My Buy Essay

Archive for January, 2009

Thousands of business and web enthusiasts are taking the big risk and joining the exciting world of internet marketing. While seemingly overwhelming at first, internet marketing and promotion can actually be classified into three simple categories: market research, search engines, and e-zine advertising. Those interested in the internet marketing field should first familiarize themselves with the very basics of what makes this fast growing business venture tick.

Determining how much money to invest in your overall internet marketing

campaign, and deciding the people and places which to target the main product, are defined as market research. This research is the most basic section of the internet marketing focus. Investing the correct sum of money to the right groups is essential in market research, and internet marketing in general. Proper research will eventually conclude the outcome of your entire business campaign.

Search engines have been a popular form of advertising, both past and present, in the internet marketing community. Search engines are divided into two sections: search engines and directories, and pay per click engines. While the most favored and effective form of internet marketing promotion, this category is also the most expensive. Excellent search engine marketing and placement can quite time consuming as well, and it is best if submission is left to an experienced professional.

Another extremely effective, yet inexpensive form of internet marketing promotion is e-zine advertising. Using the information gathered from your market research, you should be well aware of what your target audience desires. Find out what kinds of online publication or newsletters your internet marketing targets are interested in, and purchase advertising from these sources. Ads generally are available in three basic types: solo ads, top-line ads, and classified ads. Solo ads are the best ads because they are sent to the entire publication list. These ads are also beneficial for internet marketing promotion because they contain only your ad. However, solo ads are the most expensive. While classified ads may be a low-cost alternative, they will not be much help in your plight for internet marketing success. These tiny ads are placed at the end of the newsletter, and are usually overlooked by the majority of readers.

Google Adsense is a unique program that can produce a lot of revenues over time if you are patient. Here is an overview of the basics of Google Adsense.

The Basics of Google Adsense

To understand the basics of Google Adsense, you first have to understand Google Adwords. Adwords is a program where people can bid per click to buy space on platforms Google supports with advertisements. This includes the ads you see on the top and down the right column of results when you search on Google.

Adsense is the result of a crafty little idea wherein Google essentially wanted to maximize distribution of Adwords. With Adsense, Google took the unique approach of letting independent sites place certain types of Adwords advertisements on their pages. This type of advertising is known within the Adwords platform as contextual advertising and advertisers can opt out of it. Most do not.

The beauty of Google Adsense is it creates additional revenue sources for sites. For instance, lets assume someone bids 60 cents in Adwords for the placement of their ads. A site then shows those ads through the Adsense program. When an ad is clicked by a person on that site, Google charges the advertiser and splits the money with the site in question. The exact amount of the split is not provided by Google, but is known to reflect the quality of traffic, click through rates and other aspects.

The Google Adsense program is incredibly simple to use. You sign up through Google and, once approved, are able to select the format of ads you want to list on the pages of your site. Google then immediately generates a java script, which you copy and paste into the html of your pages. You cannot change the code, but you can select any old location on your page you want.

Once you have inserted the code and republished your site, it is time to sit back and watch. Google provides stats within your account area. You can see basic click and revenue information as well as monthly totals. Once you reach a total of $100 in revenues, Google will kick out a check to you. The check is issued more or less at the end of the month following the one in which you hit the magic $100 amount.

Obviously, there is more to Google Adsense if you want to make a full business out of it, but this provides the basics of the game. You will be tempted to click the links on your page. Don’t! Google will ban you from the program.

Marketing for the internet is an entirely different field when compared to marketing in the real world. Although, just like marketing for corporations in the real world, many of the same theories apply.

At the start of every business, you should have a business plan. This will undoubtedly be different for different companies and different types of industries. In some cases, you don’t have as much planning to do, but in others you’ll end up with a 200 page document.

Now, when starting an online business, or even when just branching off and creating a website for your business, you’ll have lots to plan. For starters, what type of website works best? Many internet marketers will tell you that first and foremost, you need to have a blog based on your industry. If you’re running a company that sells candy, start a blog on how candy is made. This is becoming more and more essential because it turns your website into a living, breathing thing. People will be able to leave comments and you’ll be able to receive feedback on your product.

Blogging is a great way to start an online business because not only can people leave comments and feedback, but you can write about other people and others can write about you. This is the basics of linkbuilding. Essentially, the more that other people talk about you, the more popular your website will become, most notably in search engine rankings.

One of the biggest mistakes that online businesses make is to put up advertising on their site. This is fine once you’re established, but is absolutely never okay when just starting out. It generally takes well over a year for any business to start making money through the internet. It will be worse for your company to try and force it than to try and make money right away. In fact, using ads can actually hurt your reputation as a legitimate company in the eyes of many online communities.

Once you have everything running smoothly, you should start using social media marketing. Submit your blog entries to StumbleUpon and Digg and Reddit. Get friends to help rate your blog posts and you’ll start to see a huge increase in traffic. A good estimate of what you should aim for is 2000 hits per day.

A few of our customers told us about their creative ownership methods and use. They are very creative ideas on building and effectively using a timeshare portfolio.

There is a simple idea to most of these portfolios: Travel to the nicest places they could find as inexpensively as possible. They had found that timeshares let them do this. Their secret is to build a timeshare portfolio.

One customer has four consecutive weeks of timeshares at four different resorts around the Gulf Coast of Florida. Each year the customer and his wife travel to Florida and spend four weeks at four nice resorts. Their total housing costs for four weeks is under $2000 (based on the total maintenance fees they pay).

The couple is retired, so they have more free time than most people. But their idea is great &ndash and cost effective. They are also not alone.

We see more and more people who recognize the value of a timeshare and then purchase multiple properties. These properties to give them cost effective travel at great resorts.

Here are a couple Timeshare Portfolio models we have seen our savvy customers use:

The “Expressway” Portfolio

The scenario given at the beginning of this article is a perfect example of an Expressway Portfolio. In this model, the timeshare property owner wishes to visit a specific geographic repeatedly. The Expressway Portfolio is usually composed of fixed-week properties in the same general area. People who build this portfolio like the idea of spending their vacation time in a specific area.

Customers who favor the Expressway Portfolio model often have children or extended families that frequently travel together. Often, the resorts are within a half-day car ride from home. Since the resorts are close, travel expenses are kept to a minimum.

The Dartboard Portfolio

This Dartboard Portfolio is the model of choice for “empty nesters” or those who have more time and flexibility. This portfolio emphasizes properties acquired primarily for trading, or floating weeks at desirable resorts. Each year’s vacation planning is like throwing a dart at a dartboard.

Each year the Dartboard Portfolio owner works the Exchange companies and resorts to create the best vacations possible. The property owner uses low-maintenance properties and exchanges them for more expensive resort properties. This property owner also uses floating weeks at a favorite resort and reserves each year for the best time possible.

The Dartboard Portfolio usually consists of a “foundational resort” that may have cost more than other timeshare properties to acquire. We see many customers in the West using Hawaii properties as “foundational resorts”. They cost more, but they will be visited almost every year.

The portfolio is then filled in with trading properties. These are usually two- bedroom units that have low cost annual maintenance fees (typically under $400). These trading units are banked as early in the portfolio-building process. The Portfolio Owner then shops the exchange company for the possible best trade.

Factor in Your Available Vacation Time

There is no best portfolio; every person’s situation is different. However, we have noticed that portfolio owners keep a few factors in mind. The first factor they consider is available time.

They ask themselves several key questions:

*

How many weeks of vacation do they have each year?

*

How many vacation weeks can they actually take each year?

*

How many of these weeks do they travel between vacation sites?

In other words, how many vacation weeks does the portfolio owner need to stay home.

Here’s a suggested rule of thumb: use 50% of your available vacation time with a timeshare. As your vacation time increases, add additional timeshare weeks.

Estimate Your Cost

Cost is the second key factor. The type of portfolio you choose to build is affected by the cost of travel. If you live in the Midwest, are you ready to pay for yearly airfare to Hawaii? Would it make more sense to acquire a Caribbean timeshare for a little more money up front (but lower annual travel costs)?

You can also start with an Expressway Portfolio and transition to a Dartboard Portfolio. As your family matures, you can start to use your existing timeshare weeks more for trade. You may even want to create a hybrid portfolio with some properties at fixed locations to be kept over the long term and some are used solely for trading.

Focus on the Reward: More Control, More Fun

The best part of building a portfolio is the control you have over purchasing properties. When the right properties are purchased, the focus of your vacation is on the experience, not on the expense.

You spend your time enjoying wonderful places with family and friends &ndash and that’s the reason for owning timeshare properties in the first place.

As an Internet entrepreneur, you’re more than likely aware of the ability of blogs to increase the bottom line of your e-business. Most everyone who sells online, either their product or someone else’s, or runs a blog that they have monetized with ads from Google Adsense or some other source does some kind of blog advertising because it is free and eventually gets indexed by the search engines, especially when using Blogger.com blogs. However, there are a few ways that you can really use blogs to enhance your business online, and these tips can be used whether you are selling products on your own site or simply running your own monetized blog.

The first thing you need to think about when generating new blog entries is “how do people know that I have any/new content available here?” Luckily, most blog servers and software automatically create RSS site feeds (in the form of a file called atom.xml) that can be sent to the many RSS feed servers available online. Think of it is an announcement to the world through Really Simple Syndication that an update has been made to your blog and everyone should come and check it out. These updates are then posted on thousands of other websites and seen by people who are watching the site feeds for up to date news. This benefits you in two ways: First, it gets automatic traffic flowing into your site (you posted your web address in your blog post, didn’t you?), and second many sites will carry your blog post creating one-way links to your web site. And just in case you don’t know, one way links are the most powerful types of links to have.

However, doing so manually can be slow and extremely time consuming. There are many major RSS feeds available online, and posting your blog to each one each time can take forever. Fortunately, there is an easy way to automate it; a little piece of software called RSS Announcer. (.easyrssannouncer.com) To use this software all you do is point it to the URL of your atom.xml file (which is created automatically with virtually all blog software and can be found in your setup), choose which RSS feeds you want to post to, and hit a button. The rest is taken care of for you automatically, and your blog posts are then syndicated across many thousands of web sites. Do you think that might make a difference in the number of visitors to your site?

The next important part of running a blog is always having new and fresh content for visitors to check out. When someone comes to your site or your blog, you want them to keep coming back, and one of the best ways to do that is to constantly update content. The problem is that even the most prolific of writers can’t write more than one or two articles a day, and if you start running several blogs the amount of writing can quickly become overwhelming. I have run as many as 18 blogs at a single time and there’s no way I would ever be able to create enough new content to keep users coming back. This is especially important if your blogs are monetized with Adsense advertising. Let’s say, for instance, that you run a blog about Home Mortgages because it is a subject you know a lot about and are passionate about. In order to produce income you include Adsense on your site, and visitors to your blog read not only your content, but also see ads relating to Mortgages. Some of these visitors are going to click on your ads and generate income for you. In fact, if you’re really good, 20% or more of your visitors will click on an advertisement and put money in your pocket. Soon some money starts coming in and you decide to put up another blog about Refinancing. After a while the blog starts to take off, and more Adsense revenue starts rolling in. At some point, you will find yourself trying to run so many blogs that there is no way you can write enough content for each of them.

Fortunately, there’s an answer for the problem as well. It comes in the form of a piece of software called RSStoBlog. (.dimasenterprises.com/rsstoblog.html) RSStoBlog will automatically, on a schedule that you decide, post relevant content to your blogs either from News sources, RSS Feeds, or search engines. If you’re running a blog about Mortgages, instead of constantly writing new content for your blog, you can automate the posting of Mortgage information to your blog every day, several times a day. How does this benefit you as a blog owner? First, it relieves the burden of having to come up with so much original content by yourself. Second, it will send a “ping” to all the blog directories on every new post alerting them of new content at your blog. Third, if you are running a website relating to your blog, you can post the URL’s of different pages of your website in your blog content, and those pages will quickly be indexed by the various search engines.

Have you seen those advertisements about “get your site indexed in 3 days for only $XX”? That’s how they do it: add your page to a blog and ping the directories. If you’re unfamiliar with this technique it is called Blogging and Pinging, and it is great for getting sites quickly indexed. RSStoBlog lets you do this quickly and easily. For all that it does, RSStoBlog is very under priced. It is definitely worth checking out if you are serious about marketing your websites or monetizing your blogs.

The last problem I’d like to address is that of link building. We all know that one of the keys to a long term search engine optimization strategy is high quality link building. This can include reciprocal links, purchased one-way links with related web sites, or even free links with unrelated websites. Many search engine experts agree that having some links, even if they’re from sites totally unrelated to your own, are better than no links at all. Links to your site are like “votes” that the search engines see as your site containing real content. I assume that the people who run search engines feel that someone who takes time to build links to their site actually wants the site to stick around a while. However, as usual, link building can take a long time if it is not automated in some way.

Now, you’re probably scratching your head and wondering “what does that last paragraph have to do with blogs?” Well, once again a piece of software comes to our rescue to automate our link building. It is called Blog Link Generator (.cheapbloglinkgenerator.com), and can be used to quickly create hundreds or thousands of one-way links from blogs relating to your website (or even your own blog). It does this by searching for blogs relating to keywords that you input, and automatically posting to those blogs with a message from you and a link to your website. Let’s say, for example, that you have a website or blog about Car Insurance. You enter the keywords “car insurance” into the software, and it will search through many thousands of blogs relating to car insurance and on each of those blogs post a message from you saying something like “I really enjoy car insurance blog. I have a website relating to car insurance you may find interesting at .whateversite.com. Please come and visit when you have a chance.” This is a piece of software you can use as little or as much as you want. There is no shortage of blogs on just about any topic imaginable, so creating one-way links to your site or blog on nearly any subject becomes extremely easy. Believe me when I say that you will quit before the software does.

So as you can see, there are several ways you can add to the power of blogs to bring more revenue to your e-business. Whether it is getting more people to know about your site or simply automating tasks that would normally consume too much time, software products are available to free up that time so you can get to the business of doing more business.

Suggested Resources:

.cheapbloglinkgenerator.com

.dimasenterprises.com/rsstoblog.html

.easyrssannouncer.com

Yours in Success,

Peter Dimas

While I was surfing the internet for opportunities to increase my flow of income, I came across a great concept. It was an idea I was never aware of before, but was happy that I found. The concept of an e-Book, or electronic book was what I had discovered. It is a book that can be purchased and downloaded to ones computer instantly. When purchasing a traditional book, there is a risk of it not being in stock. If this is the case, one would have to wait much longer. There is no waiting for shipping after the purchase of an e-Book because it is simply a digital file that is transferred in the form of a PDF document or other medium. This is a huge advantage because you are saving time and money on postage, printing costs and other materials needed to ship out a product to your customers. You are also saving space in your home because other tangible products would need to be stored. An e-Book can be published literally within a few days or even hours.

E-Books bring Web-like interactivity to the reading experience. Clicking directly on the electronic page allows you to look up the meanings of unfamiliar words, explore cross-referenced passages in the same book or related works, or even activates links to Web sites or multimedia elements such as sound, video, and animation. E-Books can be secured so only you or other authorized users can read and/or amend them. It is also possible to prevent unauthorized printing, copying or extraction of the content whilst still making the e-Book universally viewable and easily shared. They can be updated easily and more often so that the information is always current. This is a great aspect because we are in the information age and information that was at one point cutting edge could be obsolete within a matter of months. If in the end one would rather read off paper instead of a computer, e- Books can always be printed!

Many marketing campaigns for products hook a potential customer in with a catchy advertisement. The hook may come in the form of a slogan or picture. While snappy text and pictorial design might make a customer take a second look, it does not always convert a customer lead into a sale. What Internet marketing tools can you utilize to convert more sales leads into actual customers?

The answer is multimedia marketing. What is multimedia marketing? Let’s define “multimedia”. Multimedia is media that involves an advertisement that “talks and moves”. For example, multimedia contains more than just text and/or pictures. Multimedia advertisements contain audio and video elements. By adding audio and video ingredients to your marketing campaign you will see your sales conversion rates soar.

What exactly are audio and video multimedia marketing elements? Audio elements include voice-overs, sound effects, and music. For example, when a potential customer visits your web page the first thing that catches their eye is the beautiful graphics and text information. At this point your customer needs to feel an emotional connection with your company, products, and services. This is where audio elements play a role.

You can provide music that sets the tone for your product or services. Perhaps you are in the party planning business and you have an advertisement about planning children’s birthday parties. You can play fun, upbeat music to mimic the atmosphere of a birthday party.

You could also add in a button that allows website visitors to listen to your actual voice. You can demonstrate your passion for your product and money back guarantee through your voice. Potential customers will feel that their experience has been more personable. This allows them to feel more comfortable with your company, services, and products. A wonderful side effect of this safe feeling is increased customer sales.

Video elements are another tool you can employ in your marketing campaign. You can create your own Internet commercial. You can demonstrate how to use your product through a video. You could even video testimonials from happy customers. A video will allow potential customers to attach a “face” to the product or services you are selling.

You are building a relationship with your customers when you make their Internet experience rich and satisfying. Plus, did you know that adding an audio element to your website can increase your response rate by 300%. Wow! That is a massive increase that you just can’t ignore.

Another great benefit to creating audio and video components for your website is that you can build CDs and DVDs from these files. You could create reports on specific topics and burn them to CDs and DVDs. Then you can sell these products to customers.

The Internet is ready to handle sophisticated audio and video files. Plus, Internet technology is improving every day. You can create these audio and video components in the comfort of your own home or office. It really is that simple. The effort you put into creating your own multimedia marketing campaign on the Internet is well worth it when your sales conversion rate skyrockets.

Let’s imagine that you have spent years building up your expertise in a certain niche – say, puppy training. You have written articles, created courses, published e-books (or real books), filmed training videos and hosted web seminars. Suddenly, your name is out there. Your promotional activities have born fruit, and you are now the ‘go-to guy’ on puppy training.

For a while, it’s great. Your products sell like hot cakes, and your e-courses are always full. Grateful clients send you emails telling you how fantastic your information is – and of course, you use their words in testimonials. That generates even more sales.

Then one day you sit down at the computer to start on your email – and you realize that it’s out of control. Increasingly, you are getting mail from puppy-owners assuming you will be happy to dispense free advice. (After all, you are the guru.) People who have done your courses tend to stay in contact, too. Sometimes they just to report success, sometimes they ask for further advice. (“I know you’re a busy person, but I wonder if I can just ask a quick question?”)

At times, you open your email program and find that you have twenty or thirty emails to answer. You’re spending hours every day just being polite to people or answering more questions.

What are you going to do?

Obviously, you can’t keep this up. Yet you know that these are nice people – their motives are innocent, and you don’t want to offend them. They obviously have no idea how much time you spend on unpaid support – or how the time spent on all those ‘quick questions’ can add up.

Here are a few strategies that can help you take control of your time again.

1. Outsource Technical Support.

This is the first thing you should do if your expertise has started producing a good income. Your time is precious: use it to create new products or to enjoy well-earned leisure time – not to give technical support. Create an email forwarder (or a new pop mailbox) on your website, which will forward all support issues to the person you hire. Make sure this ‘support’ address is included on the ‘thank you’ email that goes to all customers who buy downloadable videos, e-books or software.

2. Create a FAQ Page on Your Website.

You will find that the same problems or questions come up again and again. Each time you get a different question, add it – and your answer – to the FAQ page on your website. Suggest that clients check this page first to see if the answer to their question is there.

3. Create Website Forms for Support or Contact

Your email will decrease if you ask clients to fill in a contact form on your website rather than emailing you directly. Put a polite note on your website explaining to people that because of the volume of mail, it has been necessary to use a website form. Here, you can direct people to consult the FAQ page before they fill in the form, or to Tech Support, if this is the issue.

4. Create Quick Explanations Using the Signature File

Your email program should allow you to create new signature files. (In Outlook Express, this is under Options/Signature Files.) If your business is not yet large enough to outsource support, use the signature file to create quick answers to common questions. (For example: a common question is “I’ve downloaded your e-book but it won’t open in Acrobat. I get a message saying that the file has been corrupted. What do I do?” Mostly, this problem arises because the customer is using an outdated version of Acrobat Reader. So, you create a new signature and call it “Acrobat Reader”. Type out a few lines that say something like “Most problems in opening PDF files are solved when you download the latest version of Acrobat. You can download it here…. If this doesn’t solve your problem, please contact me again.”

Create similar signatures for any common question. One of the first that you should create is a friendly paragraph explaining that your email volume is so high that you can no longer spare the time to address problems personally. Suggest that the FAQ page is a good source of information… and perhaps provide a different email address for URGENT concerns that are not covered on the FAQ page. Most people will respect your time once they understand that you get large volumes of email and simply don’t have the time to answer individuals.

You’ll find that a collection of signature files that address common questions will save you a great deal of time – you can respond with a few clicks of the mouse, rather than typing it all out again.

Bottom line: If you don’t recognize the value of your own time, nobody else will – so take action NOW to regain control.