Submitting Your Website to Search Engines

If you have a web-based business or if a significant portion of your business is done on the web through your website, then the best advertising and marketing is done by submitting to a search engine. No amount of press release, newspaper or radio ad, banner ad, spam email or newsletter will achieve the same results, although, maybe effective in a small proportion.

Beware of companies that promise automatic submission of your website to hundreds of search engines which are but only false promises. The best way to submit your website for search engine ranking and inclusion is to do it yourself or to hire an expert to do it manually, by contacting the search engine companies and directories.

Before you begin to submit your website to search engines ensure your websites are thoroughly designed to the professional quality using the right key words, good graphics and pictures and the relevant content. Don’t submit websites that are incomplete. While submitting to a search engine, make sure to provide information about your website, keywords and any other information that may be pertinent, including the name and contact information of your business.

Just a basic submission to search engine companies does not guarantee that your site would be immediately listed and the ranking will be high. Because there are thousands of new websites coming up every day and it may take quite sometime before they take up your site for review by human editors. One important factor to remember while submitting site is to include a site map of your website which makes the crawling easy for the web robots. Search engines like ‘http://www.google.com’ hardly considers submissions without sitemaps.

There are many online companies that accept search engine submission services.

WebCeo
AddMe

Don't use the automatic submission services.

Here is a list of the most popular search engines and directory companies:

Search Engines

Go.com/InfoSeek AltaVista
Google, HotBot
Excite/Webcrawler

Directories

AOL Search Inktomi
Lycos Open Directory
MSN, Yahoo!
LookSmart Snap

Apart from the above there are thousands of search engines and directories, where you can submit your website to as many companies as possible.

Tips to Get Repeat Web Traffic

1. Update the pages on your website frequently. Stagnant sites are dropped by some search engines. You can even put a date counter on the page to show when it was last updated.

2. Offer additional value on your website. For affiliates and partners you can place links to their sites and products and ask them to do the same for you. You can also advertise their books or videos, if these products relate to your industry and are not in competition with your own product.

3. You can allow customers to ‘opt in’ to get discounts and special offers. Place a link on your site to invite customers to ‘opt in’ to get a monthly newsletter or valuable coupons.

4. Add a link to your primary page with a script ‘Book Mark or Add this site to your Favorites’.

5. Add a link ‘Recommend this site to a Friend’ so that the visitor can email your website link, with a prewritten title, “Thought you might be interested in this”, just by clicking on it.

6. Brand your website so that visitors always know they are on your site. Use consistent colors, logos and slogans and always provide a ‘Contact Us’ link on each page.

7. Create a ‘Our Policies’ page that clearly defines your philosophy and principles in dealing with your customers. Also post your privacy policy as well so that clients know they are secure when they visit your site.

8. Create a FAQ page which addresses most of the doubts and clarifications about your product or your company that are likely to be asked. This helps to resolve most of the customers doubts in their first visit to your site.

8. Ensure that each page on your website has appropriate titles and keywords so that your customer can find their way back to your site if they lose the book mark.

9. Never spam a client, who has opted for newsletters, with unsolicited emails. Later if they decide they want to ‘opt out’ of the mailings, be sure you honor their request and take them off the mailing list. They may still come back if they like your products. But they will certainly not come back if you continue to flood their email box with mails they no longer wish to receive.

How Do Search Engines Work - Web Crawlers

It is the search engines that finally bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers. Hence it is better to know how these search engines actually work and how they present information to the customer initiating a search.

There are basically two types of search engines. The first is by robots called crawlers or spiders.

Search Engines use spiders to index websites. When you submit your website pages to a search engine by completing their required submission page, the search engine spider will index your entire site. A ‘spider’ is an automated program that is run by the search engine system. Spider visits a web site, read the content on the actual site, the site's Meta tags and also follow the links that the site connects. The spider then returns all that information back to a central depository, where the data is indexed. It will visit each link you have on your website and index those sites as well. Some spiders will only index a certain number of pages on your site, so don’t create a site with 500 pages!

The spider will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the moderators of the search engine.

A spider is almost like a book where it contains the table of contents, the actual content and the links and references for all the websites it finds during its search, and it may index up to a million pages a day.

Example: Excite, Lycos, AltaVista and Google.

When you ask a search engine to locate information, it is actually searching through the index which it has created and not actually searching the Web. Different search engines produce different rankings because not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indices.

One of the things that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page, but it can also detect artificial keyword stuffing or spamdexing. Then the algorithms analyze the way that pages link to other pages in the Web. By checking how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about, if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page.

Promote Your Websites Using Video Websites

Do you want to captialize on the amount of traffic to your websites? Many website owners are now starting to use video to send tons of traffic to their websites. With the popularity the internet is having with video, you would be crazy not to use it to your advantage.

That may involve creating a website that sell as particular product or creating a website that relies on online advertisements to make money. Whichever type of website you own, your website will need to have traffic. Without that traffic internet users will not buy your products or click on your advertisements. However, for many, getting internet traffic is easier said than done.

When it comes to internet traffic many individuals let the search engines do all of the work for them. When you create a website, it is likely that you will have content on your website. That content most commonly includes articles. Search engines use that content to rank your website. Being the owner of a high ranking website will often result in more online visitors. Depending on the type of website you have, more website visitors could mean more profits. Unfortunately, with an unlimited number of online websites, not everyone can have a high ranking website. This means that, in addition to search engines, you should promote your online website in other ways.

One way that you could promote your online website, to increase the number of page views it sees, is to take advantage of online video websites. Online video websites are rapidly increasing in popularity and that popularity may be able to help make your website a success. As you can easily tell by their name, online video websites are websites that host a wide collection of different videos. Many of these videos are considered homemade because they are made by people just like you.

When it comes to promoting you website, with online video websites, there is one thing that you will want to keep in mind. Most internet users do not enjoy watching videos that appear as spam. This means that you will want to promote your online business to the best of your ability, without trying to appear too pushy. This can easily be done a number of different ways.
If you are the owner of an online website that sells a particular product or service, you may want to consider promoting or showcasing that product or service. You can easily do this by showing samples of your work. It may also be a good idea to explain how long you have been making the products or offering the services that you currently offer. Although you will want to promote your online website and the products you are selling, you will also want to keep your video as general as it can be. This will help to keep it from looking like increasing your sales the only goal of your video. If you choose to do so, you will want to offer information on your business at the end of your video.

Although online website owners who are using their website to sell a product or service can benefit the most from the use of online video websites, everyone else can as well. If you are using your website to make money through online advertisements, such as Google Adsense or affiliate programs, it is likely that your website is content driven. This means that you may have a collection of articles on your website, often focused on a particular topic. It may be a good idea to create a video proving information and even interactive displays on the topic that your website covers, whether that topic be women’s health issues, owing a pet, or something similar. At the end of your video, it may be a good idea to include the address of your online website. Doing so may help to increase the number of visitors that your website gets.

When it comes to using online video websites to promote your online website, you will have a number of different options. There are a number of online video websites that will allow you to upload and share your videos, many free of charge. To make the most out of the time spent making your video, you are advised to find an online video website that is popular, such as Google Video or YouTube. The more people that see your video, the better the chances are of them making their way to your online website.

Learn more about building and continued success of your online business.
Visit Internet Marketing Info Source

Tips to Increase Ranking and Website Traffic

It is worth cataloguing the basic principles to be enforced to increase website traffic and search engine rankings.

• Create a site with valuable content, products or services.

• Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.

• Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers.

• Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.

• Keep your site design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want and buy products and services.

• Submit your web pages i.e. every web page and not just the home page, to the most popular search engines and directory services. Hire someone to do so, if required. Be sure this is a manual submission. Do not engage an automated submission service.

• Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and processes and accordingly modify your web pages so your search engine ranking remains high. Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.

• Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.

• Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyze your visitor location and their incoming sources whether search engines or links from other sites and the keywords they used to find you.

• Make your customer visit easy and give them plenty of ways to remember you in the form of newsletters, free reports, reduction coupons etc.

• Demonstrate your industry and product or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for your website or for article banks so you are perceived as an expert in your field.

• When selling products online, use simple payment and shipment methods to make your customer’s experience fast and easy.

• When not sure, hire professionals. Though it may seem costly, but it is a lot less expensive than spending your money on a website which no one visits.

Don’t look at your website as a static brochure. Treat it as a dynamic, ever-changing sales tool and location, just like your real store to which your customers with the same seriousness.

12 Ways to Build Your Opt-in List

Building your opt-in list starts with having a website that will persuade visitors to spend some time there. By doing that they will be more apt to sign up to your newsletter or offer.

Here are 7 steps that will help accomplish this.

1. Use original material. If they see that you are displaying the same content as similar sites. They aren't going to stay around for very long.

2. Start out with a headline and introduction that captures their attention. Let them know what is going to be found on your website. It doesn't take long for today's surfers to decide if this page is going to be worth further attention.

3. Make sure your visitors know just what they will find on your website. They are looking for information on a certain subject and they need to know that you have their possible answers. Therefore be sure to use the keywords that best fit your web page because when your visitor clicks on a keyword with his browser he wants to find the corresponding content.

4. Be sure you have numerous cross links to various pages on your site so the visitor can browse through it. If he finds it helpful and pertinent he will be more inclined to bookmark your site and come back again. Be sure your links are well designed to catch the reader's eye.

5. Design your site so your pages can load quickly. Don't load it up with too many pictures and long blocks of text. Leave enough "white space" so one's eyes can be drawn down the page. Articles should be broken up into short paragraphs and adjust your text so it is easy to read--not too small nor too light. Difficult in reading the content will discourage a visitor from continuing.

6. Proofread your pages so you don't make grammatical and spelling mistakes. You need to appear a professional. If you are not sure of the effect the page is presenting let someone else take a look. Forums are a good area to ask members to view your site or particular page. (You will probably receive all kinds of opinions!) But you should definitely get some valuable help.

7. Offer your visitors freebies--ebooks, software, articles etc. that they can download from your site. Ask them if they would fill out a survey which could help you find out for what type of information they are looking, or ask if they would like to sign up for your newsletter. If a visitor does nothing else than to become one of your subscribers and be put on your opt-in email list you have won the first battle.

Now that you have a means to add to your opt-in list by way of your website, you also need to build your list in other ways, especially if you don't yet have too many hits on your site. That takes time but by building your list you will increase them.

Here are 5 more possibilities outside your website.

1. Advertise a free ebook. You can have it downloaded from your site as mentioned before or you could have the visitor send you an email and you could attach the ebook to an answering one. This ebook doesn't have to be more than 7-10 pages.

2. Advertise your newsletter and send responders to your list via your autoresponder, which will take care of the opting in, and startup of your emails. Be sure any email, whether yours or your autoresponders has an opt-out feature.

3. Use email signatures, which you can add to the bottom of your emails. In 3-6 lines you put your name, short description and appropriate link to your site or offer.

4. Send an email to an individual email address and ask the recipient if they would like to sign-up for your mailing list or offer the option to decline from any future mailings. Be careful here because anyone receiving your email could consider it to be spam. To me this is the least desirable method.

5. If you have a newsletter in which you have just about exhausted your material and want to start another newsletter on a different area you could send a broadcast and invite anyone nearing the end of your letters to change to the new newsletter. You may be able to keep some of those who are ready to make a change. You won't gain any new subscribers really but you may be able to keep some of those you might otherwise lose. Let them know that you are proficient in different areas.

As you can see building your opt-in list need not be difficult. Use your imagination and I am sure that you can find many other means to get results.

The Most Useful Way To Utilize Traffic Exchanges!

Millions of websites online can be placed in their own special category of ¡°Deserted Town¡±. The only life you can find there are those of the webmasters who created them. This is because they get very few, if any, targeted visitors. For these website owners, there are simple techniques they can use to increase website traffic.

In the rare occasion the traffic company is selling legitimate, traffic targeted to your specifications, most often the traffic comes from pop- ups (which are completely dead), or some kind of ad-network whereby the visitors sit at their computer viewing pages in exchange for credits toward their own site.

Summer is finally here, and while for many, summer implies barbeques, school-break, vacations and trips to the beach; for most Internet businesses, summer implies slower traffic.

Buy traffic - There is one fast way to deliver traffic by the thousands to your website within 24 hours. Buy traffic from traffic brokers. Most traffic brokers show your website as a full page pop-under without the internet explorer bar on selected type of geo targeting and category.

The Most Useful Way To Utilize Traffic Exchanges

If you advertise through click-exchange traffic programs or GPTR programs, then you should have an idea of what a timed visit is. Basically, people have to view your page for a certain amount of seconds before they can get credit and move on. And that certain amount of seconds is all the time you have to catch their interest. Lets average it out at 20 seconds that your visitor has to view your site before they can move on so you need to catch them by creating a what is known as a...

Lead Page

A lead page is a very brief, straight to the point webpage that is intended to capture the name and email of your visitors so you can respond and followup with information about your business, product, affiliate program, etc. The webpage should consist of three different sections:

Catchy Title

The title should clearly state the whole purpose of your webpage in a few short words. Your title needs to speak out to your visitors and tell them why they should put their details in the form. The title should also lead smoothly into the next part of the webpage which is:

Brief Details

Whatever it is you are promoting or selling, state its benefits in a short paragraph under the title. Maybe you can also include a free gift if they decide to request further information. Your details are your last chance, if they're not satisfied at this point, you've lost them. If they do decide to submit their details, that leads us to the last part of a lead page, a signup form...

Establishing your own E-commerce site is not like what it used to be. There are thousands of competition that is all too willing to get a bigger share of the pie. Every scheme and method you can find to augment your sales would be very beneficial.

In reality, building site traffic is far simpler than you may think, and inexpensive. In fact, you can build a sizeable community for your site at no great cost.

Another way to receive massive amounts of targeted traffic at a minimal cost is through the Google Adwords program. This program has been enormously popular since it's inception, and will allow you to have your website ad on Page #1 of Google for your particular search term, for as little as 10 cents a visitor!!

Similar to browsers who walk into the high street shops to "Touch and Feel" the merchandise.

Signup Form

After you create your title, and list some brief but beneficial details, you need to create a form for your potential customer to subscribe to. When they input their details, you should have an autoresponder setup to reply to them discussing your business or product in further detail and including the url to your main webpage so they can visit it. This way you are bringing all of your lead page visitors (who already have an idea of what your product offers) to your main webpage where they can explore it furthermore.

Now heres the scenario: You only had around twenty seconds in the advertisement to introduce your business and concept, but once you've gotten contact details, you have plenty more time to strategize a plan that covers your business' benefits and opportunities.

Also, you shouldn't put any header or any sort of graphic on your lead page. You need to have it load within a few seconds and all a bunch of pictures will do is slow the load time. Free SEO Elite report, and get Free SEO Elite Software today!

Remember, you may only have a few seconds. This doesn't just go for timed visits, many people surf the internet hastily and may never consider your offer straight from your sales site because they don't know you or your product. If they catch some interest in your lead page and input their contact information, you have just the chance to introduce yourself and your business and product.

Do not make the mistake of including the URL of your internet opportunity on each and every manual traffic exchange you are participating....instead...use some of your traffic exchange affiliate links to derive the benefits of residual traffic in the long run.

Generating traffic is not an easy task. You have to contend with a great number of sites to generate a good number of traffic flow. But if done successfully this could open up a Pandora's Box of possibilities. One of the benefits is monetizing your traffic flow. Compare SEO Elite and get free SEO Elite Software download today at http://seoelite.trustedreviews.info/ There are hundreds, if not thousands of free traffic exchanges online today. The trick is to find the ones that work best for you. Not all free traffic exchanges are created equal and the most active ones are not necessarily the best ones for your needs.

Keep submitting your site to directories like there's no tomorrow! Just take a look at your website and see if it's directory-worthy. Web directories don't waste their time on poorly-done websites.

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Compare SEO Elite and get free SEO Elite Software download today at http://seoelite.trustedreviews.info/

Using Free Autoresponders

If you’ve looked at the prices of autoresponders that are available online, you may have decided to search for and use a free autoresponder for your marketing needs. Using free autoresponders is acceptable in certain situations, and in the world of Internet marketing, any autoresponder is better than not using an autoresponder at all!

Your first option for a free autoresponder should be the one that comes with your webhosting account – if you have a webhosting account. These autoresponders can easily be set up through the control panel of your website, and they do not contain advertisements from the autoresponder company or webhosting service. If you do not have a hosting account, or your hosting account does not include autoresponders, there are other options that you can pursue.

There are many free autoresponder services to choose from. These services are free, because the company makes their money by placing a small advertisement in each message that your autoresponder sends out. These advertisements may appear at the top of your auto responses, or at the bottom, depending on which company you use.

Many paid autoresponder services offer a free version as well. These free versions may or may not include advertisements in the outgoing messages. These lighter versions of the paid autoresponders typically do not include many of the powerful features of the paid versions. But if you don’t need the more advanced features, this is a great choice.

Most free autoresponders have a limit on the number of subscribers you can have. Many people start out with the limited free versions, and then upgrade to the paid versions once their lists are large enough to exceed those limits. Many marketers don’t feel that the expense of the autoresponder is warranted until the list that they are building is turning a profit. From a business standpoint, this makes sense.

As the owner of a business, you are the only one who can decide whether you need a paid autoresponder service, or if a free one will do the job. If your list is small, a free autoresponder should do everything that you need it to do, but as your list grows, you should definitely consider upgrading. However, having the small advertisements that the free services place in the outgoing messages may present a problem if the ads compete with what you are trying to sell. They may even pose a problem if they do not directly compete with your product or business. Again, this depends on what you are trying to accomplish with your autoresponder.

What is Niche Marketing?

The word ‘niche’ is defined as: “A special area of demand for a product or service”. ‘Marketing’ is defined as: “The opportunity to buy or sell”. If you put the two works together, niche marketing means buying or selling a product or service in a special area of demand. All that really means is that a product or service is being sold to the people who are most interested in that particular product or service and not to the world in general.

Oftentimes big businesses use niche marketing. For example, a company that makes computers and computer accessories might advertise all-in-one copy/printer/scanners to the home computer user while at the same time advertising single function machines to large businesses.

One of the things that make niche marketing so attractive to sellers is that their advertising budgets go further. It costs less to advertise to a specialized market than it does to advertise to a broader market.

Niche marketing must be designed to meet the unique needs of the targeted audience. Niche marketers must tailor their product to meet those unique needs. If, for example, you have designed a product to make poodle grooming easy enough for the untrained professional to do it, those who own poodles will be most interested in your product. Those who own Blood Hounds or cats couldn’t care less. If you have written an e-book that will explain how to start and succeed at an online business, those who are looking for that information are your niche market. Those who are happy doing what they are doing are not interested at all.

Niche marketing is a very effective and cost efficient way to advertise and sell specific products or services to a specific audience or, hopefully, buyers of that product or service.

7 Tips to Improve Your Website Design

No matter if your website is a personal site with a few pages or a huge corporation website, having a good design is one of the most important things. It matters a lot to visitors and can make the difference between leaving a site or bookmarking it. Here are a few tips to help improve your design:

1. Pages should load fast. Most people will leave your site if it's not done loading in ten or 15 seconds. And even if you have a fast internet connection, not everyone does and 56k modems still exist.

2. Text should be easy to read. The text size should be big enough, and the background should not obscure your text. If you want to be safe, use black text on a white background. If you want more color, choose very carefully to make sure it's still easy to read.

3. Your website should be easy to navigate. Each link should be clearly identified as such and graphic navigation elements like buttons and tabs should be easy to read and use. You do not want people leaving because they could not figure out how your Flash menu works.

4. Your layout and design should be consistent. If you switch between styles too much, you will confuse your visitors. If the design is too different, people will believe that they are now on a different website since the layout changed.

5. Avoid music and sounds. Very few people like to have music forced on them while they navigate, especially if they are already listening to music or surfing at their job! If you really cannot do without music, turn it off by default and ask visitors to start it themselves.

6. Design for browser compatibility. Many people do not use Internet Explorer on Windows. Make sure your site is at least viewable in Mozilla Firefox and Opera (if possible, you could even try testing on a Mac). Sites that target markets like technology should be more careful, since readers are more likely to use the newest browsers and gadgets like PDAs.

7. Design for all screen resolutions. You may like to surf in 1240x1080 with your new screen, but some people still use 800x600, or even 640x768! A site that looks perfect in high resolution may turn out to be impossible to view correctly in 800x600.

And, if you have a doubt, test, test and test! You can also ask your family and friends for help. Being less familiar with the website, they can help find a lot of things you overlooked.

Website Design, SEO Techniques All Part of Search Engine Pie

There is a critical element of thought that many Internet Marketers are missing about SEO techniques and getting websites ranked high in the search engines. And it all goes back to the elementary principle of the "whole" being the sum total of all of its parts. This simple, yet often forgotten principle is alive and well in Internet Marketing and search engine dominance.

These techniques are so subtle, so easy to implement and so minute in the bigger picture, that many people feel they are not worth doing simply because they seem so insignificant. Seemingly, if it is that easy, it cannot also be that powerful. And yet, each of these really simple techniques, when added together creates a commanding website structure that will result in search engine dominance.

These traffic generating SEO techniques are enumerated over and over again in articles, eBooks, teleseminars, and email marketing newsletters and ezines everyday. So much so, that many people have the tendency to overlook their effectiveness - even though they are some of the most critical and successful methods of structuring a website that will rank high in the search engines.

These techniques include, but are not limited to the following:

1. Keywords in title tags and descriptions.

2. File and directory naming conventions that include keywords.

3. H1 headline tags that contain keywords.

4. Keywords appearing as the first and last text on a page.

5. Internal links that are keyword rich.

6. Adding robot.txt and sitemap.xml files to a site.

7. Article submissions providing critical inbound links.

8. Blogging and RSS feed broadcasting.

How many times has an SEO expert shared one of the above tips or techniques and made the claim that it is a "little known secret," or the "one thing" that made all the difference in getting indexed faster? And for as many times as it's been written about, there are that many people and more who simply ignore the advice! It just seems too easy. It appears to be too insignificant to make a difference. And yet, it is exactly these easy and insignificant things that do indeed distinguish one person's success from another person's failure.

In pursuit of finding the magic bullet, Internet Marketing entrepreneurs frequently trample past these little gems as they are forging a path to finding the "next big thing" that will make all the difference in search engine dominance.

Please listen carefully... it is the sum total of all of these "little things" that IS the bigger picture! The answer is staring you right in the face - do not ignore it and continue searching for something bigger and better. It simply does not get any bigger than this!

There are, at most, ten to 15 little pieces of the SEO pie that will combine to form the whole of a powerful search engine friendly website. Use them. Embrace them. Get excited and diligent about them. Do not pass them off as being too insignificant to matter. They are of paramount importance and if given the weight they deserve, will yield results that will remain elusive to the majority of the Internet Marketing population who simply discount them on the basis of their simplicity. Heed this advice and you will suddenly see the amazing results they profess to achieve.

10 Ways to get Your Sites 'Slapped' by Search Engines

Of course your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts should be targeted towards high search engine ranking for your keywords, but you must beware of the over optimization penalty. This happens when the search engines consider your page has been designed for the unique purpose of ranking well.

Most SEO experts teach you how to optimize a web page for good search engine ranking, but very few tell you what you must NOT do if you want to avoid over optimization penalty and see your page rank drop or your site get de-indexed.

Here are 10 things you should consider if you are serious about SEO:

1 – Website Content Theft.

Never steal content from other websites. If you are reported you will immediately be banned. Not to mention other legal issues.

2 – Standard Language.

Do not use slang or rude words in your copy as it can get you de-indexed.

3 – Outgoing Links.

Do not exceed 100 outgoing links, always link to good quality sites and never link to farm links. Extra tip: you must check your outgoing links on a regular basis to make sure they are still working and the quality of the sites you are linking to is still good.

4 – URL Length.

Keep your URLs less than 100 characters long and avoid using more than 3 hyphens "-" in your URLs.

5 – Keyword Density.

Keep your keyword density under 5% or it could be considered keyword spamming.

6 – Title Tag.

Your title tag should contain less than 60 characters and should not contain any special characters.

7 – Description Tag.

Keep your description meta tag under 200 characters or your site ranking will drop.

8 – Keyword Tag.

Put less than 10 keywords in your keyword meta tag and make sure every keyword appears in your web page copy. Also, avoid putting the same keyword twice in your keyword meta tag. The fact is that nowadays search engines (mainly Google) do not really consider the Keyword meta tag for ranking, but if you do not follow these simple rules, you will get smacked in the face!

9 – Proper use of Alt Text.

If you use pictures and put your keyword in the alt text, your alt text must describe the picture. You could write something like: "keyword header", "keyword image" or "keyword logo" but never stuff lots of keywords in your alt texts. Again, this would be considered keyword spamming.

10 – Cloaking.

Never, ever, use cloaking. Cloaking consists in coding the page in such a way that parts of the content will be seen by search engines but will not be displayed to users. If you do that, you will get banned!

Finally, remember that search engine algorithms change frequently. So keep up to date by browsing the SEO sites and forums.

These 10 simple rules are no guarantee that you will rank well in the search engines, however one thing is sure, if you break these rules you will be penalized in the search results, lose page rank and maybe even get de-indexed altogether.

Catapult Your Marketing Success With Joint Ventures

There are many ways to make money on the internet. All methods however, come with a price-tag. For starters, you will probably need to purchase basic business software and relevant learning materials. Planning and developing your ideas will definitely require dedication and perseverance all along the way.

One of the best methods for getting started is to partner with other marketers so that you can reach larger target audiences.

These joint ventures or "JV's" can take-on many different forms. Some are as simple as promoting each other's newsletters, while others may be more complex partnerships with cross-promoting of complimentary products. Some JV's even involve starting entirely new projects from scratch.

Joint Ventures are a powerful tool for expanding business in many areas. So, what is stopping 'you' from using this technique to expand your business?

For many new marketers, starting a JV can be a frightening task, especially when it comes to contacting other marketers.
Too often, many marketers appear to be "spamming," when they are really just seeking other JV partners. Here are some tips that may help you along the way:

1. Get to know your potential JV partners.

If you start emailing everyone on your list of potential partners, chances are you will be considered a common spammer. You won't get the partners you want, or even worse, may destroy your reputation in the process.

Instead, subscribe to your potential partner's newsletter and check out their websites and blog. Get to know them a little bit before approaching them with a proposal.

2. Go slowly when approaching potential partners.

Let's face it, everyone likes a little flattery. When contacting your potential JV partner, treat them like your "first date." Be courteous and complimentary. Tell them the things you like about their business. Join their newsletter and tell them you think it is awesome, and why. You will be surprised at how much attention you receive by using a little well placed flattery as you proceed to develop your relationships with potential JV partners.

3. Your financial estimates should always be realistic.

Don't promise what you can't deliver. Be honest with your potential partners. Explain your proposal and benefits in realistic terms, but don't hype. Be honest, open and sincere.

Getting a Joint Venture off the ground doesn't have to be scary if you start by following the three simple steps given above.

Affiliate Marketing - The Art of the Squeeze Page

Affiliate marketing's one of the quickest methods to generate cash flow on the web today.

Among its many benefits is the fact that you don't have to spend time or money researching and developing a new product. All of this has been done for you by the product owner.

This is a tremendous burden lifted off your shoulders because this is usually the most costly aspect of any business venture.

A word of caution though, you should still do a little research yourself as to whether the market wants the product you are looking to promote and whether the price point is fair and reasonable enough to attract a big audience.

Once this is done and you have found the product or service you want to promote and are satisfied with the affiliate program you should set up what is referred to as a squeeze page.

Simply put, a squeeze page is a one page pre sales letter that entices the prospect to leave their name and email address in order to receive more information on the product or service of choice.

There are several points to be made for this superb sales tactic. Number one, you set yourself apart from all the other affiliates promoting the same product. Number two, you build your own opt-in list that you can promote other products to.

So what do you need to use this tactic? A few basics and a little skill.

The first thing you need is a web hosting account and domain name. These are very inexpensive these days and are a must have for anyone who is serious about doing business online.

Second is an autoresponder. These too are fairly inexpensive. Many hosting accounts will now offer free autoresponders with their service.

Third is an HTML editor. There are several free editors out there that are easily found through a quick search. Nothing fancy is needed, just a simple user friendly application.

And the final ingredient is a little copy writing skill.

Here is a tip on what to write on your page: Go to the product sales page. Pick out the highlights, the biggest benefits you can see offered. Think about what other benefits there are that may not be stated already and jot them down.

Now go into your HTML editor and put together a small sales page using a good headline, subhead and bullet points listing all the benefits you gathered. This is where the copy writing skill comes in.

Put the email capture form generated from your autoresponder on the bottom of the page. Let your prospect know that by leaving their name and email address you will then reveal this highly coveted tool, piece of information, service or whatever it is you have and they so desperately want.

Do not mention the name of the product or service on the capture page, just the benefits. The reason for this is because they may have seen this product or service before and were sitting on the fence about it and you want the prospect to purchase through your link. You are going to nudge them over the fence with your presentation.

All you are trying to do is build interest, pique their curiosity and whet their appetite for more information.

Set up your autoresponder with 6-7 emails that go out in 3-4 day intervals, each building on one of the benefits mentioned on your squeeze page.

Then add in other related services or products that you are an affiliate of. Repetition is the key and your squeeze page gives you that advantage over other affiliates.

Affiliate Marketing - How To Set Yourself Apart

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to quickly make money from your own home-based Internet business.

The reasons for this are many, including the facts that you skip the research and development stage, the product creation and the copywriting for not only the sales page but all the subsequent ads. By not having to invest in these early stages of product development you save not only money but time as well.

This leaves you, as the affiliate, the task of simply marketing the chosen product or service.

Easy enough, right?

The fact is that there are many people just like you entering the Internet ring every day looking for the so-called easy dollar. And since that is exactly what affiliate marketing promises, there is a lot of competition for the same buck in most niches.

The trick to affiliate success, no matter which market or niche you may choose, is to separate yourself from all the other affiliates who are using the exact same marketing materials as you are.

One note of caution - make sure to check the affiliate rules for each program to verify that the tactics listed here are permitted.

The first order of business is to get your own web site along with a domain name closely associated with the niche of choice. If you are targeting the home stereo niche you may want to choose something like homestereoguide.com or the like.

Next, you will want to find a template that you can use as a basis of your site. It is very important that the look and feel of your site stays consistent through out the site if you have more than one page.

Here is where you will really set yourself apart from all the other affiliates. Write a special report or review of the product or service you are going to promote. This is the real focus of your marketing, getting this document out to as many prospects as possible.

This piece should be given away as an enticement for the prospects name and email address, which should be left in an autoresponder. Set up several messages, optimally 7 to 10, to go out at 2 to 3 day intervals. Each message should give an explanation of the benefits derived from the product along with your affiliate link.

The autoresponder form should be prominently displayed on all of the pages of your site along with the sales pitch telling your visitors why they should download the free report. You can easily set this up in a sidebar on the template of choice, usually on the left hand side.

By building this list of potential buyers you can communicate with them as often as you want. Send them alerts when a new product comes out, when upgrades are available to existing products or when sales on their favorite products are being offered.

There are many reasons to build your list but by offering a special report you label yourself as an expert in your field, you thus set yourself apart from all the other affiliates.

Using Testimonials to Create High-Impact Sales Letters

Sales letters can be an effective marketing tool when you use the right ingredients to develop a targeted sales piece that is directed at very specific audiences. When you write a sales letter, you need to introduce your product or service, outline its features and benefits, differentiate the product or service from those of your competitors, and convince the reader to make a purchase. The catch is, you must do all of this within a fairly short sales piece that needs to be very persuasive. One of the best tools you can use to help convince readers that they need your product or service is a testimonial from a satisfied customer.

When a customer gets satisfaction from using your product or service, ask the customer if he or she would be willing to write a short testimonial that outlines the experience that was delivered by the product or service. Perhaps your product saved the customer 50% off of their normal materials expense because the product utilized materials more effectively. Maybe the client that utilized your marketing consulting services has experienced a 30% increase in the number of leads derived from the marketing campaign you developed. If this is the case, let your clients tell your story in their own words. This can be one of the best methods of persuasion.

Never use a copywriter to write testimonials for you. These testimonials will never sound as genuine as those that can be given by customers. Another danger when using false testimonials is that the voice of each testimonial sounds the same, making it look like the same person wrote each and every paragraph.

When you ask for testimonials, ask for a long testimonial in the customer's own words. Many advertisers use very short testimonials that encompass one or two positive words about a product or service. This makes potential customers suspicious because it looks like an editor has cut down a lackluster testimonial into a rave review. You can always edit your customers' testimonials for grammar and spelling, but you should keep the wording the same. This will further help you to maintain a genuine appearance when using testimonials.

Use specific testimonials that describe how using your product or service has changed the lives of your customers for the better. Instead of "this is a great product," find a testimonial that says something like "I used XYZ Tools' new chainsaw and saved 50% of my raw materials from going to waste." This is a specific and measurable result that can entice prospects to make a purchase. If your business is service-based, let customers talk about how your service has improved the quality of their lives, saved them money, saved them time, or decreased waste.

Using testimonials from satisfied customers may not have occurred to you when you first sat down to write your sales letter. Once you solicit some genuine testimonials from customers and use them in your sales letters, you will start to notice a real difference in the inquiries about your product or service.

Five Ways to Make Your Advertising Work Harder

One of the sharpest minds in the direct response marketing business is fond of advising potential advertisers that creativity is not a positive virtue for an advertising copywriter. Whether it is a print, on-line or broadcast ad, the worst response experts say people should give is to think an ad was exceptionally creative. Instead, the person should respond by wanting to buy the product.

Here are five ideas advertising writers may use to help make their ad copy more effective.

1. Proof - Let people know how good your product or service is by offering proof that it stacks up better than its competition, or that it has met or exceeded certain tests or specifications. When stating numbers, such as how much faster one medicine works when compared with another, round numbers are less effective. Therefore, try to use uneven numbers like 23.7% rather than round numbers like 25% and your message will be more believable.

2. Identification - Do not be afraid to let people know who you are, where you are located and what you think and feel. Rather than appearing to hide behind a post office box number, tell people that your office is located at 1234 Elm Street in the red brick Smith Building, which was constructed in 1916. This not only makes you seem more interesting, but also more believable and trustworthy.

3. Guarantee - People will always be more willing to buy from you if they trust you will refund their purchase price if they are not satisfied. Yes, you may have to incur some expenses paying for refunds, but your increased sales will more than make up the difference.

4. Accessibility - Similar to identification, it always is best to be easy to reach, so do not omit your contact information from your ads, especially ads in print and on-line messages. Whether it is your phone number, Internet URL, email address or all three, make sure they are correct and working properly before you publish the ad. For example, if you are publishing a toll-free number that only works from the USA, if you also include your regular telephone number with area code, potential customers from other countries may also buy from you.

5. Every sales letter should have a PS following the signature - This part of the letter will most likely be read more closely than some other parts, so utilize it to reinforce your most important point, or offer an extra bonus to motivate the reader to act immediately.

By making sure your advertising message has met the above five criteria, you will ensure the next ad you write will help make your cash register ring even more loudly.

Stay on the Good Side of Article Directory Owners

Article marketing has become one of the top ways to increase the popularity of websites and gain higher search engine rankings. Having articles you have written posted in reputable article directories allows you the publicity you are looking for as well as gaining necessary backlinks that count as a vote for your site - a necessity if you want a good page rank in Google.

Keep in mind that while posting articles to article directories can help to improve your search engine rankings and increase the visitors to your sites, all the work you spend writing and posting will be in vain if article directory owners choose to not post your article.

Let's take a look at how you can stay on the good side of article directory owners and increase your chance of getting your articles posted:

1. Follow the rules
You stay on the good side of article directory owners simply by reading the submission guidelines posted on the article directory site. These guidelines explain the rules that you will need to follow in order to get your article posted. At minimum, they will describe the types of topics the directory owner will accept, formatting requirements and even word length.

2. Show your expertise
By writing extensively on a particular subject or similar subjects within a broader category, you become respected as an expert - often allowing you the privilege of having your articles automatically accepted. However, submitting articles on a number of different topics might send an alert to the article directory owner that you could be a possible spammer. You could have good intentions and simply want to submit articles reflecting the variety of different sites that you own, but having many articles on many topics could send a flag that you are aiming mainly for a high number of backlinks and the quality of your articles may not meet the requirements of their site. If you want to submit articles on a variety of topics, try submitting certain topics to certain directories or sign up with multiple usernames or pennames (if allowed by the article directory).

3. Rewrite your PLR articles
If you use private label rights (PLR) articles, be sure to rewrite your articles. Do not use them straight out of the article pack, because many others who have the same article packs will not rewrite theirs! Duplicate articles are always deleted from article directories, therefore if yours does not get in the directory first; there is a good chance your article will be deleted. Furthermore, not all article directory owners understand the use of PLR for article marketing. Do not take a chance that the article directory owner might accuse you of copyright infringement!

Remember, if you have questions, ask the article directory owner(s) because it is much easier to do it right the first time than to spend time and effort rewriting it or just being taken off the list of qualified writers for that article directory. Always submit high quality work, do not try to cut corners once you have established a rapport with the website owner.

6 Steps to Picking Profitable Adsense Keywords

Knowing how to find the best keywords for use in your Adsense ads is not a straightforward process. Finding and implementing high profit, low competition keywords in your ads really is the trick for making Adsense payoff big.

The following process should yield profitable, low competition keywords for your Adsense ads. This process is not perfect, but when you analyze it and try it for yourself, you can see that it makes sense. Adsense that is.

Step 1
Research some keywords for your niche that have a high CPC value. To do this, first find your keywords using the Google Adwords keyword tool or another tool that will give you niche specific lists of keywords. Save those keywords into a spreadsheet program as a csv file. Copy and paste those keywords into Google's Traffic Estimator (you will need an Adwords account). The traffic estimator will give you the estimated clicks per day and the average cost per click (CPC) for each keyword. Copy and paste this information back into your spreadsheet file for later reference.

Step 2
Multiply the average CPC by 30% to get an estimate of your maximum earnings per click. The higher the average CPC, the more likely the CPC for the 2nd - 8th positions are high as well. You want this higher average CPC to start because if the CPC starts to drop off significantly after the 3rd position, your chance of getting high click earnings as an Adsense publisher will be diminished.

Step 3
Use any one of many tools available on the internet for helping to estimate the 1st - 8th position CPC values. These tools will estimate the CPCs for each position and allow you to see how much the CPCs drop off after the first position. This dramatically helps your analysis for picking the most profitable keywords. If the CPC values stay close to the each other and to the value of the first position, then you will more than likely have a profitable keyword.

Step 4
Now determine which Adsense ads occupy which positions. You can do this by searching on Google for your keyword and looking to see which Adsense ads are generated in the search results and in which order they are. Another way to estimate this is to use the Adwords Accelerator tool. It has a feature whereby Adwords ads are dynamically displayed for a given keyword you input into the tool to check. If the Adwords advertiser has used "Adwords for Content" in his advertising, these ads will be the Adsense ads someone else is displaying on their website.

Step 5
Compare the ads you found in step 4 to the results of using a keyword check function tool (available on the internet). If the advertisers you find by doing this closely match those you found in step 4, you will more than likely have a profitable keyword.

If the advertisers are not he same, then the advertiser is possibly not using the "Adwords for Content" mode of advertising in his campaigns. This means that the keyword may not be the basis for the Adsense ads and may not be profitable.

Step 6
Now you must get the traffic. If you decide to get traffic using the Adwords approach, then just use the keywords in your Adsense ads that scored well from the above evaluation. Then, use lower cost per click keywords in your Adwords ads. The difference between the earnings from the click you get on your Adsense word from the cost of the click you pay on your Adwords word will be your profit.

If you are planning to use search engine optimization techniques to get traffic to the website where your ads are, make sure the keywords you choose have the highest KEI possible. KEI is the ratio of the number of searches for a keyword to the number of competing sites having the keyword. The combination of a high KEI and a high score from the above evaluation will yield the best profit results.

Writing Articles that Captivate Your Readers

You've heard it time and time again: if you want to get your name out there, write articles and allow them to be freely reproduced (with a resource box pointing back to you, of course). Largely, that is true. A well-written article can:

- help you build your profile as an expert

- draw traffic to your site, and

- help you to build a database of potential clients through associated e-courses or a newsletter.

So far you probably haven't heard anything you didn't already know. What YOU are likely to be struggling with is the process of actually writing the article. Sure, you can come up with the content - but how do you really grab those readers? How do you keep their attention all the way through? And most importantly, how do you make them want to come back for more?

Let's assume that you understand the basics of constructing and editing an article (it has a beginning, middle, and an end and you know how to check the grammar and spelling.) Most of us can manage that. But if you're not content with simply "getting something out there" - if you want to WIN readers - then you need to start thinking about what they want to know, rather than what you want to tell them.

Put your readers first - every time. Give them what they want, and they'll be queuing up to read anything you produce. Give them something bland (or worse, blatantly self-serving) and they'll blast by you so fast you'll be spinning in the back draft.

The following four steps will give you a blueprint for writing articles that captivate your readers - whatever the topic.


== 1. Find Out What Your Readers Really Want ==

Sometimes you'll know what they want because you're an expert in the field, and understand the problems. If you don't know the subject area well, you'll have to do more research. Look for forums on your topic and see what people are discussing. What are the problems that need solving? Can you provide an answer? ("If they have a headache, give them an aspirin.")


== 2. Start With An Attention-Grabber ==

Spend time working on your opening. Try to avoid trite questions like "Have you ever wondered why so many people find it difficult to lose weight?" Firstly, it's dull. Secondly, it's not targeting the person reading the article - what do they care about the difficulties "many people" have with losing weight? They only care about THEIR weight problem!

Try to come up with an opening paragraph that gives the reader that warm "Hey, this is about me!" feeling right away. Better still; try to generate a rush of excitement - "This could be the answer I've been looking for..."

Example: "The diet gurus make it all sound so easy: to lose weight, all you have to do is expend more energy than you take in. Huh! If it were that simple, the "Big People" stores would be out of business in a heartbeat. Luckily for those of us who are tired of diets, gyms and dull group meetings, there is a back-to-basics way to tackle this. A way that won't cost you a fortune or leave you feeling deprived."


== 3. Write As You Speak... Then Edit! ==

The sample opening above also illustrates the importance of the tone you use in your article. You need 'meat' in each article, of course, to make it worth reading - but make sure it's not indigestible!

You're better off writing your article in a natural, relaxed style that's akin to normal conversation. It doesn't matter if the first draft is a little too informal - you can fix that when you edit. Naturally you don't want to irritate your readers with a too-breezy style, but too-formal is worse. Readers may want facts, tips, and strategies, but they hope to be entertained, too! Let your personality shine through.


== 4. End On A High ==

What's one of the biggest problems with most articles? They fizzle out! Writers often don't know how to end on an upbeat note. They either just stop dead or they come up with a trite ending like: "So what are you waiting for? Get started today!"

The beginning and the end of your article are the two parts that make the biggest impression. Start by creating a feeling of anticipation... and leave them feeling satisfied (or excited) when you finish.

If you are offering advice to help them solve a problem (like obesity) gives your readers a reason to feel optimistic and good about them. Don't make rash promises... but do offer hope. If you are giving hints on marketing or business, sum up the benefits of acting on your tips. You can also experiment with using a pithy/humorous quote, or giving readers a specific action to get them started. Be creative - and don't rush it.

Here's a final tip: create an article-writing cheat-sheet for yourself. Divide it into beginnings/middles/ends and add more useful strategies as you think of them. (For example, using the tips in this article, you might write: ENDINGS - end on a high, offer hope, use funny quote, suggest action to get started.)

Do this, and you'll be steadily cranking out articles that everyone wants to publish!

PLR Content - Quality Counts

Keen users of Private Label Rights content are delighted to see more and more PLR sites appearing. The proliferation of such sites has, however, given rise to a new problem - the overall quality of the articles users pay for. Good (and reliable) writers are snapped up fast and given ongoing work. Regrettably, some PLR site owners seem to be only concerned with getting a batch of articles uploaded no matter what the quality.

Competition, as we all know, is a GOOD thing. Quite a number of PLR users are now making a practice of signing up to check out the quality of what's on offer in a new site. If they like it, they stay. If they don't - they vote with their feet, or more appropriately, with the 'cancel this subscription' option at PayPal.)

Your Rights as a PLR Site Subscriber

Don't feel that you have to accept the articles you get no matter what the quality. You are entitled to get articles and/or ebooks that have been proofread and edited to correct grammar and spelling. It is the responsibility of the PLR site owner to check that the articles are of an acceptable standard (or to hire someone to do this for them).

PLR users expect to have to tweak and change an article to create unique website content. They should not, however, have to edit every article. We all expect an error to creep in here and there - but an entire batch of articles written by someone whose language is quite obviously NOT English is not acceptable. Nobody wants to have to copy-edit every one of 20 articles before turning them into an e-book!

What You Can Do If You Are Not Satisfied With the Quality of PLR Content

The first and most obvious option is to cancel your subscription. However, you would be doing everyone a favor if you took the time to contact the site owner to explain why you are not happy. Copy and paste a few examples from the articles to demonstrate the errors.

In the past, PLR site owners have sent back batches of articles to be corrected and/or rewritten when they are not satisfied with the job. In extreme cases, they cut their losses and just hire a new writer. Any PLR site owner who wants to build a profitable and well-regarded business will be interested in working with you on this - they don't want to lose customers!

If you can't get any satisfaction, move on. Sample the content of several sites. Ask for recommendations from friends or other publishers before you sign up. (Look for more than one satisfied customer - never forget that some reviews are there solely to get you to sign up via the reviewer's affiliate link.)

Find a Site to Satisfy Your Personal Needs

Different sites offer different things. Some sites offer articles and completed e-books, sales letters, and well-produced graphics. Others provide only articles and a few bonus products.

If you are a competent graphic designer and know your way around programs like Photoshop, graphics may not be important to you. (Indeed, you may prefer to create your own graphics so your site looks different to everyone else's.) Some sites offer 'extras' like web hosting and autoresponders, plus ready-made AdSense sites. If you are just starting out, you may like these all-in-one solutions.

Check out the following:

- What you get for your monthly subscription - articles, e-books, e-courses, AdSense sites, graphics and sales letters.
- The quality of the articles that are immediately available - general style, grammar, and spelling.
- Is the content original (not copied from some other source)?
- The regularity with which content is posted. (Check out the forum, if there's one available. Are there constant complaints or queries about when this month's content will be available?)
- The range of topics covered. You will find that some sites specialize in one subject area, while others cover a broad range of topics. Are you using enough of the monthly content to make it worth your while? There's not much point in being able to access 200 articles a month if you can use only five of them.

It's common for PLR users to belong to more than one site. An example: $200 a month spread between four to six sites comes to only $2,400 a year - which is an excellent business investment compared to the cost of hiring your own writer. Well-written, carefully-edited PLR articles are usually well worth the monthly fee. Take the time to assess the content of any PLR site - and stay with the ones that believe in quality control.

Your Blog: An Easy Alternative to a Website

These days, it is much easier to create a website than it used to be. In general, website-creation programs are much simpler to use - and you also have the option of signing up with an online web host with easy-to-use page creation tools.

But the biggest change has to be the advent of the blog.

"Blog" is short for 'web log'. Blogs started off as a way for people to create an online diary. Bloggers would simply log on, tap out a paragraph or two giving their thoughts on life and the universe (and everything in between); click 'publish' and that was that. Their words were live on the Internet for anyone to see. The big appeal of a blog was that it was interactive: readers were welcome to add a comment on any post, with a link back to their own blog or website.

Gradually, bloggers started to want more. They wanted easy ways to upload photos, and extra pages on the site - just like a 'real' website. They wanted a range of themes, to better express their personality or business.

Programmers everywhere came to the party, particularly with WordPress, a well-known open source. Now, if you want a website/blog, it's possible to:

* Sign up with a web host with CPanel for a low monthly fee

* Install WordPress with just a few clicks of the mouse, using Fantastico on your website's CPanel

* Either use one of the pre-installed themes, or browse the various themes available at WordPress (and on many other sites) to choose one that suits your personality or business

* Upload the theme you want to the wp_content folder, using a simple FTP program (such as WS_FTP or Cute FTP)

* Start posting your articles or comments

* Add extra pages to your site (if you want to)

Now that you can add separate pages to blogs - just as you can with a standard website - many people are turning to them as their preferred way of building a website. By using various plugins, it's possible to do pretty well anything you want.


=== What Are "Plugins"? ===

Plugins are extra features available for your blog to make your life easier. You can get plugins, for example, that will:

- help you block spam

- make it easy to upload and sort your photos

- ping the search engines so they know when you've added new content

- insert Adsense blocks so you can earn money from your blog

There are quite a number of plugins available now - take some time to find out what they will do.


=== Help With Using Wordpress ===

While Wordpress is not the only blog software available, it is an excellent choice because (a) it's free; (b) it's relatively easy to use; (c) it's open-source, and therefore has a lot of people working on it constantly to make it better, and (d) there are quite a few 'how to' sites on the Internet showing you how to make the most of your Wordpress blog.

One of them is Guido Stiehle ("The Jungle Marketer") who offers an excellent free tutorial (with video tutorials) that will show you, step by step, how to set up and use your blog. You can find other providers by simply typing 'how to use Wordpress' into a search engine.

Spend an hour or two browsing, and you'll see why a blog is a very viable option for establishing your presence on the Internet.

5 Quick Newsletter Tips

You know you need to stay in touch with the people on your list, but you're in two minds about starting a newsletter. Will it take up too much of your time? What if you run out of things to say? Can you maintain quality over a period of time? How long should your newsletter be?

Your first aim should be to offer useful or interesting information. (If you don't do that, you won't have subscribers for long!) Your second aim should be to keep your newsletter short. Remember that people are inundated with email these days - they actually prefer something they can skim quickly and then put to use.

Spend some time thinking about the best format. You need a model that will be easy to reproduce week after week, month after month. Any one of the following five ideas will make your job easier. Choose one and keep it as a regular format, or combine several of them (for example, you could use the "Tip of the Week" format for weeks 1-3 each month, and offer a checklist every fourth newsletter).

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1. Tip of the Week
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This one speaks for itself. You can easily brainstorm enough content for six months of weekly newsletters (you need to come up with 24 tips, which you will present weekly). Anyone with a degree of expertise on a given topic should be able to do this without any trouble. A handy way to organize this is to (a) explain the problem then (b) offer the tip which will solve it. Length? Anything from 150 - 500 words.

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2. Top Ten
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This is a tried and true format, and easy to create. Example: if you are an expert on finance, you could offer advice on the Top Ten Ideas for Getting Out of Debt, or the Top Ten Ways to Save Money on Car Expenses, or the Top Ten Tips to Pay Off Your Mortgage in Ten Years. Make sure you keep a tight rein on word length - just offer a couple of sentences for each tip, not half a page.

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3. Three Ways to...
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Sometimes it can be a bit of a challenge to come up with ten ways to do things, whereas just three ideas is a cinch. You can also explore three ideas in more detail. Alternatively, you can alternate the "Top Ten" format with "Three Ways to...” the two of them will work together nicely.

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4. Before and After
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Who doesn't like makeovers? This works in a similar way to 'Tip of the Week' in that you show the problem and then provide a solution, but the 'before and after' approach lends itself better to case studies. This is a good way to interact with your clients - invite them to send in details of whatever needs a makeover: an article, a website page, their wardrobe etc, then present your solutions. Alternatively, you can ask for 'before and after' examples from readers who have managed to do this themselves, then showcase it for the rest of your customers. (If you don't use HTML for your newsletters, you can add a link to a website page for the accompanying photos.) This works particularly well if you have a health and fitness related newsletter - your readers will be motivated by seeing the changes others have made through diet, exercise and weight training.

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5. Checklists
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When you're learning to do something new, there's nothing like a checklist to make sure you don't leave out a crucial step. Checklists can save a lot of time, and your readers will be delighted to get one. Write a brief introductory paragraph, present the checklist, and then follow it with a few final tips. You can either base your entire newsletter on the checklist format, or present one at regular intervals as a change from the standard article format.

Final tip: set up an address at yahoo or gmail just for newsletters. Spend a few hours checking out sites related to your own interests, and sign up for any free newsletters. Every so often, check your new email account and browse, looking specifically to see what approach other editors use for layout and articles. When you see a format you like, print it out and put it in an 'ideas' folder. Unsubscribe from any that are constantly filled with junk or endless sales pitches.

Making The Most of Public Domain and Private Label Content

There's so much public domain content available all over the internet, with Master Resale Rights available and sites springing up left and right with Private Label articles you can use to create your own products, but what do you need to bear in mind, what is the best way to use all this content and what can you create with it?

What to Look Out For:

Copyright - you absolutely must check on this - violating someone's copyright is not clever and can be a really expensive mistake not to mention seriously damaging your reputation. Is it really public domain? All those lawyers fees can really mount up when checking into all this but believe me, you really don't want to end up in court over it.

Public Domain Content - If you have the money to have a lawyer look at copyright for you then fine, go ahead and get started. Where can you find this type of content? It can be difficult to find content that is free to use but here are a few links to get you started:

http://www.gutenberg.org/
http://www.wikimedia.org/
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/index.html

Master Resale Rights - If you can't afford expensive lawyers what else can you do? One rather less pricey way is to buy Master Resale Rights to a product - this gives you the opportunity to name yourself as the author, use the content in another product, rewrite the whole thing - the possibilities are endless. Just be aware with this that you will need to look at the terms and conditions of what you are allowed to do with the product before you buy.

On a budget? - not to worry, there are still many ways you can find great content without spending a fortune or worrying about whether you can legally use it. Sites such as http://www.infogoround.com and http://www.thelostfiles.com provide guaranteed public domain or private label content for a monthly fee. You could also sign up to some of the well known internet marketer's newsletters. Why? Well if you're serious about internet marketing you should be checking out all the latest happenings anyway, but a lot of newsletter owners will have free ebooks, giveaways and articles to download - some of which you will be able to use as your own.

So you've got your content ready to go and you've checked your rights and permissions but there is one more thing to think about - sites such as http://www.copyscape.com can check for duplicate content on the internet and of course so can the search engines. This could mean anything from the search engines deciding they won't rate your site as highly because the exact same content is available elsewhere to some smarty pants asking you if you really did write that incredibly good article because they've seen someone else claiming that they wrote it too, so you do need to be aware of this when looking to use content you haven't personally created, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't go ahead and make the most of all that wonderful information.

What Can You Do?

You could just read the information to learn from it yourself; you could read it to get ideas for businesses, more articles, content, the list is limited only by your imagination.

How about:

Ebooks
Print Books
Presentations
Membership Sites
Face to face courses
Mini courses
Teleclass content
Webcast content
Podcast content
Blog content
Content for your Autoresponder
Ezine content
Articles for your site to build AdSense income pages
Viral Reports
Tips Lists

When it comes to using all the content you have gathered, you need to look through it all and decide what you want to produce. If you plan to use content from more than one source, such as 2 or 3 articles by different authors to be combined into a report, you will need to go through and change the content into a similar style, check that it is all written in the same tense, make sure the formatting is the same throughout, check for spelling and grammar (for example - spelling for some words is different in the US than the UK) and look through all the articles to see if any of the points made are duplicated.

Once you've done this, make a list of points you want to make in your report, read the articles through again and start combining them together to fit what you want to say - cut and paste to copy sections into the right place.

Next, look at the way your draft reads now and see if it fits your style of writing, your personality and your business. Reword it to fit with this - there's no point in producing a very formally written, stiff sounding report for a hobby site.

At this point you could just tweak it, proof read it, and then go ahead and publish it but to take it a step further and make it really unique, why not look at how you might rewrite it so that all of the content is yours - now you've got the basic idea down and laid out, it shouldn't take you long to reword things, add in some of your own ideas and keywords that fit your site, and maybe a few quotes and suddenly you're looking at something that no-one else has got, that the search engines will love and that no-one can claim you copied.

Time to start creating!

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