Archive for 2007

Promoting Your Product with Organic Search

Saturday, November 17th, 2007

I found a pretty great article entitledPromoting Your Product with Organic Search“, by Michael Fleischner

It goes right along with what I am always telling my clients – You can go broke using paid advertising to drive traffic to your site.  You will be much more successful using a handful of techniques beyond the garden variety SEO to get visitors.

Many small business owners do not have the resources needed to effectively manage online marketing or the experience to implement productive pay-per-click advertising campaigns. This really does take expert level knowledge.  But with a few tips and tricks from the best internet marketers in the world scaled down for the real world you can achieve a level of success that will rise far above the online success of the typical small business.

Inbound links and compelling content are 2 of the factors that will greatly increase the amount of “organic” trafic you receive.  These factores will increase page rank and search engine ranking.

Like Michael says in the article, “A great place to start your off-page optimization effort is through link building. Find other websites who are willing to exchange links with you, place a one-way link on their site to yours, or perhaps provide a link to unique content or tools you offer. By getting other websites to point to your website, you are well on your way towards enhancing organic search results.”

I will add to this the importance of good and riveting content that will get the visitor hooked and coming back for more, thus increasing you chances of conversion. . .

Publishing Your eZine – the Cons

Monday, November 12th, 2007

As with any other types of businesses, publishing your own online newsletter a.k.a. eZine has its share of drawbacks, in spite of the several benefits it offer.

The purpose of this article is not to scare you away with the disadvantages of publishing your own eZine, as the benefits are often more attractive. However, I will also show you how you can easily tackle the cons.

One obvious challenge most beginning eZine publishers face is the creation of eZine content. Creating your own content can be tiresome, especially if you are not a gifted writer and that you run out of ideas every so often that your publishing schedule is threatening you.

A way of taking care of this problem is to create your content in advance. You can compile 30 days worth of content in one day, for example. If you are not blessed with writing skills, you can broker the writing task to capable freelance writers which you can find at places such as http://www.elance.com/ or http://www.rentacoder.com/. While you need to pay for such services, you are at liberty to take the credit for written articles.

Alternatively, you can republish articles from article directories such as http://ezinearticles.com/. This is a free method you can use in making content, provided you include the resource box of the original author and that the article has republishing rights conveyed.

In conclusion, you can easily tackle the content creation challenge using the mentioned methods that do not require writing on your part, free or paid.

Facebook: “We Have Not Been Briefed On OpenSocial”

Sunday, November 4th, 2007

Google may have just come out of nowhere and checkmated Facebook in the social networking power struggle. Oh really. . .

MySpace and Six Apart will announce that they are joining Google’s OpenSocial initiative. Silicon Alley Insider reported the MySpace rumor earlier today. We’ve confirmed that from an independent source, as well as the fact that Six Apart is joining. Per the update below, Google has also confirmed Bebo is joining.

This according to Tech Crunch

Facebook is publicly saying they have not officially talked to Google about OpenSocial. Although sources say that that Facebook and Google have been talking about OpenSocial…including today. So pleading ignorance won’t last as a strategy for dealing with the OpenSocial movement.

You gotta love it. . . intrigue running rampant. Personally, I think it’s so cool that Google is developing this platform! Remember my previous post and my theory about Google’s bid attempt (?) for that coveted piece of Facebook. . .

I’m gonna have to learn how to build apps!

1st OpenSocial App Gets Hacked Within 45 Minutes of Going Live!

Sunday, November 4th, 2007

Part of me loves a renegade until they hack into my servers and create an email bomb. . . bastards.

Just ran across this great blog: Tech Crunch and a great article written by Michael Arrington

Today there is a story about a developer who goes by the alias “theharmonyguy” and describes himself as “just an amateur” who evidently hacked into the RockYou OpenSocial application on Plaxo called emote.

At this stage I think it is pretty good to discover vulnerability in these apps. Better now than later!

I really like the idea of OpenSocial. I think the cross platform ability of these apps to perform is a pretty nifty idea. This gets me thinking. . . Google didn’t conceive of this idea after losing a bid against Microsoft to acquire a bit of Facebook, methinks. . . Maybe they just forced up the price increasing the (pre) value of Maka Maka. . .

Ah. . . I deviate. . . Oh yes, OpenSocial hackers. . .

Read the story from Tech Crunch here

Publishing Your eZine – the Pros

Sunday, November 4th, 2007

There are several advantages publishing your own eZine can offer to you. Thus if the pros appeal to you, then publishing your own paperless newsletter can be ideal for you.

The most obvious reason publishing an eZine can be the most ideal business to you is that it is so easy to start that any individual can do. There is no need to invest in starting a brick and mortar business or even staff and heavy machines for that matter.

In fact, you can do this from the comfort of your home as the most important thing you will need is an auto responder equipped with broadcast feature. Auto responders such as GetResponse.com and aWeber.com are highly recommended when it comes to publishing your own eZine.

In spite of the low start up cost and monthly fees, you can make money from several profit centers within the spaces of your eZine issues. You can make money from selling advertising space, just to name one.

Most importantly, you get to build your own personal media and spread your marketing influence, making you more valuable to product and service owners thus do not be surprised if you receive Joint Venture proposals every so often.

Given some of the best reasons in the world of Internet Marketing, publishing your own periodical eZine can one of the best money vehicles you will ever acquire or even build.

Which One is More Important? Product or Mailing List?

Monday, October 29th, 2007

If you would ask this question, ‘Which one is more important the mailing list or the product?’ any savvy marketer would answer you, ‘The mailing list’.

Principally, any wise business person puts the importance of hungry demand (and not just any demand) in front of the product. In other words, there is no product if there is no demand! And a mailing list represents the demand or your business if you would like to call it.

If you frequent the Joint Venture forums and membership sites of any kind, you will find that product and service owners need mailing list owners more than the other way round. This is because the mailing list owners have the prospects that the other type of partner is looking for to sell to.

And if you are a mailing list owner, you do not have to necessarily make money from selling your own product. You can sell advertising space or craft a Joint Venture with product owners in return of commissions, recurring or not.

Most of the biggest success web businesses on the Internet today often establish the mailing list (or subscribers) first before the product. One fine example is Facebook.

Facebook, in the nutshell, is a website that connects friends and potential friends from around the world through a free membership access.

While Facebook does not make money from the number of members who join the site, the business makes money from selling advertising space and partnering with other big time merchants and businesses, owing to the established number of members Facebook has recruited.

This business is perfect example that demonstrates why every business should establish a need or demand before the product itself, and why you should do the same, whether you run a friends site or not.

Web 2.0: new internet, new etiquette . . . new law?

Sunday, October 28th, 2007

Copyright and privacy infringement may be taking place on an unprecedented scale, but that doesn’t mean existing laws are irrelevant

From “podcast” to “poke”, “wiki” to “weblog”, the internet generation has a language all of its own. But since web guru Tim O’Reilly popularised the phrase “Web 2.0″ in 2004, even those who never considered themselves internet-literate have worked the new technology into their daily lives. Facebook, the social networking phenomenon, dominates water cooler conversations everywhere, having gained a staggering 42 million users since its worldwide launch in 2006. YouTube, which was founded as recently as 2005, attracts some 100 million page views a day.

Thus begins a great article in the London Times on the 23rd (October). The numbers are astonishing, yes, but the question still remains, “How do we utilize the possibilities of Web 2.0 for business?

Facebook, which I call a grown up MySpace is pretty cool. Yet it still isn’t easy to reach your target audience, or is it. Creativity is the name of the game. Facebook apps (a product of the web 2.0 consciousness) are beacons of hope in the sometimes confusing new world of web 2.0. Yeah, even though the term was invented in ‘04, no one knew what the hell it meant until yesterday (or so it seems). With the ability to use these mini applications built just for faceboook to do things like show rss feeds of your blogs right on your profile page, connecting with a chosen demographic just got a little easier. No blatent selling, unlike the old MySpace, but be honest and deliver compelling content and suddenly Facebook becomes a great lead generating tool.

To be continued. . .

You Inc. The Notion of Self Branding

Thursday, October 25th, 2007

A great article today that I found that deals with branding yourself. With all the competition out there it is so important to set yourself apart. Self promotion is NOT a bad word, I promise.

Developer (and web worker) Rob Walling has published his take on the subject in his article Self-Marketing for Software Developers. Based on his years in development and management, he offers 3 rules for marketing your own skills so that you stand out of the pack. even though he’s writing for software developers, the rules can be widely applied by any smalll business with a web presence. Here’s a quick overview; refer to Rob’s original article for more depth.

Rule #1:Self-Marketing Rule #1: It’s a sad statement, but even from early on in your career, knowing how to market yourself will do more for your earnings and reputation than becoming better at what you do. This is not a license to be a crappy developer, but an imperative to become a better self-marketer.

Don’t believe it? Think about the all people in your industry who make more money and are more famous than you. Do they really know more than you? Did they just get lucky? Or were they savvy about how to promote themselves? Sure bet: the promoter. This can be a tough truth to accept, particularly when you’re new in a field and still think superior knowledge will conquer the world, but the sooner you realize that marketing is important, the better.

Rule #2:Self-Marketing Rule #2: Start now. It will take a long time to get going (think years, not months), and the sooner you start the sooner you’ll reap the rewards.

Building your blog circulation, getting people to notice you, building your social network, working your way on to the speaker list at conferences can take some time. If you put it off until next month or next year, someone else who didn’t put it off is going to blow you away. That is unless you have really good promotion techniques. I like the fast track myself.

Rule #3:Self-Marketing Rule #3: If you have an exceptional talent, market yourself through exceptional means. Don’t play the game everyone else is playing.

How many blogs are out there today? Just having a blog isn’t marketing any more; you need to do something different. Set yourself up as the expert on some subject, blog relevant articles on a regular basis, and mail the links to everyone who might be remotely interested: then a blog is worthwhile. Or use social networks or video links or something even more innovative. The goal of marketing is to set yourself apart; you can’t, by definition, do this if you insist on doing exactly what everyone else does.

There is a little more to this but by using every means necessary to spread the work about yourself will pay dividends that are well worth the effort.

Another left turn

Wednesday, October 24th, 2007

I just read online about a company touting their internet market prowess. . .

They had the following article under the title of: “Email marketing campaigns ‘benefit from targeting”.

Sending out an online mailshot has been a favourite Internet Marketing method for years, but the effect of sending out a bulk load of emails can be improved, it has been suggested.

Trade group the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) said that email marketing is best used sparingly and with a specific target audience in mind.

“When used correctly email can be an excellent channel either on its own or as part of an integrated strategy,” said Richard Gibson, chair of DMA’s benchmarking hub.

However, attempting to skimp on investment or sending out bulk mail indiscriminately can diminish the effect of an email marketing campaign.

“Relevancy, segmentation, targeting and analysis are most definitely in the direction where email marketing has been headed for some time,” he said.

“Many studies show that the more relevant an email is to the recipient the more likely they are to engage with the sender.” (Click here to visit their site).

What they fail to talk about is an email flow that both captures and engages the reader.  What business on the web is all about is traffic conversion.  Giving relevant content, enticing the visitor to give their contact info in exchange for more content, newsletter, ebook or more.  Their subscription gives you “relevancy, segmentation, targeting” as mentioned above. 

Permission marketing is the only way to market via the web.  At this point is is SO obvious that bulk mailing in not a quality means, it’s also damn annoying.

Qualify your list and sell to them.

Mailing List for Affiliate Marketers

Monday, October 22nd, 2007

If you are an affiliate marketer who wants to make a comfortable living from referring your prospects to other peopleí’ product or service for decent commissions, then you must consider building your own mailing list.

Building your mailing list of hungry prospects can be one of the best investments you will ever make, as it is time and effort worth spending on. When you strike on a Joint Venture and have a new product or service to endorse, you can look no further than your own mailing list.

Granted, that most affiliates, as in more than 90 percent of them, are not making money from affiliate programs, but this often results from the same amount of effort focused on least effective methods.

While having your own mailing list is, by a long mile, not the only effective affiliate marketing method, you can make affiliate sales very quickly even in the next few hours after sending a sales message, provided that your mailing list is huge and responsive.

This is often true, because owning your own mailing list for you to endorse products and services to is one of the fastest-producing results, beating other affiliate marketing methods imaginable.

In a nutshell, the affiliate marketer who gets ahead of the pack is the one who owns a huge and responsive mailing list of prospects.

Making Money from Selling Advertising Space

Monday, October 15th, 2007

If you would observe the company that delivers the daily paper to your doorstep for a business case study, you will come to learn that the newspaper publisher hires reporters, writers and other important staff to create the contents and deliver the papers to their readers.

In addition to the above mention, the publisher has to invest regularly in heavy duty machineries and tons of papers in printing tons of newspapers on a daily basis.

And in order to ensure that the newspapers are delivered on time, the publisher appoints agents at every part of the covered territory.

So, how does the newspaper company make money? It is obvious that selling a copy of the papers at less than a dollar would not even be able to even fund the operations.

The answer? Selling advertising spaces! You have definitely seen lots of advertisements in the newspaper. The publisher simply sells advertising space in the papers to advertisers who want to leverage their advertising efforts on the paperís high readership.

On the same analogy, you can make money the exact way from your newsletter: simply by selling advertising space to prospective advertisers!

If your mailing list size exceeds 1,000 (5,000 is recommended) subscribers and beyond, you can start selling advertising space for say, $10.00 per sponsor ad.

In this manner, you turn every issue you send out to your subscribers into a profit-pulling device. And since there is virtually no end to the stream of advertisers as products, services and businesses are cropping every single day in every industry imaginable, so are your money making opportunities.

Why Publish an eZine?

Monday, October 8th, 2007

On the Internet, it is very possible to make money without selling any product. One way of doing so is through starting your own eZine, also known as an electronic newsletter.

In a nutshell, you send out your eZine issues on a periodical basis to your subscribers. The good part is that you have a flexible choice in automating the process of sending out your eZine issues for you or manually sending them on a periodical basis.

As an eZine publisher, not only can you easily achieve the benefits a conventional newsletter publisher enjoys without having to chop down several trees in the process, you can easily and conveniently spread your marketing influence and expertise to your base of subscribers from the shoes of an ordinary individual.

In other words, you do not have to invest in expensive printing equipment, brick and mortar business, and hiring staff just to run your own newsletter publication, resulting in a lot of time, money and effort saved.

Basically, all you need to start your own eZine are an auto responder and broadcast feature to go with, enabling you to reach out to your massive subscribers whom you can regard as your prospects, too.

All in all, if you do not have the commitments of creating your own product for sale, then publishing your own online newsletter can be one of the wisest decisions you will ever make, given the benefits of impressive marketing power and influence it can offer to you.

Armand Morin LIVE In Las Vegas

Saturday, May 12th, 2007

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(more…)

StomperNet – Did It Work? or Just Hype?

Wednesday, April 25th, 2007

You probably remember all the hype that flooded your in-box when StomperNet hit the scene 6 months ago. “StomperNet THIS.” “StomperNet THAT.” It was a feeding frenzy – email after email with claim after claim.

I mean, EVERY “Product Launch” these days promises some sort of Secret, or Competitive Edge, or Unfair Advantage. Those phrases are getting pretty tired. Tired, old, ugly, and annoying, actually. It got to be a little ridiculous.

Here’s what I think… (more…)

Time for an Opt-In Strategy Change

Sunday, April 15th, 2007

Everyone knows that without a list, you have no online business. The money is in the list. It happens all the time in the Internet marketing world — a person will develop a tactic and then other people will start using it, the market becomes saturated with it and then someone improves upon it. Then the game starts over again. I believe that opt-in strategies are about to morph. What I mean by morph is that just having an opt-in page is not going to be good enough anymore.

(more…)

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