My Buy Essay

Archive for August, 2008

Are you fully leveraging the power of the Internet with your marketing efforts?

It’s kind of amazing, but I still meet lots of small business owners who don’t think the Internet is crucial for their success. “I’m just a small local business. I don’t think the Internet is necessarily the right place for me to focus my marketing efforts.” I’m still hearing this sentiment from many a small business owner.

Hey, I was one of those people for almost a year with my own business. And I’ve set my stall out as a small business marketing guy.

Listen, whether you’re trying to get people’s attention from half-way around the world or just half-way around the block, you need to consider the power of the Internet. More and more people are turning to the Internet before (or in lieu of ever) turning to the yellow pages. That’s true even when they’re looking for things in their own town.

It’s a place where people go to begin gathering information to make a decision. It’s the place where people prefer to start when someone has made a referral or recommendation. It’s the place people would generally prefer to go after they’ve met you at a networking event and were interested enough to know more.

The Internet is not going away. In fact, the trends show us that it’s becoming a more and more integral part of the communication media we depend on. Anybody notice how interested the cable companies, phone companies, and cell phone service companies have become in putting out products and services that work with the Internet?

Are you fully leveraging the power of the Internet with your marketing efforts yet? Do you have a web site? Email newsletter? Blog? Podcast? Vlog?

Does the mere mention of all these terms intimidate and overwhelm you? Don’t let it.

You don’t have to do all of these things at once. Make this the year that you begin leveraging the Internet to grow your small business.

But, the power of the Internet is something you simply can’t ignore if you really want to take your business to great new heights. Make a commitment to learn more about this powerful, ever changing medium called the Internet. And then pull out your marketing plan and figure out how to make it fit into your strategy.

There are almost unlimited opportunities in Internet Marketing, in terms of the different paths people can choose to take in search of the mighty dollar. But what many newcomers fail to consider up-front is that the different opportunities place very different demands on your time &ndash in ways that can have a significant impact on your lifestyle.

Some Internet Marketing opportunities are very close to being “set and forget.” The Underachiever strategy for marketing information products, promoted by Frank Kern and Ed Dale, is a case in point. Once an information product is written, the selling web site is up with all payment issues handled by a 3rd party, and pay-per-click ads are bringing traffic, there is relatively little to do. Similarly, anyone building quick-and-dirty web sites for Adsense income has a similar opportunity. In contrast to content-rich theme sites that may be lovingly nurtured and grown over weeks, months or even years, these sites can be created in hours (sometimes minutes!), “activated” as far as the search engines go within a few days after very little work, then effectively abandoned … to gain traffic momentum over the months with the free search engines.

But many other opportunities demand a serious commitment of time &ndash at least, unless you are prepared to outsource much of the work.

For example, while eBay does not have to be this way, many people selling on eBay end up in a situation where all the tasks involved in operating the business represent a commitment equivalent to a full-time job. What sounds easy on first glance can involve researching opportunities or products, finding sources or products, even making your own products (information products sold on CD’s, for example), taking or finding photographs, finding or writing product descriptions, putting the final ad together, placing the ads, answering bidders’ questions, packing, shipping, dealing with returns, dealing with payment problems, and so on. It’s still Internet Marketing, of course, and potentially very lucrative, but this can become hard work.

Other types of Internet Marketing opportunities demand you go back regularly to update websites to reflect changes in product or technology so that your sites are always current. This is a common problem with some affiliate marketing sites where there are many links to individual pages on merchants’ sites; while these might offer better conversion rates than links to the merchant’s home pages, these links need to be constantly checked and updated because merchants have a habit of changing products (or even just the specific web pages on which a product is offered).

Some opportunities call on you to respond quickly and consistently to questions from prospects and customers. These might be questions asked by people considering buying your product &ndash in which case you certainly don’t want to make them wait; or, questions by frustrated people having problems downloading a product they just bought from you. The longer the wait, the higher the frustration. Then there are issues of refunds, questions about billing, and many more situations (sometimes just plain dumb questions) that demand the personal touch – at least, until you are large enough or confident enough to hire others to handle the administrative side of the business.

One of the most effective Internet Marketing strategies is, of course, to maintain a list of people interested in your product or the topic in which you are a specialist. For many marketers, this list IS the holy grail; everything else is just a means to build it. That’s because a good list can be like gold; a captive audience of people who already know and trust you. But there’s no question, it can take a serious commitment of time and effort to maintain and service such a list effectively. Now, if all you do is e-mail to them occasionally with a half-dozen lines and an offer to buy some affiliate product from you, that’s one thing; sure, the commitment is minimal, but in return you can expect a high drop-out rate and poor conversions. But if you put together a valuable and interesting newsletter with good formatting, grammar, spelling and content, one designed to develop a solid and lasting relationship with the people on your list, you’re not talking about just a few minutes a week. If you want the most effective use of a list, this demands consistency of timing, too. So you not only have to commit time and brainpower, you have deadlines to meet, too.

One of the issues that had me kicking myself initially was my shotgun approach to building Adsense sites &ndash I built sites that had very little to do with each other. All the Internet marketing experts agreed that if all I was doing was slapping Adsense on those sites, and not collecting Opt-in e-mail addresses, then I was throwing away an income far larger than the one I was making. But there was simply no way I could afford to maintain and effectively service a list for every site if I was to do it justice in terms of establishing a value-based relationship with the people on the lists. Sure, I could have thrown something together, and I know some marketers do exactly that, but that’s not really my style. An anonymous site is one thing, but an e-mail from me, with my name on it, has to represent something of value.

Still on a personal level, I suppose I should also be happy that, for once, my daughter is actually listening to me! Now she’s into Internet Marketing and building her own sites, she is sticking to a common theme for a whole group of different sites. This means that a carefully written single newsletter can be applied to everybody on the List developed from ALL the sites in a group, because it’s relevant and valuable content to every site in the group. There are also valuable SEO advantages from having a group of sites ( a mini-net) on a common theme, of course; the extra traffic means more visitors, which means a bigger List, … without requiring any increase in time committed to the newsletter. When the Affiliate-based income from the List dwarfs the Adsense income, this Internet marketing strategy is the key to some serious coin.

Smart Internet marketers know that buying master resale rights is a shortcut to getting products on the market. But did you know that Bill Gates and the Microsoft empire were built from purchasing master resale rights?

That’s right – the richest man in the world bought the rights to DOS, the operating system that began the Microsoft empire.

There are 5 important lessons Bill Gates could teach you about master resale rights.

1. Find a hungry market with a burning need and fill it.

Bill Gates read about the Altair 8800 computer in Popular Science in 1975. Realizing Altair needed a simple programming language to make the computer popular, Gates sold a version of BASIC to Altair before it was even written. Then Gates worked night and day with Paul Allen and Monte Davidoff to develop it. Microsoft was born.

In 1980, IBM created the desktop PC – but they didn’t have an operating system. Gates saw a burning need waiting to be filled, and learned a new lesson:

2. You don’t have to create a product to fill a need if you can buy the master resale rights instead.

IBM approached Bill Gates to create an operating system for the PC. Gates initially recommended they contact Digital Research to purchase their CP/M operating system. But those negotiations failed, and IBM came back to Bill Gates.

Gates learned that Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products had developed a clone of CP/M called QDOS. Microsoft bought the rights for just $56,000.

Of course you don’t have to invest $56,000 to get rights worth selling. Often you can buy master resale rights for $100, $50, even $10 or $20. You can even join resale rights membership sites and get thousands of dollars worth of products for a small monthly fee. Sometimes you can even find master resale rights products for free!

Why so cheap? Sometimes the products aren’t very good, but often they’re great products that weren’t marketed well. Not seeing the opportunity, people sell their work for almost nothing.

Smart marketers know that sometimes you can just rename a product or change the marketing and have a hit. This is where Bill Gates could teach us the third lesson:

3. Repackage or rebrand, change the marketing approach, and build your own brand.

QDOS stood for “Quick and Dirty Operating System.” IBM might have bought it even with a name like that, but being a savvy marketer, Gates decided to rebrand it. He dubbed it “PC-DOS,” for “PC Disk Operating System.” He targeted it squarely at IBM – and they bought it, big time.

When PC clones hit the market, Gates saw another hungry market with a burning need. Microsoft quickly rebranded DOS, dubbing it “MS-DOS” for “Microsoft Disk Operating System,” thus building the Microsoft brand at the same time. The rest is history.

Resale rights products are often widely available. If you do the same thing as everyone else, why should someone buy the product from you? But if you take the time to repackage or rebrand the resale rights where permitted, you will have a unique product you can market to a hungry audience with a burning need. Because the next lesson we can learn from Bill Gates is:

4. Just because someone else didn’t become a billionaire with the master resale rights for a product doesn’t mean you can’t. Use your brain and figure out how to do things better.

Success in any business is often as dependent on intelligence, motivation, and marketing as it is on the product itself.

Others created the BASIC programming language, but Bill Gates repackaged it and sold it to Altair. Digital Research had a perfect operating system for the PC, but they missed out. Tim Paterson created the DOS operating system that would run every PC in the world. But he sold it to Microsoft for $56,000. Bill Gates is now worth an estimated $51 billion. Forbes magazine says he is the richest man in the world.

Realizing he had a hungry market with a burning need, Gates saw opportunities that others missed, took products that were relative failures, and built a multi-billion dollar empire.

Not everyone is Bill Gates, but don’t you think we all have opportunities that we either take or miss? And don’t you think we sometimes settle for less than we could have?

That brings us to the final lesson that Bill Gates could teach you about master resale rights:

5. Don’t sell your life for almost nothing.

Bill Gates took opportunities that others had and did something with them. Do you think Bill Gates would ever sell the master resale rights to all of the Microsoft products for $10?

Of course not! Yet you will often see people selling master resale rights to great products for less than you’d spend for dinner! They don’t realize they are selling their life for almost nothing.

You can’t go far on the Internet without someone promising you that you can make a million dollars by selling their product. Do you realize how many $10 products you would have to sell every day to make a million dollars a year? 274! Each and every day, 365 days a year. Wouldn’t it be easier to sell 27.4 copies of a product every day for $100 each? Or a $30 monthly membership to a site 8 times a day?

You’re not going to see Microsoft selling the next version of Windows for $10 each, and you shouldn’t sell yourself short either.

Don’t drop your price. Build your marketing skills instead. Find a hungry market with a burning need. Fill it by creating your own repackaged, rebranded product from other people’s master resale rights products. Use your brain and figure out how to do it better. Don’t sell your life for nothing. Charge a higher price and make it worth it to people. Fulfill their need and you’ll have no shortage of business.

Your web site is just like your business, in fact it is an extension of your business in some cases and it IS your business in others. Your advertising campaign must address each of these methods to the best and fullest extent possible given your advertising budget.

Let’s take a look at how you can use these different advertising methods to your best advantage:

Using Articles to market your web site

Short articles are a great way to generate traffic to your website. Articles can be used to keep the material fresh on the site so that your customers keep coming back, they can also be used to ‘advertise’ your site on web sites owned by others. Placing your article on article submission sites allows others to download it and use your article in their newsletters and on their web sites. Of course there are links in the article that point to your site for more information or other reviews etc. These links are great as they help increase your standings in the search engines.

The articles can be about any topic and you will find there are hundreds of article submission sites available to place your articles on. Most are free as they need fresh information so that their customers keep coming back as well. Iwantabusiness.biz is a new article submission site that I have started to give you an idea of what one is like. Feel free to post your articles on this site if they pertain to small business or home based businesses.

Using Affiliates to market your web site

Affiliate programs can add thousands of independent sales people to help market your products and services.

Over the years I have been involved with many businesses, and one of the things I remember from my Amway days was that as an individual, I could only do so much. I have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year in which I can work. I will hit a maximum point of sales that I can handle by myself. After that I’m done. The only way to do more is to automate and have others duplicate what I do. The same is true on the web. We need to automate and duplicate what we do so we can have others expand our sales for us. The first part of this equation is duplication. We can have others follow what we do and sell our products and services for us and pay them a portion of the profits. This is different than having employees. Employees have no requirement to sell. They are overhead that must be paid regardless of sales. That is NOT what you want for a new business. Keep your hard earned cash for other things. What we need is someone that is willing to do the work for part of the profits. This is where affiliate programs come in to our formula for success. Affiliates are basically a partnership between web sites to advertise and promote products, services, or information for a share of the profits. When someone they refer to you buys, you pay them a percentage of the sales. Result? More traffic, more sales and less time required by you to find the customers as someone else does it for you.

What else can a good affiliate program do for you?

• How about driving more traffic to your site!

• Build brand awareness as more people visit your site from the hundreds or thousands of affiliates that are advertising for you.

• Obtaining qualified leads that you can follow-up on to increase or up sell to.

• Increasing the links to your site which will increase the ranking of your site on the search engines resulting in more traffic and more sales.

There are all kinds of affiliate programs. Some programs charge to be a member and some do not. Some are web based and some are software programs that you load on your computer to set up and track the sales and affiliate yourself. Which one you use is up to you. Here are a few that I have found.

Affiliate Net – This is one of the more affordable server side affiliate programs. With this software there are no monthly fees only a one time software charge. At the time of this writing this package sold from $49.95 to $99.95. Referral Software – This package is also server side although more expensive, it has many more features and is worth while to consider if you are serious about earning a lot of money with your Internet business. At the time of this writing this package sold for $299.00.

Click Bank – This is a web based affiliate program. By signing up on their web site you have access to over 100,000 affiliates. There are monthly and set up fees.

clixGalore Affiliate Networks – This is a web based affiliate program. There are monthly and set up fees.

I highly recommend affiliate programs. For the reasons listed above. Remember they will help drive traffic to your site, which means more sales and you can use the affiliate programs to offer others services and make the commission once you are done with the client. This could be a good business all by its self.

Using Auctions to market your web site

Ok, you have a product or service you want to sell; you need to let people know about that product or service and you don’t have much money to spend. Imagine a place that gets over 3 million customers that are ready, able, willing and looking to buy everyday. It is a Super Mall!

Ask any business person what they would pay to be in a mall that got 3 million visitors a day. You can see the dollar signs light up in their eyes… both in terms of cost and sales potential. Remember my goal from earlier in the course when we talked about business planning? I need to have 4200 visitors a month come to my web site in order to sell 420 copies according to my business plan. Well E-Bay gets 3 million visitors a day! Do you think that might be a place that I would want to advertise my books or my web site? You bet! In fact I have sold quite a few of my other books on E-Bay as well as bottles, baseball cards, clothing, computers, software, training, video and much more. So can you.

Let’s take my Weekend Chef’s guides and see how I can sell them on E-Bay, Yahoo Auctions, or MSN Auctions. First I need an account. This is simple, but does vary based on who you are signing up with. Follow the instructions (at the end of this page is an excellent course on how to really make money on auctions, but this will get you started). Once you have an account, we now need to place something for sale. Think of the auction site as your web site As such we need to create a web page that offers you product/service for sale. I use a software package call Auction Wizard 2000. They have an excellent program that allows you to try it for 60 days before you have to register. It is so easy to use as well. Using Auction Wizard, I can create an auction page and automatically post it and repost as needed to any of the supported auctions. No special knowledge of html is required. Simple fill in the blanks and add any pictures or graphics and I’m done. It also will track the sales, send emails to successful bidders, track inventory and so much more. If you are thinking of doing auctions, this is one piece of software to take a hard look at.

Back to selling my guides and building my business. Within the auction listing, I can place a link to my site, offer a free download of some chapters of the book, of course, I will need your email before you can download. Remember, I need to keep you coming back. Be careful here, E-Bay does not like you selling outside of their auction so make sure the visitor is not allowed to buy from your site at that link. Well, now we have given something away for free (a chapter of the book), we have the visitors email address, and we hopefully will get a bid on the product/service. If not, we have the email to follow up. What has it cost us? Each item up for auction on E-Bay cost …. are you ready for this 30 cents to list it plus a small percentage of the selling cost. If I list my Weekend Chef’s Guide to Sushi on E-Bay with a starting price of say $1 it will cost me a total of about 30 cents for the week. 30 cents to reach millions of potential customers a day. If I sell the book, I will have recovered my 30 cents and started building my customer email list as well.

Now I could write a whole web site on using auctions, but this page is just how to use auctions to market your business. You can sell items and make a profit or you can just list items and build a customer database to market to later. Either way Auctions make a great way to market your business.

I have on my website a couple more tips on using auctions as well at rd-webhosting.com or visit my eBay store for other eBooks that are available from time to time.

Using Auto responders to market your web site

Depending on the products, services or information you are selling auto responders may be able to automate a good portion of your web site business. An auto responder is a piece of software that checks email for certain words or phrases and responds according to your wishes. For example, you may have received a newsletter by sending an email to me with Subscribe as the subject. My auto responder sees that email come in and has a set of actions defined that when the subject has subscribe in it that it will email back to you our newsletter. Another thing that the auto responders can do is following up with your customers at predetermined times with a predetermined letter. This is good for driving traffic to your site after they have visited and left their email address such as to subscribe to a newsletter or download a free chapter of an e-book or other information you have made available. For my training business I send up to 4 different emails to each person that request my guide to increase their income. Each email introduces them to other benefits and services that are available. Some of the emails will offer a discount or free training class as an incentive to sign up for a class. All of it done without me having to get involved.

Auto responders can be installed on your computer or used via the Internet. Some are free and others you have to pay either by the email address or based on the number of responses you want to program it to respond to. Here are some links to auto responders on the web as well as a software package with a trial version you can use yourself.

Promasoft: This is the one we use with our servers. I highly recommend. They have a trial version that is a full version. It places a header in the outgoing email, so you will want to register once you have it up and running. I think it is a great program.

GetResponse: This is also a great program, although, this one is a subscription service. It can be a less expensive way to try out an auto responder. They do offer a free account as well.

This is part one of a multi-part series of Marketing you web site. In the next section we will cover marketing you web site using banner ads and classified ads .

Using Email to market your web site

This is a very touchy subject. One that needs to be addressed and that you need to understand. Email marketing falls into three categories. First is simple, you place a signature line in your email program that automatically adds your signature block to each out going email. This signature line identifies your web site and a brief tag line or catch phase. Every time you respond or send an email, your signature advertises your business. No problems with that. However, the next two types of email marketing are very touchy.

By now, everyone has heard of SPAM. Your definition may be different from mine and from the governments. However, you look at it, SPAM is unwanted email. Now email marketing requires that we send emails to our potential customers. This can be done either with or without their permission. Sending email without the permission of the recipient put us in a bad light. Often resulting is negative feelings and responses from the recipient. This is bad for business. If you piss off the potential customer, well…. they are no longer a potential customer as they have deleted you email and won’t be visiting your site. You have wasted valuable time and money. So, the only people you will be sending any marketing emails to will be those that have requested information from you or have agreed to receive information from you. This is called permission based email.

Where can you find people who are willing to receive your emails? First provide a place on your web site to gather the names and addresses of your visitors. Offer them something in exchange, such as a free publication, or your newsletter, or something else of potential value to them. Let them know when they sign up that you will from time to time be sending them information. Include in the email a means to unsubscribe at any time. As people sign up you are building your email list which you can market to as often as you like. I wouldn’t recommend more than twice a month.

There are other web sites that maintain a list of people who want to hear from your. This permission based method is usually based on a particular subject matter. Such as hobbies, business ideas, child care etc. You can find them on the web by searching for mailing list.

Emails are an inexpensive way to keep in touch with your customers. If you have a brick and motor store, try to get the email addresses of your current customers and add them to the list as well. You will be surprised at how much extra business can come from a personalize email about a special you are offering for their support over the last year etc.

Using E-books to market your web site

What can your own E-zine or E-book do for your business or web site? How about:

Sell more products or services. An e-zine/e-book can increase your credibility, making it easier to sell your product or service as well as those of others in which you have a stake.

Attract more affiliates to help sell your products or services. This form of advertising is viral in it approach. E-zines and e-books get passed from person to person. Creating more interest which makes people want to jump on board and become part of that success.

Establish yourself as an expert in your field, creating more ‘believability’ and trust.

People don’t buy from strangers. With you e-zine or e-book you become better known to them. When the time comes they need or want your products or services, there’s no question who they’ll buy them from — YOU!

Show your visitors and clients everything you can really do for them, maximizing your sales efforts.

Build a base of customers who are ready to hire you, buy from you, evangelize for you and create more fans for you.

Effortlessly spread the word about your business via “viral marketing.”

Create new revenue streams from selling ad space and recommending other products that you’re an affiliate of. See our affiliate page for more information.

Become a recognized publisher. Have others writing your articles, advertisers paying for exposure in your publication.

Here is an IMPORTANT point, capture the email addresses of your Web site visitors, gaining permission to market to them over and over again and multiple chances closing the sale. Not to mention the sales of other products or services.

Keep in touch with all of your customers, prospects, and associates &ndash on a regular basis.

Simple tips for creating e-zines and e-books

Package your knowledge on a regular basis into tips and articles that can be reprinted in other publications for tons of additional exposure and traffic. There are thousands of ebooks and e-zines in publication today. Most are specialized in a particular segment of the web or interest. When you find an ebook/ezine that reaches the people that may be interested in your product or service. Contact them to see if they take outside articles. If they do, send them an article or two that you may have written. Include information on your business and its web site If they publish your article, your name and web site will be listed. This is a great way of getting free advertising and traffic to your site.

Another way to get articles for your e-books is to find someone to write them for you. Much like the process above but in this case you are the one publishing the material. Use your web site, chat rooms, forums etc to advertise for articles.

Save thousands of dollars printing and postage by producing your newsletter online instead of printing it. Adobe Writer is a good program for your e-books and any email program can be used for e-zines.

We have several resources in our download area on ebook. One of the better programs for creating ebooks is Deadeasy although not free it makes a great tool for creating ebooks. If you would like more information on Deadeasy, click here.

Using Letterhead to market your web site

Every business uses paper to correspond with its customers, vendors and other businesses. Many small businesses and home based businesses today use the computer a and a word processor to generate this correspondence whether it be printed or electronic we all do. So how can we use this correspondence to market our business? Simple, create a letterhead template and make it your default document when ever you create a business related correspondence.

In your letterhead template make sure you have your website address and you company slogan (if you have one) prominently displayed. I have even seem some letterhead lately that simply has the website address listed and no physical address as many companies are Internet based or figure that you will have access to the Internet and can visit their site to look up the street address if needed. This is actually a clever move, in that it get you to visit the site, which is what our marketing is trying to do to begin with.

Using Magazines to market your web site

Those articles that you wrote or had written for your business can also be sent to magazine and newspapers for publication. Each one that is printed is free advertisement for your business that last for years. Just think how many issues are passed around from person to person before they end up in the trash. I saw several magazines at the Laundromat that were from 1996-1998 that people were still reading. You can do a search on the web for publications in your area of expertise. Visit their web sites and find the editors email address. Be sure to find out the policy for submitting an article for publication and follow it. Some editors don’t like it when the mail box is full of unsolicited articles that do not conform to their policies and will just trash the email instead of replying to you.

Using Banners to market your web site

Banner advertising is on just about every web site you visit today. Banners are a form of advertising. This advertising is used to help pay for the site and help make the owner money. Regardless of the type of business or web site you have, you can use banners to help increase your income. The advertising revenue generated from banners falls into 3 groups: Pay Per Impression (PPI), Pay Per Click (PPC), and Pay Per Sale/Lead (PPS).

Pay Per Impression

With PPI banner advertising you are paid each time your advertiser’s banner is shown on your web pages. A term CPM is often used with banner advertising. It means cost per thousand, which basically means you will be paid $x.xx for every 1000 banners displayed to the visitors of your web site This is the easiest method to earn money with as every time someone visits your web site you get paid. However, this is not used very much and is very easily abused. If you have a 1000 visitors per day and are paid $5 per thousand then you make $150 per month. As an advertiser you do NOT want to use PPI. It would be like paying the newspaper or phone company money every time they said someone opened the newspaper or phonebook.

Pay Per Click

With PPC banner, you are paid more than with PPI but only when the visitor actually clicks on the banner rather then just seeing it. With PPI you many be paid $5.00 CPM (per thousand) and with PPC you could be paid $5 per click. However, not as many will click on the banner. Banner design has a lot to do with what we call the conversion rate. That is basically how effective is the banner. Conversion rates for banners is usually less than 1%. A very good banner may have a 5% conversion rate. Remember that is a passive income stream. It is working around the clock and requires no work on your part. So, if you have 1000 people a day coming to your web site and you have a 1% conversion rate with a payment of 50 cents per click, you could be earning $150 a month just for having the banner there. As an advertiser this is a little better than PPI. At least now the visitor is on your web site and you have a chance to gather information about them and possibly sell them your product or service.

Pay Per Sale/Lead

PPS banner advertising using pays the highest dollars of these three methods, but only generates income when the advertiser makes a sale to someone visiting from your web site It will have the lowest conversion rate of the three. PPS banners only work well for the web site owner if the advertiser does a good job with the banner design (creating a desire to click), selling (presenting information), and closing (getting the sale). None of these do you control directly. Selecting PPS advertisers for your site should be well thought out. As an advertiser, this is the preferred type of banner advertising.

Where to find advertisers

I think the best place to find people that want to place banner ads on your site will be the affiliate programs. This is also a good place for you to advertise that you would like to place banners on others sites as well. Read the pages carefully. Banners can be expensive if you don’t generate any sales.

If you have friends or business associates that you do business with you can ask them if they would like to place a banner on your site or if you could place a banner on theirs. These exchanges become more and more popular as your site becomes more popular as well.

A new source for banner ads are from the major search engines. Google Adwords are probably the best known new source for advertising on a pay per basis. This works both ways. You can pay to have your ad/banner placed on others sites as well as have other web site ads placed on your site. When your ad is displayed and someone clicks on it they will visit your site and you pay Google for the visit. When you allow Google to place ads on your site and someone clicks the ad, you get paid.

In the resource section of rd-webhosting.com you will find more information on using banners to market your website.

Using Classified Ads to market your web site

Classified ads are just like in the newspaper. They are small detailed ads that offer your product or services and provides a contact (your email or web site). A quick search on Yahoo for classified ads will find over 58,000,000 entries for sites and people who will either sell or place your classified ads on their web sites.

Classified ad sites fall into two categories: Free and Paid. Free sites should be avoided. BE CAREFUL… most free classified ad web sites. are farming your email address to sell to others. You will find you email box loaded with tons of offers and once it starts it will never stop. Paid classified web sites, however, can be like having a store in the world’s largest shopping mall for pennies a day in rent.

One of the largest classified ads web sites is…eBay. Think about this. For about 30 cents an ad (item to sell) you get listed for one week where over 1 million people a day come to shop. I have more information on eBay and other auction sites under Web Basics.

There are other forms of advertising as well. One of which we discussed before was newsletters. Others include, your email signature, banner ads, ebooks and affiliates. Each are discussed here. Click on the Marketing Resources to review each form of advertising.

This is part one of a multi-part series of Marketing you web site. Please visit us at rd-webhosting.com for the rest of the series. In the next section we will cover marketing you web site using email, e-books, letterhead and magazines. More information on marketing, website design and other areas of Internet Business can be found at rd-webhosting.com in our resources area.

To succeed in the mortgage industry, get used to meeting people. Referrals from people who know you and business from Realtors will make up at least half closed loans. And no matter how good you are, if people don’t have some reason to trust you, they’re not going to call.

“Real estate is a contact sport,” said Realtor Barbara Anderson.

She and her husband Ron are the owners and instructors of Success Real Estate Academy in Prescott, Arizona. According to Barbara Anderson there are some specific steps you can take that will keep you on their radar and building revenue:

• Be really, really good at what you do. According to Anderson, this means communication, competitive rates and consistent excellence. While Anderson and her colleagues can’t by law refer their customers to you, they do provide them with a list of three mortgage professionals. You have to be a star to get on that list. Nothing else will work. “I tell my students that they need to get out and interview them,” she said of choosing which mortgage professionals they’ll work with.

• Offer classes. Anderson says that she often has mortgage professionals speak at her school. Many of them will end up on the lists of the fledgling Realtors. Focus on subjects that enhance their professional lives. Topics that tap your expertise to show them how to save money, make more money or attract more clients are all winners.

• Join a Realtor’s association in your area. Like marketing frequency, the more times Realtors and escrow professionals see you, the more likely it is that you’ll come to mind when their list comes up for review. If you can, go the extra mile and offer to host a meeting. According to Anderson, mortgage professionals prove that they’re helpful, congenial and accountable by the way they show up amongst their peers. “It’s just being there for them,” she said.

• Grow your supply of testimonials. Another way to tap the power of who you know is to collect testimonials from your clients. Most people will lend far more credence to another person’s description of their experience with you than with your own assertions of excellence. Put the testimonials on your website, your brochures, your mailings and even on your business cards. A time-saving way to collect testimonials from all of your clients is to program an email request into your customer relationship management (CRM) software. That way, testimonial gathering, like all of the other tasks automatically managed and executed with your CRM, is a zero-work, high-yield proposition. If you’re still shopping for CRM, consider one geared specifically for mortgage professionals.

Taking advantage of service opportunities and association memberships has skyrocketed the revenue and credibility of more than a few mortgage professionals. According to Ron Anderson, it’s the most important thing they can do after establishing professional excellence.

“Their reputation makes a big difference, just like Realtors and doctors,” he said.

The way we do business is changing rapidly. From VOIP, video conferencing, email support, telephone answering services, and the almighty internet. As a business owner we are faced with hundreds of decisions our parents and grandparents never had to contend with.

Some of you keep hearing from other business associates that internet marketing is the greatest method of increasing business and building a foundation for customer support. The only problem is, you’ve just learned how to send emails to people! Never mind learning about SEO, web design strategies, content analysis, pay per click, ROI, etc!

Do you hire an SEO company or do you learn yourself?

Investing time into your company is what we business owners do best but, in many cases, when it comes to learning new methods we quickly open our wallets to anyone out there who seems like the right person to help with your situation. This is the worst possible decision you can make.

Diving into the internet marketing community with your wallet open will result in a disaster if you aren’t properly trained on how to spend your money wisely. The key is not to hire an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) company to take your money and promote your business behind your back. Try finding someone who offers you their “training services” in order to train yourself or someone within your organization to learn more about what is required online, how much effort it entails, and what pitfalls to avoid.

As a business owner, if you blindly search online and pick a company, you have no idea what you could be getting yourself into. There are no secrets to promoting your business online, only a lot of hard work. That being said, anyone with a computer can easily learn how to get their company high search engine rankings. Search engines don’t look to see whether or not you’re running a scam. No, they are concentrated on delivering relevant results for your search terms.

Old Fashioned Marketing Tactics:

In the old days (and still practiced today), business owners would devise their own marketing plan through print media, business cards, postcards, flyers, brochures, newspapers, magazines, TV ads, and radio ads. By doing this, the company could track their results by trial and error and really find out what truly works for their industry.

Old fashioned marketing is a simple trial and error process. So is the internet. Unfortunately, all too many business owners don’t have a clue how to start their own internet marketing process and they fail to even put their foot in the water. Instead, many business owners simply hire anyone they can find that seems reputable and then turn a blind eye and say; “Here’s my budget, you are the professional, you tell me what to do”. This is simply preposterous. You’ve worked so hard to get to where you are now by learning and adapting and as soon as it comes to marketing your business online, you simply shut down.

I hope that this article has awoken some of you. Don’t be afraid to dive into the internet’s vast realm of marketing potential. So what if you fail the first time around. When we started out, we had no idea what we were doing, 3 years later our website ranks higher than many other internet marketing companies world wide.

The ULTIMATE secret to internet marketing is simple…

A concept I call “T.I.M.E.”

T – Try and try again

I – Internet changes all the time

M – Marketing opportunities are around every corner

E – Eventually you too can succeed

Think of it this way (Illustration only)

Here is a timeline of your internet marketing campaign:

Start date – Research only: June 7th, 2005

Hired a website designer – August 31st, 2005

Website Complete – October 15th, 2005

Website launch – October 20th, 2005

Started an internet marketing campaign – November 1st, 2005

Started a Pay Per Click campaign – November 10th, 2005

Made a sale – November 15th, 2005

Increased our website’s link popularity – January 1st, 2006

Website gets hit by the Google Sandbox Effect – January 20th, 2006

Increased our Pay Per Click campaign – February 5th, 2006

Made some changes to the website – February 21st, 2006

Increase the website’s link popularity – February 28th, 2006

Got listed in the Yahoo directory – March 3rd, 2006

So here you are 10 months out of the gate and your website may still be “locked in the Google sandbox” ( Search for “Google Sandbox” in Google for an explanation). Your link popularity is just starting to grow a little bit. Hopefully you haven’t tried to link to everyone you can find and are actually linking to companies that are directly related to your business. Your PPC campaign is doing good. People are finally starting to come through Yahoo & MSN search results. You can sometimes find your company in the 200th spot within search results in Google and you are now wondering why this is taking so long.

Welcome to the world of marketing your company on the internet!!!

This timeline representation from above is just something to show you how “T.I.M.E.” is the key of success on the internet and all we are required to do is keep plugging away and keep learning more every chance we get.

For most people who simply open up their wallets, they would have learned nothing in those 10 months and for everyone else starting an internet marketing campaign, those who didn’t simply just open their wallets, their websites are probably 10 times further than yours!

In Conclusion:

Learn more about how to increase your marketing campaign on the internet. If you have to, hire someone in-house who can learn for you and give you updates on everything. If you truly need to hire an SEO company make sure it’s for the right reasons like “starting and finishing a marketing campaign with you learning in the process”, or “enhancing a campaign that is already in place”, or “to revise your website’s conversion rate” or “create a impactful key word optimization campaign”, etc. Take your time and use “T.I.M.E.” to increase your business slowly but effectively on the internet.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this article!

With its global audience, the Internet provides a unique revenue generation platform with search engines. This is where your business will be made or thrown on the refuse pile.

Marketing on Search Engines &ndash Getting the Biggest Bang for Your Buck

Search engines are similar to the streets of a major city. Some search engines represent the major avenues where people congregate while others are more similar to back alleys where almost nobody goes or at least not the kind of people you want to meet in…a dark alley.

Cutting to the chase, your traffic generation efforts should focus on Google, Yahoo and MSN. These three search engines control the vast majority of traffic on the Internet. Not only do lots of people uses them to find things, the big three provide search results to many other search engines as well. For instance, Google supplies ads and search results for AOL. Dogpile compiles the various search results from the big three in its listings. Alta Vista uses Yahoo search results. This scenario is so expansive that the big three search engines are simply the only way to go. This means you need to focus on them to the exclusion of others.

When you focus on these sites, two approaches can be taken &ndash pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization. Other forms of search engine marketing, such as banner ads, produce poor results and should be avoided. Let’s take a closer look at the big two.

Pay-per-click advertising [ppc] is platform whereby you pay for placement on a search engine. The two major ppc platforms are Overture and Google Adwords. Overture places ads on the Yahoo and MSN search engines. Google Adwords places ads on Google and AOL search results. Both platforms place ads on other search engines and sites, so you will see your listings appearing everywhere.

The advantage of PPC advertising is you get immediate traffic for your site. You can use the traffic to test the content on the site and whether visitors convert into paying customers. The downside is you are paying for traffic, which means you must pay close attention to your return on investment. All and all, PPC advertising should be used at the outset of a marketing campaign while you wait for optimized pages to get natural rankings.

Search engine optimization [seo] is by far the most effective way to go on the big three. Once you obtain top three rankings for a keyword, you receive more traffic than you would from ppc and it is all free! This does wonders for your profitability. If you can figure out seo on your own, your cost of marketing should eventually become your time and a few dollars a month for tools. This results in obscenely high profits margins. If you prefer to use a seo firm, your costs are going to go up significantly. Once the free traffic starts rolling in, however, you should get an excellent return on investment.

The downside to seo is it takes a lot of time and work. You can expect to wait up to a year for top Google rankings, although Yahoo and MSN rankings will appear much sooner. In light of this waiting period, PPC advertising is a must at the outset of a search engine marketing campaign.

Internet marketing is a fairly simple game. Focus on the big three search engines with a combination of ppc and seo efforts. Stick to these two and you should see good results.

Since its launch in 1995 Craigslist.org has quietly become the largest online classifieds website in the world with a regional presence in 190 cities, across 35 countries. Each month over 10 million people log on to the seventh most popular website to buy and sell just about everything. From real estate to furniture, promoting services such as contracting, house cleaning and even babysitting &ndash Craigslist is the one spot where anyone can connect regionally to fill a need.

As its popularity has continued to increase, so have the possibilities for vendors large and small to market their wares on Craigslist. What’s the big attraction? For the most part Craigslist is 100% free to post and search. Only do job postings in San Francisco, L.A and New York City cost a small fee to post. Otherwise, Craigslist is an open free source for new targeted customers, ripe for the picking, just waiting for your business to give them what they want.

Craigslist is regionally based website that truly promotes community involvement. However, you can post in any of the available metros and multiple metros as well. The trick is in designing an ad that gets people attention, getting on a regular posting schedule, following the rules (or at least not overtly breaking them) and searching for new customers daily.

Simplicity in ad design is paramount and it matches the vibe that Craigslist likes to attract &ndash peer-to-peer, real human interaction. It lacks the commercial aspects that add fluff and confusion in exchange for simple ads, most posted by real folks. Design your ad to fit into that scheme is key to a successful campaign.

Get into the habit of posting often on Craigslist and hit multiple metros with different ads to get more reach (if you business can support it). It’s free to post so what do you have to lose!

Understanding Craigslist rules are fairly simple as they are openly published. They are super picky about what you can post, but there are exceptions like livestock and anything illegal (drugs, guns, etc.). One of the major rules that I see as a marketing rule more than a terms of service rule is to post in the category that best corresponds with your product type. This ensures your ad will reach the best target without adding to useless clutter.

Over 8 million people post monthly on Craigslist and that number grows every day. Don’t just sit back and post ads, answer ads seeking your products and services as well.

Craigslist is one of the best ways for every business, large and small to find a new voice online for little more than elbow grease.