Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Understanding Different Digital Marketing Techniques

Marketing has always been very important for all businesses. Businesses need customers to survive and will have to try and fend off the competition. Marketing can be used to communicate with your potential customers and help them to understand why they should choose you.

Traditional Marketing
Marketing has been around since the very first business. Traditional forms of marketing involved TV, radio and print advertising. Almost all magazines and newspapers are chocked full of adverts and this can make it difficult to make these ads work.

People have gotten wise to advertising and generally won't listen to it anymore. Ads on TV for example are often ignored when people get up to do something else. Newspaper advertising was also ignored unless tricks were used.

Vouchers could be included in print media which made them much more attractive and memorable. Traditional forms of advertising are not only expensive but they are also a little bit like hit and miss. The business will have to pay whether or not people actually read the ad.

Digital Marketing
When most people think about digital marketing they will only consider the internet. However anything that is electronic can be used for digital marketing. Marketing messages are commonly delivered through email, cell phones, and the internet.

One of the best things about digital marketing is that it's instant. It's also fairly easy to trace the effectiveness of such campaigns.

Digital marketing is also targeted which means only people interested in learning about your products are contacted. You will have to ask permission before you are able to send messages and this ensures that the privacy of your customers is respected.

Digital advertising is becoming very popular and there's good reason for that. It's an instant form of communication, it's flexible, it can be targeted at specific groups of users and sophisticated analysis tools make it possible to work out what's happening.

Internet Marketing
Internet marketing works very well for many businesses. They will first need to choose keywords to promote their business with. It's important to give these keywords some important consideration. Spend some time thinking about the types of terms that your customers may use to describe and search for your business.

Internet marketing makes it possible to create brand awareness and grow your business. You can easily brand your ads to ensure people know who is writing them.

Although keywords are important, it's not the only thing that you should consider. You also need to ensure that the ad is relevant and interesting to the reader. Making any lies in the ad will damage the effectiveness of your campaign. Don't for example offer something for free unless it really is completely free because this won't go down very well.

The content of your site is also extremely important. No matter how much money you spend on advertising if your site is rubbish then nobody will stick around to read the site. Your site design needs to be top notch and the quality of the content also needs to be very high.

Internet marketing doesn't need to seem like a mystery anymore, there are a number of things that you can do to easily promote your site.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Adsense - How do I succeed?

So you have heard about the tons of money some people are making with Google Adsense. So you want in on the action. But the question is, how do I do it? What makes one person successful at utilizing Google Adsense and others fail miserably? How do I avoid wasting my time on it if I'm not going to be successful? Are there any guarantees?

These are some of the questions that may be nagging at you if you are considering getting started with Google Adsense. You may have already started, but are not seeing much return for your money and time. In this article we will discuss some of the answers to your questions and give you a hint as to how to successfully use Google Adsense.

First of all, is it true that people have made a lot of money with Google Adsense? Yes, it is true. There are some people who are and have made thousands of dollars per month with Google Adsense. There is even one website I know of that made millions when they sold their Google Adsense Website because it was making so much money per month a big company couldn't resist the opportunity to buy their business.

A business, that's what it is. That is the first thing you need to remember. Google Adsense is a business. It is not a hobby. It is not a sideline. Not if you want to be successful with the Google Adsense program. If you do not plan to treat it as a business, it is not worth any of your time. It is an all or nothing proposition.

There are exceptions. If you already run a successful website and have a lot of incoming traffic, Google Adsense can still work for you and you won't need to put a lot of time into it. By a lot of incoming traffic, I mean if you are already getting thousands of unique hits every day.

If you plan to use Google Adsense as your primary source of income, then you have to work hard at it in order to be successful. You have to treat it as you would any business. That being said, I must warn you. Being your own boss, working for yourself, may not be for you. It is a decision only you can make.

To be your own boss you have to be willing to work hard, invest in your new business, sacrifice a lot of your free time, and do whatever is necessary to make sure you will succeed. That means you will have to learn a lot of new things. You will have to study just like you did back in school, but with even bigger stakes. Your business depends on how much you are willing to work, invest, and learn.

Now, if you have decided you are willing to do those things, then you are ready to have your own business. Google Adsense is one way to get started in your own web-based business.

What do I do first? I'm glad you asked. First you will need to choose a product or topic you will be promoting or you can choose several if you plan on having a portfolio of websites. How do you choose a product or topic that will make money with Google Adsense? Again, I'm glad you asked.

There a re tools online that will give you an idea of how much different Google Adwords cost to buy. That in turn gives you an idea of how much those keywords will pay you through Google Adsense. So first, you go to Google Adwords to find out how much it costs to buy specific keywords.

You don't choose the top paying keywords, though. Why? Because everyone else in the world is doing that and the competition is brutal for the top paying Google Adwords. Choose keywords that are in the medium range. Words you believe will pay you 25-50 cents per click are best in my honest opinion.

Your competition won't be as stiff and you can still make a nice monthly income at those rates. Remember, 5000 click at 5 cents per click is more than 1000 clicks at 10 cents per click.

The next thing you need to do is take your new list of keywords you are thinking of promoting through Google Adsense and find out how many people are actually searching for those keywords through the search engines. If you go to overture.com, they have a tool that will help you. You type in a keyword and it tells you how many people searched for that keyword on Yahoo last month and how many searches were done for that keyword and other words associated with them.

So, to summarize, you choose several Adwords that you think will pay 25-50 cents per click, then find which of those the most people search for, and then add some value to those keywords that you have a personal interest in promoting.

That last thing is important. The reason is that if you are not interested in the topic or products you will be promoting you will not be as effective. You will lose interest in promoting it because it simply does not interest you.

Once you have chosen your keyword or keywords you will be using, it's time to put them to work for you and time to make some Google Adsense money. So, what's next?

You will need a website. This is very important. You do not want a web-based html generated free-hosted website. There are tons of places offering you all this for free. Remember that you get what you pay for.

In any business you wish to start, it takes some investment to do it properly. If you start with nothing at all, you will likely still be in that position a year from now. There is no magic pill or shortcut to success with any business and that includes Google Adsense.

Next you need a domain name. Most people think they need a catchy name like Google and Yahoo, because those companies are successful. Not true. Those companies spent millions of dollars to promote their name. If they had been smarter actually, they would have just registered Search.com.

Your domain name needs to include keywords that are the same or related to the keywords you will be promoting. Remember, with Google Adsense you are not building your company name, you are promoting keyword based contextual advertising and the ads you make money on are based on the words you have in your webpages.

If you have to have hyphens in the domain name to achieve this, then have hyphens in the name. Do not listen to conventional wisdom that tells you that only a dot com domain name and one that has no hyphens is any good. With Google Adsense, that is not the case. A dot net, a dot org, a dot info, or a dot anything else with the right keywords is what you are looking for.

You will need to find a good hosting company for your website. They can be found for $100 per year. If you are offered a cheaper deal than that, it probably is just that, a cheapo deal.

You will need to make sure they have 24-hour support. You want to know if they have an easy admin panel to manage your website with, like cpanel. You want to know if they have install options for things like photo galleries, forums, and blogs. You may not be using those options in the beginning, but you may need that flexibility within that year. Plan ahead.

Once you have your keywords to promote, your domain name, and your hosting, now you need your website. There are several options for this. You can purchase a ready-made Google Adsense website for around $250-$300. Cheaper ones, again, like hosting, are probably too good to be true. You can search Ebay for deals on those or search the web. I recommend affiliatewesitedesign.com.

You can also choose to build it yourself. If you know how to write html then I know you are already going to take that option. It can also be built in FrontPage or Dreamweaver, or some other auto-generator, however, I recommend you have someone who knows html actually fix the mistakes in the code when you are done.

The important thing about your new website is not how it looks! With most websites, a professional looking website is important. If you are selling a product or service that is still true. However, with Google Adsense, you are promoting keywords and need people to click the ads for you to make any money.

If your website is too appealing, they will stay on your website and click around in there burning your bandwidth and making you no money! If your website is very mundane, they will click the ads on the page to leave! You now made money.

Now let me clarify this for you. If you put text into your website that focuses on the keywords you are promoting through Google Adsense, then the right ads for you to make your money are in the page. Not only that, your page will be found in the search engines for searches on those keywords.

Now, when the searcher finds your website and it's beautiful, they want to look around at how great a website it is. They want to read all your FREE information. They will be there for awhile and may even bookmark you! None of those are good things! They are good IF you are selling a product or service on your website. They are not good things if you are trying to make money with Google Adsense!

Your website does not have to be ugly. But it doesn't need to look enticing either. You don't want them to click your links. You want them to click the Google Adsense links because your page is NOT quite what they are looking for. The more they click those links to LEAVE your website, the more money you make.

Experienced Google Adsense people know this and know how to design a website that gets visitors to click the links and leave the page, making you money on the way out.

That is about all I can shock you with for one article, but I hope I have helped you understand what Google Adsense and how to get started successfully.


Friday, September 4, 2009

Top Seven Ways Writing Articles Can Explode Your Business

In today's highly competitive internet universe, the importance of attracting highly targeted traffic to your website cannot be overemphasized. Routing web traffic to your site can be your only means of survival, especially in the cutthroat world of ecommerce. Getting a high search engine ranking can be very difficult. Fortunately, there is plethora of website promotion strategies you can use to drive traffic to your website.

There is a wide variety of strategies you can adapt, from paid advertising to affiliate marketing. However, most of these techniques require payment. Nevertheless, there are ways to promote your website and increase your web traffic without spending anything. Writing articles is one of the best web site promotion strategies you can use, and they can be very effective. How, you may ask, can writing articles help improve your web traffic? Here are the top seven ways in which it can help explode your business.

1.Reach more people

When you write good articles, it would be a shame not to share them with other people. You can post your articles in your website or you can submit them to other sites such as e-zines and online publishers. By submitting your articles to these sites, you give exposure not only to your ideas but also to your website. Simply include a link back to your site or include your information in the resource box. With this, you get exposure and free advertising as well. Submit your articles to popular e-zines and take advantage of their popularity. Other sites who find your article relevant may also link back to you. Thus, you increase your link popularity, which is one of the most important strategies in the internet world. Remember that most people are looking for information online and by filling this need with your quality article; you may reap the benefit of more exposure and higher web traffic.

2.Free Advertising

Submitting your articles to other websites presents an opportunity to advertise your website without paying exorbitant fees. Although you should avoid marketing language in your articles and make it informative and useful to your readers, you can always include your site's link in the resource box. In addition, by making your article relevant and helpful to your readers, you are making a good impression for your website, which could ultimately lead to a visit and hopefully a purchase. Good quality content in an article is far better and more effective than a few lines of ad space. You have a very special opportunity to presell your product or service to your prospective customer.

3.Gain High Search Engine Ranking

Create a new web page for your article in your website. Optimize your article to make it search-engine friendly. Use top-ranked keywords and Meta tags that can give your website a high search engine ranking. As soon as you upload your new webpage to your server, search engines will spider through it and you can gain an increase in search engine ranking. Remember that search engine optimized content is a very effective strategy to gain a high ranking in search results.

4.Increases Link Popularity

Instead of looking for other sites who would want to establish reciprocal links with your site, you can simply submit an article to other sites. Just do not forget to include a link to your site in your resource box. When these websites pick up and publishes your article, you automatically get a link partner. Try to get as many link partners as you can. Link popularity is one of the factors used by search engines in determining search engine rankings. Make your article especially useful and appealing, so that more websites will be encouraged to publish it.

5.Optimizes your site for improved search engine ranking

By making your site keyword rich, you can greatly improve the search engine ranking of your site. Remember that keyword density is one of the most important factors that search engines use when determining the search engine ranking of site. However, you should always provide relevant, useful and pertinent information. Avoid the temptation of overusing keywords just to gain a high ranking as this may turn off most web surfers. Relevance and quality is still the most important things to consider when writing articles and it will be doubly useful to your site if you make these articles search-engine optimized.

6.Establishes a Good Impression and Reputation

By writing excellent, original and relevant articles, you not only give your site exposure, you are also creating a good impression on your prospects. Encourage more people to visit your site and do business with you by establishing an impressive reputation through your articles. Be seen as an expert in the field and your will ultimately gain more customers eager to do business with you.

7.Enhances your credibility through references and testimonies

Certainly, your articles are going to receive feedbacks and testimonies when you publish them in e-zines and free article sites. Record these positive feedbacks and comments and use them as promotional material in your website or in any of your advertising efforts. Your credibility will be greatly enhanced by these feedbacks, as it will create a good impression on your prospects as well as your existing customers. In this highly competitive world, excellent credibility and trust may be the only things you need to attract new customers or make loyal patrons out of your existing customers. Original, relevant, useful and pertinent articles are important tools you should utilize to improve and explode your business

3 Ways to Use Other People's Content to Boost Your Profits

Repurposing your content is an ingenious way to make more money with less effort. So is repurposing other people's content.

I'm not talking about plagiarizing or stealing someone else's ideas. I'm talking about using information that is already out there and repurposing it into a format not already available so it appeals to new and different audiences and directs those audiences back to your core message.

Here are three examples of how to boost your profits by using or repurposing other people's content, including two case studies of successful business strategies.

Compilation Book

Greatest Direct Mail Sales Letters of All Time by Richard Hodgson is a wonderful example of a repurposed book. Richard took all of the sales letters he had accumulated from friends and colleagues during the 40s, 50s and even before and compiled them into a book. It's an amazing book, and it sells for $69.95. It's an incredibly resourceful way to make money from a book. And you can do the same thing with your own books.

Articles
A great example of repurposed articles is AdvantEdge by Nightingale Conant. What is Nightingale Conant? It's repurposing other people's products, whether it's authors like Zig Ziglar, Jay Abraham, Denis Waitley, Brian Tracy or Mark Victor Hansen.

The AdvantEdge newsletter, which goes out to subscribers, includes powerful insights, excerpts and articles from Nightingale Conant's best-selling authors. The newsletter then directs readers back to the AdvantEdge site to purchase books about personal development, business strategy, wealth building, mind and body, spiritual growth and sales training. So by repurposing other people's content, Nightingale Conant is making a bundle.

Other People's Topics / The Public Domain
Your imagination is the limit when it comes to repurposing information in the public domain, or information that's free from copyright protection.

I know there are many books that are public domain. For example, certain books like Sun Tzu's The Art of War are public domain. You can add a few paragraphs or write a special introduction. You can put in a beginning and an end and you can apply it to whatever business you're in. Boom! You now keep 100% of the profit because it's in the public domain. Mozart's work is public domain. If you just hummed Mozart, you could sell it and keep all the profits.

You can use public domain materials to help you in your marketing by not having to reinvent the wheel. For example, you can use a chapter of a book as the basis for an article or use an entire book as the basis of a teleseminar. Because many government materials are public domain, you could base a special report, manual or article on a government-issued booklet or pamphlet.

Using your creativity to repurpose other people's content is an inspired way to leverage existing content and save yourself time, energy and money. Because you and your message are unique, they emanate through the content and continue to help you attract new audiences to you and your message.