All About Internet Marketing #18

Business to business marketing has advantages over marketing to consumers that make marketing even easier.  Business to business companies market their products and services to businesses rather than consumers in general. Some of the most successful businesses exclusively supply to other businesses.

This is one of the most lucrative business models possible today, and it has proven to be especially profitable when the business is conducted online. If you’re considering going into business providing products or services, then you'll want to look into operating a business to business company.

With online business to business operation and marketing, many of the expenses of running a traditional business are gone or greatly reduced.  This positively affects all the other aspects of running the company.  Less expense means less time spent managing the money going out, and more money for important things like business to business marketing and promotion.

No company will succeed without an advertising and promotion budget.  And as many large, worldwide corporations have shown, the more money spent advertising, the more people become familiar with the brand. That breaks down into more customers and more profit.

A company that does its business chiefly online won't need the storefront that a traditional business does. And company that relies on business to business marketing wouldn't benefit from a traditional storefront anyway.  Since traditional customers won't be coming in and out browsing goods or asking about services, the need for a traditional shop area is eliminated.

This drops overhead costs dramatically.  There’s no huge warehouse or building to pay heating, cooling and lighting bills on, and no need for insurance to protect customers.

There’s also no need to pay a staff to man such a store, which eliminates many of the expenses associated with being an employer.  An online company that chiefly exists through business to business marketing may still have employees and some expense, but the lack of a storefront will greatly reduce the costs associated with managing employees.

Now, money that would have been spent on necessities like payroll and utilities can be better spent business to business marketing and increasing the customer base.  The expense of promotion is also lessened with this business model because it’s so much easier to identify a target market.  There’s not as much need to figure out exactly which consumer to market to as there would be with most consumer products.

With business to business marketing, what it is that you’re offering to business automatically identifies your target markets for you. If you’re selling general business products like paper or office supplies, then your market is large and wide open, and you'd do best finding a particular angle to market your products to each specific industry.  But if you choose a product or service that’s very specialized, your marketing research is simplified a great deal.

The internet is great for b2b marketing because of its word-of-mouth properties. While many of your customers will find you thanks to your business to business marketing and promotion, many more will because of social networking.

Many product owners wonder whether they should pay an affiliate to promote their product.  While I think the answer is generally yes, there are exceptions to when you want to pay an affiliate.

You can only get so many people to come to your website on your own.  Your pay per click resources are limited and you can only write so many articles and create so many back links before your time is exhausted.  If you have an army of affiliates promoting your product, you simply will be able to make more sales.  If your affiliates aren't poaching off of the sales you would make yourself, paying affiliates to market your product is a no brainer.

If you were selling chocolate chip cookies, each additional dozen cookies would cost you money to produce.  But digital products are different.  It costs you almost the same amount of money to produce one product as it does to produce a million.  Therefore, why wouldn't you want to pick up low hanging fruit by paying affiliates to promote your product?

Additionally, once you get a customer, you can sell to him or her for life.  If you have structured your product line correctly, you can pay an affiliate 75 percent of the original purchase price, but continue to market to that customer for the rest of his life without paying the affiliate any additional money.

Affiliate marketers are very good at their area of specialization or they wash out quickly.  Some are experts at pay per click and know how to deliver traffic to your site that converts.  Others put in the time to write articles that pre-sell customers on your product before they ever land on your page.  Video marketing, forum marketing, and classified ads are other specialties of affiliate marketers.

So, are there times when it doesn't make sense to pay affiliate marketers?  Yes, there are.

If you are only going to sell 100 of an item and you have 1,000responsive people on your personal email list, you will probably not want to pay affiliates.  When you can sell out the subscription yourself, there is no need to split the proceeds.

Another time when you may want to consider not using affiliates is when you want to control how the product is marketed.  When you open the product up to affiliate marketers, you lose control of the advertising process.  Marketers could spam safe lists or classified sites and give your product a bad name.

Most product owners, however, find that the benefits outweigh the down sides of paying affiliates.

Clickbank is the most popular way to set up an affiliate program for digital products. Pay Dotcom tried to give Clickbank a run for its money, but hasn't taken off as well as the promoters hoped. You can also set up a script to run an affiliate program.  The $7script and Rapid Action Profits are two scripts which let you pay affiliates.

All About Internet Marketing #17

When you decide you want to know how to sell online, you'll find that online auctions and your own Web store are just two of many ways to generate revenue on the Internet. The key, no matter which option you choose, is to go ahead and get started. Learn how to sell online and start making extra money right now, and then grow your online business into a full time income. It is fairly easy to make money with Craigslist if you know how to take advantage of it. You may find it to be a goldmine. There are millions worldwide who use the online classifieds known as Craigslist. It doesn't really matter what it is you are offering, more than likely there is a large portion of your niche market that is likely using it to find what you are offering.

It could be anything from music, to new or used cars, to real estate and mortgages, furniture, insurance, books, or pretty much anything you can think of and people are going there to find it. People love to find a bargain and get the cheapest prices for what they want and they are turning to Craigslist to find it.

You may be asking yourself, "How does Craigslist make money?"If you have a product or service of any kind you are very likely going to be able to find buyers or subscribers there, lots of them. As long as you use some creativity and ingenuity you can make a strong offer that people using Craigslist will respond to. Writing copy is very important as you have to be able to have it re-written so that it will fit in as many categories as possible.

Customize it for the different groups you would like to reach. It will only take a little tweaking to make it fit the different categories so don’t feel that you need to do a major reworking of the offer. Don’t be afraid to be creative with the way you phrase your offer. You want to catch people’s attention.

When you are constructing your post on Craigslist you are going to also make sure to have a title for the ad that will give the prospect a reason to click it. They are going to be looking at several things similar to your offer so make sure that you have all the key elements and also a price that will grab their attention.

Those using Craigslist are used to getting quick responses so if you aren't able to shoot them an email whenever they send you are quest of show interest use an auto responder. Anyone who wants to make money with Craigslist is going to have to learn how to deal with buyers who want attention quick. If you can't respond fast enough you will lose the sale to someone else.

It will be important to make use of all the tools they have to offer to make the most money at Craigslist. They have a tool called AdNotifier that will alert you to new ads being posted in your category. It is always good to check it out and make sure that you are still competitive. Remember when you are constructing your post that there are others wanting to make money with Craigslist who will be doing the same. Also use your post to draw attention to your websites using links and HTML.

As with anything, make sure that you know all the terms and conditions well and that you follow them. It is a great tool to use but will only be effective if you use it properly.

Consider Craigslist as another storefront and a great opportunity to get more customers. There are plenty of people out there needing what you can offer them. Done right you will find that it is very easy to grow your business and make money with Craigslist.

Google’s page rank is a patented algorithm.  Google considers more than half a billion variables when determining your rank on the search results.

No one person knows what all of these variables is not even the person who oversees the code.  So, anyone claiming to be a Google rank check authority should be viewed with caution.

Still, there are some things we do know about how page rank works.

Google flat out says that pages they believe are important get a higher page rank than others.  Pages with higher rank tend to appear higher in the search results, though you will see page rank5 pages occasionally ranking higher than page rank 7 pages for a specific search.

Google also sees the links on a page acting as a “vote” for other pages.  So, if a highly ranked page links to your site, you get more “juice” out of it than when a friend with no page rank links to your site.

Most experts agree that backlinks from .gov and .edu sites to have higher link juice than other top level domains because they are restricted to not for profit sites.

One way to get .edu links is to take out online ads on college newspaper sites.

But, any links from PR 2 or higher sites can help your page rank. One way to get links is to post comments on with decent page rank.  But make sure that Google “follows” the links on the page first.  Some webmasters set their sites up so that you don’t get any link juice from your posts.  You can do this by downloading free software on the internet.

Other ideas for increasing page rank include:

Join forums and post a link back to your website in your signature.

Every time you make a post, you'll get link juice.

Submit your site to directories.  Each directory which lists you will give you more of a chance of being listed higher in Google’s search results.

Add an ezine to your site.  Not only will this allow you to keep up with the people who visit your site, but you can also post information about your ezine to ezine directories.

Publish articles on the article sites.  You can drive traffic to your sites this way.  But, high PR article sites also give you link juice. Create a sitemap on your website.  This lets Google know how to index your page.

Link to other pages within your web site.  Putting links to the internal pages within the web site allows you to increase your link juice.

Continue building pages within your site.  Every page you create and link back to your home page increases the strength of your home page’s PR.

To do a Google rank check, you can install the Google toolbar to your Firefox browser.

You can download the tool at:

http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/toolbar/FT3/intl/en/index.html

This will give you the page rank of every page you visit.

A Google rank check will allow you to know how your site is faring compared to similar sites so that you can take the steps needed to

increase your ranking.

All About Internet Marketing #16

If you are new to getting a website, make sure you have found someone who is willing to give you great customer service. Make sure that they have someone available to not only answer your questions but help you work out bugs that may show up. Look around and see what free website template designers are being used and look for recommendations.

Once you get started making use of the website templates for free and get a hosting account that allows you an unlimited number of websites, you may find yourself a money making machine.

In the last issue we talked about getting your business noticed by using free website templates. In this issue we are going to talk about two surefire methods for effective selling online.

If you want to know how to sell online and turn a few hours of work into a steady income, you've got to take a closer look at some of the many possible ways to generate revenue through online sales.

Just as one single style of shoe isn't right for every foot, not every method for selling products or services online are a great fit for every person. Your chances of success in selling on the Internet increase if you choose a sales niche that is right for you. With that said, let's consider a couple of surefire methods to help you learn how to sell online:

Online Auctions

Of course you're probably already familiar with eBay, and there are other online auction sites as well. One of the biggest hurdles to effectively selling on the Web is getting traffic (visitors) to your Web site. If you choose to market your goods through an online auction site like eBay, you'll be able to get started without worrying about generating visits, because the auction Web sites have done the hard work for you. They'll be delivering the visitors; you only need to find the right product and the right price.

Before you learn how to sell online via the auction sites, you also need to determine how you intend to develop your inventory of goods, so consider this: in many cases, people who became adept at selling their products through the online auction sites started out simply hoping to empty out their cluttered garage and turn a few items they'd otherwise throw away into quick cash. Later they found that they could purchase products wholesale and resell them or perhaps they could frequent garage sales and lawn sales in their neighborhoods to find goods suitable for auction.

Your Own Web Store

If the online auction route doesn't seem like a good fit, you might want to consider setting up your own Web-based store as a possibility for how to sell online. Your own store might be a good option if you have many of the same items to market. In a case like this, you'll have much more control over how your goods are presented than if you'd chosen to go with an online auction site, but of course there will be significantly more work for you.

In many cases you'll need to set up a shopping cart, a method of payment, and organize the site based on the products you want to sell. While that's more labor on your part, you will also be able to avoid the listing fees and other costs involved with using another company’s site to market your products.

But don't forget, when you set up your own Web store you'll also be responsible for bringing in the visitors, and that can be a very labor-intensive or costly undertaking.

All About Internet Marketing #15

Your best way to find out about your target market, though, is to spend time where they are. If your hope is to have a coffee shop, you are going to want to see firsthand what works and doesn’t work You will want to know what the atmosphere is like in a successful coffee shop and spend time talking to customers to find out what they like and don't like about it. The same thing is going to be important for any online marketing plan.

Wherever it is that your potential customers go to find out more about what you are trying to offer them, go and spend time there. If there is a forum that is used by those who typically are interested in your product or service, be a member of it or spend time reading what is going on. Get in the shoes of your target market and find out what it is like to be them.

The more you can understand them, the more effective you will be a marketing to your target market.

To understand how to get more efficient at finding out how to get the most out of keyword search engine ranking tools, you may need to know how they work. Search engines use things called bots or spiders to travel on the web and survey what is going on to build their databases. They go to each website and collect data that is then added to the search engine index.

When someone does a search for something on the search engine, it will use all the data gathered to give the one searching the choices it believes best fit their needs. It also ranks them in order of how closely the site will meet their needs based on the way they search was phrased.

The most commonly used way the spiders gather the information is looking for keywords that seem pertinent to people’s searches. The keyword can be any work on a web page. Certain words and phrases tell the bots what it is this page has on it and stores that information so it can be used to aid in searches. The keyword search engine ranking efforts you use will make the most out of this.

One thing that web builders and authors may do is use meta tags to help aid the bots in their search for relevant information on your page. This will help the search engines know what the web page is about instead of having the bots guess and try to figure it out.

This will help make sure that your website is viewed by people who might actually think your information is useful. Proper search engine optimization techniques will help make the most of these meta tags and will also help you figure out what words and phrases in your text will help get it noticed better by searchers and make the keyword search engine ranking high.

What is important for any website is generating a lot of website traffic. There are many advertising techniques you can use but having your website search engine optimized will often time help generate traffic more than any advertising. To get the most out of it is important that you compile a large range of keywords that could help get traffic to your website.

Brainstorming is a good technique to use but also are the various free keyword search tools that can give you a list of relevant words to use in your writing. Keyword search engine ranking tools that are available use information from the search engines themselves to find out what words or phrases are being used to find information about what you are offering.

You will also want to find out how much competition you will have with others trying to use your keywords. You may have a niche you are trying to reach and have found keywords used by everyone interested in your products/services, but it won't do you any good if the market is already saturated. If there are hundreds of thousands of choices for those who are using those keywords you may have too much of a battle to fight to claim your piece of the pie. A good keyword tool can help you with this.

There are many other things that you can know to improve the keyword search engine ranking of your websites. If you gather as much information about this and incorporate it into you web site design and learn more about how search tools are used, the search engine ranking of your webpages will grow.

It may seem like an awfully intimidating process but once you realize that there are free website templates you can use, getting your website up and going won't be difficult at all. You don't need to worry about having a lesser quality product just because it is free. Most free Web templates are just as attractive and user-friendly as many of the higher priced web designs. Installing them is not difficult either. The designers have made everything as easy as possible for you to get your site running.

The website designers are offering you the free website template because they want you to use other services they have. It might be that they want you to use their web hosting service or they want you to go back to them for bigger work and designs. Most of the time, it is in their best interest to provide you not only with the bestlooking fully functional website suiting all of your needs. They will want to use you as an advertisement for their services. If you don’t look good, they don't look good.

As with most other services, you must agree to their terms and services. Make sure to read them and make sure that you know full well of what is expected of you. Also know what limitations there are on what you can do with their free website template. They may not want it used for different situations and you don’t want to find yourself in conflict with the policies that they have. They are nice enough to let you use their design for free, respect their wishes. As you are using their design you become their face on the web. They may not want it associated with any unethical or illegal or even annoying activities.

When you find a designer whose products you like, let other people know about it. If you promote their business they may be likely to either make you an affiliate so that you get a commission on their paid services. They may even offer to do some custom work for you from time to time. If someone does you a favor, pay them back. It can only bring about good things.

One thing to realize is that not all who offer free website templates and designs are going to want to give you something for nothing. There may be a catch in their offer so make sure that you read all the fine print before you agree to something.

All About Internet Marketing #15

Several years ago the band Metallica was talking about the criticism they have received for trying to reach a broader market. Their lead singer, James Hetfield, said “sure we sold out....every seat in the house.” The successful strategies used will take note of these things. The marketing and advertising you do for your own business will be successful online if you make yourself as appealing as possible to as wide a range of people as possible on the Internet.

Before you can do any good advertising your product and service or undergo any decent marketing campaign you have to know your target market. In the world of internet marketing you need to be able to know as precisely as possible all the information you can gather so you can custom tailors your marketing mix to be more effective.

You will need to know about their demographics. On any online marketing campaign you need to know who it is that you are reaching out to.

What does your ideal customer look like?

How old are they?

What income bracket are they in?

Where do they work?

Where do they socialize?

What are their buying habits?

The marketing strategies that you incorporate are going to use all this information. Fortunately it doesn't take much to find out much of this. If you are targeting a certain geographic area, use the internet to find out as much demographic information as possible. In the US use the chamber of commerce for that area.

For your market targeting you will also need to know about their geographic location. What is the culture there like? Get familiar with it and find out what things are typical for that region. Make sure you find out not only what marketing strategies are popular but find out also what things are taboo. What may seem harmless to one region may be a death sentence to your marketing strategy if your marketing research doesn't find this information out.

You also need to see what other factors might affect the buying decision and behavior of your target market. What styles are in fashion for your target markets? What type of climate is it? Are they free with their money? It may seem like a lot of work but if you want your marketing plan to work, all of this research is going to pay off.

The most important part of your marketing research will be understanding your customers’ needs. The more you understand this, the better able you will be to create an ad campaign. This will help bring about some effective branding of your product and services as a viable part of their buying pattern.

All About Internet Marketing #14

As someone who makes it their business to do marketing and advertising for others it may be that the hardest company to promote is yourself. There is nothing wrong with a little shameless self promotion. We are going to look at some reasons that it shouldn’t be so difficult and how you can have one that is successful. There may be some things in this article that sound obvious but many times it is the most obvious things that slip by us and confounds our efforts.

The first thing that you need to do is consider yourself a client. What are the things that you do when you are starting an advertising and marketing campaign for someone else?

First you need to have a target market. Who is going to be your target market? Well, everyone. The best thing to do, though, is to look for a niche. Your niche could be small businesses who need very little online presence but who do not have the time, money, knowledge, or resources to pull something like that together. Having that online presence can be incredibly helpful to a small business and you can make it happen.

Sure they won't be bringing in the big bucks for you that some huge corporation will have but what you will find is that not only will they be loyal to you, they can get referrals for you and can e easily found. You could even go after a certain niche of small businesses. It could be anything associated with the medical field, or sports, or the outdoors, or any niche. The sky really is the limit. The more you get to know a niche, the better you will be at designing a marketing and advertising campaign around them.

An advertising and marketing campaign for yourself can also be tailored to go after a certain niche. It can also turn off a niche just as easily. Consider all of the tailoring to young, urban and “hip” people. It may have some funky music and slick graphics with whirly things and lots of dancing but will something like that be appealing to a group of doctors...who may, as a niche, have some very deep pockets? Probably not.

What about your website that has the Goth thing going on or Shows some great designs that would be good as a tattoo?

Sure it might reflect who you are but does it reflect and draw in those people whose business you need and want. It isn't called selling out to cater to the likes of those whose business you desire. It’s called selling.

All About Internet Marketing #13

Getting your website to the top of the search engines is crucial for a thriving online business. Unfortunately, very few people really know how to do this. In this tutorial, you'll get a “crash course” in what to do to get your website to rank highly. We'll cover all the basics in an easy to understand manner so you can apply what you learned right away.

Keyword Research

Keywords are the words that your user types into Google to try and search for websites. What keywords do you want to rank well for? It’s important to choose what keywords you want to rank for before you start optimizing your site.

See how much volume keywords get using the Google Keyword Tool.

Optimize Your Title Tag

The next step is to optimize the title tag on your website. The title tag goes between the head tags and looks like this:

<head>

<title>Your Title Here</title>

</head>

Make sure your main keyword appears once or twice in the title. If you have a secondary keyword, put both of them in the title. Don’t have any keyword more than twice.

Optimize Your Site

There are many other factors that are important for onsite optimization. Two of the big ones are your header tags and your keyword density.

Use <h1> for your headers. In between them, make sure you mention your keyword at least once.

Use your keyword often in your text, but don’t make it sound weird to do so.

These two factors have an influence on Google, but not nearly to the same degree as before simply because people abused the system.

Get Quality Backlinks

The next step is to get good backlinks from sites that are related to yours. There are many ways to do this. Here are some of them:

- Submit free press releases

- Offer to write articles for other sites in exchange for a back link

- Pay for it

- Submit your site to directories

- Link to them and ask them to link back

- Post comments on related blogs

- Etc

Be creative. Come up with ways to get back backlinks to your site.

Optimize Your Anchor Text

If you can, ask the website owners who are linking to you to create their link with good anchor text. A good anchor text is a link that has your keyword in it, rather than just click here.

For example, if you’re selling woodworking workshops:

Bad: *Click Here* To learn About Woodworking Workshops

Good: Click This Link to *Learn About Woodworking Workshops*

Where ** = The Link Text

Wrapping it Up

If you select your keywords carefully, optimize your title, your h1tags and your keyword density, get quality backlinks and optimize your anchor text, you'll be far, far ahead of your competition.

In fact, you now know more about how to get your website to rank well in the search engines than most webmasters on the internet. Now it’s time to put this knowledge to use and really see the results. What you learned here can literally double your business overnight.

All About Internet Marketing #12

A website marketing strategy is the things you do to get targeted traffic to visit your corner of the internet.  There are many things you can do to get visitors.  There is not one “correct” procedure. Instead, you need to look at your options and develop the website marketing strategy that works best for you.

One website marketing strategy is to write articles and submit them to article directories.  The best thing about this approach is that you can do this with absolutely no money to start with.  If you are not good at writing, article marketing can still be cheaper than other kinds of advertising.

Write 25 articles (or have them written for you).  Sign up for an account at EzineArticles.com and submit the 10 articles. You can only submit 10 when you have a basic account.  After those 10 are approved, you will be upgraded and can submit more.

Then, go over to Squidoo.com and create a lens and put 5 of your articles on the lens.  Then go over to HubPages.com and create a Hub with 5 articles.  The final 5 articles should be submitted to multiple directories.  One way to do this is through iSnare.com which, for $2 each, will submit your articles to hundreds of directories.

Another website marketing strategy is to use pay per click marketing to get traffic to your website.  For this strategy, you will set up accounts with Google’s Adwords, Yahoo’s Search Marketing, or some of the lesser known and cheaper options like 7Search.

The advantage of Pay Per Click marketing is that it works quickly. You should start seeing an immediate stream of visitors to your website.  The disadvantage is that unless you know what you are doing, you can lose your shirt doing it.  So, take the time to learn about PPC before starting, set your initial click values low, and seta daily cap on the amount you are willing to spend before you start.

Another website marketing strategy is called forum marketing. For some reason, many people do not like to do forum marketing despite the fact that it is wonderfully effective.  What you do is join forum that is relevant to your website.  Initially, you should respond to other people’s posts with good information.  Then, you should start your own posts offering information or asking smart questions.

After you have 25 or so posts, create a signature with a link back to your site.  Don’t be blatant about it.  When people consider you a valuable member of the forum, they will be curious about what else you have to offer and will check your website out. These people will already be pre-sold on you and will be open to whatever products or services you are selling.

There are many ways to get visitors to your website.  You need to develop a website marketing strategy to get traffic to your site.

All About Internet Marketing #11

Do you want to have a hobby or a business?  The answer to that will determine how successful you are.  Always remember that effective internet marketing is a business and you need a plan.

Make sure you look for your next issue soon. We will be talking about using eBooks as an internet marketing strategy.

An EBook internet marketing strategy can vary from plan to plan, but the most important thing is that you do have a plan.  Some people write a report or even a large tome with no plan as to how to sell it.  There’s an “if you build it, they will come,” mentality.  In this article, I'm going to give you an eBook internet marketing strategy.

The first eBook internet marketing strategy I'm going to discuss is the scenario where you haven't actually written the product yet. This is the best way to go.  If you have already written your eBook but still need a strategy, I will discuss that in the second half of the article.

First of all, you are going to have to decide on the delivery mechanism.  For instance, is this something you are going to promote on Clickbank?  Are you going to promote it to your list only?  Are you going to get JV partners?  All of these things should be taken into account before you do anything else.  For instance, if you are going to sell through Clickbank, you will need to develop affiliate tools as part of the sales letter process.  If you are going to be working with JV partners, you need to get them lined up.  So, start working on the mechanism first.

Next, you are going to write your sales letter.  Yes, this eBook internet marketing strategy calls for the sales letter before the book is ever written.  Promise the world in your sales letter.  Let people know you can cure cancer, fly them to the moon, or solve all of their financial worries.

Now, you’re ready to actually write the eBook.  Go through your sales letter and actually make good on all of the promises you made.

This backward step internet marketing funnel is very effective in helping you to develop an eBook that actually sells.

But, some people have already developed the eBook and know they want to know how to market it.  This is the position most people find themselves in.  Unfortunately, you are at a disadvantage, but it can be overcome.

In this case, the eBook internet marketing strategy involves figuring out the delivery mechanism (such as Clickbank), then writing the appropriate sales letter for that medium using your eBook as the basis for the sales letter.  You may find that you need to revise parts of the eBook based on holes in the sales letter.  You may want to make promises in the sales letter that your eBook doesn’t deliver.  If this is the case, go back and rework the eBook so that you can deliver what is promised in the sales letter.

In sum, there are three steps to an eBook internet marketing strategy.  First, you have to determine the delivery mechanism. Then you have to write a sales letter.  Finally you write the book.  If you have done this backwards, it will mean more work in the short term because you will have to correct the mistakes you've made. But, it can be done.

Don’t believe that just because you've written a great eBook that people will buy it.  You have to have an eBook internet marketing strategy to sell it.

All About Internet Marketing #10

Effective internet marketing begins with the business plan.  One of the reasons that franchises are such a popular offline business model is that they present a plan for making hamburgers or tutoring kids.  Having a plan is one of the most important things in business and a key component of effective internet marketing.

The first thing I want to ask you is whether you want to have an internet marketing business or an internet marketing hobby. There’s nothing wrong with making a couple hundred dollars a month doing something that is kind of fun.  But it’s not a business. It’s a hobby.  Effective internet marketing means treating it like a business.

The first step of your plan needs to be your long range strategic goals.  How much do you want to be making?  What are your resources to get there?  Steven Covey made popular the saying “begin with the end in mind.”  That means, look down the road 5years or so and find out where you want to be.  Then you can plot backwards what milestones you need to meet to get there.

Your plan should be divided into long term (5 year), midterm (1year), quarterly, monthly, and daily objectives.  This way, you stay on track.

Additionally, you need to develop systems for everything you do.  If you plan to outsource your article writing, set up a system for everything from hiring your writers to how they deliver the content to you.  If you systematize the plan, you will get better results.  One-person posted a question about why his writers never gave him titles to the articles.  A responder asked him whether he had asked them to.  If you have a system in place, when you bring on anew writer, he or she will know exactly what you expect of them.

Effective internet marketing also means developing a budget and sticking to it.  Internet hobbyists buy every WSO or course on the market.  They dabble in one thing, listen to an ecourse, buy a domain name they never use, etc.  Someone who is marketing on a business developed budget will buy only the things he or she needs to move their business forward.

As you put together a real business plan for your internet marketing business, you will find that you are making a lot more money.  It stops being something you are playing at on the evenings and weekends and starts to take shape as a “real “business.

Pretty soon, you will find that you can leave your day job and make the online world your primary source of income.  Many people have done this before you.  More, though, have played at it, and said, “Internet marketing doesn't work.”  Those are mostly people who didn't have any real plan.

All About Internet Marketing #9

The way internet in marketing works is becoming clearer and clearer from day to day.  Like many things, advertising and marketing strategies are only beginning to scratch the surface of this rapidly expanding force. Whatever baby steps we've taken to fully utilize it are still very powerful in their own right after all, there has been nothing like the internet in the history of mankind.

We may not have yet fully realized just how deep or how far the internet can go.  Despite its penetration into the idea of a household it is still not as every day as the television or the radio. As a canvas for marketing, it’s the baby boy or girl of the media world.

Only recently have references to the internet in media been made realistically most references make it out to be some magical thing that can answer anything and anyone.  Now, people are getting a good idea of how it works and want to try internet in marketing for themselves.

The first step and possibly the most commonly known method of internet in marketing has been through email newsletters and the like.  Through an easily accessible method like email, people have been staying in contact with their customers as if they were simply in the neighborhood  except now, that neighborhood has been extended to anything with an internet connection. Currently, it is also the prime method by which scams and spam are delivered, making people look at it with a grain of salt.

Internet in marketing took on a whole new level when Amazon.com created the idea of web affiliates. This is the internet equivalent of the infomercial after all, where else could an entire site or channel be used as an ad?

Affiliate marketing is essentially when people promote certain products or services for a commission of the sale price.  In doing so, they also offer their viewers the chance to click on various ads or links to the "money" site.

This is why they need similar or related content the more similar the sites, the better the chance that the viewer or user would actually be interested in clicking the link.

Payment here varies, but for the most part requires actual action from the user for payment.  It takes more than viewing the ad the user needs to either click, or act on the ad in such a way that is beneficial for the main site.  In this way, the advertiser only pays for conversions, leads or click that benefit them, putting some of the work into the affiliate’s hands.

Marketing on the internet can be very profitable, if done correctly and like actual advertising, there is no magic formula to get everyone into your site, but the effort will probably pay off. Research and knowing how to actually do the marketing is vital this allows you to weed out those who can and those who can’t promote you. Internet in marketing a new concept, but one you can’t pass up.

Being an associate affiliate can be extremely profitable, but it's not as easy as all the gurus make it sound.  After all, you have to generate targeted traffic and make it convert in order to get paid. That means convincing people, most of them with short attention spans, to take sign up for offers or make purchases through your link.

This works out well for both parties because the producer doesn’t pay you money until you give them some leads or customers. Associate affiliates use this relationship to make money without having to worry about customer service or product delivery. It sort of lowers the risk for both involved parties.

For beginners, this is a great way to start earning money.  You’ll also learn the ropes of internet marketing and this is vital to your long term success. Of course, your site might have its own goal, but starting off with promoting a product that is already converting and optimized you're making things a lot easier for yourself. Doing so requires a combination of factors almost all of which are under your control, which is a good thing.

Many companies will allow you to sign up for their affiliate program even if you don't have a website of your own.  On the other hand, some companies require you to have a website that's closely related to their niche and you'll need to submit traffic stats to them in order to become an associate affiliate for them.

After all, if you have the same topics on your sites, there’s a greater likelihood of crossover from readers.  If you had a soccer website, you probably wouldn't have crossover readers for a site on wheelchairs.

Another factor to know about is keywords.  Keywords are the words that people put into search engines to look for a specific topic or subject.  Just about anything can be a keyword phrase, but some keywords are more profitable than others.

These are usually keywords which have moderate to high searches on a regular basis and a low number of competing pages.  Optimize your sites for the most profitable keywords and you’ll stand a greater chance of not only making sales, but securing a hands-off income stream.

Of course, being an associate affiliate isn't the be all and end all. Unless you’re simply there to make money, you probably opened a website because it's something you’re interested in.  If you’re not enjoying it anymore and you’re not just in it for money, feel free to move on to more interesting prospects.

You have to be in a place that’s good for you otherwise; you wouldn’t be able to stand the grit and the everyday pressure that a website demands.  If you’re still interested, there’s a lot of money to be made being an associate affiliate and if you go about the process correctly you can turn your efforts into residual, long term rewards.

All About Internet Marketing #8

Do you want to improve your internet marketing strategy for your business?  Have you found that what you are currently doing is not taking you far enough?  Are you struggling to get to the next level? The best thing you can do to improve internet marketing strategy is to value your customers.

Unfortunately, many marketers see their customers as “marks.”  If they buy your snake oil and don’t like it, there are millions of more fish in the sea.  But if you want to improve internet marketing strategy, you need to change your mind set.

A customer relationship is a valuable thing.  There are two parts to this.  It is much more expensive to acquire a customer than it is to keep one.  Once you have sold a product to a satisfied customer, they are much more likely to come back for more.

That’s one reason why it is important to develop and maintain a list. Once you have established value with a customer, you are able Togo back to them with new product offers.   Customers buy from people they trust.

This is true whether you are selling affiliate products or your own products.  If you are selling affiliate products, and people trust you to make recommendations, they will buy through your links.

Think about the books that serve as “guides” for travelers.  Hotels fight to get “5 star” ratings from various directories because it can significantly increase their business.  Affiliate programs should be vying to have you recommend them because a recommendation from you should bring in a flood of traffic.

If you are selling your own products, this remains true as well.  If you sell a customer an initial product and he or she likes it, they will probably be interested in a similar product you have to sell as well.

Bring them into your product funnel.  You should plan up sells and down sells for each product you sell.  Look at ways to repackage the products to add value.  For instance, you can turn an eBook into an audio book and sell it again.  Or, you can turn a bunch of short reports into one package.

If you value your customers, you will improve internet marketing strategy all around.

P. T. Barnum is “famous” for saying, “there’s a fool born every minute.”  The truth is there is absolutely no record of him saying this.  Joe Vitale named his biography of Barnum “There’s a Customer Born Every Minute.”  That’s the mind set you should have if you want to really improve internet marketing strategy.

If you see the people on your list and the people who visit your website as customers, you will develop relationships that will last for many years.  If you treat them as “fools” they may buy once, but they will be loath to ever purchase something from you again.

Furthermore, when you treat people as “marks,” it cheapens the whole buying online experience in general.  It drives people to “big names” like Amazon rather than the smaller distributors who can offer real value.

Don’t fall into the “fool” trap. See and treat your customers as valuable because they are.  That’s how you improve internet marketing results.

All About Internet Marketing #7

In the internet age, having an online marketing campaign should be one of your top priorities. That’s a broad, sweeping statement, but it’s a broad sweeping truth. I don’t care if you’re a Fortune 500 Company or the owner of auto shop in Podunk, Wisconsin, you need to be online, and you need to have an online marketing campaign.

The days when you could get by without having an internet presence might not be dead, but they’re definitely circling the drain. Virtually everyone has a cell phone these days, what we still refer to as a cell phone is really a mobile connection to the internet. People are constantly connected, and people are constantly using this connection to find the place and things they want to find.

If you don’t have an online marketing campaign in place, you are not going to be there to find.  If you aren't there to find, you are going to watch your business eventually dry and blow away. You need to be online, and you need be online with a strategy in place. I’m going to show you how to create a simple, effective and inexpensive online marketing campaign.

The very first step is to make sure that you have a nice, professional looking website. You'd be shocked at how many businesses pay good money to put cheap looking websites online. Good, attractive design is important, and it won't cost you extra. It should also be consistent with the look of your business in general, including stationery and business cards.

The next step is to make sure that your website is search engine optimized. This is a big subject, but the basic idea is make sure that your site makes it as easy as possible for the search engines to put you at the beginning of their results for the keywords that your customers will be using. You can have a beautiful website and an excellent business, but without search engine optimization, you won't get anywhere.

The next step in a good online marketing campaign is to make sure your website is capturing potential customer’s email addresses. You'll need to set up an auto responder service to make use of this, but they’re cheap and easy to use. Just make sure you offer your customers some reason to give their email addresses. It may not be using money, but it is still a transaction, and you need to give good value.

This allows you to interact with customers and give them multiple chances to buy from you, in addition to keeping your business in their minds. The next time they want what you offer, you’re going to be the first person they think.

Once you have all that in place, you can experiment with using online advertising. There are lots of ways to this, from banner advertising, which is generally ineffective, to sponsoring a blog or website, which can be expensive, to pay per click, which is usually the best place to start. Pay per click puts a small ad related to whatever a person searching for next to their search engine results. You see this every time you use Google. You can use this to get visitors to your site, and if you have followed the above steps, turning them into customers.

There you go; you should be well on your way to you first online explode your business and put money in your pocket. Don’t wait to get started, because your competition might already be working on it.

Which internet marketing experts should you turn to?  These people, who have been tagged as “gurus” by some, have more experience in the IM world than others.  But, it seems like there’s a new “guru” on the block every day.  So who should you trust to teach you the ropes?

Here’s a check list on how to evaluate internet marketing experts. Have they actually made money doing the things they are advising you to do?

Ironically, many internet marketing “experts” are most expert at promoting themselves.  They'll tell you, for instance, to stay out of the “internet marketing” niche because the “experts” have it cornered.  Instead, they'll say to go into less competitive niches. But, if you press them, they will have to admit that they've never been in any other niche themselves.

Are they transparent?

The “gurus” that I like best are the ones who will show you what niches are actually making them money. They’re not afraid they’ll lose their precious “position” to someone less experienced than they are.  This transparency allows you to evaluate them wisely.

Do they give you a step by step plan?

The internet marketing experts who are best at teaching newbie and internet marketers are those who can provide detailed, step by step plans for success.

Do you trust that they have done what they say?

It’s really easy to say they made “a million dollars” from a system when you are on the internet.  You don’t even have to keep straight face. You can also Photoshop PayPal and Clickbank screen shots to “show” that you have made a lot more money than you really have. So, when finding a guru to follow, you should have a gut feeling that they have done what they've said they've done.

Is their plan something you feel you can do?

There are many kinds of internet marketing experts.  Some recommend setting up a network of blogs and doing a ton of writing.  Others use pay per click marketing in their strategies. Some urge you to go offline and contact business owners to build websites for them.  All of these strategies can work.  The trick is to find a guru who can teach you the strategies you are most comfortable with yourself.

Do they say you can do it with “no work.”?

Let’s face it, there’s very little in life that you can achieve with no work.  Every once in a while, someone hits the jackpot. Whether it is in Las Vegas or online.  But, for the most part, making money of any kind requires work.  If you see a guru promising a “no work “system, run away fast.

Is it ethical?

There are a number of ways you can make money on the internet that some can live with and others find downright unethical.  Make sure you are able to live with yourself in the morning before you start any internet marketing scheme.

There are many people claiming to be internet marketing “experts.”  Choose wisely before selecting an expert to follow.

All About Internet Marketing #6

In the last issue we talked about tips for starting a successful home based business. In this issue we are going to go over some simple tips to separating your personal life from your business.

If you work from home, chances are you already know that you’re really pulling “double duty”. You probably work on your business while doing the laundry, corralling the kids, or fixing dinner... and let’s not forget all the phone calls from family and friends expecting you to run errands or just "go out" for an afternoon of fun.

One of the hardest parts of running a home business is separating your work from your family and social life. Here are six proven ways to keep your home life running smoothly while keeping your business on track.

1. First, create a work schedule and stick with it. It may be tempting to answer personal calls during the day or take business calls after-hours, but doing this actually shows that you’re expendable not dependable and people will take for granted that you'll “always be there” for any little things that come up. Even though family comes first, stay true to your business hours and resist the urge to chat with friends or pick up groceries during

working hours.

2. Your friends may consider “working from home” an invitation to chat during the day or just go out for coffee or shopping for an afternoon. Make it clear that your business hours are just that for business. Leave personal calls for after-hours, and you'll find that your friends will gradually accept your schedule without feeling slighted.

3. Just because you have to set up a work schedule, doesn't mean that you have to keep the same hours as everyone else. One of the benefits of working for yourself is setting your own hours to fit your most productive times. Whether you’re an early bird or a night owl, you'll find that you'll get much more done when you’re attuned to your body’s own natural rhythms.

Some people work in the morning; take a break in the afternoon when the kids are home from school, and work again in the evening. Schedule your work time when you feel the most productive and you'll find that things get done easier, faster and better than when you were dragging along during those same rigid work hours that everyone else has.

4. If getting after-hours business calls or work day personal calls is a problem, it helps to have a separate business phone line, or at least an answering machine or voice mail, to take the incoming calls. This also gives your business a more professional appearance to clients than if you and your family make and receive calls from the same phone line.

5. If at all possible, try to separate your “home office” from the rest of your home. If you don’t have the luxury of a separate room, a room partition or screen can be just as helpful. This also serves as a visual cue to family that you’re working and shouldn't be bothered.

6. Dress and act professionally while working. Some people find it helpful to dress in casual business attire during their working hours. This reinforces that just because you’re working from home doesn't make you any less of a professional.

Answer the phone with your name, or business name, and keep your children off the phone during business hours. Also, spend money investing in the tools you need to do your job right. A cell phone, fax machine or even a budget computer can help turn your home office into a true workspace.

If you follow all of these tips and stick with them, chances are you'll find a routine that not only makes you feel productive and active in your business, but also projects the message that you mean business literally!

Make sure you look for your next issue soon. We will be talking about jump starting your online marketing campaign for greater

success.