Sunday, May 25, 2008

Article Marketing For Beginners - The Absolute Best Way To Promote Your Business Online!

The most cost efficient traffic generation method for your online business isn't PPC or banner advertising. It's article marketing. Writing high quality articles and syndicate them all over the web is the very best thing you can do to become an expert in your niche.

By giving your best techniques for free and showing your superiority over the competition, you can make a killing online. A long term article marketing strategy make the difference between a few hundreds dollars and a full time income online.

Article marketing for beginners.

First, you need to write a quality article. 300 words is a good start. A rule of thumbs is between 300 and 400 words because ezine publisher are very selective.

If you never wrote anything for years, just use the 7 tips template. Write an introduction paragraph, and add your 7 tips.

When you are done, add a small resource box with a link to your website. The next step is to submit your articles to the top 20 directories. It is better to outsource, but if you can't, just do it yourself. Don't worry, after a couple of months, you should be able to outsource without any problem.

Think about this: the article directories receive thousands of visitors every single month. Surfers will read them, and webmasters and ezine publishers will publish them all other the web for you.

Imagine for a moment that one of those has a list of 50K loyal subscribers and fall in love with your style? Now imagine that he decide to send your article as a recommendation in his newsletter? Do you think that you will get a boost in subscribers and sales?

I hope you start to see the importance of writing articles to promote your online business. And I didn't even scratch the surface. There are so many benefits that it's impossible to list each of them on the same page.

Do you know that you can get top rankings in Google and other search engines just by writing and submitting an article a day? It's another of the benefit of article marketing.

To learn more, download my Free Guide: "How To Earn $100K Per Year With Article Marketing".

Franck Silvestre makes thousands of dollars a year from affiliate and article marketing. Wonder what the secret to his success is? Discover how he does it at: http://www.mynetmarketingland.com/article-marketing/

Where to Get Training to Learn Affiliate Marketing? - Affiliate Marketing Training

Learning Affiliate Marketing on your own is impossible. I hope you did not try it! I know I did, and now I know, there is no way I could have learned it on my own. Affiliate Marketing is a complex business and the only way to learn affiliate marketing is to get a step-by-step training. Now I know there are a lot of people who promise to teach you how it is done in eBooks but that is a dead end too. I know first hand!

As a side note! When I started my online business I really went in head first. I wanted to learn and absorb as much as possible. I started with eBay, but I lacked marketing skills. This training has helped me get the foundation most people do not have. This foundation is so important. Once you have the foundation, you will succeed.

The biggest misconception people have about affiliate marketing is that you need to find the best selling product and that is the only way to make money. You need to have a good product, and not the best selling. Another issue is that people believe they need to "sell" to make money. It is not about selling at all, all you need to learn is how to market.

You need to know how to get your audience to come to your site! You need to learn how to chose your keyword, how to set your campaign, and you need to learn how to make money without investing any money. If you can make money without any money, imagine how much money you can make if you could invest into it!

How did I learn all this? I got the training! Now a lot of people may think...oh God, how much money is it going to cost? You will be surprised. There are literally thousands of ways you can make money online! But for each of these ways to work you have to know Internet Marketing. So for anyone looking to start online business, affiliate marketing is the best way to go because potential is unlimited. But only for those people who learn the right way to becoming a successful affiliate marketers. It is all about foundation!

My road to success was very expensive. Trial and error = loss of a lot of money. I did not know about a lot of free resources. I wowed to change that once I started seeing my success. I want to help people succeed.

Different Types of Marketing

If you want your company to succeed, at some point you will need to begin marketing your products or services. The old adage that the worst type of advertising is no advertising is still true. No matter what your marketing budget may be, there are many different types of marketing that you can take advantage of. Let's take a look at a few of the more proven techniques that combine low cost with major results.

Online Marketing

Online marketing has opened up incredible avenues for small businesses. Thanks to companies like Google and Overture, you can place ads for your company right along side the big guns at competitive prices. Never before has it been easier to market your business than it is right now.

New forms of online marketing are also making headway. Online video ads are easy and cheap to shoot and give you the kind of exposure that was previously limited to expensive national television campaigns. With low production costs and reasonable pricing, you can run an online video campaign at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising.

Offline Marketing

The benefits of traditional marketing cannot be overlooked in our digital age. Many companies are reaping the benefits of combining online and offline marketing techniques. For example, you can use direct mail or local advertising to drive potential customers to your site. This is a great and proven combination that results in increased traffic and better conversions.

You can actually save money on print campaigns by relying on your website to do the actual selling while the print ad can function as a pointer. You'll save money using less words while building brand awareness. Radio ads are still a proven way to increase awareness of your company. If you are new to radio marketing, try placing a sample ad with a local station. They'll be able to assist you in producing your first ad until you get the hang of the process.

Word of Mouth Marketing

Word of mouth is still one of the most powerful forms of advertising on the planet. The best word of mouth comes from satisfied customers. Go the extra mile for them, and really work towards building relationships with your customers. This will result not only in more leads but they'll keep coming back to you in the future. Try running special promotions or coupons for these regular customers to help them feel that they are special and you'll really be able to continue to build on these relationships in the future.

The best marketing strategies take advantage of all the different types of advertising. By spreading your ad dollars around you can be assured of greater success and better interaction with the public. Start small by combining a special promotion that will run both in print and online avenues at the same time. You can keep track of the success of each method by using coupon codes to see which form suits your company the best.

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How to Increase Link Popularity

Being the gateway to the Internet isnt the only purpose that search engines serve. Search engines are also the first tool that potential customers use to find the products, services, and information they need on the internet. For this reason, link popularity is very imperative. Heres why: If customers do not find your website, your chances of maximizing your online sales are slim to none.

Id bet youre wondering what is the importance of the popularity of a link! Heres your one word answer -plenty-! Link popularity refers to the ranking assigned to your website by the search engines, and it determines the ranking your page gets when keywords are entered into a search engine. So, Im sure youre next question would probably be Well, how do I make my link popular?

Good question. Search engines are discretionary, giving status and ranking to sites that have links to their pages from related, quality sites. It's a really simple formula, but a very important one. Google created the system, and now virtually all the most popular search engines employ the same formula to rank your web pages in their indexes.

The more commonly used your keyword is, the harder it will be to achieve link popularity. Without achieving this very important step, it is almost certain your site wont ever rank highly on any search engine. However, before you get discouraged, consider the fact that there are tried and true ways of achieving link popularity using only the most competitive keywords.

There are a few things to keep in mind. Link popularity is not achieved by just linking up with a large number of other websites. In fact, it may backfire and have quite the opposite effect. Most typically this is true when pertaining to websites that contain line after line of indiscriminate links, or "link farms". It has been the tendency of search engines to aggressively discriminate against your website if you are associated with a link farm, so stay away from them!

The next thing to consider is the quality of the site you are linking to. Dont ever link to a page that youd have reservations about your visitors seeing. That would make your site look cheap and indiscriminate, which I dont think would be the look to go for. Linking to sites of poor quality not only fail to increase your link popularity, it may just destroy it altogether.

So let's get right to it. Lets discuss what you need to do to achieve supreme link popularity and improve your rankings to stellar status on all the popular search engines.

The first step, and the fastest way to get your foot in the door, is to get a listing in a popular directory, such as Open Directory Project and Yahoo. If your site is business-related, you will want to be listed on Yahoo, and despite the fact that it will cost you around $300 a year, it will be money well spent, and you most assuredly wont regret it. The listing is free if your site is noncommercial, but it takes time and follow-up to actually get it listed. Open Directory is another popular director. It gives you a free listing whether you are business-related or non-commercial. However, be prepared to make a lot of follow-up inquiries before you see your site listed.

Getting listed on the lightest level of appropriate category takes some common sense. Heres what I mean: Lets say your company ships Alpaca wool from an Alpaca farm located in the middle of Nowhere, Tiny State. Do NOT submit your listing to "Retailers from Nowhere, Tiny State." HUGE MISTAKE! You have to look a little deeper and think a little bigger. You would submit your listing to the "Fine Alpaca Wool" category. This is doubly effective because not only will you associate yourself with culture and quality, but you will also be listed in a national category.

The next step after having attained directory listings, is to locate other quality sites that will increase your link popularity and link with them. Finding quality sites that are in some way related to yours increases your link popularity in addition to expanding your customer base. Of course you want to avoid your competitors and look for sites that are useful to your site's visitors.

Let's look at the Alpaca Wool site example again. Linking up to a site that sells knitting supplies would be helpful to your visitors, and the chances of the knitting supply site wanting to link up to your site are also greater. As a result of your linking to a related site thats relevant to your website's traffic, you are increasing both companies site's business prospects - and both companies sites' link popularity. Teamwork makes the dream work.

Before we all break out and sing We Are The World, lets keep in mind that not all sites want to link to other sites. Proper research is necessary when you are looking for possible linking partners, and theres no better place than Google to start your search. Make sure you enter keywords that you think quality customers will also enter to find your site. Also remember your criteria are: quality, highly ranked, non-competing websites that have a links or resources page. Go to these sites and objectively assess them. Look at the level of quality of the product, the graphics, and the ease of use. Then check out the other sites they are linked to, and determine how well or if your own site would fit in with the crowd.

Not unlike dating, when you decide youve found a good prospect, you must set out to woo them. The first thing to do is to add a link on your own links page to their site. This is a very important first step; it not only shows good faith, but it also ups your chances significantly of their reciprocity.

After adding their link, contact the webmaster of their site. This is almost always done by email, so you want to make sure it is immediately clear that your message is not junk mail (EVERYBODY hates junk mail). With this in mind, there is a requirement that you tell them right off the bat that you have added a link to their page on your site. A hook like this almost always insures the reader will read on.

Again, not unlike dating, be sure to be flattering and let them know how much you appreciate their website. Emphasize that you have actually visited their site, and that time and consideration went into your picking their site. Give them the address of your links page, and ask them to check out the link for themselves. Be sure to mention that they will not only benefit from the increased traffic your website will direct their way, but you will also increase their link popularity. Briefly, explain why link popularity is so essential, but do this in a sentence or two or youll come off like a professor! Finally, tell them reciprocally adding your link on their own website would be as appreciated as it would be mutually beneficial.

Repeat this process with as many appropriate sites as you can find, bearing in mind the criteria of quality and non-competitiveness. After emailing all relevant sites, remember to check these website frequently to see if they have added a link to your page. Give it about four weeks, and if no link appears, try another charming email. Then give it another four weeks, and if your site is still missing from their links page, it's time to remove their link from your own links page. The only time you want to pursue a link any further than this is if you believe a site is absolutely crucial to your link popularity and your business needs. Remember to keep all your communications professional, complimentary, and cordial.

Set up a consistent schedule to check your ranking in the search engines to see if your link popularity has improved. This is not an over-night process. Just like anything else worth having, it will take some time and a good deal of work. There is no escaping the labor-intensive quality of improving your link popularity, which is why search engines regard it with such importance, and so should you.

I thought this might go without saying, but to be on the safe side - make sure you have a beautiful, streamlined site or you will never persuade anyone to link up to you. Just as you wouldnt link up with a bad looking or poor quality site. Considering that in most cases nothing worth having comes easy, be prepared to keep plugging away at this process until you reach your goals.

More Information:

OnlineStartUp best practices avoid costly mistakes

Are Reciprocal Links Really Dead?

When Google devalued reciprocal links in their search ranking algorithm, I, like many webmasters, dismissed reciprocal links as worthless. But now, having experienced something else other than improvements in my natural search rankings from them, I've changed my mind. So, I will boldly go where I haven't before and say that I believe reciprocal links are not in fact, dead and worthless.

Of course, if all you want to do is improve your natural search results, then reciprocal links will not help you. And these type of links should not be the only ones that you get, in terms of search ranking. But then, you shouldn't concentrate on any one type of link for that, otherwise your link profile will look unnatural.

But, like bum (or article) marketing, reciprocal links can provide a good deal of traffic when you get enough of them. And that traffic, independent of the search engines, can result in sales (if you're a product owner or affiliate), newsletter signups, or even just visitors to your site to be monetized by other means.

The secret lies not in getting one or two, or even twenty, reciprocal links. You do need a few hundred. But over time, those links, from good quality sites, can add up to a source of traffic independent of the search engines.

The problem with reciprocal linking is the fact that it can be time consuming. Looking for link partners manually can be more time than it's worth. But if you use a program to analyze the search results (there are a number out there, but I use Arelis), then this can cut down the man hours. In fact, by analyzing your competitors links, you can find which blogs they have left comments which forums may be valuable for promoting your site, and which directories they have submitted to.

Next, you'll want a way to organize your links so that it looks professional, checks the existence of the reciprocal link, and allows people to swap links with you without a lot of your input. I use a directory script for this rather than one of the old reciprocal link managers, because they have much more functionality, and look very professional. My favorite is PHP link directory. They have a free, older version, but the new version is only $25, with a link back to their site, and it is worth the small investment. You can even get included in their list of directories, which is a valuable link back from a high profile site!

I like PHP link directory because it allows you to add content to your new directory. You can accept articles from anyone, and even automatically show youtube videos embedded in the directory itself. This is a great feature that can increase the visitor value, as well as showing your potential link partners that their links will be placed in a valuable, content-rich part of your site.

Whether or not anyone believes reciprocal links are dead is really a matter of the old saying of beauty being in the eye of the beholder. If you want another source of traffic to your site, then reciprocal links are not dead. But like any form of link or traffic building, you should not focus exclusively on one thing. Get your reciprocal links, but use other forms of link building too. One way links remain the gold standard for rankings in natural search results. And one way links embedded in articles or other content are the absolute premium.

Want to see the new PHP link directory in action? Or get a link back to your business, marketing, or technology site? Visit my web directory now at http://www.directory.pickthebusiness.com Rebecca Prescott is the author of many articles, and websites, on business and health topics.

Do Follow Link List And Search Engine Optimization

The day of buying and selling links is well over. As google, yahoo and msn have become very accurate in spotting and ranking sites badly who do this. So no webmasters are engaging in the practice. But another very important reason is the existence of do follow blog lists. Meaning if you leave a detailed response on a blog and they install do follow, it will count the same as any back link and help you rank well in search engines.

As you can imagine webmasters are trying to get there hands on these new do follow blog link lists like there is no tomorrow. But the good thing is blog lists like Courtney Tuttle's and Nic Cursor's have about 1000 do follow blogs listed on it. Which makes it great and easy to use. And one thing is for sure if you complete the thousand on a specific keyword, its highly likely you will be on the front page for it even across the major search engines in a highly competitive and popular keyword.

But you have to be professional in the way you conduct your self. Do not go leaving spammy comments, because the blog owner is not going to approve it and a lot of bloggers will be annoyed with you. Simply read a post by the blogger, the entire post and leave a detailed and lengthy comment, which will most likely be approved. The bloggers are allowing people to do this so we should respect it and contribute to the blog with solid responses.

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