Should you be selling a product or a service?

The Internet is primarily used to communicate, entertain,
educate and research. It is thus no wonder that
nonperishable, information-intensive products - including
computers and software, books, travel, consumer electronics,
magazine subscriptions - are the most popular online
products at present. Content-rich sites, subscription-based
sites to advertiser-supported sites focusing on a wide range
of topics, have been sprouting all over the Internet.

Services such as hotel reservation, air travel and
investments have successfully translated themselves to the
Internet.

Unique services such as Online driving schools have been
prospering. Some states in the US have set up online payment
sites for Government services. Residents of a state can log
on to a common site to pay all bills and other expenses,
such as parking tickets to the local/County courts.

However, all kinds of services cannot be run entirely on the
Internet. The Internet is less effective when face-to-face
selling is needed to close a deal. The Internet can give
lots of preliminary information that's useful in setting the
scene for the closing. But the actual closing takes place
offline - i.e., not on the Internet.

Products can also be marketed and sold successfully on the
Internet. The kinds of products and services that sell best
on the Internet are those that take advantage of the
convenience of the Net. Remember that convenience is the
primary reason why consumers flock to the Internet in the
first place. People can shop any hour of the day at any
site. They can avoid crowded stores, irritating sales
clerks, and even avoid pickpockets.

Offbeat or unusual products and services often attract
online attention and sell strongly. You would generally not
try to sell items people can get at the corner store. Thus,
few toothbrushes are sold on the Net; the same thing with
daily food and beverage purchases. But special cheeses, rare
cigars, Turkish plates, long-aged wines, even diamonds, can
and do sell on the Net.

Most products sold by catalog and mail order also sell well
on the Net. However, people tend to buy only those products
that could be shipped at a reasonable price. Higher shipping
costs diminish the price competitiveness of online products
and turns-off a lot of potential buyers. In fact, high
shipping costs is the primary factor that discourages people
from buying online more than any other single reason. An
Ernst and Young report shows that 53 percent of online
shoppers are concerned with shipping costs that are too
high, compared to only 19 percent who are concerned with
credit cards being stolen.

As an online merchant, you have to work out the advantages
as well as disadvantages of selling either products or
services. However, in the recent past, online services have
known to flourish. Nevertheless, if you chose to sell
products you need to rethink your product offering if the
total costs of the product and the shipping are higher than
what is offered elsewhere.

Take some time to evaluate your products or services. There
is a growing market of potential customers on the Internet,
you just need to offer the products and services they are
looking for.

What businesses are succeeding on the Net?

This week we will address the most basic question any
Internet business owner will have to answer at one point or
another…”what should I sell?”.

After the settling down of the dot-com bubble, sanity checks
have brought realistic expectations to the fore. Initially,
a backlash was seen, forecasting the doom of the Internet.
Finally, merits have made the Internet gain its rightful
place. In breakthroughs that show the promise of e-commerce
wasn't all smoke and mirrors, four dot-coms recently
reported their first quarterly profits. The list of the
Internet’s publicly held moneymakers includes eBay Inc.,
Amazon.com Inc., Yahoo! Inc., Overture Services Inc.,
Expedia Inc., FindWhat.com Inc. and E-Trade Group Inc.
Several privately owned dot-coms, including search engines
Google and DealTime, say they have been making money, too.

In 2001, the last full year where numbers are available, the
Department of Commerce broke out e-commerce sales versus
total U.S retail sales which revealed the $3.16 trillion
retail industry saw a total of $37.7 billion in sales take
place online -- comprising 1.2 percent of the total. This
year e-commerce is tracking about the same. Through the
third quarter, the last full quarter where numbers are
available, total retail sales were $856 billion versus $11
billion in e-commerce, about a 1.3 percent share.


There were big gains made in Home and Garden, a 78 percent
increase; Furniture and Appliances, a 75 percent increase;
and Toy shopping online with a 61 percent increase in the
year 2002. There is no doubt that online shopping is
growing.

Nielsen//NetRatings found that more than 35.5 million U.S.
Internet users made shopping trips to virtual department
store sites during the week ending November 3, 2002 - that's
a 20 percent increase from the week ending October 20 and
roughly 14 million more than almost the same time period in
2001.

There is a growing tendency amongst Internet users to pay
for valuable content online. There are many reasons for
this. First, only a few websites operated by big companies
can afford to provide valuable content without being
compensated. The rest of us can't be so generous. And trying
to recapture our expenses by selling advertising on our
websites has failed to pay the bills. Online advertising and
click-through rates are on the decline.

Second, many people are now more than willing to pay to
receive quality services and products even if they were
offered for free earlier. Several paid content websites have
already proven this unmistakable trend. The discerning buyer
values his/her time as also the quality of information or
service and is willing to pay for it.

However, not all products can be sold on the Internet. Some
products may be better suited for online sales than others;
others simply will not work on this new commercial medium.
According to an Ernst and Young study, the most popular
online purchases are computer related products (40%), books
(20%), travel (16%), clothing (10%), recorded music (6%),
subscriptions (6%), gifts (5%) and investments (4%).

Businesses offering paid services have also prospered
enormously. The top three categories (Business
Content/Investment, Entertainment/Lifestyles and
Personals/Dating) accounted for 62% of all paid content
revenues in the first three quarters of 2002. The total
market for paid online content in the U.S. grew to $361.4
million for the quarter, a 14 percent gain over the previous
quarter and a 105.3 percent gain over Q3 2001. An
interesting statistic put forward by this report is that 85%
of money spent by U.S. Consumers for online content goes to
the top 50 sites in most of the categories.

The graph below (Top 3 Content Categories) is indicative of
this change.

In terms of “stickiness” of different categories, Business
sites - especially finance and investment rank the highest.
In other words, users are more likely to spend longer time
surfing through a business website compared to other
categories. This study was conducted by Nielsen//NetRatings.
The table below shows the most addictive web categories for
2002.

Category Time per person(hr:min:sec) Audience
Business – Finance and Investment 0:21:33 51,586
General News 0:15:47 64,822
Entertainment 0:14:32 45,922

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings

According to the above figures a person spends about 22
minutes on a finance website on an average.

Why should potential customers hire your service company?

Tell your customers what service you are selling and explain
what your service provides. What is the key benefit(s) to
your customers? What pain does it cure, what solution does
it provide? Compare your service with that of your
competitors and highlight what makes you stand out from the
competition? Keep working on this until you can clearly
separate yourself from the field. As stated earlier there
must be a convincing reason for doing business with you,
instead of your competitor.

Summarize the above into one tight, powerful, motivating
phrase that will persuade your customer to do business with
you and to trade their money for the benefits delivered by
your service.

As you start to work through the above four steps, you may
find this to be a lot harder than it looks. Don’t blow it
off and give up! You must have a USP. If it was easy,
everyone would have a great USP! Come up with a tight, sharp
USP that sells your service to your customer.

Write tight, get right to the point, be keenly aware of the
audience for the page, and don’t use a three-syllable word
when a one or two-syllable word will do. Use call-to-action
language and be interesting. The page should be so clearly
organized that, in seconds, visitors can understand and get
convinced to buy your product and be able to anticipate
where a hypertext link – or a “Continue” button – will take
them. Studies show that “ease of use” is the winning factor
on an e-commerce site.

If you’re going to promote your service and expand your
customer base using your website, potential clients have to
be able to trust you. Their confidence in you and your
products has to be boosted. Endorsements on your website
from a valued friend or colleague, or a referral from a
strategic partner are the types of “leads” that boost your
credibility. You and your service must be perceived as
being trust-worthy before your visitor will be confident
enough to contact you or even buy your product.

Show prospects that you have their best interests at heart
and that you can adapt or customize your service to meet
their individual needs. Foster an ongoing relationship that
steadily increases their trust levels and cements a view
that you are an “authority” in your field.

Another important aspect of convincing prospective customers
is to keep abreast of recent developments in your field.
Check on what your competitors are writing about, and watch
for new trends. This will keep your website current,
razor-sharp and unique. By keeping your eyes open, you will
be able to grab an angle or niche that hasn’t been well
covered yet by your competitors. Portray this angle or niche
on your website.

Finally, be wary of broadening the theme of your site too
much. Try not to dilute your product or service’s targeted
niche simply to expand your base of merchant partners.
Remember; focus on your selling your service. That’s where
the “meat and potatoes” of your business will come from.

Why should potential customers hire your service company?

Tell your customers what service you are selling and explain
what your service provides. What is the key benefit(s) to
your customers? What pain does it cure, what solution does
it provide? Compare your service with that of your
competitors and highlight what makes you stand out from the
competition? Keep working on this until you can clearly
separate yourself from the field. As stated earlier there
must be a convincing reason for doing business with you,
instead of your competitor.

Summarize the above into one tight, powerful, motivating
phrase that will persuade your customer to do business with
you and to trade their money for the benefits delivered by
your service.

As you start to work through the above four steps, you may
find this to be a lot harder than it looks. Don’t blow it
off and give up! You must have a USP. If it was easy,
everyone would have a great USP! Come up with a tight, sharp
USP that sells your service to your customer.

Write tight, get right to the point, be keenly aware of the
audience for the page, and don’t use a three-syllable word
when a one or two-syllable word will do. Use call-to-action
language and be interesting. The page should be so clearly
organized that, in seconds, visitors can understand and get
convinced to buy your product and be able to anticipate
where a hypertext link – or a “Continue” button – will take
them. Studies show that “ease of use” is the winning factor
on an e-commerce site.

If you’re going to promote your service and expand your
customer base using your website, potential clients have to
be able to trust you. Their confidence in you and your
products has to be boosted. Endorsements on your website
from a valued friend or colleague, or a referral from a
strategic partner are the types of “leads” that boost your
credibility. You and your service must be perceived as
being trust-worthy before your visitor will be confident
enough to contact you or even buy your product.

Show prospects that you have their best interests at heart
and that you can adapt or customize your service to meet
their individual needs. Foster an ongoing relationship that
steadily increases their trust levels and cements a view
that you are an “authority” in your field.

Another important aspect of convincing prospective customers
is to keep abreast of recent developments in your field.
Check on what your competitors are writing about, and watch
for new trends. This will keep your website current,
razor-sharp and unique. By keeping your eyes open, you will
be able to grab an angle or niche that hasn’t been well
covered yet by your competitors. Portray this angle or niche
on your website.

Finally, be wary of broadening the theme of your site too
much. Try not to dilute your product or service’s targeted
niche simply to expand your base of merchant partners.
Remember; focus on your selling your service. That’s where
the “meat and potatoes” of your business will come from.

Web Copy

We have all heard that “it’s not what you say, it’s how you
say it”. Well, the same applies to website content. In
this article we will discuss the importance of web copy and
how to turn your visitors into customers.

Your website content should convince visitors that your
service is either unique or superior to that of your
competitors in terms of quality or is competitively priced.
It should show your potential clients that you can provide
the solution that they are seeking. Your product or service
will solve their problems, answer a dream, enrich their
lives, and/or improve their businesses. You are the
dependable expert that they want and need!

Your website copy plays a major role in establishing and
growing your customer base. Web site copy creates the
“voice” of a company, just as the look and feel of a site
put a “face” on the company and on otherwise intangible
products and services. On an e-commerce site, the copy plays
a key role in closing sales as well as in up-selling and
cross-selling products and services. Good copy delights
first-time visitors, encourages return visits and propels
both customer acquisition and retention.

People read a Web page differently than they do a brochure
or a newspaper. They scan, scroll, click, hit the back
button, and hit the forward button. “Reading” is about
moving around and being in control. You have one chance to
make a first impression – to quickly convey the benefit of
staying on your Web site. I can’t overstate the importance
of first impressions, which in Web-time are measured in
milliseconds. The layout, functionality, message and overall
look and feel of your web page determine who stays – and who
clicks away.

Your story should be clear and to the point. The goal of any
web page should be to get the visitor to DO something: to
move on to the next step in a purchase sequence or to click
for more information about a product or service. Without
readable, compelling copy and clearly organized hypertext
links, visitors are much less likely to complete a
transaction – and return to your site again.

Writing for your Web page should always start from your
visitor’s perspective. What is your Web site visitor looking
for? Why is he/she here? How can you make his/her visit as
quick and efficient and positive as possible? You should
take the time to clarify the goal of each page before
starting to write. If the page is part of a transaction
sequence, identify what may be hindering the buying process.
Be sure instructions are clear and easy to read.

If you are selling a service on your website, your Unique
Selling Proposition (USP) is your service’s most powerful
benefit, in combination with a strong, unique feature of
your business. It answers that most difficult question:

AOL Search

America Online signed a multiyear pact with Google for Web
search results and accompanying ad-sponsored links, ending
relationships with pay-for-performance service Overture
Services and Inktomi, its algorithmic search provider of
nearly three years


Take some time to register with these search engines as soon
as possible and watch the traffic grow.

Excite

Excite has been around the web for many years now. Much more
of a portal than just simply a search engine, Excite used to
be a fairly popular search engine, until companies such as
Google seemed to have dominated the search engine market. As
of recently, Excite no longer accepts submissions of URL's,
and appears to no longer spider. To get into the Excite
search results, you need to be either listed with Overture
or Inktomi.

Looksmart

Getting a listed with Looksmart could mean getting a good
amount of traffic to your site. Looksmart's results appear
in many search engines, including AltaVista, MSN, CNN, and
many others.

Looksmart has two options to submit your site. If your site
is generally non-business related, you can submit your site
to Zeal (Looksmart's sister site ), or if you are a
business, you can pay a fee to have your site listed. Either
method will get you listed in Looksmart and its partner
sites if you are approved.

Once you have submitted your site, and it is approved for
listing it will take up to about 7 days for your site to be
listed on Looksmart and its partner sites.

Lycos

Lycos is one of the oldest search engines on the Internet
today, next to Altavista and Yahoo. Their spider, named
"T-Rex", crawls the web and provides updates to the Lycos
index from time to time. The FAST crawler provides results
for Lycos in addition to its own database.

The Lycos crawler does not weigh META tags to heavily,
instead it relies on its own ranking algorithm to rank pages
returned in results. The URL, META title, text headings, and
word frequency are just a few of the methods Lycos uses to
rank pages. Lycos does support pages with Frame content.
However, any page that isn't at least 75 words in content is
not indexed.

Inktomi

Inktomi's popularity grew several years ago as they powered
the secondary search database that had driven Yahoo. Since
then, Yahoo as switched to using Google as their secondary
search and backend database, however Inktomi is just as
popular now, as they were several years ago, if not more so.
Their spiders are named "Slurp", and different versions of
Slurp crawls the web many different times throughout the
month, as Inktomi powers many sites search results. There
isn't much more to Inktomi then that. Slurp puts heavy
weight on Title and description tags, and will rarely deep
crawl a site. Slurp usually only spider’s pages that are
submitted to its index.

Inktomi provides results to a number of sites. Some of these
are America Online, MSN, Hotbot, Looksmart, About, Goto,
CNet, Geocities, NBCi, ICQ and many more.

AltaVista

Many who have access to web logs may have seen a spider
named 'scooter' accessing their pages. Scooter used to be
AltaVista's robot. However, since the Feb 2001 site update,
a newer form of Scooter is now crawling the web. Whichever
spider AltaVista uses, it is one of the largest search
engines on the net today, next to Google.

It will usually take several months for AltaVista to index
your entire site, although the past few months scooter
hasn't been deep crawling too well. Unlike Google, AltaVista
will only crawl and index 1 link deep, so it takes a good
amount of time to index your site depending on how large
your site is.

AltaVista gets most of its results from its own index,
however they do pull the top 5 results of each search from
Overture (formerly Goto).

Yahoo

Yahoo! is one of the oldest web directories and portals on
the Internet today, and the site went live in August of
1994. Yahoo! is a 100% human edited directory, and provides
secondary search results using Google.

Yahoo! is also one of the largest traffic generators around,
as far as web directories and search engines go.
Unfortunately, however, it is also one of the most difficult
to get listed in, unless of course you pay to submit your
site. Even if you pay it doesn't guarantee you will get
listed.

Either way, if you suggest a URL, it is "reviewed" by a
Yahoo! editor, and if approved will appear in the next index
update.

Top Search Engines

Ok, so you may know how the search engines work and you may
know that you need to be listed by them, but do you know
which engines get you more bang for the buck? In this
week’s installment, we will review the top search engines on
the Internet today.

Google

Google has increased in popularity tenfold the past several
years. They have gone from beta testing, to becoming the
Internet's largest index of web pages in a very short time.
Their spider, affectionately named "Googlebot", crawls the
web and provides updates to Google's index about once a
month.

Google.com began as an academic search engine. Google, by
far, has a very good algorithm of ranking pages returned
from a result, probably one of the main reasons it has
become so popular over the years. Google has several methods
which determine page rank in returned searches.

Expensive, Dedicated Servers

Advantages Disadvantages
------------------------------------------------------------
Server, software and |The cost is higher than any other
network is managed and |options
supported for |
you |
------------------------------------------------------------
You can select a |
custom domain name |
------------------------------------------------------------
Search engines don’t |
view you as second |
class |
------------------------------------------------------------
Improved response time |
for support |
------------------------------------------------------------
Uptime is improved and |
generally guaranteed |
------------------------------------------------------------
Technical support is |
provided, generally |
24 hours a day |
------------------------------------------------------------
Generally offer a |
wide range of software |
options and |
configurable bundles |
------------------------------------------------------------
Improved bandwidth |
------------------------------------------------------------
Processing power is |
not shared |
------------------------------------------------------------

Your choice of server will depend on how much money you have
available at the beginning and how much you plan to grow in
the future. In my opinion, for commercial sites, free
hosting is a waste of time. Your users are going to get
blasted with annoying pop-ups every time they surf to your
page, it’s going to be impossible to get a decent position
in a search engine, and you don’t even get a real business
URL. No one’s going to remember your Web address if they
have to type www.freehosting.com/my_site. But it is
possible to choose a cheap host at the beginning and move up
as your business begins to bring in money.

Mid-Priced Web Hosting—Shared Servers

Advantages Disadvantages
------------------------------------------------------------
Server, software and |Shared processing power.
network is managed |
and supported for you |
------------------------------------------------------------
You can select a |
custom domain name |
------------------------------------------------------------
Search engines don’t |
view you as second |
class if you have |
your own domain name |
------------------------------------------------------------
Improved response time |
for support |
------------------------------------------------------------
Uptime is improved and |
generally guaranteed |
------------------------------------------------------------
Technical support is |
provided, generally 24 |
hours a day |
------------------------------------------------------------
Generally offer a wide |
range of software |
options and |
configurable bundles |
------------------------------------------------------------
Improved bandwidth

Cheap Web Hosting

Advantages Disadvantages
------------------------------------------------------------
Server, software and | Bandwidth restrictions.
network is managed and|
supported for you. |
------------------------------------------------------------
You can select a | Shared processing power
custom domain name. |
------------------------------------------------------------
Search engines don’t | Limited software.
view you as second |
class if you have your|
own domain name |
------------------------------------------------------------
Improved response time| Potentially limited disk
for support | space
------------------------------------------------------------
Uptime is improved |
------------------------------------------------------------
Technical support is |
provided, generally 24|
hours a day.

Free Servers

Advantages Disadvantages
------------------------------------------------------------
No Cost. | Search engines view free hosting
| services as inferior and
| sometimesd do not include them in
| their index.
------------------------------------------------------------
You manage the server | Some free hosting services do not
software and network. | allow you to use a custom domain
| name.
------------------------------------------------------------
| The bandwidth is restricted and may
| cause difficulty for visitors
| attempting to access your site.
------------------------------------------------------------
| Because the service is free, some
| providers do not strive for 100%
| uptime which could result in your
| site being frequently inaccessible.
------------------------------------------------------------
| Software availability is limited,
| and free hosts do not generally
| provide database options.
------------------------------------------------------------
| Disk space is sometimes limited;
| ensure that you are getting all the
| room you need.
------------------------------------------------------------
| Poor response time for support.
------------------------------------------------------------
| Very limited support.

The Host

This installment will deal with finding the right host for
your site; from the free to the very expensive, we will
discuss what your options are so that you can find your
“perfect host”.

A host is a server which provides a home for your website on
the World Wide Web. Just as your computer contains all your
files, so a host contains all the files needed to run your
website. Why can’t you just keep all those files on your own
computer? Because that would mean users would have to
connect directly to your computer to see your website. Not a
good idea—it wouldn’t be secure and it would make your
machine run like a tired snail. With a host, you can simply
upload everything you need to the server and your users can
then connect there to see your site. It lets the site run
faster and allows it to have all the security and extras it
needs.

Selecting a host is the first important step towards
building your Internet business.

Hosting services and companies vary from totally free,
shared servers to large-scale dedicated machines. You’ll
have to decide which is right for you and your business. To
help you make that decision, study the following tables:

Indexing

Once the spiders have completed the task of finding
information on Web pages, the search engine must store the
information in a way that makes it useful. There are two key
components involved in making the gathered data accessible
to users:

* The information stored with the data
* The method by which the information is indexed

In the simplest case, a search engine could just store the
word and the URL where it was found. In reality, this would
make for an engine of limited use, since there would be no
way of telling whether the word was used in an important or
a trivial way on the page, whether the word was used once or
many times or whether the page contained links to other
pages containing the word. In other words, there would be no
way of building the ranking list that tries to present the
most useful pages at the top of the list of search results.

To make for more useful results, most search engines store
more than just the word and URL. An engine might store the
number of times that the word appears on a page. The engine
might assign a weight to each entry, with increasing values
assigned to words as they appear near the top of the
document, in sub-headings, in links, in the meta tags or in
the title of the page. Each commercial search engine has a
different formula for assigning weight to the words in its
index. This is one of the reasons that a search for the same
word on different search engines will produce different
lists, with the pages presented in different orders.

An index has a single purpose: It allows information to be
found as quickly as possible. There are quite a few ways for
an index to be built, but one of the most effective ways is
to build a hash table. In hashing, a formula is applied to
attach a numerical value to each word. The formula is
designed to evenly distribute the entries across a
predetermined number of divisions. This numerical
distribution is different from the distribution of words
across the alphabet, and that is the key to a hash table's
effectiveness.

The search engine software or program is the final part.
When a person requests a search on a keyword or phrase, the
search engine software searches the index for relevant
information. The software then provides a report back to the
searcher with the most relevant web pages listed first.
Is Your website search engine friendly? If you have any
doubts, it may be time to take a look and make your own “big
break”.

Spidering

Before a search engine can tell you where a file or document
is, it must be found. To find information on the hundreds of
millions of Web pages that exist, a search engine employs
special software robots, called spiders, to build lists of
the words found on Web sites.

When a spider is building its lists, the process is called
Web crawling.

In order to build and maintain a useful list of words, a
search engine's spiders have to look at a lot of pages. How
does any spider start its travels over the Web? The usual
starting points are lists of heavily used servers and very
popular pages. The spider will begin with a popular site,
indexing the words on its pages and following every link
found within the site. In this way, the spidering system
quickly begins to travel, spreading out across the most
widely used portions of the Web.

How Search Engines work

Internet search engines are special sites on the Web that
are designed to help people find information stored on other
sites. There are differences in the ways various search
engines work, but they all perform three basic tasks:

* They search the Internet -- or select pieces of the
Internet -- based on important words.
* They keep an index of the words they find, and where they
find them.
* They allow users to look for words or combinations of
words found in that index.

Early search engines held an index of a few hundred thousand
pages and documents, and received maybe one or two thousand
inquiries each day. Today, a top search engine will index
hundreds of millions of pages, and respond to tens of
millions of queries per day.

Boy, was I wrong!

One day, I sat down and checked out which sites were popping
up first in the categories that suited my businesses. I
found that all the top-ranked sites were my biggest
competitors. And when I say biggest, I mean these guys were
in a whole other league. They had incomes that were ten or
twenty times the size of mine—no wonder they had top billing
at Yahoo! and Google! And then it clicked. Search engines
don’t list sites by size, they list them by relevance. These
sites weren’t listed first because they were big; they were
big because they were listed first!

That was when I began to ‘optimize’ my pages and think about
meta-tags and keywords. As my sites rose through the
listings, my traffic went through the roof. And not just any
old traffic! The people that came to my sites from search
engines hadn’t just clicked on a banner by accident or
followed a link from curiosity, they’d actually been looking
for a site like mine. My sales ratio went up like a rocket.
I’d created my own big break.

In this chapter, we are going to discuss all proven
strategies of Search Engine Optimization. We would discus
how to optimize your site, submit your pages and pick up the
targeted traffic you need to make cash. This chapter is
probably the most important chapter in the whole book. It’s
crucial that you read it carefully.

Secrets of Winning Traffic through Search Engines

In this article we will discuss how search engines work and
how to use them to your advantage.

It doesn’t matter how great your website, if no one sees it,
you’re not going to make a penny. You can spend days
producing the perfect design, weeks tweaking the copy, and
months writing the code and uploading the pages, but if no
one knows where you are, how are they going to know they
should buy from you?

When I first started selling on the Web, the first major
problem I ran into was bringing customers to my door. I put
banner ads on other sites, organized reciprocal links and
joined Web rings. Those methods all worked to some extent,
but what really did it for me, what turned my business from
a small earner into a major money-grabber, was figuring out
how to use search engines.

Sure, I’d submitted my sites to the major search engines as
soon as I’d finished building them, but I didn’t really pay
them much attention. After all, I figured search engines are
just for people who are looking for information; they’re not
really good for commercial sites.

Cross Selling

Another successful strategy similar to the ones discussed
above is Cross Selling. One of the best examples of cross
selling via the web is on Amazon.com. If you search for a
book on the Amazon site, a message will appear on the same
page, saying 'Customers who bought this book also bought…'
and will list half a dozen other books for your
consideration. This is an excellent way to cross sell
additional services or content to your members.

You can also direct visitors to other parts of the site, to
consider products and services that they hadn't previously
considered. Successful cross selling is the result of
recognizing a customer need and meeting that need with a
useful product or service. Customers benefit from
needs-based cross selling efforts because they receive the
services they need and want.

Cross selling can help your business realize its objectives:
providing useful services, retaining customers, attracting
new customers, and staying competitive with other websites.

In conclusion, you can offer a range of products and
services on the Internet. The key is proper research and a
great marketing plan.

Second Tier Marketing

In this article we will review the principles of second tier
marketing or selling to your existing customers. We will
also discuss how to cross-market and find potential
customers that you may not have been aware of.

Importance of Back-end Selling

Considerable effort is required to get customers for your
products. You design killer web pages, work hard for high
search engine rankings (or pay for them), submit classified
ads, etc. but still do not manage to sell enough. This is
where the concept of back-end sales is useful.

Most marketers are successful because they apply back-end
selling into their marketing efforts. Back-end selling is
when you sell other products or services to your existing
customers after they have purchased an initial product.

It is always easier to sell products or services to your
existing customers because you have developed a relationship
with them when you sold your first product or service to
them. You will find it less expensive to sell to old
customers as compared to selling to new customers.

Your conversion ratio will be dramatically higher with
existing customers. Every time you continue selling back-end
products or services to existing customers, you will be
building a life-long relationship. You should continually
bring out new back-end products or services to sell to
existing customers.

Many businesses sell their front-end products (initial
products) at almost zero profit in order to generate
back-end profits. These businesses do not care even if they
lose money on the front-end products or services; they want
the back-end profits.

How do you make backend sales? There are several ways. When
you order a product from a mail-order company, they'll send
you a catalog along with your order, or put you on a mailing
list and send you new catalogs from time to time. They might
also send you a sales letter for another product. This may
be related to the first product in some way. Many companies
implement such a strategy.

To implement this technique on the web, you can put the
sales pitch for your backend item in the email to the
customer to confirm their order. If you have an online
catalog, you could include a link to it, or even include a
coupon or special offer "for all valued customers".

For a faster response, you should put the backend offer on
the "Thank You" page that is generated by a credit-card
sale. The customer just bought something from you and has a
credit card in his or her hot little hand! Why not ask for
another purchase while they are in the mood to buy. In case
you do not sell more than one product or service, affiliate
programs might come in handy. This way you can back sell
products promoted by your affiliate programs as well.

Back-end selling can also be integrated with “Up-Selling”
wherein you introduce more expensive products or services to
your existing customers in similar ways as those mentioned
above. This will almost instantly raise your sales and
profits.

Web Copy for SEO

The search engines will scan the text on a Web page to see
if your site is relevant to the search term. That means that
in effect, your Web copy is going to have to do two things:
to persuade a customer to buy, and persuade a search engine
it’s relevant.

When you write your copy aim for about 500 words a page, but
throw in between four and eight keywords. You’ll have to try
to balance a smooth text flow with getting in all the
keywords you need to be listed.

You can also consider adding text-only pages such as how-to
articles, tips or tutorials to your site. Throw in some
keywords and they can turn up in search engines and create
opportunities for link exchanges.

So there’s a few ways you can try to improve the position of
your site in a search engine. More important than where you
put the keywords is choosing the right keywords. That’s not
really a huge challenge as your competitors are likely to
have done the job for you.

Of course, even if you do get everything right, it doesn’t
mean you’re going to shoot straight to the top of Google.
One of the criteria for relevancy is how long you’ve been
online, so success on the search engines won’t come
overnight. The sooner you start submitting though, the
sooner you can start to rise.

Use a specialized tool

Not too surprisingly, a number of companies have popped up
to supply specific keyword services for a fee. The best of
these is WordTracker.com. They’re not bargain basement, but
you get what you pay for. They’ll give you all the keywords
you need and in my experience, they’re a sound investment.

Googlefight.com is another useful tool to see whether one
keyword is more popular than another. The site compares two
keywords and tells you which is more popular. It’s free and
has a limited use, but it’s fun to play with.

As you make up your list of keywords, bear in mind that it’s
also worth looking at key phrases. It’s quite possible that
a user looking to buy flowers online might search for ‘red
roses’ or ‘cheap bouquets’ as well as just ‘flowers.’ Key
phrases are often overlooked by competitors, so you’ve got a
pretty good chance of getting a high placement with the
right combination.

Don’t worry too much about the competition though. Some
people will tell you that you’re better off trying to find
keywords that no one else has thought of—as if there were
any!—and others will tell you to throw in keywords that are
only slightly relevant to your businesses.

In my experience, that’s a waste of time. If your
competitors are using certain keywords, it’s because they
know they work. And if you pick up any users using
irrelevant keywords, you’re not going to sell them anything.
Don’t try to reinvent the wheel here: just try to figure out
the most popular keywords and the best key phrases to put on
your site.

Whichever of these methods you use—and I tend to use more
than one—you should end up with a pretty comprehensive list
of keywords that you can stick into your website. The next
question then, is how do you use them? When a search engine
assigns relevancy to a site, it looks for the keywords in a
number of specific areas.

Ask the pay-per-clicks

Pay-per-click sites actually let you see how popular a
keyword is. They’re not being kind; they’re trying to make
money. The more webmasters bid on those keywords, the higher
the bids are going to rise—and the more money the
pay-per-clicks are going to make. FindWhat, for example, has
a Keyword Center, and Overture a Keyword Suggestion Tool.
Both are very handy, but they also require you to open an
account. That can cost a few bucks, but when you have a lot
of sites covering a lot of different areas, it’s usually
worth the expense.

Keywords—Optimizing Your Site to Get Top Billing at Search Engines

This week we will discuss the key to improving your sites
listing in the top Internet search engines.

When a user enters a search term, also known as a ‘keyword,’
into a search engine, the engine runs through the billions
of pages in the database and awards each one a ‘relevancy
score.’ The higher your score, the higher your listing. If
your site doesn’t contain the keyword used by the searcher,
the only score it’s going to get is a big, fat zero. Your
first task then is to make sure you know which keywords are
most relevant for each of your sites.

There are three ways to figure out your keywords:

Ask your competitors

This is the cheapest way to find many of the most important
keywords. Simply log on to a search engine (AltaVista is
good, Google is better) and carry out a search for sites
like yours. Open the top site, and once the home page has
downloaded, click on ‘View’ in your browser, and then
‘Source.’ That will reveal all the HTML used to build the
Web page, including all the keywords that have been
specially inserted.

For example, let’s say one of your websites sold nutritional
supplements. You could carry out a search for ‘vitamins’ in
Google. The top site there is called DrugEmporium.com, and
the keywords they list are "The Katz group, Snyders, Drug
Emporium, Drug, Drug Store, pharmacy, stores."

Some of those keywords will be relevant to your site.
Others, of course, won’t be relevant and there will be lots
of other keywords that aren’t obviously listed—like
‘vitamins’ for example. But you can repeat the process on
other sites, using different keywords, and build up a pretty
long list.

Navigation Controls

Navigation controls are the main navigation links; they
allow users to move around the site. Whether they comprise
images or text they should be predictably located in the
same place, and with the same appearance, on each page.

These have several purposes

* To allow users to move about within the site
* To tell users what information is available at the link
* To work with location indicators to orientate users

A good navigation control:

* Is clear: it looks like navigation
* Leads to obvious content - users have a good idea what
they will find if they click
* Is consistent with other navigation controls
* Is predictable in its style and location on the page

There is no mystery to usability. It simply involves
creating a site, which is accessible to the majority of
people, is easy to use and get around and delivers on its
promises. You can have a site that meets the most important
standards of usability by planning it well and always
keeping the end user in mind. Remember that web sites should
not be designed for their owners - they should be designed
for their users.

Problems with usability could be said to stem from just two
sources: the site itself and the user. In fact the site is
always at fault; if a user, however experienced or
inexperienced, has problems navigating, getting information
or understanding the site.

While websites have become far more complex, web users have
become less rather than more experienced as more and more
people go online. It is a mistake to think that the majority
of users will be web or even computer savvy and will
understand subtle clues about content. Most will not.

So take these words of advice and review/plan your
navigation links accordingly. Just remember - if the
customer gets lost, so will your sale.

Objectives of a Navigation System

Navigation can be broken into two primary types, Location
Indicators and Navigation Controls

Location Indicators

Location indicators let users know where they are in the
site at the moment. It needs to be borne in mind that users
coming from outside your site can enter at any page, not
necessarily on a 'main' page. They need to be able to
orientate themselves.

Equally it is important that users navigating around your
site have a clear idea of where they are both in absolute
terms and in relation to other content.

Location information should appear on every page of the
site, in the same place and in the same style. Location
indicators should tell the user precisely where they are and
this should be clear even to a user who has entered the site
at an internal page. The location indicator should be
identifiable for what it is and make sense in the context of
other navigation.

In simple sites a page banner - text or graphic - naming the
page will be sufficient. For this to work the page name
should also appear in the main navigation so that it is
relevant within the overall structure of the site.

Color can be used. For example a different color background,
contrast color or sidebar in each part of the site. To be
really effective the color change should be reflected in the
navigation.

Using ‘breadcrumbs’ on every page is a good idea.
Breadcrumbs show you a series of hierarchical links that you
have used to go from page to page within a section. Using
breadcrumbs is like leaving a trail of the path you have
followed. The breadcrumbs appear at the top of the content
section, just below the main navigation template. Each
element in the breadcrumb is a link to that section or
subsection. This helps in avoiding a series of back buttons
allowing the user to directly go back to the main section
page or another sub section. More importantly, it always
shows the context of the page that is being viewed and how
it belongs to a section or sub-section.

Navigation

Finding your website is one thing, but knowing what to do
once you get there is quite another. In this article we
will discuss the importance of website navigation and how it
can make or break your site.

The aim of a web site's navigation is simply to allow users
to get to the content they require. For sites that have a
large number of sections and web pages (and information
sites can be one of these) the navigation plan has to be
properly researched and designed. You have to consider
different types of visitors and simulate the most common
steps they would take to find what they want on your site
and the navigation plan has to optimize this movement. For
example the steps required from searching a catalog of
items, selecting from the catalog, adding them to a shopping
cart, proceeding to check out, to entering the payment
particulars is a specific sequence that should be
facilitated by the navigation system. If the sequence is
haphazard, it could lead to frustration or the user may miss
an important step and you would have an aborted sale.

To find their way about, users need to know two things:

* Where they are now
* How to go elsewhere

Navigation does not exist in isolation; good site
organization is a prerequisite for a coherent navigation
system.

A good traffic logging service would provide statistics pertaining to the following

* How many people visit your site?
* Where are they from?
* How are visitors finding your site?
* What traffic is coming from search engines, links from
other sites, and other sources?
* What keyword search phrases are they using to find your
site?
* What pages are frequented the most - what information are
visitors most interested in?
* How do visitors navigate within your web site?

Knowing the answers to these and other fundamental questions
is essential for making informed decisions that maximize the
return on investment (ROI) of your web site investment.

The most important aspect of tracking visitors to your
website is analyzing all the statistics you get from your
tracking software. The three main statistics that will show
your overall progress are hits, visitors and page views.
Hits are tracked when any picture or page loads from your
server on to a visitor’s browser. Hits, however, can be very
misleading. It is quite an irrelevant statistic for your
website.

The statistic that is probably the most important for a
website is Page Views/Visitors. This gives you a good
indication of two things. First, how many people are coming
to your site, and secondly how long are they staying on your
site. If you have 250 visitors and 300 page views you can
figure that most visitors view one page on your site and
then leave. Generally, if you're not getting 2 page views
per visitor then you should consider upgrading your site's
content so your visitors will stay around longer.
If you see the number of visitors you have increasing as
well as the number of page views per visitor increasing then
keep up the good work! Always look for this stat as an
overall barometer of how your site design is going and if
your marketing campaigns are taking hold.
Also, a good stat to look for is unique visitors. Once a
person visits your site they will not be added to the unique
visitors’ category if they visit again. This is a good way
to track new visitors to your website.
Page views are a good indication of how "sticky" your
website is. A good statistic to keep is Page Views divided
by the number of Visitors you have. This statistic will give
you a good idea if your content is interesting and if your
visitors are staying on your site for a long time and
surfing.

Some people are intimidated by web traffic statistics
(mostly because of the sheer volume of data available), but
they shouldn't be. While there are many highly specialized
statistics that can be used for more in-depth web traffic
analysis, the above areas alone can provide invaluable
information on your visitors and your website performance.
Remember- this data is available for a reason. It's up to
you to use it.

Monitoring and Tracking

In this addition we will discuss the importance web site
tracking and explain to you why it is so important to pay
attention your current web traffic.

Understanding what your visitors do on your site is crucial
information, not to mention interesting. If your visitors
proceed to purchase a product but then a large majority
leave the site when they get to a specific page in the order
process then you need to know about it. It could be that
this page is confusing or hard to use. Fixing it could
increase your sales by 200%. This is just an example; there
are many reasons why you want a detailed analysis of your
site visitors.

Most website hosting services offer a stats package that you
can study. If you're not sure where this is, call up your
hosting service and ask them. Statistics are a vital part of
tracking your marketing progress. If you don't have access
to website statistics get a package that can help you in
this area. Do not get a counter that just shows how many
visitors you've had. You'll be missing out on vital
information that can help strengthen weaknesses in your
site.

A good website hosting service would offer traffic logs that
provide an invaluable insight into the traffic being
referred to a web site from various sources such as search
engines, directories and other links.

Unfortunately traffic tracking provided by web hosting
services is often in the form of raw traffic log files or
other difficult to understand cryptic formats. These log
files are basically text files that describe actions on the
site. It is literally impossible to use the raw log files to
understand what your visitors are doing. If you do not have
the patience to go through these huge traffic logs, opting
for a traffic-logging package would be a good idea.

Basically two options are available to you and these are:
using a log analysis package or subscribing to a remotely
hosted traffic logging service. A remotely hosted traffic
logging service may be easy to use and is generally the
cheaper option of the two. WebTrends Live and HitsLink are
two good, remotely hosted, traffic-monitoring services worth
considering. However, WebTrends Live is a more complicated
system and is suitable for larger ecommerce websites.
“SuperStats” is another recommended traffic logging service.

These services do not use your log files. Typically a small
section of code is placed on any page you want to track.
When the page is viewed, information is stored on the remote
server and available in real time to view in charts and
tables form.

Log analysis packages are typically expensive to buy and
complex to set up. Apart from commercial packages there are
also some free log analysis packages available, such as
Analog.

Managing Your List: Paid List Servers vs. Free List Servers

This week we will be discussing how to manage your email
lists. It can be a big job but we’ll discuss how you can
get a handle on it with minimal fuss.

As you build up your subscriber list, you’re going to find
yourself with a problem. Whichever mail program you’re
using, whether it’s Outlook or Eudora or something else,
it’s just not going to be set up to deal with the kind of
mass mailing involved with newsletters.

If you have more than 50 people on your list—and that will
probably take you less than a week—you’ll need to use a
listserv. Don’t even try to do this by yourself!

My hosting company organize this for me. They have a mail
server that handles all the mail. I just send them the
newsletter and they send it out. Alternatively, you can use
a professional listserv such as Microsoft’s List Builder or
Sparklist.

There are free list servers available too. While you can use
these if you’re on a really tight budget, I don’t recommend
it. First, they stuff their own adverts onto your
newsletter. That doesn’t just reduce the effectiveness of
your brand, it draws attention away from your own
ads—provided you can persuade people to advertise on a
newsletter like this. But their privacy policies have also
come under a lot of criticism lately and even some of the
biggest companies have been found to have used their
clients’ lists to market their own goods.

If you’re going to do a newsletter—and you should—it’s worth
investing in a professional service. That is, after all,
what you’re offering.

In conclusion, newsletters then are one of the most
effective ways to keep customers, and keep your revenue
flowing in. They remind people you’re still out there,
provide news about deals and bargains, and give customers
the confidence to buy. You can put them together in a snap,
or even pay someone a pretty small fee to do it for you. If
you sell advertising space on your newsletter, you’ll even
find each issue will pay for itself.

Consistency is the key

Make sure the site is consistent in look, feel and design.
Nothing is more jarring and disturbing to a customer than
feeling as if they have just gone to another site. Keep
colors and themes constant throughout the site.

Make your site interactive and personalized
Make your website interactive. Add feedback forms as well
as email forms that allow your prospective customers to ask
you any questions they might have pertaining to a product.
Personalization of your website is another key element that
can lead to customer delight and can increase your sales.
Personalization technology provides you the analytic tools
to facilitate cross-selling and up-selling when the customer
is buying online. It would give you an idea of what products
to cross-sell and up-sell. For example, when a person buys a
CD player, a disc cleaner can also be offered.

Content is King
Good content sells a product. Ask yourself the following
questions. Does your copy convey the message you wish to get
across to your visitors? Is it compelling? Does it lead your
visitor through the sales process? Have others review,
critique and edit your copy to insure it is delivering the
intended message. Always double check your spelling and
grammar.


These eight, simple rules will go a long way toward the
improvement of your website and most importantly, turn
visitors into customers.

Focus the Site

Make certain your web site is focused on the goal, selling
your product or service. A site offering many unrelated
products is not necessarily unfocused, but this is often the
case. If your business does offer many products, dedicate a
unique page for each instead of trying to sell them all from
one page.

Credibility Is Crucial
The most professionally designed site won't sell if your
customers don't believe in you. A clear privacy statement
is one way to build your credibility. Provide a prominent
link to your privacy statement from every page on the site
as well as from any location that you are asking your
visitors for personal information. Provide legitimate
contact information on line.

Navigation should be simple
Make site navigation easy and intuitive. Simple and smooth
navigation adds to the convenience of the visitors. Add
powerful search and catalog features. Many times a lot of
visitors do not have the patience to navigate through the
whole website to find what they are looking for.

Build It for Speed

It's a fact of modern life - people are in a hurry. This
means that you have between 10 and 30 seconds to capture
your potential customer's attention. Tominimize your load
time, keep graphics small. Compress them where possible. Use
flashy technology (JavaScript, Flash, Streaming Audio/Video,
animation) sparingly and only if it is important to your
presentation.

Target your Market

Know who your market is and make certain that your site
caters to their needs. It is critical that your site reflect
the values of your potential customers. Is your market
mostly business professionals? If so, the site must be clean
and professional. Is your product aimed mostly a teenagers
and young adults? Then your site could be more informal and
relaxed. The key here is to know your market and build the
site to their preferences.

Making your website attractive, interesting, engaging and interactive

In this article you will learn the importance designing your
website around your customers and their needs. A websites
form and content is what will determine if a visitor will
stay just a visitor or turn into your next customer. Today
we will discuss how to accomplish the later.


To succeed at your online business (whether you are selling
your own product/service or are selling for other merchants
as an affiliate), you need a Web site created just for that
- a simple, focused site. One that is easy to build,
maintenance-free, low cost, credible, and a powerful
traffic-builder and customer-converter.

Having the right tool and the right product alone doesn’t
insure the success of your website. There are many factors
to be considered while designing a site. Unfortunately, most
of these are easily ignored by Internet business owners.

The Fourth Step is to decide commission levels. Your first
decision will be to determine whether you want to pay a flat
rate or percentage of each sale. Based on the needs you
identified above for each of the affiliate types, decide on
a commission amount for each Type. If you have a two-tier
program, consider the possibility of different second tier
rates as well.

The Fifth Step is to devise promotions for affiliate groups.
Once you have your affiliates properly categorized and your
system under control, consider developing promotions for
your affiliate groups. Give them special incentives to sell
more during a certain time frame, move seasonal products, or
increase business during your slow months. Offer them
additional commissions, or even bonuses for reaching a
specific amount of sales.

In conclusion, if you follow the steps I have just outlined
and if you are ready for a little work and a lot of
organization, your affiliate program should be up and
running in no time.

The Third Step involves the process of creating and
compiling linking methods for each group of affiliates.
Based on the needs you identified in Step two, create and
compile linking methods for each type. Here are a few
linking methods to think about.

* Banners - Though they aren't as effective as other linking
methods, banners are still widely used and expected. Make
banners in a variety of sizes to fit tops of pages,
bottoms, toolbars, sidebars and other miscellaneous areas.

* Articles - These are great for affiliates that need
content for their websites and newsletters. Be sure that
your articles are articles and not ads.

* Email Ads - Your active affiliates may be interested in
placing ads in e-zines or their own newsletters. Try
writing
a few ads in different lengths.

* Signature Files - Dedicated affiliates may even add your
tag to their signature line. Give them a few witty lines
to choose from.

* Guestbooks: - Let your affiliates help you build your
Opt-In email lists with guestbooks. Offer them a
commission
for each email address they send you, or each resulting
sale
from the subscribers they send you.

* Product Images - Give your affiliates images that show and
link directly to specific products. They'll be able to
choose an image specific to their site, or choose several
images to display.

* Review each affiliate Type and match them up with your new
linking methods. You may have some linking methods that
overlap Types -- this is okay. Just be sure you are
concentrating on the affiliates' needs.

Here are some basic things to look for:

The Second Step is to determine the needs of each type. Each
of your affiliate types will have different needs; some of
their needs will overlap, but you should find a distinct
difference in many of their needs. If you find that all of
them have the same needs, go back to step one and re-think
your types.

Here are some basic things to look for:

* Linking Methods - Different types of affiliates will need
different linking methods. Let's use the example above
where we had different groups based on sales. Your low
sales group may be satisfied with a banner or two to place
on their site. Your medium sales type may be interested
in an article or two for added content on their site.
Your high sales group will probably pass up banners
for articles, guestbooks, email ads and signature files.

* Capturing visitors is what you want. In order to do so --
you have to know what they want. Visit your affiliates'
sites to see what visitors are looking at and looking for.
Ask yourself, "How does my product relate to what I am
seeing?"

* Different types of affiliates may expect different
commissions. You'll have some Affiliates that have joined
your program "on the side" and others that plan on earning
a
substantial income from the program. Determine what effort
they are putting into advertising, how much other programs
in your industry are paying, and the amount of time they
devote to your program.

Find content sites

There are many sites that do not sell
any kind of product or service but are mainly
content-oriented sites. Such sites promote an idea, concept,
study or belief. Content sites that are used as a resource
for your target market are ideal affiliates.

Finally, there are several sites on the Internet dedicated
to listing affiliate Programs. Get your program listed in
these directories.

Classifying Affiliates for better management

The hardest part of administrating an Affiliate Program is
deciding what your affiliates need to help make the sale.
But, by carefully categorizing your affiliates, you can
easily determine what their needs are and how to accurately
meet them. The plan given below helps in categorizing
affiliates in order to manage your affiliate program better.

The first step is to pick at least three types of
affiliates. Take a look at your affiliates and try to
determine one outstanding characteristic that can easily be
compared across the board and choose at least three types of
the characteristic. Here are some examples:

* Level of Sales - You may find that your affiliates are so
completely different that it's hard to find something to
classify them by. Try classifying them by the level of
sales they've reached with you. You'll most likely find
that youhave a few forerunners that lead the pack with
a number of sales, quite a few affiliates that have.
sporadically made a sale or two and some that have yet
to make a sale. This will help you classify them based
on sales.

* Products - If you sell a wide variety of products for
specific interests/needs you may be able to classify your
affiliates by product. For instance, a financial site
could classify types like Personal Finance, Small Business
Finance, and Corporate Finance.

* Industry - If you market commodities like office supplies,
health and beauty products, house-wares and so on, you may
find that your affiliates come from a wide variety of
industries. You can most likely classify your affiliates
according to their industry.

How to attract affiliates

In this article we will discuss how to attract affiliates to
you program.

One of the biggest fears new Affiliate managers have is in
finding new affiliates. This fear is a stumbling block that
stops many site owners from getting started with affiliate
marketing. Interestingly, with a proper marketing strategy,
getting affiliates may not be very difficult. Given below
are some tips that may help in attracting new affiliates.

Find complimentary sites
"Complementary" sites are a sites that sell products or
services that compliment your
offerings. If you sell "gardening tools", a site that sells
books on "gardening tips" would be a perfect affiliate. If
you sell software, try looking for sites that sell computers
or computer parts. Finding sites that already attract your
target market, and can benefit from recommending your
product or service to their visitors, is the goal.

Joining An Affiliate Program

As with any marketing venture, you need to be careful in the
selection of an affiliate program. The benefit of an
affiliate program is that it gives you another way to make
money from your users. Instead of selling them a product
yourself, you send them to a partner and take a cut.

On the downside though, your affiliate ads will take the
place of a different ad that you could have put in that same
spot. You have to make sure that each advertising position
on your site is bringing in the maximum revenue possible. If
you’re not getting the most from your site, you’re tossing
money away.

The key to success is to choose the right program, right
from the beginning.

Now, a lot of commercial sites run affiliate programs.
That’s because they know that they only have to pay a
commission if a sale is actually made; it’s a proven way to
generate revenue without risk. What that means for you is
that when it comes to choosing an affiliate program, you’re
going to have a huge range to choose from. What it all boils
down to though is product and price.

While it might be tempting to go for the program that pays
the highest commissions, the program won’t pay you a penny
if your users won’t go there or won’t buy once they get
there. You have to be certain that the service you’re
promoting is of genuine interest to the kind of users you
buy, whether you’re buying them from search engines or
anywhere else.

Sure, you can work backwards: You find a high-paying
affiliate program and create a small site to send users to
it, but do you know where to buy users for a program like
that? You’re going to have to research the field, check out
the most popular sites, and negotiate banner campaigns and
link exchanges.

That’s fine if you want to invest the time and the effort.
But it’s much easier to find an affiliate program operating
in a field you’re familiar with, and use that program to
earn extra cash.

For example, suppose you had set up a dating site. You might
make bit of money selling subscriptions, but you might make
even more by joining Match.com’s affiliate program and
selling them your users. Unless you’re planning to be the
Internet’s biggest dating site, you’re not going to be able
to compete directly and beat them, but you can join them—and
earn money.

Or rather than sell your users directly to a ‘competitor’,
you can look for services that complement your own. Visitors
to your dating site, for example, might be interested in
buying flowers, books on relationships or tickets on singles
cruises. Instead of selling just one product—membership
subscriptions—you’d be selling a whole range of different
goods to the same people, and increasing the sources of your
income.

Here are some tips to selecting an affiliate program that is
lucrative and right for you:

* Don’t accept less than 25% commission. You can find
affiliate programs with great payment structures and high
percentages of the purchase price in just about every
field.

* Look for comprehensive statistics pages that list the
number of click-throughs, sales and earnings so you can
see
how you’re doing. The information should be broken down
by month.

* Look for programs that offer a wide variety of
promotional tools to put on your Web page, including text
links, banners and graphics.

* Find out how often you will be paid and make sure that
the payment schedule meets your expectations. Some
programs pay
monthly, others quarterly; which is best for you?

* Look for examples of marketing methods that successful
affiliates are using to get the best results.

* Make sure that top level support is given. If they can’t
answer your questions promptly and intelligently, you
don’t want to work with them.

Affiliate programs offer a viable solution to competing
against larger competitors and still make money. As the
saying goes, if you can’t beat them, joint them!
Until next time,

Getting Rich from Affiliate Programs

Some times it pays to work with others. In this article we
will discuss how to make money with affiliate programs.

Affiliate programs (also called Referral Programs or
Partnership Programs) are essentially commission-based sales
schemes. You recommend a site to your users and pick up a
percentage of any sales those users generate. You benefit
from the commission and the site benefits from sales it
wouldn’t otherwise have made. If you’ve ever gone to a
website and seen links to Amazon, those were affiliate
links.

You can run an affiliate program from a site you’ve already
set up, or create a site specially to promote a product or
service. As long as it brings in more cash than you spend on
building it and buying traffic, you’re laughing.

Affiliate ads work two ways: you can join them to make
money, or you can run one to attract users.

Getting subscribers and generating leads for your newsletter

There are many different ways of getting subscribers to your
Newsletter. Obviously, the first place you should start is
on your website, doing this can get you an immediate flow of
subscribers. You should advertise your Newsletter and place
a sign-up box on every page of your site. Always use the
sign-up box instead of a simple email link when you can
because the results are far better. The top of the page is a
better place for your sign-up box as it gets more exposure
but the bottom is still good. Always include a privacy
statement telling people exactly how you are going to use
their email address and how you will keep it private, with
all the talk about spam nowadays this is bound to reassure
them, which in turn will increase the number of new
subscribers.

Offer an incentive to your visitors. You should whenever
possible offer them a free gift if they subscribe, such as a
free report or Ebook. There a hundreds of free Ebooks which
you can give away. You are bound to increase your sign-ups
by doing this provided you offer them something related to
your site's theme.

Next you should submit your Newsletter to all the Newsletter
directories you can find, there a plenty of them on the net,
and some of them get really big traffic every month. If your
articles are good quality and informative then newsletter
and website publishers will be interested and your work
could end up being published in endless newsletter editions
and hundreds of websites. Not only will this increase your
credibility, it could result in 1000's more visitors, this
is because at the end of all your articles which you allow
others to publish will be a link back to your site. Don't
forget also if lots or your articles are published on
websites then your link popularity will improve drastically.
This will result in higher search engine rankings in Google
and the other engines which use link popularity as a ranking
factor, which or course means lots more visitors and profit
for you.

Include details of your newsletter in your signature file.
This is the little bit of text that you attach to messages
you post on the Internet and the emails you send to people.
You then can promote your Newsletter through you signature
when you post in email discussion groups. Email discussion
lists are great ways of communicating with people who have
similar interests as the topic of your Newsletter.
Contribute to the discussion by posting solutions to
problems. You can also mention "We have put together more
in-depth advice on xxx. Feel free to visit our website.
You’ll find loads of free information and resources."

This technique alone will drive much more traffic into your
site. It also begins to establish you, the author, as an
authority in your field. Once your online customers come to
trust your information, they will also trust you enough to
buy from.

Similar mediums to email discussion lists are newsgroups and
online discussion forums. Remember that you cannot advertise
your newsletter directly in any of these mediums, but having
a little mention in your signature is perfectly OK (in most
cases). The amount of subscribers you get through your
signature file will depend on the quality of your post, if
you post an interesting and useful article people will think
that your Newsletter will also be useful.

Apart from these, Ad swaps are a very effective way of
getting subscribers. You should find other publishers with
newsletters similar to yours and trade ads with them. You
run their ad and they will run yours. This helps both sides,
which is another plus. You should swap ads with publishers
no matter how many subscribers they have. Another method of
'swapping' would be to have the other webmaster recommend
your newsletter in the confirmation email he or she sends to
people who have just subscribed and you in turn could do the
same for him.

It will take a little time to get your newsletter
established but if you follow these few steps, you will have
a growing subscriber base in no time. Until next time…take
care!

Find Repeat Customers

When it comes to building customers, there are clients who
buy once—and clients who buy lots of times. It’s the latter
that you want to pack into your customer list; they’re worth
their weight in gold. Big companies are good places to
prospect for repeat business (they have big demands and
budgets) but always treat your repeat customers well. That
might mean the odd discount or the occasional freebie, but
the extra business should make up for it.


To wrap it up, customers are customers no matter where you
find them. Customers found on the Web respond to many of
the same things that make them customers in the real world.
The sooner you think in those terms and apply that knowledge
to your site, the better your site will perform.

Be Alert for New Marketing Opportunities

You must always be alert for opportunities to make new
business contacts and not allow yourself to be caught off
guard when opportunities arise. It doesn’t matter if you’re
out shopping or at a Chamber of Commerce meeting, make sure
that you have professional business cards, brochures, etc.
on hand—and don’t be afraid to use them.

Don’t Keep Your Business a Secret

Tell everyone about your business and your product. You
might even consider sending out a mass mailing to everyone
you know, telling them what you’re doing. Chances are,
someone knows someone who wants what you’ve got, and
friendly referrals usually bring the best business!

Bring Out Your Benefits

You might think you know what your product’s sales points
are—you might even be dead proud of them—but the fact is,
your buyers don’t give a toss about all the wonderful gizmos
you’ve packed into your product. They just want you to
answer one question: what’s it going to do for me?

That’s what all your marketing has to be about: explaining
to your buyers how you’re going to improve their life.

Make Your Site Sing

It can take a fair bit of effort and not a small amount of
time to create a website that works. But you can’t stop
there. You’re going to have to keep updating it, checking it
and making sure all the links and addresses work. It’s the
first place to look when you notice your sales starting to
drop, and it’s crucial to keep them coming in.

Cultivating New Customers

In this edition we will discuss how to think out of the
Web…out of the World Wide Web, in the never- ending quest
for new customers.

Text links, banners and search engines are all ways to
attract clients and build a customer base. It’s our buyers
that’s we’re really talking about here. But the Web isn’t
the only place to look for customers even for Web-based
businesses. Some of the old traditional methods like
word-of-mouth referrals still work just as well, and still
bring me a fair bit of cash each month. Here are some tips
to help you grab as many customers as you can while you’re
setting up your business and getting your online marketing
programs in place.

Know Your Market

Whatever your line of business, you’ve got to know your
market. You have to know who your clients are, what they
want and what makes them buy. Do the market research, check
out your competitors, create a formal marketing plan—but
take the effort to put yourself in the shoes of your buyers.
Otherwise you won’t get any!

As Inform Creating Newsletters That Sell As Well

Running you own free Newsletter or Ezine can bring huge
benefits to your website and profits. In this article, we
will discuss how newsletters are one of the most important
components for you to drive traffic to your website and
build your online business.

The popularity of these newsletters is based on the need for
information. The main reason people are online is because
they want and need information and that is exactly what
newsletters provide. Newsletters are mostly delivered via
email, some however are delivered as HTML pages. Newsletters
which are delivered as HTML pages still utilize email, as
the webmaster will email subscribers notifying them that a
new issue is ready.

There are many advantages of starting your own newsletter,
however newsletters do require a bit of work to get started
and maintain so they may not be for everyone.
The two main advantages are:

* Being able to maintain regular contact, and
* Being able to build a relationship with your subscribers

Newsletters allow you to maintain regular contact with your
website visitors, this is vital to success, because rarely
do people buy on there first visit, in fact people usually
have to be exposed to an offer several times before they
actually buy. A Newsletter allows you to keep the connection
with your site visitors reminding them of how your product
is suited for them.

Newsletters give you the "excuse" to send potential
customers emails packed with articles and off course your
sales message. Newsletters are great for building trust and
relationships online, if your newsletter provides regular
quality content which your subscribers can really use, they
will begin to trust your opinion and also they will begin to
feel that they know you. This is important as developing
relationships is vital for any business.

The other, often overlooked, advantage of having a
newsletter, is the income it can generate, not from selling
your products and services but from selling advertising
space in it. You do need a medium to large subscriber base
before other businesses will be interested in advertising
but this is not that hard to achieve, especially if it is
regularly full of quality content. You can earn a few
hundred every month just from ads if you play your cards
rights.

Your online customers will eventually become your offline
customers if they trust the information you regularly send
them. Put simply, a newsletter is your way of helping
people. If you help people online, eventually they will buy
from you.

However, running your own newsletter involves considerable
amount of work. It is vital that you regularly write a lot
of quality content before your next send-out. Besides,
ideally a newsletter should be sent out every week or at
least every fortnight. This is not always easy. In fact it's
never easy; the next thing that adds to your work load when
it comes to newsletters is maintaining your email addresses.
Many of the email addresses may be wrong. Maintaining a list
of working email addresses is crucial.


In conclusion, running your own newsletter can have a very
positive impact on your website and online business. If you
wish to see the full potential of your newsletter, be
prepared for a considerable amount of work. If you dedicate
yourself to keeping it up, you will find it well worth the
effort.

Make sure you Include:

* Table of Contents
* Hyperlinks for customers who want more information for a
featured topic
* Exciting secrets or tips related to your product or
service
* Contact information

E-newsletters can take up a good amount of time if not
managed correctly. The use of a list server (a piece of
software that runs on your Internet provider's computer or
on your own web server) is a good option. It will
automatically manage a list of e-mail addresses. Once you
send your newsletter to the list server, it distributes the
letter to the stored addresses. For more information on list
servers, contact your Internet service provider. If you opt
to use another method, make sure you have a plan for
handling incoming and outgoing mail when your customer base
increases.

In conclusion, your newsletter can serve as an extension of
your business that will reach out to your customers. It
will allow you to maintain regular contact with them and
serve as an effective and rewarding addition to your
marketing arsenal. These tips should help you put it all
together and help you create an exceptional newsletter.

Test

Test the Newsletter on few email addresses to check for
errors and other issues – before sending to the entire
distribution list.

If you lack experience in print media, seek out assistance
if you know someone in the field. If not, don't worry – the
above mentioned basic principles apply. Plan to research
your material thoroughly and avoid factual or editing
errors, as they will make you seem less credible.

Add hyperlinks and include updates on old material should
new information surface. The typical form of newsletter is a
one-way communication where you provide information to
customers, such as product updates and announcements. You
have the option of formatting your e-mail by including
colorized text and a variety of fonts, but not all e-mail
software supports HTML mail. Consider writing your
newsletter in plain text or offer two mailing lists- one for
plain text mailings and the other for HTML e-mail.

Enjoy Your Life: Change Your Point of View

"Two men look out through the same bars: One sees the mud, and one sees the stars."- Frederick Langbridge, A Cluster of Quiet Thoughts

If you’ve placed second in a writing contest, will you jump for joy and push for better results the next time or will you be discouraged and find an excuse not to join again?

In life, you are always filled with choices. You may opt to have a pessimist’s view and live a self-defeated life or you may decide to take the optimist’s route and take a challenging and fulfilling life.

So why nurture an optimist’s point of view? And why now?

Well, optimism has been linked to positive mood and good morale; to academic, athletic, military, occupational and political success; to popularity; to good health and even to long life and freedom from trauma.

On the other hand, the rates of depression and pessimism have never been higher. It affects middle-aged adults the same way it hits younger people. The mean age of onset has gone from 30 to 15. It is no longer a middle-aged housewife’s disorder but also a teen-ager’s disorder’ as well.

Here’s how optimists are in action and researches that back up why it really pays to be an optimist:

Optimists expect the best

The defining characteristic of pessimists is that they tend to believe bad events, which will last a long time and undermine everything they do, are their own fault.

The truth is optimists are confronted with the same hard knocks of this world. What differs is the way they explain their misfortune---it’s the opposite way. They tend to believe defeat is just a temporary setback, that its causes are confined to this one case.

Optimists tend to focus on and plan for the 'problem' at hand. They use 'positive reinterpretation.' In other words, they most likely reinterpret a negative experience in a way that helps them learn and grow. Such people are unfazed by bad situation, they perceive it is a challenge and try harder.

They won’t say “things will never get better,” “If I failed once, it will happen again” and “If I experience misfortune in one part of my life, then it will happen in my whole life.”

Positive expectancies of optimists also predict better reactions during transitions to new environments, sudden tragedies and unlikely turn of events. If they fall, they will stand up. They see opportunities instead of obstacles.

People respond positively to optimists

Optimists are proactive and less dependent on others for their happiness. They find no need to control or manipulate people. They usually draw people towards them. Their optimistic view of the world can be contagious and influence those they are with.

Optimism seems a socially desirable trait in all communities. Those who share optimism are generally accepted while those who spread gloom, panic and hysteria are treated unfavorably.

In life, these people often win elections; get voted most congenial and sought for advice.

When the going gets tough, optimists get tougher

Optimists typically maintain higher levels of subjective well-being during times of stress than do people who are less optimistic. In contrast, pessimists are likely to react to stressful events by denying that they exist or by avoiding dealing with problems. Pessimists are more likely to quit trying when difficulties arise.

They persevere. They just don’t give up easily, they are also known for their patience. Inching their way a step closer to that goal or elusive dream.

Optimists are healthier and live longer

Medical research has justified that simple pleasures and a positive outlook can cause a measurable increase in the body's ability to fight disease.

Optimists’ health is unusually good. They age well, much freer than most people from the usual physical ills of middle age. And they get to outlive those prone to negative thoughts.

So why not be an optimist today? And think positively towards a more fulfilled life.

Why not look forward to success in all your endeavors? Why not be resilient? Like everybody else you are bound to hit lows sometimes but don’t just stay there. Carry yourself out of the mud and improve your chances of getting back on the right track. And why not inspire others to remove their dark-colored glasses and see life in the bright side?

Frequency

Determine how frequently your readers want to hear from
you/receive your Newsletter – and what you can commit to. As
a thumb rule, a weekly newsletter is ideal. However, don’t
launch a weekly newsletter if you are not absolutely certain
that you can distribute a quality Newsletter every week. A
fortnightly newsletter is a good option too.

Timing

Test and pick a day and time that works best ...and stick to
it. Readers should almost be able to set their watches by
the receipt time of your Newsletter.

Make it Viral

Provide information readers can act on or that stimulates
reaction – forwarding it to friends and peers, stimulating
purchases or requests for additional information. Make it
easy for readers to forward articles and information to
peers and friends. Provide a “Forward to a Friend” link that
enables readers to forward the Newsletter with a
personalized note.

Voice and Personality

Establish a voice or editorial personality – whether newsy,
serious, gossipy or funny – that is synergistic with the
image you want to portray and connects with your audience.
Remember that email newsletters aren't email promotions
designed to stimulate immediate action. Sales and
promotional copy don't suit e-newsletters. Nor does the
traditional tone of broadcast corporate communications.
Think of your newsletter as a one-on-one conversation. Just
imagine sitting in a coffee shop talking informally with a
customer. That's the starting point for your approach--a
more personable and appropriate "human" voice will come
naturally. Drop the jargon, drop the sales pitch, be as
honest as you can, and talk like a human being.
You can have as much or as little personality as is
appropriate. Consider adding a brief editorial, a comment or
two, an editor's note, a couple of lines of commentary, a
touch of opinion; adding a little human element here and
there. Sign editorials, give authors a byline, or list some
names down in the administrative section of each issue to
which your readers can relate to.
From Line
Whether a person’s name, name of the newsletter or company
name – determine what will resonate best with your readers
and stay with it.

Subject Line

“Vol. 1, Issue #8” or “Company News” are not enticing
subject lines. They are certainly consistent and simple, but
they don’t tell your readers anything that will motivate
them to open your email. Your subject line is your calling
card - entice your readers with the most interesting or
intriguing information in your Newsletter..