Strategies For Finding Topics To Write About
What possibly could I have to write about? I never was good at it anyway. It doesn’t matter how hard I try, I just sit and stare and stare at a blank screen.
Sound familiar? Don’t worry. We all have gone through this. It happens to me periodically. If you experience this at any point, it is a good signal that you need a change in creative direction. Here are a few tips to help you find topics to write about and get your creative juices flowing.
I personally like to write with pen and paper. For one, I can take it anywhere. Well, o.k. with a laptop you can take it almost where ever you wish as well. But, when the battery is gone and there is not a single electrical outlet in sight, I will still be sitting there writing until I get my fill.
You periodically need to change your scenery. This always helps me. If I am at a block, I get up, take pen and paper and head out of the house. I frequent outdoor cafes when I can. The openness and fresh air helps me think. You can also just try a different part of your house.
I try to at least keep a notebook, or sticky notes somewhere within reach at every point in the day. Why? Ideas usually come to me when I am not at my desk. One of the best ways I have developed to find new topics is to spend what I call “routine task time” thinking about recent articles I have read. Routine task time is the time you spend washing dishes, cleaning, driving home(of course pay attention to the road here as well!), etc. Make use of this time if you can.
Write down any idea that comes to mind. Don’t worry about whether is seems reasonable at the moment. You will edit and refine later if need be. More than likely you will throw away half of the ideas you come up with. You’ll find however that these ideas bring out other topics that you may never have thought about.
Go to the web. I can’t stress this enough. Need new topics? See what other people are writing about. Try www.CNet.com, or any other internet / technology or business website to find the new hot topics. Are you writing about hobbies? Check out the top hobby sites. Don’t hesitate to use the internet and what others are doing to keep your writing up to par.
Writing articles for your own E-Zine or to be published elsewhere for advertising is the most powerful resource for promoting your online business. Practice it, develop it, prune it. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed. This is the most prized resource that you can pull from to succeed online.
Author Bio:
Dan J. Fry is an independent researcher and owner of e-Kinetic.com, a site devoted to providing resources for small budget home businesses. He has a PhD in Physics, two daughters and two cats. Subscribe to his free E-Zine on home business resources at e-kinetic@GetResponse.com or by visiting his site at http://www.e-kinetic.com. He can be reached at mailto:comp@e-kinetic.com.
Been Banned By Yahoo?
It is interesting to watch the varied reactions to the new Yahoo! search. As a spectator I can sit back and take it all in and form my own opinions. I can then apply my ideas to my clients and watch them succeed. One such topic of interest of late is Yahoo!’s policy on spam in the index.
To quote what Yahoo! considers unwanted:
“Some, but not all, examples of the more common types of pages that Yahoo! does not want included:
• Pages that harm accuracy, diversity or relevance of search results
• Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page
• Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages
• Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames
• Pages in great quantity, automatically generated or of little value
• Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking
• The use of text that is hidden from the user
• Pages that give the search engine different content than what the end-user sees
• Excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site’s apparent popularity
• Pages built primarily for the search engines
• Misuse of competitor names
• Multiple sites offering the same content
• Pages that use excessive pop-ups, interfering with user navigation
• Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent or provide a poor user experience
• Yahoo!’s Site Guidelines are designed to ensure that poor-quality pages do not degrade the user experience in any way.”
As you can see, there is a lot of grey area here. While most points are pretty straight forward, some like “Pages in great quantity, automatically generated or of little value” could include dynamically generated database driven pages (like a storefront or e-commerce site) while “Excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site’s apparent popularity” could include sites which use legitimate link building strategies to help their rankings.
So what do you do? How do you know if your site falls into these categories? In other words, how do you determine if your site may be considered spam?
I would suggest taking a critical look at your site. Does it follow the guidelines listed in their help section on pages which Yahoo! does want included in its index? For example, are they original? Built for humans primarily? Contain useful information? These are all questions you need to keep in the back of your mind as you assess your site.
If you have concerns that perhaps you could be violating some of these rules, perhaps you need to look at what is needed to ensure you are in full compliance with Yahoo!’s recommendations. I would strongly suggest you do this review. If you do get removed from the index because of the spam policy it could be very difficult to get re-indexed according to Yahoo!’s own spam police.
So should you convert your dynamic site to static?
The simple answer is no. There is no need to scrap that content management system you’ve likely spent months and years developing. Perhaps simply adding more useful content to some of the pages is all that is needed. By following Yahoo!’s own rules you should be able to reconstruct some of your pages to ensure they don’t get banned.
Does this mean you should quit doing link building or remove your links page?
I don’t think you should discontinue link building, but if you are doing reciprocal linking, take a look at the site to which you are linking as well as those sites linking to you. You may need to reassess the quality of your link partners using the same tests you put your own site through.
With regards to your link partners, again, assess them for quality. Are they in related industries? Are they worthy of linking to? That is, do they also follow the Yahoo! guidelines? If not then perhaps you will want to consider temporarily removing their links from your site. You may even go so far as to contact them and suggest they perform their own analysis of their site based on the new Yahoo! rules.
So what if you think you have already been removed for this reason?
There is an email address (webmasterworldfeedback AT yahoo DOT com) to which you can send a request for review. This is only a temporary fix, as they plan on implementing a full review process in the coming months.
Also keep in mind that Yahoo! search is still in its infancy. As time goes on it will get better. Perhaps their filters are over filtering sites which are legitimate, but it should get better with time. They can’t anger too many people early on, as they are trying to build a competitive search engine. If they start alienating webmasters or legitimate site owners they risk losing search customers to other engines such as Google or MSN.
Author Bio:
Rob Sullivan
Production Manager
Searchengineposition.com
Search Engine Positioning Specialists
Search Engine Advertising & Keyword Matching
Search engines seem to be all the rage these days. Internet users want easy accessibility to various sites for shopping, entertainment, business, etc. And the best way to do this is with the help of search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Overture.
So, how do advertisers get their listings on these ever-popular sites? Google and Overture, the two major players in search engine marketing, offer two ways–organic (natural) or paid listings. We’re going to explore the latter and how you can make it work for you, particularly with respect to keyword match types.
Google Match Types
Google AdWords is Google’s own advertising system, allowing advertisers to “create your own ads, choose keywords to tell us where to show your ads and pay only when someone clicks on them,” boasts its site. It is basically a way to purchase Google’s search engine keywords.
In order to get users to see your Google ad placement, you must first determine what keywords you will apply in relevance to your ad. Google has four different keyword matching options, each with their own stipulations as to how you can target different sets of users. General keywords generate the most impressions but often result in fewer clicks. On the other hand, by changing your matching options you can better target your ads. The options are as follows:
Broad Match: The most basic and common option, you include your keyword/keyword phrase (usually best to go with a phrase because users generally search for 2-3 words) in your keyword list. Say you list tennis shoes…your ads will appear when a user searches for the words tennis and shoes in any order. Furthermore, your ad will appear when a user searches for plural terms or similar variations.
Phrase Match: When you enter a keyword in quotation marks like “shower curtains” your ad will show when a user looks for this exact term in this order. It can also be viewed when someone does a search for green shower curtains, but not for curtains for shower. Phrase matching is obviously more targeted than broad match and is more flexible than exact match, the next option.
Exact Match: This is the most targeted option of the four. You surround your keyword in brackets-[jewelry cleaner]-and subsequently your ad will only show when a user searches for jewelry cleaner, in this order and without any other terms. Undoubtedly, this is extremely targeted. You are likely to receive more clicks than impressions.
Negative Keyword: Perhaps you sell dog collars of all colors–except green. You can set your keyword for dog collars but add the word green as your negative keyword. In other words, simply type in -green. If someone wants a green dog collar, he/she will not see your ad.
Overture Match Types
Search engine marketers should note that while Google and Overture offer similar services, they apply different terms. So, be conscious of this fact when distinguishing between the different options.
Overture allows you to bid differently for each match type. There are currently three of these options, but Overture also allows for negative keywords, like Google.
Standard Match: This is the equivalent of Google’s broad match option. If your bidded search term is diamond ring your ad will appear when someone types that exact phrase, singular/plural variations of the words, or misspells any word/s.
Phrase Match: Overture will preserve your search term in its exact order but will also allow for other terms to be included in the query, as well. E.G.- The bidded search term is golf shoes. If a user enters “golf shoes in size 10” your listing will show.
Broad Match: True to form, your listing will appear when your search term is used in the broadest form. For example, if a user types in “car used in James Bond movie” and your term is used car…your listing will appear.
Regional Targeting
It is important to note that there are also regional targeting options for advertisers. Google recently implemented this feature and it is sure to gain momentum. Regional targeting allows advertisers to not only specify a particular country, but states and regions, too. This option can benefit advertisers that are trying to reach people in particular areas.
If you are selling your product or services but can only provide them to a very specific area, this is a very effective option to implement. Prospects in your targeted area/s will see your ad even if they enter very general terms.
Determining what keywords you will use is an extremely difficult task. Both Google and Overture have keyword tools to assist you, but it still takes time, strategy, and good ole’ playing around to figure out what words are the most effective.
Search engine marketers need simply to put themselves in the shoes of Internet users. What terms do they commonly use? What combinations?
With some fine-tuning and research, any advertiser is sure to gain from paid search listings.
Author:
By Loren M. Baker of the Search Engine Journal
The basics of a mailing list structure
The short and sweet of it is that a mailing list is nothing more than a plain text file that contains email addresses. Sometimes these *flat files* also contain first and last names, as well as other additional and optional information.
A *flat file* is a term used to describe a storage file that is not a database. Generally, the flat file is a plain text document without the .txt or other file extension attached to it.
If a flat file contains more than one piece of data, then each additional item is separated from the next by commas or other delimiters. The pipe key (shift – back slash) or the tab key serve as the next most popular delimiters used in flat files.
Each new record will appear on a new line. The new line is signaled by the carriage return in the file.
Examples showing the use of delimiters & the reason for considering delimited files
Note: These examples show two leading spaces in front of each record. In real life data files, your records should not contain the leading spaces.
Mailing List Example A:
tom@domain.com
dick@other-domain.com
harry@third-domain.com
Example A permits the mailing list owner to only send an email
to a defined address.
Mailing List Example B:
tom@domain.com,Tom Jefferson
dick@other-domain.com,Dick Nixon
harry@third-domain.com,Harry Truman
Example B permits the mailing list owner to send an email to Tom Jefferson at tom@domain.com . Addressing the mail directly to Tom Jefferson encourages Tom to pay close attention to your email, since he knows that you have acquired his real name in addition to your email address. Most personalized emails will never be thought to be a s/p/a/m message by the person who receives it.
Mailing List Example C:
tom@domain.com|Tom|Jefferson
dick@other-domain.com|Dick|Nixon
harry@third-domain.com|Harry|Truman
Example C is the most versatile of the three examples. In some cases, it makes sense to personalize the list owner’s messages. Whereas, Example B will permit you to address someone by first name or first and last name — depending on how you direct subscribers to sign up — it does not always serve the more personable style of mixing and matching the first name and the combination of the first and last name as provided for by Example C.
Utilizing delimited data in your mailings
Depending on the software that you will use to initiate your mailing, you will be directed to show where you want the additional data fields in your mailings.
The range of software available makes it nearly impossible to quantify the various methods to get your personalized data into your mailing. As such, I will only define an example to show the basic idea of how to do this.
Personalization Example:
To: #FIRST# #LAST# <j#EMAIL#>
Dear #FIRST#,
Welcome to my example of a personalized mailing.
According to our records, your subscription information is as follows:
Name: #FIRST# #LAST#
Email: #EMAIL#
#FIRST#, we appreciate your attention to this information
as we feel it will help you better utilize the tools of
the Internet in your activities. In the end, the more
knowledgable you become, the more likely that the Internet
will become a more useful place for all of us.
Sincerely,
Your Publisher
As you can see, it can be far more useful to you and your purposes to address your subscribers as individual human beings with individual desires. As all of the sales teachers in the world will tell you, the one word that humans enjoy hearing most is the sound of their own name. Even in print, people appreciate being spoken to directly as an individual person.
Delimited files give you the power of utilizing multiple data resources connected to your individual records.
Methods of mail delivery
There are two basic methods of delivering your email to your mailing list. The first is by direct email, and the second is by a website interface.
Direct Delivery Method –
The direct mail method is the most complicated method from the programming perspective. If you are using a mailing list management company such as YahooGroups or Topica, then they will have done the hard work for you. If you are managing your own mailing list, then you will need to jump through some hoops to get your infrastructure set up for the direct mail method.
You will need to set up your server to take any incoming mail to a specific address and to process that email through a mail handling script. The script will search for and verify your posting password, and then the script will reformat your message for direct delivery to your mailing list.
Using this method, you will actually address your outgoing email to a specific email address, often accompanied by a posting password. The posting address may appear in this kind of format:
mailing-list-name-[password]@your-domain.com
Website Interface Delivery Method –
From the technical perspective, this is the easiest delivery method to construct. It only requires the publisher to visit a webpage, fill out a form, and click the send button.
Clicking the send button will take the placed information and send it to the mailing script. Once again, the mailing script will take the given information and format it into an outgoing email message for direct mailing to your mailing list.
Actual mailing list delivery process
Whether you are using the direct mail or website interface method to get your data into the mailing script, the next step is the same. It is important to note that by the time you reach this point in the process, the outbound delivery is completely out of your own hands. Now is the time for the server to deliver on its part of the process.
Your mailing script has taken your input and put it into a direct mail format. Once that is completed, it is time to mail the information to each and every email address in your list.
The basic message structure is kept in its own variable. This variable will not change during the entire mailing process.
The basic message structure is then copied into a second variable, and the final preparation is done on that message as each individual mailing is prepared.
The software will read each record in your flat file or your database, and then the personalized data will be exchanged for the #FIRST#, #LAST# and #EMAIL# as it appears in your message construct. Once the personalized data is swapped for the variables in the text, the message will be delivered to the defined email address.
This process is repeated for each record in your mailing list.
Depending on how busy the server is and the size of your list, the mailing process could take two minutes or even twenty minutes.
A suggestion for the actual delivery of your message
Having learned the hard way, I do highly recommend that you set up your posting address as a special email address that you do not use for everyday business.
The reason is simple. With each and every mailing, you will find a certain level of attrition in your mailing list. People change email addresses everyday without unsubscribing from mailing lists; people lose their email accounts due to unpaid ISP bills; and people exceed the size limits of their mailboxes. People quit the Internet and die. That’s the reality of life on the Internet.
But with some fore planning, you can prevent a nightmare in your own email box. Lists that I have managed have experienced as little as two or three people, and as high as a 5% attrition every month. The list that I managed that had the 5% attrition rate also had 20,000 subscribers. As such, I was receiving 1,000 bounced emails every month with that one list.
I did not utilize a special address for my mailings at that time, and as such, I was losing track of important messages under the barrage of bounced email messages. This is the only reason I suggest the use of a special limited use email address.
Another list I managed later had an attrition rate of about 4% with 100,000 subscribers. With this second list, my secondary email address was receiving 4,000 bounced messages every month.
If you are using a mailing service such as YahooGroups or Topica, they will handle the bounced messages for you, so there would be no concern using your primary email address with those messages.
The process of subscribing & unsubscribing & the selection of the email server in the process
For the average mailing list, the process of adding or deleting an email address is as simple as going into the file or database and removing the record.
It must be noted that while there are several email servers available to webmasters, there are two servers that are used far more often than the others.
One email server software is called Sendmail. For the longest time, this was the most often used email server. It is still in wide use today.
The second email server software is called Qmail. Qmail is most often used by e-commerce mass mailers. Simply, Qmail offers more flexibility and speed and fewer bugs than Sendmail could ever dream of providing. It is also easier to customize.
If you visit a website and ask to be unsubscribed from the website’s mailing list, and the website notifies you that your name will be removed from the list within 48 to 72 hours, then you should assume that the website is utilizing Qmail as their mail server.
On the surface, this 48 to 72 hour window might seem like a scam — it is not. Qmail actually sets up an outgoing email and then queues that message for a later delivery. Qmail does this because it is usually set up on a very high volume mail server. By queuing the message for later delivery, the server can actually continue to process outgoing mail as long as the resources to do so are available for the task. If the messages were not queued for later delivery, multiple requests to deliver mail within a certain limited time period could crash the mail server. A crashed server is always bad news.
The site who is promising removal within the next 48 to 72 hours is actually telling you in advance how far ahead they have already queued outbound messages. Any piece of email that is already in the queue cannot be stopped from being delivered. Therefore, if a message exists in the queue with your address already on it, then there is nothing the webmaster can do to stop that mailing. Instead, all they can do is to let you know that you will no longer receive mail from them on any email that is sent to the queue from this point forward.
In conclusion
With this tutorial, you should now have a better understanding of the nature of a mailing list and how it works. For some of you, I will likely have provided too much information. For others of you, I will have not provided enough.
Either way, if you are looking for help in setting up your own mailing list, most web hosting companies that you might use to host your domain will have already provided an option to you for your mailing list management.
However, it must be noted that not all mailing list software is equal to the other. I have used some really bad software packages, and have yet to explore the full range of what is available to you. I do not have an actual recommendation for you as to a good software to use. What I can do for you is to provide a good starting point for locating that software you will need to run your mailing list efficiently:
http://cgi-resources.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/Mailing_Lists/
By using an already developed mailing list manager, all you will need to know is how to install the software on your server and how to set the file permissions on the package files. Be sure to read the installation files that are provided with your new mailing list software. The creators of this software will tell you exactly what you need to know to get their software packages up and running.
Final precautions before sending your first email
One final but very important note. I strongly recommend that you select a mailing list management package that will install on your webserver. Additionally, notify your webhosting company that you will be running a mailing list through your account. And, for the purpose of self-preservation, always keep up-to-date backups of your website and your mailing list.
Some webhosts are very leery of letting their customers run a mailing list from the customer’s site. With all of the s/p/a/m accusations floating around, it can sometimes be a dangerous proposition to run a mailing list. Many smaller webhosting companies fear the rogue webmaster who will get their servers shut down for s/p/a/m. This is why it is so very important to notify your webhosting company of your plans to run a mailing list from your account. Make sure your webhosting company is aware of your intentions, and be sure to know where they stand on the possibility of s/p/a/m complaints. My webhosting provider takes the time to actually investigate a complaint before actually pulling the plug on any of their customers. For webhosting, I use http://www.site5.com .
Additionally, I am very serious when I say that you should never run a mailing list from your desktop. Local ISP’s are far more worried about the s/p/a/m issue than the webhosting companies are. Given that so many of us live in locations where we only have one, two or three ISP’s to choose from, we would run the significant risk of losing complete access to the Internet if we were to run a mailing list from our desktop.
Good Luck in your publishing endeavors.
Author Bio:
Bill Platt owns The Phantom Writers, a company committed to helping people to establish an Internet presence & promote their businesses through the use of Free-Reprint Articles and Press Releases. Articles are distributed to 6,000+ publishers & webmasters as part of the package. http://thePhantomWriters.com Do you write your own articles? Let us distribute them for you.
The Rise and Fall of Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs were once a great source of online revenue, a savvy webmaster with an eye for marketing could easily parley a site into a money making machine with a little luck and effort. However, the evolution and growth of the Internet has hampered the growth of fortune making affiliate programs. Constant search engine algorithm changes, along with the search engine’s clear distaste for sites participating in affiliate programs; have made it a little more difficult to earn a healthy affiliate revenue. An influx in the use of software programs that terminate cookie tracking and privacy programs that prevent webmasters from tracking referrers, have also hindered the affiliate sales channel. While it is still possible to make money through affiliate marketing, other alternatives ought to be considered.
A Healthy Alternative or Supplement
Google’s Adsense program allows approved websites to dynamically serve Google’s pay-per-click Adword results. This has become a popular alternative and an effective revenue sharing program for webmasters. Google’s spider parses the adserving website and serves ads that relate to the website’s content. While the Google’s Adsense program still has some issues, they are making efforts to improve it.
The website maintenance related to Adsense is very easy and requires very little effort. Webmasters need only to insert javascript into the webpage or website template. The javascript calls the ad from Google and will ensure that ads are served each time a visitor goes to the webpage. If the visitor clicks one of the Adsense ads served to the website, the website owner is credited for the referral.
The implementation, while simple, has its drawbacks. Google dictates the format of the ads. Webmasters can select from a handful of preformatted text boxes that lack creativity. A recent improvement allows webmasters to modify the ad boxes to resemble the website’s color scheme. Still, a far cry from some of the creative ads webmasters are accustom to.
The example below reflects how the color scheme can be modified to match the look of the website, but the ads physically don’t fit well into the overall website design.
sample modified to match sites color scheme:
http://www.hospital-software.com (scroll to the bottom)
Google determines the content of the ads that are shown. Sometimes the ads are poorly targeted, and of no interest to the website visitors.
sample of poorly targeted ads:
http://www.real-estate-supply.com
Adwords can be a great addition to a website, and when well matched to the content the revenue stream from Google is consistent and effortless.
sample of effective Adsense program:
http://www.police-supplies.com (scroll to the bottom)
http://www.small-business-software.net (scroll to the bottom)
Not that the Google Adsense program is not without its problems.as the reporting provided by Google is lacking. Google has not implemented any way to track multiple sites that serve ads; they simply show the number of ads served, the percentage of clicks received, and the revenue earned each day. Google does not disclose the amount of the revenue they share, what percentage of the revenue they earn and what someone can expect to receive for each click. Webmasters with multiple sites will have difficulty determining which websites are producing the money in the Adsense program.
With affiliate programs many webmasters implement a new browser launch with each click off the site, Adsense removes the visitor from the website and there is not currently an option to launch the visitor into another browser.
Early on Google implemented a filtering system that allowed webmasters to prevent a specific domain’s ads from being served on the website. Ad blocking meant that webmasters could prevent their competitors ads from being dynamically served on their website.
Overall, adwords are great supplements to websites where affiliate programs are either not performing or when affiliate programs don’t exist that target the sites content.
Give it a Try
Implementing and maintaing Google Adsense program on a content site requires very little effort and can often bring a steady stream of additional revenue for webmasters. Consider supplementing content and see what happens.
Author Bio:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc. a company specializing in alphanumeric paging, SMS and wireless messaging software solutions. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com, and http://www.small-business-software.net
Google Rankings On A Budget
You know the scenario. You get an occasional click from Google for a certain keyword. You go to find out why you aren’t getting more clicks, and you find out that you’re ranked in the 30’s, 50’s, or heaven forbid, the 300’s. “Great”, you think, “I finally get ranked for a good keyword and it’s a worthless ranking”.
Not necessarily.
If you got ranked for a keyword you wanted At All, the game’s not over yet. If your site’s content is geared towards that subject, you can get your ranking in search engines increased, at no cost. How?
The first thing you want to do is find out how well you are ranked for this keyword. For Google in particular, this used to be a difficult chore. In the old days of 2003, you’d spend your valuable time doing a search on your desired keyword, then a sub-search for your site, and crawling through pages of listings to find out exactly where you stood.
Now there is hope in the form of the following website.
Direct your browser to:
http://www.googlerankings.com/index.php
You can use this site to find out what number you come up for in the Google listings, which can be very powerful information if used correctly. If you’re ranked in the top 1000, you have a shot at raising your listing for that page by tweaking the page to be a little more relevant.
So, secondly, you have to know how good a shot you have at getting a better listing. Go to:
http://www.searchguild.com/difficulty/
I posted a tip about this a month ago, and it’s also in the free optimization Guide I released the week of March 7th. It tells you how hard it is to rank well for certain keywords in Google. You’ll need a free Google API key to use it.
Now that you know your chances, the third piece of information you need to know is how much traffic you can expect. Digital Point has a free tool that gives an approximation of how many hits per day a good ranking gets. Access it here:
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
Okay, let’s say everything checks out so far. You rank in the top 1000. The term you want won’t be that hard to get, and will get you enough traffic per month to justify your efforts.
Our fifth step is to take the term you chose and optimize your page.
This site does periodic reports on the search engines, and their February report gives their analysis of what the best ranking pages in Google have in common. And as a free bonus, it will also tell you what Yahoo wants. Follow the following link for details – http://www.gorank.com
Now that you know what to shoot for, you need to know how the page you want will measure up- you need to calculate your keyword density. You can also do the sixth step at gorank.com – it has a free tool that will calculate it for you. Prepare your page with that in mind, re-upload, and you’re almost done.
Great, you’re all set. Now you should submit your site to Google, right?
Wrong. Absolutely not. If you can help it, you should never, ever submit any page of your site to Google. Let it find you. HOW it finds you can affect your page rank. I don’t mean that there is a standard penalty for submitting. There’s been speculation on that for a while but I have yet to prove it matters.
What I DO know from personal experience and testing on my member’s sites, is that getting the Googlebot search engine spider to happen upon your site shaves up to 6 weeks off the standard time it takes for indexing. You can show up in Google in as little as 4 days.
Which site links to you can also affect your Google Page Rank. While this is not as important as it once was, it still carries significant weight- my site didn’t start getting spidered on a daily basis until my Page Rank increased to 5.
So even if the spider comes to your site on a Monthly basis, you’re better off waiting for the spider to come back by. That’s the seventh step, let your page be re-discovered with it’s great new changes.
And yes, there’s an even faster, better way to get Google.com’s search engine spider to re-index that page, but that’s another article, isn’t it?
Author Bio:
Subscribe to Free Traffic Secrets to find out how to get the Googlebot spider sooner at ftdsecrets-subscribe@topica.com or visit http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com to get more time-tested information on getting Free Quality Traffic to Your Site.
Boost Affiliate Sales
The old ways are not always the best ways.
The traditional model of making money from affiliate products was simple. Create an interesting website geared to a specific theme, slap up some banners for affiliate products that were related to your theme, and sit back, hoping that some of the audience your website drew would click on those banners, giving you some sales. If you really wanted to get creative you might have done some email campaigns for specific products on the side.
But email campaigns are mostly ineffective (and God-forbid you should spam anyone). And banner advertisements don’t generally work. And websites take a long time to build, and promote. And even longer to get good ranking in the search engines.
So it was a slow steady process. There were no quick routes' to affiliate gold.
Until now.
Hang on to your hats, ladies & gentlemen, because pay-per-click advertising is here!
Pay-per-click search engines like Google AdWords and Overture offer an exciting way to quickly bring highly-targeted, highly-motivated people who want to buy straight to your affiliate products and services. You don't even have to have a website.
All you have to do is write a cleverly worded ad describing your affiliate product and put it up. When searchers click on your ad, they are whisked right to the affiliate product, and given the opportunity to purchase. Wham, you've just made money. It really is that simple.
To demonstrate how quick and powerful pay-per-click advertising can be, I'll offer myself as an example. I came into the let’s make money on the Internet’ game late,and when I started I didn’t even have a website, and I barely knew what an affiliate' was.
The first month I cleared $1500 in profits, even though I barely knew what I was doing. For every one dollar I spent on pay-per-click, I got three dollars back in profits. And I was a total newbie, a marketing virgin’. I didn’t have a website, I didn’t know how to conduct an email campaign, and I barely knew what a `tracking URL’ was. Does that wake anybody up to the power of pay-per-click advertising?
However, don’t think it’s all wine and roses in the pay-per-click field. The fact is, almost everyone who tries it fails, at least initially. I failed myself, by the way. The first two days I netted over $50 in losses. And I still maintain those were the most valuable two days of my entire pay-per-click experience, in terms of how much I learned, and how quickly I adapted to the learning curve.
So don’t go into it with false expectations. Pay-per-click has a learning curve. But if you’re willing to demonstrate a little stick-to-it-ness, pay-per-click can be wildly profitable, and kick-start your affiliate sales business.
Author Bio:
Daniel Brough is the founder of AdWord Wizards, a free mentoring program designed to teach anyone how to profit from pay-per-click search engines. Want to start a profitable AdWords campaign in less than 30 minutes? Come to http://www.adwordwizard.com and sign up for this free program.
Introduction
Are you an online marketer? Or do you simply promote affiliate programs? Marketing is truly the most misunderstood word in use today on the Internet. Let me see if I can clarify this issue just a bit.
In Marketing 101 at your local university, marketing is actually the process of Product, Place, Price and Promotion.
Product
No business can exist without a product or service to sell.
In a nutshell, entrepreneurs are the people who believe in a product, service or idea, so much that they are willing to invest their lives into the development of their dream.
Historically, every major corporation in the world was started by an entrepreneur with a dream and the drive to make it a reality.
However, there comes a time in the life of every corporation when those who fear the gambling nature of their founder, squash the entrepreneurial drive that made the company a viable concern in the first place. The entrepreneur will either submit to the careful nature of the stockholders, or he will be forced to leave the company he created.
The only entrepreneurs who withstand the pressure to move more carefully are those who have maintained majority control over their companies.
Place
In the offline world, place is defined by location. On the Internet, place is defined by domain name and the web hosting service chosen.
Both online and offline, place can make or break a company without respect to the quality and value of the product, service or idea.
Price
Selecting a price is determined first on a basis of whether the company wants to be seen as a discount or a value company.
Take for example Wal-Mart and Staples.
Wal-Mart is the lead discounter in the marketplace. Staples on the other hand is the specialist in office supplies.
Both sell a significant number of office supplies despite the fact that the lowest price can usually be found at Wal-Mart. As a value dealer, Staples can afford to charge more for their products than Wal-Mart.
So the question for you is whether you want to position your company as a discount or value company.
Testing has shown that products and services can be sold at any number of prices and still reach a significant number of people.
The challenge of selecting the best price for your product or service will require a certain amount of testing.
Understanding the pricing equation
Let’s assume we are selling a product. Let us also assume that we know that the product can be sold for $10 or $50. Let us also assume that if the price dips below $10 or rises above $50, then the product sales fall off significantly.
Our challenge is to determine the best rate at which to sell our product.
Testing has shown us that we can sell 1000 items a week at $10. Testing has also shown that we can sell 500 items per week at $50. And testing has shown that we can sell 650 items per week at $45.
At $10, our projected weekly earnings are $10,000. When we sell the product at $50, we know that we can earn $25,000 per week. Most importantly, we know that we can earn $29,250 when our product is priced at $45.
With the imaginary testing we have done on our imaginary product, we can easily see that selling our product at $45 per item will earn us more money over the long haul.
Thus, when we make the decision for a national rollout of our product, then we will price our product at $45.
Of course, this is a very simplistic analysis of the point I am trying to make. Though simple, I believe this analogy will help you understand the methods of developing a product’s prices.
Promotion
Promotion, on the other hand, is the process of notifying the consumers for your product or service of your availability to serve them.
Methods of promotion vary distinctly and should be arranged to meet very specific goals.
As with product, place and price, promotion should not be left to chance. You should test every ad, every media, and every price point to determine the best bang for your promotional dollars.
Heads up!
If you are an online promoter or marketer, please factor in the most important element concerning the cost of your promotions.
What element is that? Your time!
Value your time at a certain dollar amount, and figure in your time into the cost of your promotional accounting.
I say this because too many online promoters lose sight of this concept and spend 20 hours to generate one sale while using free advertising. Even if you rate your time at the federal minimum wage, then you will have invested $105 of your time for one sale that might only net you a gross sale of $45!
Are you truly a marketer or just a promoter?
Most people who run a business on the Internet call themselves marketers. Yet, most of these same people are really just
promoters wrapped in the label of a marketer.
True marketers do not promote without a lot of advance work. They spend time planning, testing and measuring their actions
and results to get the most out of every dollar spent and earned.
Entrepreneurs finesse the art of marketing as they build their company into a major enterprise.
If you are a promoter who does not keep an eye on the total marketing equation, then you are bound to fail.
If you do call yourself a marketer, then do what a professional marketer does. Make sure that every dollar spent is spent well. Make sure that every dollar earned is put to good use. Market well so that when the people of the next generation look at your life, they will see a fine example of a successful entrepreneur that they will strive to emulate.
Author Bio:
Stone Evans owns the Home Business Resource Directory where you can find everything you`ll ever need to start, run and grow a home based business at: http://www.Home-Business.com
Introduction
Are you confused by the flood of information on how to improve your internet marketing results?
Mastering the search engines, pay-per-click advertising, affiliate marketing, website design, writing articles, and on it goes.
Doesn’t it seem more and more complicated to focus in on what really works and what doesn’t?
After working to build many businesses from the ground up over the last 10 years, it’s more clear than ever that there are 2 main principles that will largely dictate your success in any business. All of the other techniques build on these first two principles.
Think of these two main principles as the cement pillars that hold up a bridge – without them, no matter how well you construct the bridge, it will still fall down.
Focus your energies, time and resources around meeting these two key principles – you will immediately see a big difference in your results.
Principle #1
You must have a well positioned product, fulfilling a hot desire within a clearly identifiable and accessible target market.
Let’s break this down.
Making a profit in business is really quite a simple concept, you have to earn more revenue than your cost. Revenue minus cost is your profit.
So where does that cost come from?
The two big sources of costs are: costs associated with creating or finding your product to sell and cost of reaching your market to sell your product
It only makes sense then that identifying a hot desire within a market you know how to reach will mean much lower costs for your businss. Ultimately, this means more profit for you.
Have you ever run against the wind? Tried to swim upstream in a river? Walk one way in a crowd when everyone else was walking the other way?
It’s a very tough lesson to learn.
I’ve been brought it to consult with companies that have burned through millions of dollars before learning this lesson.
You cannot FORCE a low-demand product on a market – no matter how much money you spend on marketing.
You cannot hope to reach enough buyers in the entire marketplace even with a very high-demand product in one segment.
In fact, I’ve seen situations where unknown entrepreneurs enter a market, quickly identify a hot desire, address it with a less than perfect product and in a very short time have created wealth 100X higher than anyone else in that market.
An old mentor of mine used to tell me all the time, “focus on the low lying fruit – there’s far more than enough to go around”
Principle #2
You must reach your market with a clear, empathetic message that instantly catches your readers attention, interest, desire and moves them to see your product as THE answer to their deepest desires.
If you were reading closely, you’ll recognize Principle #2 as the same principles that underly great copywriting.
How do you become a great copywriter and master Principle #2?
1. Research, research and research. I make sure I have a pulse on my target market’s desires, needs, emotional triggers. Focus in on WHY they want a solution to a particular problem. Research takes many forms…
– speak with them
– survey them
– read what they read
– talk to others who do business with your market
– test using articles and special reports to guage the response
– do what they do
By doing this you should have content for 20-30 (at least) different benefits for your product.
Then….
2. Polish your benefit statements. This is where you can use books of action verbs, swap files (samples of great ads, letters and webpages), the services of a copywriter. This is the technical aspect of copywriting which can be learned by reading other great material.
Far too many people go right to #2, as a result their benefit statements seem bland, miss the mark or seem the same as everyone else.
Next time you get distracted by the latest and greatest tip, technique or strategy – know that focusing on these 2 fundamental principles: In-demand product ideas and effective copywriting, will make the most difference to your pocketbook in both today and in the future.
Author Bio:
Discover Little Known Secrets On Profiting From Your Own Information Products. Jeff Smith Shares How Easy It Is To Instantly Create Your Own Hot Selling Online Products With Knowledge You Already Have. Get Information Here: http://www.infoproductcreator.com
Introduction
How often do you visit the search engines looking for the information that you seek? Twice a week? Every day?
According to SearchEngineWatch.com, seven of the top search engines process over 300 million searches a day! Additionally, Search Engine Watch documents an item called the GVU Survey Results from the Georgia Institute of Technology which shows that 85% of all web users admit to regularly using search engines to find the web sites they visit.
The truth is, if you are seeking sales at your website, then you should be looking for traffic too. While sales is your true goal, no sales can take place until traffic occurs.
A lot of people scream to the high heavens that search engines do not work. The fact is that search engines do work. It is just that the people who are shouting do not understand how to make search engines work for them.
Different types of search engines
We will not go into great detail right now about how to make search engines work for you. We will only touch on the differences between the search engines of which there are three types: Pay-Per-Clicks, Directories and Spiders.
Pay-Per-Clicks require that you open cash accounts with them before you will be listed. While there are often ways to get into the PPCSE’s without opening an account, we will not discuss that here.
Directories limit your submissions to page title, link and a short description.
For this discussion, we will be speaking about Spider Search Engines. Spiders are in fact software that visits your site and gathers the data from your website to determine how to tell people about your website.
Content delivers traffic and sales
While some Spiders gather a limited number of words from each website, others gather all of the words listed within your website. This is where we come to our point today.
Spiders gather data from your site to provide a title and description for your readers. Additionally, Spiders gather the words from your website and rank those words to determine which sites to return to their users.
The words they gather from your website are referred to as keywords. Search engine keywords exclude pronouns, prepositions and other very common words. All others provide rich fodder to the Spiders.
To get the best use of Spider search engines, you must feed them what they want — you must feed them lots and lots of keywords. It is important to note that the best use of keywords on your website is using keywords that are relative to your products and services.
Where to find content
When you do not have the time or creativity to provide that information on your own, you could realistically tap into the free-reprint market to attain the content you want and need. To browse what may be available to you in the free-reprint market, you can browse the archives at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Free-Reprint-Articles
Here you will find over 7000 articles available for your use.
While some writers are the same, there are other writers that have submitted some 1400 articles to:
http://topica.com/lists/FreeEzineContent
The only drawback of using content created by another for the free-reprint market is that the terms for using these articles is to set up a hyperlink to the website of the author as given in the resource box attached to the article. The resource box serves as a small advertisement for author of the article which must appear with all articles used. This is actually a small price to pay for getting high quality content for you to use on your website without monetary cost attached to them.
If you feel that printing someone else’s resource box is simply too high of a price to pay in order to provide content to your visitors and keywords for the Spider search engines, then you should strike out on your own to develop your own content in this format.
Generating targeted keywords and keyphrases
However you cut it, any article placed on your website will generate 300 to 500 specialized and targeted keywords and keyword phrases to feed the Spider databases. In turn, as time progresses, you will discover more and more people flocking to your website from the Spider search engines.
That is what you want isn’t it? Traffic that can be turned into sales? Of course it is.
The time has come to start developing your website to take advantage of the power of the Spider search engines.
Author Bio:
Bill Platt owns The Phantom Writers, a company committed to helping people to establish an Internet presence & promote their businesses through the use of Free-Reprint Articles and Press Releases. Articles are distributed to 6,000+ publishers & webmasters as part of the package. http://thePhantomWriters.com Do you write your own articles? Let us distribute them for you.
