Monthly Archives: March 2011

The 21st century has been an era of technological advancement, and this is most evident in the exponential growth of the Internet. As such, nearly every kind of service or activity can now be transacted over the web including advertising – which is quickly shifting focus from more traditional means like print, TV and radio to its contemporary version – online advertising.

Online advertising in a nutshell

The term itself is pretty self explanatory, if you think about it. It’s advertising done online – the kind that involves not TV, or radio or print media to promote products and services, but taps into the power of the Internet to get their message to the right recipients.

Advertising via the web takes full advantage of the Internet’s boundless scope and immeasurable potential to reach not just the target market but also anyone and everyone who is electronically connected, making it an advertising medium that many companies are exploring and developing at an incredibly rapid pace.

It’s the trend

Though research data has yet to clearly illustrate the true effects of online advertising, it has already grown in scope and influence continuing to eat up a greater portion of the advertising dollar.

Recent trends point to more and more people shifting focus from popular media such as TV, radio and newspaper to the fast-paced world of the Internet, where information-gathering, communication and socialization zips by at a rate of gazillions of megabytes of data per second.

This trend is causing more of those advertising dollars to be poured into online advertising. In fact, in a period of five years, between 2006 and 2010, the budget for this mode of advertising has doubled in size, from 6 percent of all money spent on advertising to 12 percent or more. This is already pointing to a clear and fundamental shift in the way advertising money is being spent and is going to be spent in the years to come.

Advantages

Advertising over the Internet has become a major draw for companies looking to push their products and services into consumer consciousness. First, marketing over the Internet reaches a greater number of young adult males – a prime demographic that advertisers need to target.

Second, ads over the Internet have the functionality of hypertext linking, which allows advertisers to transport consumers directly to the company’s site – especially useful for sites that sell products.

Finally, companies have the option to go for pay-per-click ads. This means that the company does not have to pay any advertising fees if users do not click on the ad, making this kind of advertisement a truly cost-effective method.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/6089755

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In this search engine optimization tutorial, we will be looking at some tips and tricks for doing DIY link building in an effort to increase your standing in the major search engines.

The most common solution for website owners in regard to link building is to hire either an SEO company or a link builder to do the job. This approach might work, provided the techniques and methods implemented are in accordance with Google search quality guidelines. Those techniques will also work provided the links built count not only on the basis of quantity, but quality and relevance as well.

The down side is that hiring SEO companies and link builders can be a very expensive investment for a beginning webmaster who does not yet have a positive return on the online business. It can also be risky, because a lot of SEOs and link builders practice techniques which are in violation of Google quality guidelines. As a result, your site can be penalized if it gets involved in one of these link schemes (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356).

This article will list the best practices for “do-it-yourself” link building techniques, which can help your site rankings in the search engines (particularly in Google). This way, you will not only learn to build links yourself, but be actively involved in the online community/niche where your website belongs.

Remember that success using these techniques is highly dependent upon what you are doing on your website. You cannot expect a link from a reputable website with authority if all they find on your website is crappy content and cluttered ads. Remember: content is still king. Let’s get started.

Link Building Tip #1: Let Them Know That You Have Quality Content to Offer

If your site is extremely new and getting only a few visitors, it would not make sense to rely on link baiting techniques. This technique is only effective if your website already receives a lot of visitors coming from other sources.

What would make sense is to let your community know that you have quality content to offer. Why? Even sites with authority that are trusted by Google are not complete; they still need improvement, particularly when it comes to content. To do this, follow the steps below.

1. Wait until you have at least 30 or more pieces of content. Fifty high quality/originally written articles is a good start to exposing your site to your related niche. The content must meet the following specifications:

2. Show your background and history in your website’s “about” page. It helps your visitors to get to know you better and begin to trust you sooner. Show your pictures and biography. If your website is about car repairs and you are a certified car technician by profession, you can say this in your bio and provide a link to the organizations that grant your certifications.

3. Make sure that your website is easy to navigate and professional-looking. Avoid cluttering your website with too many ads; it is a big turn-off, and has an adverse impact on your professionalism. I recommend you hold off on ads until the later stages, when you are already earning a lot of links and receiving a lot of visitors. For now, I recommend you turn them off.

4. Avoid having a link page with links pointing to nonsense, spammy and unrelated websites. It is much better to have no link page at all. You need to convey a professional image to other website owners in your related niche, which you will invite to your website later.

5. Include your contact information. Some people might be willing to contact you in person. So a phone number, contact form or even an email address on your website will be useful. Avoid listing just the email address and no official business address. They need to know that you are for real.

6. Get a list of reputable, related and authoritative websites in your niche. You can use the following tools:

7. Now that you have a list, it is time to do your homework. Go through each website and look for opportunities for them to link to you.

Next: Reciprocal Link Tips
 

More Link Trading Articles
More By Codex-M

Article source: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Link-Trading-Help/Link-Building-Tips-and-Tricks/

If you ever wanted to learn how to find a niche, then this article is for you!

We want to share with you the process that we actually use to find a niche (or profitable micro niche) for affiliate marketing. It is the same process that has helped us to do well as an affiliate marketer over the last eight years. The good news is that it is a simple three step process. It has worked for us, and if you follow it to a tee, it will work for you.

Step 1: Write about a topic you like or are knowledgeable about: If you like a topic you are more likely to want to write about it. If you are very knowledgeable about it then you will have a lot of good things to say to your audience. The good news is, you can also undertake a lot of research on line, so you don’t need to know everything straight away.

Step 2: Find out how much competition you have: The best way to start with this is to consider a general topic. Let’s say it is Dogs, from there you can look at what niches exist for dogs. Examples could be dog training, dog grooming or diet’s for dogs. Dog training, may be something that you know a lot about or are interested in. More specifically, you could find a micro niche on how to train specific types of dogs, or how to train dogs for specific actions or tricks etc.

Once you have found the niche or micro niche do a quick Google search to see how much is written on the topic. If they are only a few pages of good information then you may be onto a winner. Next check out forums (eg. pet forums) to see what questions people are asking. If they are a few questions relating to your particular niche even better. Also check out how many Google Ads there are. More than two and less than nine is a good range. It means there is some competition but not to much.

Step 3: Check out how many potential customers there are: You now need to see how many potential customers there are. Use the Google Keyword Tool to see how many searches there are on the topic. We recommend under 20,000. Simply type in your niche or micro niche keywords and see what comes up. You can then build your site based on these key words. Once you have done the above, see if there is a relevant product. Start in ClickBank as they are one of the biggest resources on the web. Once you find one start your site. The product is the last step. You have to find a niche that works first!

Yes… the above process does involve a fair bit of work, but it is definitely worth it and you will reap the rewards for the hard work you have put in. All in all it will help you find a niche that is profitable.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/6117980

A great deal has been written on internet marketing in general, and affiliate marketing in particular.  But it takes quite a lot of reading to get to the point at which you understand the entire process in overview. The purpose of this article is to give that overview.

There are three important factors which together contribute to internet marketing success:

1. Marketability

The best way to determine marketability is to find products that are already selling well.  How do you do that?  Here are two great ways.

Firstly, go to ClickBank and search the marketplace for the particular type of product you would like to sell.  Then use the dropdown to sort the list by “Gravity”.  Broadly, Gravity indicates what is selling the most, and most recently.

Another way is to make use of the “Popular” lists that most online vendors use. Find a vendor who runs an affiliate program (look in the footer for the “affiliate” link) and then go to their “Popular” list and choose one of those products.

2. Getting traffic to your website

The more visitors you have, the greater your potential to make sales. One of the key factors is identifying a micro niche market that is popular but not too competitive. 

Essentially a micro niche is a description of three to six words long.  So, for example, “affiliate marketing” is a niche.  “Affiliate marketing for beginners” is a micro niche.  There are numerous products out there that will enable you to discover quickly and easily which search terms are searched frequently. 

That is not the end of the story as you also need to find a phrase that is not already catered for by too many websites.  In other words, how strong is the competition? Which is better, a phrase that attracts 500 searches a month worldwide that has 1,000 websites relevant to it, or a phrase that attracts 1,000 searches a month worldwide that has 500 websites relevant to it?

It is also important to ensure that at least your home page, and preferably every page of your website, is search engine optimised (“SEO”).  This involves using page names that are human-readable (“affiliate-marketing-for-beginners.php” rather than “?page=25.php”), making sure that the title, description and keywords tags in the page headers have relevant keywords in them.  If you are using WordPress (as most internet marketers do), Drupal or Joomla there are plugins or modules which help you to do this.

It is also important to build backlinks.  What this means is to ensure that there are a lot of links pointing at your site, preferably coming from sites that already have high page ranks in the search engines.  This gives you a lot of what is called “Google juice”. One way to achieve this is to submit relevant articles to sites like EzineArticles, Squidoo and others. Use all of these techniques together. The aim is to get your site onto the first search engine page (usually the top 10 sites) for your chosen search phrase ( i.e. your micro niche).

3. Clinching the sale

Now that searchers have found you, you want to sell to them.

Sometimes most of the content on your site will just be search engine bait, which has got you your ranking.  The real selling might be done on the landing page, that is the page on which the searcher first arrives, which has no other purpose than to sell a product.  This page might be a “squeeze page” which has no header, footer or sidebars.  It will link to a vendor’s site in several places and will be worded from the start to ensure that the searcher realises that he or she only has one chance to acquire this product or has some other incentive to click through to the vendor’s site.  You will already have set up an affiliate relationship with the vendor so that when the searcher clicks through to the vendor’s site (“just to see what this great product is”) a cookie will be downloaded to the searcher’s computer, which marks that searcher as “yours”.  Whether the searcher buys on that occasion or returns later, this helps you to get credited with the sale and receive your affiliate commission (often as much as 75% of the sale price).

Other sites take a more long-term approach.  They aim to persuade the visitor to sign up to their email list.  They do this by offering incentives, for example a free “ebook” (a short manual in pdf form).  Once signed up, the searcher receives a series of emails over a period of time.  This process is automated, through what is known as an auto-responder.  The website owner has already set up this series of emails, some of which will be informative (to encourage the reader not to unsubscribe) and the others will be seeking to sell products which will earn the website owner commission.  It is easy to set up an autoresponder via email marketing providers such as Aweber and Constant Contact.

Other website owners will rely more or as much on their content.  A lot of vendors (e.g. Amazon) provide code to their affiliates that can be pasted in, and hey presto suddenly your site is showing a beautifully-formatted internet store, which looks just like it’s part of your site, but in effect it’s just a branch of the vendor which earns you commission.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/6094955

The best way to learn affiliate marketing is to register with a training course. In fact many people try to start a business but fail. The reason that most of these people fail is because they forget that the best way to learn affiliate marketing is to sign up for a training course because without a program you will not learn everything you need to know.

I have suggested several training courses to different people in the past and I have found different courses that have helped different people. Now each and every person learns differently so there is no 1 best way to learn affiliate marketing however, of all the programs that I have recommended to people in the past there are several things they all have in common so now I am going to go over those points for you.

• The program should be popular and have been displayed on several popular websites such as yahoo, Bing, MSN, AOL, and many other major websites.
• The course must have a full testimonials from other people who have used the program before with their reviews of the course to explain whether or not they thought it was the best way to learn affiliate marketing.
• Videos are an absolute must. In fact people always say that a picture is worth 1000 words. Well a video is a worth 1000 pictures and the videos are one of the best training tools and is the best way to learn affiliate marketing.
• There should be a 100% money back guarantee. Whenever you buy something from a store you are able to return it if are not satisfied right? Well if a training course is really the best way to learn affiliate marketing then it will guarantee you learn or you can get your money back.
• You should spend about $100 on the program. This may seem like a lot of money to spend on a training program but its really not that much. The reason is because once you finish the course you will be able to earn at least that much money every day so the money is very well spent. People spend 1000′s of dollars every year on college which trains you for a job in your future so spending only 100 dollars on a training program is not that bad at all and once you start earning money you will realize that a training course is the best way to go.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/6082633

Beginner affiliate marketing training is crucial if you want to begin seeing the profits that you have been hearing about you have to get a little education first. I know people may have told you that it is so easy that a kid can do it. Well it is but, if you do not know what you are doing you still will not get your business running properly. In fact thousands of people try to start a company everyday but 99% of them will fail and make absolutely no money. The reason is because they try to skip the beginner affiliate marketing training. That is putting the horse before the carriage because if you do not know what you are supposed to do how can you possibly complete it?

Beginner Affiliate Marketing Training

The best beginner affiliate marketing training programs are all going to include several important pieces which prove the courses worth and show you that it will teach you everything you need to know. Now I’m going to list out several important things that you should find on the program you choose.

• There must be testimonials from actual people who have used the program before right on the front page
• The beginner affiliate marketing training program should have been displayed on major websites such as bing, MSN, AOL, and yahoo
• The course should take about 15 minutes or so for you to go through
• There must be a 24 hour a day 7 day a week support team which is there to help you at any time if you run into difficult situations.
• Make sure that there are video training programs because videos will be much easier to learn from and are considered by many to be the best tool for learning
• One of the most important things is that it includes a 100% money back guarantee if you are not satisfied for any reason. All quality products will give you your money back and with a beginner affiliate marketing training program they should guarantee your training
• You should expect to pay about $100 for the training. I know this may seem like a lot of money but when you are learning to earn at least that much money every day that $100 for the training is almost nothing. You might think this seems unreasonable but people are willing to pay thousands to go to college to get trained for a job and a small fee to train for your job makes sense too.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/6079050

The Internet is filled with ways to make money at home, but some of the methods suggested are only get rich quick schemes. Only, once you buy the eBooks or access into the special website, the “revolutionary” program seems nothing more than affiliate marketing dressed up in fancy terms and language. Making money on the internet can involve affiliate marketing, but just like any other job, it takes hours each day and a lot of hard work. Also, there are certain things a marketer can do to avoid making costly mistakes.

Affiliate marketing is all about referrals. The more you can send paying traffic to a retailer, the more money you can earn. One common method is to build and search engine optimize a blog around your affiliate partnerships. Then, write a series of serious, non-fluff and non-spammy blog posts. The key is to provide informative information, not an incoherent blob of text with links. The idea is that your blog visitors might click-through to the vendor and buy the product.

However, you need to limit yourself to one product per post. For example, if you are an Amazon associate, only write about one book per blog post. This way, you can center all of your writing around that one book. Once you try multiple links, you will accidentally dilute your efforts. The key to good writing, both on paper and on the internet, is maintaining a sense of focus. Plus, the better quality your blog posts, the more you might get return traffic or RSS subscriptions.

Only choose to market products you are comfortable with. This should seem like a no-brainer, but it bares saying. If you do not read a lot of books, then using Amazon’s program will likely be a bad idea. Think of it this way: if you do not know much about power tools, you shouldn’t try recommending them to people, no matter how much the referral will earn you. The less you authoritatively know about a product, the less you will be able to write about it effectively.

Even if you are creating quality blog posts, do not go about marketing your blog in suspicious ways. Some make money at home schemes suggest you visit message forums and post links there. This is mostly a bad idea. Forum users can be easy to offend, and you can easily tick off a lot of people and get a forum account removed for link dumping. Plus, your friends on Facebook will likely feel the same way if you start posting too many links there.

There are real and true ways of making money on the internet. However, the internet is just like the physical world in some respects. The more hard work and common sense you employ, the more reward it can possibly be.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com/6072870