My Buy Essay

Archive for April, 2009

As the buzzwords go Web 2.0 is the current reigning deity. But how can one small businessman tap into it to make it work for his business? This article offers some tips to sync one’s marketing strategies with web 2.0 scenario.

Want To Make Web 2.0 Work For Your Business?

Silicon Valley loves its buzzwords, and none more than it does Web 2.0 these days. But what exactly is it in terms of website development and strategic internet marketing? Unless you’re a diehard techie, wish you good luck in figuring out what it means.

Web 2.0 technologies bearing names like wikis, blogs, RSS, AJAX, mashups and the startups hawking them — Renkoo, Gahbunga, Ning, Squidoo sound to be straight out of Star Wars, right up Mr. George Lucas’ alley.

So what does all this mumbo-jumbo means to a normal businessman &ndash a value multiplier or ‘only for geeks’ stuff? Rest assured Mr. Businessman, for all its appeal to the young, the nerds and the wired; Web 2.0 may end up making its greatest impact in business.

And this could well prove to be the one vehicle to usher in more changes in corporations that are already in the throes of such tech-driven transformations as globalization and outsourcing. Indeed, what some are calling Enterprise 2.0 could transcend the whole lot of organizational boundaries, between managers and employees and between the company and its partners and customers.

So how does one go about making Web 2.0 work for his/her business? Let’s see how:

1. Work out a plan

Don’t dive in just for the sake of keeping abreast with the changing world and its technology. Be clear about what you’re trying to accomplish, how and where Web 2.0 can help your business, how much you’re willing to invest and what time frame you are working on. Plan ahead!

2. Good content is the key

Web 2.0 is the social web, but it’s still content-driven. And the control lies in the hands of the users here, mind you! You might think yourself to be the smartest marketing man this side of the Suez but remember, it is the user who would determine how good or bad you are. Lousy content leads to lousy marketing, no matter how flashy it is. Make your content relevant, interesting and real. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes, ask yourself questions you would as a customer and answer those with your content.

3. Be information provider not a salesman

Help, inform, educate but do not sell. Web 2.0 is all about people connecting by helping each other. No salesmen allowed! Think education, not advertising. Deliver useful, nuts and bolts stuff or honest opinions they can believe. That’s how you build credibility and trust that lead to new customer relationships.

4. Have a free hosted blog

WordPress and Blogger both have very useful and simple blogs you can setup for free. Use them to start blogging and get a feel for how it works and how people use Web 2.0. Dip your toe in the water to test it before diving straight in.

5. Do it yourself

Web 2.0 is about being real. It’s real people connecting with each other. Make sure you or your employees create the content and do the work to start with. And when scales demand it, hire a professional company offering strategic internet marketing services. Still keep tab on what they are doing and what they are writing.

Surf blogs, YouTube, Google Videos, Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati and other social media websites. Get a feel for how they work and who goes there. Become part of some social media communities. Make new friends online. Get in touch with professional web development companies and firms providing internet marketing services well versed in Web 2.0 tools and marketing ways. Immerse yourself in the Web 2.0 culture so you know how it works and where and how it fits in smoothly with your marketing plans.

Don walked across the street from his house to mine to announce he had finally retired. “But I’m not ready for the golf course,” he said. “I want to make a living on the Internet. What can I sell?”

This is a question many of us struggle with as we see money, freedom, and a bright future for those who manage to find their niche online. You may have tried to sell something from the Internet only to find it is difficult to get visitors to your web site and even harder to get them to buy.

The biggest hurdle is simple: most folks are trying to sell products to consumers. That’s not where the money is. It is a more daunting task than most realize.

Only one percent of retail sales happens on the Internet. Even though selling to consumers should be gargantuan one day, we have a long way to go before the majority of people are placing orders the Internet way.

Instead, sell something to businesses. While consumer sales amounted to many billion last year, business-to-business purchases vaulted to a whopping ten times that much. Clearly, if you want the easiest path to tapping into the landslide of Internet cash, sell a product or service needed by business.

So, you say, I should sell a product to businesses? Not exactly. Most products need to be sold in large volumes by many distributors before they turn a profit. Chances are the product you sell is also being pushed by hundreds or thousands of other affiliates. In the end, many business buyers will simply click to the main corporate site to make their purchase.

Your best bet for starting a small Internet business and earning a living online is to sell a service to businesses. Unlike products, it is hard to mass produce a service. Most service providers find their competition is relatively thin. This is especially true if you provide a very specialized service or do your job in a particular way that is hard to duplicate. Because services require time spent by an experienced expert, rates can be high, especially for business customers.

But I’m not an expert in anything people on the Internet would want to buy, you exclaim. Not true.

Sit down with a pen and jot down all the things bosses have paid you for during your work career. Add to your list things you have done on your own time that friends, neighbors, or co-workers have felt were valuable.

Which of these things could be sold on the Internet? If you kept books for a business with twenty employees, you can sell your bookkeeping service to the vast number of small Internet businesses who don’t have the time or expertise to manage their growing firm.

If you produced your church newsletter for several years, your desktop publishing and editing skills could fill the hot demand for people who can write and publish e-messaging campaigns, web sites, and print newsletters. Best of all, a writer/editor deals in pure information which is easiest and cheapest to deliver over the Internet.

My neighbor Don decided his skills from a career in law enforcement would be hard to sell on the Internet. But he knew lots of things businesses needed and he had a list of town residents who could fill those needs.

If you don’t readily have a service you can sell to business, find someone who does. Many in-demand people don’t know how to market themselves on the Internet or haven’t the time to try. Represent their service online and take a commission for each sale.

Put up your own web site with some articles business customers will find helpful. They can do double duty, showing you know plenty about your line of work.

Post testimonials from satisfied customers or other experts in your industry. To get full impact, be sure to list the person’s full name and the name of their business or city they live in.

Offer to send customers and prospects a monthly update via email. Include brief updates on important developments in the industry. Mix in three line ads promoting your service.

Selling a service to business is your least-expensive way to get started making money online. It is also the quickest way to tap into the huge amounts of money traveling from business to business.

Do you have a website but having a hard time generating traffic? Don’t you wish you could just sit back and let someone else do the promoting for you? Well you can! And they’ll do it for you for FREE. That’s right, we’re not talking about paid advertising here. What we’re talking about works better than paid advertising and doesn’t cost you a thing! We’re talking about article submissions.

Submitting an article to an article directory is a great way of generating traffic for your website, whether you’re just starting out or just trying to increase the traffic to your site. All you have to do is write an article that would be useful to your prospects, and put a resource box at the end of the article with a link to your website. A resource box is just a small statement about yourself with a link to your site for them to find out more information. Then you submit it to a few article directories. That’s it. Other people take over from this point.

So what exactly happens when you post articles on an article directory? Well your article gets posted on their website. A lot of other website owners check these article directories for articles they can use as content for their website or newsletter. But when they use your article, they agree to not change the article and to leave YOUR resource box on it. They advertise your website for you! You don’t have to do anything.

I can hear you now, this all sounds great but I’m not that great at writing. Well you don’t have to be! You’re not trying to sell a novel here. All you are doing is writing something that you think would be useful for someone else to know. As long as it is helpful I’m sure there will be plenty of people who WANT to read it. And the more you write, the better your writing is going to get. So don’t sit around procrastinating because you don’t feel you can write good enough. Just do it. You’ll get better.

This looks good but is it really better than paid advertising? I would say yes and there are several reasons for this. First of all it is FREE. Second, it’s viral. Take a look at this scenario. If you post an article on a couple article directories and only 10 people decide to use it in their newsletter. Each of these people has 2,000 people on their list. This advertises your site to 20,000 people. Now imagine if 100 people used your article or if they had 20,000 people each on their list. This stuff is powerful. Third, it establishes you as an expert in that field. People will trust you more and will be more willing to by your product if you’ve already given them useful information. Forth, after you’ve written a lot of article you can compile them into your own ebook and give it away for free (with links to your site of course) or sell it. Paid advertising doesn’t even compare to this. Don’t waste any more time. Start writing articles now!

Anybody who has a product to sell, an idea to promote or a service to offer relies on advertising to get the attention they require. There are so many forms of local advertising and internet advertising that finding the correct medium can sometimes be a daunting task these are some examples: web banner advertising,

PPC search engine

ppc search engine advertising is a paid assortment of announcements which appear on the first pages of results in ppc search engines (Google, Yahoo, Overture, etc.). They have recently become an important consideration when marketing a company’s, or small business web site . The times the advertisement appears depends on the keywords chosen by the website marketer, in addition to appearing as “text” rather than a graphic or banner. Therefore, such advertising at times is referred to as “textual”.

Magazine Ads &ndash

You can advertise on magazines and save up to 80% off the regular price. There is a company called Media Bids , which allow you to meet other marketers as well as to choose among different marketing packages available. The service is free. You only pay for an ad if you choose to make a purchase.

As you can see, these techniques can increase your exposure and help you get more clients. You can read about other effective marketing techniques from my free e-book

Banner advertising

The internet is now changing at an accelerated rate, it has made web banner advertising a popular and widespread form of advertising where practically all the websites have one or the other form of a advertising banner on it. Though it is thought that the effectiveness of banner advertising on the web has declined, there are many tips, which if followed, prove to make people rush to your website!

When you create a banner file make sure the banner ad uses only a small file. This is because a large .gif or .jpg file takes a few seconds to download, wherein the visitor may have either left the page or just scrolled down the page without seeing the banner. And if people don’t see your banner, they are sure not going to click on it! So make it a point to restrict your file size to below 10K or 15K;it may be difficult, but where there is a will, there is a way! Make it a point to have a call to action on your banner. This means having the words ‘click here’ or ‘sign up now’, where you guide the user to click on the banner. The main reason this has to be included is that people are so used to off-line advertising where people just see banners, without having to do anything. They are usually not aware that they have to click on the banner to find out more! So make it a point to have a call to action on your banner ad to improve the effectiveness of the banner.

More and more webmasters have the recurring dilemma on how to increase the flow of traffic in the websites. During the past few years many methods that been developed to solve this predicament. While most of them would work there are those that would not make even a small impact.

One of the methods that have spawned many success stories in driving traffic into websites is viral marketing. Viral marketing makes use of the tendency of a person to share something to find informative, entertaining or amazing.

Many companies bank on this behavior to spread their products and increase the popularity of their company or their website. Viral marketing makes use of many mediums in enticing this behavior. It might be in the form of an interesting story, an addicting flash game, an amusing video and many others that may catch a person’s fancy.

This ingenious form of marketing is typically low cost and is a wonderful tool for any company to utilize. The benefit greatly overshadows the cost or efforts to initialize this marketing scheme. Any website would greatly benefit that viral marketing.

Tell A Friend Script

One of the easiest methods in viral marketing is using a tell a friend script. This is a simple programming script that you can attach to the programming of your website. Generally, tell a friends script are installed in pages where a media is placed so that a person can easily send the media to any of his friends or his family members.

The basic concept of a tell a friend script is a script wherein a person may input his name, e-mail address, the recipient’s e-mail address and send the media to the intended recipient much like an e-mail with an attachment. As the recipient receives the e-mail he wouldn’t think of the mail a spam mail because he would see the sender’s name as someone he or she knows and trust.

Tell a friend script eliminates greatly the chances of being blocked because they use the information inputted by the sender. This allows for wider spreading of this marketing method. It can be quite sneaky but it is very effective.

With the e-mail sent and opened the sent media will either be read, viewed or played. Also along with the mail would be a brief description of the company or site that sponsors the media sent. This allows for the introduction of either the site, company name or its products. The along with it is another tell a friend script.

Then the process begins again. As more people use the tell a friend script, more and more people will know of the existence of the sponsoring company or site. People who read the ads inside the mail who liked what they see would go and click on the link and visit the site. This drives traffic into the site resulting to great number of potential customers.

Tell A Friend Script Availability

A tell a friend script is very simple and does not require a complicated method of programming. In fact, you can copy paste a script and simply put it on an intended page. Finding one is even simpler. All you have to do is go to a search engine and type in the search box “tell a friend script” then press enter or click go.

In the search results page you will see many links that will direct you to a site where you can get a tell a friend script. It would just be a simple matter of looking and searching for the script and copying it to your intended web page.

With a tell a friend script viral marketing strategy you can drive traffic into your site which could potentially spell profits. This is a simple harmless script that offers great benefits for low cost paired with great creativity and foresight.

It is imperative that you have patience in using a tell a friend script. If your chosen media doesn’t get the mileage that is expected of it, it may take some time before it gets spread or shared. But surely many people will see your ads and there is great probability that they will visit your site increasing your traffic flow.

Trade is a key factor in economic development. Successful use of trade keys can boost a country’s development. Today the world of trade markets has boomed up due to major contribution of increasing online trade portals. These markets provide you with Opportunities and Challenges and definitely prove the theory of “Survival of the Fittest & Fastest” in today’s scenario.

Internet has helped to promote products and reach people around the globe in a matter of seconds. Trading over the Internet has undergone a paradigm shift over the past few years with the upcoming of various trustworthy and friendly portals, offering desired commodities to traders across the Globe at best prices. Online trade portals are a great source of information and sourcing of a wide range of products. Such highly recommended online global trading portal having a very wide range of technology products to offer to its clients/customers.

This type of online portals offers trade facilities for Recycled Products, Energy Products, Electronic Products, Etc, which can meet the demand of the consumers. Products like Used / Empty Printer Cartridges, Mobile Phones, Metal Scrap, Plastic Scrap, Oils and Waxes, Metals, Alloys & Ores, Communication & Network, Entertainment, Security Systems, etc are in great demand today. To meet the demand of products around the world, they are exploring new business opportunities and new markets with sustainability as a key driver. As the economy metabolizes more and more metals and other raw materials, the damage mounts. Although recycling is typically justified as an economically attractive alternative to rising landfill costs, it also greatly reduces ecosystem damage.

Such Portals usually ship worldwide and pride themselves in supplying the best & latest technology products enabling trading fastest and time saving technique. Changing the way traders used to trade a decade ago.

You can visit Tekxchange at .tekxchange.com for more information and online trade.

Many of us who build websites get in the habit of using the Overture “Keyword Suggestion Tool” to do keyword research. It’s convenient, and one of the few remaining such tools that is free. Be careful, though, because there are four problems you may run into with it.

1. Singular and plural forms are lumped together. I once optimized a site for “mountain hiking” based on the search traffic indicated by Overture. I later discovered that over half of that traffic was actually for “mountains hiking.” Unfortunately, the search engines don’t lump singulars and plurals, so those searchers didn’t find their way to my site.

2. Alphabetizing. I hesitate to mention this, because it only seems to happen occasionally, but that makes it worse. Sometimes Overture alphabetizes search phrases. If you see “bag lightweight sleeping,” you might guess that the searches are actually for “lightweight sleeping bag,” but what about “hiking mountains?” That could reasonably be searched for both ways. Look down the list to see if other phrases are obviously alphabetized.

3. Misspellings are not always seperated. I searched “perseverence,” on Overture’s research tool, an honest spelling error on my part, and saw good demand. I almost optimized a page for it before taking a second look and seeing that the results shown were for “perseverance.” You can be certain that searches are being done both ways, but how many each way?

4. Inflated figures. Overture often shows more monthly searches for a keyword than other research tools show for ALL search engines. Who is in error? Hard to say for sure, but given Overtures other imperfections…

Overture’s Keyword Suggestion Tool is a fast way to learn if there is some demand for a keyword, and it’s still free. For serious keyword research, though, it’s best to look to other tools.

There are many uses for an autoresponder. One such use is the publishing and distribution of an ezine or newsletter. Since autoresponder services usually are set up to send automatic responses to the people on the list at certain intervals after they sign up, setting up an autoresponder to send out an ezine can be a little confusing.

Depending on the service or autoresponder that you are using, you will need a ‘broadcast’ feature. The broadcast feature works essentially the same as the autoresponse feature, with one big difference. The messages are not sent out at intervals. The messages can, however, be scheduled to go out on a certain day, which has no bearing on when the subscriber was actually added to the mailing list. Broadcast messages are ‘one time’ messages that are only sent to your current mailing list. People who sign up for your list after the broadcast has been sent do not receive it, unless the specifically request it with an autoresponder address, which you must set up.

Using the broadcast feature of most autoresponder services, you can simply go and either type your newsletter, or copy and paste it into the editor, then choose to send the broadcast to your entire mailing list. More advanced autoresponder services will usually have broadcasting features.

Using an autoresponder to maintain a mailing list and to distribute a newsletter is a wonderful idea. Your subscribers can easily opt-in, or opt-out, and all of the distribution is handled for you, based on the schedule that you set. List maintenance can become very difficult without the automation that autoresponders provide. You can write each issue of your ezine or newsletter well in advance, and have it delivered to your mailing list, no matter where you are or what you are doing. That is the beauty of automation!

Since all past broadcast and autoresponse messages are saved, you can easily refer back to old issues, or allow people to request past issues. You can also use the tracking feature throughout each issue of the newsletter to determine how many clicks you are getting for the various products or websites that you promote in your ezine.

If you have not yet purchased an autoresponder or signed up with any autoresponder service, make sure that you inquire about the broadcast feature first. Not all autoresponders or autoresponder services have this feature, and as your marketing progresses, you will find that this is one of the most useful features of the service or program.

The following article covers a topic that has recently moved to center stage–at least it seems that way. If you’ve been thinking you need to know more about it, here’s your opportunity.

In any kind of business, marketing is such an important tool in the growth and development of a business or any kind of financial venture.

For this reason, even with the technology that covers online businesses, still, it need highly revolutionized and very effective marketing strategy in order to boost their productivity and sales.

Basically, since the advent of the Internet, people started to flock this new medium of information without even knowing its fundamental principles, how it works, things that are needed to survive in it, etc. Many people literally bombarded the Internet thinking that life would be a lot easier if they will invest on online businesses.

Indeed, it is a well-known fact that you can find money online, but only for those who know their way around and employ the best marketing strategy there is online.

What people do not know is that online marketing does not have to be very complicated. It just needs the right stuff to keep you going.

Take for example the use of mailing list, particularly opt in list. Before, no one ever dare to use opt in list thinking that it will not do any good for their business. Most entrepreneurs think that building an opt in list is just a waste of time and money. What they do not know is that, according to the “golden rule of the Internet,” money is in the list.

It has probably been mentioned before, and is worth mentioning again, money is really in the list.

Why? Because with opt in lists, you get to keep your readers on the hook by providing them with information, promotion, and other campaigns in order to entice them to buy again from you.

Basically, opt in lists are lists of email addresses of customers with their consent. This means that after the customer had closed the transaction in a particular web site, there is an option on whether or not they wish to subscribe to the mailing list of the online business for any future promotions, newsletters, or campaigns that they would like to be informed of.

And because it is an option, the customers are not compelled to provide their email addresses to the web site. Plus, the web site owners will not be accused of spamming because emails that will be sent to the customers have the consent of the customer.

Once you begin to move beyond basic background information, you begin to realize that there’s more to Opt In List than you may have first thought.

Creating an opt in list can be very beneficial to your site. In fact, it has been proven that in the two-step concept of selling, follow-ups are important to sustain the interest of the consumers. The other step is to obtain the interest of the buyer.

Hence, in order to sustain the interest of your buying public, it is best to create an opt in list so that you can always give your buyers the chance to remember your products, your business, and your services, in which they have been satisfied with.

To know more of the advantages of creating an opt in list for your business; here is a list that would tell you the reasons why it is beneficial.

1. Opt in lists are the business’ most valuable asset

If you were to ask the owners of some online business about their most valuable asset, they will tell you that it is their opt in list. This is because opt in lists are customers’ lists that can provide higher probability sales in a more consistent and stable condition. Because with opt in lists, all you have to do is to follow up orders or sales through promotions and ad campaigns.

2. It is always available

The best thing about opt in list is that it never grows old. As long as your customer needs something to survive, your contact with them will never grow old. This means that you can always have a fresh, new transaction wit them every time you inform them that you have new products or services. Every transaction is a new way of increasing your sales. Simply put, no opt in list = no sales (at the most).

3. Bigger opt in list would mean bigger profits

The more customer’s names and email addresses you have on your list, the more chances you have in increasing your online sales. Every name, every email address can be worth a hundred dollars that can be accumulated with each transaction

Hence, the bigger your list, the more money you will have.

Boiled down, opt in lists are not just ordinary mailing lists. It is the very core of an online business’ existence and survival. That is why for people who value most their businesses, they extend the same value they give to their opt in list. No wonder why most people regard it as the best partnership available online.

Hopefully the sections above have contributed to your understanding of Opt In List. Share your new understanding about Opt In List with others. They’ll thank you for it.

.article-ecommerce.com/articles/Email-Marketing

You should use You should use internet marketing for a variety of reasons. If you can figure it out, it gives you the ability to spend your time, not your money, advertising your business. It gives you access to a much broader market than any brick and mortar business. It allows you to kick the crap out of big companies that just throw money at Internet marketing, a tactic often used to crush smaller business in the brick and mortar world.

The second reason you should use The second reason you should use online marketing is arrogance. Dominant brick and mortar companies use marketing firms to push their brands on television, billboards, magazines and so on. When the companies open a site, they often have these marketing firms handle their internet efforts as well. Crushing them on search engines is like taking candy from a baby. They haven’t a clue what they are doing, but their arrogance will never let them acknowledge they are paying triple the going rate for advertisements on high traffic sites. They just throw money at the problem, a strategy that fails every time on the web.