SEBENAGHAU

Should you be selling a product or a service?

2009-12-20T02:46:00.000-08:00

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?

2009-12-19T02:11:00.000-08:00

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?

2009-12-15T03:37:00.001-08:00

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?

2009-12-15T03:37:00.000-08:00

Web Copy

2009-12-11T01:54:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-06T13:59:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-03T14:04:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-27T14:25:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-22T02:07:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-18T13:54:00.000-08:00

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).

2009-11-15T01:11:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-11T02:45:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-09T14:21:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-08T14:01:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-31T04:28:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-27T14:51:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-18T14:43:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-16T02:32:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-02T14:52:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-27T04:30:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-09-12T04:21:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-11T01:34:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-29T19:56:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-12T04:48:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-06T03:03:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-04T04:10:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-03T06:05:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-02T02:57:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-01T04:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-30T02:54:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-29T03:29:00.001-07:00

* 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

2009-06-28T02:37:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-27T04:14:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-26T03:07:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-25T02:46:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-24T03:09:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-23T03:04:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-22T04:22:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-21T04:17:00.001-07:00

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:

2009-06-20T04:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-19T04:12:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-18T03:36:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-17T05:40:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-16T03:09:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-15T04:26:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-14T07:04:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-13T00:42:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-12T03:13:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-11T04:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-10T03:13:00.000-07:00

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:

2009-06-09T02:31:00.000-07:00

* 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

2009-06-08T06:13:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-07T04:19:00.000-07:00

"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

2009-06-06T04:41:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-04T16:05:00.000-07:00

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..

Creating an effective newsletter

2009-06-03T04:43:00.000-07:00

Creating a successful newsletter can be extremely rewarding.
Subscribers and customers respond with glowing feedback,
online sales jump and your customer relationships and brand
loyalty deepens. Here are some useful tips that might help
in creating a successful newsletter.

Define Success

Ask yourself “What is the purpose of your newsletter?” A
newsletter is a substantial investment of company resources
in terms of time and energy, and you need to define in as
tangible terms as possible the purpose of your Newsletter.

Creating effective Ads

2009-06-02T04:33:00.001-07:00

Today’s article deals with a subject that we all need to
read, study and understand…how to create an EFFECTIVE ad.

Online advertising on the Internet leaves a lot to be
desired. We have ads that emulate Windows-warning boxes. We
have pop-ups and pop-unders. All of these are developed with
the intent to make people notice them. However, most of them
only end up irritating them. Advertisers, especially those
with small budgets, can't afford to waste money on
ineffective buys. In order to optimize your advertising
buys, you need to concentrate on improving your creative.

Here are some tips that might help:

Step 1: Define clear goals of your advertising campaign

The most important aspect of any advertising campaign is to
have a clear objective in mind. You may be targeting a
specific group of people, your initial aim may be to target
at least 1000 internet surfers and so on and so forth. Have
a well defined, clear purpose.

Step 2: Identify the most effective sites for achieving your
goals

Sites that are most relevant to your product or service
will, more than likely, be your best bet; but also consider
larger sites or networks that can target the audience you're
trying to reach. They can be very cost-effective. If you
have multiple products or services that appeal to various
target markets, you'll have to consider sites that reach all
those various segments.

Step 3: Craft your message to fit the needs of the audience
you're targeting

This comes down to understanding the audience of the sites
you're advertising on. The message you use on a technology
site to appeal to technologically savvy customers won't have
the same appeal for visitors on a small-business site. Focus
your campaign.

Step 4: Content of your Ad

Pay particular attention to the content of the Ad. The
content should be such that it clearly distinguishes your
product or service from your competitors’. Have a catchy
headline. The headline is probably the most important part
of the Ad – It is the customer puller.

Step 5: Formulate the specific promotional messages that
correspond to your goals

The promotional messages should concentrate on the major
selling points of your product or service and have a strong
call-to-action.

Step 6: Make the desired action clearly visible

This certainly doesn't mean the desired action should
necessarily blink, bounce or do flips, but it should be
visible within an accepted format for the media you're
using. In the case of the Internet, underlined text links,
"click here" text entry boxes, and pull-down menus are all
ways you can make the desired action clearly visible.

Step 7: Design the ad so it looks like it belongs on the
sites where you're advertising

For instance, you may want to use the site's font faces in
your text, color schemes in your background, font color
choices overall, and emulate images where appropriate. Try
to conform to the environment so potential customers
visiting the site don't gasp in shock when they see your ad.

Step 8: Produce multiple versions of each ad

Create three or four versions of each ad, changing the
promotional message, call-to-action, font faces and color
schemes. This is especially important if you're doing price
testing or gauging reaction to specific promotions. By
splitting your advertising buy among the various versions of
your creative, you can then start to optimize your buy based
on the message that works best.

With these tips, you will not only be able to create an ad,
but you will be able to create an effective ad that does
what it is supposed to do – sell your products and services.

Using expired domains to skyrocket your traffic

2009-06-01T06:02:00.000-07:00

At some point while you’re building your website, you’re
going to have to buy a domain name. This is the address that
users type into their browsers to reach your site. That
takes about five seconds, and depending on the name you want
and whether anyone else owns it, it won’t cost you more than
a few bucks.

But domain names are also a golden opportunity to make some
easy money.

I’m not talking about Internet real estate, where you buy up
good names and sell them on for a profit—if you haven’t got
into that now, forget it. The bottom’s fallen out of the
market and the best domains are long gone.

I’m talking about expiring domains.

Thousands of webmasters invest time, effort and money to
promote their site and build up traffic. Many of them then
lose interest and move on, leaving their site active. That
means that although they still own the domain, they’re not
actively promoting it. But they don’t need to. All the
automatic marketing systems they’ve put in place are still
bringing in traffic. The site runs itself.

Now, at some point the ownership of those domains is going
to expire. If you snap up those domains once they come back
onto the market, you’ve got a pre-built stream of customers.
You can either rebuild the site, or redirect the traffic to
your domain. You could set up an affiliate program get paid
for users someone else paid for.

It’s that easy.

There are tons of options, and lots of easy ways to make
lots of money with very little effort. Opportunities like
these are everywhere.

Websites such as www.expiredtraffic.com or
www.deleteddomains.com actually do all the legwork and let
you reap all the rewards. Expired Traffic even has an
affiliate program and www.snapnames.com allows you to
back-order a specific domain name.

Do be careful when using other sites though. There are some
swindlers out there that will sell you subscriptions,
provide you with outdated lists, take your money and keep
the good domains for themselves. It happens, and there’s
little point in taking a risk when www.deleteddomains.com
does such a great job.

Choosing a Domain Name

2009-05-31T02:18:00.000-07:00

In this article you will learn how to chose an effective and
memorable domain name and learn how you can actually
increase traffic by using an old, expired domain name.

Times wasting so lets get started…
In the physical world, you can distinguish a business
because of its structure, window displays, or signs. You can
tell that a bank is a bank, or a clothing store is indeed a
clothing store.

In the Internet, however, it is an entirely different story
altogether. Your domain name is the only clue to your online
business. You do not have visual clues: no location, no
look, and no store design. Instead, users have to type in a
word or a set of words to reach your site. Your prospective
visitor has no way of knowing what your site is all about
until he/she finds it and reads its contents. Who can ever
tell that Amazon.com sells books? Or that Excite is a search
engine?

Your domain name can spell your success on the Internet. A
good domain name is the best asset you can ever have. It can
make your business stand out in the crowd, or just float
aimlessly in space.

The need to provide immediate clues to an online business
led to the prevalence of generic domain names. Generic names
instantly provide the user with an idea of what a business
is all about, what to expect and look for in a site. For
instance, Etoys.com is a toy store.

The temptation of the generic name has been so powerful;
that some companies even paid ridiculously high prices to
get the name they want. The domains Loans.com and Wines.com
were both bought for $3 million each. Telephone.com was
acquired for $1.75 million, while Bingo.com sold for $1.1
million.

However, generic names do not necessarily create the “buzz”
that you’d like surrounding your website. Branding has
always been about proper names: McDonald's did not name
their store Hamburger. Hertz is not called Car Rental. FedEx
is not Mail Carrier. Kodak is not Photographs. Microsoft is
not Computer Software.

For better branding results, your domain name should be
memorable and easy to remember. Remember the following tips
when creating a domain name.

* The domain name should be short
* The domain name should be simple
* It should be suggestive of your business category
* It should be unique
* It should be easy to interpret and pronounce
* It should be personalized
* It should not be difficult to spell
* It should not be difficult to remember

Domain names can be registered through many different
companies (known as "registrars") - a listing of these
companies is available at ICANN: http://www.icann.org. You
can register for 1 to 10 years - prices can vary anywhere
from $10 to $20 per year. Most web hosting companies, as
explained later, will handle the registration process for
you, but make sure that you are properly listed as the owner
of the domain when it is registered. If you have registered
a domain name for a specific period, make sure you renew it
in time. You can be surprised at the number of cases, where
site owners have let a domain name slip by if they have not
renewed in time.

How to create a Weblog?

2009-05-30T04:29:00.000-07:00

The majority of weblogs are now created using software or
services designed specifically for this purpose. Some of the
software is free - and some of the organizations that
provide weblog software will also provide free server space
to house a weblog so that it is publicly accessible on the
Internet. There are also commercial versions of some of the
free software; these commercial versions often provide more
features. Some weblog software is available only as
commercial software. Alternatively, bloggers can create and
maintain their weblog using free software or a free weblog
service, but use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to load the
resulting weblog to their own Website.

There are many blogging softwares available easily on the
Internet. One of the most popular weblogger is “Blogger”
which can be downloaded for free at http://www.blogger.com.
Most webloggers simplify the process of Website creation.
However, they do require basic knowledge of FTP, Website
structures and a few technical terms. Besides, creating an
advanced weblog requires knowledge of HTML.

So get out there and start your own Blog…it’s free,easy and
can work seamlessly with the rest of your website or
newsletter. Until next time…

Weblogs when used with newsletters present immense marketing opportunities:

2009-05-29T02:53:00.000-07:00

* Articles within newsletters can be linked to a blog,
extending life and creating a massive conversation.
* You can offer a bidirectional forum to customers to get
true, personal opinions on your products and services.
* Company experts can start a blog and become industry
experts, helping your company edge out competition and,
through this interactive forum,draw customers into another
exchange of information and thoughts.
* The beauty of this interplay is you can layer your blog
with editorial controls.

Blog as a marketing tool

2009-05-28T02:17:00.000-07:00

Blogs offer huge marketing potential. They are highly
strategic tools that can strengthen relationships, share
knowledge, increase collaboration, and improve branding.
Besides, blogs can represent the real voice of the website.

A weblog can take the form of a diary, a news service (or
summaries of and links to current news items on a topic), a
collection of links to other Web sites, a series of book
reviews or products, reports of activity on a project, the
journal of an expedition, and much more. Businesses can use
this tool to effectively advertise their products or
services.

One of the most interesting ways to use a weblog is by
allowing it to function as a discussion forum for customers
of your products or services. In this case, the webmaster
can give posting rights to other people – visitors and
customers, and their posts may or may not be reviewed before
they are published to the Web page. Customers, in such a way
can post favorable comments about the websites offerings.
Some weblogs are set up in such a way that only the owner or
the owner and certain other people have posting rights, but
anyone else can add comments to the posts.

Blogs

2009-05-27T02:55:00.001-07:00

In this article we will discuss a relatively new intertnet
tool – the Blog.

Blog (also known as Weblog) is traditionally a webpage where
pre-surfer or a blogger “logs” all pages he/she finds
interesting. In other words, it is a Web page that contains
brief, chronologically arranged items of information.
Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality
of the author.

Weblogs provide a series of annotated links to items such as
news stories, and often include personal rants. They are
maintained by one person, most commonly someone who is
involved in Web design or some other tech-related field.

A blog is often a mixture of what is happening on a
particular website and what is happening on the Web, a kind
of hybrid diary/guide site, although there are as many
unique types of blogs as there are people. Blogs can be used
to introduce products to potential customers.

People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but
the trend gained momentum with the introduction of automated
published systems, most notably Blogger at blogger.com.
Thousands of people use services such as Blogger to simplify
and accelerate the publishing process.

Banner Economics

2009-05-26T03:14:00.000-07:00

Business online, like business offline, always boils down to
math: the difference between cost and revenue. If your
banner campaign is costing more than it’s earning, you won’t
be in business for very long. To figure out how your
campaign is doing, you’re going to need to know your Cost
Per Mille, your Click Through Rate and your Conversion Rate.
These are your basic tools. If you don’t know them, find
out!

Let’s say your CPM is $20, your CTR is 1%, and your
Conversion Rate is 4%. (So you’re paying $20 every 1,000
times your banner is shown, it brings you 10 new users, and
you make one sale for every 25 users the ad brings). The
question you need to ask yourself is how much are you
wasting on the 24 users who don’t buy.

Cost per visitor = $20 / 10 = $2 So each visitor costs you
$2, but you need 25 visitors to make one sale, so...

Cost per sale = $2 * 25 = $50 ...if your product is worth
less than $50, you’re making a loss.

That’s pretty simple, and as you can see, there’s not a lot
of room to maneuver here. Margins are tight on banner
advertising and that applies to both the site selling the
advertising space and the webmaster buying it.

Of course, hard cash isn’t the only way to measure the
success of a banner ad, and one reason they’re still popular
is that they’re a pretty effective branding tool. After all,
advertisers spend millions on billboards without expecting
motorists to drive straight through them and make a
purchase! On the Web, those advertisers can even be
reasonably sure that the people who see their ads will be
interested in them. But branding costs money—lots of it—with
no guarantee of results. It’s usually best left to the big
boys.

The banner ads on my sites usually send users to my
affiliate partners, and the banner ads I place on other
people’s sites usually come from my affiliate programs. They
don’t cost me anything and as long I’m making the sales to
pay my affiliate partners, everybody’s happy.

If you do decide to purchase banner advertisements though,
and if you have a very specific market in mind, make sure
they are strategically placed—on sites where the traffic
will most definitely be interested in your product or
service. Find a site that suits exactly your specific
product and you’re going to be appealing directly to your
target market.

That’s it for this week. As you can see, banner ads are not
the guaranteed money making tools that they once were but
they can still be used effectively if targeted properly. Is
banner advertising for you? Only you can determine that.

Banners

2009-05-25T03:31:00.000-07:00

In this article we will discuss the ins and outs of banner
ads. Are they worth your advertising dollars or are they a
thing of the past?

When the Web first started, banners were all the rage.
Today, they’re pretty much passé. They’re no longer a
novelty and unless they’re super-clever, users pretty much
ignore them. Conversion rates have dropped through the floor
and many advertisers have found other ways to push their
products.

And yet, every website still contains a whopping great
banner ad splashed along the top or running up the side. In
part, that’s because they’ve become more sophisticated with
better targeting and improved graphics. But in practice,
banner ads tend to be used for one of two reasons: as a
method of gaining/ giving users through an affiliate
program; or as a way of generating revenue—or
traffic—through paid advertising.

Both these methods work to some extent, but the key is
always to make sure the economics make sense. We’ll look
closely at the math in this chapter, but before we go on to
talk about the math of banner ads—and how to tell whether
your banner campaign is worthwhile—let’s just take a look at
the terms involved. You’re going to see these words whenever
you join an affiliate program or take part in any other kind
of online marketing scheme. You should definitely be
familiar with them.
Banner Glossary

* Banner Ad — A graphic ad linked to an advertiser’s
website. These usually run across the top of the page but
can also run up the page (“skyscrapers”). Banners are
usually limited by size.
* Banner Views —The number of times a banner is seen by
users. This is usually the same as "page views," but
counts the number of times the banner is actually
downloaded rather than the number of times the page is
downloaded. Some users click away before the banner
finishes loading.
* Clicks/ Click Throughs — Banners are operated by clicking
the cursor over them. Not too surprisingly these responses
are called “clicks” or “click throughs.”
* Click Through Rate (CTR) — The percentage of users who see
the banner and click on it.
* Conversion Rate —The percentage of people who visit your
site and actually give you money. The higher the better!
* Cookies — Small files placed on a user’s computer. They’re
used for all sorts of reasons and by all sorts of sites.
Banner ads use them to make sure the user hasn’t seen the
banner recently, which banner brought them to the
advertiser’s site, and even which adverts they’ve seen
recently.
* CPM — "Cost Per Mille." The amount you pay for every
thousand times a banner is shown—the usual way of charging
for banners.
* Hits — The number of times a server receives a request for
a Web page or an image. Not a great way to measure
interest. One page can have lots of images and get lots of
hits, even if it’s only seen once. Often, people will say
"hits" when they really mean "page views" or
"impressions."
* Page Impressions or Page Views —The number of times a Web
page has been requested by the server. Much more accurate
than hits: each view is a potential customer looking at a
page of your site. But not necessarily a different
customer...
* Unique Users — The people who download a Web page,
counted by IP address. You want to bring lots of users to
your site so that you can create a broad customer base.
The same user clicking on a banner a dozen times could
cost you money without increasing your sales. Most
reputable sites will check the IP address of the person
clicking on a link and only count it once in a 24-hour
period. If a site doesn’t do this, don’t advertise with
them.

A few avoidable errors when promoting your affiliate program

2009-05-24T04:28:00.001-07:00

In this article, I have listed a quick and easy bulleted
list of does and do not’s when trying to promote your
affiliate program.

* Many affiliate marketers make a huge mistake of posting
their ads on forums. Forums can be used to promote your
affiliate programs and your website but in a proper
manner.
Posting banners is very similar to spamming and may
easily
upset forum administrators.

* Always do your research before promoting your affiliate
program to a potential customer. Do not offer affiliate
programs to visitors who are not at all interested in
the products associated with the program. This is a
futile endeavor.

* If you promote affiliate programs offered by other
merchants, ensure that you develop your own advertising
copy. Many websites commit a common mistake of using the
same advertising copy as used by the merchant
themselves.

* Avoid Copyright infringement in all cases. Always use
original content or ask permission to use graphic images
or text found on other websites.

* Do not submit your programs to free websites. These may
be free but your programs would hardly ever be noticed,
especially by Search Engines. Moreover, your own ranking
would get lowered if you submit your affiliate programs
to such websites.

* Avoid using caps on your web page or email ad. Using
caps is symbolic to shouting, which never goes well with
potential customers. A few words may be written in
capital text to give them additional emphasis. However,
such practice should be limited.

* Always respond to all queries sent by visitors as soon
as possible. A slight delay in your response could
easily result in loss of a potential client.

* Do not use pop-up ads along with your webpage. Most
surfers are likely to close their browser if they come
across pop-ups.

* Do not host your website on a free server or use free
email accounts. This gives a negative impression to
visitors. Using free hosts and email accounts looks
cheesy and loses sales.

* Many websites do not have an opt-in list. Create an
opt-in and opt-out list for your visitors. Without
these,there is no way of tracking potential customers.
Visitors should be allowed to opt-in at any time
as well as opt-out at any time.

* Most sites have a poor tracking mechanism. It is
essential that you track all business activities.
Accurate record keeping is crucial. There are many
software tools, discussed earlier in this chapter,
than can automate your record keeping process with
minimal error.

* A 'mall' site is best used as a central hub to send
visitors to your other domains. As a main or only site,
unfocused mall sites don't get traffic from the engines,
and they don't convert well to sales. Highly focused
theme sites attract traffic and sales.

* Offline advertising may not be effective. A lot of money
and effort should not be wasted on offline advertising.
Most people rarely check websites that are advertised in
local magazines or newspapers.

* Avoid focus on animated banner ads. These simply use up
bandwidth, thus making web pages load slower.

* While advertising do not degrade other competitors. It
is recommended that you highlight your products’
uniqueness and superiority but never mortify other
products.

* Banners or text links that expire are guaranteed to
eventually send your visitor to a broken link or show a
broken graphic on your page. Time sensitive advertising
is best used only in email advertising campaigns.

* Never put affiliate links on your homepage. This is
similar to asking your visitors to leave immediately.
Give them a chance to browse, sign up for your
newsletter and decide that they'd like to come back
to your place before introducing them to your
affiliates.

* Technology changes with amazing speed. To keep up with
this rapidly evolving industry, you must invest time and
money in research. The investment is a tax write-off,
and will pay you back many times over in additional
revenue.

Hopefully this list has proven helpful to you and has shown
you some red flags to avoid when it comes time to promote
your own affiliate site. Good luck and take care.

Staying Organized

2009-05-23T04:10:00.001-07:00

There are many affiliate networks that provide multiple
affiliate programs and merchants. Keeping a track of all
affiliate programs in a single network is easy. You would
generally be given one username and password as well as a
single interface that controls all the programs. However, if
you have many of your own affiliate programs or you promote
several stand-alone affiliate programs from your website,
the task of staying organized becomes a bit more complex.

There are many software programs available on the Internet
that organize and keep track of all data associated with
affiliate programs. Some of these are My Affiliate Program
2000 and Affiliate Assistant 1.0. These programs maintain
databases pertaining to information about all your affiliate
programs. A typical database would consist of the following
fields:

* Program Name
* Date joined or created
* Contact Name
* URL
* Email Address
* ID
* Password
* 1st Tier Percent
* 1st Tier Sale
* 2nd Tier Percent
* 2nd Tier Sale
* Total Income
* Additional comments

Once the program information has been entered, you can add
information about individual sales made and checks received.
The program then keeps track of sales to date, amount
collected and receivables. Besides, some of the advanced
software programs also provide analysis and comparison tools
for all affiliate programs. If you take the time to input
collected data about clicks, sales, and page views,
impressions, emails sent etc. from your various campaigns
and enter all of it into the program, it will show you:

* Click to Sale Ratios
* Impression to Sale Ratios
* Amount Earned Per Impression
* Amount Earned Per Click

Apart from these are a few other tips that might help you
manage your affiliate programs.

* Always ensure that your website is up and running. On a
Daily basis type your URL into your browser's address bar,
refresh the page and find out. The danger in not knowing
that your site is down comes when you are running a pay per
click advertising campaign. The click costs add up whether
your site is functional or not. If your site is down, you
are paying for advertising, but no one is buying.

* Check your statistics daily, maybe even twice a day. This
will give you a better idea of your income trends and also
highlight affiliate programs that bring your business. Visit
the statistics interface for each network and individual
affiliate partner and input your total revenues into any
accounting software. Using such software frequently will
also keep you informed as to whether certain checks have
become overdue.

* Be prompt in answering any queries from affiliate partners
or customers, especially when these are about your products
or services. This probably means that the customer trusts
your site and is thinking of buying your product.

* One of the main aspects of any affiliate program is
residual income. You've got to make the most of each and
every customer you receive. The best way to do this is by
promoting affiliate programs that offer residual commission.

* This allows you to repeatedly get paid for work you do
once. For example, if a visitor arrives at your site and
purchases auto responder services, newsletter subscriptions,
ISP/hosting services, you will collect a portion of the
monthly fees for as long as they remain a paying customer.
Membership sites are a good way to collect residual
commissions and are steadily growing in popularity. There
are many affiliate programs that offer residual commission.

* A well placed recommendation placed at the end of an
outgoing email can bring in extra sales. Target your
audience, what are their specific needs? If you can offer
them a product they need/want, often times the end result
will be a sale.

* Finally, track all your affiliate links. The best way to
accomplish this is by setting up tracking software for your
affiliate links. There are a number of scripts that will do
the job. Most tracking programs typically allow you to setup
tracking links for any product you promote, telling you how
many hits each product has received, and where the hits are
coming from. A more detailed view of tracking and analysis
is given in the section below.

* It is not enough to have a few banners and classified ads.
You must provide as much help as possible for your
associates if you want them to be successful. You should
have tested and proven endorsements, testimonials, sig
files, ezine ads, and other unique tools and techniques. You
must also make yourself available, either through email or
the phone, to help your affiliates implement these tools and
to answer any questions they may have.

* Whether you run your own or participate in an affiliate
program, you must be able to determine what methods work
best in a particular medium. For instance, which ezine ads
work best and in what ezine; which banner ads produce the
greatest clickthroughs and from which sites or banner
exchanges; and where on your website is the most effective
spot to include a testimonial.

* Some affiliate programs, have implemented unique payment
procedures to get affiliates their commission checks on a
timely basis. Some of these procedures include: online
electronic payment services, direct bank deposits and checks
by fax. If you can solidify your payment procedures from the
start, you will save yourself an administrative headache and
more importantly, keep your affiliates happy and working to
promote your program.

This concludes my series on starting your own affiliate
program. This information should be all you need to start,
manage and track your own affiliate program.

Setting up Your Own Affiliate Program (part two)

2009-05-22T05:44:00.000-07:00

This article is the second of a two part series on setting
up your own affiliate program. In addition to starting an
affiliate program, you must manage it and keep track of it.
The following information will show you how
Managing and tracking your affiliate programs

The key to any business is to promote your products and
services to people who need them. Your affiliate business is
no different. In order to earn commissions you must put your
products in front of the people who need them. The beauty of
marketing affiliate programs is that it is anybody’s ball
game. This is the one place you can burrow deep into your
own niche and stick it to the so-called 'big wigs'.

You may create your own affiliate program or you may promote
other popular affiliate programs that are related to your
product or service. The best way to manage and track
affiliate programs is by creating your own affiliate program
website. This is where you can list all your affiliate
programs.

Setting up Your Own Affiliate Program (part one)

2009-05-21T02:15:00.000-07:00

This week we will start the first of a two part series on
starting your own affiliate program. Joining an affiliate
program is a neat way to make money from your users. But
just as you can join someone else’s affiliate program, so
you can set up your own program and invite webmasters to
sign up.

So…what would that bring you? The same as you’re bringing
your affiliate partners: deals. Every time someone sends you
a user who gives you money, you give a portion of that money
to your affiliate. It’s an easy way to generate traffic and
earn cash.

And you don’t need to be a programming genius to set up an
affiliate program. There are a whole bunch of companies out
there that offer entire affiliate kits right off the shelf.

Ultimate Affiliate lets you run a fully featured affiliate
program from your website. It integrates with virtually
every payment method, awards down-line commissions, and can
handle high-traffic websites. You can edit the sign-up form
to match the "look and feel” of your site as well as delete
some of the optional fields. The administration area allows
you to edit affiliates and commissions, create printable
reports of money due, export the data to a text file, view
the traffic through your affiliate program, and much more.
Your affiliates can log in at any time and see their traffic
and commission statistics as well as change their
information and get links and banner code.

Once the program is set up you'll only need to log in once a
month to print out a list of the affiliates, their
addresses, and the money owed. You can do this quarterly if
you wish. You can export the payments owed to a text file in
PayPal's "mass pay" format and then just upload it to your
PayPal account to pay everyone automatically. Or, you can
simply write your own checks. If you have to pay a lot of
commissions, there is a check printing service called
qchex.com. Upload the file and they’ll print and mail your
checks for a fee of about 80 cents each.

Alternatively, Locked Area Pro is an advanced member's area
management system offering very good security that’s easy to
maintain. The system provides a huge list of useful features
including automated sign-up, user account validation,
optional random password generation and an administration
approve/decline account feature. It also comes with an
extremely powerful control panel with an online
administration of users, backup, and full customization
facilities from the browser. A statistics system is also in
built in. What more could you want?
5.3 Cooking off the Spam

Any time you run a program where your affiliates rely on
other signups to generate profits, you will eventually have
a problem with spam. One of your affiliates will inevitably
get it into their head to blitz the Web with unwanted
garbage.

When this happens you need to be ready to take
action—otherwise it will cost you! Your Internet company can
boot you off your server and you can find yourself
blacklisted. Not good for business. If you get an email from
someone claiming they received spam with your URL, then take
it as an early warning. I am not advising you to immediately
terminate the affiliate’s account, but be sure to contact
them to follow up on the complaint. Let your affiliate know
you received a complaint and advise them to remove this
person from their list.

If you only get one or two complaints, it’s probably not
spam—the complainants might simply have signed up for an
email list and forgotten all about it. You will know when
one of your affiliates is spamming, because you will get
anywhere from 10 to 100 complaints in the same day all
regarding the same URL. The best thing to do in this case is
to immediately terminate or disable the account of the
affiliate URL that was spammed.

This concludes the first installment of my two part series
on starting your own affiliate program. Stay tuned for
more.

Buying Ads in Other Newsletters

2009-05-20T05:39:00.000-07:00

Just as you can sell advertising, you can also buy
advertising in newsletters. You can use those ads to promote
your business or to invite people who read newsletters to
read your own.

Again, you have to pick your partners carefully. There’s no
point just picking a newsletter with the cheapest rates; you
want to make sure you choose an outlet that appeals to the
same buyers as you. You also need to think about where your
ad is going to be placed. In general, the higher the
position the better. And the more the merrier too. Don’t
expect a huge response from a single ad. It’s always best to
think of advertising in terms of a campaign. You’ll get a
better deal—and better results—if you reserve an advertising
slot for four or five issues than if you buy them one at a
time.

That’s it for today. I hope you found this article
useful. Until next time…take care of yourself.

Advertising in newsletters

2009-05-19T02:17:00.000-07:00

We discussed earlier the advantages of having advertising
space in your newsletters. In this article we will discuss
advertising in other companies’ newsletters and how it can
be as equally beneficial.

By advertising in other newsletters, you can reach an
audience which is highly targeted and cost effective.
Moreover, you can never be accused of spamming as all the
recipients have subscribed to the newsletter. There are so
many newsletters out there covering so many different topics
that it's easy to find highly targeted ones to advertise in.
So if you've matched the newsletter to the product you're
selling, you've reached your target audience to a tee.

Almost all newsletters are archived, thousands of people
read these archives, and your ad will be seen by these
people at no extra cost. This can bring in exposure and
extra sales on a long term basis. Besides, newsletter
publishers may have already developed a trust between
themselves and their readers. Just by placing your ad in the
newsletter, it's more likely to be read because it appears
in a publication they like and trust.

Newsletter advertising is not only effective, it's cheap as
well. A 5 line ad in a newsletter that goes to 3000 people
will cost you between $5 and $25 per issue. With so little
risk involved, this is definitely worth it.

Introduction to Autoresponders

2009-05-17T08:53:00.000-07:00

If you've reached the point of exhaustion trying to keep up
with answering the mountain of emails that threatens to
bury you alive every single day, you're ready to learn
about autoresponders.

The bad news is that people expect prompt replies to their
email inquiries. However, unless you can figure out how to
work continual twenty-four hour shifts, or hire enough
people to constantly monitor incoming emails (while they're
eating up your revenue), you have a problem. The good news
is an autoresponder is an inexpensive - or even free -
method of quickly responding to emails. What these programs
do is automatically respond to incoming emails as soon as
they are received.

Emails are essential to your business for many different
reasons. Most importantly, these invisible email voices
give you their feedback about your website - for free!
However, if you spend all your working hours answering
these emails, how are you supposed to run your business?
The answer is simple: use autoresponders. Autoresponders
are programs that automatically respond to your emails
without you so much as having to click on your mouse.

There are a number of good reasons why you need an
autoresponder besides just answering your email. For
example, autoresponders can be used if you need a way to
send information about your services or products, price
lists, or if there are repeated questions asked across
large numbers of emails. Maybe you want to offer your site
visitors a special bonus of some kind, such as advice or
relevant articles. All of this can be handled by an
autoresponder. Additionally, you can advertise your
business and then build stable relationships with your
customers by using autoresponders.

Autoresponder programs vary from software that runs with
your email program to a specialized script that runs on
your web hosting company's server. This kind of script may
use a web page form or simply operate with your email
account. This kind of script is programmed to send out a
standardized message whenever an email is received. The
message is sent to a particular script or email address.

Some autoresponders can do more than simply send out
standardized messages. They can send out an unlimited
number of follow-up messages sent at predetermined interval
of time. For example, you can set your autoresponder to
send out a new message every day for as long a period as
you desire.

There are numerous companies who offer autoresponders free
of charge. Your website hosting company often provides
autoresponders as a free service. If this is not the case
with your web hosting company, there are numerous companies
who offer this service for a small fee, or free of charge,
providing you attach an advertisement for their company to
your emails.

To personalize your autoresponder messages, you can attach
a signature. Signatures in this case are much like business
cards. You can include your name, company, all your contact
numbers and addresses, and a brief message.

It's a good idea to attach a signature to every email that
is sent out. This works as a repeated reminder of your
business identity every time a customer sees it. The more
they look at your signature, the more likely your company
will spring to mind when your particular service or product
is needed.

You can create a standardized signature that every employee
in your business uses, or you can go wild, and let every
staff member create their own personal signature. Of
course, like everything in life, there are some rules and
guidelines to creating a personal signature.

Keep the length of your signature between four to six lines
of text, with no more than 70 characters in a single line.
Make sure that your email program does not cut off your
text! The content should include your name, your company
name, your email address, fax number, and any other contact
details, such as 800 numbers. Lastly, always include a
short personal message about your company. It should be a
subtle sell of your services or your products, and possibly
your company's reliability and longevity.

Another specialized use of autoresponders is to create
courses that you can then offer your site visitors for
free. You must choose a topic in which you are an expert
and that precisely targets your potential customers.

Once you have carefully chosen your subject, divide it into
a number of different sub-topics. Then offer your site
visitor a free 10 or 15 day course, each day offering a
different sub-topic. The first topic should always be a
welcome message to your site visitor and an explanation
about what is to follow. Your explanation should be
enticing, getting the point across that you are offering
free, quality information that your target audience will
find of great value.

With every lesson, include the number of the lesson, the
topic title, information about your company and its
services or products. At the end, include a few blurbs
about the next lesson to entice the subscriber to continue
on.

Make sure each topic is packed with essential and valuable
information, and leaves the visitor lusting to know more.
Otherwise, you may lose them in the very beginning.

Of course, you have to write up your course before you can
offer it. Once you have done this, and gone over the
material carefully, employing a professional writer or
editor if necessary, you must transfer your text to your
autoresponder.

There are a number of free autoresponders you can use. Try
http:/www.getresponse.com, or http://www.fastfacts.net. Or
go onto Google and you will find a long list of free
autoresponder companies. Then sign-up for your chosen
autoresponder. Once you do, you will receive instructions
as to how to set it up and transfer your text.

Email is an excellent marketing tool; it is inexpensive and
it is fast. Use it to advertise your business by choosing
your email address carefully. Your website should contain
different email addresses for different contact requests.
For example, use info@yourdomain.com for information
requests, or sales@yourdomain.com for questions about
sales. It's a good idea to set up one for the owner, such
as president@yourdomain.com. This presents your company in
a personal, approachable light and insures that direct
contact is provided.

Autoresponders are an effective and powerful marketing
tool, allowing you to make contact with thousands of
potential customers. This is an invaluable asset
considering how many potential customers you usually have
contact with before you make an actual sale. Essentially,
an autoresponser allows you to automate part of your
marketing campaign.

Creative and Profitable Ways to Use Autoreponders

2009-05-17T08:51:00.000-07:00

An interested visitor who has been strolling through your
site has finally come to just what she is looking for and
is about to make a purchase. It's a sunny afternoon, and
her cat, who happens to be sitting on the moss under the
visitor's large fifty-year-old snow-rose bonsai tree,
suddenly jumps down, and the priceless tree topples over.

In the blink of an eye, your visitor exits your site, and
your sale is dust - unless you have had the foresight to
utilize an autoresponder that has captured her email
address. If you have installed an autoresponder, you can
then follow-up with her, and in all probability, make the
sale when the poor woman has finished repotting her
precious bonsai.

Autoresponders are remarkable, versatile programs that do
so much more than just automatically answer your email.
Here are a few ideas that will help you to creatively and
productively use your autoresponder to transform the casual
visitor into a profitable customer. Use your autoresponder
to:

1. Publish a newsletter. Certain quality autoresponders
will manage subscriptions and follow-up with interested
prospects. Your newsletter can keep your visitors informed
about your services or products, while building your
reputation as a credible expert in your particular
business.

2. Publish a newsletter only for your affiliates. Inform
them of current sales you are running and of promotional
material that your affiliates can use themselves to
increase their commissions. Include tips, advice, and
techniques that your affiliates can use to successfully go
out and promote your business.

3. Write reviews. Cover books, software, music, e-books,
movies, etc., and put each review in an autoresponder.
Review your affiliate programs, using a link to your
affiliate's page in your autoresponder.

4. Distribute your articles. Writing and distributing
targeted articles is a powerful tool to build your business
credibility, bring traffic to your site, and increase your
sales potential. If your articles contain valuable
information, many editors will print what is known as a
resource box for you. A resource box contains your bio and
a brief description of your service or product. It can also
contain your autoresponder address. Let's say you've
written fifty articles. Put them on separate autoresponder
accounts and create a master list that contains the titles
of each article, the autoresponder address, and a brief
abstract. Then promote your master list. Additionally,
include your publishing guidelines so your affiliates can
add their articles to your list, increasing the number of
writers who are represented in your article list.

5. Create mailing lists. Inform subscribers to your
articles when you've written new ones that they may want to
publish in their own newsletter or website.

6. Automate your sales process. Use an ad to insure
repeated exposure of your message, which has been proven to
effectively increase sales. In your ad, put your
autoresponder address where a visitor will be exposed to
numerous marketing materials. This multiplies the chances
of converting visitors into customers. For example, if
you're selling a particular product, put testimonials about
how spectacular it is on your autoresponder, and add a
detailed, enticing description of your product.

7. Distribute advertising. Let's say you sell advertising
on your website or in your newsletter or e-zine. Set your
autoresponder to send the information about rates and how
to place an ad automatically to all prospects' email
addresses. Then have your autoresponder follow-up. It can
also send notification of any special deals you are
currently offering.

8. Distribute an email course. Each day, have your
autoresponder send out another lesson. Just be sure that
each lesson has quality content - not a sales pitch. Your
content will do the selling for you, and will do it much
more effectively. You can include tips centered on a
different topic for each lesson, illustrating how your
product will benefit the reader. Include the tangible
benefits the visitor will reap by purchasing your product.
Make sure to include a paragraph or two at the end of each
lesson enticing your prospect to consider making a
purchase.

9. Automate a reminder about your service or product after
a visitor has completed your course. This will increase the
possibility of sales from visitors who have taken your
course but are dragging their feet about actually making a
purchase. You can also use these reminders to promote new
products or services, and the products and services of your
affiliate programs.

10. Distribute free reports. This gives your visitor an
idea of the type of information you can provide and the
quality of your product or service. Make sure these reports
are not sales letters or you will more than likely lose a
potential customer than gain a sale.

11. Create trivia quizzes on your site and place the
answers in an autoresponder. Your visitor will then be
motivated to request your autoresponder, and you will have
a record of the visitors' email addresses who took your
quiz. Or create a contest and have any visitors that enter
send their responses to your autoresponder. Your
autoresponder can be set-up to send them a confirmation of
their entry.

12. Offer a trial version of your product. Give your
prospects a sample of your ebook, course, software,
membership, etc. People who are exposed to a little taste
often end up wanting the whole pie. You can also capture
their email addresses when you offer them a free trial from
your website. Set up your autoresponder to give
instructions on how to obtain their free trial, and then
make sure to follow-up to try and close the sale.

13. Link to hidden pages on your autoresponder. For
example, a hidden page could be your affiliate page that
contains graphics, promotional articles, and text links
that interested affiliates can make use of. Inform visitors
that they may have free access to your affiliate page by
simply requesting your autoresponder. You will then gather
a list of visitors who may be interested in becoming your
affiliates.

14. Use an autoresponder on your order page. Post a request
form for visitors to be notified of special offers or
discounts in the future. This creates a very effective
mailing list that contains the names of people who are
already your customers.

15. Put your links page on your autoresponder. It should
contain up to fifty links that would be of particular
interest to your visitors. Make sure to add your own
promotional copy at the top or bottom of this page.

Now that you have proof that autoresponders can be used
creatively, see if you can come up with some brilliant
ideas of your own!

Using Free Autoresponders

2009-05-15T04:05:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

Using Autoresponders Responsibly

2009-05-14T04:18:00.000-07:00

In today’s world of unsolicited email and spam laws, it is extremely important that you learn to use your autoresponder responsibly. Autoresponders make our lives much simpler, and they are very powerful marketing tools, but if they are used in a way that they
are not intended, they can quickly turn your life into a nightmare!

First, never add people to your autoresponder mailing list that should not be there. If they have requested information from you, they
should automatically be added, and you should have a ‘double opt-in’ method in place to make them confirm that they have
requested the information. This serves to protect you and them.

Each autoresponder message should include a link that the recipient can click that will automatically remove them from the mailing
list. Without this link, you will be breaking the spam laws, and you risk having your website, your ISP service, your email, and your autoresponders shut down!

We all want to build a list of a million people, but you must do so responsibly, and it does take time. Don’t get in a hurry and break
all the rules and laws in an attempt to build a large list. This will only result in losing your list altogether!

Using an Autoresponder to Publish an Ezine

2009-05-13T03:29:00.000-07:00

There are many uses for an autoresponder. One
such use is the publishing and distribution of an
ezine or newsletter. Since autoresponder services
usually are set up to send automatic responses to
the people on the list at certain intervals after they
sign up, setting up an autoresponder to send out an
ezine can be a little confusing.

Depending on the service or autoresponder that you
are using, you will need a ‘broadcast’ feature. The
broadcast feature works essentially the same as the
autoresponse feature, with one big difference. The
messages are not sent out at intervals. The
messages can, however, be scheduled to go out on
a certain day, which has no bearing on when the
subscriber was actually added to the mailing list.
Broadcast messages are ‘one time’ messages that
are only sent to your current mailing list. People
who sign up for your list after the broadcast has
been sent do not receive it, unless the specifically
request it with an autoresponder address, which
you must set up.

Using the broadcast feature of most autoresponder
services, you can simply go and either type your
newsletter, or copy and paste it into the editor, then
choose to send the broadcast to your entire mailing
list. More advanced autoresponder services will
usually have broadcasting features.

Using an autoresponder to maintain a mailing list
and to distribute a newsletter is a wonderful idea.
Your subscribers can easily opt-in, or opt-out, and
all of the distribution is handled for you, based on
the schedule that you set. List maintenance can
become very difficult without the automation that
autoresponders provide. You can write each issue
of your ezine or newsletter well in advance, and
have it delivered to your mailing list, no matter
where you are or what you are doing. That is the
beauty of automation!

Since all past broadcast and autoresponse
messages are saved, you can easily refer back to
old issues, or allow people to request past issues.
You can also use the tracking feature throughout
each issue of the newsletter to determine how
many clicks you are getting for the various products
or websites that you promote in your ezine.

If you have not yet purchased an autoresponder or
signed up with any autoresponder service, make
sure that you inquire about the broadcast feature
first. Not all autoresponders or autoresponder
services have this feature, and as your marketing
progresses, you will find that this is one of the most
useful features of the service or program.

Using Your Autoresponder to Generate Leads

2009-05-12T00:51:00.000-07:00

Autoresponders are one of the most important marketing tools that you can have if you are doing business online. In fact, the
only thing more important that the autoresponder is your opt-in list! But all autoresponders start out without a list – the list doesn’t
exist until your autoresponder mailing list starts filling up with names and email addresses!

The easiest and fastest way to build up an email list is to give things away for free. Some marketers will tell you that this is a
waste of time – and if you already have a list of one hundred thousand people that you can market to, then it probably is. But for
those who do not already have a list, this is the way that it gets built! You simply pay for advertisement to promote your freebie.
Don’t think of this as lost money, think of it as an investment in future earnings.

Give away an ezine, free reports, free ebooks, free access to private websites, or anything else that you can think of. The object is
to get people to sign up to receive that freebie, and to agree to receive email from you in the future! It is a win-win situation for
everyone, but you get more than anyone else in the deal. The person gets a freebie. You get their name and email address, and
permission to email them in the future.

But if you do it right, you get even more than that. The freebie that you give away should also be used to promote your products or
services. Even if it just has affiliate links for products or services that are related to the topic of the freebie, it is a way to generate
extra revenue. Then, when you send email in the future, you can again promote your products or services. Just be sure to include
valuable information in the email as well, or you will have people dropping off of your autoresponder mailing list like flies!

Using every opportunity that is presented to you in the world of Internet Marketing is vital to your success. You have the opportunity
to earn money in the freebie that you create, you have the opportunity to earn money when you send the ‘thank you’ email after a
person has requested your freebie, and you have the opportunity to earn money every time an autoresponder message is sent out
to that list in the future! Don’t waste those opportunities, and put it all in automatic mode with the use of an autoresponder.

Tracking Autoresponder Responses

2009-05-12T00:39:00.000-07:00

As an Internet marketer, it is vitally important to
know how well your advertising campaigns are doing.
Advertising campaigns cost a lot of time and money,
and campaigns that are not doing well need to either
be changed or scraped. When using autoresponders
for purposes of Internet marketing, you will be able to
tell how well your autoresponder messages are doing
by using response tracking.

Autoresponder response tracking is usually easily
set up with the higher quality paid autoresponder
services. Using the tracking set up tool, you simply
enter the web site address that you want your
readers to visit, and the software generates a brand
new URL. This URL is used track the number of
clicks that you have from the autoresponder message
to the website that you are promoting.

When a person clicks on that special URL, the click
is captured, and they are automatically redirected to
the website that you intended them to arrive at. The
visitor does not know that they have been redirected
in most cases. You can monitor the results
through the control panel of your autoresponder
service account. The control panel will tell you how
many messages were delivered, and how many
clicks were received. Most quality autoresponders
will even include a feature that allows you to track
how many of the emails were opened. This is a
great marketing research tool for mass email marketing.

Not all autoresponder services offer tracking abilities
such as this. If tracking is important to you, you
need to make sure that this is one of the features of
the autoresponder service before you sign up. This
feature gives you the ability to know whether the
message you are sending out is effective, or if
changes need to be made. It also allows you to
see if the sales copy on your website is effective, in
a ‘round-about’ way. For instance, if you are getting
thousands of clicks from the autoresponder
message, but very few clicks from the sales page
to the order page, you know that the
autoresponder message is working, but the sales
copy is failing.

If you have never tracked your autoresponder
responses before, you should definitely consider it.
Again, this information allows you to find out what is
working, and what is not working. It will essentially
make your autoresponder marketing much more
effective and profitable. You will most likely be very
surprised at the results of the tracking!

The Difference Between Autoresponder Programs and Autoresponder Services

2009-05-10T01:46:00.000-07:00

Many newcomers to the Internet marketing arena are not aware that there is a vast difference between an autoresponder program
and an autoresponder service. Not knowing the difference, they often purchase the wrong type of autoresponder, and find out too
late that they have wasted money on a program that is useless to them.

An autoresponder program is a program that is set up on your web server. This is usually a free autoresponder that comes with
your web hosting account. Many people don’t like to use autoresponder services; so instead, they use an autoresponder program
that they have more control over. Some of those people don’t like the autoresponder programs that come with their hosting
accounts either and purchase autoresponder programs or scripts that must be installed on their web server.

Other people are quite happy with using an autoresponder service. This is a service that is usually paid for on a monthly or yearly
basis. The fees are ongoing, and everything is browser based. In other words, you can set up your autoresponder messages and
manage your opt-in list through your web browser – just as you can with an autoresponder program that is installed through your
web hosting account. The difference is that the service runs on the autoresponder service’s web server – not yours or your web
hosts.

Beginners are usually better off using an autoresponder service. These services are very easy to understand and to use, and no
technical knowledge is needed to set things up. As a newcomer to the field, however, you might be concerned about the costs of
an autoresponder service. If this is the case, you have the option of signing up with a free autoresponder service.

Free services make their money by placing advertisements in each autoresponder message that you send out. Sometimes these
ads appear at the top of your messages, and sometimes they appear at the bottom. Some of the free services are simply an
enticement to purchase the professional version, and have many of the more advanced features, such as tracking, disabled.

More advanced users often choose to use autoresponder programs, simply because they have more control over the autoresponder,
and they don’t have to follow some of the stiffer rules imposed by autoresponder services, such as sending confirmation to each and
every person who is entered into the autoresponders list.

The autoresponder that you choose is strictly up to you, but in most cases, an autoresponder service should suit your needs. If
you are unsure, look for a service that offers free signups, with the option of upgrading to the professional paid version at a later date.

Powerful Autoresponders – Does Yours Measure Up?

2009-05-09T04:16:00.000-07:00

Autoresponders are very necessary when it comes
to marketing or taking care of customers. But the
power of an autoresponder, or the lack of power,
can mean the difference between success and
failure.

When you use an autoresponder service, you must
make sure that the domain that the autoresponder
uses isn’t blacklisted by the spam watch groups. If
it is, your messages probably won’t make it past
the majority of spam filters, no matter how much
you check it with spam checkers.

Also, not having the ability to track responses can
cost you business. If you can’t track response rates,
you won’t have any way of knowing whether your
messages are doing you any good. A good
autoresponder will provide the ability to track
responses. If yours doesn’t, you might want to shop
for a new autoresponder.

The ability to add and remove names to your
autoresponder manually is vital. Often, people will
contact you without going through your
autoresponder. These people need to be put on the
autoresponders mailing list. If you are moving your
list from one service to another, you need the ability
to import names and addresses to your list. Again,
if your autoresponder service isn’t powerful enough
to allow this, look for a different one!

Personalizing Autoresponders

2009-05-08T03:23:00.000-07:00

Have you ever walked into a store in your town, and
been addressed by name? This has probably
happened to you at stores that you frequent often.
The shop owner knows your name, and uses it. He
remembers you, and he wants you to know that he
cared enough about you and your business to
remember you. In the offline world, this is just one
aspect of customer support.

Customer service like this is almost impossible to
achieve on the Internet, but some semblance of it
can exist when you personalize your autoresponder
messages. Autoresponder messages can be set up
to address people by their first or last name – or both.
In fact, there is quite a bit of personalized information
that can be added, depending on the autoresponder
that you are using.

The information is included in the autoresponder
messages by using codes. Each autoresponder will
use different codes to insert the information in your
messages. You simply write your message, and put
the codes where you want the personalized
information to appear. For instance, your message
may start out with ‘Hello (code for first name)! In this
case, the person’s first name will be inserted where
that code is.

Personalizing your autoresponder messages will
most likely improve your response rate. Research
has shown that emails that are personalized with the
person’s first name are opened more often, and
those people are generally more receptive to the
contents of the email message. It is usually very
easy to do. You write one message, using the
codes where you want the personalization,
then, no matter who that one email is sent out to,
their personal information will appear where the
codes are.

Of course, the autoresponder must collect the
information first. This is done with the use of forms
that activate the autoresponder. For instance, if you
are giving away a free ebook, and you have your
visitor fill out a form with their email address to receive
the download instructions for the ebook by email, that
form should collect any type of information that you
want for personalization – such as a first name, as
well as the email address. If that information is not
collected, the autoresponder won’t have anything to
insert where that code appears in your messages!

Take a look around the control panel of your
autoresponder, and find out what type of
personalization you can add to your autoresponder
messages. You may be very surprised at the
improved results!

Motivate Your Downline with Autoresponders

2009-05-07T04:28:00.000-07:00

Many affiliate marketers have a hard time building a
downline – and an even harder time keeping downline
members motivated and selling. If your income
depends on the sales of others, you should strongly
consider keeping them motivated with
autoresponders.

You can load your autoresponder with positive
messages, sales tips, and news related to the
product or service that is being sold. Many affiliates
fail simply because they don’t know how to market a
product, and they have little or no support from affiliate
managers or up line members! With the use of
autoresponders, all of that can change.

You should definitely write on some marketing tips,
specific to your product or service, and set you
downline members up in the mailing list for that
series of messages. Send broadcast messages
once a month congratulating the top sellers. Send
short motivational articles that will keep your
downline member upbeat.

Failing to communicate with your downline members
is the same as ensuring that they fail at the
business in most cases. If you want to succeed in
affiliate marketing, you have to take steps to help
your downline succeed!

Invoicing with Autoresponders

2009-05-06T05:19:00.001-07:00

If you have recurring invoices that you send out, you
can easily automate this process with
autoresponders. Many business
owners find that they spend a good portion the day
sending out invoices, or trying to collect on unpaid
invoices! This can easily eat into the time that you
could be spending generating new business.

If the amounts invoiced are the same each month,
and due on the same day each week or month, you
can easily automate the invoicing process with the
use of an autoresponder. Many shopping carts that
have autoresponders built in work well for this.
Others may take a little time to set up, but in the
end, they will save a great deal of time overall.

Get extra usage out of the automated invoicing
process by adding small messages to the invoices
that alert these clients to new products or services
that you offer. Think about your phone bill – doesn’t
your phone company send out additional sales
material with each bill? There is no reason you
shouldn’t use this same marketing technique with
your autoresponder invoices!

Improper Uses of Autoresponders

2009-05-05T03:04:00.001-07:00

Autoresponders are wonderful! They can be used for
a variety of things, but there are several ways that
autoresponders should not be used. Using
autoresponders in improper ways will make things
a bit more difficult for other people, and it could
make things really bad for you!

Having one autoresponder respond to another
autoresponder creates chaos, and in some cases, it
can overload servers. This happens when you sign
up for something, using your autoresponder email
address. You sign up, and a message is sent to
someone else’s autoresponder, which responds to
your autoresponder, which responds to that
autoresponder – and this continues on and on until
it is manually stopped and straightened out.

Some people use their autoresponder address on
purpose when they sign up for discussion lists. In
effect, this causes an their autoresponder message
to be sent to the entire list, or to one person on the
list, each time a person sends a real message to
the discussion list. Needless to say, discussion list
members and owners frown on this practice, and the
autoresponder owner gets banned.

Avoid these problems and use your autoresponder in
ways that it was meant to be used. Do not use the
autoresponder irresponsibly! Not only will you create
problems for others, but you may find that you get
reported for spam!

How Important are Autoresponders to Internet Marketing?

2009-05-04T03:01:00.000-07:00

Internet Marketing and autoresponders essentially
go hand-in-hand. In today’s online business world,
you simply cannot succeed at Internet marketing
without the use of autoresponders. Autoresponders
are used to achieve many of the marketing tasks
that are essential to a successful online business.

Internet marketing can be very time consuming.
Whether you do affiliate marketing or market your
own products, an autoresponder is a big part of your
marketing arsenal. Autoresponders are used to keep
in contact with your past customers, and to develop
a relationship with potential customers.

An autoresponder can be used to deliver sales
messages to your opt-in customer list. It can be
used to deliver email courses, to send reminders,
and even to help you build an opt-in list if you don’t
already have one. There are many creative ways you
can use your autoresponder to make more sales and
to build customer relations.

Any successful marketer will tell you that there are
two tools that are vital to any type of online
marketing – an opt-in list and an autoresponder. In
fact, most marketers will agree that you could take
away all of their other marketing tools, but they
would fight to the death to keep the list and the
autoresponder!

Give Potential Customers A Preview With Autoresponders

2009-05-03T03:05:00.000-07:00

Building customer interest and excitement is the first
step to successfully marketing many products.
Autoresponders play a vital role in building this
interest and excitement. For instance, if you were
developing an ebook, you may want to start telling
your website visitors and opt-in subscribers about it.
Start building interest; tell them what this product
will do for them, and how soon it will be available.

Do more than build interest by telling them about it.
Use an autoresponder to let them preview your
product! Even though you will be selling the product,
you can allow your potential customers to preview
the information. Have you ever seen previews for
movies that will be playing intheaters soon? It is the
same concept.

Load one chapter of the ebook into an autoresponder,
and put a form on your website where your visitors
can enter their name and email address to receive
the preview chapter free of charge. This gets their
name on your list of potential customer. Each
week, send a reminder email, letting them know how
close the release date is, and what they can expect
from your product – keep building interest and
excitement.

Finally, a couple of days before you are ready to
launch your product offer those that received the
preview the option to buy a pre-release copy. You
canopt to offer a discounted price, or leave the price
as it will be on launch day – the choice is yours.

Take a look at the list of people who signed up to
receive the preview. How many of them are still ‘
subscribed’ to that list? They’ve had the option to
stop receiving notices about your product, but they
chose to keep receiving the information you were
sending. These are highly targeted prospects for
your product. They have already shown you that
they have an interest in your product, and a large
number of those people are simply waiting on the
autoresponder broadcast message that will let
them know that it is time to pick up their copy of
your product!

Isn’t automation a wonderful thing? Using an
autoresponder, you are able to see how much of a
market there is for your product, and build a great
deal of interest in it before it is ever released. This
isthe key to making sales on launch day. Use
autoresponders to build the interest. Get your
prospects excited about what is about to come –
andon launch day, give them what they are waiting
for andwatch the sales pour in!

Getting Your Autoresponder Messages Through The Spam Filters

2009-05-02T04:19:00.000-07:00

In light of the spam problem, most email clients now
have spam filters installed. These filters catch spam
email and either move it to a ‘spam folder’ or
automatically delete it. After spending a great deal
of time laboring over your series of autoresponder
messages, it would be a shame to find out that the
majority of the messages that are sent out end up
in the spam folder, or are automatically deleted as
spam!

You can avoid this in two ways. First, when anyone
signs up to receive information from your
autoresponder, have them automatically redirected
to a page that gives them instructions for ‘white
listing’ you. Email clients have an actual white list
where the owner of the email client can add specific
addresses that should never be considered spam.

The other way to make sure that your autoresponder
messages get through the spam filters is to check
them using one of the various spam checkers that
are available online. These programs are often web
based, and free to use. They check your message
for words or phrases that commonly trigger spam
filters in email clients. Don’t send out any
autoresponder messages without doing a spam
check first!

Formatting Autoresponder Messages

2009-05-01T02:36:00.000-07:00

Have you received emails that were all broken up?
These emails have one or two words on one line,
then eight or ten words on the next line. In some
cases, one word begins on one line and ends on the
next. These emails are very hard to read, and they
appear to be very unprofessional. Is this what you
want your autoresponder email messages to look
like?

If not, you need to learn how to format your
messages. Start by reading the instructions for your
specific autoresponder. Each one operates a bit
differently in the way that it handles text. For
instance, some autoresponder messages will be
messed up if you do put a ‘hard line break’ at the
end of each line, while others will be messed up if
you don’t! Find out what the right option is for your
autoresponder!

Because each email client is different, you should
not allow any line in your message to exceed 65
characters. This will help prevent lines from breaking
up, and it is achieved by hitting the ‘enter’ key at
the end of each sixty-five character line. The best
way to be sure that your autoresponder messages
are delivered in the correct format is to send them
to yourself, before you send them to your list!

Email Courses and Autoresponders

2009-04-30T02:58:00.000-07:00

Offering free things to your website visitors is one
marketing method that often results in a lot of sales.
Free courses that are delivered via email are very
popular, and people sign up for such courses on a
regular basis to learn more about a topic of interest
to them. These courses are best maintained and
delivered with the use of autoresponders.

An autoresponder can be set up to send out a
series of lessons for an email course. The lessons
can be set for distribution at specific intervals. You
determine how often the lessons for the course are
sent to the people who have signed up for it. Email
courses are very different from traditional courses,
web based courses, or any other type of course.

There is no student and instructor interaction. The
instructor writes the information out, puts each
lesson in an autoresponder series, sets the timing
for the lessons, and the rest is automated. You can
opt to have lessons delivered daily, every other day,
every three days, or any other time frame that you
think works best for your email students.

Email courses are commonly used to sell products
and services. For instance, if you sell widgets, you
might develop a course that teaches people how to
use widgets or how to care for their widget. Experts
agree that an email course can be written for
almost any product that you can imagine – if you
put enough thought into it.

Start by determining what your course will be about,
and how long it should be. If the course should be
delivered every other day for two weeks, you know
that you would need seven lessons. Write the
lessons, and load them in the autoresponder. Set
the interval for each lesson, which in this case would
be 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13.

This means that the first lesson would be delivered
one day after the person has requested the course,
and the second lesson would be delivered three days
after the person has requested the course, and so
on. The interval for each lesson is set for the
number of days after the person has signed up
Make sure that everything is spelled right, and that
your sentences are grammatically correct. You
want the lessons to look and sound as professional
as possible.

Next, simply advertise the email address that will
activate the autoresponder. Make sure that you run
a test first, sending each lesson to yourself. This will
allow you to see what your email students will see
when they sign up!

Customer Service with Autoresponders

2009-04-29T02:55:00.000-07:00

Ideally, when you perform customer service, it is
done on a one-on-one basis with each of your
customers. That works quite well in the offline world
– but on the Internet, that simply will not do. Your
customers are literally all over the world, and there is
no way that you can really deal with each one of
them personally. That is where an autoresponder
comes in.

Customer service with autoresponders is quite
simple. When an order is place, an autoresponder
can send out the receipt for the sale, the information
for accessing the product, and a ‘thank you’ email.
This happens whether you are logged in to your
computer or on vacation in an exotic location! But
customer service doesn’t always end right there, and
if you are away from your computer, you may be
letting your customers down!

For instance, an elderly gentleman sees your
product advertised and places an order. Everything
goes through just fine, and he receives the receipt,
the download information, and your ‘thank you’ email.
Your product is an ebook, compiled into a PDF file.
This particular gentleman doesn’t understand what
a PDF file is, and he has no idea what you mean by
‘right click to download.’ He needs additional
customer service for the product that he has
purchased, and there is nobody available to help
him – nobody but an autoresponder.

Set up an additional autoresponder that will send out
a list of frequently asked questions or problems that
deal with customer service or how to access the
product. Also set up a support autoresponder. If he
sends a message to support, he should get an
instant message back letting him know that his
message has been received, and how soon it will be
addressed. This will give him some measure of
comfort, and in most cases, he will wait that
specified period of time for assistance.

However, if he doesn’t know how to download the
product, and he sends a message to support, and
nothing happens, he will most likely become very
dissatisfied in a very short period of time. The
difference between a patient customer and an irate
customer is one simple autoresponder message
that can and should be set up in under five minutes.

Really think your ordering process through, and
consider the potential problems that may occur for
your customers. Get an autoresponder set up to
address those problems, and you will find that your
customers are more satisfied with your products,
and extremely satisfied with your customer service –
all because your autoresponders handle their
problems right away!

Business Automation with Autoresponders

2009-04-28T02:49:00.001-07:00

Automation is important to all businesses. The less
time we have to spend doing small tasks, the more
time we have to make more money – or we could
spend that time doing something besides working.
Putting an online business on auto pilot isn’t difficult
at all – and it is all done with the use of
autoresponders!

Autoresponders can be used to get people to your
website, or to promote products and services.
Simply plug your sales message into the
autoresponder, along with some valuable
information that your potential may want or need,
and advertise that autoresponders address.

Once the person arrives at your site, and goes
through your ordering process, another
autoresponder kicks in. This autoresponder
should send out a receipt, as well as information
that will grant the customer access to whatever it
is that they have purchased. Another autoresponder
message should be sent out after this, thanking the
customer for their business, and letting them know
about similar or related products or services that they
may be interested in.

The beauty of this is that while all of this ordering is
going on, and these important customer service
emails are being sent, you can be off doing
something else! The more automation you can
integrate into your online business, the better off
you will be.

Build Interest With Autoresponder Messages

2009-04-27T02:29:00.000-07:00

If you are using your autoresponder to sell a product
or service, you must be very careful as to how you
approach your potential customer. Few people like
a hard sale, and marketers have known for years
that in most cases, a prospect must hear your
message an average of seven times before they will
make a purchase. How do you accomplish this with
autoresponders?

It’s really quite simple, and in fact, the
autoresponders make getting the message to your
potential customers those seven times possible. On
the Internet, without the use of autoresponders, you
probably could not achieve that. Too often, marketers
make the mistake of literally slamming the potential
customer with a hard sales pitch with the first
autoresponder message – this won’t work.

You build interest slowly. Start with an informative
message – a message that educates the reader in
some way on the topic that your product or service
is related to. At the bottom of the message, include
a link to the sales page for your product. Use that
first message to focus on the problem that your
product or service can solve, with just a hint of the
solution.

Build up from there, moving into how your product or
service can solve a problem, and then with the next
message, ease into the benefits of your product –
giving the reader more actual information with each
and every message. Your final message should be
the sale pitch – not your first one! With each
message, make sure that you are giving the
customer information pertaining to the topic – free
information! This is what will keep them interested
in what you have to say.

This type of marketing is an art. It may take time to
get it exactly right. Use the examples that other
marketers have set for you. Pay attention to the
messages that you receive from other marketers.
Start a ‘swap’ file, and keep those messages. Use
some of the better sales copy for your own
autoresponder messages – just make sure that
yours doesn’t turn out to be an exact copy of
someone else’s sales message!

Remember not to start with a hard sale. Build your
potential customers interest. Keep building on what
the problem is, and how your product or service can
solve that problem or fill that need. If you are doing
this right, by the time the potential customer reads
the last message in that series, they will be
convinced enough to make a purchase!

Autoresponder Training Sessions

2009-04-26T01:51:00.000-07:00

Autoresponders work very well when it comes to
training others. This is why autoresponders are the
perfect way to conduct email courses. But there are
other types of training that can be done with
autoresponders as well.

Even college professors have found a use for
autoresponders. They can use them to remind
students about upcoming tests, or to deliver study
guides. Since the information in that professor’s
course is taught over and over again each time a
new class comes in, this saves the professor a
great deal of time.

Autoresponders are also used by colleges to remind
faculty and students about upcoming events.
Because events are scheduled in advance, these
autoresponder messages are set up in advance,
and nobody has to depend on a secretary to get
those notices out!

Many businesses use autoresponders to keep their
employees trained. When new equipment is brought
into the office, and employees need to know how to
operate it, an autoresponder can be set up with
training instructions.

No matter what kind of business you are in, there is
a way that autoresponders can be used. The use of
an autoresponder will save quite a bit of time, and it
can also serve to make the people in your
organization much for effective.

Autoresponders – The More You Know, The More Effective They Are

2009-04-25T04:14:00.000-07:00

If you have signed up with an autoresponder service,
you need to take the time to read the instructions to
learn how to use the service – before you load the
first word of your first message! Not knowing how to
use the service will lead to many mistakes, and
your customers and potential customers will most
likely see every mistake you make!

As soon as you have complete the sign up process,
load one email address into the autoresponders
mailing list – yours. If there is a manual or help file
for your autoresponder, read every word of it, and
really learn how to use all of the features of the
autoresponder.

Work with it, sending messages to your own address,
until you know your autoresponder service inside and
out! This may take a little time, but after a few hours
or so, you should know all that there is to know, and
you will be able to set your autoresponders up much
more effectively in the future. Taking the time to learn
now, will not only save time in the future, it may also
help you tweak and tune your autoresponder
messages and tracking in a way that increases your
responses!

Autoresponders and Spam – What You Need To Know

2009-04-24T03:26:00.000-07:00

There are laws against sending spam. There are
even laws that you must adhere to when you send
out email that was requested. No matter what type
of email you are sending out, the chances are good
that the anti-spam laws apply to you in some way.

In order to be in compliance with the anti-spam laws
in various states in the US, each commercial email
that you send must include your name or business
name, your street address, city, state, zip code,
and phone number. You must also include
instructions that will allow the recipient to remove
themselves from your mailing list. If you fail to do
any of this, you are essentially breaking the law in
various states – no matter what state or country you
live in!

Protect yourself from spam complaints in any way
that you can. Make sure that when a customer
requests any type of information from you that an
email is sent requesting confirmation before any
other email is sent. If someone is placing an order
from you, include a check box on the order form,
asking for permission to send them periodic emails.
Never use your autoresponder to send unsolicited
commercial email!

Autoresponders and Shopping Cart Integration

2009-04-23T04:13:00.000-07:00

When people place orders through your website, it
is always a good idea to immediately acknowledge
the purchase. One way to do this is with the use of
an autoresponder that can be integrated with your
shopping cart. In fact, many shopping carts that are
available today have their own autoresponders built
into the system.

When you set up your autoresponder to send a
message to someone that has placed an order,
there are several things that should be included in the
message. This is an opportunity to ‘speak’ to your
customer, and to let them know about other deals
that you have or special items that you have available.
You should not miss this opportunity.

Do not try to get your ‘thank you’ sales message on
the same autoresponder as the customers email
receipt. Putting the sales message on an email that
is automatically sent to grant the customer access
to their purchase is also a bad idea – that would go
better with the receipt. Make sure your ‘thank you’
sales message is a message that is sent out all by
itself, so your customer can focus solely on that!

Thank the customer for their recent purchase. Tell
them how much their purchase will help them, and
then tell them about other available products that
work well with the one that they just purchased, or
that are similar to the one that they just purchased
in some way. For instance hair conditioner works
with hair shampoo. Vacuum cleaner bags or carpet
powder works well with vacuum cleaners. Just let
them know about the various products that you offer
that will compliment their purchase in some way.

The important thing is to not let your customer get
away without further contact! Think about being in a
brick and mortar store. When you go up to the
counter to pay, there are many items there for sale.
These items are meant to be picked up as last
minute purchases, or impulsive purchases. Your
‘thank you’ sales letter serves the same purpose.

Don’t make the mistake of bombarding your
customer! You can usually send them periodic
information about your specials after they have made
a purchase through you, but emailing them on a
daily basis with your offers is not good business!
Use your autoresponder responsibly! Make sure that
your autoresponder is set up to handle automatic
remove requests, and make sure that the information
that you are sending your customers is of value to
them.

Autoresponder Access to Secret Pages

2009-04-22T06:12:00.001-07:00

People love to have access to things that other
people can’t get. It makes them feel special, and it
is a marketing tactic that really works. Granting
access to secret pages works well on the Internet.
It works best when it is limited. For instance, you
can grant access to only a lucky few, or you can
have a time limit for accessing the pages. You can
grant access to secret pages on your website with
an autoresponder.

The way this works is quite simple. You create a
directory on your website that is password protected,
with one login and password that everybody can use.
You then create some valuable content for that
directory. You can call this your secret vault or your
private stash or anything else you want to call it – as
long as it sounds like something that your visitors
may really want to get their hands on. For instance
‘the secret tools that helped me earn thousands
each month’ would probably entice many people
who want to learn how to make money.

Once you get the directory and the pages set up,
put the URL of the pages and the login name and
password in an autoresponder. Write a sales page
and distribute it to your opt-in list, or have other list
owners distribute it to theirs. Make sure you ‘limit’
the offer. Don’t let people assume that you are
going to share this secret information with the rest
of the world – they want to be the only ones with
this special access!

Keep access to the secret pages free. The goal is to
get people to those pages, so that they can purchase
your products or services. However, remember that
you’ve advertised secret tools or secret information.
Therefore, when they get to those pages, there must
be something of value there for them to collect – for
free in most cases. Don’t make the mistake of
thinking that you will be losing money by giving
something away for free – you won’t. In fact, you’ve
already gained by collecting the names and
addresses of the people who were interested in
your secret information!

Again, this is a marketing tactic that really works,
and it is a great way to use an autoresponder. Once
people have requested the information for your private
pages, you can email them periodically, using your
autoresponder, to let them know about updates to
the secret site. While you are updating them, you
can also tell them about other specials or new
products in your line.

Articles and Autoresponders

2009-04-21T03:00:00.001-07:00

Writing articles to market a product or service is an
excellent way to build business. The articles should
be very informative, providing the reader with
information that is relevant to a specific topic. The
article usually includes a link to a webpage for more
information. The webpage, of course, is designed to
sell a product or service that relates to the topic of
the article.

These articles are commonly submitted to article
banks, websites, and ezine publishers. This is one
of the most effective ways to market a service or
product on the Internet, and it can become even more
effective when it is combined with the use of an
autoresponder.

Begin by setting each of your articles up in your
autoresponder. It is important that each article have
its very own autoresponder address, so you will
need an autoresponder service that will allow you to
do this. Next, make a master list of your articles, with
the autoresponder address for each article listed
beside the title. You can even add descriptions of the
articles on your master list if you want to.

Advertising your articles one at a time can take a
great deal of time…but advertising one autoresponder
address – the one for the master list – won’t take
very much time at all. Simply put it in your newsletter
and on your website. You can even allow other
ezine publishers to use this is a free resource for
their subscribers!

Introduction to Autoresponders

2009-04-20T04:19:00.001-07:00