Marketing Strategies & Techniques Source

New FlexSqueeze theme revolutionizes online marketing!

2009-04-17T07:07:00.000-07:00

Enhanced features make FlexSqueeze the fastest way to create profitable niche WordPress blogs

Click here to visit Advantus Media Inc. website!

VirulUrl Protects Your Affilate Links

2009-04-06T18:10:00.000-07:00

If your like me that have affiliate links this free tool is very effective. When you join they offer a free members benefits, silver and gold. If you have the opportunity to upgrade to the one time offer, I'm telling you all the benefits you get is incredible!

Here is the Reality:

The reality is that the truth is that there are people out there that will actually edit your link to enter their own affiliate ID and make a quick buck back on their purchase. There is even software out there produced by large companies that will strip your affiliate code and enter the company's during a consumer purchase! This practice, termed "hijacking", happens every day and though highly dishonest and sad in the eyes of you and I, it is entirely legal.

Promoting the oldfashioned way... you get one chance at turning a prospect into a buyer for one product and have to hope they aren't going to edit your link and cost you the commission that is rightfully yours.

Promoting with VirulUrl...Every visitor to your website could become an immediate buyer of your primary product, a viral list building partner to you in VirulUrl, and earns you more advertising exposure across the internet- all for just advertising your primary product!

Free website with BlinkWeb

2009-04-06T16:49:00.000-07:00

Blink Web is simple and easy to manage. They have different lay outs & styles from sales letter to blogs. You could also purchase a domain or hosting with them. You could choose to use a domain name or transfer your own.

The ultimate link swapper and traffic generator!

2007-12-03T22:24:00.000-08:00

I just found this cool site, were you get linked by thousands instanly. Maybe you're asking yourself what will it benefit my blog if I have others linking to me.

Here it goes MORE TRAFFIC AND MORE SALES.

It's easy you just join and start linking with others in some cases they link to you and if you don't want to show their link in your blog just hide it. The part I love that your still linking to them.

blogLinker.com

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2007-12-03T08:16:00.000-08:00

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Catchy titles for message board posts!

2007-12-01T18:39:00.000-08:00

Here is some ideas for subject titles....

@@@@ - New Mom Business Is Booming! Free Trial!""@@@@ Is Exploding! Home Biz + Website + Free Trial + No Home Parties!"

"Join Moms and Dads Working From Home For @@@@ a Month!""Sell What Everyone Needs!"

"Finally, A Business Us Moms Can Afford!""Does Your Business Cost @@@ a Month To Run? Mine Does!!"

"Does Your Business Cost More Than @@@ A Month To Run?""My Work At Home Business Is Booming, See Why!"

"Don't Open"

"Have you seen this yet"

Tips To Achieving A Successful Web Site

2007-11-23T13:20:00.000-08:00

1. Choose a Niche - Today, anyone can have a website and sell merchandise or services on the internet. The choices are endless and only limited by your imagination. If you are already in a business and don’t currently have a website, then it’s simply a matter of deciding what name to chose. If you are thinking about setting up your first website and aren’t sure what niche to chose, you might consider a favorite hobby. I’ve always liked to collect & repair antique radios, so I setup a website called Radio Exchange.net The fastest way to achieve success and a high ranking on the internet is to build a website around a theme and niche which does not have a large amount of competition.

For instance, if you were to start a web hosting site, it would be an up hill battle because there are thousands and thousands of hosting websites already on the internet fighting to be seen in the top 10 or 20 listings of the major search engines like Yahoo, MSN and Google. The more competition, the more costly and time consuming it is to get your website seen.

I know of a guy who used to drive a van for a courier delivery service for a living. He started a expedited transportation website on a shoestring budget several years ago. Today his website is one of the most successful in the US for the expedited transportation industry.

Another guy I know loved to collect scale model steam engines, so he built a simple website with photos of his collection. Before long, he started getting inquiries from other collectors as to where they could buy some like his and where to get parts. He began selling parts and hard to find steam engines to collectors around the word. He also added a paid ad section to his site. These are two examples of how you can turn a job or hobby into a successful, money making website. There are still many untapped, niche markets available. You can do the research on your own or a detailed report on 109 Untapped Markets is available for download.

2. Purchase a Domain Name – Think of a domain name which uses the words which describes your business or what you will be selling. If your domain name contains the keywords which describe your business, you may rank higher than with names which do not.

For instance, if you are a realtor located in Orlando Florida it would be a good idea to register the domain name www.OrlandoFloridaRealEstate.com/net or org or www.Orlando-Florida-Real-Estate.com/net or org.

A scientific way to determine the best name to use is to run keyword popularity searches by using Overture's Keyword Tool at http://inventory.overture.com/ . When you type in keyword phrases, the tool tells you how many times any given keyword phrase was searched across the internet for the previuos month. Once you determine the name you want to use, you can search to see if it’s availabe and register it at a domain registration / hosting service.

3. Set Up Web Hosting - Web Hosting is what connects your website to the internet so it can be viewed by people around the world. Prices for hosting service range from free (I would not recommended a free service - you get what you pay for) to $39.95 per month which is on the high end. Some hosting companies charge a setup fee and demand a year commitment. I would not use any hosting service which charges a setup fee or demands a year commitment because there’s so many which does not.

4. Design Your Website - If you have no experience or limited experience designing a website you can choose from thousands of professionally designed templates for as low as $20. If you choose to customize the template yourself you will need web design software such as Macromedia Dreamweaver or Front Page. You will also need image software such as Adobe Photoshop or Macromedia Fireworks. A new alternative web development software which is rapidly become the tool of choice for Internet Marketers is XSitePro. or go to scriptlance. and pick your price.

5. Upload Your Web Site files to your Hosting Service’s Server – Most Web creator software such as Front Page and Macromedia Dreamweaver has built in FTP (File Transfer Protocol) capability. A super program I recommend for uploading and downloading files is Cute FTP by GlobalScape. It’s especially handy for managing several sites.

6. Submit Your Website to the Search Engines - I recommend Submit-It http://www.submitexpress.com/submit.htmlwhich is a Free service that Submits your URL to all of the major Search Engines such as Yahoo, MSN & Google. Also, don't forget to make a sitemap and submit it to google. This makes it easier for google to index your web site pages therefore increasing your website's ranking. Just go to http://www.sitemapbuilder.net/ , type in your URL and their online sitemap program will create a sitemap for you which you can download and then upload to google.

Complete instructions are given on Sitemapbuilder website.7. SEO / Search Engine Optimization - This is the final step and an ongoing process to achieving success with your website. Search Engine Optimization involves having as many pages of articles and text as possible containing keywords phrases which describe what services or products you are offering in your website. You can get articles about almost any topic you can think of from many of the Ezine websites with reprint rights.

Articles written about your niche on your website vastly increases the value and ranking of your site to search engines because they reinforce your keyword word count.

Another very important step is to trade links with other sites and get as many inbound links as possible. Publishing your own articles to Ezine websites will help increase your inbound links.To learn more about SEO / Search Engine Optimization, just type in the search phrase "SEO" in your browser and you'll find numerous articles and info to help you with this process.

Forum Secrets Part 2

2006-06-06T16:49:00.000-07:00

Pay particular attention to the P.S. at the end...

Is anyone here experienced in putting together a really "tasty" resale rights package? I've been brainstorming all the different elements of what I want to include, and here's what I've come up with so far:

* resale rights to the eBooks (obviously)*

use of my professionally created sales letters (I paid a fortune to have these killer sales letters written... should I include them, or let people create their own?)*

I'll also give them my thank you pages, and download instructions email to make things easy for them.Here's my main question...I have a few other things that I can throw in, but I'm not sure if it would be too much.

The other possibilities are...

* the professional header graphic*

the complete set of eBook graphics*

and this is the one that I'm wrestling with...

should I offer ALL of them in a bundle package?

(meaning, they can buy all 10 products with resale rights for one low cost... or should I sell them individually?).Because these eBooks have sold a ton of copies, I don't want to devalue them by offering a ton of cheap, low level packages. I expect to charge around 150 dollars for the cheapest package, and even with that... if the person has a list, they could make their money back on the first day. Would it be a mistake to offer this as a bundle package, and give people all of these products that are already developed and ready-to-sell?

I'm ready to launch this offer, so I'd really appreciate hearing from some of the more experienced marketers on this forum.

Warmly,
Michael Rasmussen

P.S. - Here's the URL of the products that I'm offering the rights for. IF anyone here has an email list that would be interested in this kind of deal, I'm willing to give you 50% of what I make (50% of a high end sale like this is a pretty good chunk).

Do you see how I structured my post as a request for help?

What you may not realize is that what I was REALLY trying to do was get the attention of people who have good sized opt-in email lists, so they can promote my resale rights offer to their list.Pretty clever, huh?

Go ahead and give it a try. The Power P.S. technique is a proven winner. By the way, I received a lot of helpful replies to this original post, and as a result, I came up with a much more compelling resale rights offer. If you want to see it for yourself, go here, but make sure you keep reading...

Onward... it's time for the next technique of this series. This is a little known trick that experts use to make sure their posts get seen by nearly EVERYBODY. I call this one... The Slingshot Method Why do I call it The Slingshot Method? Well what happens when you pull a sling shot back further and further? Eventually it comes exploding back to where it was originally... almost instantly.When you think about that in terms of forum posts, that means that you take your post, and get it to come rocketing back to the top of the list of available posts to read.

Here's how to pull this off...Most forums are designed so that the newer posts are at the top of the list, and they get pushed down as more and more new posts get added. But guess what... it's not ONLY new posts that make it to the top. The ones who get replied to also get pushed to the top!Let me explain that in plain English.If you made a post last week about something, and nobody replied, it would keep going further and further down the list, until it made it to (gasp) page 2,which nobody looks at. Here's how to keep your post at the top of the list... simply REPLY TO IT.That's right, simply reply to your own post, and add some extra information that you "forgot" to put in your original post. Think about it, if there's a reply to your post every day for an entire week... your post will NOT get pushed to the bottom, and most of the "regulars" will get to read it.

I actually have a very powerful example of how to use the Slingshot Method. I used it to keep one of my own posts "stuck" at the top of the list for an entire MONTH! While everyone else was getting 2-300 people reading their post, I got nearly 2,500 views!

That post brought me a lot of traffic, and a lot of extra sales. The good news it that you can model my post to create your own traffic producing monster.Be sure to read the next part of this course, because I'm going to share with you this "Golden Post" that got the attention of thousands of Internet Marketers, and teach you how you can create one just like it for your business.

Forum Secrets Part 1

2006-06-05T13:18:00.000-07:00

The purpose of this mini-course is to give you some fantastic tips, tricks & secrets that will make your forum posts MUCH more powerful (and make you a lot more money).Since you'll be posting ANYWAY, let's learn how to craft your posts so that they get some serious results!

The second thing I wanted to mention is that there's a hidden danger lurking in forums. Most new marketers aren't aware of it, and yet I've seen it choke the life out of new websites, products & great ideas.What is this hidden danger? It's simply a LACK OF DISCRETION when choosing WHO you allow to influence your advertising efforts. In otherwords, a lot of new marketers will see someone making a certain kind of post on the forums, and they'll immediately go and copy what that person is doing... without even knowing if it's effective or not. Listen, just because something looks or sounds good, doesn't mean it makes money. If you're going to choose a forum posting style to emulate, then make sure that the person you're learning from is actually making money on the internet.

That's where I come in. I'm one of the few people in the online marketing community that consistently earns over ten thousand dollars per month in spendable cash. I have a lot to share with you, so I hope that this will only be the beginning of our relationship. Okay, now I've got a great forum posting technique for you...

The Power P.S. Technique

Have you noticed that you barely even SEE banner ads these days? Even if a site has a well placed banner ad, your eyes are trained to ignore it, because you've seen so many of them, and you know that they're generally not worth looking at.Well guess what, the same thing is happening on discussion forums!

More and more people are completely ignoring the signatures at the bottom of each post. Although some people ARE making money with their signatures, I've discovered a much more powerfulway to get people to click on your link.

It's called the Power P.S. Here's how it works...

At the bottom of your posts, you add a littleP.S. that increases the URGENCY of your message.That way, people click your link immediately,instead of ignoring it.The P.S. cannot be a "canned" message that youslip into every post. It should be different eachtime, so that people don't get trained to ignore your PS's.

Look out for part 2 of this mini-course tomorrow, because I'm going to give you a powerful REAL LIFE example of one of my most successful PS's o fall time, and then I'll reveal how you can"ethically steal" my secret to make drive tons oftraffic to YOUR web site.

10 Extreme Ways To Rocket Your Profits

2006-06-05T13:11:00.000-07:00

1. Advertise your web site with banner ads that areanimated and include a call to action. You must grabpeople's attention and make them to click.

2. Use pop up windows or advertisements on yourweb site. They grab your visitors attention becausethey jump right out at them.

3. Buy internet business books, ebooks, private sitememberships, etc. Study and learn all the new website promotional ideas you can.

4. Analyze all your promotional efforts. Concentrateon the ones that work and drop the ones that don'twork. Don't waste your valuable time.

5. Get the most from each one of your visitors. Askthem to subscribe to your e-zine, participate on yourmessage board, bookmark your site, etc.

6. Use text links if your banner ads are not pullingtraffic. People don't ignore text links as much asthey do banner ads.

7. Trade content with other ezine publishers or websites. This is a powerful and effective way to placeyour links on other targeted web sites.

8. Keep your product available to your customersat all times. If you have to backorder it, they mayend up canceling their order.

9. Use content on your web site so people can skimthrough it easily. Most people have little time so tryusing lists, short tips, short articles,etc

10. Add a message board or chat room to your website. If people enjoy it, they will revisit your web siteto participate regularly.

Top 10 directories to submit your website to

2006-05-25T10:34:00.000-07:00

Adding your new site to the major directories is a key task if you want to build traffic and page ranking. While the list below is not exhaustive, it will get you well underway in your directory listings.

A few points to keep in mind as you add your site to these directories:

Directories are not search engines.

Directories are edited and managed by human beings, whereas search engines are programs that troll the web looking for pages. Your site might be recommended to a directory by one of the site editors, or a very enthusiastic fan of your site, but most likely you will have to introduce yourself if you want to make a directory’s list.
Be sure the directory is indexed in the major search engines. A quick search at Google, Yahoo & MSN will do.

Be sure the directory is not banned by Google. You probably won’t get flagged by Google if you are listed there, but the risk is too great – there are hundreds of other places for your link.

Page Rank isn’t everything.

Don’t skip sites just because they have a low page rank. While Page Rank is extremely helpful, it changes over time. A directory with a PR of 3 this month could jump to 6 next month. Also, take note of the Page Rank of the specific page of the directory your site will be listed on. Just like it says, Page Rank is for pages, not for sites. A directory could have a PR of 7, but the page your link appears on might be a humble one.

Directories are not overnight traffic.

Look around the submission guidelines and to see how long the editors will take to review your site. Free sites can take up to four months to get approved.

Go after the older directories first. Google values a site’s age, and you should to.
Review the directory’s guidelines and don’t abuse them. Don’t submit your site every week. Don’t add an unrelated site to a niche directory. Don’t try to trick the editors into adding your site to more than one category if that goes against the guidelines.

Now that you know the basics of evaluating and submitting to directories, here’s a short list of the top sites:

General directories:

Yahoo http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request The world’s best-known directory. This free listing form may take months to result in a link back to your site, but it is well worth a try.

DMOZ http://www.dmoz.org/ This is the granddaddy of all directories, and is greatly respected by Google and the other major search engines. Listings are free, but the wait can be long. According to the DMOZ site, expect your site to appear in the listings at Google, AOL and other major engines about 2 weeks after you’re listed in DMOZ.

Zeal http://www.zeal.com/A free listing after you register. Zeal is owned by Looksmart.

Best of the Web http://www.botw.org/Requires a $49.95 yearly fee, or a $149.95 one-time fee. Online since 1994. Listing pages usually have a page rank of 4.

Directory World http://www.directoryworld.net/Requires a reciprocal link, but is otherwise free. Good page ranks for listing pages.

Clickey http://www.clickey.com/A free link. Also sorts companies by country.

Seoma http://www.seoma.net/Requires registration and a $15 paypal fee for a link, but the high page ranks make it a bargain (compared to buying a text link).

ExactSeek http://www.exactseek.com/A free link at an established site. You can also upgrade to a “top ten ranking” for $12.

What You Seek http://www.whatyouseek.com/Standard submissions cost $24.99 and will be posted in eight weeks. Velocity submit takes two days and costs $49.99.

Really First http://www.reallyfirst.com/One of the largest directories with over 40,000 links. Poor navigation, but a free link if you add their link to your site.

This not an exhaustive list, but a great start. Also, remember, if you have a new site, getting listed here will help your website get indexed by search engines.

SEO - Selecting A Domain Name

2006-05-23T13:44:00.000-07:00

Selecting a good domain name is the key factor for attaining a better page ranking. The most commonly used aspect while choosing a domain name is the usage of keyword in the URL. You can take the idea of selecting a domain name that has low competition but with good demand can ultimately help in Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

There are many factors to keep in mind while naming your domain. A good domain name should be short and easy to spell by the users. By avoiding long domain name will help the searchers to find your website and also to remember the name much easily. The keyword used in your domain name can be descriptive to help the internet users to memorize.

Make sure to include the domain name that is unique and at the same time keyword rich. Usage of more keywords in your domain name will help in a better ranking which in turn may also help the searchers to find your website. The use of more than two keywords can bring a negative impact, as it can make the domain name lengthier and the chance of misspelling is more. So it better to use a maximum of two keywords. Another drawback is that it can also make your email address long. So it is recommended the use of shorter and catchy domain names.

Among a large number of steps while choosing a domain name, the most important and foremost one is whether you are choosing a free or paid domain. In all these, give consideration to the customer so that your potential users can find your website.

Another important factor to be remembered in domain naming is the use of hyphens (-). If you are using two or more keywords, without separators, as your domain name it can be interesting, but at the same time the search engine may consider it as a single keyword. In this case, it is advised to use hyphen to separate the keywords. But for internet users the domain name without hyphen will be easier to remember and the one with hyphens tend to bring confusion for the users. A main solution for this issue is that you may use hyphened domain name during the registration with a search engine and for online advertising. At the same time go for a domain name which uses no hyphen, so that it may help the people who prefer just keywords during the searching.

Taking these tips into consideration will help you in selecting an excellent domain name for your website. You can register multiple variants for your website at the price of a single domain name. Also, make sure to avoid the use of numbers in your domain name as it may prevent confusion. In place of keywords you can also use some unique brand names for your website
Selecting a good business and domain name can draw a good traffic, and makes the entire process of optimization much easier. All you require is a shorter and unique web address that can bring your website among the top listing.

Link Cloaking Techniques

2006-05-20T11:51:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a lot lately about affiliate link hijacking and link cloaking.

There are two ways you can go about cloaking your links: set them up yourself or buy a program to automate the process.
Personally, I do it myself.

In some cases, I use a little mouseover script, but that's just to trick the casual observer - it won't beat the schemers and spiders.

In the past, I've also used frames to cloak affiliate links.

This has it's limitations, but it's quick and easy.
Another method is to purchase a domain and use the domain registrars forwarding service (free with most domain registrars) to have the domain redirect to your affiliate link.

The technique I use most often is the .htaccess redirect.

An .htaccess file is a plain ASCII text file you place in the root directory of a Unix server.

The .htaccess technique is much easier than using other redirects, because there's no HTML required. All of your redirects are in one text file.

One thing to bear in mind when cloaking your links is that you should add the afsrc parameter, so legitimate adware affiliates will recognize that you are an affiliate and not overwrite your cookie.

How To Stimulate More Business Part 2

2006-05-11T03:54:00.000-07:00

We'll pick up with going down our list of seven strategies that can help you stimulate new business, increase business from existent customers and build repeat business. Let me remind you that you may not be able to use all of them in your business, but you can certainly use some of them.

In your last Successful Marketing Strategy, I spoke about the first two - a frequent buyer program and discounting. Let's continue where we left off.

#3) The use of premiums.

A premium offer essentially says, "Buy this, get this free." This is an extremely effective marketing strategy suitable for many different types of businesses. In effect this type of offer let's the business customer spend tax deductible business dollars for supplies and receive free and tax-free a gift he will use personally in his home.

#4) Packaging of different products or services together.

This is a marketing strategy usually used to increase the average purchase size.

#5) The sale of prepay agreements.

You're familiar with this in the health spa and exercise salon business. You pay say $395.00 for a membership that entitles you to use the facilities 'X' number of times or for 'X' length of time rather than paying as you go per visit. The same idea is applicable to many different businesses and it even presents an interesting opportunity for the small business person to raise operating capital. With this technique, operating capital can actually be raised from customers by collecting in advance for future business.

In your next Successful Marketing Strategy, I'll finish up the last two strategies that can help you stimulate new business, increase business from existent customers and build repeat business.

(By the way, #7 is the single most effective marketing strategy that any business can use to build customer loyalty, to retain customers and to stimulate more frequent purchasing.)

Blogging - What's in it for Me?: Technorati Tags Made Easy!

2006-04-29T15:12:00.000-07:00

Are you kidding me...It was driving me crazzzy this tag dilema.

Check Elizabeth blog and start tagging your blogs

Blogging - What's in it for Me?: Technorati Tags Made Easy!

Improving Your Results => Building Traffic to Your Affiliate,Blog or Website - Site

2006-04-20T12:32:00.000-07:00

So you have done your research and built a nice Affiliate site and the next step is to start marketing your site and getting some traffic.

This is the difficult part, but there are some basic techniques that many people use to get a decent flow of potential buying customers to their sites and then onto their Merchant's sites!

This tutorial will take you through the basics of getting that traffic to your site.
Natural SEOGetting traffic from the search engines is one of the best ways to get quality traffic to your site. This means adhering to what the search engines want from a good website.
For a primer on how to optimize your own site for the search engines, be sure to check out our tutorial on Search Engine Marketing for Affiliates.

If you adhere to the general rules of SEO when building your site, you should get a reasonable amount of traffic to your Affiliate pages.

Post in Forums Finding forums about the topic area of your site is an easy way to get a little traffic to your site. But there are a few things to REMEMBER.

Just posting in forums saying "Visit my site" is considered SPAM and you should not do it. Most forums will however, allow you to put a signature in each post which is basically just a line or two about you at the bottom of each post you make. That is where you can usually put a link to your site. If you have an interesting signature related to the theme of the forum, then people will visit your site. As for participating in the forum, just be helpful by answering other people's questions and joining the conversation in a constructive way.

Get Listed on DirectoriesThere are thousands of directories on the internet and getting listed on them is one way to drive a little bit more traffic to your site.
Just go to Google and type in "Directory" to find a list of potential candidates. You could also try typing in the keywords of your site along with the word "directory" to see if there are any industry-specific directories that might be worthwhile submitting your site to. Most of these sites will have a directory submission page where you can let them know about your site.

Get Incoming Links Getting incoming links to your site is possibly the most powerful way to get traffic to your site. (It can also help with SEO). There are several ways to go about this (getting links from directories is one). Swapping links with other relevant sites is a pretty common strategy. You can also email other webmasters to ask if they would like to link to your site or a page on your site (do not SPAM random emails asking for this) or give you a plug in their blogs etc.

Write Articles Writing articles for free article directories is a great way to get traffic and incoming links to your own site. We have written before about writing articles to promote Merchant programs directly, but you can also use the exact same technique to promote your own site too.

The amount of traffic you get from this technique is really only limited by how many articles you can write.

PPC Paying for traffic to your site is another option for drawing in potential customers. Be sure to do the maths before utilising this strategy as it can be quite expensive to get a lot of targeted visitors to your site using PPC search engines. The bright side is that PPC campaigns will usually drive specifically targeted visitors to your site who are already interested in the topic at hand.

Email Signatures An often overlooked method to get a few extra visitors to your site is email. More specifically, placing a link to your site in the signature link of your email is an easy and effective method to get people visiting your site. Of course, the success of this tactic will very much depend on how much you use your email from day to day, but it is something that is well worth doing as it takes very little effort.

These are some of the basic strategies that I been using to build well-trafficked sites promotion. While this list isn't exhaustive, it is a good start to help you on the road to driving some sales through your Affiliate account or any website.

Much of this contect of this article was drawn from www.clixgaloretutor.com

Affiliate Marketing Primer For Beginners - Please Read This First!

2006-04-20T11:49:00.000-07:00

If you are just getting started with your Affiliate marketing program, this quick tutorial will get you up to speed with what Affiliate Marketing is all about as well as the terms that are used.

Affiliate marketing is a way for Merchants on the internet to allow others to promote their products and pay a commission for sales. Terms - Who's Who!

Merchant - The company that is selling a service or product.

Affiliate - The company or individual who promotes and markets the website of the Merchant.Affiliate Network - The company that provides the service by which Merchants and Affiliates are connected

The Affiliate Network is usually the creator of the software and websites that track transactions between the Merchant and Affiliate.

Terms - Program Types%Sale - Where a Merchant pays a set % of every transaction to the Affiliate who sent the customer.

Per Sale - Where a Merchant pays a set $ fee of every transaction to the Affiliate who sent the customer.

Per Lead - Where a Merchant pays a set $ fee to an Affiliate who sends a customer that fills out a lead form. Per Click - Where a Merchant pays every time a customer clicks on their advertisement on an Affiliate's website.

Much of this contect of this article was drawn from www.clixgaloretutor.com

2006-04-17T15:14:00.000-07:00

Reasons Why People Don't Buy From You

1. You don't make people feel safe when they order. Remind people that they are ordering through a secure server. Tell them you won't sell their e-mail address and all their information will be kept confidential.

2. You don't make your ad copy attractive. Your ad lists features instead of benefits. The head line does not attract at your target audience. You don't list any testimonials or guarantees included in your ad.

3. You don't remind people to come back and visit. People usually don't purchase the first time they visit.The more times they visit your site, the greater the chance they will buy. The most effective way is to give them a free subscription to your e-zine.

4. You don't let people know anything about your business. They will feel more comfortable if they know who they are buying from. Publish a section called"About Us" on your web site. Include your business history, profile of employees, contact information etc.

5. You don't give people as many ordering options as possible. Accept credit cards, checks, money orders, and other forms of electronic payments. Take orders by phone, e-mail, web site, fax, mail, etc.

6. You don't make your web site look professional.You want to have your own domain name. Your website should be easy to navigate through. The graphics should be related to the theme of your web site.

7. You don't let people read your ad before they get your freebie. When you use free stuff to lure people to your web site include it below your ad copy or on another web page. If you list the freebie above your ad they may never look to see what you're selling.

8. You don't attract the target audience that would buy your product or service. A simple way to do this is to survey your existing customers to see what attracted them to buy. This information will help you improve your target marketing and advertising.

9. You don't test and improve your ad copy. There are many people who write an ad copy and never change it. You have to continually test and improve your ad copy to get the highest possible response rate.

10. You don't give people any urgency to buy now.Many people are interested in your product but they put off buying it till later and eventually forget about it. Entice them to buy now with a freebie or discountand include a deadline date when the offer ends.

Ways To Sell Your Products Now

2006-04-14T20:31:00.000-07:00

1. Make your reader visualize they have already bought your product in your ad. Tell them what results they have gotten and how it makes them feel. They'll already become emotionally attached before they buy.

2. Turn your ad into an article. It could be a story,or how-to article. This will lead them into your adwithout them knowing it's an ad. They'll already be interested when they get to your sales pitch.

3. Make sure you show your reader that they are getting a bargain. Tell them the usual price you sellyour product for is $99. Then tell them if they order today they can buy it for $69.95.

4. Direct your ad headline to your target audience.Your readers will feel important and belong to aselect group of people who buy your product.

For example; "Attention! Accountants, Discover A New Way To Increase Your Client Base!"

5. Tell your reader how fast they can receive your product or service in your ad. Their buying decision may be based on how fast they can receive your product. They may need it by a certain deadline.

6. Use bullets to highlight your product or services benefits. Benefits are the key to selling anything,make them stand out in your ad. You can use dots,dashes, or circles to highlight them.

7. Give a money back guarantee that surpasses a normal one. Instead of the normal timed guarantee, give them extra back. Tell them they can keep the free bonus or give them double their money back.

8. Tell your reader they'll receive surprise bonuses.This will raise your reader's curiosity and make them want to buy so they can find out what the surprise bonuses are.

9. Let your reader know this specific package willnot be offered again. You must create urgency so people buy now. You may always sell the sameproduct but not with the same bonuses or price.

10. Give them a couple tips in your ad that will help them with their problem. This will give your business credibility and gain your readers trust to buy your products or services.

If You Are Not Blogging You Are Losing OUT ...

2006-04-14T20:25:00.000-07:00

I've been researching more about how to get that #1 spot with my blogs and the more I read the more I learn.

I'm going to address today is this:

If You Are Not Blogging You Are Losing OUT BIG TIME!

You are losing the biggest market growth to advertise your business to. You are losing ground in getting in on this NEW internet land rush. Why do I say this?

Let me refer to a company, Technorati, a blogging directory and a little more, and let you see what they are seeing. In summary:

* Technorati now tracks over 27.2 Million blogs

* The blogosphere is doubling in size every 5 and a half months

* It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago

* On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day

* 13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created

* Spings (Spam Pings) can sometimes account for as much as 60% of the total daily pings Technorati receives

* Sophisticated spam management tools eliminate the spings and find that about 9% of new blogs are spam or machine generated

* Technorati tracks about 1.2 million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour

* Over 81 million posts with tags since January 2005, increasing by 400,000 per day

* Blog Finder has over 850,000 blogs, and over 2,500 popular categories have attracted a critical mass of topical bloggers Did I just post right?

Technorati now tracks over 27.2 Million blogs? Now, granted, there are some blogs that should not exist or just waste digital space.
Don't confuse 'MySpace' as a blog either. It is a community with a blog feature within. So all of the teen ranting you see there will not be accounted for as legit blogs.

Anyway back to Technorati. The State of the Blogosphere is Strong OK, I'm paraphrasing from a more famous speech (Bush-2006) that happened January 2006, but the truth is that the blogosphere continues to grow at a quickening pace.

Technorati currently tracks 27.2 million weblogs, and the blogosphere they track continues to double about every 5.5 months. The blogosphere is over 60 times bigger than it was only 3 years ago. New blog creation continues to grow.

Technorati currently track over 75,000 new weblogs created every day, which means that on average, a new weblog is created every second of every day - and 13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created. In other words, even though there's a reasonable amount of tire-kicking going on, blogging is growing as a habitual activity.

In October of 2005, when Technorati was only tracking 19 million blogs, about 10.4 million bloggers were still posting 3 months after the creation of their blogs. In addition to that, about 2.7 million bloggers update their blogs at least weekly. A News Cycle Measured in Megahertz Moving beyond spam, the number of people reaching out and reaching each other continues to grow. Daily Posting Volume tracked by Technorati continues to grow, and the blogosphere also reacts to world events.

Technorati tracks about 1.2 million posts each day, which means that there are about 50,000 posts each hour. At that rate, it is literally impossible to read everything that is relevant to an issue or subject, and a new challenge has presented itself - how to make sense out of this monstrous conversation, and how to find the most interesting and authoritative information out there.

The Continued Rise of Tagging In January 2005, Technorati launched its tagging service, based on the rel=tag microformat, which is a simple way for bloggers to associate their posts with topics, and to make it easy for people to find interesting posts on a given subject.

Today, they have tracked over 81 million posts with tags or categories - and over 400,000 new tagged posts are created every day. Tags for Blogs There was still a major problem, however - how to easily find the most interesting blogs on the subjects that you cared about. So, in September 2005, Technorati launched Blog Finder, a tags-based way for people to find the most authoritative blogs on a particular subject, allowing bloggers to tag their blogs with the subjects they felt were most relevant for themselves.

In 4 months, over 850,000 blogs have been put into Blog Finder, making it the most comprehensive directory of blogs on the web.

Over 2,500 categories have already attracted a critical mass of influential bloggers writing about them, from Politics and Technology to Gardening or Erotica. And more are created every day, making it easier for people to find the most interesting blogs in the topics they care about. So with all of this information about blogging how can you ignore the inevitable?

Blogging is here and here to stay. The longer you wait to start the more behind the pack you will be.

How To Stimulate More Business Part 1

2006-04-14T20:21:00.000-07:00

In fact, there are seven strategies that can help you stimulate new business, increase business from existent customers and build repeat business. You may not be able to use all of them in your business but you can certainly use some of them.

#1) A system of frequent buyer rewards. Today all major airlines and many hotel chains are using this technique to capture repeat business from their clientele. In Phoenix the Weiss Guys Car Wash uses this same idea.

They issue each customer a little plastic punch card. After the customer pays for a certain number of washes, recorded on the card, they can then redeem the card for a free wash.The idea of the frequent buyer type incentive is to encourage the customer to return to your business rather than spreading his business around. In order to make this type of incentive even more effective you can tie it to an expiration date so that the points have to be accumulated and redeemed within a certain time period.

#2) Discounting is probably the most commonly used marketing strategy in business. Just about every business in America uses discounts at various times in various ways. One word of caution about discounting, if it's overused it loses its effectiveness.The retail furniture industry, for example, is finding that 'special this weekend only' sale type advertising is losing its effectiveness the more they use it.Also artificial discounting is very dangerous in the long run.

The American automobile industry did itself great, apparently permanent damage with artificial discounting so that today everybody knows that the sticker price on a car is meaningless and every price is negotiable.It's important to have a logical reason tied to a discount opportunity. Otherwise you are essentially admitting that your regular prices are excessive. Inventory overstock, an anniversary, a holiday celebration, an introductory offer for new customers, a special offer on a new product or service, these are all examples of logical, acceptable reasons for discounts.

#3) The use of premiums, which I believe is a much better way to incentivize your customers and prospects to buy. We'll be covering this in detail in the next Successful Marketing Strategy that you'll be receiving in just a couple of days.

Dedicated To Multiplying Your 1ncome

Innovative Ways To Use Your Autoresponder

2006-04-14T20:14:00.000-07:00

Collect leads with your autoresponder. You will get an e-mail digest of everyone's e-mail addresses whore quests information from your autoresponder.

Publish a price list of all the products and services that you offer. You could also include order forms,product descriptions, and other sales material.

Publish free reports in auto responder format. The reports should be related to your business or web site. Giving away free stuff will quickly increase your traffic.

Collect vital customer satisfaction information by publishing a survey in auto responder format. This type of information will help you serve them better.

Instead of answering every customer question that'se-mailed to you, publish " Frequently Ask Questions" in auto responder format. This will save time and money.

You could publish your testimonials or endorsements in autoresponder format if you don't have the room in your ad copy. It's more effective to include all of them.

Provide back issues of your e-zine archives in auto-responder format. This will give your subscribers and web site visitors easy access to them.

Publish your entire web site in autoresponder format. Sometimes visitors don't have enough time read your entire site. They could print it out and read it offline.

You could offer your ebook in autoresponder format.Your visitors won't have to download it or have the software to read it right away.

You could publish the terms and conditions to any business transactions in autoresponder format. This could include return policies, purchases, refunds etc.

Accelerate Your Profits

2006-04-14T20:11:00.000-07:00

Proven Ways:

1. Make copies of your web site in many different languages. This'll allow foreign speaking people toread your web site and advertisements.

2. Give your customers a surprise bonus for buying.When you give customers more than they expect, there is a good chance they will b.uy from you again.

3. Send greeting cards offline or online to customerson holidays. You'll get the chance to increase your orders by including your ad inside the card.

4. Market your products or services to your targetaudience. For example, don't try to sell a footballin a cooking magazine.

5. Give people the option of buying other productsor add on products when they decide to b.uy your main product or service at the point of sale.

6. Think of new ways to attract people to b.uy yourproducts or services. You could add on extra free bonuses , delivery options , payments options, etc.

7. Give other businesses the option of selling yourproduct. It could be a simple joint venture affiliate/associate program.

8. Follow-up regularly with all your prospects andcurrent customers. When people see your ad morethan once they are more likely to buy.

9. Learn sales ideas from reading and studying otherbusiness' advertising and marketing material. Itcould be ads, brochures, tv ads, sales letters, etc.

10. Educate yourself with new strategies to i.ncreaseyour sales. You could take classes, subscribe toe-zines and magazines, read books or ebooks, etc.

Free and Low Cost Ways

2006-04-09T20:42:00.000-07:00

To Generate Traffic To Your Site


By Kim Thomas



It is not enough to simply submit your site to the search
engines. Generating traffic to your site takes a little
work, however, it doesn't have to cost you money. I'll
show you several free and low cost ways to drive traffic
to your site.



1. Exchange Ezine Ads - Ezine ads have become a very popular
and successful way to promote your website or newsletter.
People subscribed to a particular ezine are interested in
that subject and are more apt to reply to ads that interest
them. One way you can exchange ezine ads is to approach the
author of your favorite ezine and simply ask them if they
would swap ads with you. Or you can find reputable, targeted
ezines to exchange ads with using the following resources:

List City's Ezine Ad Exchange Directory -
http://www.list-city.com/adexdb.html


Comprehensive directory of ezines interested in exchanging
ads with other ezine owners

Ezine Publisher Trading List -
http://www.bizpromo.com/ezinetrades.htm


Page of ezine publishers that would like to exchange ezine
ads. List your ezine on the page for free


2. Offer Free Software - Everyone loves freeware or
shareware. You can find some incredible tools and utilities
if you look around. Find software that relates to the theme
of your website. Use the software on your site or provide a
link for the software in your ezine. Here are a couple of
sites that offer a great selection of software tools and
utilities:

http://www.completelyfreesoftware.com
http://www.tucows.com/


http://www.freewarefiles.com/




3. Sponsor a contest on your website or in your ezine.
Contests are extremely popular. The contest should tie into
and promote your business, products, and services. By having
the contest monthly, weekly, or daily you will generate
repeat business. Here are a few places where you can sponsor
a contest:

Websponsors.com
http://www.websponsors.com


Earn a commission for contests that you sponsor on your

website. They offer co-branding tools, top offers and more.

Commission Junction
http://www.cj.com


One of the largest online affiliate program directories. You
choose which contests or sweepstakes you want to offer, and
then earn affiliate commissions.


These are just a couple of ideas to get you started. You can
find a lot of free, creative ways to promote your site on
the internet.

Good luck!

"Advertising Exposure News" reveals affordable, high
quality Internet advertising resources for promoting your
business online, at reasonable cost. Subscribe for free at
http://www.adexposurenews.com

Tags: site, website,  seo,online, weblogs,

google free, low, cost, easy

The Do's and Don'ts of Classified Advertising

2006-04-09T20:38:00.000-07:00

Classified Advertising

Below you'll find a "classic" how to report about the do's and don'ts of classified advertising. Even though we live in the age of information and technology, many lessons can be learned and applied from some these old classic how to reports and articles. Enjoy!

The DO'S:

DO WRITE OUT ALL DETAILS in your ad offer. Read it, edit it, and re-write it for a shorter, money saving effective ad. "Think small".

DO FOLLOW ALL THE RULES when writing your classified ad. Use these ideas.
AID A FORMULA: Attention, Interest, Desire & Action

DO USE A NAME with each classified ad including your envelopes.

DO NOT CHARGE for sales letters or circulars.

DO BE HONEST with all your classified ad claims.

DO IDENTIFY your product.

DO WRITE YOUR CLASSIFIED AD simple, clear and direct.

DO USE WORDS EVERYONE KNOWS and everyone will understand what your are saying.

DO USE A WORD that will benefit a reader.

DO NOT OVERPRICE your product.

DO ADVERTISE FREQUENTLY. Constant exposure creates a familiar offer with better response.

DO OFFER A MONEY BACK GUARANTEE in your classified ad, salesletter or circular if possible. An excellent sales technique!

DO TEST YOUR AD in 2 or 3 smaller, low cost publications. Record results. Code each ad.

DO READ PUBLICATIONS that relate to your product. Write for ad rates, paid circulation, discounts and closing dates. Keep records.

DO HAVE ALL YOUR LITERATURE AND PRODUCTS ready for mailing when your ad appears in the publication of your choice. Do not delay in responding.

DO USE THE COPYCAT METHOD. Do what other successful advertisers are doing. Only with a slight twist, idea or offer.

DO RUN SEVERAL ADS worded differently. Keep records of results.

The DON'TS:

DON'T OVER ADVERTISE. It can be expensive. If you want to, do it gradually.

DON'T PRETEND YOU KNOW ALL THE ANSWERS. Because you don't. Take time to find out what you need to know.

DON'T TRUST YOUR MEMORY. A thought will leave you as quickly as it came. Always write down a good idea. NOW!

DON'T PLACE YOUR AD in the wrong classification.

DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY on ad words to amuse or entertain, but use words to persuade, inform and sell your product.

DO USE A SHORT BUSINESS NAME. Make it easy to pronounce and remember.

DON'T FORGET THE M.E.D.I.C.S. Motivation. Enthusiasm. Desire. Image. Creativity. Success!

DON'T GIVE UP. If your ad doesn't pull after a fair exposure, try re-writing it. One or two different words may do the trick.

DON'T SPEND THE PROFITS. Re-invest the money in more continuous advertising.

DON'T FORGET, an ad that offers "FREE DETAILS" means writing a sales letter or circular.

AVOID HIGH TYPESETTING COSTS AND MISTAKES

Getting your price lists, brochures, catalogs or newsletters typeset does not necessarily have to be a costly procedure. Keep in mind that the main cost in typesetting is the time involved in setting type. By minimizing the time needed to create a typeset piece you can effectively keep your cost down. The following suggestions can help reduce your typesetting expense.
Know what you want the FIRST time around. Have a picture in your mind. Trial and error can be costly. Don't have a typesetter set it one way, then decide a different format would look better.

Reduce and eliminate author's corrections by thorough proofing and re-proofing.
Avoid minimum charges by combining small jobs and having them set at the same time.
Try to use one family of type to save time and money by avoiding font changes. The consistent look is better.

Give explicit instructions on marking up copy: type styles, column widths/margins.
With a large job, such as a brochure or annual report, request a style setting proof sheet to get approvals before the entire job is done.

Avoid super rush jobs, especially if you don't really need them.

Avoid lengthy corrections on the phone. You might end up paying for corrections later that could have been avoided if you had done your editing on proof sheets.

Get the layout finished and approved before having type set...the same goes for copy, of course.

Avoid the use of "run-arounds" (reducing the width of the copy to make room for a photo in the column, for example). If you do use them, use simple shapes, boxes, squares.
Avoid the use of curved or angular type. Type reading left to right on a page (for example, this report) is faster and less expensive to set than copy that is set in a curve or running sideways on the page.

The use of unjustified text and captions is less expensive than justified because it sets quicker, costing less time. Don't depend on the typesetter to read your mind. Be specific.

WORKING THROUGH OBSTACLES AND CHALLENGES

2006-04-09T20:18:00.000-07:00

When an obstacle or challenge arises, there are generally three responses from which you can choose:

1) you can give up;

2) you can work through it; or

3) you can work around it. A common obstacle for new affiliates trying to set up Doorway pages or place banner ads is the failure of a banner (a graphic image) to show up on the page or in the ad.
At some point in every Internet marketing career, one stares helplessly at that infamous "X" showing up where the banner image should be.
In order to successfully place a graphic image, you have to first download the image from its source. Then you have to upload it to the server you are using. Then you have to insert the "image source" code exactly right in the HTML code where you want the image to appear. If any single character is wrong or left out, either in the name of the image file or in the display code, the picture will not to show up.

You must have the "path" to the image's location on the server exactly right in the code also. On their first few attempts—even though they have gone over and over it—many affiliates just can't get the graphic image to display. It can be very frustrating! Your response to this frustration could be to give up.
If it's going to be this complicated, why bother?

You could give into your feelings of frustration and discouragement and quit. Or,...you could try to work through the problem. The first step in working through any problem is to carefully define what the problem is. In this case, the affiliate is either using the wrong method or is making a typing error. There are really two problems here. One is that the image does not work and the other is that you are expending too much time trying to fix it.

The affiliate is unsure whether the problem arises because the method they have been given is wrong or because, while the method may be right, they are just being careless with the details. It is time consuming to painstakingly proofread every character to make sure you are doing it accurately. You think to yourself that since you may not be employing the right method in the first place or since the image may be in the wrong place on the server, why bother with all that proofreading?!

There are so many different ways you could be getting it wrong. How do you know? You need to remind yourself that there are only two questions here. Am I employing the right method? Am I employing the method accurately?
To work through the problem, you will have to allocate the time necessary to think it through, explore, experiment, consult experienced affiliates, and study over the training materials on the subject.
It may turn out that you were just leaving one quotation mark out of the code. It may turn out that you have placed the image in the wrong directory on the server. It may turn out that the code you were trying to use is not correct—you got it from an uninformed source or it is intended for an entirely different situation. Whatever the problem is, you can ultimately find and fix it. With persistence and patience, you can ultimately solve the problem and get your image to show up properly. When you do this, you will have worked through the problem. You will have overcome the obstacle.

WORKING AROUND OBSTACLES AND CHALLENGES If,

on the other hand, you simply do not have the time to study the problem out fully, you may want to take the work-around approach. Instead of using a banner ad, use a textual ad. While it may not be quite what you had planned, it still gets the job done—a Doorway has been created or an ad placed.

You can then continue to work on the banner image problem as time allows, without losing your momentum in getting your promotional campaign started. It is not always possible to work through every problem that may arise, but you can almost always find an acceptable work-around. Although a work-around may be a slight deviation from your plan, at least you are not quitting. You still have your momentum.

You are still moving toward your goals. For another example, let's say that you have placed some "work-from-home opportunity" ads on some free classified ad sites. What you expected to happen is that some number of people would respond to your ad with an e-mail to your posted e-mail address and that, upon further follow up, you would persuade some of these people You are somewhat pleased to see that you do immediately get a large number of e-mails in response to your ad.

You begin to become frustrated, however, when you discover that nearly all of these e-mails are trying to get you to join various other programs. You soon realize that not a single one of these replies is seriously interested in joining your program—they are just promoting their programs to you. How do you deal with this?

Again, the first available response would be to simply give up. You could harbor feelings of being mislead (because you have read in the training that free advertising can work and yet it doesn't work for you).

You could feel that you are not being treated fairly by anyone involved and that you have no hope of making any of this work for you...
Obviously, again, that response is not the successful one. Alternatively, you could proceed to correspond with these people who responded to your ad in hopes of convincing them that your program was more worth their efforts than the program they were promoting to you. In this case, unless you are very creative and convincing, you would likely have unpromising results. You soon decide that this is a waste of effort. Thus, you have been unable to "work through" this problem.

But, as Thomas Edison said, "Just because something didn't do what you planned it to do in the first place, doesn't mean it is useless." So, you look for a "work-around" to this problem. The first step in finding a work-around (just like the first step in working through a problem) is to clearly define your problem.

Here, your problem is stated rather simply. The problem is that free classified ads produce numerous insincere responses to the posted e-mail address (and most free classified ad sites do not allow you to post anything other than an e-mail address). You don't want to spend your limited time reading through insincere responses and yet you don't want to miss that rare response that is interested.

So, the question becomes what to do about it. One answer would be to set up an autoresponder for the e-mail address that you use in the ads. You could draft a message to be sent by the autoresponder that invites the person to join your newsletter and gives a URL (Website address) from which they could do just that.
This way, those few who were genuinely interested could go to your Website and join your newsletter. Then, you would have ample opportunity to follow up with them in your newsletter. Those who were not genuinely interested would simply ignore your e-mail and that would end your involvement with them. Over time, if you seek out the right places to place your ads, you will gain affiliates this way. Some of these affiliates may produce commissions for you for years to come!

AVOID FRUSTRATION

Never expect anything to work as smoothly as you may have hoped at first. By keeping your expectations realistic, you will be less likely to experience frustration. Try to look forward to each new obstacle and each new challenge that comes along. It is in overcoming these obstacles that you will find true success. Always believe that you can work through or at least work around any obstacle that may come your way. Allow yourself to enjoy the process.

LEARNING FROM YOUR SETBACKS

Whether you work through an obstacle or work around it, every obstacle is a learning opportunity. If all else fails and an obstacle does appear to defeat you, at least you have learned what doesn't work and now know what to avoid. Just be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Define very narrowly what you are eliminating as undoable and continue to look for something similar that does work. Most importantly, do not be afraid of failures. No one succeeds without having failed a number of times first. Einstein, one of the most renowned physicists ever, whose name has become synonymous with the word "genius," spent several years of his life working on theories that ultimately proved incorrect. To quote Thomas Edison one more time: "If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward...."

P.S:You cannot have success without setting goals and developing plans to reach those goals. Rely on your own efforts in reaching the goals that you set. Make your goals realistic but optimistic. Expect to encounter obstacles, challenges, and difficulties in Internet marketing as you would expect them in any part of life. Approach these challenges with enthusiasm and look for ways to work through or work around the problem. When you do encounter setbacks and failures, learn from them. Most importantly, always think positively and enjoy the challenge.

OVERCOMING OBSTACLES —WORKTHROUGHS & WORKAROUNDS

2006-04-09T20:17:00.000-07:00

ARE YOU ON THE PATH TO SUCCESS?
The American Heritage Dictionary defines "Success" as "the attainment of something planned, desired or attempted." Thus by definition, you cannot have success without having first planned, desired, or attempted something. We all desire things—that comes naturally. From basic needs to extravagant luxuries, we are all, as humans, familiar with the experience of desire. Occasionally, even without plans or directed effort on our part, something happens along that fulfills one of our desires.
When this occurs, we consider it a successful event—or, if we recognize that it occurred randomly despite our lack of planning and effort, we more accurately call it a "lucky event." Most of us, however, are not satisfied with the random satisfaction of occasional desires dependent upon luck.
We want to take our fate into our own hands, at least to some extent, and thus we make plans and expend effort attempting to obtain the things that we need and desire. Without planning and effort there can be no real success—only occasional luck. Thus, to be on the path to success, you must have a plan and you must expend effort. You must set goals and you must plan the efforts you will invest to obtain those goals. How carefully you plan and how faithfully you direct your efforts in accordance with your plans determines how successful you will be. This is as true in Internet marketing as it is in any aspect of life.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EXPECTATION AND FRUSTRATION

Frustration, in this context, is the feeling of discouragement that we experience when our expectations are not met. Frustration is an unhappy feeling of helplessness when our actions are not leading to our goals. Frustration saps our motivation. It makes us less likely to continue our efforts to reach our goals, whatever those goals may be.
We set our expectations when we set our goals. If we set our expectations unreasonably high, we are setting ourselves up for frustration. If we set our expectations based upon what we expect others to do for us, rather than upon what we intend to do for ourselves, we are also setting ourselves up for frustration.

While we have no real control over what other people do or don't do, we can control our own actions. Thus, we should set our goals based upon reasonable expectations of what we can expect to achieve for ourselves through our own efforts and our own determination. As we achieve these reasonable goals through our own self-reliance, we gain confidence. With this confidence, we can then set higher and higher goals. Ultimately, it is truly astounding what can be accomplished when this path is followed.

ENJOYING THE CHALLENGE

While it is beyond the scope of this nuts-and-bolts course on Internet marketing to delve much into philosophy, psychology, or spirituality; a couple of additional points do merit brief mention here: First and foremost, you should have fun with your challenges! Life without challenges would be thoroughly boring. However, we don't have to worry about that because there will never be a time as long as you are in this world when the challenges stop coming. Eliminating obstacles and challenges from ever arising again is not the secret to success—no one ever accomplishes that.
If you are waiting for the obstacles and challenges to stop coming so that you can be successful and happy, you will always be waiting...and will never be successful or happy. When you learn to find success and happiness despite constant obstacles and challenges, you have indeed found the secret.

POSITIVE THINKING

The other "secret" to success is to understand the power of positive thought. The first step to successful action is thought. If you can succeed in your mind, you can succeed in the world. If you believe you can overcome your obstacles and challenges, you will overcome them. If you believe there are opportunities for you, you will find opportunities—even in the worst of situations. The secret to success is to think successfully. Use the power of your thoughts to plan your success. Then, use the power of your thoughts to fortify your belief in your plan. Anticipate obstacles and challenges. Enjoy the efforts involved in overcoming them. Never give up. Make it happen!

FREE ADVERTISING STRATEGIES - PART 2

2006-04-09T20:13:00.000-07:00

ONE MORE TIME
Let me also say this one more time (because it is so important). Do not just look for a list of sites that someone else is using. Like the blackberry bushes from the last lesson or a good fishing hole, a good free ad site only works when a few people use it at a time. Learn the process to find your own free advertising sites.
In fact, I would suggest this: Go ahead and find all the lists of free ads sites you can find. Talk to everyone and get all their suggestions and add them to your list as well. Search for "free classifieds" on a major search engine and write down all the links that show up on the first three pages. Then use this list as a list of places NOT to place ads on at first! (You will eventually want to place ads on some of these sites, but make it a point to not do so at first.)
Why do I make such an outrageous suggestion? Two reasons. First, I suggest this because it will save you a great deal of time in your searching process. If you see that you have found one of these recommended sites, move on. You are not there to be searching for the obvious. You are there to be searching for the hidden treasure. This will help to keep the process moving quickly for you. Secondly, I suggest this because it will save you frustration and maybe even save you from giving up on affiliate marketing altogether. Far too many people spend countless hours posting to these obvious and frequently listed free ad sites. Then, after those long hours of work, they become discouraged when the ads produce no results. They decide that affiliate marketing doesn't work and they quit. I don't want that to happen to you. I want you to post your first few ads on effective sites, so you will know that affiliate marketing does work. It will take a little more time to find these sites, but you will save that much time and more in the time spent posting ads.
OK, OK, OK! SO WHAT IS THE PROCESS?
The way most people approach the process is to use the Search Engines.
If you are an advertiser, you have a product or service to sell or you are attempting to recruit people to your affiliate program. We will discuss the products or services later and focus now on recruiting affiliates

FOLLOWING THE RULES
A common obstacle is that many sites allow you to submit for "possible inclusion" and have very strict and sometimes complicated rules about the types of submissions they will accept. Let me give you an example.
Using the search phrase "my own home business," I searched on Google. It didn't lead to anything promising until the third page where I encountered a link that led to a page with a "Submit Your Home Business" link. Problem was that right on the form it stated that you must own all the rights to the information that you were submitting and the Website you listed. Since I don't own all rights to the SFI furnished ads or the SFI Gateways, I could not have used this site if I did not have my own domain name and my own personally created ads for my own domain.

Some of the sites get pretty tedious with their rules and restrictions. For each site, you have to make a judgment whether it is appropriate to post your ad there and whether it is even worth the trouble to read and learn their rules and fill out their complicated forms.
It is a good idea to take notes as you go through the process. If a site looks like it might be promising but is too tedious in its rules and forms, jot down the URL and perhaps come back to it later. The point is to keep the process moving.

Another obstacle is that many sites will allow you to add your URL, but require a reciprocal link in return. Many require a special button or banner be displayed on your site and in a certain way. If you are just using SFI Gateways, you cannot add links to your site. Even if you have your own Website, you could not use very many of these because you would not have room for all the buttons and banners at the places they required them to be placed on your site. You want to keep control over the design of your own site.
You definitely do not want it cluttered with all these buttons and banners to other sites. So, these sites you must also pass over, just making a note that it might be worth coming back for a second look later.

(Reciprocal links are a good idea, but they must be done in the right way. Only agree to reciprocal links when you can put the other site's link on your "Links" page--as opposed to your home page. Searching for reciprocal link sites is a different process from searching for free ad sites, though. Don't try to do both at the same time--other than making quick notes if you find something promising. Come back to it when you are searching for reciprocal link sites.)
Here's a tip that will save you some time: Many of the classified sites are just front ends for a limited number of back-end classified databases.
That is, there are a few companies that provide the opportunity for Webmasters to include classified ads on their Websites. The sites are customized by each Webmaster and look to be part of their own Website, but in fact they just tie into the classifieds database of the providing company. When you post to one of these sites, your ad will show up on all of them. So, there is no need to post on the other Websites that use the same database.
To determine if this is the case, look for a "powered by" or similar graphic on the classified site. If you find one, you can see the ultimate database in which your classified will be posted. When you see this same "powered by" graphic on other sites, you do not need to post there also.

Yet another catch to this process is that many sites limit the free listings to "non-commercial" ads. The notion is that if you are advertising a yard sale or trying to sell your old guitar online, it's OK to post for free. If you are an affiliate selling Internet Service or Cell Phones or recruiting other affiliates, it will be considered "commercial." You can often get around this problem if you have your own Website and advertise it as providing free information.

FREE ADVERTISING STRATEGIES - PART 1

2006-04-09T20:06:00.000-07:00

FOUR ELEMENTS OF AN ONLINE ADVERTISING STRATEGY

Online advertising strategy involves four elements. You need an ad. You need a URL (Website address) or an e-mail address to which the ad will point. You need to be prepared for the posting process. And, you need a location to place the ad.

PICKING YOUR AD

POINTING YOUR AD

Note:
You should not just use an ordinary e-mail address, however. Most of your responses to an e-mail address in an ad will be insincere. It is very common, when you use free advertising, to receive numerous e-mail responses to the effect of "I saw your add and see that you are interested in making extra income. I would like to talk to you about that." Such responses are nothing more than someone trying to get you to join their program. These e-mails, which are automatically generated, really are not interested in information about your program. Thus, your ad needs to point to a Website where the serious responders can sign up immediately or to an autoresponder that will automatically send them further e-mails pointing to your URL. Otherwise, you would have to work your way through all those e-mails to find those who are serious and then point them to your gateway manually.

The argument for pointing to an autoresponding e-mail rather than a Website URL in your ad is based upon the fact that many people will not sign up on the first encounter with anything. People need time to mull it over in the back of their minds. Some studies suggest that it takes seven to 11 contacts before most people will commit to anything online. Setting up an autoresponder to send out seven to 12 messages over time increases the odds that someone will sign up.
In my opinion, it is better to have your ad point to your own Website and then let the Website have a sign-up form for further contact--i.e. a newsletter or e-mail series--than to use an autoresponder in your ad. This reduces the odds of spam complaints and is a bit more professional manner of creating the additional contacts needed to achieve the signups. (I can't help but envision these autoresponding e-mails still triggering each other and still trying to convince each other to sign up for something long after the humans who set them up are dead and gone.) The more personal your communications, the more effective they will be.

PREPARING FOR THE POSTING PROCESS

Secondary E-Mail AddressWhether your ad is designed to point to a URL or an e-mail address (autoresponder or not), all ad locations will require that you submit an e-mail address to the site host in order to post an ad. It is absolutely essential to obtain a secondary (often called "throwaway") e-mail address for this purpose. Posting ads will result in your e-mail getting farmed by the spammers and you will receive tons of spam. Do not expose your primary e-mail address to this! You can acquire e-mail accounts fairly easily these days from your ISP or from one of the free e-mail services, such as Yahoo! or Hotmail. You have to give an e-mail address to post ads anywhere, so create a new e-mail account just for this purpose.

Physical Address And Phone NumberMany sites also require you to give an address and phone number. Although these are "required fields" in the form to post the ad, many people get away with just typing "N/A" or similar text in these fields. There are ethical issues here that you will have to resolve for yourself. The ad posting service is being provided in exchange for your information. In a real sense, you become a lead for the host site. It would not be ethical to provide false information to acquire the service. Some people even set up secondary post office addresses and phone numbers (like the secondary e-mail) to avoid this ethical problem. Others do provide their primary contact information and deal with any resulting telemarketing or junk snail mail as it arrives.

Tracking SystemAlso essential is to set up a tracking system. Tracking is crucial. Without it, you do not know which sites are working and which are a waste of time. At a minimum, each ad you place should have a tracking code in it that exclusively identifies the location you placed the ad. With some tracking systems, you can also code for the specific ad used, the date and time you placed the ad, and other variables. For each advertising campaign, you will need to pick the gateway or Website that will be the target of your ad. Then you will need to pick the ad you will be using. Then you are off to find some places to post the ad. For each place you post, remember to keycode the ad's URL and record the location of your ad on your keycode list.

PREPARING YOURSELF FOR THE QUEST FOR AD SITES
The big issue is where to place the ads.
Do not think of this issue as being one of acquiring a list of Websites from someone or someplace and then placing your ads on those Websites. It doesn't work that way, and I will explain why in a moment. Instead, you must think of it as a process. While others can't tell you where to place the ads, they can teach you the process of finding sites on which to place your ads.
Let me make an analogy. Let's say that you are in a group of 15 people who are going blackberry picking.
The field that you go to has more than enough blackberries for everyone. But, the bushes are spread out over a large area and each has only a few blackberries on it. It would make sense for everyone to spread out with much distance between each person and each go from bush to bush in their area picking the blackberries.
What would not make sense would be for everyone to stay clumped in a group and, as soon as anyone found a bush, all 15 try to pick from the same bush at the same time. Only the first two of three people would get any blackberries and the other 12 or so people would only serve to be in the way and to stomp down the nearby bushes before anyone could pick from them.
In a way, many of the Websites that accept free ads and are effective are like those blackberry bushes.
They have a limited capacity to produce results. They only work for anyone because everyone is not posting there. No matter how unselfish affiliates who have found effective advertising sites may be, it is not in anyone's interest to publish the site on a list somewhere for all to use. That usually only serves to kill the sites effectiveness for everyone.

So, your task is to learn the process to use to continuously find new and effective advertising sites. Some sites, while very effective at first, have a limited audience and thus a limited capacity to produce results for your ad. You will likely need to move from site to site as the sites' capacities are exhausted.

The Internet is vast and constantly changing. New sites crop up all the time to replace the old ones as they lose their effectiveness. Thus, the process of searching for places to place your ads is a continuing process. Fortunately, it is also a very interesting and exciting process.

CONCLUSION

Free online advertising can work for affiliate marketers provided they are properly prepared and approach the process in the right way. To be prepared, you need to have an effective ad, you need a target URL to which the ad will point, and you need to be prepared for the posting process. This includes having a secondary e-mail account and a tracking system in place. Finally, you need to understand the process of finding effective locations to place your ads.

THE GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE

2006-04-09T20:04:00.000-07:00

GOOGLE'S ALGORITHM

Unlike Yahoo!, which uses humans to rank its listings, Google uses software. The ranking algorithm used by Google is its trademarked "PageRank." The key to a high ranking on Google is to have lots of links to your site from other high ranking sites. That is, you need lots of sites linking to yours, which in turn have lots of sites linking to them.

Google is one of the most useful sites for those searching the Internet and has sophisticated and effective ranking and searching software. At the time of this writing, Google does not sell placement within the ranking. Thus, sites are ranked with pure objectivity and results are usually quite relevant to your search. For the marketer, however, this makes it extremely difficult to manipulate your ranking. To get a high ranking in Google, you have to have a content-rich site that is already popular as expressed by links from other popular sites.

ADVERTISING ON GOOGLE

If you do not have a lot of links to your site yet, you can still buy textual ads to appear to the side of the Google search listings. These ads are keyword specific and you can pay by impressions or by clicks on your site's link with Google's "AdWords Select" program.
Google also has a "Premium Sponsorship" program where your textual ads appear at the top of the search results page for the chosen keywords. Google does not allow any images in the ads. (Textual ads, if properly placed, have proven to be more effective than graphical banners anyway, so this restriction is not so bad.)

Google touts that its ad results are five times greater than industry averages. One competitive edge that the Google AdWords Select program has at the time of this writing is that it only charges you the minimum necessary to hold your ad's position. That is, if you hold the second spot for a certain key phrase and the advertiser below you in the third spot reduces the amount of his or her bid for that phrase, your amount will be reduced to the amount just necessary to hold your second spot. This occurs automatically, saving you the time of constantly monitoring the bids for your search phrases as you have to do on other, similar sites.

SUBMITTING YOUR SITE TO GOOGLE

If it took any significant time to submit your URL to Google, we would say, "don't bother." Google only ranks sites that it finds from following links on the Internet with its spider, Googlebot. Even though Google may have your site in its database from your submission, your site will have no ranking until some other included site links to it...and Google's spider finds that link. The only advantage of submitting your site to Google before it is found by the spider is that your site will show up if someone types in the URL or the exact description of your site in a Google search. Since it takes very little time to submit your site to Google, you should do so for that purpose.

Although it may be rare that people will type in your URL or an exact match of your description, they are the very ones you do not want to miss while you are waiting for your site to be spidered.

To submit your site to Google, go to http://www.google.com/ and click the Advanced Search link. At the top right of the resulting page, click All About Google, then the Submitting Your Site link on the resulting page. At the time of this writing, you can also simply go straight to http://www.google.com/addurl.html. Enter your site's complete URL (that is, include the "http://" in your Website address) in the appropriate field and type a short description of your site for the comment. Check your typing and spelling and then click the Add URL button below.

SUBMITTING TO DMOZ CAN GET YOU INCLUDED IN GOOGLE

If other sites link to your Website, Google will find it pretty quickly. Google currently spiders the entire Web at least once a month. Rather than waiting for the spider to find you, however, the best way to ensure inclusion in Google (as well as Netscape, AOL, AllTheWeb, Alta Vista, HotBot, Lycos, and Northern Light) is to submit your site to the Open Directory Project.

Google, as well as the other search engines listed above, include data from Netscape's Open Directory Project, which uses human indexing like Yahoo! does. Thus, Google uses its own software-driven spidering technology and supplements it with the dmoz's human indexing. Since you cannot manipulate the results of the spider technology (other than to create a high-quality popular site), your submitting efforts are best placed with dmoz. A good ranking with dmoz can ensure your inclusion in several major search engines. Submitting to the Open Directory Project will be the subject of our next lesson.

CONCLUSION

If you have a Website with lots of links to it from popular Websites, Google will find it and give you a good ranking without any effort on your part. If you have a new site that does not yet have a lot of links to it, you should submit your URL to Google, but you should focus your submitting efforts on the Open Directory Project (dmoz). A good ranking by dmoz will earn you a good position in Google as well as other major search engines. You should also consider placing an ad with Google if your budget allows.

SUBMITTING YOUR WEBSITE

2006-04-09T20:01:00.000-07:00

FIRST AND UNIQUE

Yahoo!, the original search engine on the Web, continues to be unique among search engines and directories. Yahoo listings are maintained by humans rather than algorithms. Each site submitted for inclusion is accepted or rejected by a Yahoo editor who actually views and evaluates the site.

This is in contrast to other search engines, which often use automation programs (called spiders) to gather site information for the listings, as well as to evaluate and rank sites.
Because of the limited time available for editors to make choices about all submitted sites and a desire to keep the directory unique, Yahoo is quite picky about the sites it includes. Thus, having your site in Yahoo's site listings is a coveted accomplishment, especially since Yahoo generally ranks as the most visited search engine on the Internet.

You should NEVER use any type of automatic submission software or service to submit your site to Yahoo They build their directory by hand on Yahoo's end, so you should submit your site by hand on your end. However, the most important factor affecting the review of your site by the Yahoo editors is whether you have a high quality site with original content.

CATEGORY MATCHES VS SITE MATCHES VS WEB PAGE MATCHES

In order to properly submit your Website to the Yahoo search engine, you should first have some understanding of how Yahoo works. When you input a search into Yahoo, you can get up to five kinds of results: Inside Yahoo Matches, Sponsor Matches, Category Matches, Web Site Matches, and Web Page Matches.

The first two, Inside Yahoo Matches and Sponsor Matches, are not relevant to our discussion because a site submitted for inclusion in the Yahoo directory is not listed within these two categories. Therefore, we'll cover only the three categories that matter—Category Matches, Web Site Matches, and Web Page Matches.

The difference between Web Site Matches and Web Page Matches is that Web Site Matches include only sites listed in the Yahoo directory. Web Page Matches pull results from one of the spider-based engines (Google.com at the time of this writing) to supplement the Yahoo Web Site Matches.

So, even if your site is not listed in Yahoo as a Web Site Match, it may be found in a search through Yahoo if it is listed in Google. Since you have to click on Web Page Matches link to see this list of results, however, it is important to have your site listed on Yahoo (as well as Google) if you can obtain a listing there.

Yahoo displays Category Matches before the Web Site Matches and Web Page Matches (and after Inside Yahoo Matches and Sponsor Matches). If the search word or phrase is in the category name, that category will be included in the results of a search. As most people click on a category if one shows up, it is important in preparing your submission to Yahoo to select a category that includes your most important keyword or key phrase.

Thus, when people search with your main keywords or phrases, they will be presented with, and likely click on, a category that includes your site. When they get to the category listing, they will see your site, provided it ranks high enough to show on the first few pages of the category listing.

Yahoo is able to create Category Matches because it groups the various Websites in its directory under various subject headings, thus creating a hierarchy of categories. The broad initial categories are divided further and drill down into more and more specific subject areas.

For example, Web sites dealing with the subject "business opportunity magazines" are found in the following hierarchy:

Business and Economy > Business to Business > Business Opportunities > Magazines

Sometimes, you may have difficulty finding a category to match your particular subject. Recall the example of a doorway page listing senior discounts discussed in an earlier lesson in this course. If one were submitting such a site to Yahoo, there would be a problem picking the right category. When you search for "senior discounts" on Yahoo, no Category Matches occur. This is because that particular phrase does not appear (at the time of this writing) in any Yahoo category.

On the other hand, 17 Site Matches show up when you search for "senior discounts." Those 17 sites are organized under 15 different categories! (Note again that none of those 15 categories show up as Category Matches when you make that search, but when you look at the Site Matches, you see the categories under which those sites are individually organized.)

The most relevant site for "senior discounts" shows up in this category:

Society and Culture > Cultures and Groups > Seniors > Web Directories
However, some of the sites which show up for "senior discounts" in the Yahoo Site Matches are

in the following categories:

Recreation > Travel > Seniors > Airline Programs
Business and Economy > Shopping and Services > Health > Senior Care
Business and Economy > Shopping and Services > Coupons > Discount Cards
And 11 more categories, which we will not list here.

Many sites listed in Yahoo are only listed under one category (even though they may logically fit under several different categories). Other sites are listed under two different categories when they fit well under both categories. In the situation above, however, Yahoo lists the "senior discount" sites across 15 different categories. This means that there is no way you could drill down through the Yahoo categories to find a place where all senior discount sites are listed.

This is a situation in which you may want to suggest a new category to Yahoo. A good proposal would be

Business and Economy > Shopping and Services > Seniors

Yahoo does provide an area where you can propose new categories. However, the directory receives tons of suggestions daily, so don't count on having Yahoo act on your suggestions automatically. You would have to convince the editors at Yahoo that the directory would be improved by adding such category—and you would have to do so within the limited communication available. You would also still have to select an existing Yahoo category for your site in the very likely event that your suggestion for a new category is ignored.

Even among the existing categories, the Yahoo editors—being human—may or may not accept the category you have chosen for your site. Picking the most appropriate category in your submission, however, improves your chances of inclusion and will affect the traffic you receive if included in the directory. You make the editors' work easier by submitting your site under the right category. Thus, they will look more favorably on your site in the review process.

Take the time to become familiar with the Yahoo categories relevant to your site. Choosing the correct category while submitting your site is crucial, both for your chances of inclusion in the directory and for strategic placement of your site within the directory, if included.

SUBMITTING YOUR SITE TO YAHOO

Now that you're familiar with the process of picking the right category for your site, you're ready to select the Suggest A Site link FROM THE CORRECT YAHOO CATEGORY to begin your site's submission process. Just drill down through the categories from Yahoo's main page until you come to the appropriate category for your site. Then, on that page, select the Suggest A Site link. (It's down at the bottom of the page.)

You'll now see a page where you can choose between a Standard Submission and Yahoo!Express.
The Standard Submission is free.
Yahoo!Express costs $299 (at the time of this writing; $600 for adult content sites). For commercial sites, that fee will be charged on a per year basis. That is, each year after your commercial Website's inclusion in the Yahoo directory, Yahoo will review your site and charge you another $299 for your site's continued inclusion in the commercial directory. This yearly charge went into effect for commercial sites submitted through Yahoo!Express after December 28, 2001.

Note that Yahoo!
Express does not guarantee you a listing in the Yahoo directory! It's pretty darn arrogant of Yahoo to take $299 from you and then reject your site, but they will do just that if your site has no original content or is unprofessional. Also, there is no refund if your site is rejected! Yahoo gets away with this because of the unique traffic-generating capabilities the directory and search engine is able to provide. It's worth the money just to have them review your site for inclusion.

For your $299, you get a guarantee that Yahoo editors will look at your Website within seven business days and make a decision one way or the other to include your site.
Prior to February of 1999, all submissions to Yahoo were reviewed without charge. The submissions became so numerous that the existing staff could never review even a significant portion of them within a reasonable time. Thus, Yahoo!Express submission was created to generate the funding for the additional staff needed for timely review of the submissions.
Yahoo!Express is required for commercial sites and available for all sites.
After selecting your submission method, you are asked to confirm a number of things about your site.

The most notable of these confirmations (at the time of this writing) is as follows:
"My site contains substantively unique content that is not already accessible from the Yahoo directory. (For example: a user who submits multiple URLs to the same content is not submitting substantively unique content.) "

This is a warning that you will waste $299 if you submit multiple pages with only minor details changed or try to submit a doorway page or a banner page that has no unique content. Take heed. Yahoo likes only quality sites with unique content. If you do not have one yet, do not waste your money on the submission.

After you complete this section by checking all the boxes to confirm things about you site, you will proceed to a page where you'll provide your site title, URL, geographic location, and a description.

(If you have not already done so, read the previous Internet Income lessons about preparing keywords, titles, and descriptions before completing this part of the submission process!) Follow the same principles as discussed in these lessons about meta tags.
Remember, Yahoo doesn't use the meta tags, but it does use what you submit here. Be sure to take care to match your keywords with the desirable Yahoo category names as well as desirable search terms.

Also, note that Yahoo list its sites alphabetically by title (for the most part). Remember that when choosing a title. However, obvious attempts to artificially gain alphabetical advantage (such as "AAA Discounts") are disfavored by Yahoo.

Next, you'll be asked to provide a login name and contact information. The final section is for additional information.

There have been situations where submitting some additional information got sites listed on Yahoo within a couple of days (even though it was submitted through the standard submission, which usually takes weeks).

In one instance, the site host was scheduled to make a public appearance with a celebrity to promote the site.

Making that known to Yahoo made for a fast and favorable determination. Thus, it's a good idea to use the Additional Information box to submit any information that may add to the quality and popularity of the Website but may not be obvious from a review of the site.

WHAT IF YOU GET REJECTED?

If your site is rejected by Yahoo, when should you resubmit?

There is a clear answer to this question:

Resubmit your site only when the quality of your content has been significantly improved. That is, the only fruitful response to being rejected by Yahoo is to work hard to improve your site. If your site has not improved, the mere passage of time or a different staff member reviewing it will not likely improve your odds.

CONCLUSION

As Yahoo generally ranks as the most visited search engine on the Internet, it is important to carefully submit your site for possible inclusion as a Yahoo Site Listing. Make the submission by hand rather than using an automated service or software. Carefully pick the category under which your site should be included and make your submission from that category. Carefully pick and fill out the site title, URL, and description. Be sure to add any important additional information to help in the review of your site.

INTRODUCTION TO SEARCH ENGINES

2006-04-09T19:57:00.000-07:00

WHAT IS A SEARCH ENGINE?

When people look for things of interest to them on the Internet, they go to search engines and directories.

A directory is a listing of category subject headings with Websites listed under the specific categories. You browse through (often called "drilling down") the categories until you find what you are looking for.

Search engines, on the other hand, have a form in which you input keywords, and pages of results are displayed. The results are lists of Websites that pertain to the keywords you have used.

Search engines seek out and index Websites on the Internet according to keywords. When a user types a search phrase, a search engine scans its database and returns a list of successful matches to the request.

WHICH SEARCH ENGINES ARE IMPORTANT?

According to Nielsen//NetRatings, as of the date of this writing, search engine popularity within the top 25 online properties is as follows, with the most popular listed first:

Yahoo!, Google, Lycos, Go.com, Excite, InfoSpace, and Ask Jeeves.
HotBot, which has always been a very popular search engine, is now part of the Terra Lycos Network. Other search engines worth noting but not presently in the top 25 online properties are Northern Light and LookSmart.

Thus, although there are thousands of search engines, you can narrow your main focus down to just those mentioned above, as they receive the overwhelming majority of all search engine traffic.

The "reach" of a search engine is usually defined as the percentage of all Web users who visit the site at least once a month. Services, such as Nielsen//NetRatings, also periodically release statistics on the current reach of a search engine.

Another factor by which to judge a search engine is the percentage of Web pages it has indexed. Even the most comprehensive search engine was aware of no more than 16% of the estimated 800 million pages on the Web, according to a study published in the July 8, 1999, scientific journal Nature.

THINKING LIKE A SEARCH ENGINE

By now we hope you have noticed a theme running throughout the Internet Income Course. When we discuss recruiting affiliates, we ask you to think from the perspective of the prospects you are targeting. When we discuss selling products, we ask you to think from the perspective of the potential consumer.

When we discuss contacting Webmasters to place your ads on their sites, we ask you to think from the Webmasters' perspective. When we discuss spam, we ask you to think from the perspective of the e-mail recipients. Now, as we begin to discuss search engines, we are going to ask you to think from the perspective of the search engine operators.
Take a few minutes and pretend that you are starting your own search engine. Say it is back in the mid 1990's and you want to establish your site as one of the popular search engines on this new fantastic Internet.

You are going to take your company public and retire as a zillionaire!
What would be important to you?

When visitors search from your search engine, they will input search words or phrases and then be led to sites pertaining to those words or phrases. Again, you want the most useful, valuable sites to come up first in the results. How would you accomplish this?

Let's say, for example,
that one of the visitors to your search engine has to write a report on the planet Saturn for a class he is taking. He types in the keyword "Saturn." When your engine searches through its index of keywords, it will pull up sites that discuss the planet Saturn, but it will also pull up sites that deal with the automobile named Saturn, the Saturn Sega game system, the comic strip character named Sailor Saturn, perhaps a rock band named Saturn's Rings, and maybe even a porn star who goes by the nickname Saturn (provided you have not taken steps to filter out porn sites).

These diverse results are to be expected. What you do not want, however, is for a number of business opportunity sites, credit card sites, long-distance service sites, and porn sites (at least those that don't have stars named Saturn) to come up also. If those sites come up under a search for Saturn, then your search engine is not very efficient and your visitors will become frustrated and quit using your search engine.

(If your visitor loses valuable time needed to write his report on the planet Saturn while plowing through all of these other non-relevant sites, he or she will find another search engine to use next time. If this happens often, there goes your zillion dollars!) You also want a means to identify the most valuable sites and rank them to come up first in the results. So, what you realize is that you need a means to exclude irrelevant sites and to rank relevant sites according to their value.
The better you do these things, the more people will like your search engine and the more successful it will be.

The first thing you have to figure out as a search engine operator is how to associate keywords with sites. You will not have time to examine all the sites on the Internet and write keywords for them.

When knowledgeable Webmasters build their Websites, they use the meta tag keywords on each page and insert the relevant keywords for that page.

The tag looks like this:

Thus, when your search engine indexes sites, it automatically grabs the keywords from the keyword meta tag, and you are good to go. . . Or, are you?
What if the Webmasters cheat when coding in their keywords?

Why would Webmasters want to cheat, and how would they go about doing so? Let's switch gears away from our Saturn example for a moment to explore these questions. Although the statistics are now changing, over the last several years the Internet has been used mostly by young men. Thus, the "hot" search terms—the ones most frequently searched for on the search engines—have been things of interest to young males. Because of this, as you might expect, search terms relating to sex and nudity, rock music, famous female stars, and outlaw-type sites (called "warez sites") have been high on the list of popular search terms.

Some Webmasters have kept themselves aware of the current popular search terms and used them in their keywords, even though they may not be relevant to their Website. They do this to increase the probability of their site showing up in a search and, therefore, to increase their traffic.

Currently, one of the most popular search terms is "Britney Spears." It may occur to a Webmaster of a business opportunity site that if he adds "Britney Spears" to his keywords, he will increase traffic to his page and perhaps get more signups. But, as a search engine operator, you would have a problem with this Webmaster. You want your search engine visitors to find the pages they are looking for.

If some young man is looking for a page discussing Britney Spears and finds business opportunity sites, your search engine has not done a good job. The young man, being unhappy, will take his search engine business elsewhere (so to speak) and your search engine will lose popularity. Thus, as a search engine operator, you are at cross purposes with these Webmasters who want to cheat with their keywords. Because you want that zillion dollar retirement, you are dang sure going to figure out ways to deal with them.

The various search engines do exactly that in various ways. Search engine operators are constantly trying to improve their means of detecting such cheating. They closely guard the algorithms they use to do this as industrial secrets because if they become widely known, people will find ways around them.

When search engines detect people cheating, they can exclude the page from the search engine (and even any future submissions from the same person or company), give it a very low overall ranking, or give it a low or non-existent ranking with respect to the offending keywords.

Since we are never going to know with certainty how the search engines actually go about detecting keyword relevance and ranking sites, at least at any particular point in time, all we can do is imagine that we are the search engine operator and think how we would go about doing those things.

Thinking again like a search engine operator, how would you go about detecting keyword relevance?

One thing you would soon realize is that you do not want to throw the baby out with the bath water. That is, you would realize that by only looking to see if the keywords show up in the actual content of the site and assuming that cheating has occurred if the words do not, you will exclude some very relevant, very valuable sites. This, too, would be bad for you as a search engine operator.

There are many legitimate situations where a keyword may not be repeated in the actual content of the site. Say a Webmaster has a regional site which provides news and current activities for a three county area commonly known among people in the region as the "River Basin Area" or perhaps the "Wiregrass Area" or some similar term.

Since you cannot afford to pay someone to sit and look at all of the millions of pages submitted to your engine in person, you will have to develop some algorithm that will do this task as best it can be done without human intervention. Clearly, it's not going to be extremely accurate. It would be far too difficult to write a program sophisticated enough to figure out all the different variations of relevant keywords.

SITE DESCRIPTION

In addition to keywords, there is also a meta tag standard for the site description. This is where the Webmaster provides a description of the site which can appear in the search engine listing. We will discuss this in another lesson.

RANKING VALUE

In addition to producing search results containing sites that are relevant to the search terms used, search engine operators also want to place the most valuable sites high in the results list, leaving the less valuable sites for the end of the list. They want the people who use their search engine to find high-quality sites first.

Thus, as a search engine operator, you will want to find means to evaluate the quality and value of sites submitted. How would you go about this? Here are a few things you might consider. Check the HTML code of the submitted pages for errors. If the code contains errors, it is a signal that few resources were put into the site or else the Webmaster is less than knowledgeable. If the Webmaster is less than professional is his coding, he may also have been less than professional with the content. Check to see the number of other sites which link to this site. If there are many sites out there linking to this site, obviously some human beings have looked at it and determined that it has some value.

You may also want to consider the quality ranking of the sites which link to it. If known high-quality sites are linking to it, it probably is a high-quality site itself. You may also want to look at the number of outgoing links from the site and see where they go. There is probably some ratio of links to volume of text content that is characteristic of high-quality sites. The quality of the pages linked to is also a factor.

You would also want to look at how long the site has been at the same address. Many sites come and go. The fact that a site lasts is an indication of its quality. Thus, you will need to revisit the ranking of the sites on your engine from time to time to revaluate these factors. Simple things like the amount of content on a site and whether it has its own domain name would also be important.

CONCLUSION

As a Webmaster or an affiliate doing Internet marketing, search engines are important to you. Set aside some time to spend thinking like a search engine operator. Think of other things that would be important to you in evaluating keyword relevancy and judging the value of sites.

Then incorporate all of these things into your Web pages. While you can never really know the true current search engine secrets, you can use your common sense and imagination to design Websites that would be favorably evaluated and ranked by you if you were the search engine operator. That should go a long way toward having your pages favorably evaluated and ranked by the real search engines.

MARKETING METHODS

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The most common Internet marketing methods, particularly useful in promoting affiliate program are these:

1) Doorway Pages and Search Engine Registration

2) Banner or Textual Ad Placement (Exchange Programs)

3) Banner or Textual Ad Placement (Online Classifieds)

4) Banner or Textual Ad Placement (Affiliate and Paid Placement)

5) Building Your Own Content-Rich Website

6) Utilizing an Opt-In Program

7) Hosting FFA Pages

8) Using Safelists, Announcement Lists, and Viral marketing

9) Press Releases, Relationship Building, and Offline Promotion

10) The Latest New Technique

Many of these methods overlap or have much in common. Depending on what you read, there are various ways to describe each of these methods and various names with which to identify them. There is no particular importance to the order in which we have listed them here. The only reason to enumerate them into the list above is for ease of learning.

WHAT NOT TO DO - SPAM

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WHAT IS SPAM?

There are many definitions of spam.

For example,

Netscape defines spam as the sending of more than five e-mails in bulk to persons you do not personally know. Most others define spam more strictly. The most general definition of "spam" is "the sending of unsolicited commercial e-mail."

When you open your snail mailbox everyday and see numerous unsolicited commercial advertisements that have been delivered to you by the postal service, it makes you wonder why unsolicited electronic e-mail is outlawed. Like all laws and rules, however, we should look more to history than to logic to understand why they came to be.

Although the Internet did not become popular with the public until the early 1990s, the Internet has been in existence for a long time. Prior to the early 1990s, the Internet was used primarily by the military and university scientists. These users were conducting what they justifiably felt was important business which could not be interrupted by any commercial correspondence.

For most of the Internet's history, ALL commercial correspondence was completely banned. Only recently has commercial use of the Internet been allowed at all. Although this total restriction on commercial use was lifted, a restriction on unsolicited commercial e-mail remains—and for good reason.

E-mail is for communicating, not for advertising. Unsolicited commercial e-mail is annoying! Without restriction, it has the capacity to come in such large numbers as to render your e-mail completely useless and even to shut down your e-mail server altogether. This is due to the fact that, unlike snail mail, e-mail can be sent in tremendous bulk with very little effort and very little cost.

Because it is so cheap and easy to send, we would all receive thousands of messages a day from each of thousands of sources were it not prohibited. Since many people break the no spam rules and send it out anyway, we all have had some taste of what it would be like if it were not prohibited. Spam understandably makes people mad.

When they get mad, they report spammers to their ISPs or other organizations or to the government authorities. Bad consequences, such as losing Internet service or even facing civil and criminal penalties, result from spamming. Therefore, you want to make sure that you never spam!

The Internet covers the entire world. There are many different laws in many different jurisdictions pertaining to spam. Plus, losing your Internet service or having your domain blocked due to spam is a matter of contract that varies from provider to provider, each having its own specific rules about spam in its "Acceptable Use Policy." So, how can you possibly avoid spam when there are so many different rules and regulations? The answer is to use common sense. In a subsequent installment we will discuss the technical rules and contracts, but for now, let us just show you how to use your common sense to avoid spam.

THE RULES OF THUMB

Here are the Rules of Thumb you can use:

1. Never use e-mail for advertising with one, and only one, exception: when you have a clear "opt-in" event.

2. When advertising with e-mail in an "opt-in" situation, always supply a working "opt-out" mechanism.

3. Never annoy anyone with any kind of e-mail.

4. Never mislead anyone (in either the opt-in process or in the e-mail subject header).
Now we will discuss each rule of thumb in turn.

RULE OF THUMB NO. 1—

NEVER USE E-MAIL FOR ADVERTISING UNLESS YOU HAVE A CLEAR "OPT-IN" EVENT.

Again, e-mail is for communicating, not for advertising. The same is generally true of Newsgroups (Usenet), Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and Web-based Discussion Boards. Your own site on the World Wide Web (or another's site - with permission) is the only Internet Resource where advertising is generally acceptable.

Many marketers are resistant to this, but the sooner you accept this simple truth, the better off you will be. There are many effective ways to use Websites to market on the Internet. These techniques often involve using the one exception to the e-mail rule—the "opt-in" exception—as part of the process. But, the process begins with a Web page, whether that Web page is yours or another's with your ad on it.

The spam rules usually refer to UCC. If the e-mail has been "solicited," it generally is not considered spam. (Also, if the e-mail is not "commercial," it is generally not considered spam—more on this in later installments.)

How do you know whether e-mail has been "solicited"?

While there are no hard and fast rules that everyone will agree on, your common sense will provide you with a working definition that should be relatively safe. E-mail is not spam if it has been requested or consented to or if permission has been granted to send it to a particular recipient.

There are two kinds of consent:
express and implied.

=>Express consent is where someone communicates directly to you permission to send an e-mail. Examples of express consent are when someone types in their e-mail address on a form on your Web page requesting more information or sends you an e-mail in response to a classified ad.

=>Implied consent occurs when someone performs some act from which permission can be inferred. An example of implied consent is when someone posts a URL on your FFA page or takes advantage of some other free resource you are offering.

(Be careful here, though, the extent of implied consent is very limited.)
Implied consent also arises in many instances where you have a pre-existing relationship with someone. Ultimately, the question of whether implied consent exists is a question of fact to be decided based on all of the circumstances of a particular situation. Your opinion as the one accused of spam is not the opinion that matters.

The opinion that matters is the opinion of your ISP or local authorities who will decide whether you have spammed or not.

When someone fills out a form or accepts a free service, this is generally referred to as "opting in." That is, they have opted to accept an e-mail from you. When we use the term "opted," we are referring to the same concept as "consent" or "permission" discussed above. Another example of an opt-in is the opt-in e-mail lists.

There are a few such e-mail lists on E-groups, Onelist, Topica, and other such free e-mail list services available on the Internet. If the list's creator allows, and the hosting service allows, ads may be acceptable on the list.

The people who subscribe to the list are deemed to have "opt-in" to receive commercial e-mails sent through the list. (Note that the extent of this implied consent is only for e-mail sent through the list. If you send the list members e-mail directly, rather than through the list, you will be spamming.)

If you are accused of spamming, you will need to be able to clearly establish a documented opt-in event to justify the e-mail. The e-mail you sent must also be within the scope of the opt-in, or you will be guilty of spamming.

So, the bottom line is that e-mail is NOT a tool you can rely on to generate leads or new customers. Rather, e-mail is a tool that can only be used in conjunction with some other resource through which an opt-in can first be established. However tempting it is to buy a CD of over a million e-mail addresses and blast your ad out to them, do not do it. You will be spamming if you do.

RULE OF THUMB NO. 2 -

ALWAYS SUPPLY AN OPT-OUT MECHANISM.

Even when you have a clear opt-in event (which is the only situation where you should be sending commercial e-mail), you must include an opt-out mechanism in the e-mail. You must give the recipient the option of communicating with you that your e-mail is no longer welcome. The mechanism you use must work to get that communication to you in a timely manner and you must immediately obey the opt-out request. Opt-out mechanisms are generally of two types.

One is a line in the e-mail that states that one can reply to the e-mail or send an e-mail to another stated address, putting "REMOVE" in the subject heading. The other common opt-out mechanism is to supply a URL in the e-mail, which if clicked on, will automatically remove someone from your mailing list. Either one is fine—as long as it works.

A belief commonly held among Internet users is that opt-out mechanisms are untrustworthy. It is often advised that the process is used by unscrupulous marketers to confirm that you have a working e-mail address, which they will use for further spamming rather than to remove you from the list.

Therefore, any mistake or negligence with your opt-out mechanism will immediately put you under a cloud of suspicion. Make sure that you timely and carefully attend to your opt-out requests.

An opt-out request must be immediately honored. Despite what many ill-informed people believe and say, you should know that it only takes one "no" anywhere in the process to void all prior expressions of consent. There is no way to trap anyone into being forced to receive e-mail from you.

Nothing they do prevents them from opting out at any later point.
One tricky situation for opt-outs is the opt-in mail list. You send your mail to the list and the list then forwards it to the other members on the list. Often you will be sent a request to remove from one of the other members, but you do not have the capacity to remove them from the list.

In opt-in e-mail list situations, you should always include a statement in your e-mail advising the recipients that the e-mail is being sent through a particular e-mail list and that they must remove themselves from the list to opt-out of the e-mail. Give them the name of the list and the opt-out address.

RULE OF THUMB NO. 3 -

NEVER ANNOY ANYONE WITH ANY KIND OF E-MAIL.

With respect to the gray areas, it helps to remember that you will never get in trouble if no one ever accuses you of spamming. If you never annoy anyone, no one should ever be motivated to report you. If you treat others as you would have them treat you, you are not likely to annoy them. Because some people have thin skin, however, and will be annoyed where you would not be, using the Golden Rule is by no means foolproof. It helps to think in terms of what annoys the average person, but to be safe, you need to think in terms of what annoys the overly sensitive person as well.

It's a mystery to me why, but many aggressive marketers approach Internet marketing as a kind of war game. They want to kill your e-mail or your ad and strike you repeatedly with theirs. I don't know about you, but it sure as heck doesn't put me in the mood to join something or buy something when I have been defeated in an Internet war game of ads. E-mail autoresponders are the weapon of choice in these war games. For example, I place an ad on Yahoo! Classifieds.

I receive an e-mail that says, "Responding to your ad." The content of the e-mail clearly reveals that the sender knows nothing of my ad and could care less. He only wants to put his ad in my face, using some ridiculous pretext that his reading of my ad (which he didn't do) demonstrates to him that I am a good candidate for his opportunity.

Then, were I naive enough to respond to his e-mail and point out that I am not interested in his opportunity, I would immediately receive an autoresponse message with even more information about his opportunity. Also, in the process of responding, I would have gotten myself added to his e-mail list so that I would receive more info every week about this opportunity in which I have no interest. No matter how hard I search, I can find no way to actually opt-out from his list.

Am I going to report him for spamming?
You bet your bippy I am!

Another example of the war game is people who join the opt-in lists and then hook up an autoresponder to the account with which they joined the list. Even though every single one of these lists prohibits using autoresponders, they are quite commonly used anyway. When you send out e-mail to the list, you immediately get back autoresponses from hundreds of the members of the list.

They will never read the list nor your e-mail, but they will stack the list with their ads and then, on top of that, will autorespond to yours sent from the list.

Such tactics are absurd, ridiculous, ineffective, annoying, and unlawful. People get away with them only because they are technically savvy enough to hide their identities and make it so time consuming to track them down that most victims will not take the time to do it. But these are the extreme examples.

Let's look at some of the more subtle issues.
If you take care to always make sure that your e-mail is pleasant, you will not only be less likely to be accused of spamming, but you will more effectively develop relationships—which is the key to any successful marketing. You should take pains to be polite and sincere in all your e-mail correspondence. While you have to protect yourself from the war game spammers, you need to provide some way for people who read your e-mail to directly respond to you—where you will actually read their response.

Only use e-mail autoresponders in the most controlled of situations and use them with great care. In fact, there are really only two situations I know of where an autoresponder is appropriate. One is where someone fills out a form on your Web page and you need to confirm that the e-mail address they supplied is a valid e-mail address. The other is when you host FFA pages. Autoresponders should rarely, if ever, be triggered by an incoming e-mail in my opinion. The only exception would be form submissions. While automation is a goal for some tasks and is being made more and more possible by the Internet, communication should be personal, not automated.

Take pains never to annoy people with your Internet marketing, whether through automation, insincerity, rudeness, or as we discuss below, misleading tactics.

RULE OF THUMB NO. 4 -

NEVER MISLEAD ANYONE.

Being bothered by correspondence one did not ask for and does not want is something that annoys most everyone. Another thing that annoys the heck out of the average person is being misled. What most people want is good, solid, honest information about what they have expressed an interest in and no more.

People become annoyed when they are misled. If they request one type of information and get another, they feel used.

This factor comes into play, among other places, in choosing a subject header for e-mail that you do choose to send. If the subject says "$50 deposited into your bank account tomorrow—no strings, no obligation," and then the body of the e-mail mentions nothing about a free $50, but proceeds to try to sell them something, they have been misled and will be understandably annoyed. I have read so-called marketing advice that recommends using subject headings that will get people to read your e-mail regardless of whether the subject has anything to do with your offer. Nothing could be worse advice! Such "bait and switch" tactics are dishonest, immoral, often illegal, and are guaranteed to annoy the dickens out of the recipient of your e-mail. Do not do it.

Another guaranteed way to annoy someone, spurring them to report you for spam, is to mislead them about the type of information they are requesting. If you have a Web page which collects e-mail addresses to send more info about an interesting subject, but you send entirely different correspondence from what they expected, you will certainly have trouble. Honesty is more than just morality, it is good business practice. You do not want to start any relationship with a client, customer, or affiliate by dishonest correspondence. As we will discuss later in this course, "trust" is the most important factor in any business relationship.

So, it is very important in both the opt-in event and the subject header of e-mail to be very honest and straight-forward about the information that will be in the body of the e-mail. To do otherwise, can only make people mad and get you in trouble.

THERE ARE MANY EFFECTIVE INTERNET MARKETING TECHNIQUES THAT DO NOT INVOLVE SPAM

A common response to the spam rules is to throw up one’s hands and say "It's too complicated and too risky, why bother with Internet marketing?" The answer to that question is that Internet marketing is a powerful, yet inexpensive tool, that can be used by people of few resources other than a will to succeed in obtaining financial success. In later installments, you can look forward to learning how to research the web to find high traffic Websites and then use non-commercial, non-spam e-mail to develop relationships with the publishers of those Websites.

From these relationships can arise the opportunity to partner with them to promote your business or your opportunity at little cost. We will also discuss how to correctly use opt-in procedures to reach large audiences without spamming. We will also discuss how to use content to gain some Internet traffic to whom you can promote your business. This is just a small sample of the effective techniques we will teach you in this course. We need to cover spam to make sure that you don't knock yourself out of the game before you have a chance to get started right. The bulk of this course, however, will dig in with earnest on the how-to's of successful Internet marketing.

Harnessing the Power of Email Marketing

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First, I`d like you to consider these four facts:

*A DIRECT MAIL PIECE costs about 40-cents in postage alone.(And then you have to factor in paper and printing costs.)

*A PHONE CALL can cost just as much - or more - than a direct mail piece.

*A PHONE CALL wastes time (and time is money) because you`llspend precious minutes - sometimes hours or days - trying tocontact the right person.

*A MESSAGE left on voice mail is almost always a waste oftime, and therefore a waste of money.Depressing? Not at all.

Harnessing the Power of Email Marketing Given the inherent problems with traditional marketing techniques, it`s important to master the BASIC STRATEGIES FOR INTEGRATING EMAIL into your overall campaign. As I`ve just shown you, sending out an EMAIL CAN BE MUCH CHEAPER than other marketing methods. Proceed with caution,however. Email can also cost you a fortune -- in lost opportunities AND cold hard cash -- IF you don`t know the basics.So that`s where we`re going to start.

First, always keep in mind that your "primary objective".the master key that unlocks your "Success Vault" in InternetMarketing is to build your mailing list - your EMAIL MAILING LIST. (Often referred to as your "In-house list.")The addresses you collect are going to mean the difference between the middle-of-the-road results that Average Joe andJane are achieving and the through-the-roof, over-the-top,to-the-moon-and-back MEGA-success that top online sellersachieve. (The difference really is that dramatic.)

Sodon`t miss the boat: The time is NOW to start building your list of email addresses (prospects). REVIEW You can begin to grow your list simply by capturing emails from people who visit your website, as we have already discussed in a previous lesson.

=> Pop Quiz: What`s the easiest way to convince people to give you their email address?

(Answer: Offer an irresistible freebie with a sign-up form on your site or ina pop-up box, drive traffic to your site, and watch as people start entering their email address. you`ve "in the groove". you`re capturing people`s emails like crazy. But if you`re just sitting there - well, you know the old saying, "Even if you`re on the right track, you`ll get run over if you just sit there."So what next?-- Let me take a moment from telling how to build your email list to remind you why. It`s been said that - YOU CAN GET RICH WITH AN EMAIL LIST OF JUST 1000 PEOPLE!Think about that.

Then stop thinking and get going on new ways to capture and keep email addresses. presents an unparalleled opportunity for you to build a mountain of wealth with a leads-buying program that rewards you quickly and generously).GIVE `TIL IT HURTS!

If you want to keep getting addresses, start giving stuff away! Give, give, and keep finding more things to give! And since you can`t send a TOASTER through email, why not give the far more valuable -- and far more affordable for you -- INFORMATION PRODUCTS, business tools, and expert advice - maybe even a no-cost/obligation email marketingcourse like this one!

DRIP, DRIP, DRIP.You`ll want to have a series of letters already set up so that they can be "dripped" on your prospects on a regular basis. Send a message daily, every other day, or onwhatever schedule suits you best, but make contact AT LEAST EVERY 7 DAYS.

If you`re not confident in your writing skills, you have two choices: you can hire a professional to write the letters for you or you can use a system already set up with letters to help you build your email list. (I suppose the third choice is to just give up and bury your heard in the sand,but that`s no way to make a million!)...

Wise Ways to Collect Email Addresses and Build Your

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If you`re wondering why you need emails, there`s a key point to remember: your whole objective must be to BUILD A LARGE EMAIL LIST of prospects and customers. Once you have an email list, you can begin to make SERIOUS MONEY So how do you capture email addresses?

I`m glad you asked.The answers follow.

=> Wise Way #1 - OFFER A FREEBIE You have to give in order to get. If you want people too ffer up their email address, you`re going to have to offer up an incentive. Nothing works better than something that`s complimentary (you spell that F-R-E-E). You can give away no-cost reports, books, software, or even sample pages of abook. Works like a charm.

=> Wise Way #2 - USE POP-UPS Pop-ups are one of the most common methods you can use to capture email addresses and build your email list quickly and with ease. Simply construct a web page containing code for a form and set the page to open (pop up) when visitors ENTER OR EXIT your site. Make sure the pop-up offer is something that`s valuable enough to motivate visitors to take time to give you their contact information. Your offer can be a complimentary report, download, or ebook that arrives instantly throughyour autoresponder to their email inbox when they give youtheir email.-Word to the Wise: If you need a pop-up, you can pick one up F-R-E-E (there`s that word again) "Instant" is a very powerfulpop-up offer.

=> Wise Way #3 - USE POST CARDS If you have a mailing list that contains snail mail (street) addresses, convert it into an email list by sending out a postcard and inviting people to VISIT YOUR WEBSITE to receive a gift of some kind -- a report, a discount coupon,etc. Visitors don`t have to pay in order to receive theirgifts, they simply need to enter an email address.-A Word to the Wise from the U.S. Post Office: Postage ismuch less expensive for a postcard than a standard-size letter. (Not only are they economical, postcards are morelikely to get your message across since the consumer doesn`t have to open an envelope.)

=> Wise Way #4 - SUBSCRIBER BOX ON EVERY PAGE This is a clever trick that so many people overlook. Put a RESPONSE FORM ON EVERY PAGE of your website offering a newsletter or other freebie. This will increase the number of email addresses you capture exponentially.Why? When search engines index the pages of your website, a visitor may come directly to a page other than your homepage. If you only have a subscriber box on your home page,you`re missing the boat, not to mention the thousands ofvisitors who bypass your homepage.-

=> Wise Way #5 - CONTESTS Contests very often prove to be a good way to generate traffic and buzz for your business. Create a contest and puta form on your site or in a pop-up box. The entry "fee" is their email address.-Word to the Wise: Not all the people who sign up for your contest are good prospects. Many are just contest "junkies" -- people who are only looking for freebies and have no intention of buying a product or service.-Warning to the Wise: If your prizes are cash or large-ticket items, you should be sure to check with local agencies to make sure you`re not violating any contest laws.

=> Wise Way #6 - DISPLAY YOUR AUTORESPONDER ADDRESS Most people give their website link when they place solo ads, ezine ads, or other marketing messages. To be one step ahead of the game in collecting email addresses, LIST YOUR AUTORESPONDER ADDRESS instead of your URL. This way you can capture email address and funnel them into your follow-up sales letters.-Word to the Wise: Don`t have an autoresponder?Word from our "Sponsor": Autoresponders you can use are just one sample of the incredible resources . -- Revenue Sharing Value Program -- are all designed togenerate BIG bucks with LITTLE effort.

=> Wise Way #7 - JUST ASK If you`re chatting with a prospect on the phone or apotential customer stops by your place of business, don`t beshy: ask for an email address or business card (whichusually includes their email address).Okay, you know what you want...you know what you need. It`stime for you to set your traps and CAPTURE THOSE EMAILS!In the meantime, I`ll be putting the final touches on your next lesson.

Nothing Happens by Accident

2006-04-09T19:04:00.000-07:00

You are here-right-now for a reason. And so am I.

Maybe you've read all the books on Internet marketing but are still struggling to make money-online. I say hold on to your cash...You've dreamed of having your own online business and you feel it's about time you finally did something about it.

You don't have to trust me. You don't really know me.But we do have something in common. We BOTH WANT MORE OUT OF LIFE!

Maybe, you're sick an tired of 'making a living' by helping other people (your boss) get rich while you can hardly afford a vacation or extra things for your family.Maybe you're sick and tired of being poor and you're ready to do something about it, right now.Maybe, you're almost ready to 'give up' on the idea of owning your own business (Don't! There's STILL Hope) You may think you need contacts with important people to make really good *money in your own business (no you don't!)You may think that your lack of time or investment capital is keeping you back... (they’re not keeping you back) You may think that making money-online is hard to do... (It’s not)There's only ONE THING keeping you back ...and it's not any of these things. It's the ability to decide, to make up your mind.Once you decide ‘What You Want’ the necessary action will follow. What do you want?How do you want to live? Too Nervous to try something that feels right?Decide today- Be Bold TODAY- Take Action RIGHT away!
This program can change your life- IF- you let it.

Quote of the Day:

2006-04-09T19:02:00.000-07:00

"It doesn't make any difference whether what you face is something that affects your work, your personal relationships, your sense of security, your appraisal of self-worth, or your appearance--the way you think about your situation largely determines whether you will do anything about it and what you will do." -- Dr. Arthur Freeman

Incredible Ways To Keep Your Sales Soaring

2006-04-09T19:00:00.000-07:00

1. Maximize the effectiveness of your banner ads.Don't just use the same ad on every banner, use avariety to attract the greatest number of clickers.

2. Make your web site load much faster by cuttingdown on banner ads and start using more buttons.Button ads are also smaller and take up less space.

3. Offer free advertising space to well known andrespected companies on your web site. Sometimespeople link their business credibility to yours.

4. People have been taught all their life to respectpeople in authority. Tell your visitors that you arethe president or CEO of your business.

5. Offer people a free telephone consultation beforethey order your product. When they get to knowyou personally, it could convert to more sales.

6. Test the "bill me later option" on your web site.Most people are honest and will pay you. It is apowerful little niche and could increase your sales.

7. Find a charity your target audience would likely support. Tell people on your ad copy that you willgive a percentage of the profits to that charity.

8. Hold a "buy the most wins contest" on your website. Tell people each monthly winner will get theirentire purchase refunded.

9. Attract visitors to your web site by offering thema free course. You could package the course ona follow-up autoresponder and send lessons daily.

10. Interview people related to your industry andget their legal permission to convert it to an article.Promote your web site by submitting it to ezines.

Secrets to Making a Fortune Online

2006-04-09T18:58:00.000-07:00

Wildly profitable Internet business in your spare time. If you're serious about earning an extra incomefrom a Internet business, then you must learnand apply these 8 “Secrets” today.

#1: Leverage Your Time. You'll never-get rich trading dollars for hours. The wealthy let their money` and other people work for them. You may only be able to work 10 hours a week, but you can leverage the work of 1,000 other people to create a 10,000 hour work week. That's the way to become wealthy. By the way, you can do this without ever hiring any employees.

#2: Use an Automatic Selling System. Guess what? The number one reason people can't make it in business is because they can't or don't like to sell. The solution is to simply set up an automatic selling system where lead generation, sifting, and selling, is all done for you.

#3: Don't Re-Invent The Wheel. Don't start from scratch. That's the hardest way to do anything. Inventors go through tons of frustration, failed tests, and often ridicule. Find a system that's already working. Then just jump in and follow it. Just do what already works.

#4: Find a Personal Coach. Every top athlete has a coach. In fact, many of the best have two or three coaches. They're there for one reason... to help them be the best they can possibly be. A coach will help you set your course. They'll help keep you on track. They'll take you from where you are today to where you want to be.

#5: Generate leads. Lead generation is the biggest advantage in most businesses.

#6: Use Tax Advantages. Starting your own online business gives you the advantage of tax benefits not available to the general public. Everyone should make money-from their home with an online business just to save on taxes if nothing else...

#7: Build a Residual Income. Don't just sell a product one time. Find a way to earn a residual income from anything you sell. Sell something today. Earn an income on it every month for the rest of your life. This is how you build real wealth. It isn't by selling a one~time item and finding a new customer for it every day. Work an hour today and earn an income forever.

#8: Set goals. Most people live paycheck to paycheck all their lives. They hope Social Security will take care of them when they get older. That's a mistake. Social security isn't enough for people to live on today. It definitely won't be when you have to rely on it. You have to make a plan today...or you'll end up in desperation tomorrow.

Power-Packed Ways To Spark Your Sales

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@ Spend money on targeted advertising instead of mass media advertising. You don't want to waste your ad dollars on people who aren't interested.

@ Increase your profits by concentrating on small details. Improving small things like text size, color,or graphics can really make a positive difference.

@ Keep your offers flexible. If you offer a set price for your product, you could offer the people that can't afford it an optional payment plan.

@ Offer your knowledge or consulting as a bonus product. You could offer a free 15 or 30 minute consultation. This will add value to your product.

@ Personalize all your e-mail messages so they get read. Include the recipient's name in the subject line.This will grab peoples attention quickly.

@ Keep your web site consistent. You don't want to keep things on your web site that are unrelated to the theme of your web site.

@ Attract more subscribers to your free e-zine by giving them free bonuses like e-books, software,online services and other incentives.

@ Sell advertising space in your e-zine and on your web site. This will create an extra income stream for your business.

@ Make your web site ready for the public. Have an "About Us" page and clear descriptions of what actions you want your visitors to take.

@ Don't just start advertising everywhere, plan out your marketing. Locate places and publications that your target audience would congregate around.

High-Impact Viral Marketing Strategies

2006-04-08T19:15:00.000-07:00

Viral Marketing is allowing people to giveaway and use your free product or service in order to multiply your marketing quickly over the internet.

The idea behind viral marketing is that you include your ad with the freebie people giveaway or use. Below are ten high impact viral marketing strategies:

(1) Allow people to reprint your articles on their website, in their e-zine, newsletter, magazine or ebooks.Include your resource box and the option for article reprints at the bottom of each article.

(2) Allow people to use any of your freebies as free bonuses for products or services they sell. Include your ad on all your freebies.

(3) Allow people to use your online discussion board for their own web site. Some people don't have one. Just include your banner ad at the top of the board.

(4) Allow people to sign up for a free web site on your server. Since you are giving away the space, require them to include your banner ad at the topof the site.

(5) Allow people to add their link to your free website directory. Just require that they return a link back to your web site, advertising your directory.

(6) Allow people to provide your free online service to their web site, visitors, or e-zine subscribers.They could be free e-mail, e-mail consulting, search engine submissions, etc.

(7) Allow people to give away your free software.Just include your business advertisement inside the software program.

(8) Allow people to give away your free web design graphics, fonts, templates, etc. Just include your ad on them or require people to link directly to your web site.

(9) Allow people to place an advertisement in your free ebook if, in exchange, they give away the ebook to their web visitors or e-zine subscribers.

(10) Allow people to give away your free ebook to their visitors. Then, their visitors will also give it away. This will just continue to spread your ad all over the internet.

How Can You Use Blogs To Increase Traffic?

2006-04-08T18:26:00.000-07:00

How can you use blogs to incease traffic?

Blogs can increase traffic through the following:

1. If your blog has valuable content,
this will attract readers to your blog who will visit again
Most people who perform searches using search engines are actually looking for information, for solutions. The more helpful and relevant content you have, the easier it is for you to attract visitors and also to turn them into loyal readers and subscribers.

2. With a Blog, you can submit to the many Blog directories that exist online.
By submitting to the many blog directories in the proper category, you can expand your reach to targeted subscribers or readers who wants to read your posting on your area of specialisation.

3. Blogs promote relationship building and trust with your readers, as it allows you to interact with them. Your readers can refer a friend and imagine the traffic power that can be generated if each one of your reader make a referral.

For example, if you have 500 readers and each one makes a referral, that will be an additional 500 new subscribers, giving you a total of 1,000 subscribers/readers.

4. By attracting search engine 'bot's to visit the site more often
All search engines have a program known as a 'search engine bot' which basically 'spiders' or searches web sites and bring back the results they have to the search engines.

And 'search engine bots' love content, especially pages with related keywords.
The more frequent you update your pages, the more frequent that search engines
A Blog is actually a content management system. If that sounds too technical, a Blog is a push-button publishing system.

There is no uploading of pages to web host accounts, unlike web pages

For example, with Blogger, you just set up a free account, write what you want, and press "publish".

Your Blog posting will be instantly published and is automatically hosted for you. The hosting is also free by the way.

5. Blogs can be easily turned into an RSS Feed, for syndication.
With RSS Feeds, your Blog contents can be published by other websites that pulls RSS Feeds based on targeted keywords or content automatically.
By turning your Blog into an RSS Feed, you can also submit to the many RSS directories out there, again expanding your reach you otherwise will not have with a normal web site

6. You can add "podcasts" or "videocasts" to your Blog, and reach out to even more people, Audio learners especially "Ipodders", people who own Apple Ipod and likes to download audio from the Internet and listen; as well as Visual learners.

16 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

2006-04-08T18:12:00.000-07:00

You've got your blog set up and you've started posting pithy, useful information that your niche market would benefit from and enjoy. Days go by, you keep publishing, but no one comments and your traffic stats are barely registering. What do you do?

Like any website you own, you must do some blog promotion to start driving traffic to your site.

==> Here are 16 steps, in no particular order of importance, that you can start doing now to get traffic moving to your blog.

1. Set up a Bloglet subscription form on your blog and invite everyone in your network to subscribe: family, friends, colleagues, clients, associates.
Http://www.bloglet.com

2. Set up a feed on MyYahoo.com so your site gets regularly spidered by the Yahoo search engine (see tutorial on http://www.biztipsblog.com)
http://www.my.yahoo.com

3. Read and comment on other blogs that are in your target niche. Don't write things like "nice blog" or "great post." Write intelligent, useful comments with a link to your blog.

4. Use Ping-0-matic to ping blog directories. Do this every time you publish.
http://www.pingomatic.com

5. Submit your blog to traditional search engines: http://www.submitfire.com

6. Submit your blog to blog directories. The most comprehensive list of directories is on this site:
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/
Tip: Create a form to track your submissions; this can take several hours when you first start so schedule an hour a day for submitting or hire a VA to do it for you.

7. Add a link to your blog in your email signature file.

8. Put a link to your blog on every page of your website.

9. If you publish a newsletter, make sure you have a link to your blog in every issue.

10. Include a link to your blog as a standard part of all outgoing correspondence such as autoresponder sequences, sales letters, reports, white papers, etc.

11. Print your blog URL on your business cards, brochures and flyers.

12. Make sure you have an RSS feed URL that people can subscribe to. The acronym RSS means Rich Site Summary, or some may consider its meaning as Really Simple Syndication. It is a document type that lists updates of websites or blogs available for syndication. These RSS documents (also known as 'feeds') may be read using aggregators (news readers). RSS feeds may show headlines only or both headlines and summaries.
To learn how news aggregators/RSS readers work, see this site: http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-readers.htm

13. Post often to keep attracting your subscribers to come back and refer you to others in their networks; include links to other blogs, articles and websites in your posts

14. Use Trackback links when you quote or refer to other blog posts. What is TrackBack? Essentially what this does is send a message from one server to another server letting it know you have posted a reference to their post. The beauty is that a link to your blog is now included on their site.

15. Write articles to post around the web in article directories. Include a link to your blog in the author info box (See example in our signature below).

16. Make a commitment to blog everyday. 10 minutes a day can help increase your traffic as new content attracts search engine spiders. Put it on your calendar as a task every day at the same time.

Tip: Use a hit counter to track your visitor stats:
how many unique visitors, how many page views, average length of visit. You can get a free hit counter at http://www.sitemeter.com Denise Wakeman of Next Level Partnership, and Patsi Krakoff of Customized Newsletter Services, have teamed up to create blogging classes and marketing services for independent professionals.

You can read and subscribe to their blogs at
http://www.biztipsblog.com/,
http://www.coachezines.com/ and http://www.bizbooknuggets.com

Author: Denise Wakeman

Article source: http://www.goarticles.com/. Used with author's permission.

3 Key Tips for Starting a Business Blog

2006-04-08T18:03:00.000-07:00

Excited yet? You should be--blogging's not just a winning strategy, it's also a lot of fun! The beauty of blogging is that you can easily incorporate it into your daily schedule of tasks. You can even blog when you're on the road.

But what does it take to become a really successful blogger?

Great content:

If your content isn't interesting and relevant to your target market, your blog won't work. It's as simple as that. You'll be surprised, however, how easy it is to find things to write about if you really put your mind to it. It could be news articles about your industry, product updates, interviews, personal insights into topics of importance to your target audience, and much more.
Regular updating: I won't lie to you: there are some days when I really find it hard to find the time to post a new article.

But if I don't post, no one will come back. It's like subscribing to a daily newspaper but only getting a copy delivered now and then! So post often and your audience will keep coming back. And regularly adding fresh content to your blog also gives you a boost in the search engine rankings.

Your own distinct voice: It's important that you write in your own voice. A blog is no place for formality and corporate speak. It's more of a forum, a place where ideas can flourish and topics of current interest can be debated. You don't even need to be a brilliant writer; you just need to be able to relate to your audience and give them good content.

Final Thoughts Starting a blog can take as little as five minutes. Of course, starting a blog is the easy part; turning your blog into a strategic tool that drives traffic and sales to your online business is a completely different matter.
Building a truly effective blog that keeps people coming back again and again takes a lot more than five minutes; it takes time and dedication to develop a blog that keeps your audience coming back for more.

Harness the Marketing Power of Blogs & Get yours FREE start Blogging!!

2006-04-08T17:49:00.000-07:00

However, what you may not know is that a blog can also be a very powerful marketing tool for your business, and some people actually earn an income just from blogging alone.

The fact is, blogging is fast becoming an extremely important strategy for any online marketer.

An effective blog can:

drive swarms of traffic to your main website,
generate more product sales,
create an additional stream of advertising income,
be a great customer service tool,
and much more!
Blogs have an informal, conversational style, and readers can join in by commenting on each post.

Blogs can be chatty, informative, opinionated and often humorous, and it's this "human" aspect of blogs that draws many people to them.
But the best part about blogs is how accessible they are to everyone.

Blogs are free (or very inexpensive) to set up using services like Blogger or TypePad. They're also easy to use (you can literally create your own blog in less than five minutes) and easy to promote with all the new tools and resources that have been created specifically for blogs.

How You Can Use a Blog to Accelerate Online Success The fact is, blogs are no longer just online diaries of people's personal lives. Both online and offline businesses can use blogs to take their products and services to a wider audience, increasing their traffic, leads and sales.
Let's look more closely at a few of the extremely powerful ways your business can benefit from a blog.

With an effective business blog, you can:

Humanize your business.
Because a blog is much more informal than other websites, you can write posts in your own voice and give your business more of a human face. This helps reassure prospective customers that there's a "real person" behind the website who'll take care of their needs. It also allows you to inject much more of your own personality into your online business than your main sales site could do.

Improve your customer service.

Your blog can act as a kind of interactive FAQ, allowing your customers to submit questions and you to answer them. You can also provide product updates, how-to articles, and other information of relevance to your customers. Prospective customers who see your blog will be encouraged by your commitment to good customer service.

Give your target market the information they're looking for.

With its automatic archiving feature--by date and category--a blog is a fantastic content-management system. It's easy for you to post new information on a regular basis, and it's easy for your visitors to find the information they want. With a well-written, regularly updated blog, you can become a reliable resource in your industry and build a following of loyal readers who depend on your content. These people will be your best potential customers.

Drive traffic to your sales website.

If you already have a website, a blog can give your traffic levels a real boost. For starters, your blog will attract new visitors that you can then redirect to your main sales website through links and special offers. But an even more effective technique is to use strategic keywords and links to specific sales pages to dramatically improve the search engine rankings of both your blog and your main website.

Build your credibility and establish yourself as an industry expert.

You can give your credibility a real boost by regularly posting valuable and relevant information on your blog. It's a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your subject area, and allow your visitors to feel much more comfortable buying from you.

Promote your products or services.

You can actually sell products directly from a blog, or you can use your blog to mention new products and direct visitors to your sales website.
Generate extra income. There are now several advertising programs available, such as Google AdSense, that allow you to monetize your blog and generate an extra revenue stream.

Some other blogging sites that I know:

http://www.livejournal.com

http://www.diaryland.com

http://www.easyjournal.com

http://www.xanga.com

http://www.pitas.com

http://www.eponym.com

http://www.blogstream.com

http://www.blogtastic.com

http://www.blogsource.com

http://www.Blogharbor.com

As far as I know these are all free.

Blogs Directories

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5 Star Blogs - a growing human edited blog search directory. By submiting your blog to 5 Star Blogs, you will have the opportunity to gain more exposure to new readers and increase your blog's traffic. Blog listings feature user rankings, reviews and carefully hand-crafted screenshots. Only "5 Star" blogs need apply. Blogs must be in English. No X-rated, illegal, unethical blogs allowed
BigBlogMedia.com - Directory of blogs containing articles and reviews aimed at specific interests ranging from cunlinary arts to celebrity gossip
Birmingham Bloggers - bloggers from Birmingham, England
bitacoras.net - A directory for Weblogs in Spanish
Bitadir - A new directory for Weblogs in Spanish
blo.gs - a directory of recently updated weblogs and tools for tracking interesting weblogs, in the spirit of services like weblogs.com, linkwatcher.com, and blogtracker
Blog Africa - open listing of Africa-related weblogs
Blog Catalog - a listing of Blogs from all around the World. The Blogs listed in Blog Catalog range from Political Blogs to Sport Blogs. Blog Catalog is the ideal site for users looking to Submit A Blog and for users Searching For A Blog. If you don't see a Blog category that fits your Blog you can always recommend one. Suggestions to Blog Catalog are always welcome
Blog Flux - created as the spiritual successor to the Eatonweb Portal
Blog Hot or Not - view random blogs and rate them from 1 to 10
The Blog Hunter - searchable index of weblogs, along with reviews, ping and trackback services, and a Blog O the Week feature
Blog Universe - Blog directory categorized by genre
Blogarama - Search and enjoy web logs from all over the world
Blogdir.com - Latin American Webloggers Community
Bloggeries - a new blog directory. It is a list of categorized blogs from all around the world. Free and paid submissions are available
Bloggernity - searchable subject index of blogs
blogging ecosystem - Regularly updated link-based ranking of a number of weblogs and related sites
Blogging Network - Provides Web-based blogging that earns the writer money. Blogs by professionals and new writers creates a real-time exchange of ideas, news and articles. Since it is a network even new blogs find an existing audience. Readers can use the constantly updated search/directory function and browse blogs by category, popularity and newest posts
bloggoggle - a customized directory of blogging professionals
BlogHop - Someone had to put all that chaos there!
Bloginality - weblogger personality types. Find your type and others the same
Blogion.com - a blog directory intended to make searching and finding blogs about your interests extremely easy. There are many ways to search for blogs on the blogion system. Blogs can be found by language, country, keywords, pre-defined categories, and even by blog host
BlogsCanada - listing over 10,000 blogs
blogs4God - A semi-definitive list of Christian webloggers
BlogStreet - Find out your Neighbourhood of related blogs, Search Engine, Who's BlogRolling you, RSS Discovery and Top 100 Blogs
BlogSweet.com - Blog directory featuring 100% free submission. Best optimized for search engines
Blogtagstic - an English language human moderated blog directory. All links in this blog directory go straight to the bloggers site without redirects to improve your blogs backlinks. Visitors can browse the blogs in this directory by using tags, tags are how blogs are categorised in this directory
BlogThat.net Blog Directory - Human edited free blog directory
BlogTree.com - the blog genealogy site. You can register your blogs and record which blogs inspired their creation. You can also search for existing blogs and view which blogs they in turn inspired
Blogwise - bringing you a collection of categorised blogs from around the world. Whatever your taste, interest and culture - there's bound to be a blog out there written by a person just like you
British Blog Directory - BritBlog - A directory of blogs written by British people from all over the world
Canadian Blogs Directory - Shamelessly plugging BlogsCanada.ca
Danish weblogs - blogs from Denmark
dcmetroblogmap - the incredibly spiffy map where you can find bloggers in the D.C. metro area, arranged by metro station
DFW Blogs - bloggers in and around Dallas/Forth Worth
Diary Registry - The Definitive Directory of Online Journals and Diaries Today there are thousands of people all over the world chronicling their lives on the web. In order to help you navigate this fast-growing community
Diarist.Net - is proud to present The Diary Registry. Now indexing more than five thousand sites, it is the largest and most definitive resource for finding online journals and diaries
DirLog - Brazilian Weblog Database
eatonweb portal - 14913 weblogs as of 11.21.03
Euroblogs - list of European weblogs categorized by the home country of its maintainers
GeekPhilosopher - a directory of weblogs accessible by location, topic, or language. Listings include blog excerpts to help new readers locate blogs of shared interests
Get Linked - a database for Weblog and Journal links. Have a link? Add it. Or, just browse the links
GetBlogs.com - human edited directory of blogs and blog related information. Each and every submission made to the directory is reviewed by a real person and all URL's are checked to ensure they point to an actual blog or blog specific resource
Global Voices - a country-by-country aggregation of world blogs: Translations of and links to selected postings from blogs around the world
globe of blogs - specifically for weblogs and blogs. Please do not submit commercial sites, generic personal sites (i.e. poetry, pictures of your dog, etc.), journals or online diaries
High Class Blogs - a non profit directory that lists only interesting blogs of high quality. Awards are given out at the end of each quarter for the best blog in each category
Indiana Blogs! - Exploring Hoosierdom through blogging - compiled by Greg Schwartz
Industry Blogs - cataloging the emerging business blogoshpere. If you are a business blogger please submit your blog to the directory, and subscribe to the category RSS feeds to be notified of new blogs in your Industry
Jewish Blogs - A community website for the Greater Washington, DC Jewish community
LA Blogs - bloggers in and around Los Angeles
The Lefty Directory - A central directory of politically-oriented blogs who identify with liberalism or the left
LeftyBlogs - the place to find out what's happening in the progressive blogosphere across the country, in every state
Library weblogs - for or by librarians
Linked - Weblog and Journal Database
London Bloggers - zoom in on the London Underground map or find your nearest station and discover the bloggers who live nearby
LS Blogs - The directory for bloggers, Submit or find Blogs, Blog Directories, forums and resources
metapitas - Jennifer's picks of interesting pitas
MozillaZine: Weblogs - directory of the blogs hosted by MozillaZine featuring developers and those involved with the Mozilla line of products including Firefox, Thunderbird, and Bugzilla
Nolablogs - Listings from the New Orleans, Louisiana area
nyc bloggers - - A map of New York City that shows where the bloggers are, organized by subway stop. Find out who's blogging in your neighborhood!
Online Writers Directory - everyone is welcome to add a link to their blog
Open Directory - web logs - Sorted by subject, with a tools section
Open Weblog Directory - Lists sites that are regularly updated
ORBlogs - Oregon Weblogs
The Pepys Project - The purpose of this is to collect URL's for web logs, diaries, and journals from around the world, indexed by geographical area and then country
Pitas.com - latest updated sites
[ P O P B L O G ] - a tiny directory for all blogs on pop culture, from music to movies to the plain weird stuff.
Research Blogs - An annotated list that can be used by researchers and academics
San Diego Bloggers - Sites must be updated frequently and originate somewhere in San Diego County, California
seablogs - Seattle weblog portal
Small Business Blog Directory - It includes blogs that are written by small business for small business. Its purpose is for small business owners to find what they need without having to search all over the place and dig through oodles of categories to get to just the right nugget of information
TheVital.Net - a searchable, categorized directory of blog and news sites
Vancouver Bloggers - from Vancouver, Canada
weblogs.com - lists recently updated weblogs
Wil's Domain - categorized directory to blogs from around the world
Zeal - Community-built directory
Xenoblogs - Weblogs from outside the USA

Searching For blogs?

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Adminimizer Toolbar - The easiest tool for updating your Blog with Internet Explorer 6
Archangel Weblog - a new, full featured weblog application. Written in PHP and using a MySQL database backend, Archangel Weblog is easy to install, easy to configure and customize, and easy to use for most anyone
ashnews - a simple program using PHP/MySQL that allows you to easily add a news/blog system to your site
AvantBlog - a very simple interface which will allow you to post to a blog from your Palm or WinCE device via AvantGo
b2 - A news/blog tool
b2evolution - a multi-lingual, multi-user, multi-blog engine. It was developed to provide a free, feature rich, extensible, and easy-to-install solution for efficient Web publishing of information ranging from professional news feeds to personal weblogs. b2evo can easily be installed on almost any LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) host in a matter of minutes
Bleezer - a powerful blogging client. Blog from anywhere. Work with any blogging service. Add tags for any tag service. Create custom markup. Spell check. Advertise. Work online or offline
Blog - An automatic web log program which allows you to update your site easily without the hassles of HTML editing and having to use a separate program to upload your work. Windows client freeware
Blog Alert - will send you daily email notifications when there are new posts to your favorite blog or RSS feed. No account is required, just enter the feed URL and your email address
Blog Navigator - makes it easy to read blogs on the Internet. It integrates into various blog search engines and can automatically determine RSS feeds from within properly coded websites
BlogAmp - a web audio player for bloggers. Blog-Amp can be positioned on a web page or displayed in a mini pop-up window. BlogAmp does not require listeners to use media player applications which means that everyone with a web browser can listen. For bloggers themselves it couldn’t be any easier when it comes to managing, programming and tracking their Blog-Amp. Simply upload any recorded MP3 files to your secure online media manager
Blogarithm - a web service that let's you subscribe to blogs and be notified by email when they have new content. Also has a tool to generate stickers you can add to your own blog to make it easy for readers to subscribe to you. A way to be reminded about blogs you read and to generate more views of your blog
Blog (Web-Tagebuch) - Dies ist die Demonstration eines Webservice, der die Funktionalität eines blogs bereitstellt
BlogBack - Allows visitors to comment on your weblog posts, without the need to host the service yourself
Blogbox - Blogboxes provide exciting, instantly deployed functionality for your blog or Web site. They are free for non-commercial use
blogBuddy - A small Windows client providing a front-end to the blogger.com website
BlogChat - a browser-based chat window that you can attach to your weblog or site. When you are online your visitors can engage in a text discussion with you in real time. The chat can be a popup window or you can embed it right in the page. All you have to do is put some links on your page, we provide the service. If you run PHP and mySql, you can host your own single blogchat by running the original free version. It has less features and requires your hands-on maintenance, but comes as source
BlogCollector - Backup your blog. Publish your blog into a book
BlogCounter - Free comprehensive site statistics and web counter system for bloggers which tracks host/IP (both proxyfied & 'real' IP), referrers, Search Engine keywords, user agents, date & time, resolution & color, operating system, online time spent, page impressions, browsed page paths, currently online visitors and more!
blogdex - System built to harness the power of personal news, amalgamating and organizing personal news content into one navigable source
blogdexter - Will help you jump to the page on blogdex that displays the web addresses of people who have linked to your URL
BlogFace - provides a weblog-style interface to a cataloged collection of objects, without requiring that the catalog or entries be modified, or even know about the BlogFace at all. It will work with any catalog and collection of entry objects, so long as the catalog provides an ISO format date attribute for each entry record
BlogFlix - Use this blog and online service to add video effects (pan and zoom) to blog photos. Also delivers Flash video clips in a small frame in your blog. Just paste a snippet of code to make movies appear. Supports all major blog hosting services
Blogger FAQ blog - The blog formerly known as Blogger archive/template troubles, featuring fixes for problems with Blogger's archives, templates, and more
BloggerBot - Blogger AIM client
BlogHoster - written in PHP and uses a single MySQL database. The entire system includes no flatfile data storage, which means that backing up your system is as simple as downloading your MySQL database. To install BlogHoster, your server only needs PHP 4.2.0 or higher as well as an available MySQL database
Bloglet - offers an email subscription service for your blog
blogLinker - a free tool to manage your web links on your blog/website and to dramatically increase traffic to your site. It can be embedded anywhere in your web page and can be easily configured to fit the existing design of your site. blogLinker is the only tool of its kind
BlogMax - An Emacs package that aids in the creation of a weblog
BlogPHP - has typical features of blog scripts including the ability to post blogs, comments, categories, upload files, add static pages, links and unique features such as an amazingly easy-to-use template system, built-in support system plugin system, complete stats program (uniques and views) and lastly converters for wordpress and onecms
Blogrolling.com - This site provides a free, easy to use service to manage your buddy lists on your blog that works with every major blog tool and website.
BlogSnob - The better, faster way to publicize your personal site
blogsnow - 'reads' blogs, depending on what's going on between 100 and 240 a minute. Out of this stream of information it extracts links and displays them in different views every 10 minutes
Blogster.net - Top 25 -
Blosxom - [pronounced "blossom" or "blogsome"] is a lightweight yet feature-packed Weblog application designed from the ground up with simplicity, usability, and interoperability in mind - Mac OS X
bookmarklet.ping - Allows a user to ping the weblogs.com update server via the
Userland pingSiteForm
bplog - a minimal weblog/news script for use with Apache+PHP+MySQL
Bricks Site Builder - A Dynamic HTML (DHTML) layout tool that runs on Apache + mod_perl + Mason. It enables a web designer to quickly build assemblies bricks (dynamic components, such as images, or weblogs) using a web-based select-and-submit interface
Chronicle Lite - provides a friendly client application for people who use Blogger.com for all of their journalling needs. It also looks to satisfy the needs of the "power users" who want to interact with files on their local computer, and publish them to their online journal. Helpful shortcut keys speed up editing of HTML content, and drag-and-drop support allows tags to be created simply by dropping a file onto the Chronicle Lite window
CityDesk - runs on your Windows desktop, using any web server. Files uploaded via FTP
CocoBlog - a free weblogging software tool based on Apache Cocoon and Apache Xindice
corzblog - a drop-in-and-blog content management system for human beings. stylish, intelligent, easy-to-use blogging with automatic rss/rdf news syndication, secure editing, one-click blog archiving, and expanded bbcode entry. a blogging system with character. worth a look just for the cute archives menu. the bbcode to html to bbcode parser can also function in stand-alone mode, navigate to /inc/cbparser.php for its built-in demo
csBlog - a powerful blog (web log/journal) management tool. Use the script to create ongoing news items or journal entries. csBlog allows you to quickly and easily manage entries into your website with ease. CGI / Perl script. $49.00
DAWG project - The goal: write a cool, easy to use, easy to install, attractive, and VERY flexible weblog generator using PHP 4 and its XML-related functions
diary2002.cgi - is an online journal or diary script. You may call it also a blogger or weblog. fact is you will be able to write, read, search and delete your own articles or stories from your browser. diary2002.cgi is designed for easy setup, use and maintaining. web publishing has never been that easy. your articles will be stored in text file format, so no database like for example "mysql" is needed
dotcomments - Free, distributable PHP-based comment system used on hundreds of individual and group weblogs
Drupal - A full-featured content management/discussion engine suitable to setup a news-driven community or portal site
Easy Blogs - By uuba.com. Allows anyone to write and publish his or her very own web log or "blog". Simple enough for the non-technical, and yet with enough extra features to please the demanding too. Use one of the many included web-site templates or build your own. Templates are designed to be sharable with other Easy Blogs users. Store your Blog on your PC. Automatic publishing to your web site using FTP. Windows? XP, 2000, ME, 98, NT4 Compatible
EasyMoblog - an open-source platform for personal weblogs and moblogs. It allows the creation of customizable and easy-to-use weblogs: you'll be able to update your EasyMoblog contents just sending e-mail messages
ecto - a feature-rich desktop blogging client for MacOSX and Windows, supporting a wide range of weblog systems, such as TypePad, MovableType, WordPress, Drupal, Nucleus, Blogger, and more. ecto is the successor of the wildly popular Kung-Log, which has been in use by thousands of Mac users and which earned a 4.5 mice in the MacWorld July 2003 issue. ecto earned high ratings at VersionTracker.com, and at MacUpdate.com
Eggblog - a skinable, small, simple, secure and open source blogging package. Anyone with a php and mysql enabled server can make use of our easy to install package to create their own personal blog. Features include Skinable upload or create your own skins to change the colours, graphics AND layout Blogs, instantly post and edit blogs Blog Archive, An archive by month of each blog posted Blog Comments, visitors can post comments to individual blogs Forum, egglbog comes complete with a forum, allowing visitors to start topics and post messages Photo Album, Post your photos online with comments for each one About Me, An about me page allowing you to tell your visitors who you are, where are and what you do Administration Section, A secure admin section from where you can post/edit/delete blogs, comments, forum topics, forum posts and photos RSS Feeds, XML RSS feeds for your blog, the forum and each topic in the forum
Elicit - a desktop blogging client that integrates Web and RSS services from Google (desktop search, news, blog search), Yahoo (news), Microsoft (news), Bloglines (RSS aggregator), Amazon (catalog searching), Flicker (photo sharing), Technorati (blog tagging) , del.icio.us (social book marking), Furl (personal Web), and Chitika (blog context ads) in one desktop application for the purpose of creating content for blogs. Elicit allows the blogger to manage their blogs with a calendar. Many bloggers have more than one blog that are hosted on a variety of hosts
enetation - is a play on words of annotation, the adding of remarks or comments to something. The aim of enetation is to provide a system that allows users that are not able to afford hosting or have the technical knowledge to install scripting to have commenting on their website
Evoca - Easily create, organize, share and search voice recordings
EzWebBlog - Professionally Designed Complete Blogging System
Falou & Disse - commenting system for blogger.com
Falasério - commenting system for blogger.com - in Portugese
FeedBlitz - a service that monitors blogs, RSS feeds and Web URLs to provide greater reach for feed publishers. FeedBlitz takes all the headache out of converting feed and blog updates into email digests, delivered daily to subscribers' inboxes. FeedBlitz manages subscriptions, circulation tracking, testing, and is compatible with all major blogging platforms and services such as Blogger, Typepad and FeedBurner
Firedrop2 - an open source client-side blog tool written in Python. It features categories, auto-ftp, three different markups for entries supported, archives and rss feeds auto-generated, flexible templating and macro system. It also has various plugins - emailer, spell checker, etc.
Frequency - a desktop weblog client. If you have a weblog you manage with Blogger, Radio, Movable Type, or other Blogger API or metaWeblog API system, you can use Frequency to add new posts instead of logging into the web site every time. Comes in three versions: Mac OS X, Windows2000/XP, and Mac OS 9
Geeklog - allows you to create your own virtual community area, complete with user administration, story posting, messaging, comments, polls, calendar, weblinks, and more! It can run on many different operating systems, and uses PHP4 and MySQL
googlebox js - online form for creating a googlebox
GoogleBrowser - this lets you browse Google recursively, finding connections between sites. Enter any URL, and then follow the arrows to see other related sites.
Greymatter - For anyone interested in creating an online weblog or journal, Greymatter offers a new level of power and control handX webLog for Palm OS - Allows you to use your Palm OS device to create webLog (blog) entries for a web site
iBlog - you post messages to your weblog using blogger XML-RPC API
Instant Gratification - a way to get AIM instant messages when someone reads your blog. Only requires adding a small fragment of HTML to the blog that you want alerts from
InTerra - a blog engine, rather simple at first sight, but extremely powerful inside. Moreover it is extremely scalable and extendible thanks to 3tier architecture and high-end design guidelines
Jabber - The first application of Jabber technology is an instant messaging system focused on privacy, security, ease of use, access from anywhere using any device, and interoperability with IM, phone, and web-based services
Jericho - a Java-based weblogging tool which interfaces with the Blogger and Manila XML-RPC interface
jogger - Powered by Jabber, this new weblog service (or blog) allows anyone to update their own personal journal through a normal Jabber client. Jogger is intended to demonstrate how Jabber can be used as a platform for application communication
Journaling Script - Free CGI script for publishing your own journal or weblog
JustBlogIt - a Mozilla / Firefox extension to allow easy right-click posting to a weblog. From any website your new blog post is only a right-click away
Link Feedback - see and show where your visitors come from! - a very simple set of links that you can insert into your pages to automatically track incoming links and echo them back to people who visit your site. Basically it's automated link-exchanging, but hopefully with more interesting results - Sean Nolan
LiveJournal Meme Tracker - From this page you can see the most popular URLs referenced recently on LiveJournal
Logahead - New open source downloadable blog software with tagging, drag and drop widgets and more. PHP and mySQL required
LuckyPolls.com - Add a free poll to anything that supports HTML: Myspace, Xanga, Live Journal, AOL Instant Messenger, Blogs, and much more
Manila - An Internet server application that allows groups of writers, designers and graphics people to manage full-featured, high performance Web sites through an easy-to-use browser interface
MarsEdit - a weblog editor for Mac OS X that makes weblog writing like writing email—with spell-checking, drafts, multiple windows, and even AppleScript support
Master WebLog - Written primarily for maintaining WebLog pages
MobiLog! - a powerful standalone blogging tool that allows you to update a mobile weblog ("moblog") remotely using any email-capable device, such as a cellular phone
monaural jerk - Allows one or more authors to regularly publish content without touching HTML. It has a nifty web-based editing/publishing sytem. It has a built-in search engine. And it is free for personal or corporate use, under the GPL: this is open-source software
Movable Type - Six Apart's powerful, customizable publishing system which installs on web servers to enable individuals or organizations to manage and update weblogs, journals, and frequently-updated website content
MozBlog - a tool to enable people to a blog with mozilla while they surfing
myMediaList.com - a free, web-based tool for all blogs. It lets you embed and remotely manage a list of music, books, films and computer games anywhere in your blog/webpage. Fully customizable design. Beats coding html; just copy and paste a single line of code
MySmartChannels - an Application Framework Server that lets anyone quickly and easily publish, organize, and reuse information in a secure Web environment. Beneath the MySmartChannels interface lies a powerful Web services platform that provides a solid foundation for corporate blogging, knowledge management (KM), enterprise collaboration (EC), and a collection of services for solving a wide variety of content-oriented problems. A FREE MySmartChannels User Account is available
NanoBlogger - a small developement & demo site for a small weblog engine
NewsBruiser - A simple but full-featured weblog management system. It is almost entirely self-contained, requiring nothing but SSI and Python (1.5.6 or greater) to be happy
Nucleus - allows you to easily maintain your own weblog(s) on your own server. It offers a system that is easy to install, but still offers maximum flexibility
Open Journal Project - Free, perl-based open journal script you install on your Web server to maintain a Web log or online diary
Particle Blogger - allows you to set up a blog in minutes just by entering your database settings and running the installer script. You can then begin blogging with automatic archiving of posts my month, an integrated RSS feed and the option to turn on static (search engine friendly) URLs. Requirements: PHP 4.x or above. MySQL 3 (4 recommended)
Personal Weblog - PHP/MySQL include file for adding a weblog to a home page. It is highly configurable and can be changed to fit any web page style
PhoneBlogger - a tool for publishing to a blog via a phone call. It is an automated voice application that first asks you for info about which pre-configured blog you wish to post to. After collecting the necessary information, PhoneBlogger records your audio message. Finally, it posts a blog entry that links to the recorded audio
PHPBloggerAPI - a PHP implementation of the Blogger XML-RPC API. The code is available as a collection of "free-standing" functions, or a fully OO class
PHP-Blogger - a free script for posting and sharing news, pictures and slideshows with your friends and family. It provides tools for posting and editing posts without the need for an FTP client. It provides authentication for a single-user and allows the user to customize certain aspects of the UI. Of course, since the script is open-source it can be completely modified from the ground-up for those who like to dabble in PHP scripting
phpWebLog - A complete news-driven website package with lots of bells and whistles. A few features include interchangeable templates/themes, multilanguage translations, fully configurable web-based administration, rdf import/exporting, internal links / statistics pages, search / archiving capabilities, and more
PikiePikie - A collection of CGI scripts, written in the Python language, with which to create collaborative web sites in the tradition of WikiWiki. Each page can contain its own weblog, and the page layout can be customised extensively. The latest version supports skins, or themes, with which visitors can select their preferred appearance for the site
Ping-O-Matic - will let you send a ping to various weblog tracking services such as weblogs.com, blo.gs, Technorati, BlogShares, and more, to let them know that you have updated your content
Pivot - a web-based tool to help you maintain dynamic sites, like weblogs or online journals. Pivot is released under the GPL so it is completely free to use. It is written in PHP, and does not require additional libraries or databases to function
Pix8.net - Free Image Hosting - Provides free image hosting to customers. Take advantage of free hosting offers today without having to signup for a webhosting account. Good for ebay and yahoo advertisements, weblog users' images. No signup required
Planarchy - an application that lets you easily publish news, reports, statistics and so on to your website with ease. You do not need any knowledge of HTML (although it is an advantage) or require the use of an external FTP client. This is because Planarchy takes care of it for you; hit New Entry, type in your new entry, then click on Publish and your brand-new entry will be uploaded to your site. Windows
pLog - a PHP and MySQL based blogging platform and its main goals are flexibility and extendibility. It uses a powerful template system based on the Smarty template engine to render the templates, whick makes the platform highly customizable and safer to let other people customize the templates, since the presentation code is isolated from the PHP code
pMachine - is blogging/news software with a LOT of extra features, like member registration, mailing list manager, random content displayer, search engine, birthday calendar, hit counter.... and, well... MORE! pMachine runs on your own server and installation is a breeze
Polywogg - was designed to allow users to view journals on the web. Polywogg Publisher and Polywogg Reader provide links to the web. In addition, anyone can go to www.polywogg.com to view journals, read and leave comments, view user profiles and to send feedback to Polywogg management. for Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) or Higher
Popdex - the website popularity index
The Posting Station - Excellent blog/website creation tool that allows users to create photo galleries, categorized posts, and much more. The site features an email notification system that allows your site's visitors to subscribe to topics and the Posting Station will email your subscribers automaticly when you create posts. No more fuss about having to notify people to take a look at your site when it is updated, the posting station will do this for you
PostNuke - an Open Source content management system
Psychoblogger - PB or Psychoblogger is a PHP/MySQL based Blogging tool. Requirements: PHP 4.1.0+, MySQL 3.23+, Web Server
PWAIN - a windows client that uses WYSIWYG editing and ftp upload. It has full image support
pyLJclient - a Live Journal client written in python and wxpython
Quick Topic bookmarklet - makes adding a Quick Topic "Discuss" link to your weblog (or any web page) super-easy
Quickblog - an automated web publishing tool currently in beta test. Quickblog offers many of the same features as other popular blogging tools such as Blogger or LiveJournal
Radio UserLand - An easy-to-use Weblog tool that runs on your desktop. Automatically builds your site, organizes and archives your posts, and publishes your content -- without any knowledge of HTML, FTP, or graphic design
Reblogger - Allows readers of Web Logs managed by Blogger to post comments on a post. Reblogger features a post counter, which indicates how many comments have been made on a certain post
Roller - server-based weblogging software - a web application that is designed to support multiple simultaneous weblog users and visitors. If you want to see Roller in action, take a look at the
Blogging Roller weblog
scoop - A "collaborative media application". It falls somewhere between a content management system, a web bulletin board system, and a weblog
ScratchLog - a Weblog/Journal script based on PHP and MySQL
Serendipity - a weblog/blog system, implemented with PHP. It is standards compliant, feature rich and open source. Needs a PHP installation together with a MySQL or PostgreSQL server
Simplog - provides an easy way for users to add blogging capabilities to their existing websites. Simplog is written in PHP and compatible with multiple databases. Simplog also features an RSS/Atom aggregator/reader. Powerful, yet simple.......
SIPS - Simple Internet Publishing System - web based system for publishing news stories, and it will in later versions have options for letting users discuss these stories. It also has an integrated search/link indexing system
SnorComments2 - a script programmed in perl that can be run on most web servers with cgi capabilities. It can be used for adding a commenting feature to Blogger.com blogs
Soapbox - an easy to use, open, cross-platform, web application for creating, managing, and publishing weblogs
Squishdot - Host your own weblogs with software similar to slashdot.org. Built as a plug-in module for the Zope Application Server
Stickam - allows you to easily place streaming video, slide show, music, and live video chat on your blog and/or web site. You can also play them on your Stickam profile page. With Stickam, you can instantly play your videos online using just your web browser, a web cam and microphone (optional). There is no software to download, you just copy and paste the Stickam Code into your web site or blog where you want it. You can also upload pre-recorded video, enjoy talking to your family, friends, and visitors to your web site. Your video can be viewed by virtually anyone with no software to install and will play on any operating system including Linux, Windows and Mac
Tangelo - termed "web publishing with a twist," is a departure from most traditional weblog publishing tools. Instead of installing or using weblog software on an Internet web server, Tangelo is installed on the user's computer as a standalone application, providing much easier installation, greater weblog control, and ease of use. Tangelo streamlines organization of weblog text and images, and publishes the weblog to both an Internet web server and to the user's own computer for better control and backup. In addition, Tangelo features integration with NetNewsWire 2.0 for posting RSS news items.
telnet7 - Bloggy - simple and yet powerful web blogger for websites that use free webhosting services like Tripod, Angelfire, etc. telnet7 Bloggy is still in its alpha stages but can already be used
texting.com - "This is a simple concept. We tell people about cool websites. Sites are ranked by how many times our users add them. To make texting.com useful, you should join the fun. The more the merrier"
TextRouter - paste text to Blogger.com or Manila weblogs
thatware - Based on Apache/PHP3/MySQL
Thingamablog - a cross-platform, standalone blogging application that makes authoring and publishing your weblogs almost effortless. Unlike most blogging solutions, Thingamablog does NOT require a third-party blogging host, a cgi/php enabled web host, or a MySQL database. In fact, all you need to setup, and manage, a blog with Thingamablog is FTP, SFTP, or network access to a web server
thumblogger - with this tool you can blog picture galleries
Tinderbox - A personal content management assistant for making, analyzing and sharing notes. A tool for making Web logs and news sites. It's superb for collecting and understanding complex information. Tinderbox for Macintosh will ship in February 2002. Tinderbox for Windows will follow
tkblog - - free blogging application. standalone, cross-platform. does NOT require blogger.com, etc. or xml, or php/mysql, or running your own server
Tojo - an online collaborative journal/diary system written in PHP, allowing multiple users to add entries to a page, with a new page every day. It is designed for small groups in mind, and thus works differently from a BBS/forum or blog
TowerBlog - Fast & powerful weblogging program that runs on any server supporting PHP 4.1 or greater. Features a customizeable layout via CSS & templates, a fullly searchable archive & category system, as well as quick and efficiant backup and restores
Traction Software - The leading Enterprise Weblog software. Easy to use, secure blogging software designed for business and group use
Trellix - Create your own weblog using client-side windows based software. No HTML experience required
TypePad - a personal publishing service designed to provide a simple yet full-featured environment for you to put your thoughts, ideas, and experiences on the web, whether it be a weblog, journal, photo album, diary, or an entirely new creation. With TypePad, there's no installation or configuration required. Your website and all the tools are managed by the service, and upgrades and updates to the TypePad application are included in your service subscription fee
Userplane AV Blogger - an easy-to-use system allowing the creation of audio and video recorded messages for use in blogs, websites and email
Vanilla - simple and extensible hypertext system which subscribes to the Wiki philosophy and is written in Rebol
w.bloggar - Blogger API client
Web Engine - a highly flexible, feature-rich web publishing system that empowers individuals, organizations, and companies around the world to create dynamic, content-driven websites
Weblog Translator - Bookmarklet for Google's Translate feature
Weblogs.Com - Read the hot list of weblogs most recently updated. Have your site included with the
Ping-Site Form
Weblogs ping bookmarklet constructor - Simple as can be: enter the name of your blog and its URL and click submit to get a page with a bookmarklet which will ping weblogs.com in a popup window whenever you select it from your links toolbar
webpad - a web-based text editor which gives the user access to files from: the users' computer, the server it's installed on, any remote FTP server, posting to Blogger.com accounts and even the source code of webpages
WheatBlog - a web journaling application, similar to blogger in some respects, but designed for personal use on your own server
WordPress - born out of a desire for an elegant, well-architectured personal publishing system built on PHP and MySQL and licensed under the GPL. It is the official successor of b2/cafelog. WordPress is fresh software, but its roots and development go back to 2001
Wordsmith - a versatile blogging tool designed to help writers get their words out in no time. It's based on PHP/MySQL platform and supports most of the standard blog functionality, and much more
Write2Left - Post a site and have it forwarded via FTP to your host. By Tim Dorr
Xoops - an open source portal script written extensively in object-oriented PHP. Backed with a number of databases (currently only mySQL), XOOPS is an ideal tool for developing small to large community websites
YACCS - a service that allows you to place a comments section in your blogger entries. It's very easy to set up and use; you don't need a server that supports php, you don't need to upload any files to your server, and you don't need to know any programming languages. Created by Hossein Sharifi
YesI! - a PHP application that allows you to build a tree-structured website via a browser. It lets you store text, images, grab webpages from other sites, share your data with others in a multi-user mode, create on-the-fly weblogs, store your contacts in the addressbook and store your appointments in the personal calendar
Zempt - a desktop tool for the Movable Type content management system

Shorter URLs

2006-04-08T17:19:00.000-07:00

These services allow you to create shorter URLs, which are easier to remember and work better in e-mail:

2my.info - free subdomain, URL redirection, WEB forwarding
301url - create shorter URLs that can be easily shared and distributed through the Internet, posted to web sites and blogs without breaking in email messages. 301url also provides the additional value of search engine friendly 301 redirection. Your 301url never expires and is very easy to use
BabyURL -a free service created and provided by Window Six. There are no mission statements or lofty goals for BabyURL other than to be a cool little tool. If you think it's accomplished the "cool little tool" mission and you would like to find out more about Window Six,
visit the Window Six website
BigLNK.com - Url Shortening & Redirection Service
CLipURL - free service lets users change long URLs into short ones
DigBig.com - Big URLs Made Small
Doiop.com - create brief URLs using your own keywords
glyphbot - a small link-shortener utility
ipoo.org - Make short URLs from long ones. Share snippets of text with other people. Sign up anywhere without receiving spam
LinkTrim.com - allows you to trim down long links so that they are easier to send in emails, text messages, or over the phone. Whether the domain name is too long, or whether the webpage is on free web hosting, LinkTrim.com will help you shorten that long URL
linkz - a URL shortening service. Many web sites have pages with awfully long URLs that are hard to share with your friends via e-mail, SMS, or phone. Enter linkz. Linkz will give you a free redirection to that long, ugly URL. And our redirection is only 20 characters long
littleURL.com - URL shortening service
LittLink - easily turn long URLs into little links on the site or via bookmarklet
Make A Shorter Link - handy utility shortens the web address for pages with long URLs
Metamark Shorten™ Service - enter a long url and let us make it short
MicroURL/ClickThruStats - a very cool traffic tracking service, and it's ideal for weblogs: it lets you easily replace any and all URLs with shortened MicroURLs and then it tracks all click-thru stats in real-time. Fee-based, starting at $5.00
notlong - make a long URL not long
Qwer.org - allows users to make their own shortcuts for long URLs
shorl.com - makes long URLs short. Also offers a bookmarklet
ShorterLink.com - turns long URLs into a shorter link for cutting and pasting into emails or elsewhere
shortLink - easy to use service to create short links from unwieldy URLs
SkinnyLink URL Converter - simple interface allows users to convert long URLs to short ones
SmallURLs.com - turn hard to remember URLs into short ones
SnipURL - provides a tool to shorten long web links, track their interest levels, and share them in emails
Tinylink.com - allows you to convert quite instantly an endless internet adress into a new shorter one, that points to the exact same page but that is only 20 characters long
tinyurl.co.uk
TinyURL.com - providing URLs that won't break in email
tz4.com - 100% Free, No Forced Ads, Sub domain Address, URL Masking/Cloaking, Optional WWW prefix, Traffic Statistics, Meta information, Instant Activation
URL jr. - where you can turn Big URL into URL jr. At URLjr.com you can shrink your long, unpostable URLs (web addresses) in smaller, much more manageable links
URLCutter - You can shorten any URL you find on the internet to random or custom free short URL with URLCutter. These URLs can be used in the Forums, PDAs, Emails or Phone
URL123 - helps you shorten, share, and manage long links. Join free and create your own subdomain, password protected links, and track hits on your links! Long links break in emails, but URL123 can make your links more friendly and easier to share
urler - a bot that shortens long URLs seen on IRC so people don't have to copy and paste multiple lines when someone pastes a huge URL
yx4.net - no annoying adverts pop-ups etc just straight forward URL redirection. No need to register just input your link and it will be shortened for you. Great for links that just go on forever like forum thread links etc.

Creative Ways to Advertise & Market Your Biz Offline Part 2

2006-04-05T20:07:00.000-07:00

#46. Check out your local area State Fairs & Community Carnivals, there are always alot of them going on during seasonal weather. Ask about getting a booth or table & set it up with your business information! People love to shop at Fairs & Carnivals and they are looking to spend money!

#47. Get some Business Card Magnets printed up and hand them out every where you go! Have your friends & family pass them out too! People are more apt to keep a magnetic business card compared to a regular one which gets shoved into a drawer or wallet. By having a magnetized card, your business is kept in front of the potential customer/client.

#48. When you give gifts to family, friends, neighbors, co-workers etc. make sure you give them gifts from your own company! This allows other people to see & touch your gift meaning FREE business exposure for you! (plus, you bought the gift from yourself so you are saving money!)

#49. Invite your spouses co-workers over to your home for a little mingling party! Serve some refreshments or do a cookout BBQ and make sure you have a table set up with some product displays! If you sell kitchen or food products, make sure you use them!

#50. Do a neighborhood childrens shopping party! I do this before Christmas and again before Mother's Day. I invite the neighborhood kids to come by and shop for gifts for their parents and loved ones. They enjoy shopping on their own and parents enjoy a small break from the children! To make this successful make sure the products you are offering are economical, I try to keep them under $25.00 each with most being around $10.00 each. Have a table set up with some inexpensive crafting supplies and let the children make their own greeting cards to go with the gifts they have purchased or have a gift wrapping table set up so they can personally wrap their gifts!

#51. Do a joint party with another consultant in a non-competing business. Partying with a friend is always fun! You can hold it at one hosts home, your home or at a local community center. Invite every one you know and have others help you spread the word. Hang up fliers at local centers & businesses too!

#52. Put an AD in the back of local high school yearbooks! You can usually get these ads for around $20.00 which makes it affordable advertising for you!

#53. Put an AD for your business in local Athletic Sport Programs! You can find these at the High School Level, Minor League Level and at Professional Sporting Events!

#54. Contact Local Churches & Religous Groups and see if you can place an AD in their weekly church bulletins & program guides!

#55. Do you have a local Community Play House? If so, get your business ad placed in their play programs! You can usually get ads in them for less than $25.00

#56. Co-Sponsor a Local Youth Athletic Group! Baseball teams, softball teams, cheerleading squads, gymnastic squads and swim teams, etc. are always looking for sponsors! Co-Sponsoring a team will help get your business noticed in your local area!

#57. Get a Yard Sign! If you have a home business consider getting a Yard Sign printed up and proudly display it in your front yard!

#58. Does your neighborhood hold local Meet & Greets? If so, make sure you go out and attend them! Get to know your fellow community members!

#59. Donate a Raffle Drawing Prize to a Non-Profit Group or Charity in your local community! They are always looking for prize donations for their charitable raffles. Note: Make sure you get a receipt for tax purposes!

#60. Do you have a Online Business & Website? Consider getting some computer mouse pads printed up with your website address & business name on them! This will keep your website & business in front of them every time they sign online! This encourages them to check out your website often for new products, updates & features!

#61. Local Bus Stops & Bus Sheds! Have you noticed that alot of them have local business advertising on them? Call up the company and see how much it would cost you to advertise there too!

#62. Does your local area grocery store allow advertisers to place business ads on the back of their cash register receipts? If so, contact them about getting your business ad on there too!

#63. Local baby expo's and baby events/contests! Set up a booth or table with your business info! These events are always very popular and a great way for you to reach new customers!

#64. Watch your local newspaper for Wedding, Engagement and New Baby Annoucements! Make a list and then go to: http://www.searchbug.com/ to try to track down addresses. You can mail off your business info to them announcing your business, bridal gift registry, baby gift registry, etc.

#65. Stamp your business info to the outside of all outgoing postal mail! Include your business card on the inside. Do this for personal mail, business mail and for paying your bills!

#66. Contact your local Fire & Ambulance companies and see if you can set up a table at their next BBQ Event or fundraiser event.

#67. Contact LOCAL Assisted Living Centers for Senior Citizens (this is different then a nursing home!) and see if you can come in & offer a shopping oppty. to their Senior Residents! Seniors can NOT get out like they used too so they appreciate being able to shop from home and the majority of them don't own computers & if they do, they are not extremely computer savvy...so offer a one on one shopping experience with them! They also appreciate the adult company!

#68. Are there local small summer concerts held in your local parks? We have them here during the summer months! Ask about advertising options during these community events!

#69. BUY little boxes of Smartie (tm) Candies! Put your Business info on one side & on the front side slap on a label that says "Be a Smartie, Earn FREE (Your Company Name) w/a Party!" Hand them out every where you go!

#70. Make up candy packs with your business info attached to them and hand out to the Halloween Trick or Treaters!

#71. Exchange Business Cards, Fliers or Coupons with another Home Party Consultant in a NON-Competing Business and place her filler in your bags & outgoing packages & have her do the same for you! Sort of "scratching each others backs".

#72. The PUBLIC Library! I go in there often and see all kinds of local advertisements for businesses there! See if you can leave a catalog & a few business cards!

#73. Do a CATALOG SWAP with another party plan consultant (NON competing business). See if she will swap a few catalogs with you. You hand out a few of her catalogs at the END of your party and have her do the same! Hand them out as guests are LEAVING the party!

#74. I have a friend & fellow network member who prints out for me...mint books...she prints a pretty graphic on it, along with my business info...they look like matchbooks and inside is a piece of peppermint hard candy! They are inexpensive too! I think I paid $8.00 for 40+ of them! She includes the candy too! I can refer her to you if you want to try those! Tell Tonya that Shelly sent ya! www.bboopsworld.com/

#75. Do a PARTY SWAP with a Consultant in another HOME party business! (NON-COMPETING!) Tell her if she holds a (Your Company) Party for you.....you will hold a XYZ Party for her!

#76. Ask about getting your info printed onto golf tee's and golf balls & then donate them to a local golf course or mini golf course!

#77. FOAM DRINK COZIES, the foam thingie you wrap around a cold beverage can! See if you can get some of those with your business info on them & hand them out at local sporting events!

#78. Indoor Concert Arena's. Have you attended a concert lately? Tons of advertising by local and national merchants at concerts! Check into doing some advertising!

#79. Children LOVE Stickers! Buy a slew of stickers with your business name on them....hand them out! Chances are that the kid's parents will see the stickers too!

#80. Temporary Employment Agencies...again drop off packets of info about Your Business Oppty to them. The Economy is sluggish in alot of the areas in the USA...ask Temp. Employment Agencies to refer some clients to you who may be interested in a (Your Company Name) Home Business!!! You could offer the staff a discount or free gift for referrals.

#81. Print up some flyers and get permission from local shopping centers to see if you can leave them on car windshields! Always ASK permission first!

#82. Does your community print up FREE Renters Guides, House Buying Guides Etc? (you can usually find them for FREE at your local supermarket). If so, contact them about placing your business ad inside one!

#83. Got a local ice cream man who drives around in his ice cream truck throughout your community? Talk to him about passing out flyers or letting you add a logo onto his truck via a vinyl cling logo banner!

#84. Do a web search for you local county, local township and surrounding areas. I found tons of websites for my area with FREE online business directories which I was able to get my website listed in. They also have offline ADS that you can advertise in too! A great way to also find out about upcoming local community events to participate in!

#85. Are there any professional moving companies in your area? If so, contact them! They usually give out new business packet info to their customers/clients to welcome them to their new home. See about adding your business information to their "New Move" Packs!

#86. Local small town radio stations that are usually found on the AM frequency usually offer very low-cost local area advertising on their small radio station. A great way to get your business info out to those in your local community.

#87. Get your business information printed out onto paper text book covers! You can make them yourself! Donate them to local area adult technical schools and colleges!

#88. Is there a local business in your area holding a upcoming Grand Opening? If so, contact them! Alot of times they are giving away freebies to the first few hundred customers plus they do heavy advertising announcing their Grand Opening. This is a GREAT way for you to capitalize on that!

#89. Get your business info printed up on inexpensive bookmarks! Then give them to local area colleges, adult technical schools, book reading groups, libraries etc. You can usually print up your own bookmarks with your business info on them for less than .8 cents each! This will keep your business info infront of those avid book readers! They are also great to give away for FREE with customer orders!

#90. Put your Business Knowledge to Work! Offer to teach classes to adults! Examples: If you are with a kitchen/cooking company offer to teach adults to cook! They are always looking for fast & easy ways to prepare healthy meals! If you are a scrapbooking consultant, offer to teach a class to new moms on how to scrapbook new baby pages! If you are a Bath/Body/Spa consultant offer to teach pampering classes to women & moms! You can find adult programs by contacting: Local Community Centers, Local Civic Groups and alot of High Schools & Community Colleges offer evening classes to adults. (continuing education). This generates leads & sales and only takes a short amount of time!

#91. Put the word out to your friends, family & co-workers that you offer freebies to party go'ers. What do I mean? Well, people who are holding baby showers, bridal showers, birthday parties, anniversary parties etc. contact me about my freebies. They make up party goodie bags and are always looking for things to stuff them with. Depending on what type of party it is depends on what I donate! I print out pretty bookmarks, recipe cards, candy wrappers, gift bag tags, shopping lists, chore lists etc. with pretty designs on them along with my business info. I also attach a coupon. I keep my cost down to .15 cents per person. An inexpensive way to reach new potential customers.

#92. Print out your own Re-ordering labels! If you sell consumable goods (foods, spices, soaps, bath products, cosmetics etc) make sure you stick on a small re-ordering info sticker with your business info on it so that your customer can easily locate your information for placing reorders! This is also important to do considering some customers purchase items from you to give as a gift, this way the person who received the gift will also know how to contact you and will become a potential new customer for you!

#93. Establish a Referral program for your business and print out referral coupons! Offer established customers a free little gift or personal discount if they refer a new customer to you! I like to give out 3 Referral Coupons to every new customer I get so that they know they will be rewarded for referring new customers to me. Established customers are more apt to refer new customers to you if they know they will be rewarded for that referral. Verbal referral programs don't work well, so print up referral coupons or referral promotion cards to hand out to your established customers. I also like to put a "referral reward" sticker in all of my Tupperware catalogs. You can also add a sticker to the backs of your business cards.

#94. Print out Coloring Pages with a small section on them advertising your business and donate them to local area restaurants, daycares etc. I was able to find 4pc. crayon sets for ONLY .05 cents a box which I also donated along with the printed out coloring pages! Parents hang them on the front of their refrigerators after the children are done coloring them which keeps your business in front of the parent daily! Cost: About .03 cents for printed out coloring page with your business info located some where on it and .05 cents for the mini box of crayons. Try to find a design that relates to your business for the best effect.

#95. Contact your local area Girl Scouts, 4-H Club and other youth groups. Talk to them about you coming in to do a project with the youth's in the group. You can also talk to them about your business fundraiser program if you offer one. During the summer time there are alot of youth camps throughout the community. You can also find youth camps through local churches. Some are seasonal and some are year long programs. The YMCA is also a great resource! For Example: If you are a Kitchen Consultant, come in and teach the youth how to cook or about kitchen safety. If you sell pet products, go in and talk about grooming a pet. If you sell candles, go in and make some mini candles or teach them how to decorate them for gifts. Be creative!

#96. If you are crafty with your computer you can print out tea bag wrappers with a pretty design on them along with your business information. I purchased a few boxes of individually wrapped tea bags and then put my printed business tea bag wrapper over it. You can hand them out throughout your community. I like donating them to: Assisted Living Centers, Senior Community Centers, Daycare Centers (to be given to the parents & teachers), School Teacher Lounges, Employee Break Rooms etc. Example of Cost: .03 cents for a printed color wraper and about .03-.05 cents per tea bag.

#97 Make sure you leave info about Your Business on your answering machine or voice mail message! Not everyone who phones you knows that you sell or represent a particular company! (especially those pesky bill collectors & telemarketers).

#98 Take your outdated catalogs and randomly mail or distribute them thru-out your neighborhood! Make sure you stamp it OUTDATED and provide contact info for yourself so they can contact you if interested to get a current catalog!

#99 Get Business Themed Banking Checks! Your bank checks pass thru tons of hands that could become potential customers or party hosts! If possible get your email address or website URL preprinted onto them! I also suggest using preprinted postal address labels too! (try to get checks that have pictures of some of the products you sell on them or at the very least make sure some where on the check it says: Tupperware Consultant, Avon Rep, and so forth.)

#100. Get your business info printed onto matchbooks! Donate the matchbooks to candle shops, smoke shops, clubs etc. to help get your business name out in your community!

WAHM ZONE Post Shelly Hill

Creative Ways to Advertise & Market Your Biz Offline Part 1

2006-04-05T20:01:00.000-07:00

#1. Take a small zip close baggie (snack sizes work well) and include the following in it: Your Business Card, Business Oppty Mini Flyer, a Piece of Candy such as hard candy or a lollipop, mini flyer of current host specials, discount coupon (optional) etc. Hand these out to the bank tellers, retail cashiers, at your kids sport events, every where you go!

#2. When I stay at hotels & motels I leave a mini catalog, my business card & discount coupon and the mini coin canister for the maid! I put her tip inside the mini coin canister! I have gotten 3 orders by doing this! Be creative when you leave tips for Hotel Maids, Waitresses, Waiters, Hair Dressers, etc. Don't just hand them your business card, make it memorable! You can also buy cute little beaded change purses at your local dollar discount store!

#3. Print out flyers with your contact info (not your personal address), your website address & email address along with any current specials you are offering. Then contact local area mobile home park offices, apartment complex rental offices, housing developements etc and ask them if you can leave fliers in their office or hang on their tennants doors. Give the office employees a free gift or discount on their personal orders.

#4. Contact local area bridal supply stores, bridal gown stores, caterers, tux rental centers, wedding dj's etc. Ask them if you can leave your business cards & fliers about the great (Company Name) Bridal Gift Registry for them to give to their customers. Offer store owners a free gift or a personal discount for helping you spread the word about your business.

#5. Daycare Centers! They are excellent to contact and leave business cards and/or fliers at! I print out a flyer of just a few items from our Tupperware Childrens line and I attach my business card & a discount coupon. I get alot of orders by doing this! So whatever company you represent, find some items that cater to children or to moms and make up a flier!

#6. Alot of churches hold a Spring and Fall Fest! Contact them about getting a table or a booth. Alot of times this will cost you under $15.00 for a space! Make sure you take products with you along with business oppty fliers, plenty of catalogs, business cards etc. Do a contest drawing at these types of events. Make up entry blanks that gather the customers info so that you can initiate contact with them again!

#7. Join your local area chamber of commerce! They are always holding local business events that you can participate in.

#8. College Campuses! Dorms & Housing Students are always looking to spend money! Alot of college students are also looking for an extra income so target them with the Business Oppty too! Drop off fliers and business cards to the College Student Center! They usually have bulletin boards, tables and other things where you can leave your information at for FREE!

#9. Contact your local area Welcome Wagon or Welcome to the Neighborhood Group! Ask them about you leaving mini catalogs, fliers, business cards, discount coupons, freebie mini gifts, etc with them. They are always looking for additional items to place in their Welcome Bags!

#10. Contact your local area hospitals and ask for Human Resources Dept. The Majority of hospitals hand out New Mommy Diaper Bags filled with products, samples and other stuff for New Moms who just had a baby! It's FREE for you to add in your information! I have gotten party hosts, new customers and new recruits by participating in these types of programs.

#11. Contact your local medical offices, particularly Gynecology and OB Offices and Pediatric Offices and inquire about you leaving information with them. This is a way for you to target Parents of Children with both the home party oppty, the business oppty and new customer sales.

#12. Donate a Product to your local area Radio Station, they have numerous contests and they are always looking for sponsors! Your donation can be written off as a tax deduction plus you will get FREE Advertising & Business Exposure for your donation!

#13. Donate a Product to your local area Bingo Halls! They are always looking for sponsors of their Bingo Prizes! Bingo is BIG in alot of areas!

#14. Call your Chamber of Commerce and find out about Local Area Job Fairs. Get a booth and set up info about the fabulous business oppty!

#15. Call your Local Area Colleges and find out when their next job/employment fair is. Alot of times you can get a booth or table for less than $35 and you will get alot of GREAT new recruit leads by participating in events like these.

#16. Contact local area car dealerships. I have 2 in my local area that hand out a small packet that I made up for FREE to their customers who come in to take a free test drive!

#17. Target your local area gyms! You can get a table space for $20 or less in most cases! Make sure you have 3-5 products on display, plenty of catalogs, business cards and fliers.

#18. Network with others in your community who are in home business. Find out what events and activities that they participate in. They are usually "in the know" and can help you get started in networking in your community.

#19. Contact Companies in your area to see if you can come in and set up a table in the employee lounge or cafeteria for a employee shopping break! These days alot of companies will allow you to do this if you ask them!

#20. Does your local area tv cable company have a local information channel? Inquire about advertising! These ads will reach thousands of potential buyers for you! I recommend you only use your website address for these types of advertising and not your personal at home address.

#21. Contact local small companies and shops to see if you can offer an exclusive discounts or freebie gift to their employees. Companies are always looking for a way to "treat" their employees to specials from the local surrounding community.

#22. Small Home Town Newspapers! I dont get too good of a response when I do big newspaper city ads, however... when I target small town newspapers I usally get a great response. I even had them let me place an ad on their wedding and engagement announcements page which I advertised the Bridal Gift Registry. So if you are going to do any type of newspaper advertising, inquire about getting your ads on specific pages in the newspaper that targets the group of people most likely to buy from you.

#23. Get a low cost outdoor banner printed up with your business information on it. You can usually get them done for $55 or less depending on who makes it. You can have these outdoor banners displayed at outdoor music/concert events, outdoor childrens sporting events, outdoor adult sport events, outdoor neighborhood block parties, outdoor community events, carnivals, fairs, etc.

#24. Take your business on the road during nice weather. Contact local area parks & community centers to see what their schedule of events are and inquire about setting up a booth or table. This is a great way to network & market your business to those in your community.

#25. Community Clipper Coupon Packs & Sales Flyer Mailings. These days alot of communities have mailings such as these, contact them and see how you can participate and advertise your business.

#26. Contact small local area businesses such as hair salons, massage parlors, boutiques, banks etc. See if you can set up a table for 1 week with 3 of your best selling products on it along with some catalogs, fliers, coupons and your business card. Keep a basket on the table for any customer orders which you can follow up on after you return back to pick up your display. Offer the store owner or manager a free gift for allowing you to do this. You can also offer to donate a prize for a contest if they let you display the prize donated & get a copy of the contestants entry blanks after the promotion closes.

#27. Contact local area pizza shops, diners, deli's and coffee bagel shops to ask them about advertising on their paper placemats! Customers do read those ads!

#28. Contact local area restaurants, bars and clubs and see about advertising on their paper beverage coasters!

#29. Local Television Stations are always holding on-air contests & website contests for their viewers, contact them about you donating a prize or gift certificate to sponsor one of their contests! Great business exposure for you!

#30. Attend Local Area holiday shopping events. Customers who are ready to spend holiday shopping money turn out for these events by the thousands! You can usually get a booth for less than $50.00 so they are economical to participate in!

#31. Hold a local area community Block Party at your home or local community center! Families are always looking for something to do during the nice weather seasons! Optional: Attend your neighborhood block party and set up a table with your product offerings or samples. Get out there in your community and get your business seen!

#32. Get your business listed in your cities telephone book yellow pages! Alot of them also have a coupon section too!

#33. You can take this phone book advertising one step further by finding out what company makes the plastic vinyl phone book covers which have local business ads on them and get your business added to it!

#34. Get your business information printed up on pencils and hand them out to local colleges and technical schools for them to hand out to their adult students! This keeps your business information in front of them! (make sure you only donate them to schools with adult students).

#35. Get a vehicle banner made for your automobile. I recommend the vinyl window clings or vinyl cling ones that stick to your automobile but dont scratch or remove the paint. You can easily remove them when washing your vehicle!

#36. If your city has a travel guide that tourists request, contact that business and find out how you can advertise in it too!

#37. Local City Maps! These days even city maps have advertising on them! You can usually get a small business ad printed on them for an economical price. Don't advertise your personal location. If you dont have a business location then advertise your website address or email address.

#38. Contact local area hotels, motels and bed & breakfast inns and ask them if you can do up a Lobby Basket and leave it in their Lobby. What is a Lobby Basket? You make up little packs of info about your business & products and put them into the Lobby Basket for their patrons to take. They usually have a pamphlet wall or area too with pamplets from local area attractions etc. If they dont have a lobby basket area, inquire about leaving your business info in their pamphlet area.

#39. Get your business info printed up on balloons! This is very economical to do! You then distribute them to local community centers, sporting events and other types of places where parents book their childrens birthday parties! These balloons can be displayed at the birthday party giving you business exposure. You can usually get them done for .3-.8 cents each. Your business name & website address is all you need on them!

#40. Find a few other self employeed business owners in your community and team up! You can all sponsor a local parade float, parade clowns etc. Make up signs with your business info imprinted on them so that you can receive some great business exposure during the parade!

#41. Get some T-shirts printed up with your business information on it (both front & back sides) and hand them out to some friends, family and co-workers and ask them to wear them out and about in the community. This is their FREE gift for helping you to spread the word about your business! Optional: Get ball caps printed up with your business info!

#42. Get some canvas tote bags printed up with your business information printed on it. Find a few ladies who are very active in your community and ask them to use your tote bag and give it to them for FREE under the agreement that they will use it every time they go out in the community for errands & events!

#43. Get a license plate made up for your vehicle! If you have your normal license plate on the back of your car, put your business named one on the front of the car! You can get one with just your business name on it for about $20-$30 per plate!

#44. Wear a business name tag every time you go out into your community! Get a Catchy Slogan printed on it such as: A. Ask me about (your company name) Products! B. I work from home, you can too! C. Earn some FREE when you party with me! #45. Local Area Magazines! Does your city publish a City Magazine? If so, contact them about advertising or if they hold contests for their readers offer to donate a product or service for their contest!

WAHM ZONE~Posted by Shelly Hill Tupperware Online Manager http://my.tupperware.com/Ravish30

E-mail sales letter

2006-04-04T12:45:00.000-07:00

=> Step #1 - WHO DO YOU THINK YOU`RE TALKING TO?

Before you sit down to write your email sales letter, you`ve got to determine exactly who your audience is. This is a master key to getting results from email marketing.
Ask yourself these questions:-
What do your prospects/customers want?
What frustrates your prospects/customers most?
Who else is selling something similar to you?
Why should your prospects/customers believe you?
Why should prospects/customers respond to you instead ofsomeone else?
What kind of appeals will your target market respond to?

=> Step #2 - A GREAT SUBJECT IS YOUR OBJECT

Before an email can generate results, recipients need toopen it. But what can you do to spark their interest andget their interest "motor" revved up?

Your SUBJECT LINE is the key.There are four types of email formulas you can use as aguide in crafting your email. Each has a different PSYCHOLOGICAL APPEAL that works like magic on consumers. youcan start the money wheels turning before the sun goes downtonight"Here`s an important "homework assignment": Write at least 25 SUBJECT LINES before you decide on which one to use. Take the best two and test them against each other in your marketing campaign. (Save the "losers" to use for other purposes or spruce up later.)

=> Step #3 - WHAT`S IN IT FOR THEM?

Sit down and write every conceivable benefit your producthas. Don`t know the difference between features andbenefits? Features describe the product; benefits describethe results of using the product. Features appeal tologic...logic justifies emotion...emotion drives sales (seebelow).Here`s a rule of thumb for benefits: ask yourself "What canmy product or service do for my customer?" Then begin to write your letter telling your reader
WHAT`S IN IT FOR THEM.Tell them how much better life will be for them after theybuy from you. Tell them how much better they`ll feel. Tellthem how their peers will respect them more.

=> Step #4 - AN EMOTIONAL APPEAL

When promoting anything to anybody, you must remember that buying decisions are based upon emotion and later backed upby logic. Before you write a single word, determine what emotional hot buttons you need to push to "jump start" your prospect.Selling health supplements? Go for the "fear of illness"button with "A Natural Way to Save Your Eye sight." Selling political bumper stickers? Hit the "anger" button with:"Let the President Know What You Think of His Policies."Other buttons include: curiosity, greed, ego, vanity, hope,and/or fear of scarcity or security.

=> Step #5 - A NAME YOU CAN TRUST

To convince people to buy your product or service, you must make them believe that your offer is credible and that you(or your product) will deliver as promised.How do you do that?

Here are three ways you can build credibility with the readers of your sales letter:-
Provide testimonials.- Include endorsement letters from authority figures in yourindustry.- Make your offer and promises sincere and believable.

=> Step #6 - A GUARANTEE

Now adays, trying to sell without some type of guarantee is alosing proposition. You`ve got to have one. And the stronger your guarantee, the better your response will be. And,believe it or not, although most people will NOT ask for arefund, they`ll trust your offer knowing that you stand behind it.You can offer a 24-hour, 30-day, 60-day, 90-day, or even afull-year. And here`s an interesting fact: The longer the time period, the fewer returns you`ll have! It`s human nature to procrastinate, so the more time someone thinks they have to get a refund, the more they`ll put it off orforget about the refund altogether.

=> Step #7 - DON`T FORGET TO ASK

It happens all the time. Someone makes a fantastic sales presentation, and then doesn`t close the deal because he/shedidn`t clearly ask for the order or made the process confusing rather than simple.- From the Research Department: Statistics show that you need to ask for the order at least three times to closesubstantial sales. (Some studies put the number at 7!)If you can, offer several ways for your prospects toorder -- consumers love choice. It tells them, "You`retalking directly to me and meeting my unique needs." If youonly offer one way to order, make it crystal clear how ANDhow easy it is. Describe it in detail and ask for theorder. Then ask again.

=> Step #8 - THE EYES HAVE IT

It`s a well-known fact: Large blocks of copy areintimidating and will often send people running for thehills or at least the Delete button.The solution? Break up paragraphs into two to foursentences. Use several subheadings throughout the emailletter. And use asterisks, dashes, and ellipses (...) togive your copy more rhythm. Bullet points are excellenteye-catchers - use them whenever appropriate.

The Truth About Direct Email & Email Lists - What`s Unsafe

2006-04-04T12:35:00.000-07:00

=> Unsafe Email MarketingUnsafe
E-mail marketing is a method many people foolishlytry, thinking it will yield big money fast.

When you send an UNSOLICITED EMAIL to someone -- when you invite your self into someone`s emailbox without invitation or permission -- that`s called SPAM.If the people receiving your messages have no interest inyour offer, or they simply don`t know you and don`t want toknow you, chances are they`re tossing your message into the trash bin and you`re tossing your marketing dollars down the toilet.

Sending spam -- and that`s exactly how your unsolicited message will be reviewed, regardless of thevalue of your offer -- gives your business a black eye and damages your reputation...and the "kicker" is: it doesn`t`improve business!

=> EMAIL ON STEROIDS - BULKING UP IS BAD

Conducting a marketing campaign using BULK EMAIL will manifest the same results as spam.You may have seen ads that say, "1000000 email addresses foronly $29.95.
" Don`t fall for that". You`re only going to get spam complaints and your ISP connection may be shut down!

The reason for this is that most all of the bulk mail lists you see being advertised online are nothing but a list ofemail addresses that have been harvested from websites allover the Internet. These addresses and are then sold againand again as "targeted" bulk email.
WARNING: The only "target" here is your money! You MUST stay away from these bulk lists. They`re a waste. Remember that a list that`s advertised as "Targeted" is probably not accurate, reliable or safe.If you were marketing a revolutionary new gardening tool,would you send 10000 direct mail pieces to names randomly snatched from the phonebook?

Or ...Would it be wiser to send your offer a mailing list of people who have recently purchased gardening tools and products through mail order?

=> BULLSEYE NOT BULL No

legitimate businessperson would ever send thousands of emails to random people culled from the Internet. Bulkmailing is unprofessional and makes you look bad. Bulk mailing can make your bottom line look bad, too. You want to do more than hit your target, you want to hit a bulls eye on that target.
Bulk lists aren`t the answer. When you do a direct email or direct mail campaign to a RESPECTABLE rental list, if the people on the list haven ever heard of you before (called a COLD LIST),statistically, you`re likely to get a .005% response orless.Does this mean that email campaigns are doomed before theystart? No at all. As long as you use emails that are safe,you won`t be sorry.

You Could Have a Top 10 Google Ranking Already!

2006-04-04T12:23:00.000-07:00

Adland Digest Sponsor Message

Here's something Bogdan and I kind of stumbled upon during my lunch break here. You may actually have a TOP 10 Ranking on GOOGLE right now! Just by creating a profile on Adlandpro Community, you can get a top 10 Google Ranking with your name. Here's a few random name searches on Google as examples:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=nettz%20tulod
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=charles+fortney http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=challie+chachere http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22mark+dransfield

Click the link below to find out if your name appears in the top rankings for Google:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=Mary

IMPORTANT: Make sure that when you fill out your profile that it is complete with all your interests, your business name and web address so Google associates your name properly with your business.

Preparing Your Mind and Body for the Work-at-Home Experience

2006-04-04T12:22:00.000-07:00

Your goal has finally been realized. You're finally going to take that giant step into the mysterious world of working at home, but you have some concerns.
You've heard all the myths, negative talk, etc. that others throw your way when you enlighten them about your new-found dream.

Don't let negative people stop you from going after your dream of working at home. If you really want to work from home, you'll find comfort in knowing that millions of people are already doing it with success!

Preparation is the key to a great work-at-home experience. Below are a few simple steps you can take to prepare yourself for the work-at-home experience and avoid potential pitfalls.

Step One: Preparing Mentally and Eliminating Fears

Mental preparation is the first step because success begins in your mind. You should eliminate all fears of working from home because ultimately, there are absolutely no guarantees in the business/employment world. Keep your mind on your goals, not on all the things that "could" happen. If you have a comfortable nine-to-five job and fear losing that security in order to work at home, that's perfectly normal. However, when you decide to start your own home business, you'll need to keep your goals ever before you. When fears creep up in your mind, remind yourself that any job could be terminated at any time in the business world. So why not have your own business where you're free to make the decisions which determine your future?
Prepare your mind by eliminating fears and keeping focused on your business goals. Work daily to reach those goals, and you'll reap the rewards.

Step Two: Preparing for a Roller Coaster Experience

One thing that's guaranteed with owning a home business is the roller coaster ride experience. Be prepared to experience ups and downs with finances, customer demand, product or service availability and everything else that goes along with a business. If you're the type of person who loves adventure, this probably excites you. If you're more of a steady, even-flow type of person, then this may sound a little scary.

A great way to prepare for the ups and downs is to have a budget. Learning to budget for a business is a great stress reliever.

Why?

Because a budget places the financial burden on paper instead of on your shoulders! A budget will free you from the temptations to overspend when profits are up as well as from temptations to quit every time things are down. It can actually be fun to watch the trends of your business each month, and eventually year by year.

Step Three: Preparing Physically for a Change in Pace

If you're leaving a very active job in the workforce to start a computer-based business at home, then you're in for some surprises. You might not realize how active you really were on the job until you're confined to the computer all day.
Never stop being active. There's a temptation to stop all activity when you begin working from home. Unfortunately, activity is what stimulates the mind and enables your body to keep functioning at the right pace. The less active you are, the less energy you will have.

Prepare yourself by committing to at least a small frame of time each morning for exercise. Take a thirty-minute walk in the morning and during your lunch break to clear your mind. Go to the gym daily, or take the kids to the park. Keeping yourself active also keeps your mind full of fresh ideas for business expansion, promotion and producing quality service.
When you're prepared, working from home will seem less stressful and more enjoyable. Your focus will be clear and you'll be able to reach your business goals.
Copyright 2006©, Nicole Taylor a member zbntoFrom AdlandPro

How To Get People To Your Blog ...

2006-04-04T12:16:00.000-07:00

I'm gonna cover a little about getting people to your blog.

The first thing about your blog that we need to focus on is the title of your blog. Does the title tell what your blog is about? Does it sound inviting? Remember that whatever you title it is what is going to show up in search engines, links, and other places people will see.

The title is what sells interest into someone going to your blog. So make sure you choose a title that matches your content and sounds inviting. Now, once this step is done you can look into blog directories like http://www.technorati.com/ , http://www.blo.gs/ and http://www.weblogs.com/ and see about claiming your blog.

This is simple. All you are doing is letting the directory know who you are, where your blog is (the url) and what catagories your blogs fits in. You can also look at blogs in the same catagories that compliment your blog and see about linking.

You can also use a blog linking service to get reciprocal linking. BlogLinker is a service I use at my blog and they notify you by email when someone has linked to your blog. This means they have linked to your blog and you to theirs. If the linking blog doesn't fit your 'style' or is offensive you can delete or hide the link in Bloglinker control panel of your account.

You can get a FREE account or upgrade to a paid service. You can also get headline feeds for your blog and become a 'listed' partner. And make sure you place your blog url in your sig file of all emails and any other sig file you use. Post in forums about your blog and ask people to leave comments. Get people interactive. Do an interview of someone for your blog. Post it and let the person you interviewed know where to find that interview. I'll bet you that you'll see some traffic from this for sure. There are more ways and I will leave you with your work cut out to find them all. Happy blogging.

The Little Things To Do To Create Success

2006-04-04T12:09:00.000-07:00

Think of it this way, if you throw one little metal B-B at a window you probably won't shatter the glass, but if you super glue a couple of hundred of those little B-B's together into a ball, that'll shatter the window.

When working to build and improve a business don't waste a lot of time looking for the one big magic marketing strategy that will make all the difference in the world. Instead, find a lot of little things that can be improved. Added together little things have big impact.

In keeping with our theme of referrals, another way to stimulate referrals, if you have direct contact with your customers, is by staging events where loyal customers can and are motivated to bring their friends to you.A night club has an annual anniversary party with huge tents in the parking lot, free food and free entertainment, closed to the public but open to their customers and guests invited by the customers.

The Secret To Direct Mail Success

2006-04-04T12:05:00.000-07:00

Need some specific ideas and guidelines to help you write effective advertising copy?

Whether it's a sales letter, postcard, or on the web, think format, copy and graphic components. A graphic component can be a cartoon, a drawing, a photograph, a border, a key word in a dramatic typeface. Most needs for such things can be filled very inexpensively with what is commonly called clip art in the advertising business.

You can buy books of copyright free clip art in art supply stores and by mail from several different companies. It's also easily available on the web today. An expenditure of ten or twenty dollars will get you hundreds of pieces of useable art.

=>There's one last tip I want to give you about using direct marketing to promote your business. A real secret to direct marketing success is repetition. When you are selecting or compiling a list of prospective customers to mail to you should think in terms of mailing offers and information to that same list three to five times during a 12-month period - not just once.

Properly used this can be one of the most effective and cost-efficient marketing strategies you'll ever find for your business. In your next Successful Marketing Strategy email we're going to get into the “nitty gritty” of creating effective advertising and writing effective copy. Be on the lookout for it in just a couple of days.

The Most Important Part Of Any Ad

2006-04-04T11:57:00.000-07:00

=>The first critically important key is the development of effective headlines. The headline is the most important component part of any type of advertising. It must work or nothing else matters. Next in importance are the subheads that are used to break up long blocks of copy.

=>Next are photo captions. Photo captions are marvelous opportunities to make persuasive arguments. People are drawn to pictures and often read the captions beneath the pictures before reading just about anything else. The same basic guidelines apply to headlines, subheads and photo captions. First, the headline should promise a positive benefit or ask a provocative question, or both. Second, it should telegraph its message in twelve words or less.

=>Third it should stand alone. That means it should make a complete statement by itself. I'll give you a great example to compare all of your headlines to, one that comes from the National Enquirer. This is a headline of a small mail order ad that has been running continuously in the Enquirer since before I was alive, a great indication that it works.

Here's the headline: "Corns Gone in Five Days or Money Back." This is a great headline. In just eight words it clearly promises a benefit - corns gone. It strengthens the promise benefit with a specific time frame - in five days. And it further strengthens the benefit with a guarantee - or money back. Your headlines, subheads and photo captions need to be equally strong.

If your headline does its job it will grab the attention of the reader and motivate him to read more of your offer. The headline will bring the reader into the copy. There are fourteen tips to make sure that your advertising copy works. I'll give you the first seven of them in your next Success Marketing Strategy email in just a couple of days. Dedicated To Multiplying Your 1ncome

Don't just "Advertise Your Business".... Read

2006-04-04T11:51:00.000-07:00

Networking - It's Important!

Networking opportunities are everywhere. Don't let them pass you by.

1. Recognize that there is more to networking than greeting people. Develop a step-by-step plan for how you'll build relationships and how you can effectively tell your story. Don't forget your 30 second commercial to tell your story.

2. Zero in on specific groups of people. Who are the ideal prospects for your business? Do they live nearby? What activities do they participate in? Try networking groups meetings. For those of us in lease purchasing we network with real estate agents, accountants, financial planners, and a mul***ude of others.

3. Determine where you'll be most likely to find your ideal prospects. Do they belong to specific organizations or associations? Do they frequent particular events, performances or recreational facilities? Again, for those of us in lease purchasing, investors, buyers and sellers are just the beginning.

4. Identify organizations, events, professional groups and social clubs whose members meet your profile characteristics, and get involved. Get to know people, and let them know what you do. Volunteer for committees, attend conferences, and maximize opportunities that might spin off from the formal sessions. For those of you in lease purchasing, and even other businesses, become an expert. Give seminars, speeches, write articles. Become involved and get your name out there.

5. Work on your ability to make small talk. Have some prepared topics in mind—current events, sports, vacation plans. And be sure to ask open-ended questions of the other person like "What is it you enjoy most about your work, or where you live or your free time?" Remember, too, that having a good conversation depends greatly on being an active, courteous listener. Again, your thirty second commercial is a must. And let's emphasize again being a good and courteous listener.

6. Explore organizations dedicated to business networking. Chambers of commerce, tenant associations and networking clubs offer opportunities for you to meet and greet. Look for the groups in your area. Many times your local paper has a certain day of the week that lists all of these types of meetings. If you don't see it, call your paper and ask about it.

7. Look for partners. Specifically, look for other businesses that complement what you do and might be a good source of referrals. Again, those of us in lease purchasing have it easy. We have a ton of people to work with. For those of you in other businesses, think of who would complement your business. If you are a travel agent, how about hotels, spas; a flower shop, what about bridal shops, catering services, party planners... you get the idea.

8. Don't look at networking as a sales opportunity. Instead, look at it as a reconnaissance mission—a chance for you to learn something and enjoy the scenery. There is a proper time and place for sales calls. This is a very important point. Read it over and over again. Networking is not sales.

9. Make a habit of being patient, polite and friendly to people, whether or not you're in an "orchestrated" setting. This is just good business behavior. If you are going to run a business, at least a successful one, these are just some of the characteristics and behavior you will need to employ.

10. Finally, do something constructive with the names and information you've gathered. Stay in touch with the most meaningful contacts. Again, those of us in lease purchasing know the importance of following up and have numerous ways to do so. For those of you in other types of business, develop a few types of follow-up methods; such as phone, fax, newsletter, brochure, card and letter.Referrals, introductions and contacts that simply come by chance are like gifts. Be sure to thank anyone who helps you network, and when appropriate pay a nice referral fee. Your ability to be seen as a giver rather than a taker will spread the word that you are someone with whom people want to do business.

Copyright 2001 DeFiore Enterprises (linkelly)

Turbo-Boost Your Sales

2006-04-03T16:44:00.000-07:00

*Design your web site to be a targeted resourcecenter. Choose one subject and build on it. You'llgain repeat visitors that are interested in that topic.

*Offer something that is really free. If people goto your site and what you said was free really isn't,you'll lose their trust and they won't buy anything.

*Add a chat room or message board to your website. People want to interact with other people thathave they same interests as them.

*Entice people to link to your web site by givingthem something free in return. This'll increase yourranking in some search engines.

*Trigger your reader's emotions in your ad copy.Example, if you sell a book on gambling tips, tellthem the feelings they'll get when they win money.

*Make sure your site looks good in all browsers.You could be losing sales because it looks distortedin some web browsers.

*Increase your sales by e-mailing full page ads toyour e-zine subscribers. Remember to tell peoplebefore they subscribe or they may consider it spam.

*Ask people questions in your ad copy that makethem think about their problems. For example: Doyou want to be free of your debts?

*Magnify the size of your prospects problem inyour ad; show how your product can solve it.The bigger the problem, the more sales you'll have.

*Invest a percentage of your profits right backinto your business. Spend it on marketing, productimprovement, customer service, advertising, etc.

Ways To Increase Your Traffic

2006-04-03T16:42:00.000-07:00

1. Trade links with other web sites. They should be
related to the subject of your web site. Instead of
trading links, you could also trade banner ads, half
page ads, classified ads, etc.

2. Start an e-zine for your web site. When people
read each issue they'll be reminded to revisit your
web site. They'll see your product ad more than
just once which will increase your orders.

3. Form an online community. It could be an online
message board, e-mail discussion list or chat room.
When people get involved in your community they
will regularly return to communicate with others.

4. Write articles and submit them to e-zines, web
sites and magazines that accept article submissions.
Include your business information and web address
at the end of the article.

5. Give away an electronic freebie with your ad on
it. Allow your visitors to also give the freebie away.
This'll increase your ad exposure and attract people
to your web site at the same time.

6. Combine your products or services into one big
package deal with other businesses offerings. You
could share a web site and advertise the package
deal; which means double the traffic.

7. Submit your freebie to the online directories that
list your particular item or service for free. If you're
offering a free e-zine, submit it to all the free e-zine
directories on the internet.

8. Participate on message boards. Post answers to
other people's questions, ask questions and post
appropriate information. Include your signature file
at the end of all your postings.

9. Exchange classified or sponsor ads with other
free e-zine publishers. If there is a huge subscriber
difference between e-zines, one can run more ads
to make up for it.

10. Post your ad on free advertising areas on the
internet. You can post it on free classified ad sites,
free for all links sites, newsgroups that allow ads,
free yellow page directories, etc.

2006-04-03T16:35:00.000-07:00

Express the same views as your target audience.Bring up common likes and dislikes in your ad. Thiswill create instant rapport with your audience.

Add viral marketing into your promotional plans.Allow your visitors to give away your f.ree stuff,just include your ad somewhere on all the freebies.

Design your web site to be less confusing. Don'tuse a lot of graphics, links and anything that takesaway from your sales message.

Give your visitors the option of viewing your website by autoresponder or printing it out. They mightnot have the time right then to look it over.

Increase your o.pt-in e-mail l.ist quickly by givingaway a product at no c.ost. Just require people tosubscribe to your e-zine in exchange.

Joint venture your web business with other offlinebusinesses. Look for businesses that have the sametarget audience and create a win/win deal with them.

Expand your target audience by adding a newproduct line or packaging your main products withother ones. You could also add-on extra services.

Persuade your visitors to like you. People b.uyfrom people they like. You could tell them a joke,give them a compliment, give them a freebie, etc.

Submit the f.ree stuff you o.ffer to online freebiedirectories. They usually get tons of traffic becausepeople like to get things for f.ree.

Use headlines and sub headlines that are aimeddirectly at your audience. If you're selling things tolawyers use a headline like "Attention All Lawyers!".

Free Business Cards...Take 25% on all Products!

2006-04-03T16:31:00.000-07:00

Affordable business cards too. Join there mailing list, If you do you'll get awesome weekly deals hssttp://www.vistaprint.com/frf?frf=744551720155

24 Mouth-Watering Email Subject Lines

2006-03-27T10:59:00.000-08:00

(Consumers Just Eat `Em Up!)

The following are email subject lines that have gotten outstanding results in marketing campaigns for a broad spectrum of goods, products, and services.

If they work for"Brand X," think how well they`re work for "Brand YOU."

1. Who really wants to be a(n) X ?
2. What do YOU want for Christmas?
3. You`ve got to see this ...
4. Doctors spill the beans ...
5. I goofed ...
6. Special Pre-release Announcement
7. You`re going to love this one
8. Here`s the answer you`ve been looking for
9. 3 minutes to greater X, X, and X
10. DISCOVERED! The secret to X
11. Urgent News
12. Still skeptical? Here`s why you should be!
13. Our loss is your gain
14. This is extremely urgent
15. I need your help ...
16. Check this out and let me know
17. Important notice from
18. Something that might interest you ...
19. Before you give up, here`s my suggestion
20. Open this before 7 p.m.
21. Make X work for you!
22. Seen this yet?
23. Sneak Peek at .com
24. Newsflash fromUse them in good (marketing) "health"!Sincerely,

2006-03-27T10:45:00.000-08:00

How to Deal With Discussion Forum Flames

Unfortunately, flames are a part of the everyday reality of discussion forums. Not knowing how to dealwith them is like not knowing how to defend yourself ifyou're walking through a part of town where you knowthere is trouble lurking.
Luckily, forums aren't nearly as dangerous as your local ghetto.

Why People FlameThere are 3 main reasons that people construct flameposts.

They are:#1 – They are perceiving an injury or loss, and theybelieve that you are the one who's responsible for the pain they are feeling... so they want to counter attackto make themselves feel

better.#2 – They are in an emotional state when they are writing their post, and they aren't thinking about thelong-term consequences of their actions.

#3 – They are imagining themselves as the victim of what ever situation they are in, and they are imagining that YOU are their victimizer.Now that you know why people flame, let's talk about...How to Handle ThemThe first thing you need to know is that you can't fight fire with fire… no matter how cool it sounds when you say that. That stuff usually only works in the movies.In real life, you have to fight fire with water.

Here's my five-step process for doing just that.
This has been tested and proven in dozens of situations.

STEP #1 – You have to write two text documents. The first one will be a private email that you send to them, and the second will be a response to their post on the forum itself.

SIDENOTE: You have to write both of these at the sametime, because you're going to be sending them at thesame time.

STEP #2 – When writing to them, tell them that you understand how they could feel the way they feel, but that their feelings are based on a misunderstanding.

STEP #3 – Point out the specific errors in their post,and gently correct them. Fill them in on the information that they are missing or that they misinterpreted.

STEP #4 – Tell them how you will fix the problem, andthen instruct them on how to fix the mistake they made by flaming you on the forum. Explain to them that you are forwarding their post to your attorney (but only say this if you mean it), and that you would like their contact info if they don't plan on doing step five.Speaking of which...

STEP #5 – Politely ask them to apologize to you publicly on the forum, and explain to the people who are following the thread that he/she made a mistake.

WORD OF WARNING – Don't go around making legal threats to people just because you're angry about their flame. If you don't actually have a lawyer, then don't tell people you're going to have your lawyer contact them. Going the legal route is some thing best saved for last resort. Also, one other thing… make sure you take a screen shot of their post, and save it. It would also be smart tocopy and paste their post into a text file, because the moderators might delete the entire thread before you can save the evidence.

In Conclusion...

The key to handling flames is to not take it personally, and to act quickly before the damage spreads.

BONUS TIP – One last thing that might help you craftyour reply to the person who wrote the flame… tell themthat you ALSO hate it when people do to you what hethinks you did to him. For example:If someone flamed you for not responding to an email ontime, you can say, "I hear ya... I hate it when people don't get back to me quickly either. I've been away ata conference for two days, and I wasn't able to get tomy email account until just now."Of course, don't say this if it's not true, but I think you get the idea.Make sure you book mark this page as a reference in case you ever find yourself at the receiving end of a nasty forum flame.

MISTAKE 1,2 & 3's

2006-03-27T10:39:00.000-08:00

In today's lesson, you're going to learn 3 common mistakes that people make when they first start postingon discussion forums. You'll learn what they are, and how to avoid them so you won't look like an amateur. Over the past few years, I've seen people make all kinds of mistakes on the discussion forums. These are the three mistakes that I keep seeing people make week after week, though. Let's dive right in, and learn about...

****MISTAKE #1 – JUMPING INTO A FLAME WAR****

I have to admit, if you're sitting at home, and working on improving your pay per click ads, it's tempting to seek out a little drama here and there, and the forums are a great source of it. People get into flame wars all the time on forums, and it's so tempting to jump in and offer your 2 cents. Even if it's just for fun, you should be careful not to get mixed up in these dramas, because then you'll quickly get a reputation as someone who "slings poo-poo" in the forums. Have you ever seen someone at a party or in a bar that talks WAY louder than everyone else, and usually whatever they're saying has no value? Nobody really wants to get close to that person, because they know that sooner or later… that person will gossip about them too. Flame wars are lot like that. If you end up irritating someone in a flame war, they will become motivated to attack you and your business. Trust me, don't do it. It makes you look like a rank amateur, and it takes time away from activities that will make you money.

****MISTAKE #2 – MAKING "ME TOO" POSTS****

I have to admit, this one is a huge pet peeve of mine. If I go out of my way to ask a question on a forum, I usually set the forum up to email me if there are anynew replies. Nothing irritates me more than taking the time to check out my discussion thread, only to see someone write:"Yeah, I was wondering the same thing too"or"Yeah, I think so too".This also makes the moderators mad, because if it's amoderated discussion forum, they have to take the time to actually read and approve the "me too" post. Oftentimes, they will delete your post, just because you created extra work for them… so don't do it.If you want to chime in, then make sure you add someunique value to the discussion thread by offering your experience, comments, or even a story that relates towhat's being discussed.Speaking of pissing the moderators off, let's jump into…

**MISTAKE #3 –
MAKING POSTS THAT SAY "WHY DID MY THREAD GET DELETED?"**

Seriously, please don't do this. I know that it's frustrating to get your post deleted after you spent time and effort making it, but trust me… the moderators almost always have a reason.If you really feel like the moderators made a mistake,then try sending them a private message, and ask them how you can improve your post so that it meets theirguidelines.

****IN CONCLUSION…****

To someone who's been posting on forums for a long time, these 3 tips will seem like common knowledge, andyet I still see people making them all the time.You'll go a long way toward making a good impression,and making a lot more money on your favorite discussion forums if you follow these tips and guidelines.Well that's it. I hope you enjoyed these tips, and Ihope you'll use them.

Killer Ways To Sell Your Back-End Products

2006-03-26T16:04:00.000-08:00

Back-end product is a product you attempt to sell your customers after they have recently purchased a related product from your business. If you're not trying to sell back-end products to your customers, you're making a big mistake. It is easier to sell to existing customers than it is to sell to new ones who don't trust your business yet.
Below are ten killer strategies you can use to sell yourback-end products to your existing customers:

1. When you ship people the first product they bought,insert a flyer or brochure for your back-end productin the package.

2. Give customers a free subscription to a customersonly e-zine when they buy your product. You could include your ad for your back-end product in eachissue.

3. Send your customers greeting card. Include a small advertisement inside the card for your back-end product.

4. After people order your first product from your website, take them to a "thank you" web page and include your back-end product ad on that page.

5. Send customers a free surprise gift after they orderyour first product. You could attach another ad withthe free gift for your back-end product.

6. If you're selling an electronic product, like an ebook,include your ad for your back-end product somewhereinside the electronic product.

7. Give your customers a free membership into your"customers only" private site. You could include yourad for your back-end product somewhere inside the private site.

8. Contact your customers by phone and ask them ifthey were happy with their purchase. You could tellthem about your back-end product.

9. Send your customers a thank you letter by mail or E-mail. You could mention your back-end product some where on the letter.

10. Ask your customers if they want to be updated inthe future when you have new product offers. Youcould have them sign up to receive e-mail or snailmail updates.Your business will have a greater chance of surviving when you attempt to sell back-end products to your existing customers.

Magic-Like Ways To Multiply Your Orders

2006-03-26T15:51:00.000-08:00

1. Use reward programs to keep people revisiting your web site and buying your products. You could reward gifts or discounts for revisiting or buying.

2. Publish e-zines for other web sites to increase your traffic. You could do it at no charge and inreturn just ask for a sponsor ad in each issue.

3. Trade endorsement ads with other e-zines. They pull more hits and sales than just trading classifiedads because it gives your ad instant credibility.

4. Test your ad copy before you start taking orders.Tell your visitors to e-mail you if they want to be notified when you launch a new product.

5. Get your visitors excited about your product by letting them know how excited you are about it. Tell them why you're excited and use exclamation points.

6. Use incentives to gain referrals if you don't havean affiliate program. Tell people when they refer customers you will award them with free products.

7. Tell your visitors the reason why you're having a sale so they don't think your products are cheap. It could be a holiday/seasonal sale or clearance sale.

8. Stay away from overloading your web site withhigh tech gadgets. They can create a slow loadingweb page and distract people away from your offer.

9. Cut out words, phrases, and paragraphs in your ad copy that aren't selling or supporting your product.This will stop people from getting bored with your ad.

10. Keep people at your web site as long as possible.Allow them to download free ebooks, sign-up for contests, use free online services, etc.

10 Mesmerizing Ways To Reinforce Your Profits

2006-03-26T15:48:00.000-08:00

1. Anticipate any objections your visitors may have about your product offer. You must research your target audience's needs and wants.

2. Remember not to use outrageous or unbelievable claims in your ad copy. People are too savvy online and won't believe you.

3. Pick a good name for your business and product.Your names should be memorable and describe the kind of product your offering.

4. Solve your customer complaints by being quick and friendly. The faster you respond, the more your customers feel you care about them.

5. Never think your customers are satisfied with their purchase. You should be constantly finding new ways to better your product and service.

6. Market yourself, as well as your product. You could write articles, ebooks, do free consulting,do speaking engagements, etc.

7. Find new target audiences for your products or services. For example, if you're selling coffee tostores try to also sell it to coffee shops.

8. Use the phrase "invest in our product" instead of the words buy or purchase. This makes prospects feel they're investing in their future if they buy.

9. Create offline affiliates to market your product.Have people sign up at your web site to sell your products through "house parties".

10. Use logos and slogans for your business. They make it easier for people to remember and identify your business.

2006-03-26T15:43:00.000-08:00

---Mind Altering Words That Make People Buy---

1. Use the word "fast" in your ad.
People want fast results, fast delivery, fast ordering, etc. Nowadays,we usually value our time more than our money.

2. Use the word "guaranteed" in your ad.
Peoplewant to be assured they are not risking their hardearned money buying your product.

3. Use the word "limited" in your ad.
People want to own or receive things that are exclusive or rare because they are considered to be more valuable.

4. Use the word "easy/simple" in your ad.
People want easy ordering, easy instructions, easy to use,easy payments, etc.

5. Use the word "testimonial" in your ad.
People want to see believable proof before they buy your product. It should be reputable and specific proof.

6. Use the word "discount/sale " in your ad.
Peoplewant to find bargains. They could be rebates, one time sales, percentage offers, get one free offers, etc.

7. Use the word "free" in your ad.
People want free incentives before they do business with you. Theycould be free books, accessories, services, etc.

8. Use the word "you/your" in your ad.
People want to know that you are talking them. This will make them feel important and attract them to read the whole ad.

9. Use the word "important" in your ad.
People do not want to miss important information that could effect their life. People will stop and take notice.

10. Use the word "new" in your ad.
People wantnew products or services that will improve their life like new information, tastes, technology, results, etc.

Quote of the Day:"What is wrong with our world is that love is in short supply." -- Christopher BryantWarm regards,

Your URL is to long??

2006-03-17T19:06:00.000-08:00

I found this and thought it will be very useful for all of us with affiliate programs or long url home biz.. By entering in a URL in the text field below,they will create a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires. They don't charge a dime is FREE!

Essential Rules for Effective Email Marketing

2006-03-17T19:03:00.000-08:00

Print This Page - Makes For An Easier Read"

Hi Eveyone, In today`s "Marketing Strategies that EMPOWER Success" lesson, you`re going to learn the BASICS OF EMAIL MARKETING. Now I know what you`re thinking:
Basics don`t sound very exciting or "empowering."
But the basics are the foundation upon which everything else is built. Miss these and you may end up spinning your wheels for the next 12 months. (Wouldn`t you rather be spinning stories about how you made your first million?)

So find a comfortable spot, put up your feet and let`s get ready to rumble!

=====Essential Rules For Effective Email Marketing =====

If you want an email campaign to succeed, you don`t want to offend anyone when sending your messages. Turn off a consumer with your email and you can be sure they`ll tune out your message. Don`t let this happen to you! A message that earns respect makes sales.

That`s why our first topic for discussion is email etiquette. (Later in the course, we`ll talk more about how to write an email sales letter.) Train yourself to always -- and I mean ALWAYS -- stick to the rules below when crafting your email message.

=> RULE #1 - ALWAYS WRAP YOUR LINES AT 65 CHARACTERS OR LESS Whenever you write an email, always format the lines so that they`re 65 characters, or less, across. To do this, you may need to do a "hard return" by hitting "Enter" at the end of the line. Wondering why to limit your lines to just 65 characters? (Good question! It shows you`re thinking.)

There are two reasons that "less is more": --

The first thing to remember is that looking at a computer screen for a long time causes EYE FATIGUE for many readers. The shorter span of characters across the screen makes reading easier and more appealing to the recipient of your email message.

-- The other reason to go short instead of long is this:

some email clients AUTOMATICALLY ENFORCE LINE-WRAPPING at 60-65 characters on received messages. If your email is wrapped at 70, the content will arrive all "chopped up." This makes it unattractive...and worse -- unappealing.

-- Tip within a Rule #1:

Email clients such as Outlook Express allow you to SET THE LINE-WRAP to any character-width you choose. That means you won`t have to hit Enter each time after typing 65 characters. Makes life easier!

-- Tip within a Rule #2 -

You can type 65 asterisks or dashes in a Notepad file to create a template. Then paste your email below it to see if any lines extend too far to the right.

=> RULE # 2 -

BE CAREFUL USING ALL CAPS How many times have you changed the TV channel to avoid listening to a screaming car salesperson? No one likes a screaming salesperson...and no one likes a "screaming" email message, either. Odds are, when someone has over-amped the volume of their message by using too many capital letters (not to mention too many exclamation points and other punctuation) - you`re going to be turned off.

On the Internet, email messages written in all caps are considered yelling. It`s okay to write some sentences and some words in all caps, but don`t go overboard. (As you can see in this message, I`ve tried to use capital letters to help break up sections of the content from time to time)

-- Tip within a Rule:

Consumers buy from a source they trust. Emails in all caps are perceived as "shady" or uneducated, and have an appearance that damages the credibility of an offer.

=> RULE #3 -

WATCH YOUR Ps & Qs (Spelling and Grammar) Would you be influenced by an email selling you something that had noticeable spelling and grammar mistakes? Sure you would...and the influence would be negative, not positive!

When a consumer reads a sales message that`s filled with errors, they think to themselves, "Good grief, this person doesn`t even take the time to get his emails right. His product is probably the same quality as his emails." When you`re in business, YOUR IMAGE IS YOUR REPUTATION and your reputation is the reason people buy from you or the guy down the block. It`s essential that you create an image of INTEGRITY, CREDIBILITY, and HONESTY in the mind of your prospects.

Sending emails filled with errors doesn`t hurt your professional image...it destroys it. (Ouch!) That`s it for now, but I`ll be back with Lesson #2 faster than you can say, "I want to be EMPOWERED"

Marketing and Promotion!!

2006-03-17T19:02:00.000-08:00

Your home business is NOT about YOU.

It's about everyone else around you, how you connect to others and let them see the value that your business can provide:

What's your Instant Impact Message—
Most small or home business owners can't describe their business in one sentence. Even when they do, it speaks nothing of the uniqueness of their business.
"I do internet marketing" is a statement that does nothing to promote your business to others. Instead, if you say "I help small businesses with low budgets find unlimited clients over the Internet using affordable and simple solutions" then you now have a ‘value statement' that will stick in the minds of others even when they sleep.

Having your own Instant Impact Message is the toughest, and most important thing you can do to successfully market your business.
Don't describe what you do – describe the value that others can get from YOU.

Don't forget the power business cards—
If you used to hand out business cards to clients in your former company, why stop now? Business cards are a cheap and good way to advertise and promote. But instead of putting useless jargon and boring titles, put in your Instant Impact Message.

Offer free coaching—
If your business "Helps people feel and look professional and confident by mastering communications skills" than you can always offer free coaching to your prospective clients.
Just do a simple class where you can teach them how to speak better, listen better etc. etc. Free coaching can help you cement your position as an expert in your field. When people like what they get from you for free, they are more likely to become paying customers and self-driven marketing machines for your business.

Maximize your local contacts—
So over the years you developed a good relationship with the owner of the restaurant right opposite where you live. Now that you have your own business, you have to maximize ALL the contacts you collected over the years. The people you've met in your previous job or social functions can give you extra marketing leverage. So talk to the restaurant guy. See if you can work out a mutually beneficial business relationship. Everyone around you, if you know how to do it, can help you grow your business. Tips I found to be usefull on my training and I want to pass It to you guys