engine traffic are already greatly handicapped. This by itself is such a great impediment that chances of success become very slim if any.

Ghost Writer Services Must Be Based On A Lively Writing Style

If your writing is not interesting, you will never make an impact online. Hiring ghost writer services from online writers whose writing style is visibly rigid and boring will quickly end up in regret and unfulfilled objectives for you. Even if good keyword phrases are used in all the content, traffic that ends up on your site will quickly reach for the "back" button and click their way out of your site or blog pronto. You will quickly find that any investment you have made in generating traffic like using Adwords, for instance, will not pay back or come anywhere near giving you a decent return on your investment.

Ghost Writer Services Must Incorporate Effective Traffic Generation Techniques

Good ghost writer services will constantly seek to incorporate effective traffic generation techniques. For example some articles will clearly be written with link-baiting objectives in mind. Generating links to a site is a very effective traffic generation strategy that will pay for years and years. Thus guarantying a massive return on every penny you will end up spending on ghost writer services.

Christopher Kyalo Is A leading web content provider who provides all the key traffic generation ingredients in all his work for clients. He is occasionally available to handle new client assignments. Get the details on how you can contact him at his content provider blog. Or learn all the inside secrets of high traffic generating content from his free newsletter. Subscribe now by sending a blank email to articlesrgold-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Having The Right Attitude And Start Becoming A Problem Solver

Writen by Rich Hamilton, Jr

Do you really want to make money online?

Do you want to develop a business which can make money for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week almost automatically?

Of course you do!

Why else wouldn't you be reading this ebook right now.

Many others have created full-time incomes while only working part-time online. It is within your grasp. Plus, many of them, including myself have started with little or no money!

The down side to this is, many of you will need a change of attitude before you will be able to reach your goals.

Even with the right information and the right foundation, many people have still failed in their online ventures just because they did not develop the right attitude. Your attitude is essential when achieving success and your dreams. Which brings me to an old statement "Your Attitude determines your Altitude," pretty much says it all!

If your psychological mindset is poor, than your outlook in general will always be poor. The negativity will show in everything you do. No matter what you are doing, your results will be poor and your business will do poor.

Having a positive mentality about yourself and about your business is a part of having the right attitude, but that is not what I want to focus on in this section. I want to focus on your reasons and vision for your business.

If your vision for your business is to just make enough money for a little extra income or to just produce a full-time income for yourself. You are severely limiting yourself to the real possibilites. If this is you, you need a change of attitude. Don't limit yourself! On the Internet, "The only limitation is your imagination"!

The most successful people in business are the ones who look for problems and develop solutions to cure their problems. They have a vision which is bigger than just to make a little money. They have a vision to solve problems for others.

You need to learn about powerful internet marketing strategies to expose your product to hungry visitors and learn how to write killer sales copy. Yes, that is what you need to know how, if you want to produce sales. You need to ask yourself a few questions.

What is it that I'm selling?

Are you selling just another product?

Are you selling a solution to people's problems?

Are you just in business to make a little money or do you honestly care about helping other people with their problems?

Now you are probably wondering where a good place to search for problems is. Well there are many places to do your research such as forums, discussion boards, newsgroups, and even eBay.

When you get to these places to do your research, here are just a handful of some of todays problems to give you an idea:

• People are frustrated with the amount of traffic on their web site!

• People are frustrated with the amount of time they spend with their family or friends!

• People are frustrated with learning how to submit to the Search Engines!

• People are frustrated with learning how to use certain software!

• People are frustrated with not being able to produce affiliate sales!

• People are frustrated with not being able to produce sales!

• People are frustrated with weight loss!

• People are frustrated with health problems!

Look for these types of problems and frustrations and develop or find products which have the answers. In other words, don't just try to think of new ways to make money. Think of ways to solve more problems for more people! Once you've learned the marketing side of the equation, the money will start coming in.

The best part about it is that all you have to do is change your attitude and start being a problem solver. What problems are still out there in your specific market? What problems do people have when they order from your competition? What can you do to make your product or service a better answer to people's needs?

When you ask yourself these types of questions you are often taking the first step to success. Once you have recognized the problem and developed the right attitude, you can start looking for or creating the solution. You have the question, it's time to develop the answers.

About The Author

Rich Hamilton, Jr is the CEO/President of www.ElitesMarketing.com a.k.a. Elites Marketing, Inc and the Author of: "Inside Internet Marketing" www.InsideNetMarketing.com.

Teaching To Build Your Optin List

Writen by Matthew Coers

If you are in the business of selling online, then you are in the business of building an opt-in list and remarketing. Many website owners find that collecting opt-in subscribers is extremely expensive and involves running advertising or renting e-mail lists.

These methods can be effective – especially if you happen to sell high-end products with a very limited market size. But regardless of your organization's size or the cost of your products, finding more cost-effective ways of generating leads is extremely important. For many website owners, providing free information products is an excellent way of improving opt-in subscription ROI.

Teach Them And They Will Come

The single most popular commodity on the Internet is information. People are starving for it. In fact, information is so important to many people that they spend an enormous amount of time educating themselves online so they can stay informed. Many view this form of continuous education as a competitive advantage they have over their peers, and feel that without it, their careers would suffer.

Here's an example: A CEO schedules a meeting with his technical staff to talk about installing a Voice over IP (VoIP) system in the office. Because he likes to do his homework, the CEO spends an hour or so preparing for the meeting by doing some quick research on the Internet. He searches for "VoIP" on Google, and finds a ton of information about the different types of technologies. With this information he can develop a game plan for his meeting.

The company (and website) that does the best job of educating him about VoIP stands a very good chance of getting an opportunity to bid on the project when it gets approved.

In this case, the website doesn't just create a lead for the VoIP company. It actually does something more important – it teaches the prospect to value the unique selling points of the company that provided the educational material. And in the case above, it actually influenced how the project was going to be presented to the prospect's management team.

Later that week, when a competing company calls on the prospect to try to get an appointment, the CEO will be prejudiced against their solution because it does not possess the qualities he has learned to value from the first company.

Understanding this dynamic is crucial to building your opt-in list, and it should go a long way in determining your overall online strategy. Effective Methods to Teach Online Depending on your industry, there are a number of ways you can effectively teach online. Following are a few rapid-fire methods we have used in the past that brought great results.

White Papers – Inexpensive to produce and with an established distribution system on the Internet, white papers are a great way to get the word out about your organization's products. These types of publications are primarily used in more technical industries such as software, hardware, medical, and engineering. A couple of distribution channels are: www.bitpipe.com and www.knowledgestorm.com, but you can also distribute them on your website.

Video Tutorials – An emerging method of teaching, video streaming allows organizations to not only teach a prospect about the industry, but also to demonstrate their products. Currently, video tutorials are a favorite among computer software and hardware manufacturers, but their use is rapidly spreading to other areas such as marketing and healthcare. Video tutorials can be marketed through Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns on search engines as well as a number of new online video search services (Google has recently released a service here: http://video.google.com/).

EBooks – Because they are relatively inexpensive to produce, eBooks are a favorite form of lead generation for those website owners who have the talent or resources to write long-form text. Ebooks are generally viewed as more educational than white papers, and so may be viewed as a more valuable resource to some people. Ebooks do not need to be hundreds of pages long. In fact, most eBooks are between 50 and 100 pages, and can be promoted through dozens of online directories and distribution portals.

Web-based Tutorials – The most flexible method of delivering online content is on your website itself. Using this method, you create password-protected areas that require surfers to register in order to access your information product. The primary benefit of web-based content delivery is that the content can be easily updated at any time. Web-based tutorials are ideal for industries and topics that change often, or where the product itself is delivered via the website. Web-based tutorials can be promoted on your website, through PPC ads, and via your corporate newsletter.

If you are in the business of selling products or services online, then it could actually be said that you are also in the business of educating your market. When it comes to your industry, you are the expert. Your prospects are the students, and they have a vested interest in understanding as much as they can about how they can use your products and services to improve their businesses.

The companies that build their opt-in lists fastest are usually the ones that do the best job of educating their prospects about their industry. By following this method, you gain a valuable database of leads, and the prospect base learns everything they need to know to be able to purchase your products confidently.

Matthew Coers has 11 years of experience in building profitable websites for customers and clients, and he is the founder and president of ProfitChoice.com. Visit ProfitChoice.com and download the free report, "7 Days to Website Success" to learn seven low-cost strategies that can help you quickly boost your website's performance.

3 Reasons Why I Never Delete Spam Immediately

Writen by Marina Smiley

All of us hate spam and all of us have our own methods of fighting it. Unfortunately, all the methods in the world cannot help us to succeed completely. A long time ago, I heard the expression, "If you can't beat them then embrace them".

Ok, so what has this expression have to do with the spam problem? In my opinion, a lot! I decided to use the spammer's knowledge for my own interests instead of just being frustrated and get upset looking at all my emails full of junk.

Every morning when I open my email, I quickly look through all the spam. Why am I doing this instead of delete them immediately?

Reason 1:

In most cases spammers send their letters trying to promote very profitable niches within the Internet. Actually, these niches are so profitable that spammers are even willing to put themselves at risk. They chances and violate the law because of the profit that they can derive from these niche markets.

So why not pay attention to these areas that are so heavily promoted by them, especially if these people already did all the dirty work for you? They have already done the research and found out the ones that are most profitable.

Reason 2:

I have few web-sites in different business areas of the Internet and always look for nice affiliate programs to enrich my sites. If the subject of the spam letter is related to one of my web-sites in some way, I always try to find the time to check it out. And you know what? These sites often have very interesting products and generous affiliate commissions, that's why they were chosen by spammers! It is not the website owner's fault that they become the target for spammers.

Reason 3:

Spammers know that everybody hates them and that people try to delete their messages immediately, so they have learned how to make their letters and headlines catchy!

Instead of buying loads of e-books on "how to", you can learn these techniques for free just looking thru all the headlines of junk letters.

Am I trying to protect spammers or trying to find positive signs in their activity? Absolutely Not! I am sick and tired from these folks, the same as you, but if I cannot escape from them at least I can use them. Remember what that wise expression said? "If you can't beat them then embrace them".

Marina Smiley is the author of the popular eBook

"Cheap Ticket To Russia" - tips for budget travelers to Russia.

Information Is The Hottest Product On The Market

Writen by Hans Hasselfors

If you have been researching or involved in online business for very long, you have no doubt seen a multitude of offers for "eBooks", books, reports and training course on every subject imaginable.

Why? Because information is the hottest product on the market! (At the foundational level, it's actually the Only product, but that's another article.) Information cuts straight to the root of all selling, which is answering the customer's question: "What will this product do for me?"

There's another reason, though. Pure information is a product that doesn't require a huge financial overhead to produce, (other than the hard knocks you got in gaining the experience and information), and is easy and relatively low cost to deliver to the customer. That is what makes it such a great product for us, as entrepreneurs, to offer.

Everyone has life experience, training, and skills that others don't have. Everyone knows something that others want to know, or can do something that others want to learn. That's how I know you have an InfoProduct inside you, everyone does. Your first assignment is to decide which of your many gifts you are going to offer to the world!

Does that mean you have to be able to write a book? No. Not necessarily. I'm talking about what is known as USP...Unique Selling Position. Your USP might be that you have detailed knowledge about someone else's product that you are selling as an affiliate. It could be that humorous way you present the information you have collected on some subject of interest, or the fact that you offer the best customer service available for the service you offer. You may offer the same products that others are also selling, but find your own unique market for them.

But whatever you decide to use for your information product, your USP, you need to find one. If you were to research the online marketers who are honestly making the money they claim to be earning online, you would discover that they all have a USP. Your USP IS your product, however you package and deliver it.

If you are working a Multi-level Marketing program or one of the BIBs (Business in a Box), you are not left out of this concept, but you may have to work harder to figure out how to be unique. You can still go for the niche marketing idea. Find a group of people who aren't usually reached by these kinds of businesses, or aim your advertising at people in the countries that are just now going online.

You may, of course, actually write a book, eBook, or training course and sell it. Many are making good money doing just that. The list of helpful software and online publishers is growing every day. But even if you write your own product or design your own software, you will still need a well-thought-out USP to stand out in the crowd. It's like your business plan -- you need a firm foundation before you can build your future online success.

This Article Was Published By Hans Hasselfors, from SubmitYourNewArticle.com. Get the net working for you. Join a community of like-minded authors and publishers and make your living online. Become a member of our article directory: http://www.SubmitYourNewArticle.com

Internet Marketing Give Me Immediate Gratification

Writen by Virginia Bola, PsyD

When we buy physical items on line, there is obviously the need to wait for delivery. Make it as fast as possible, surely no problem in a world where things have to "absolutely, positively, get there overnight."

And forget those shipping charges and express delivery upgrades. Are you aware that the biggest discouragement to online buying is shipping costs? Increase the price of every item by a dollar and make shipping and handling free. I'm not going to not order something because it's a dollar or so higher in price and the lack of hassle on shipping will make me purr with satisfaction.

Even on an item that must be shipped, give me something immediate. Not just an e-mail that my order has been received but some information about what I'm getting, how smart was my decision to order, and where I can get additional information about related items that might interest me.

If I'm buying a product that doesn't need to be shipped, such as a report or book, give it to me now. As soon as I've paid, or taken you up on a free offer, I want to right click, download, and read. I don't want to have to go into my inbox and click to activate something.

If I receive a zip file that opens up to show a bewildering array of mysteriously labeled icons, I want clearly labeled instructions so I can go there first and learn what all the other stuff is. If it's "so easy to use a child could do it" software, don't make me feel stupid because I can't figure out what to do next and the instructions are vague or non-existent.

If it's a marketing report, I want to be able to read it first and decide whether I like it, not be immediately confronted with a page urging me to brand the book so I can resell it - how do I know I want to be associated with it before I've completely read it?

If you're giving me a mini-course over a period of days, make sure each lesson is totally self-contained or indulge my impatience by allowing me to click onto the next chapter. If I'm interested, I want to read it now. By tomorrow morning, I may have forgotten that I ordered it, no matter being able to recall what was in part one.

There is real joy in reading something and feeling an immediate internal reaction: "I like that." Those are the books we print out and pore over with our yellow highlighter. We take notes and write between the paragraphs, interacting with the material and thereby making it our own.

Give me something so engrossing that I can't stop until I've devoured all of it. If I get to page 3 and decide to exit thinking that "I'll read it later when I have the time," you've already lost me. I may occasionally open it up again but if I couldn't get into it at first read, I doubt that I ever will.

Mark it up to experience but it leaves a bad taste about the author who probably shouldn't count on my continued patronage.

Dr. Bola, a clinical psychologist, sometime marketer, and consistent consumer is offering complimentary copies of her book "Seven Super Simple Tips: I Am Your Customer" from which this article is taken. Feel free to download at: http://www.dietwithanattitude.com/SuperSimpleTipsCustomer.html

Dont Baffle Me Talk To Me

Writen by Andrew Eklund

Congratulations, all you Internet marketing people you. You now command a whopping 3% of total advertising and marketing budget. Hey, it's better than, well...2%. And the number is trending higher. That's good too.

But what if I told you that people spend nearly as much time on the web as they do in front of the television?

Did you know that TV commands almost 40% of all ad spending, while the web gets only 3%? How about newspapers? Businesses spend almost as much on newspaper ads as television, but guess what? Consumers spend less than 10% of their time reading newspapers.

Clearly, if you judge just by the numbers, the web is underfunded. Why?

I have a theory: to most business decision-makers, the people who sell the web channel are geeks. They talk in web jargon and acronyms. For example, if I was a business owner (which I am) and had an inkling that email marketing might be successful for my business (which I do) and called an Internet marketing consultant to meet with me, here's what I might hear:

"Thank you for calling me in. What we provide is an ASP email solution that has easy-to-use WYSIWYG tools which, in addition to providing you outstanding content management, tracks click-throughs, white list status, and user conversions in real-time."

As a business decision-maker, I think: What did that geek just say to me?

Or let's take search marketing: "Sir, I'd like to talk to you about how we can dynamically measure your keyword PPC programs within the Google AdWords or Overture network to, again, track real-time user conversions using state-of-the-art web analytics systems, which, by the way, are an ASP model so your IT guys don't have to get involved. Isn't that great!?!?!"

Yeah. Not so great, pal, because YOU'RE NOT TALKING TO ME!

And we wonder why web marketing might be underfunded? The fledgling field is so proud of itself for its snazzy lingo and sizzling software that it's forgotten that this is just marketing -- only possibly a whole lot better in many ways than traditional marketing.

To get decision-makers fired up about investing in the Internet marketing channel, strip out the jargon and the acronyms and get down to business. If you do so, then you've finally got what everyone wants to buy: better marketing. Instead of selling "conversions" and "ASPs" -- which have no language connections to traditional advertising and marketing -- talk in real business language. A conversion is a sale or a lead. A user is a customer. Keywords are just words and language. Every Internet t erm has a seasoned business equivalent. Use them.

If we want to justify more than a 3% budget allocation for our web marketing efforts (which we can and should), then we need to talk about business in language that decision-makers use everyday. And whatever you do, if you say "it's just marketing" then don't make it sound like IT.

Until next month,

About The Author

Andrew determines Cicerons strategic direction and leads the team in its ongoing quest for client success on the Internet. His 10 years of experience in Internet marketing provides a perspective that combines visionary creativity with common business sense.

Under Eklunds spirited leadership, Ciceron provides web marketing services to a diverse client roster that includes Best Buy, Jostens, US Bank, Hazelden Bookplace, Minnesota Environmental Partnership, Trend Enterprises, and Coldwell Banker Burnett.

http://ciceron.com

andrew@ciceron.com

Stop Committing These 10 Common Viral Marketing Mistakes

Writen by Portia David

Unsuspecting computer users consider themselves to be doing favors for their friends with whom they are sending these referrals, but they are not the only ones jubilant with their discovery. They do not exactly feel it, but they are part and parcel of the mechanism which makes viral marketing promote and increase website visits like luscious pancakes.

Viral marketing is currently being used by most online business people because it works. Who would pass up the opportunity to have a website endorsed exponentially by all its users and viewers? However, not all viral marketing ploys work. Before you concoct your own viral marketing portal, here are a few basic things you need to avoid.

1. General Unhappy Perspective-- One cannot do viral marketing without having a good dose of confidence that it will actually WORK. Even if you don't communicate that directly to your marketing ploys, a disbelief for whatever you have set out to do has already started to sabotage your attempts.

2. Not-So-Viral Marketing-- You need to be very competent or at par with other websites in viral marketing. Study other existing excellent viral marketers online and see what makes them secure the top spot. Timing is essential. Your viral marketing can backfire if you do it without researching first on your target groups and executing your moves in an unproper time. Conditioning is just as essential as the actual marketing itself.

3. The WIIFM (What's in it for Me) Factor is Missing-- Most people are encouraged to refer to friends only if they have something to get out of it. Some viral marketers forget this very important thing. Giving out rewards or incentives can boost or motivate every visitor to pull more people in. Watch out for the extremes of giving too many rewards, though. It must boost and not take the limelight off the main concept.

4. Marketing without Asking-- Some websites employing viral marketing techniques forget to let the customers interact. Javascripts are useful tools.

5. Giving up the first time-- Some users tend to get irritated the first time they receive recommendations from friends. People behind viral marketing fail to anticipate this and end up giving up on what could have been a most promising buyer.

6. Too Many Details--This is a common and often commited mistake! No one would want to hang around that long just for one offer. There are other websites which would be less concise and yet drive the point home with pizzazz that yields a lasting impression. Time is not just gold in viral marketing. It is everything. The fact that a person is surfing the Internet for information already communicates that he or she is already trying to save time by retrieving information in the fastest possible way. If websites offer good products but takes forever to load or for one reader to get to the bottom of the page, it still would not be worth his time or looking effort, for that matter.

7. Hoops and Hurdles in Transactions-- Related to the mistake above is the transaction hurdle itself. Given that you have already convinced or gotten a buying signal from a customer, if the whole process is tedious and hard to follow, it will most likely dropped by the customer. No one would want to buy or refer something which is too intricate or complicated.

8. Lack of Uniqueness and Follow-up-- Viral marketing needs to be continuous and not just a one-time big-time shot, and it must not merely duplicate what is already available with other competitors. There must be something unique about the offer, and at the same time, you must have a line of products prepared after the first purchase, in order to experience the long-range effects of viral marketing.

9. Forgettable By Clicks-- Some viral marketing websites do not make use of javascripts. A user or viewer may easily be distracted by other links within the page and click it in the middle of his or her evaluation of your offer. It may be an affiliate website or an outside link, but it totally diverts the attention off your product and may lead him away from your page.

10. Lack of Assurance in Privacy-- Privacy concerns are also important for every person who wants to take part in the process of viral marketing. Asking for referrals without making any assurance that the personal information to be given will be kept confidential and not forwarded to other websites makes a person think twice before typing up those email addresses.

After learning the abovementioned viral marketing boo-boos it will be definitely easier to work out your viral marketing campaigns.

Note: This article may be freely reproduced as long as the AUTHOR'S resource box at the bottom of this article is included and all links must be Active/Linkable with no syntax changes.

For more SEO know-hows please go to http://alfamercado.com/blog

7 Simple Steps To Web Wealth

Writen by Sopan Greene

A lot of people and companies have websites. They also have products and services they want people to know about. Unfortunately, most of these people and companies waste most of their time on things that don't help them to make money. Here are 7 areas to focus on that will help you make more money:

1. Remember that marketing is more important than what your product is. If you have the greatest product ever and no one knows about it you won't make any money.

Direct response marketing online is very similar to direct response marketing offline. 90% of your time should be invested in marketing because nothing else will make you money. Don't waste time figuring out how to do it right. Study the people who have already spent time and money on learning what does and doesn't work. Then you can spend more of your time on collecting cash.

2. You must have a back end product to make good money. The way to make the most money is to first offer FREE information that is valuable. This will begin your relationship with a customer. Then have a product that is under $50 for a front end. Make sure the front end product is somehow connected to the back end product. For example, if you sell a $10 book on shaving points off your golf score, you want to have a back end product like a $300 course on the best proven techniques for the most effective golf swing ever.

3. Your product needs to be valuable to your customers. They need to believe that what they receive is worth a lot more than what they paid for it. That will make them a life-long customer. Sell them something worthless and they will be unhappy and they will be gone forever. Sell products you believe in or don't sell anything.

4. Give your customers FREE bonuses and more than you promised. Under promise and over deliver. Make your customers say "Wow!" when they receive your products. Don't just make them happy, blow their minds with how much value they get from you.

There are thousands of low cost bonus products you can throw in as a thank you. Even better, these low cost bonuses can make your customers a lot of money and they will appreciate you more. Besides, it's more ethical and fun and creative to build in great extras and bonuses for people. The bottom line is the more you give the more you get.

5. Get opt-in e-mail addresses. This is like gold for you. The only real purpose for a consumer website is to capture leads and to sell products. By leads I mean e-mail addresses. You want to build up a customer list and then you want to work it repeatedly. Send out a monthly e-zine that offers FREE valuable information and mentions similar products they may be interested in. They may see something that a friend of theirs will want to buy from you.

The key here is that these people ask to be on your list, you give them FREE information that has value, and they can unsubscribe at any time.

6. Build a relationship. It is much easier to sell someone who has had a good experience with you than someone who has never heard of you. Most companies ignore this fact and spend thousands of dollars each month trying to bring in new customers while they ignore people who already bought from them. Pretty stupid, but that's how most businesses operate.

7. Never stop learning. The best and richest marketers in the business spend the most amount of money buying books, tapes and courses that keep them on the cutting edge. Why? Because no one knows it all and new and better ways to market are discovered every day.

There is a lot of valuable FREE information available online that is easy to find and can make you a lot of money. One good idea can be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars in future sales for you. So invest in yourself and your future.

These 7 simple steps can mean the difference between struggling to stay in business and struggling to keep up with all the orders coming in. Which struggle would you prefer?

About The Author

Sopan Greene M.A.

http://www.NetMarketingMastery.com

Grab Your 2 FREE eBooks & a FREE report: "Million Dollar Emails" "How To Start Your Own Traffic Virus" & "The 13 Deadly Internet Marketing Mistakes Almost Every Business Is Making..." mail to: webmaster87-5956@autocontactor.com

Some Tips About Creating An Infoproduct

Writen by Patric Chan

We all have problems right?

Products and services are there to help us solve those problems. Your products created are the solutions to problems. So when there's a problem, there's an opportunity for you to make money online.

But sometimes, when you've found a problem, there's already products created to solve it. This does not means that you no longer have the opportunity to tap into this problem. Make the product better, faster, cleaner, more reliable, more cost effective, better presented, you get the idea.

If you look at the bright side, it means that there are a lot of people who are willing to pay to get their problems solved.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not telling you to go out, buy peoples stuff, and just clone it and give it a fancy new name and change the layout a bit and sell it on. Aside from probably getting you into trouble with copyright laws and such, it's just not practical or ethical. What I am showing you though is that you can take basic ideas, and you can make them a better solution to a specific problem from the ground up.

Be innovative.

You'll probably find these products in Clickbank.com's Marketplace. There are plenty of info-products for you to look through there.

No matter how weird or crazy your product creation idea seems, no matter why you think it won't work, don't give it up. Never calls it quit before you give a deep consideration about how it can BE SUCCESSFUL. You'll never know whether that idea could be your big money-maker one day.

Open your mind a little, and don't start dismissing things on a whim because they seem impractical or even impossible at first glance. Sometimes, it has a lot to do with your self-confidence.

Some ideas you got there, when you wrote them, they look impractical. It seems like there was no market for them or couldn't afford to create them.

Keep an open mind and don't start placing these limits on yourself before you start. Once we remove those limits, the ideas will start flowing. Start recording them. One of them may well be the next big thing in your field of expertise. Sort out the good from the not so good ideas later.

Then, evaluate your ideas.

It's hard to start creating an info-product, but once you settle into this idea of bringing new concepts to the front of your mind and exploring them, you'll see that things will become possible and you'll never run out of ideas for new products.

There are 4 types of formats you can use to create an info-product. Four of them are ebook, software, audio and video types of info-products. The easiest and fastest way is to record an audio product. Then, transcript it and you'll have the ebook version product immediately.

If you can't create an audio product by yourself, interview an expert in your niche market. I'm sure many people would want to learn from him.

How can you convince him to be interviewed?

Do a tele-conference call to promote his product as an affiliate to your mailing list and record it. He won't be able to resist that.

Software and video info-products are slightly more complex to create. The reason why these 2 info-products are being created by marketers very often lately is because of the high-perceived value that they can sell it for.

"Is there a market for my product?"

And can you reach them?

An important question indeed, because incidentally, if there's no market for your product, or you have no way to reach them, then no ones going to find out about your product, and you simply won't sell any.

It's easy enough to head over to google.com and do a search for your product, or a different version of it.

Also, when running your search, if there are other products out there offering either the same as you, but in a different way, you can bet your life that there's a market out there. Specifics and how's aren't really important right now, as long as you know not to go launching a product that's going to be impossible for you to reach the people that want to buy it, or even worse; there aren't any people who want to buy it.

Copyright 2006 Patric Chan

Patric Chan is an internet infopreneur, international speaker and author. Subscribe to the Chan Do Internet Success System Newsletter for free to get first-hand and the latest internet marketing tips at http://www.automateinternetmarketing.com.

King Kong Size Link Building Tips

Writen by Mark Walters

After recent changes in search engines ranking mechanisms, relevant link building has become one of the most important ways of Search Engine Optimization. Now it is almost as important as having a web site loaded with good content.

Why do you need link building?

It's simple: the more relevant links to your website the more important your site appears to search engines and that should lead to better your page ranking. Search engine spiders are restlessly traveling through the Internet, constantly evaluating existing web pages - the keywords they use and the number of relevant links to your website. Because now relevant links are deemed more important than keyword density, some one way and relevant link building strategy is necessary if you hope to get to the top 10 or at least top 100 of web pages in your category.

While you have to create your own link building strategy that will fit into your situation, there are a few general tips. If you follow them, you will avoid many common link building mistakes and you can hope for greatly improving your website ratings in just a few weeks.

1. Use short URLs

When you submit your link to other sites that have a theme relevant to yours, make sure that offer a short URL. You can speed up the link building process by almost 50% if only you would use shorter URLs. Most webmasters will agree on adding a axbxcxex.com link, but won't accept a link that will look like axbxcxexg.com/articles/general/index.php/id=brnd. Even if your link building strategy relies on submitting deep links, they need to be as short as possible.

2. Be careful with redirect links

No site owner likes redirects. If you want to make your link building easy and fast, you should avoid them every time it is possible. They are often used to avoid long URLs, but it's often a deadly mistake. Instead of redirects, you may consider simplifying your website map and making the URLs shorter. While it may be easier for your web site builder to have long addresses, every sophisticated link building strategy calls for making them as short as possible.

3. Keep the same URL over time

Don't change your URL unless you have really good reason to do that. If you do change, you will have to do all that link building again from the beginning. Even if you redirect from your old web address to the new one, you have to consider the possibility that many webmasters delete redirect links from their websites. As a result, you can expect that you will lose about 25% links just because you've changed your website URL.

Just what are the searching engines looking for in the way of relevant links? No one knows for sure, but common sense tells us that links from a gardening site to a dirt bike site are not complementary.

Put yourself in the shoes of someone searching for gardening information on the internet. They come to your gardening site and feel they've found helpful information. Oh look, they think, there's a link there by pansy graphic. I'll just click that and get more good information. Yeow, what does a girl in a bikini sitting on a dirt bike have to do with gardening? … And there goes your credibility with your viewer and the search engines.

It appears that the value of links is swinging to a reasonable number if good quality links rather than a thundering heard of indiscriminant links from anywhere.

Mark Walters offers everything you need to build a powerful linking strategy at http://www.LinkingUniverse.com