My Buy Essay

Archive for November, 2007

Every year, many one-man online stores and small e-tailers close their internet doors and drop out of the race without giving themselves a fair shot at success because of Irritable Online Marketing Syndrome (IOMS). IOMS, more commonly known as information overload, presents a real and present danger and although it sometimes attacks veteran online marketers, newbies and intermediate users find themselves especially susceptible to its volatile effects.

The “bust” felt by major online companies a few years ago, can no longer shoulder the blame for failure on the internet. Online market research company eMarketer.com estimates that retail e-commerce sales will increase an average 18.6% per year between 2005 and 2009.

The site which provides extensive reports online marketing and objective analysis of online market trends, states, “Not only are online shoppers spending more online, they are buying more different types of goods. This opens new possibilities for creative Web retailers.”

According to emarketer.com, small Web retailers can now emerge to meet the needs of shoppers. Overcoming IOMS can often mean the difference between success and failure for home-based and other internet-based companies.

IOMS works like this: Someone decides to sell a product or service on the internet. A search on the major engines for the term “internet marketing” reveals a billion pages representing several hundred or thousands of gurus, coaches and wannabees.

After selecting a few, scanning their Web sites and downloading ebooks, newsletters, special reports, 7 day e-mail courses, etc., months or even years later, they find themselves either still not doing anything or accomplishing very little towards establishing their internet business.

Usually, they then drop out, all the time pooh-poohing accounts that people can make a bona fide living online. Veteran internet marketer Marlon Sanders (.amazingformulacd.com) describes it like this in a recent issue of MILCERS Magazine: “Having the knowledge is what holds most people back. And yet, a lot of our members and customers feel overwhelmed, frustrated and confused. They have the knowledge but don’t know which method to use first, which method invalidates the other, and which marketing teacher invalidates the method taught by another marketing teacher.”

You can find qualified help from almost every nook and cranny of the internet and therein lies the problem. A known factor stops anyone from acting on all of the available information, and that is put simply, a day consists of only 24 hours.

Having at your fingertips a storehouse of information can build your personal library, but it may also cause the death of your dreams of internet success &ndash- killing it off before it gets off the ground. Let me explain it the way a higher education counselor might.

Enrolling in a three-credit-hour class means you’ll sit in class for roughly three hours per week. However, if your goal is to make a high passing grade, you’ll need three hours of study time each week for every credit hour.

A three-credit-hour class will actually take up nine total hours of your time weekly. If you take three classes with the same credit hours, you will take nine credit hours, and you will need to dedicate a total of 27 hours of your time weekly.

The same applies with the study of internet marketing. The latest get-rich-quick schemes or techniques and promises of working one or two hours per day, often lure many would-be internet marketers who underestimate the time needed to understand and learn the real concepts provided.

IOMS rears its head when it comes to internet mastery; what you need to do in order to get schooled and not just hit and miss gaining of some knowledge. The sooner you recognize its symptoms, the sooner you can get treatment (change your diet of overwhelming information and select two to three courses of study) and move past its stifling effects.

It’s over. You’ve written your ezine article, sent it out to some ezine publishers, posted it to some article banks and announcement groups, and have even had it published in a few ezines. Pretty good, huh! Now it’s time to forget about that article and move on to the next one. Or is it?

Actually, if you forget about your article now you may be missing out on some of the most important benefits that can be gained from writing ezine articles. Listed below are 5 ways to get more benefits from your already published ezine articles.

1. Submit URLs of Published Article to Search Engines

Many times people will like your article enough to post it on their website. Once you find the URL where your article is published try submitting it to some search engines. The webmaster probably won’t mind but a email asking for their permission can’t hurt. Additionally, if your article is published in an ezine that is archived on a website you can submit the URL of the issue of the ezine that your article appeared in. If it’s a well-designed site the search engines may except the submission and your article may start appearing in search results all over the Net.

I recommend using free search engine submission sites like: .addme.com or .submitexpress.com

2. Submit Article Bank URLs to Search Engines

When you post your articles to article banks like Ultimateprofits.com or Ezadsuccess.com, your articles are posted on their own webpage. Submitting the URL for this page to search engines can bring added readers to your writing. I tried this tip a while back and truthfully I forgot that I even did it. Recently, I was surprised to find that a few of the article bank URLs that I had submitted were actually in some of the major search engines!

3. Post Your Articles on Your Own Website

By posting your articles to your own website you are giving all visitors to your site a chance to read over and benefit from your writings. Having well-written, informative articles, that you’ve personally written, on your site can add to your credibility-which can increase sign-ups and sales.

4. Save All Articles and Promote Them Again in 6 Months/1 Year

New people are logging onto the World Wide Web each day. The ezines that run your articles now will have thousands more subscribers in a years time. Your article will be new to all these fresh faces. And even the people who read your article in the past will probably learn something from it the second time around as well. Of course, you’ll want to be sure an update your article and maybe even add some new information.

5. Compile Your Past Articles Into an E-book

E-books are everywhere these days and for a good reason: People read them! After you have written a few articles you may have enough content to publish your own e-book. Then you can offer this e-book to subscribers or website visitors as a free gift. Or you can sell your e-book for a small fee.

**Bonus Tip** Always Include Good Resource Box

Whenever you write an article be sure to always include your resource box. This is the section at the end of the article where you talk about YOU. If people like your article they will look for your resource box to find out where they can get more information from you. Be sure to include at least one URL in your resource box. That way anytime your article is posted on a website you will have a link to one of your websites, which, coincidentally, will help out your websites search engine ranking if you follow tips #1 and #2 in this article.

So don’t forget about those previously published articles you’ve got saved in Microsoft Word. Pull them out. Dust them off. Re-use them. Start on your E-book. And try and remember all the websites that have posted your articles. Get the URLs. Submit them to a few search engines. The benefits you receive may suprise you. And now, my resource box:

It never ceases to amaze me how often new webmasters set about their online business at the start without actually having clearly defined strategies on how to market and promote the website and the product.

Now this article is for internet marketing newbies, so the strategies for website promotion are fairly basic therefore experienced internet marketers are under no compulsion to proceed.

If you are a newbie, however, please pay attention as these website promotional strategies are what you will need to employ over and over again every time you have a new product to promote. Apply these basic techniques and the bedrock of success is laid for you.

Remember, no traffic, no sales.

Free listings in Search Engines: Everyone loves to get something for free. The same applies to free traffic.

Consider building a keyword list related to your product before you build your website. This way, you write your website content crafting in those keywords for which the site needs to be optimised. Don’t overdo it though as the search engines are becoming too smart and may think you are attempting to trick them. The more pages you have, the easier it is to have your site optimised for your chosen keywords.

Pay Per Click Advertising: Here the search engines list your site based on your bid for a particular keyword(s). Your position in the search listing strongly depends on how much you are prepared to pay for those keywords and the bidding price is also dependent on the popularity and competitiveness of your niche. This Pay Per Click (PPC) listings are the ones you see on the right side of your screen in the search results in, for instance, Google and Yahoo who now own Overture.

It’s always a good idea to know your website statistics especially conversion rates to determine how much you will be prepared to pay for those keywords &ndash what I call your bid price affordability. This way you don’t operate your PPC Campaign at a loss.

Know Your Numbers!

Ezine Advertising: You search for popular ezines (these are electronic magazines or newsletters) in Google or Yahoo by entering Keywords ‘ezines directory’.

Visit these directories and look out for ezines that fit your products and also the subscription base of those ezines. You then choose to place Solo ads, Sponsor ads or Classified ads on ezines of your choice at an agreed price. The choice of which type of Ad and what ezine(s) to place your Ad would depend on your personal preference and your budget as well.

Linking Your Website: You need to set out linking strategies that can boost your business in two ways. First is that the more links you have, the more the search engines will rank your site and consequently your position in the organic search engines. Secondly, you get traffic deservedly from your link partners website. I’m sure you will welcome targeted free traffic from any source.

Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate program are a great source of free traffic and income at no cost to your good self. Affiliates are business partners who sign up to sell your product for an agreed commission. You can make a fortune on the internet from a great product if you have tons of affiliates working for themselves and you. An affiliate software is necessary to track your affiliate sales, visitors. Don’t forget to provide your affiliate with marketing tools and training materials to assist them.

Offline Advertising: This is quite often ignored. Just because your business is online does not mean you cannot generate traffic offline. You will be surprised at how potent this weapon can be. Write Press Releases about your product, Product review etc and send it to editors of newspapers and magazine. The one I love most is what we refer to as web ad. Here you use classified ads in newspapers and magazines to drive traffic to your site.

These are basic strategies you must have mapped out before commencing work on your website. This way you can start marketing the very day your website goes live.

Always think marketing first.

When you are looking for a way to effectively promote your website, you will find both expensive and inexpensive options. One of the most popular inexpensive options today is to use keyword rich text. When someone is looking for something on the web, they are most likely to use search engines such as “Google” to find what they need. The goal as a website operator is to get most of this traffic right to your website. With thousands of people conducting searches each day, there are thousands of potential consumers and web users to direct to your site. With keyword rich text, there is a better chance that these searchers will indeed be directed to your site through search engines.

Keyword rich text is basically articles of text that contain high numbers of a keyword or keywords that pertain to the subject chosen. To be clearer, if you have a website about fishing, then for search engines to direct web users to your site, you might include articles with words such as “fishing”, “fish”, “tackle”, “lure”, or “boat”. If someone were to type one of these particular words into a search engine, your site would likely come up near the top if you include these words in large amounts on your site. The more you repeat the word the user types in the search engine, the more likely they will see your site as an option for them to click on. Your articles may seem a bit redundant, but it really pays off to use as many keywords as you possibly can, without compromising content.

Another way you can use keyword rich text to effectively promote your website is by submitting articles to databases. This is great for the website operator that would rather not bulk up their website with lengthy articles. The basis of this task is to write keyword articles and submit them to various free article databases. Throughout the articles, or at the bottom of the text, include information about and a link to your website. When someone searches for the keyword within your text, the article will be brought up. As they read the article, they will have the opportunity to visit your page through the link for more useful information. This is a great idea, especially when you have a retail business online that would look ridiculous with a large amount of text included. It gives you the space to store the text somewhere else (the database), but still allows you to reap rewards from your articles.

Once you’ve decided writing keyword rich text is the best way for you to effectively promote your website, you will need to come up with appropriate articles to use for your task. If you feel qualified enough to write the articles yourself, then you can certainly do so. If this is your plan, you will first need to create a list of keywords that you feel are most relevant to your website. When doing this, be sure to think from a web user’s point of view. Think about the words you would type into a search engine if you were looking for a site like your own. Once you come up with a list of 10 or 20, you can begin working. Develop specific subjects for each of your keywords and create original titles. Then, simply write articles between 300-800 words that contain the keyword many times. Again, the more you use the keyword and variations of the keyword, the better results you will see. Lastly, make sure you include your name, business information, and website link at the bottom of the keyword. This is probably the most important information, so don’t forget it!

If you are unsure about your writing skills, it is also possible to hire professionals to write articles for you. You can come up with your list of keywords or allow the professionals to do it for you. This is a great way to benefit with keyword rich text without the trouble of writing the articles. After purchasing the articles from a professional writer, you can then use them as you see fit. Unless you are a strong and skilled writer, you may want to consider this option. It will allow you great results and cost you very little effort. No matter how you plan to use keyword rich text, it is certain you will be glad you did!

If you’re like me you don’t like to exaggerate, in fact, quite the opposite, I prefer to understate things and let the facts and results speak for themselves. In the internet marketing game however, if you don’t tell people that your product is better than the next person’s and list all the reasons why, you’ll end up losing out because your customer never had a chance to see for themselves why your product was so good and the obvious choice when compared to your competitor’s.

This means that, you guessed it, your product has to be the best on the market or at least, beat your competitors in the major areas that appeal to your target market. For example, Rapidforex is a leading foreign currency trading course, arguably the best available anywhere. The course teaches everything that any of the other Forex courses teach plus additional unique techniques. The competitor’s products were a sounding board to use the principle of exaggeration. That is, by knowing what was on the market and aiming to beat competitors in every area, the product had to match up to what was promoted! And it did.

Other Forex courses offer up to 30 page ebooks free and Rapidforex created a free ebook several hundreds of pages long and better than most that were costing a few hundred dollars. Instead of one strategy, they include more than 30. nstead of a 5 to 10 part mini course, Rapdiforex offers a 20 part eCourse. You get the drift. It may sound like I’m writing a plug for Rapidforex and in a way, I am. The key here is that this website is known to have had massive success and I just so happened to find out the details about it.

They took what others were doing successfully and then did it on a bigger scale. The principle here is if you do something that your competitor is doing and improve it, you’ll often see an exponential increase in profits as them. So, do your research and find out what others are doing in your chosen market. By doing more than what they’ve done, you’ve got a huge chance of success and most competitors won’t go that extra mile to outdo what you’re offering the market so you’ll end up on top.

This is an eternal question. Search engine optimizers would remain glued to their computer screen to take in the first hint of any PageRank update as and when that occurs. And when it occurs, it will be an anxious wait till the dust settles, before scurrying off to rework ways to claw back in ranking in case the new PR reduces.

Why so much bother? Does PageRank really matter? The short answer is yes, PageRank does matter, but not as much as it is made out to be. Let us talk things over.

What we know

The first lesson on PageRank will be an unquestionable reference to what Google says. According to Google [.google.com/technology/], “PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value.”

Elaborating, Google says 2 things. One, more the number of incoming links to a webpage, more is the ‘number of votes’ for that page. But then comes the second rider. According to Google, it also analyzes the page that sends links and attempts to figure out how ‘important’ or ‘relevant’ this page (rather its content) is vis-

#1 Create a list with all possible keywords that fit to your product, service or whatever you are promoting. The more words you come up with, the more chances you get of finding the niche keyword which brings me to point 2

#2 Niche Keywords. Drill down deep into the word, expand on it. For example, if you are promoting affiliate products related to mothballs. Instead of just mothballs you can use mothballs for sale, mothballs for sale in uk, motballs , discount mothball etc… The possibilities are quite huge. Use a combination of misspellings, adjectives and country locations.

#3 Make use of excluding keywords. If you are promoting a particular product &ndash say an ebook on making mothballs and it is sold for $100 dollars. You bided on the keyword “blue mothballs”. People searching for the term free blue mothballs would see your ad thus making it clickable and lowering its CTR. If you add a ‘-free’ it would eliminate unwanted advertising costs.

#4 I usually choose NOT to advertise on content opting purely for search as they are more targeted and is of higher quality. BUT if I am targeting a highly competitive area where ads are like $0.80 per click, I would turn on advertising for content while disabling adwords for searching(lowering bid price). I would have total control over costs while having traffic extremely cheap.

When I began my newsletter, I needed a page to redirect my subscribers to once they signed up. Because I was in a rush to get it set up, I redirected them to the archives page of my newsletter.

Big Mistake #1.

When I had some free time I went back and made a thank you page that simply stated, “Thank you for subscribing. Your first issue will arrive shortly.” and listed the archives.

Big Mistake #2

What I failed to realize when I set up those two pages is that I had my visitor’s attention. They were already interested in what I had to say because I convinced them to sign up for my newsletter or eCourse and I let them get away. I missed an opportunity. I missed potential profits.

When I redesigned my thank you page I included the standard “thank you” and “make sure you look for your confirmation email”. I also instructed them to make sure they added me to their safe senders list to ensure they receive my emails. But this time I included “You may also be interested in these additional free offers:” and listed a free eBook, the opportunity to sign up for a free eCourse, and information about my favorite business author &ndash all using my affiliate links.

Guess what happened? When I checked my affiliate stats, my click through rate increased 100% in just two days. Every person who subscribed to my newsletter also subscribed to the free eCourse I offered. My affiliate sales for the three products I promoted have doubled.

I’ve been publishing my newsletter for five months and it makes me sick to think about how much money I’ve lost because I didn’t take the time to talk to my visitors.

Do you know what’s mind blowing? Not only did it take me 30 minutes to set up the new thank you page, it didn’t cost me a dime. I already had all the information tucked away in my personal affiliate tool kit and was just too lazy to pull it out and put it to use.

Don’t make the same mistakes. Take a look at the page you’re redirecting your new subscribers to. Are you offering targeted product recommendations? Are you keeping them with you or just letting them close that window to possibly never return? Take thirty minutes of your time and the resources you already have available to you and update your redirect page.

Your bank account will thank you.

I was one of the thousands (if not millions) of people who wanted my own “internet money machine” and I came from a position where I had little or no computer knowledge – I could send and receive emails and knew how to surf the net – but that was literally it!

Does that sound like you? If so then how do you get from that position to making serious money on the internet? The first thing I did was get incredibly excited. I’d been looking for a home based business and eventually stumbled across the internet as an obvious market place. After all I had a computer at home. So I looked around the web (using one of my existing skills – I knew how to surf!) and soon realised “I want to make money on the internet”.

So I spent some more time surfing for ways of making this desire a reality. There seemed so many businesses and no shortage of people offering to make me serious money on the internet. How kind of them! Just type in “online business opportunity” in Google and see what I mean. It was about now I began to think perhaps not all these opportunities were as great as they were cracked up to be!

So I went around doing a bit of market research. How? I visited a few forums. You soon learn that there is a forum on just about any subject online. It is a phenomenon that you can use to weed out some of the good from bad if you use them right. Visit a few (again use Google or whichever search engine you have) and just read the posts relating to your interest. If you like you can join and actually ask some questions. Nearly everyone is helpful and friendly. But beware the person who tries to hard sell his or her opportunity to you.

It helps to get over the get rich quick mentality as soon as possible. Sure you can make serious money on the internet – it is after all a market place – but start out with the intention of making a steady income first. Don’t try to run before you can walk. When you have your regular income covered you will be in a good position to move to the next stage (getting rich!)

There are so many business types and niches out there that you will have no problem finding something – in fact you will probably be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of it all. I really had no idea before I started. Just try and hone in on something you have an interest in or that you have some experience in at first. Then research the business and market and the opportunities presented. Visit websites, use the forums and download some ebooks on the subject – invaluable in my experience.

Every bit of help and knowledge you need is to be found online. Just use your search engine as a research tool. The web is like an almost infinite library at your fingertips. I can honestly say that I learned everything I needed without leaving my seat!

Good luck with your “internet money machine”, you can do it!

For a review of my favorite money machine visit .realmoneysite.com

This question is for you “newbies” out there. Ok, so you‘ve entertained the thought that you might want to be involved in or at least checkout the wide wide world of Online Marketing! Soon enough the question arises, will I need my own website? Or, does this mean I’ll have to have a website? This may even be expressed with some trepidation.

One of the reasons I’m discussing this question is due to some marketing opportunities being offered on the web or elsewhere that use the pitch: ”no website needed”. What’s the reality here? Are there ways to make money online that don’t require the operator to have a website? Well, yes there are, but after you hear about them you may think they’re not what you were referring to. First,

Trading the financial markets

If you know what you’re doing and have enough trading capital, yes, you can be quite successful trading a market(s) and no you won’t need your own website. I’ll bet you weren’t thinking of this.

Auction selling as in eBay.

As a part time activity it definitely qualifies, As a modest full time activity it might qualify. The truth of the matter is that the most successful auction type sellers usually do have their own websites and online stores.

So, where does the “no website needed” pitch come from? First, it seems to come from sources that have limited experience online themselves and are therefore not credible sources. Next, it seems to come from sources that are using it as a marketing ploy to get the business of persons who are “faint of heart” or only marginally suitable to become online marketers themselves. One could say that it is being used as a sort of “half-truth” bait.

There are online marketing techniques that can be used without a website. However, experience will usually show, that most of these same techniques can be used even more effectively with your own website. Usually, maximum effect, with the least required effort, is what most online marketers are striving for.

Not coincidentally, our FREE 12 hour course, offered below, includes a section with exacting steps and instructions on creating your own website! You could buy a course on web site creation, but why not take ours for FREE? (It’s only one section of our 12 hour course.)

What will your online marketing activities include? Physical products, info products, products or services offered as an affiliate? All of these will have greater profit opportunities if you have a website that you control to promote your online marketing efforts. My best advice is to seek out the skills you need for online marketing and GO FOR IT! The rewards are well worth it.