My Buy Essay

Educated Consumers

Not too long ago, a colleague asked me why we invest so heavily in consumer education. We have made a conscious decision to spend marketing dollars on consumer education for a very simple reason. Educated consumers are simply better customers.

Lets take a closer look at why educated consumers are better customers.

Less Technical Support.

1.) Educated consumers require less technical support. The reduced technical support results in lower overhead costs. Often educated consumers can further reduce the support burden by assisting or educating other customers or potential customers in forums, newsgroups, user groups or elsewhere in an industry community.

Often users with a strong technical background or understanding will often assist in the forums and provide users technical support. The result: an educated consumer is a happy and helpful customer.

Easier Sales.

2.) Generally speaking educated consumers have a better understanding of the technology, how it can be used and how it will benefit them. A customers understanding that an application will result in saved time, can easily justify the software’s expense. Cost becomes less of an issue when long-term value is understood.

Reasonable Expectations.

3.) I hate to say it, but back in 1996 when we started out, consumer ignorance resulted in unrealistic expectations. Consumers purchased expecting that software would do their dishes and vacuum. Regardless of how well the software did what it was designed to do, if a customer expects it to do something else, they will not be a satisfied customer.

Educated consumers have realistic expectations and understanding of what can and cannot be accomplished.

Kinds of Consumer Education

1. Articles.

Educational articles not only propagate the success and understanding of a technology, but well written articles will often establish the writer as an industry expert.

Example .feedforall.com/newsletter.htm (on the bottom)

2. White Papers.

Real world examples of how other users are using software to resolve problems or save time are often great illustrations of technology in action.

Example .notepage.net/whitepapers.htm

3. PPT Demonstrations.

Power point presentations not only assist with user education, but also can be used by User Groups to further evangelize and educate potential users.

All in all, educated consumers result in a happier user with realistic expectations. Ignorance often results in dissatisfaction and unrealistic expectations while education leads to long term happy and helpful customers.

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Marketing online has become the preferred method of promotion and advertising for both web and home businesses. Internet marketing gives business owners the opportunity to target their chosen audience, while often receiving instant results. To accomplish your goals in the internet marketing field, you must first familiarize yourself with general promotional and marketing facts. Just a few simple tips can help you build your business into all that you desire.

To produce a significant income from your business, you must first find a way to gain visitors to your web site. Generating traffic is very important in internet marketing. It is a good idea to visit other web sites with a similar audience as yours to aid in the development of your internet marketing plan. Affiliate programs are an ideal source of traffic generation, as well as, web site advertising. As the internet expands, so do the many ways to bring customers to your site.

The word “free” is one of the most powerful internet marketing tools ever. Offering a free trial or sample on your web site is the perfect way to get potential customers excited about your business. As in any marketing plan, creativity is a must. If you are not able to dish out any free goodies, why not create a special offer or discount? It is essential that this offer is only offered at your site; this shows that you are willing to try something different from other business owners. Innovation can be the key to success in the internet marketing game.

Developing an honest and solid reputation in the business community is a necessity. Customers need to feel secure purchasing from you, and not worry about disclosing their personal information through your servers. Most consumers look for a seal of approval such as the Better Business Bureau Online icon. Once customers trust you, your business and internet marketing aspirations can continue to prosper.

You’re a service business, such as a coach, accountant, consultant, speech coach, office organizer or virtual assistant.

A prospective client lands on your website. “Nice site,” she says, nodding approvingly. “Great logo.”

So she looks for a Call to Action: “Click here and get a Free Report.”

And you offer one. 101 things a coach [accountant, consultant, speech coach, office organizer or virtual assistant] can do for you.

Yawn.

At that point, your prospect decides to leave. Unless she’s been living on another planet, she has some idea of what you do (or thinks she does).

If you’re an accountant, she won’t be astounded to discover you’ll prepare her taxes. If you’re a virtual assistant, she’ll expect you to help with mailing lists and phone calls.

And she’s been to 43 other websites. She’s already seen the same list. Her eyes start to glaze over. She decides it’s time to take a break and watch the latest replay of The Sopranos.

At least that’s what I would do.

How can you prevent the bleary-eyed visitor blues?

(1) Create a problem-solving Call for Action &ndash before you design the rest of your web site. “How-to” titles work best because you demonstrate that you understand the problem and showcase your unique approach.

A Virtual Assistant: “How to delegate the 10 most critical tasks that keep your business alive and profitable.”

A speech coach: “Five techniques that tell your audience you’re a professional speaker”

An office organizer: “It’s 9 AM &ndash do you know where your Top Priority is?”

(2) Make it easier for prospects to figure out why you’re different from the competition on the other 43 websites your prospect just visited.

A hairstylist: “Curly hair is my specialty (and we’re never late with appointments).”

A virtual assistant: “I can program the Internet’s top shopping cart system to save you 5 hours each month.”

A speech coach: “Five clients I coached last year are now listed with speaker bureaus.”

(3) Identify benefits your prospect may not have anticipated.

For instance, prospective clients may not realize that some office organizers can help them choose furniture to make their lives easier. Others employ feng shui principles.

Bottom Line: Visitors who see a big grab-bag list of offers will tune out if they recognize the first few. “Ho hum. I know that.”

Instead, find ways to showcase yourself and your expertise –professionally. Your visitors will thank you.

Many webmasters who have been following the discussions about Google’s dislike of paid links have been confused about what constitutes bad links and good links, in the eyes of the search engine companies. In this article, I will seek to answer many of the questions people have on this topic.

There are two kinds of links that you can pay to have made for you: rented or paid links, and permanent links.

Introduction To Paid Links, Or More Accurately Rented Links

With Rented links, you can generally make your purchase decision based on the PageRank of a page.

The downside with rented links is that Google has stated that they do not like links that are sold on the basis of PageRank, and they are trying to create systems to identify links rented for PageRank, for the purpose of discounting those links. While they may eventually be able to target and negate links developed by systems like Text-Link-Ads or TextLinkBrokers, they will never be able to completely identify and discount all links that are sold for the purposes of PageRank .

In the end, I suppose Google is not going to penalize the Source or Target websites for those links, but they will nullify the value of the individual links in the Google algorithms. Cutts suggested and implemented the “rel=nofollow” a while back as a tool webmasters could use for the purpose of identifying links for which the webmaster did not want to pass PageRank. The only thing that Google’s algorithm will actually do to links identified as rented or paid links is that it will treat those links as “rel=nofollow’s”. If Google succeeds in their quest, the webmaster buying the links will be throwing away his or her money, if they are buying placement on a webpage solely for the purpose of influencing PageRank.

The Story Of Permanent Links

The second kind of link is the permanent link. Permanent links come in many formats, and in most cases should generally be viewed as non-rental links. With rental links, you pay a fee for placement once a month, quarter or year.

Of course, the Yahoo directory is not viewed as a paid link by the Google engineers, because although you “pay” to get the link, Yahoo does not guarantee placement of your link in their directory. Instead, Yahoo says that we are paying them to “review our link.” This is why Google is not discounting links from the Yahoo directory. Those Yahoo links are nice to have, but they still do require a yearly review for commercial websites, which must be paid for on a yearly basis.

Permanent in all cases is in the eye of the beholder. Permanent as a rule in the Internet world means that you will not have to pay another fee later to keep that link on the page, where it will reside. In the context of links on the Internet, permanent actually means that the link will live at that location, until the webmaster who owns the website changes his or her website’s direction OR goes out of business.

In my experience, perhaps 10% of the website’s where we get links placed will go under within one year. Towards the end of the second year, webmasters will look at their Profit/Loss and make a determination whether their income level will justify shooting for a third year of operation. Another 20% will close their website at the end of the second year run. So, 30% will drop out of business, within their first two years. Of the remaining 70%, many of those websites will survive to the fifth year and beyond. I don’t know how long one will be able to count on a permanent link just yet, but links that I built for myself in 1999 continue to produce traffic for my websites today, and those links have sent me continuous traffic for years.

Permanent, One-Way Links

Many permanent one-way links can be acquired on pages that currently have PageRank on them. In those cases, it may simply be a matter of your link being added to a list of links already on someone’s web page.

However, any link created through a content development method, such as pay-per-post or article marketing, will be posted on a new page on the Internet. All new pages on the Internet begin life at PageRank Zero. It is like the birth of a baby. The baby begins small, but grows into a child, then a teen, and finally an adult. All article pages begin their lives at PageRank Zero, and most of those new pages will increase in PageRank as they age. Some web pages will never mature beyond PR1, but others can grow into pages that are as high as PR6 (at least that is the highest I have seen an article page to date).

If you trust Matt Cutts of Google, he has indicated that all new pages begin life at PageRank Zero and in the Supplemental Results. He also said that Supplementals are not the end of the road. Cutts stated that the only thing required to bring a web page out of the Supplemental Results is to have that web page gain PageRank. (For those curious why a page went from the Primary Results to Supplemental Results, the answer is that either Google began counting links differently OR the links that gave a web page PageRank no longer exist.)

Three Reasons Why Article Marketing Helps Link Building

My conclusion from this information, and I might be biased, is that the use of article marketing for link building is a positive in the Google algorithms.

* I conclude this because links developed through article marketing begin on pages that have a PR Zero. So, we are obviously not getting links placed on websites for the sole purpose of acquiring PageRank, not directly anyway. We are placing links for the sake of having links, but with good luck, many of those links will gain PageRank over the long haul.

* By the very nature of article marketing, we can ensure that the links we develop for our websites reside on web pages that are tightly focused and targeted to the content of our websites.

* Most websites that post articles do so through a process of moderation, meaning that all article placements have been human reviewed. That human review process at the other end of the transaction puts most article websites on par with Yahoo’s human-reviewed directory.

When we can get our keywords embedded into the link pointing to our websites, then that is always a much better deal. But, that outcome will be affected by the webmaster at the other end of the process. Each webmaster has his or her own rules for article placement, and some of those folks simply do not permit embedded keywords in our links, either in the body of the article or in the about the author information. A plain text link is better than no link at all, although we always strive to get embedded keywords in our links.

Final Thoughts

When you write a great article people will link to it, no matter where it may reside. So in time, the pages that house your article will gain PageRank.

As the article’s author, you will are in total control of the relevance of the web page linking to your website.

Just as you are in control of relevance, you are also in control of whether people will choose to reprint your article. Write a good article, and people will use it.

Internet marketing can be a tricky business if you do not know what you are doing. That is one reason that so many marketing beginners constantly execute some of the top internet marketing mistakes known to the cyber world. Building a clean, workable web site can be very simple if you educate yourself on the basics of site design and content. And if you fail to learn the most important aspects of web site creation? You will most likely commit some of the deadliest internet marketing blunders the World Wide Web has ever seen.

A significant internet marketing mistake frequently made, is letting your webmaster compose your site copy. Webmasters are generally not trained to write text, and most probably cringe at the thoughts of having to write the copy that will be viewed by thousands. When developing your internet marketing plan, you must allow money to hire a professional copywriter that is paid to create articles and text. For your site to make money, you need words that will entice your visitors, and encourage them to buy your products. Experienced copywriters are very knowledgeable in marketing and promotion, and can guarantee to attract large amounts traffic with their exceptional copy and unique ideas.

Another major internet marketing blunder is poor web site design and navigation. A site’s design should be clean and simple, with a search box on the top, and clickable categories running down the side. Small thumbnail pictures should accompany each product, with larger, crisp photos just a click away. A great internet marketing technique is to have a separate section of the web site specifically for sale and discount products, and another page for seasonal items.

Forgetting to include contact information on your web site is another huge internet marketing mistake. Who would want to buy from a company that cannot be reached? Your web site should always include a telephone number, e-mail address, and shipping address. It is advisable to include a separate page solely for contact information, and have a link to your e-mail address on the home page.

In this communication era, to promote for any kinds of products efficiently, a businessperson must think about looking for help from the Internet. These are some tips to have a successful online promotion.

First, you have to build up a good website to introduce about your company, advertise for your products, bring up promotional programs and contact with your clients worldwide. With just one click, potential customers can be on your site and make any deals they wish. Therefore, you have to update your web pages frequently for both content and design that will attract viewers’ attention.

Tips for building a good website:

- Content: List out focused keywords and tailor your web pages with them.

- Design: Make some banners that CATCH viewers’ eyes. Animated banners tend to attract people better than static ones.

Secondly, you should think of direct marketing via emails. Every week, every month or every special occasion, send newsletters to your customers to inform your promotional program or just give them some gifts. This activity must be repeated to remind customers about your company products and encourage them to come back to your website.

Thirdly, you can use referral links to advertise on other sites. Posting an article or a press release, you should give out links to your company web pages directly or indirectly, which can improve your website traffic. I do not want to mention about the content of your articles or press releases, but the titles of them. Currently, there are millions of articles and press releases on PR websites. Thus, to catch readers’ eyes, your titles must be attractive, unique and interesting, for example, “Advertising - Friend, not Foe”, “Rock DJ”, “Writing Killer Sales Letter”, “Pro and Profitable website”, etc.

Finally yet importantly, that is advertising on online magazines. You might think that it is a costly way, or might you not? However, there are some ways, that do not influence money in your pocket much, and sometimes they promote your selling very well. If you are a software producer, you should contact with some editors of international IT magazines who find companies and request free softwares to include in their CD/ DVD cover mount. During the discussion, you can persuade editors to get one of your softwares and make the branding for the software you wish. For example, you offer free full version of Voice Changer Software and then advertise for Voice Changer Software Diamond 4.0. Moreover, you can improve your selling by providing some coupons for readers to buy latest version of your software. For instance, readers of XYZ magazine can use the coupon of $30 to buy Music Morpher Gold 3.0 at the price of $69.95 instead of $99.95. With these ways, you can encourage your website traffic as well as opportunities to get more orders from readers worldwide.

Well-prepared promotional projects can help you to advertise your products, popularize your brand name, and draw more potential customers. Remember that do make use of the Internet to perfect your online promotional plans.

Author:

Jenny Le who is interested in Marketing and Advertising categories is now working for Audio4fun Media. Contact her at mediaaudio4fun.com

Web Directories Explained

By S. Housley

Web directories are an important component to search engine positioning. Directories come in all shapes and sizes, some are generic, while others are highly specialized. Directories, are defined as categorized topics or collections of information organized into a tree like structure where categories are used to define each groups association.

Large directories like Yahoo tend to have general themes and may charge for listings. While smaller niche directories like .finance-investing.com offer free listings and profit from advertising revenue or pay per click models like Google AdSense.

Being listed in a directory not only brings in targeted traffic, it provides a one-way link from a website with similar content. Directories are generally highly ranked in search engines, and are considered well respected resources, two traits that are desirable in link partners.

While smaller directories that focus on a specific niche might generate less traffic, the quality of the traffic from a niche site is usually highly targeted and will be superior to that generated from general search engines.

If you are selling fire alarms, traffic from yahoo will be less qualified than traffic from Alarm Tools, .alarm-tools.net . Most visitors to Alarm Tools will have a genuine interest in alarms and alerting systems. The nature of highly specialized directories result in visitors who have a serious interest in the directories theme, or a at the very least an interest in a theme related to the directory.

As a result, web publishers need to make a conscience effort not to ignore the value of directory listings. Regardless of their size, a related niche directory listing can be extremely valuable.

Many directories offer sponsorship opportunities. Vendors can optionally purchase sponsorship to increased their exposure with a bold listing or top category listings.

Determining a Directories Value

It is difficult to assess the value of directory listing, as there is an obvious advantage to a listing of a closely related theme directory that is difficult to measure and quantify. In general, webmasters can use common web guidelines to determine the popularity of a directory and assess the directory link’s value.

To assess the value of a web directory, consider the PageRank of the webpage where the link placement of your site will occur. The PageRank is indicative of how important Google may find a specific page. Another reliable third party measuring tool is Alexa. The Alexa ranking provides insight into how popular a website is. In general, a link from a web page containing a PageRank of 5 or higher is considered very good. A link from a site in Alexa’s top 100,000 is also generally very desirable.

Compare the following two directories’ Monitoring Tools .monitoring-tools.net and RSS Specifications .rss-specifications.com . Monitoring Tools’ main page has a PageRank of 5 but most internal pages that contain links have low page ranks and the overall Alexa ranking of the site is over 650,000. While RSS Specification’s claims a main Google PageRank of 6 and subpages all contain a minimum of a 5 for PageRank, the overall site is ranked 32,000. Clearly if you are in the syndication business, RSS Specification’s would be a very desirable link partner, while you would have to weigh the cost benefit and position of a link from Monitoring Tools.

To determine a sites PageRank without downloading the Google Toolbar, use the following online tool from RustyBrick .rustybrick.com/pagerank-prediction.php . A website’s Alexa ranking can be found by entering the URL into Alexa .alexa.com .

It is recommended that PageRank and Alexa ranking be only used as a guide when determining a directories reputation. It is important not to get too caught up in either Google PageRank or Alexa Ranking as webmasters can use “tricks” to artificially inflate their numbers.

The bottom line, links from directories that are small but niche, can provide quality web traffic.

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Other than creating your own products in order to join the herds of increasing business online crowd, there are also other easier ways to have an immediate Internet business established.

So what do you need in order to join the Resell Rights business? It is very easy(really mean it..), which is to have a domain name &ndash able to get one easily from Yahoo for $2.99 or namecheap for $8.88, it depends on which you prefer, a hosting, most preferably a paid one &ndash important, and a fully-functional website.

There are tons of hosting out there, and to name a few midPhase(free domain name), lunarpages(free domain name as well), bluehost, or GoDaddy are the better ones.

These are almost the basic requirements of a successful affiliate, but don’t be mistaken - Affiliates and resellers are different.

Affiliates don’t need to have any other startup costs other than the basic requirements above, but resellers &ndash yes. Resellers will need to purchase the rights to a product owned by the other people, but they can resell the products and keep 100% of the profits instead. For affiliates, they only receive a percentage of commissions from their sales. Usually, purchasing the rights to resell a certain product can cost 3, 5 or even 10 times more than its normal price.

The few stages of Resell Rights:

• Basic Resell Rights

You can sell the product, but not your customers.

• Master Resell Rights

When you have a master resell rights product for sale, you can resell it to your customers, and so can they with the same product. This means that when you purchase a Master Resell Right, your customers get to sell the same item as well.

• Private Label Rights

These are really popular. Why is it so? &ndash If you purchase a private label right of a product, you get to change the contents of the product any ways you want, produce it under your name, anything! Basically, you can treat it as though it’s your production.

Prices for a private label right is much higher than any other rights. Of course, everyone knows it(it’s common sense!).

• Give Away Rights

As clear as it sounds, you may give away the product to anyone you want! Instead, you can’t sell or edit the product in any ways.

Usually give away rights works well with viral marketing &ndash people give their work out for publicity.

• Rebranding Rights

This product works almost the same as a product with give away rights, but you are able to edit part of the contents to benefit yourself on publicity as well. Most probably, you can only edit the sponsored names, website URL and affiliate links.

How can you profit from a resell rights business at its peak?

You definitely need your opt-in lists. In fact, the most important thing for an Internet Marketer is his or her lists of subscribers. Some Internet Marketers who own 100,000 to 200,000 subscribers(also called leads) doesn’t even need to actually work anymore. What they do everyday is just providing their subscribers or leads with some useful information, real life news, stories, and build a closer relationship with them.

When they found a good product or item, easily they can send an email out and endorse it, earning commissions through the affiliate links. Well as for a reseller, you do the same, but a little bit different. When there are products that you think is interesting and is worth to be “told” to your subscribers, you purchase the resell rights to it and usually, sell them to your subscribers at a better offer.

Most Internet Marketers will usually purchase much more resell rights to the other products then combine them together, selling all of them at a cheaper price in a bundle. Sometimes the price can even be more expensive for up to ten times if you purchase them separately, that is why tons of people would rather purchase the products from resellers in a bulk.

Nevertheless, it is not always a must to sell all of them together. Many resell rights have the same looks and same sales page and you can change that. By writing your own or hiring a copywriter to craft a much more compelling sales copy for the resell product, you can increase the response a lot more.

As for digital products like e-books or software, you can design a whole new e-book cover or software box instead of using the given one that comes with the resell rights. As the saying goes “in the valley of the blind the one with an eye is the king.” 727 words

Now being a reseller is really sometimes easier than anything. When new resell rights which seems attractive are being sold, people will just need to purchase the rights to them, compile them, and next ready to be sold in a single sales copy. Search for joint venture partners, offer them a higher percentage in commissions, request them to endorse your offer and that’s it.

Being any Internet Marketer, it is always better to take hold of every opportunity you can earn money with. When you successfully sell a product to a customer, try and sell him or her another product right on your Thank You page. Basically the idea is “since you’re my customer and you purchased a product from me, here’s a great offer specially for you at an incredible special price.” It’s a very good way of having a back-end sale.

That’s not all, to urge customers into pulling out their credit cards for the Thank You page item, most Internet Marketers will also make it a one-time offer &ndash this will be shown only one time, you won’t see it again. If the customers are interested they’ll get it, if not, there’s no harm at all.

There are many ideas of earning money as a reseller and you can always apply it for your own. The Internet business market is so huge that you can choose from these varieties of business styles that suits yourself. From starting your own Internet business selling your own product, earning commissions from affiliate programs and being a reseller &ndash make the best decision for yourself and get started!

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.

All web sites are different. MTTs unique software is modified on the fly to suit each web sites products and services to guarantee that thousands of sales are generated. A huge surge of ready to buy targeted search engine traffic is Guaranteed.

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Your web site will be deluged by ultra-targeted ready to buy search engine traffic. You site will jump to the top of all the best search engines’ results for the keywords and content the software will feed them including Google. You will sell more and earn far greater profits but only pay service fees subject to the MTT income and performance guarantee ONLY when they generate you $100,000.

If you do not earn $100,000 net profit within 4 months, MTT will give you the remainder of their service for FREE- no charges plus you get to keep what you earn. You can set up as many of your web sites or affiliate programs as you want. This is true Set-It-And-Forget-It technology. Join our FREE affiliate program and try the service before the introductory offer expires.

See You At The Top!

C L Eldridge