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0 comments | Wednesday, February 28, 2007

It has been said that only 2% of affiliate marketers ever make any “real” money from their efforts. The rest struggle and flounder as they see most of their efforts fail. Rather like master archers hitting the bull’s-eye each time while the rest struggle to sharpen their arrows, draw the bow and try to figure out what to aim at!

Those who run affiliate programs are often very sincere and well meaning, but lack the expertise at marketing. They may have produced a great product, but that doesn’t make them great marketers.

If you want to make money from affiliate marketing then you need to go to someone who’s meets 4 simple criteria.

1.Has made a success at affiliate marketing.

2.Has the skills to teach their success principles.

3.Teaches principles of success for any program and not just their own.

4.Has committed themselves to seeing you become successful and not just inflating their own bank account.

All this can be summed up as quality support for your benefit. Does such support actually exist? Most courses train you and then leave you to “go and put it into action”. They don’t follow through with you until you are successful. The reason is they have no motivation to do so because it's not cost effective.

We are about to see a new era in the field of affiliate marketing. Just recently launched is “Affiliate Classroom” who meet the previously mentioned criteria. This is hugely refreshing. At last proper training without hidden agendas! Training for the benefit of the marketer and not the product owner. I believe we will see a rise in the number of such training programs over the next few years. We may even see affiliate program owners promoting such “classrooms” as part of their own marketing strategy!



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After designing your website and creating your web portal you will hopefully begin receiving visitors to your site. You would think that after creating your website people would just be flying to your site. But that isn’t how it happens. Therefore, it is important to understand that there page rankings and link strategies that can aide you in guaranteeing your link popularity amongst the virtual world. As with the society in the real world, there is popularity in cyber space too. The better you are at selling the more popular your site will be!



Those websites that are most visited often contain all or most of the words the searcher is seeking. For example. You as the searchers will go to a search engine and type in camera cell phones. The websites that offer the most results will be those that use camera, cell, and phones in their description a variety of times. The key to your link popularity is the description of your site, not your site name.

When creating your link description write down the words that will grab the customer’s attention. Using the camera cell phone, a suggestion would be to write down camera cell phone, the types of camera cell phones, i.e. Motorola, Samsung, etc., latest technology camera cell phone, phone camera cell, yes, changing the wording around helps too. List the characteristic, best quality picture, email capability, voicemail all these will aid in providing the broadest rang of visitors. Although it has been said that simple is best, in this case, using same words over and over in various patterns and forms can aid you in ways that you never thought was possible before.

Sentence structure here is not important, key words are! Therefore, when consumers perform a search they simply type the subject they are seeking information on. This can be a few words or an entire sentence. To obtain their presence on your site you need to provide an extremely broad description of what you site has to offer. This, guaranteed, will provide you the advantage of experiencing the feeling of link popularity and guide you to the top of the page ranks in the internet website cyber space world. After you understand the importance of description and wording you will reap the rewards of link popularity and soar on that internet highway to generate traffic to your site.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building





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0 comments | Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Whether you call it website promotion or search engine optimization or even internet marketing, it's still important to 'court the what, don't marry the how'.

What do I mean by that?

Basically, that expression means to be concerned about *what* you are trying to achieve -- more visitors to your website, say -- rather than *how* you want to achieve it -- a high ranking on Google.



For example, here are three websites that *can* help you promote your website and thus help you promote your business, online:

1) YouTube
2) Digg.com
3) Del.icio.us

The above sites are known as social networking sites or social bookmarking sites or even social media sites. Whatever they are known as, the most important thing about these types of sites (and these three sites in particular) is that they are some of the most visited websites in the world.

Notice I haven't mentioned Google, until now that is:
4) Google Video.

I could also include:
MySpace, Technorati, Bloglines etc.

With the arrival of these social media sites, the website promotion game has changed.

Yes, website promotion -- getting visitors to your website -- is now much more than about ranking well on search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN these days. It's taking advantage of so-called social networking or bookmarking sites, and the high levels of visitors these sites receive.

Or, to use a fancy term: it's about social media optimization.

What are the rules of this new game?

How does social media optimization work?

Well, with any new technology (and these sites are also known as examples of Web 2.0 sites) the rules are still being made up, and no one has all the answers.

But here are a few clues:
-http://digg.com/design/Top_7_ways_to_get_a_useless_article_dugg -http://digg.com/tech_news/10_Tips_for_Promoting_Your_Blog_or_Business_on_MySpace_com (all 1 word)

And here are further reasons why you should take these social media sites seriously:
-http://www.digg.com/tech_news/Social_Media_Numbers_are_Out

Some think that Web 2.0 websites or social media sites will not be around for long. Others think that social media optimization will become as important as search engine Optimization. The important thing, right now, is to understand how you can best utilise these high traffic websites in promoting your website.

So, the time to embrace social networking sites is now.

Don't ignore search engine optimization, but do find out how your business or website can use social media Optimization, before it's too late.


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Probably one of the hottest things to hit the Internet Scene in the past couple of years is the social networking sites. Sites like MySpace have grown to astronomical proportions indeed. It appears to be a logical outgrowth and evolution from blogs and now kids, teens, and even adults are posting videos and media clips on their websites.



There have been a few problems with this such as video clips have been taken from other websites and actual mass media outlets, some stolen outright and this has caused a stir in places all over the planet and with the movie industry, as kids use their video, digital camera cellphones and such to take pictures of things they shouldn’t that are copyrighted and then placing them on their websites. Whoops?

What do they say about the theory of the law of unintended consequences? Of course now there are millions of these social networking sites and policing it is rather tough. Worse off now some companies are suing other companies that host these sites for not policing the content. But how can they? This whole issue is causing a media firestorm. MySpace is trying to cleanse its video postings;

http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsid=8017

There is another problem on the horizon that has to do with video and bandwidth especially as many people also switch to VoIP systems. These issues will eventually be worked out, but there is a temporary bit of chaos that we will have to deal with in the mean time. I certainly hope this article is of interest and that is has propelled thought. The goal is simple; to help you in your quest to be the best in 2007. I thank you for reading my many articles on diverse subjects, which interest you.





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The phrase Social Media Optimization, (SMO), has quickly become an industry buzzword in search marketing circles. The term refers to the practice of crafting, altering or augmenting profiles, images, movies and other files to be easily found and well shared in social media applications such as 43Things.com, MySpace, Tribe.net or Flickr, and by interested parties throughout the blogosphere.


The ultimate goal of any marketing campaign is to put products or services in front of as many interested eyeballs as possible. Where the public leads, marketers, by necessity, must follow and if those eyeballs begin to congregate over there as well as over here, many marketers feel the need to move. Tens of millions of registered members populate dozens of social networks. People appear to enjoy the ability to form communities and inform each other. Online marketers looking for another winning venue are therefore turning to social media spaces as social marketing tools.

For the past five years, the number of high-traffic venues for search marketers remained fairly constant, consisting primarily of Google. More recently, the space has been supplemented by Yahoo, Ask and MSN. For the most part, five years of consistency has benefited the search engines, their users, online merchants and the SEO/webmaster communities. Nothing stays static very long on the Internet though. The online marketing metaverse has expanded yet again.

People like applications that make life easier. That's why search is somehow part of practically every application people use online. One of the major appeals of social media networks is that by nature, they are about sharing information, usually from a highly personalized point of view. As the theory goes nobody knows everything but everyone knows something. Collectively, we must know a great deal. Where search tools are about users pulling information and Web2.0 applications are about pushing information to users, social media steps into the middle ground by pushing information to subscribers and inviting others to pull information via shared files.

In a social network, large groups of people who would otherwise likely be strangers associate with each other based on spider-web networks of contacts, friends, images, interests, and occupations, creating ever expanding communities. These communities, built around shared ideas and interests, draw users by giving them the ability to educate, inform and share with others.

Both Google and Yahoo have embraced social networking in their membership based services for years, starting with Yahoo Groups and Google's Orkut. More recent products include Flickr (Yahoo), Picasa (Google), Yahoo Publisher Network, and Blogger (Google). The major search engines have learned from the lesson suffered by the music and movie industries over the past decade.

About eight years ago the true power distributive power of the Internet was demonstrated by peer-to-peer file sharing networks. When Napster appeared on the scene, the music files of millions of people became illicitly traded public property, virtually overnight. A similar thing happened to the movie industry two years ago with broadband and bit-torrent. As soon as a large enough number of Internet users catch on to a technology that delivers access to the information or entertainment they want, that technology becomes a trend. Sometimes, trends have a way of becoming habit.

Social media applications have transited from trend to mainstream usage. Thousands of new users sign up for Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, Linked-In, Tribes and other community-active networks every day. As a result, blogging, image sharing and new-media content creation have moved well beyond creative geekery and corporate PR departments to become a trans-global pastime. Now that the various social network tools have acquired mass-market popularity they represent a pirate's treasure to corporate PR departments and the online marketers ready to serve them.

As far as treasure troves go, the world of social media is fairly easy to find; access and start working in. Creating a MySpace membership or a Flickr account is as easy as filling in a simple form. While building a MySpace profile is slightly more difficult than outfitting a Flickr portfolio, both are easy enough for new users to begin immediately. Partially because social media is so easy to use and partially because sharing information, recommendations and the latest outrageousness with friends and strangers alike is so cool, tens of millions of people have populated the social environments with hundreds of millions of files, ranging from music, images, documents and movies.

Social media is a cool, barely controlled environment in which individual users can form instant communities, finding friendships based on shared interest, passion and ideas. So how long do such environments remain cool after the invasion of barbarians cleverly disguised as marketing experts? That all depends on how we (the barbarians), make use of the virtual villages we're migrating into.

The problem with breaking in any new marketing medium is the instant gold-rush mentality of the advertisers who are early adopters. As recently as six or seven years ago, for instance, the majority of SEOs chased placements without a great deal of regard for the integrity of the search results. Claiming every possible Top10 placement under any given keyword phrase for a single site on AltaVista, InfoSeek and Lycos was entirely possible, and it was done with mercenary zeal. Ask any long-term SEO about the earliest days of the industry and most, if not all will show a slow, sly, satisfied smile. Back then, everything was blackhat. Before PPC paved the way to profitability, the search engines naturally considered SEOs as dangerous enemies.

Similarly, social networkers are not terribly happy about hitting the search marketing radar screen. By introducing corporate clients to what is assumed to be an open and non-commercial atmosphere, the online marketing sector is blatantly degrading the experience shared amongst the people making up the social network. As the months move on, more and more marketers are finding their way into places like MySpace. Communicating with custom created personalities shilling brand name sneakers is not what most social network users signed up for.

On the other side of the coin, the people populating social networks are already being subjected to advertising. Banner ads have been a part of MySpace for over a year and in a deal recently signed between MySpace and Google, AdWords ads could begin appearing alongside the personal profiles of MySpace members who've registered with the AdSense program. Movie studios, bands and other performers have also used social media, primarily MySpace, as an effective marketing venue to reach youthful consumers. Flickr sometimes displays paid ads from Yahoo Search Marketing. Advertising is nothing new to web users though its inclusion in areas or formats that would normally be considered non-commercial content is often frowned upon.

The social media environment is increasingly going to be used as a marketing tool regardless of how the various social networks and their millions of members feel about it. For a good search marketer, it is nearly impossible to avoid affecting whatever file one is working on in order to get good placement. In the realm of social media, adding tags, links and trackbacks is easier than altering the title, meta-tags, content text and link patterns. As Internet users gravitate towards the social media and thus, towards each other, online advertising is likely to take a community and interest based focus.



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Firstly let’s all get up to speed and cover social bookmarking. Social bookmarking is the process of storing you bookmarks or (websites added to your favorites) on a publicly accessible website. This allows people to essentially store their favorites on a website which will be available wherever they are and whatever PC they are accessing the internet from.

Social Bookmarking sites are predicted to make huge gains in popularity in the near future as the boom around user generated content increases and the internet increases in size making finding quality sites harder. Yahoo acquired del.icio.us in December 2005 and they have experienced a 300% increase in their user base since then which shows the growth of these sites.


So now to the main point, can social bookmarking sites be used for website promotion?

In an attempt to stop marketing and promotion SPAM most social tagging sites have implemented the now famous nofollow attribute tags (like Wikipedia) meaning no link popularity can be passed on from these sites.

However despite the attempts to prevent any link popularity and SEO benefit being gained, there are still some great benefits to be had by submitting websites to the social plethora of social bookmarking sites. Most enjoy good search engine ranking and appear high up on a huge amount of search terms, this can provide some excellent search engine visibility by population for listings with your sites links.

This provided with searches from the bookmarking sites can provide some good traffic. This can work especially well if used in conjunction with link bait or viral marketing, as a sites exposure increases exponentially as it gets more “bookmarks”.

The increased traffic and search engine listings can increase brand awareness and can be especially useful when launching a new site. So despite the nofollow’s social tagging sites can yield some very impressive results especially when used in conjunction other SEO and link generation methods.

Look out for the next article which will explain how best to go about submitting to social bookmarking sites and what content to use for maximum benefit.




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Pay per click (PPC) advertising continues to gain popularity in the online marketing world as an effective and inexpensive way to drive targeted visitors to web sites. Research firm eMarketer reported that between 2002 and 2003 the paid search listing market grew 175 percent. Major trusted search properties such as Google, Yahoo Search Marketing, MIVA, Search 123 and Kanoodle.com, all offer PPC campaigns in which you pay only when someone clicks through your banner ad or link. But PPC also has an enemy--click fraud--and understanding what it is and what to do about it should also be a key part of your PPC campaign.



What is Click Fraud?

Click fraud is when someone or something generates illegitimate hits on your banner or text advertisement causing you to pay for worthless clicks. AS PPC campaigns have grown in popularity and keyword prices and bidding have become more competetive, click fraud is on the rise.

Online marketers are becoming increasingly worried about the prospect of click fraud. According to CNET News, some marketing executives estimate that "up to 20 percent of fees in certain advertising categories continue to be based on nonexistent consumers in today's search industry."

This estimate is certainly unsettling for advertisers who, recently, have been paying hefty amounts bidding on desirable search terms. Financial analysts report that in the year 2004 advertisers are paying an average of 45 cents per click. Compare this to 40 cents in 2003 and 30 cents in 2002 the bidding wars continue to rise.

Who's Doing it and Why?

Click fraud perpetrators are most often motivated by trying to increase revenues from affiliate networks or attempting to damage competitors' revenues by forcing them to pay for worthless clicks. The Google Adsense program, in which affiliates receive payment for clicks whether they are real or not, has caused great concern for Google and has intensified its focus on click fraud.

Those engaged in click fraud use a variety of techniques to generate false clicks. Low cost international workers from all over the world are hired to locate and click on ads. The Times of India provided investigative reporting on payment for manual click fraud happening in India. Unethical companies may pay their own employees to click on competitor ads. Last but not least, click fraud can be generated by online robots programmed to click on advertiser or affiliate ads. Some companies go to great lengths creating intricate software that allows for this to happen.

How Can You Deter It?

Many advertisers know about the possibility of click fraud but generally haven't done much in the past to prevent it. Some feel that if they complain to any of the search conglomerates, it could ruin their free listings. Others feel like the problem is beyond them.

"It is a bigger problem, but folks just don't want to take the time to track it down because it's a complex problem," stated John Squire, of web analytics firm Coremetrics, to CNET. "Given that some of the largest marketers manage up to 1 million keywords in a campaign the data can be difficult to crunch."

Companies who do understand and report click fraud to search engine properties have had success receiving refunds for fraudulent clicks. For those advertisers who want to address the possibility of click fraud in PPC campaigns, good option do exists. At the most basic level, advertisers can use general auditing many have been known to compile lists of sites that generate high numbers of clicks but not sales. This will indeed put up a red flag.

On the other hand, because click fraud is advancing at such frequency, click fraud detection companies and software have been popping up all over the country. Let's take a look at some of the options:

  • WhosClickingWho.com - This fraud detector tracks all PPC search engines, detects multiple IP's, and even pops up a "ClickMinder" after a potential abuser clicks repeatedly over five times.
  • ClickDetective - ClickDetective allows you to track return visitors to your site and alerts you if there is evidence that your site may be under attack. Its reports show you every click in real time rather than a summary hours later.
  • Clicklab - Clicklab employs a score-based click fraud detection system that applies a series of tests to each visitor session and assigns scores. Calculations are made to indicate bad/good sessions to show an advertiser the quality of traffic.

Click fraud is a big problem in search engine marketing that's only going to get bigger in the future. It is wise for any online advertiser to implement some auditing system. Why continue to waste precious campaign money?!





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There are millions of dollars and multiple hours spent every day trying to increase website traffic, by both ethical and unethical means. There is so much demand for traffic solutions that people will go to any lengths to get ranked higher in the search engines. But did you know that you could increase your traffic by about 20% right now, with virtually no effort?



Most times when you hear something like this I suggest that you turn tail and run as it will normally lead to your site’s ranking demise. This particular method of boosting traffic, however, is not a scam; it’s not an unethical ploy; it is a genuine method of increasing traffic via a future internet standard. The reason that you can increase your traffic so vastly is because you are getting in on the ground floor of a new technology which will revolutionize the internet and the way that traffic is distributed.

To understand what we’re about to tell you, you need to understand what an RSS feed is. Put simply, it’s a standard format for sharing your content instantly with users and other websites. People can quickly get access to ‘teasers’ for your latest newsletters, articles, blogs, content and more, and click through to see the full version. This method of distributing your information is very helpful because it basically generates dynamic newsletters without spamming and without causing your visitor any grief at all. In fact, many users find RSS to be their preferred way to hear about updates as RSS is so fast, user-friendly, and (most importantly) dynamic.

RSS feeds are often used by news sites or blogs, as the content changes often enough to make it worth while. By using highly targeted RSS feeds, you can improve your site's web content without having to write it on your own – if someone offers you an RSS feed of their site, you can add it to your site easily. This provides you with a good content base which will keep visitors coming back. The more information that people associate your site with the more important they consider your site. The more important they consider your site, the more important search engines will consider your site. Providing RSS yourself will get lots of people to link to you and so potentially improve your search engine rankings. Why?

1. RSS feeds can provide good, relevant content for your website – there are plenty of RSS publishers with themed content for you to choose from. These highly-targeted feeds will often contain your keywords, and so increase the keyword relevancy of your website. This helps even more than you may think as the key words will be within link or “anchor” tags. Search engines value anchor tags almost as much (if not more than) header tags (h1-h6).

2. RSS feeds can provide new, fresh content. When new content is added to them, the old content drops off, making sure that your website’s content doesn’t go stale. Most of your visitors will not visit your site if they find that there is nothing new between the first and second time that they visit it. If you want to keep your visitors where they belong, you have to have a good selection of content that is updated on a regular basis.

3. RSS feeds can get search engines to crawl your site more frequently – daily in some cases. This helps your site to rank higher in the search engines, and gives you an advantage over your competition. Your RSS feed can do your SEO work for you.

RSS feeds can be great for getting your newsletter, articles, or blog onto other people's sites, and that’s very powerful, as long as you make sure that your RSS feed is adding more to your business than it takes. In some situations, you might find that including RSS on your page makes visitors click away from your site, as they find that site’s content more interesting than you – and people who click on RSS links might be less likely to click on ads. Use caution with RSS feeds, or you could be in for a shock.



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Have you ever wanted to re-record movies, music videos or other stuff playing on the web?

Well, the problem is that these players use video overlay. A video overlay is invisible to Windows capture programs because it is handled by a special video hardware. So, when you try to record you only see a solid black block. This is the overlay.

So, if you want to re-record what you see playing on the web or in Microsoft Media Player, RealMedia RealPlayer, Apple's Quick Time Player etc. you can use video screen capture software and temporarily turn off the overlay. Now, there are two ways to do it:

• You can disable the graphics hardware acceleration globally for all applications,

or


• You can disable the graphics hardware acceleration for a particular application.

We are going to concentrate on the second method.

And, it is very easy to do! If you want to learn the first method we will provide you a resource on how where to get the information on how to do this at the end of this article.

Apple Quick Time Player

From the menu select "Edit > Preferences > Quick Time Preferences". You will then in the "QuickTime Settings" window. Select "Video Settings" from the list menu at the top and then click "Safe Mode (GDI Only)". Then close "QuickTime Settings". And finally, close everything completely and re-start QuickTime Player.

Microsoft MediaPlayer

Select the Tools menu, then Options , click the Performance tab and slide the Video Performance - Hardware Acceleration tab down, all the way to None . Note that this does not work for DVD playback.

RealMedia RealPlayer

Select Tools > Preferences > Hardware and at the bottom you will see ‘ Video card compatibility' Move the slider over to ‘Most Reliable'.

That is all there is to it!

If you want to learn how to disable the graphics hardware acceleration globally for all applications which is very easy to do, you can find where this information is available in the Resource Box.


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Yahoo finally launched Yahoo! Podcasts in public beta, allowing users to easily search, preview and subscribe to audio content and listen at their own leisure. You can access it at http://podcasts.yahoo.com/. How can it help your business?

What's in it for you?

Podcasting is obviously all the rage nowadays. According to I ISP Interland's Summer 2005 Small and Medium-sized Business Barometer, 11% of small business leaders are interested in using podcasting as part of their website features.


A forecast based on the data on sales of portable digital music players and high-speed Internet penetration by The Diffusion Group released in June 2005 showed that demand for podcasts is expected to reach as much as 60 million users by the end of the decade.

Another interesting fact probably worth mentioning is the release of iTunes 4.9 in June 2005, which integrated podcasting for the first time into the music player used by close to 40 million consumers.

Only two days after the release, podcast subscription reached a number probably none of us would believe before: one million. Many podcasts received free exposure and got surge of subscribers at that time.

As Yahoo! Podcasts entered the market, this event might very well happen again the second time. I am not a psychic but if you can tap into this publishing medium and be one of the first to immediately get exposure to millions of people searching for very specific content they are interested in, I know only good things will happen to your business. I hope you agree with me.

Why it matters to your business

iTunes Podcast Directory offers more than 15,000 podcasts and growing quite rapidly at 1,000 a week according to Steve Job, the CEO of Apple Computer. That is just one directory. This may seem like a lot at the first glance but really it doesn't even scratch the surface when compared to how many websites are currently available on the Web.

With more than 6 million podcast consumers have already listened to podcast in April 2005, there sure are a lot of room to play. If you want a proof, just browse on any popular podcast directory and see how many of them only have a handful items, even on a relatively popular topics.

But really, "Why does it matter to my business?" Well, for the first time there is a way to reach your audience of customers through the use of voice. It's much like your own radio show but listeners can tune in any time they want to.

The power to be able to express emotion and bring personality to your marketing communication can be very powerful. From public relation, customer relationship management, name branding, to generating leads and sales, all can be done through the same medium, but more powerful than the traditional text based communication. Imagine these benefits and the ability to get your podcast in front of millions of Yahoo! Podcasts visitors for free.

How to participate

You can use existing computer equipment to record your voice or anything audible. Really, podcasting is not limited to talk show but can be in the format of music samples, audio books, and more. A microphone that comes with your computer can do it, but a decent one makes you sound professional.

If you need to edit and mix the sound before publishing, some audio editing tools are available for free. To make a podcast file accessible, you need to upload the audio file to a public web server. In the future we may have alternative distribution methods but for now serving it through a public web server is the most common one.

When it's time to publish your podcast, you can use the existing blog software to build a podcast website for the podcast show. Using a blog platform allows you to manage content easier. Most of them can generate a valid podcast feed to for you. It's such a nice feature, but not compulsory.

An RSS feed carries the podcast audio metadata and syndicate it to the mass. Existing technologies even make the whole process of creating and publishing the feed almost seamless.

Once you have a podcast ready, all you needed to get listed is to enter the URL to your podcast feed at the Yahoo! Podcasts Publishing page (http://podcasts.yahoo.com/publish). You can even tag it so that others can find your podcast easier.

When to start

While the use of podcasting has gained a significant boost lately, it is not for every market yet. Some industries are better serve through other channels. Yet others mostly consist of users who connected with slower Internet connection where regular audio downloads may be more difficult and longer, or simply are not that technical savvy.

You know your market better than me, but you can't never be sure until you test it. The technologies are here, allowing you to start on a shoestring. You may even stop if this is not for you and continue after your market is ready. Whatever it is, just make sure you don't miss the opportunity.

If you decide that podcasting is for you, there are dozens of free resources you can use to start immediately. The sooner you start the better. Your audience may have been waiting for your podcast and if by the time they can't find yours, obviously you'll be missing not only targeted traffic from one of the search engine giants but also prospective customers.



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This is where the real meat of e-Marketing begins. You have a list of hungry subscribers at your fingertips and now you need to convert them into customers. You want to send them the best offer possible, presented in the best possible light.

In order to accomplish this, you need to create effective sales copy.

Good copy includes many elements: voice and style, proper grammar, spelling and punctuation, emphasis on benefits and much more. Let’s talk a bit about each of these.

Voice/Style*

Your messages should sound professional without sounding “stuffy’.

You need to find your unique voice to connect with your subscribers.

Pretend that you are sitting across the table from a friend and write as if you were speaking to them (leaving out, of course, things like swear words or references to your personal life).

You should also keep close watch over pronoun usage. Talk directly to the subscriber and avoid using the word “I” as much as possible.

Be personable, but not too personal.

English 101*

We all make mistakes in our writing at times. Your subscribers will probably forgive you for a few gaffes. However, you don’t want to send out horribly written messages. Always run your copy through a spell-checker. Brush up on your grammar and punctuation skills if you’ve gotten rusty.

Focus on Benefits*

Never place your focus on selling the product or its features alone. People want to know what the product can do for them. For example: will it save them time? Will it save them money? Will it bring more love into their life?

Remember that most consumers, even if they swear otherwise, purchase products that they desire, and not products they need. Self-gratification and self-improvement always lay behind the buying impulse

Offer Useful Content First*

Are you giving your subscribers useful information? You need to win them over first with lots of high quality, free content before you begin making offers. Your sales pitches should be periodic in nature.

It’s a really bad idea to flood your list with offers every single day of the week. If you want, you can bury an affiliate link or two in each newsletter as long as it points to a useful resource in the context of your content. Just go easy on the special offers, though.

The best way to prime your subscribers is through scarcity. Your offers should be something subscribers look forward to receiving, rather than something easily predictable.

Calls to Action*

When you do finally send an offer to your list, don’t be shy about letting your subscribers know what action you want them to take. If you want them to buy a product, sign up for a membership, visit a site, etc., then offer them the link and tell them to go for it.

Sprinkle your link several times throughout the copy for maximum effectiveness.

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So you finally decided you want your very own home on the World Wide Web. Many people use free services like Geocities or AngelFire for their first home on the Internet. Others jump in and get their very own domain and then set up a hosting account.

Here is a very simple 3 step process to find that perfect domain name using some free online tools

Step 1 Decide on a Theme.

It is very important that you decide on a Theme for your web page. Once you decide on a theme you should pick a Name that works well with your Theme. If your theme is about Pets you wouldn't want your Domain Name to be All-About-Plants. For this example we will choose Debt Reduction and Bill consolidation as our theme


Step 2 Find a Domain Name

Most Internet Guru's recommend that you get a '.com' for your Domain. It is also best to choose a Domain with Keywords that are Popular for your Theme. Again if your domain is about Pets you probably wouldn't want plants as part of your Domain Name unless you are Selling a Vegetarian Pet Cook Book.

If You already have a Domain name in Mind then you can skip to step 3 to see if your Domain is available. If Not keep reading step 2 for helpful hints on finding that Perfect domain Name

If you do not have a Domain Name yet and if you are at a Loss at what name to use don't despair their are a few free online tools you can use. If your web site theme is Debt Reduction and Bill consolidation then you would probably want a Domain Name with one or more of those words in it. If you need help finding Keywords to include in your Domain Name here is a free Keyword Suggestion Tool you can use http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Now that you have some Keywords Picked out you can use either of these free Online Tools to help you find that perfect Domain Name

http://www.nameboy.com/ http://www.domaininformer.com/tools/

Some suggestions for our Debt Reduction theme is

* DebtDispatch.com

* Debt-be-Gone.com

* Debt-No-More.com

* DebtNoMore.com

Step 3 Register Your Domain

Before you can Register your Domain name you need to make sure it is still available. You can go to the following Whois Server to see if your domain is taken: http://www.internic.net/whois.html You would simply type in one of the names from step 2 like DebtDispatch.com and see if it's available.

Once you have found that Perfect Domain Name and verified it is indeed available Internic has a List of approved Internet Registrars Here:http://www.internic.net/regist.html

You will notice that the List of Registrars is Long and confusing, A very Popular one is Goddaddy.com Their Pricing is very reasonable and they have a great reputation. Nameboy and Domaininformer from step 2 will also register your Domains.

Host Your Domain

Now All that is left is to host your Domain. There are hundreds of Web Hosts available some good and some not so good. It is really hard to know which ones to use. Findmyhosting.com has a Web Hosting rating service where users rate Web Hosts. They also Tell you the Up time History of your Web Hosts. Pick your Host Carefully. You may want to ask some of your friends and Associates which Hosts They use.

Now anytime you want a New Home on the Web Just follow this simple 3 Step System.



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Do you have domain names that you are not currently using?

Did you know that these domains can actually become a source of revenue for your online business?

There are several companies on the internet that will pay you to redirect your domain to a landing page, filled highly relevant PPC (pay per click) links. The links displayed on your landing page will be optimized based on what keywords are in your domain, and what links previous visitors have been interested in looking at. You can earn real money every time one of your visitors clicks a link on your landing page, in addition to guaranteed ad revenue for each and every unique visitor that you recieve. All this revenue building up month after month can form into a very nice income stream for your business.

Considering the fact that you can earn up to $5.00/click (depending on your domain, and what country your traffic comes from) with this type of program, there is no doubt that domain parking can be an extremely lucrative practice.

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