Monday, June 9, 2008

Viral marketing is a methods of list building

There are multiple methods of list building, and if you are just getting started, until you have gained mastery over one or two methods, it is advisable to use multiple methods of list building strategies. You’ll see every step of the process, no matter how small, in exacting detail so

Many businesses at the current time are venturing into article marketing, for the internet has lured a large host of customers that are hoping to locate unique and contemporary merchandise. When wanting to attract and keep these customers for a length of time, take care to post descriptions that have creative and unique content.

Writing articles that are effective for article marketing isn't for everyone. You not only have to be a talented wordsmith, you have to be able to take the perspective of many different people. A website receives traffic from many visitors with many goals, every day. To be successful, you have to be able to create an article that will engage many different people, from many different angles. If you can do this, you will find yourself in a very desirable position.

Unique articles are the main portion of article marketing. It's vital to verify that the articles you choose to use are brand new. You should not be able to find any of these articles anywhere else on the internet. Cut and pasting any articles from other sites will make you look bad. It will also not flag the search engines, and your rating will not be changed.

How do you write an article that brings widespread interest to your page? Such writing is not simple. Creative thinking and an excellent grasp of grammar is needed. The author of the article needs to think from many points of view to understand how to interest many types of people from a variety of backgrounds and ethnic groups.

If you are into article marketing as you well should be, exert an effort toward writing a new article daily. Keeping it interesting helps enchant consumers and potential buyers that could get bored with stale article marketing. You look more professional as well as achieve higher ratings. This type of marketing is creative fun for the marketer as well as for the customer(s) that he acquires.

While there are other types of marketing available to you and your business, article marketing is taking the net by storm. This new type of marketing is providing lots of businesses with customers who have been looking for them. By gaining search engine rank and engaging readers in the topic, articles are able to boost your sales and profits.

Article marketing is being used more and more by online entrepreneurs. Some customers find the new articles on their favorite Web sites a big part of the attraction. Those who specialize in it find that intuitiveness and unique content are the most important aspects of writing an article that people will wait for, and appreciate. Unique articles are the main portions of this marketing. It's vital to verify that the articles you choose to use are brand new. You should not be able to find any of these articles anywhere else on the Internet. Cut and pasting any articles from other sites will make you look bad.

Viral marketing is a methods of list building

There are multiple methods of list building, and if you are just getting started, until you have gained mastery over one or two methods, it is advisable to use multiple methods of list building strategies. You’ll see every step of the process, no matter how small, in exacting detail so

The television show American Idol is once again roaring through yet another blockbuster season on Fox Network. Are there marketing lessons buried within the weekly contest that draws millions of television viewers every week? Yes! The same strategies that creates stars on American Idol can help YOU create some star power for your own online business.

Differentiate Yourself - Simon Cowell is often heard telling American Idol contestants that their performance was "totally forgettable." Well, since American Idol is about more than just vocals - making yourself memorable comes from being talented, original, fresh and contemporary.

The only way to stay alive in the competition is to consistently deliver what the American Idol fans want... week after week. You need to stand out from the pack and stay there. Even as a viewer - when someone asks who was the best on last night's American Idol, it doesn't say much for the show when there isn't a performance that jumps out at you. Often times people are talking more about which performances were down right awful.

Differentiating yourself by showcasing your best gifts and strengths is how you will make yourself memorable - whether you are a contestant on American Idol or marketing yourself online. Your website, your tagline, your email signature and resource box for your articles should all work hard to make your business "memorable."

Play on Your Strengths - So many American Idol contestants try to be sign songs that are out of their range and beyond their talent. It is better to stick with what you know you do well and showcase the best YOU. More often than not, you will hear the judges talk about a song being "pitchy" or "screaming" the lyrics.

Showcase Your Talent - Choosing songs that dramatically show your gifts is a much smarter move than picking a song that is a stretch for your voice, your rhythm or energy level. The same holds true for marketing strategies. Know your gifts and strengths then make them SHINE.

Be Coachable - When Simon Cowell tells a contestant on American Idol that their performance was a "disaster" you can hear the crowd come alive with hisses and boos. Viewers at home may even get their own hackles up and rant to anyone that will listen to just how mean the judges are on American Idol. For most of us, being faced with such blatant criticism makes us cringe BUT just like the athlete pushed by a coach - we learn. We learn to improve our game so to speak. If everyone around us told us what a great job we do when in fact, we are lousy - we will be end up like those American Idol wannabees that show up for auditions only to find out - we can't carry a note!

It really doesn't matter if you are trying to become the next American Idol or make a living online from home - when you get advice or suggestions from others that know more than you, listen. You don't have to give up a piece of yourself in order to learn from others. Stop listen, think it over and take their advice to heart. Be open to learning from others - see things from those more experienced than you.

Take Risks- Each week, at least one American Idol judge will say "you played it too safe" with that performance. If you have ever watched the auditions, you may have noticed people sing one song that isn't well received then ask if they can sing another choice then end up being a contestant. It's all about risk. Unless you are willing to risk looking foolish, you will rarely experience great moments. That is how life works. Until you are willing to ask that girl out or sing a song for the American Idol judges - you will never know if or when the answer will be YES.

For those that love to hate American Idol, remember - the contestants that perform each week might still be in their hometown's simply dreaming of singing their hearts out on the Big Stage BUT instead they took the leap and made it this far in the competition. They are living their dream and giving it their best shot.

For those of us that run a home business or market online - we are pursuing our own entrepreneurial dreams. The marketing lessons learned from American Idol just might get you showcasing your own talents and passions in a brighter spotlight.

Tammy Ames shares her latest opportunities and online business resources at Online Business News. Tam's online earnings are getting her closer to her dream of living debt free - share the dream on Debt Crunch.

Viral marketing is a methods of list building

There are multiple methods of list building, and if you are just getting started, until you have gained mastery over one or two methods, it is advisable to use multiple methods of list building strategies. You’ll see every step of the process, no matter how small, in exacting detail so

Many people who are interested in article writing success do not consider themselves particularly capable as writers themselves. If you are such a person, you may be interested in finding a ghost writer who can assist you in the creation of copy to further your own article marketing efforts. There are five tips that you should keep in mind when looking for a capable ghost writer to assist you in achieving your goals.

1. Experience matters. Always look for a ghost writer that has experience in the field.

2. Get recommendations. You should get references and recommendations from a ghost writer before you settle on selecting that person to assist you. A capable ghost writer will be more than happy to provide you with references.

3. Check out the portfolio. Just as a capable ghost writer will be willing to provide you with references, a solid and professional ghost writer will be more very willing to provide you with samples of his or her prior work. You absolutely must see what the writer has done in the past before you select that individual to assist you with article marketing.

4. Deadlines. You need to make certain that any ghost writer you select actually has the time to devote to your project. The fact is that quality ghost writers are few and far between and these individuals can be overbooked.

5. Communication: You need to make certain that you pick a ghost writer that is comfortable with communicating with you regularly. You will want to select a ghost writer that will keep you up to date on the progress if your project

Want to learn how I do it? Download my free guide here: Article Marketing Secrets

Mike Upshaw is an experienced internet marketer specializing in list building, traffic generation, article marketing and affiliate marketing. http://www.secretstointernetprofits.com

Making Money with Your Blog!

A place for finding the Nuts and Bolts for Making Money Online with Affiliate Marketing Business Opportunity!

Introduction

People use search engines to find things. Although you should avoid making your business depending entirely on free traffic from search engines, so is it still important to consider search engines in your overall internet marketing strategy. Ignoring search means leaving a big chunk of business on the table, which will make it much harder to stay competitive depending on the industry you are in and what your competition is doing. SEO isn't rocket science and to a certain degree technical. It has nothing to do with magic and fairy dust will do nothing to help you with it. It also requires a long term strategy and commitment in order to become and remain successful. There is no silver bullet and no shortcuts.

Because of its long term commitment necessary, is a well formed strategy key to success, a strategy that is followed and verified and scrutinized along the way.

While all 11 steps below are part of a repeating cycle over the time while you are doing business on the internet, so are only step 6 to 11 task that need to be on going on a much more frequent basis. Due to the fact that steps 1 to 5 are not repeated very often, is it necessary to give them special attention and care to get them right at the beginning. Errors made there will affect all the others in a negative way and hurt your efforts along the way.

1. Keyword Research

Keyword research is the most important first step that should not be taken too lightly. While you can easily test and change hundreds of keywords in paid search campaigns, so is this not possible for organic search optimization. You usually concentrate on one to five key phrases for the whole site (theme) and one to three phrases for a single page. For large sites with thousands of pages is it hard to optimize every single page to the full extend due to the limits in time and other resources.

2. Competitive Intelligence

Know you competition! What are they doing? Where do they rank, for which terms? Who is linking to them and why? The things you have to do depend on what your competitors are doing. The less competitive your vertical is online the easier is it for you to outperform your competition. This is important to determining cost and resources for your SEO efforts.

3. Web Design and Development

Fixing something that is broke is always harder than building it right from the beginning. If you are in the process of creating a new website, make sure to consider search engine friendly design and architecture before and during the actual development of the website. This will save you a lot of time and money and in most cases put you already ahead of a considerable number of your competitors. Search engine friendly design is not rocket science and search engine friendly design does not have to be ugly. Search engine friendly design is for the most part user friendly design as well, but there are some exceptions where compromises have to be made.

4. Get Your First Inbound Links

Don't submit your new site to search engines and by no means pay anybody to do it for you. There are many cheap services and software products out there that offer for less than $100 submission to and #1 ranking in thousands of search engines. Don't do it. If you see an offer like that, hold your wallet and run. Your site should be found by search engines naturally and they will find your site if a page that is already in their index links to you. Why? Because this is what search engines do, following links to discover content. There are plenty of methods to get your first inbound links. Some web directories are recognized by search engines and a listing there will do your site good. Most recognized directories are commercial in nature and charge a fee for reviewing your site. Also check with vendors or good customers (B2B) who have a website for the opportunity to have them place a link to your website.

5. Sitemaps

The larger search engines allow webmasters to submit a sitemap to them via a webmaster console. The search engines also provide reports and other useful information, such as technical problems with your websites you might not be aware of via their console. Even if you decide against the submission of a site map to the search engines, is it advisable to create an account and register your website with them for the reports and statistics they provide for free and which are invaluable for your internet marketing efforts.

6. Web Analytics

You can't determine success or failure of any of your internet marketing activities if you do not track and measure their effectiveness. Engaging in any type of marketing campaign online, be it SEO, paid search, display advertising, email marketing, social media or affiliate marketing is like fishing in the dark without any type of web analytics solution in place. The options range from free services to very expensive and heavily customizable package. You have to determine what solution will work for you, but you have to start with one so don't put it off. Web analytics helps you to determine where to improve your site and your marketing campaigns to channel your resources and money to the things that work and pull it away from the things that don't work. Web analytics is not a cost center if it is done properly.

7. Content Building

A website is never done. It has to change and grow over time. This is a natural process to adjust to changes in the market, with maturing in this type of medium and your normal business growth. Providing good quality content that is related to what you do, but not necessarily aimed to sell something directly is the best opportunity to increase traffic and exposure of your business. Most people do not link to pages that only serve the purpose to make a sale.

8. Link Building

The internet wouldn't be a "net" without links. It would only be a collection of independent pages that are not connected to each other. Disconnected pages cannot be found and that defeats the purpose of them, wouldn't it? Inbound links and internal site linking is important for organic traffic, meaning people seeing and clicking on those links to get to your website, but they are also important for SEO. Inbound links play an important role in virtually every search engine when it comes to ranking pages in their search results. This is a never ending process and while it happens naturally. Be a bit more pro-active to get more and good inbound links. There are plenty of sites out there that should link to you, but don't know you and your content.

9. Engagement, Trust and Community Building

Social media and Web 2.0 might be buzz words, but the underlying core elements they are made of are much more elementary and fundamental. Don't live in a bubble and talk to people without allowing people to respond and to interact with you. People will talk about you, with or without you being around. Take the opportunity to become part of the discussion to build trust and deeper relationships with your customers or potential customers. Listen to what they say and learn about their wants and their needs. Hear what they say about you and your products, especially the criticism and improve on them.

10. Ranking and Traffic Analysis

Check where you are today to be able to compare it with data in the future. Look for trends and evaluate the success of your goals, which you should have specified before you engaged in any type of marketing campaign. You did set goals that are measurable I hope. Improving ranking is important for SEO, but more important than the ranking is the traffic that comes with it. Does the change in ranking yields in the traffic you expected? Does this traffic actually convert?

11. Conversion Analysis

No matter what you do, everything will come down to one critical factor at the very end. What is your bottom line? Did you make profit or did you lose money. While losing money in the short term for strategic reasons is okay, so Is losing money in the long run deemed to failure and the end of your business altogether. Whatever you do, it has to contribute directly or indirectly to a positive Return of Investment. Web Analytics is part of the process of making this determination among other tools and methods. Expand the things that work and help your bottom line and rid yourself of the things that don't. Improve of details to increase conversion. This requires testing. Don't reject anything upfront without testing it first. Things that work for others might not work for you, but the same is true the other way around.

Carsten Cumbrowski is an internet marketer, entrepreneur and internet marketing strategy consultant. You can find tons of resources to the various channels and topics in internet marketing free at Cumbrowski.com including further details about the SEO fundamentals that were discussed in this article.

Three Things You Must Do Before You Submit To Article Directories

To all writers and non-writers out there, now is the time to start digging up those creative writing skills.With modern communication technology comes the popularity of information-based marketing, which is one of the oldest and most effective techniques in getting targeted prospects to sites and converting them into buyers. This is

In the realm of once upon a time there was a term that was often used to describe a secret list of potential dates for the owner of the list. The term was 'a little black book'. The notion was picked up in movies, books and as a means of poking fun at someone else.

The idea of the little black book had, at its core, the idea of list building.

Others have used the term to describe contacts they might have in business that may be called upon when the salesman needed to reach a specific sales goal. These were customers you could count on to make a purchase if you just asked, So the salesman kept their names and only called when they really needed that extra boost.

Some things about marketing have changed, but not the idea of a list. Businesses realize they need to develop contacts that may have an affinity for their business and/or product line.

These contacts are needed if the business is to conduct an effective email marketing campaign. Because this should be an opt-in process the customer has the option of continuing to receive your email notices or be removed from the list.

I don't know if there is anything more frustrating for a business startup than to have a business in place with products to sell and customers are not beating down the doors to get to the product.

This scenario may have a lot to do with the fact that cyberspace is a really big place and it can take a while for customers to find any new business. Work hard at Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies and be prepared to wait. While you're waiting keep working at marketing strategies and seek to initiate list-building strategies that take advantage of consumer interests.

Build a little cyber black book that contains the email addresses of individuals who may be interested in your business and product line.

These names are important because they have a history. These names are not just randomly selected and placed on your list. No, these names represent either customers or prospects who have already shown enough interest in your business that they have willingly supplied you with an email address so you can contact them about upcoming sales, discounts or an expanded product line.

You wouldn't expect a business to assume that their contact list was every name listed in the phone book. While there may be potential there these business owners realize it may make more sense to work more efficiently by matching names against those who have already visited the store or made a purchase. These names provide a much better target for the business.

List building is an important means of taking small successes today and building on them for potential successes tomorrow. Virtually everything about marketing is designed to work like links in a chain. On their own they are just an oval shaped piece of metal, but together they can provide a significant ability to tow your business from startup to trusted business resource.

Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. Make Your Own Website in minutes with HighPowerSites.com or Build Your Website with BuildAGreatSite.com. Start an EBOOK BUSINESS at BooksWealth.com.

List Building, Network Marketing or Both?

I heard, before I joined an Internet Marketing system, to build your list first. I was anxious and foolish. I didn't listen. First, I didn't have anything to offer a list to start with. And second, I didn't understand the importance of having a list. I spent about $2,000 to join an opportunity which I believed in. I figured I could make a few sales a month and my business would prosper. Boy was I deceived! After spending another $800-1,000 in advertising without making a sale, I was pretty discouraged. I was bouncing checks and paying bills late for months waiting for a break through that never came.

I absorbed myself in Internet Marketing though. I probably spent 60-80 hours a week,for about 10 months, studying on line and listening to audios about Internet Marketing to and from work. I've been on 300-500 different Internet marketers list. I probably have over 500 ebooks on Internet marketing. All given to me for free to be a subscriber to an Internet marketers list. If I wasn't receiving 30-60 sales letters a day from being on those list, I might have had time to read one or two of those books by now. They have come in handy though. When something does stump me, I do have all of those resources and I have learned from them.

It was through being on on those list that equipped me to be able to build my own list. When you've been on that many list you know which ones could grow quickly and which ones won't. 90% offer the same products, whether for free or for sale. So, even as a newbie, you can start your own list. You don't need unique products, you just need to set yourself apart from the 90% group! In fact, even the 10% group sells a lot of the same products.

So, what's the difference? Patience, and the willingness to want to train new Internet marketers the ropes. The patient list builder will develop a relationship with you and give you free relevant content before they try to make a sale to you. The majority of them give you a free ebook, which they got for free anyway, along with a sales page ($49 price goes up $20 at midnight!) and then they fill your email box day after day with more sales letters until you unsubscribe. I do have patience though. I'll usually give them the benefit of doubt and give them a couple of weeks before I unsubscribe.

I'm a faithful subscriber to about 5 or 6 Internet marketers. Because they have patience, they teach me a lot, they even offer free audio and video training. Now, when they are all out there promoting the same things, are you going to buy that $49 product from some one that gave you an ebook that they got for free, or are you going to buy that product from one of the guys that has invested in you? Because when one these guys send me a sales letter, I'll look it over. They have invested time and training into me, and I owe them at least that. Even if the time isn't right for me, if the opportunity interest me, I'll save it and look it over again in the future.

The problem is is you can join one of the Internet Marketing opportunities out there and spend thousands of dollars with out making any sales. There's a lot of competition out there selling the same products or a different one. The odds are, by the time a person clicks on your ad they have already seen it 5 times in the last hour. You still have to pay $1 or so for each click. It gets very expensive and discouraging when they click and leave. I'm suggesting that instead of investing thousands of dollars, be patient first off, and secondly build a list of people who are interested in Internet Marketing by training them list building. You can produce a great income doing this without sending out a sales page every day. Then when you are lucrative, find an opportunity that you believe in, and offer that to the list you built that you already have a relationship with and sales should follow!

Mark Draugelis has developed a system to create Multiple Streams of Income on the Internet through affiliate programs without using the duplicatable web site systems most opportunities use. He helps you build your own unique Internet Business! To learn more go to- http://www.Easy-Viral-Listbuilding.com