Saturday, July 19, 2008

Effectively Get Website Visitors

Advertisement

Effectively Using Overture/Yahoo To Get Website Visitors Overture or now known as Yahoo because of Yahoo’s takeover, was the original inventor of the use of the P4P or Pay for Performance. Overture saw that the internet was fast becoming the easiest and most convenient way to shop, and advertising was going to hit at an all time high because of the many businesses in the arena. To get a person to go to a site than others, it needs to be very visible.

Providing ads that could direct potential consumers and costumers to their site would allow them to have an increase in traffic as well as sales. Yahoo provides a service that can put a site or company’s ad in their sites that can be shown when certain keywords are inputted. Yahoo offers a chance for any company to increase their traffic by using their services. With more people being aware of your site, there would be more traffic and visitors to your site given the chance to view your pages as well as your products. With even a small percentage of successful sales, with a high traffic volume this could still be a substantial figure for your company. Getting a consistent substantial flow of website visitors is every company’s goal. Many methods are devised and utilized to ensure that there would be more people to boost the sales and to be aware of the existence of such a product or service.

Website visitors are potentially the life blood of your internet based business. Yahoo/Overture utilizes the same principle as Google’s Adwords. In fact, they are very similar to each other that they use keyword and keyword phrase searches and to determine which ads to show per search. When a person types in a keyword or keyword phrase to search for anything, the search engines gives out the results in a page. Then at the right side of the page, you will see selected ads that have paid for their ads to be viewed with certain keywords and keyword phrases searched. For example, Lets say you run a car parts retail/wholesale site. You choose keywords that can prompt or trigger your ads to be shown in the page when a keyword is searched. When a search engine user types in Honda Accord, your ad may come up if you have designated that as one of your keywords.

Free traffic

You don’t need to fully optimize your site with Search Engine Optimization methods and techniques. While some labor so hard to make their site one of the high ranking sites per keyword search, you get the chance to be on the top of the list or at least in the first page of a search result increasing your chance to be clicked on. With that, you drive traffic and website visitors to your site a lot faster. You will have to pony up some cash when using this service though. There are different ways Yahoo/Overture will charge you. It may be in the number of Keywords or Keyword phrases your ad uses or in the many times your ad is clicked on. Others offer many other services like having your ad show up not only in the search engine pages but also with some third party sites. Third party sites support ads that have the same theme or niche as them.

With more areas your ad is shown, you increase the chances of people knowing about your site or product. With more website visitors you increase the sales of your site which makes your investment with your ads a wise one. With so many competitions in the internet based businesses, it is necessary to take a huge leap forward from the pack by advertising. Yahoo/Overture will be a great place to start. Many have utilized their services and have reaped the rewards of this decision. It’s a marketing strategy that will increase your website visitors as well as increase your sales resulting to profit. It takes money to make money, while there are some methods that are basically low cost or free, using a marketing service such as what Yahoo/Overture offers will provide results faster and on a larger scale. Many businesses have learned this the hard way, don’t be counted with them.

more info

Free traffic here



Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Advertising on MySpace

Advertisement

Advertising on MySpace

MySpace is an online community where users have the opportunity to create websites where others can view personal information about them and contact them. However, savvy Internet marketers have found MySpace can also be used to advertise products or service or for the purpose of self promotion. Care should be taken to review the terms of use on MySpace to ensure none of your actions are in violation of these terms but otherwise users can advertise either directly or indirectly on their MySpace website.

Why Advertising on MySpace is Effective?

Advertising on MySpace can be effective as long as it is done correctly and not in a way that is viewed as spam. The effectiveness of MySpace stems from amount of users who are currently using MySpace. This includes both members who place comments as well as nonmembers who only look at other websites. With so many daily visitors it is likely there will be visitors who are interested in the products or services you are offering on your MySpace website.

Another reason why MySpace is such an effective advertising tool is there are no fees associated with using your MySpace profile to create links to your ecommerce website or to provide more information about the products and services you offer. The best way to effectively advertise on MySpace is to follow the same guidelines that would normally be followed by advertisers in online locations. This includes knowing who your target audience is and how to effectively appeal to them. This is important because a marketing campaign which does not follow these simple rules will not likely be effective.

In addition to advertising within a MySpace website there are also opportunities to advertise in the form of banner advertisements on MySpace. MySpace is able to not charge a fee to members because they generate their income through paid advertisements. Contact MySpace administrators directly to learn more about these advertising opportunities.

Selling Products on MySpace

MySpace can be also be used to advertise products or services. This can be done either subtly or blatantly. Those who are active participants on MySpace and invest time in meeting others and making friends are more likely to benefit from selling products or services through a MySpace account. This is because most people who use MySpace are not exactly looking for information about products or services so they are unlikely to seek out this information.

However, if they have online friends who are using their MySpace account to promote a product or service they may see the advertisements and find the products or services interesting. In this case they may visit a link to an ecommerce website and consider making a purchase. However, care should be taken when advertising online. Links to your ecommerce website on your own profile are acceptable but placing comments with the same link on other members’ websites will likely be considered spam by both the other members and the MySpace administrators.

Using MySpace for Self Promotion

In addition to selling products and services, MySpace websites can also be used for the purpose of self promotion. Models, actors and actresses, bands and other performers are all realizing the potential for self promotion which exists on MySpace. Members of the community can include everything which may be useful to those who wish to hire them in the future. For example, models can include professional photos while bands can have their music playing on the website for visitors to enjoy. With so many people visiting MySpace on a daily basis, it can be easy for members of the community to create quite a following for themselves.

Those on MySpace should also be aware that industry executives are now dedicating staff members to comb MySpace to try to find new talent on MySpace. In fact more than one major recording company has admitted to having interns spend hours each day on MySpace looking for exciting new artists.

More info

Monday, July 14, 2008

Internet Marketing Strategy

Advertisement

6 Tips To Put Your Web Marketing

The Internet has changed and will continue to change the way we do business. It has also created amazing marketing opportunities which should be incorporated into your Internet marketing strategy.
The rules of the marketing game have changed big time. The new reality:

* Over 80% of all web traffic is coming via search engines.
* 88% of economically active Americans go online everyday
* A recent study showed that 85% of users research products and services on the Internet before they purchase
* 77% get their news online through Google or Yahoo news
* 80% of all business on the Internet goes to the first three listings on the first page of a search result
* Research shows that searchers (your customers) regard good placing in the natural search results (as opposed to pay per click or sponsored links) as an indicator of a company who is tops in their field
* 99% of reporters start their research for a story on the Internet.

The bottom line is that your potential customers are researching their purchases online before spending their money. This also includes big-ticket items like cars and houses.
In a recent study, "Search Before the Purchase" from DoubleClick and comScore Networks notes half of all online purchases are preceded by multiple product-specific searches.

For the brick and mortar retail world keep in mind for your internet marketing strategy that consumers are using the search engines like product catalogs to research products and services--then printing out a map on how to get there. Yellow pages may become a thing of the past.
Use these tips to take advantage of the ever-increasing influence of the World Wide Web:

1. Do your homework on key words. The huge majority of people use search engines to find products and services that they are looking for. Find out what key words they are using. This is the heart of an Internet Marketing strategy. Consider it a mandatory form of survey and market research. Once you have determined the key words that people are searching for, and then check the number of competing pages. Create you key word strategy from your research.

2. Tune up your web site. Re-structure the content of your site so it attracts the users you want. Change the keywords in your title, description and keyword tags. Rewrite the home page and interior pages text using the key words that people are searching on.
Remember search engines can't read pictures so includes lots of text on your site. The home page should have a minimum of 250 words of text.

Keep in mind that your web site has to firstly attract the search engine before anyone can find it. The design, content and programming of your site all influence your search rankings. A well-written and designed web site is the foundation of your Internet marketing strategy. No matter how great your product is, if the public can't find you the sales are lost in the second it takes to click the mouse. On the flip side, an effective web site is the key to quality leads and volume sales.

3. Create regular online newsletters and encourage all visitors to the site to sign up for the free newsletter. A newsletter is an excellent and cost effective way to stay in touch and build a relationship with prospects and customers. Get an email distribution program that tracks the stats i.e. quantity sent, opened and clicked through to your web site. Use the free offer to build your list--you want to get a large volume of subscribers. Add the newsletters to your web site to increase content.

4. Start a blog to raise search visibility and create page one search results. A cover story in Business Week magazine was "Blogs Will Change Your Business, Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up...or catch you later."

5. Syndicate your content via RSS (really simple syndication) feeds so that you get exposure in other places on the Web. This also increases the number of links to your website. Syndication is a process of providing your content to others, doing updates of information and generally spreading your content from one place to another. One example is syndication in newspapers. You sometimes see a column that appears in several papers at once. It is syndicated. Syndication online allows you to share your content with your visitors and other websites.

Online syndication has many advantages: It vastly improves your site's visibility; makes your content available in a more convenient manner; feeds your content directly to interested parties; broadens your reach on the Internet and best of all, costs almost nothing to implement. An inexpensive must item for your internet marketing strategy.

6. Send out optimized press releases about your products or services- this will attract visitors and increase the number of links back to your website, which will raise your ranking in the search engines. Your audiences are actively online searching for news, products and services. It is no longer enough to send out press releases--or pitch journalists and hope that you will reach the right audience.
As consumers are actively searching for you using key words, then you need to put your press releases where they're looking--on the search engines and news engines.

The vast majority of economically active people are Internet savvy today and are using the Net to research products and services before they buy. Use these effective tools as key elements of your internet marketing strategy or you will simply be cut out of the picture.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Network Marketing Strategy

Advertisement

Network Marketing has been amongst us for over twenty years and does not appear to be slowing down any time soon. Everybody has heard the term thousands of times and maybe even thought of getting involved in to earn lots of money. But do you truly understand the idea of Network Marketing?

Network Marketing is one of if not the quickest growing businesses concept today. This idea was popular in the 1980's but then got a great deal of negative publicity in the 1990's but was then able to overcome allot of it and regained all of its respectability and status and is at present moving into the twenty first century even stronger than before.

In the early days many individuals confused Network marketing with that of Pyramids Schemes and just wrote it of as being a BIG SCAM. Actually Pyramids are illegal. The easiest and quickest ways to find out if something is a Pyramid Scheme ask this question; what are the goods or service that is being provided and where is it going? There must be a physical good or service that moves from the supplier to customer.

Network Marketing is one of the only business ideas that can allow an individual with a limited amount of money to start their own business with nearly no limit to the amount of money that they can be earned. This is a snapshot of how this program works. When you are In Network Marketing you own you own business, you purchase goods and services at a wholesale price from your supplier, you can then use these products yourself or sell it to family and friends at retail prices to earn a commission but this isn't the only way that you can earn money.

The thing that allows Network Marketing to be so incredibly successful is from building downlines. How this system operates is that when your downline (individuals you recruit into the program) buy products to re-sell you earn commissions on all of there sales. Allot of programs even go as far as allowing you to earn profits on your downlines' recruitee's (downline) as you can see there are simply no limit to the possibilities. You can earn commissions sometimes 4 levels deep. So eventually you don't have to totally focus on your personal sales but on bringing in others that will do that for you. Most Network Marketing Programs have training courses for all of there recruits so you learn exactly how to build a profitable company.

When you start building your downline you are really building a worker force to help you grow and build your own business. From just one single recruit you can grow it into hundreds maybe even thousands of individuals with each one pointing back at you, remember as they move goods you make money.

A great deal of people think that all they need to do is just join, allow their downline do everything and just sit back and collect fat commission checks at month end. Network marketing isn't a get rich quick program, to be successful you need to work hard and put in allot of effort, you also need to motivate and help your downline. Just decide to make up your mind to work hard at it and there is simply no limit to the commissions you can make. If you would like to know more on this topic check the link below of out “Dotcomology” the art of making money with your home business.

To your success

More info


The Path To your Internet Marketing Strategies

Advertisement

It’s easy to set up a website for your organization, but takes some planning to make sure your website is set up for marketing online. One of the most important facets of online marketing that must be considered when you first put up your company site, and before you even consider an internet marketing plan, is creating a virtual environment for your website that will thrive in the business of “internet marketing”. Many organizations make the mistake of focusing their time and energy on internet marketing without first setting the groundwork, or laying the foundation, for their websites to thrive in the online environment. Below are some tips you may find useful in making sure your website is “internet marketing ready”.

Re-Discovering Your Niche Market:

In clearing the path to your internet marketing strategies, your organization must have a website specifically developed for the purpose of giving information, advice, products, or services to a community of online visitors. Notice, I said “online visitors”. You are now developing your site to serve the online community, so be sure to include them in your niche market analysis. This is an important first step toward online success. Once you know who your target market is, internet marketing becomes substantially easier. You may need to re-evaluate your target market, or re-discover who they are. Your target market online can be different than your target market offline. Whereas, your current marketing strategies may be geared toward your local community and offline marketing endeavors, it is first important to realize the necessity of thinking of your online site visitors as your new market.

Keeping In Touch With Consumers:

You’ll first need to consider your target market, and develop your website with your market in mind. If you will be selling products or services, consider your e-commerce solutions, such as shopping carts or other 3rd party e-commerce vendors. Think about how your potential clients may contact you, whether by email or web form. Also keep in mind that you will want to keep in touch with your online visitors, giving them an opportunity to subscribe to a newsletter or mailing list. All of these things should be taken into consideration during the build of your website, so be sure to address these issues with your web developer.

Branding Your Company:

Purchase a first level domain name so that your site visitors know they are visiting a legitimately professional company. You don’t want to send your web visitors to a subdomain such as Bravenet, for example. Although there are many options for free hosting online, be aware that these free subdomains may cost your business in the long run, when visitors are chased away because of the various banner advertising and annoying popup windows. This is where branding is especially important. Brand your company image so that it stands out professionally head and shoulders above your competitors. Purchase your own domain name and professional hosting account, and always keep your email addresses under the domain name of your organization (rather than using free mail accounts such as Hotmail or Yahoo).

Once you have considered rediscovered your target niche market, determined how you will keep in touch with your site visitors, and re-branded your company for a professional image, you are well on your way to clearing the path for a successful internet marketing plan that will propel your organization to the next level!

About the Author
Demetria Zinga, M.S. is an internet marketing strategist, podcast consultant, and web success coach whose goal is to help the woman entrepreneur and work at home mom with web consulting needs. To find out more, visit Work At Home Mom University
Article

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Social Networks For Internet Marketing

Advertisement

People who are involved in e-commerce understand how marketing can be very expensive. In order to have sales, marketing your products or services to people who are in need of them is vital. Social networks present a viable internet marketing alternative or supplement. Here are 3 reasons why you should integrate social networks into your marketing plan online.

Social networking websites are known to attract a lot of people. It has been said that the top 10 Social Networking websites receive about 45 percent of the total number of active internet users. This really is a proof of how powerful these websites can be.
One very good example of a prominent and extremely prolific social network is mySpace.

Websites such as MySpace give access to people of various interests. For social networking website owners, the main benefit comes from the content that social network users produce and lodge in their site. The following are the three benefits to business owners and internet marketers.

Number 1: They give you a large market to sell to If you are apprehensive about integrating social networking in your overall marketing plan, recall what the Fox Interactive President said during the Web 2.0 Summit. He noted that MySpace has managed to acquire acquiring a user base whose number is equivalent to the population of Buffalo. Imagine how large this is. This represents millions of users from around the world that you can sell and market to.

Using social networks for marketing purposes is very good strategy. Millions of users are attracted to these networks. Entice these visitors to visit your website and you’ve got it made. Getting this many visitors through other marketing means can really cost a lot, but if you use social networks you can get it for free. Social networks like MySpace open the gates for e-commerce businessmen; these sites provide you a place where you can market your products. 

Number 2: They make targeted marketing easier

Social networks consist of several sub-networks to which one can gain access. These sub-networks have pre-filtered members and users so a business owner can easily pick and choose groups which he is targeting or whose members may be interested in what he has to offer.

It is amazing how deep a social network can go. It is truly a very fertile ground for one’s targeted internet marketing efforts. All you’ll have to do is browse over the groups and find people who may be interested in your products and services.

Number 3: They have enormous potential for boosting site traffic and sales
Though some webmasters still consider social networks as a fad meant only for teenagers, most businessmen have realized the social networks’ potential for boosting site traffic and sales. Online and real-world entrepreneurs alike are flocking to social networks. Affiliate marketers are not to be outwitted, and they have begun promoting the products of their affiliate partners in social networking sites. Fad or not, creative and strategic use of social networks can really boost a business’ earnings.

--- Just Remember ---
Given the wonderful opportunity that social networking sites offer, one can easily get carried away in his marketing campaign. You must remember, however, that as with any marketing method, tact, subtlety and strategy are all required. This is especially true for social networking sites since they are truly not for marketing purposes. Thus, you must never be too obvious about your efforts to sell. You should always couch your marketing pitch in a manner both personal and engaging.




Monday, July 7, 2008

3 Skills Every Network Marketer Needs

Advertisement

Network Marketing is a little like baseball. In baseball if you can catch, throw, and hit then you can
make millions of dollars every year. Network marketing has its own fundamentals that, when mastered, will pay you very well for the rest of your life. How are you doing with these 3 skills?

3 Basic Skills Every Network Marketer Needs

1) Skill ONE - The Ability To Create New Prospects – Every growing business needs new customers.
If you’re not personally bringing new people into your business, then you’re probably not going to get very far. The three places most network marketers get prospects are their warm market (people they know), the cold market (buying leads for a company that does advertising), or some creative way of doing your own marketing to create leads. The last method could include blogging, article marketing, newspaper ads, press releases or a million other things.

2) Skill TWO – The Ability To Close Prospects – This is basically any way you have to getting the person to make a decision and get started. It can be done for you by getting your upline on the phone with your prospect with a 3-way call.

It can be done by yourself by simply asking people if they are ready to get started. Or a third way to close is to have your system do it for you. If you’re doing online marketing to generate prospects, your system can educate and pre-sell your prospect for you. A system like that can make it so you’re just taking their order and asking if they’d like to supersize it.

3) Skill THREE – The Ability to Help Your Team – You need a simple way help your team be successful. Personally, I recommend that you organize people into groups of about 6. This team will become a small community of like-minded people.

You don’t have to be a superstar to lead a small group, you just need a desire to help people, and the ability to create a healthy environment. The team will discuss problems and brainstorm for solutions. A small group like this helps people
become successful, and the best part is you’ll probably become like a family. It’s really where network marketing is at it’s best.


Friday, July 4, 2008

RSS Marketing resources

Advertisement

Information and Resources on RSS Marketing
This is the number one directory for blogs. They do regular updates of their list of blogs that have new content. A good publishing systems will automatically notify (ping) weblogs.com every time you add new content to your newsletter .
Pingo-0-Matic
Ping-o-matic is a super weblogs.com. It pings about a dozen or so blog directories, including weblogs and My Yahoo. You should ping them about once a week at a minimum.
Google Rankings
Google is the best and most widely used search engine. It serves as a feeder for directories like Yahoo and MSN. Google ranks individual pages. This nifty online tool will tell you where your pages rank for specific key words you are targeting. This gives you the most accurate picture of how you stack up against your competition.
Ranking.com
Ranking.com ranks your site relative to all other sites on the Internet. They use criteria like unique visitors, links to your site, page views, etc ti determine where your site belongs in the pecking order. It's not perfect, but it will give you some idea of how you measure up to the compettion. BTW, a ranking of 100,000 or less is quite good.
Alexa
Alexa is nothing more than a popularity contest. Rankings.com does a better job of ranking sites. Alexa rankings, IMHO, are meaningless and not relevant in the overall marketing picture, no matter what any search engine specialist says.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Analyzing Website Traffic

Advertisement

Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be an invaluable tool for a number of different reasons. But before you can make full use of this tool, you need to understand how to interpret the data. Most web hosting companies will provide you with basic web traffic information that you then have to interpret and make pertinent use of. However, the data you receive from your host company can be overwhelming if you don't understand how to apply it to your particular business and website. Let's start by examining the most basic data - the average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and
monthly basis.

These figures are the most accurate measure of your website's activity. It would appear on the surface that the more traffic you see recorded, the better you can assume your website is doing, but this is an inaccurate perception. You must also look at the behavior of your visitors once they come to your website to accurately gauge the effectiveness of your site.

There is often a great misconception about what is commonly known as "hits" and what is really effective, quality traffic to your site. Hits simply means the number of information requests received by the server. If you think about the fact that a hit can simply equate to the number of graphics per page, you will get an idea of how overblown the concept of hits can be. For example, if your homepage has 15 graphics on it, the server records this as 15 hits, when in reality we are talking about a single visitor checking out a single page on your site. As you can see, hits are not useful in analyzing your website traffic.

The more visitors that come to your website, the more accurate your interpretation will become. The greater the traffic is to your website, the more precise your analysis will be of overall trends in visitor behavior. The smallerthe number of visitors, the more a few anomalous visitors can distort the analysis. The aim is to use the web traffic statistics to figure out how well or how poorly your site is working for your visitors.

One way to determine this is to find out how long on average your visitors spend on your site. If the time spent is relatively brief, it usually indicates an underlying problem. Then the challenge is to figure out what that problem is.

It could be that your keywords are directing the wrong type of visitors to your website, or that your graphics are confusing or intimidating, causing the visitor to exit rapidly. Use the knowledge of how much time visitors are spending on your site to pinpoint specific problems, and after you fix those problems, continue to use time spent as a gauge of how effective your fix has been.

Additionally, web traffic stats can help you determine effective and ineffective areas of your website. If you have a page that you believe is important, but visitors are exiting it rapidly, that page needs attention. You could, for example, consider improving the link to this page by making the link more noticeable and enticing, or you could improve the look of the page or the ease that your visitors
can access the necessary information on that page.

If, on the other hand, you notice that visitors are spending a lot of time on pages that you think are less important, you might consider moving some of your sales copy and marketing focus to that particular page. As you can see, these statistics will reveal vital
information about the effectiveness of individual pages, and visitor habits and motivation. This is essential information to any successful Internet marketing campaign.

Your website undoubtedly has exit pages, such as a final order or contact form. This is a page you can expect your visitor to exit rapidly. However, not every visitor to your site is going to find exactly what he or she is looking for, so statistics may show you a number of different exit pages. This is normal unless you notice a exit trend on a particular page that is not intended as an exit page. In
the case that a significant percentage of visitors are exiting your website on a page not designed for that purpose, you must closely examine that particular page to discern what the problem is. Once you pinpoint potential weaknesses on that page, minor modifications in content or graphic may have a significant impact on the keeping visitors moving through your site instead of exiting at the
wrong page.

After you have analyzed your visitor statistics, it's time to turn to your keywords and phrases. Notice if particular keywords are directing a specific type of visitor to your site. The more targeted the visitor - meaning that they find what they are looking for on your site, and even
better, fill out your contact form or make a purchase - the more valuable that keyword is.

However, if you find a large number of visitors are being directed - or should I say misdirected - to your site by a particular keyword or phrase, that keyword demands adjustment. Keywords are vital to bringing quality visitors to your site who are ready to do business with you. Close analysis of the keywords your visitors are using to find your site will give you a vital understanding of your
visitor's needs and motivations.

Finally, if you notice that users are finding your website by typing in your company name, break open the champagne! It means you have achieved a significant level of brand recognition, and this is a sure sign of burgeoning success.