Monday, December 24, 2007

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to ALL!

To all friends and readers,

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and the very best for the New Year!

Happy holiday and happy marketing!

Thursday, December 13, 2007

3 Must-Have Tools For A Successful Affiliate Marketer

What does it take to become a successful Affiliate Marketer? What are the ingredients of an affiliate marketing success story? Is there a shortcut to Affiliate Marketing glory? All these questions play around in the minds of affiliate marketers who want to make it big in this business.

Although affiliate marketing is touted as one of the easiest and most effective ways to earn money online, it is not as easy as it sounds. The wise affiliate marketer plans every action and executes it the best way he can. He should also maximize the potential to earn by utilizing the right tools necessary for a successful Affiliate Marketing business. We have consulted some of the most successful affiliate marketers in the business and below are the top three necessary tools for a successful affiliate marketing business.

Important Tool #1: Your Own Website

The most important and indispensable tool in Affiliate Marketing is your own website. The first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking website. Your website is the jump off point of all your marketing efforts. Thus, you must first build a user-friendly website, which will appeal to your prospects and encourage them to click on the links to the products and service you are promoting and make a purchase. Therefore, you must first concentrate your efforts in building a website that will cater to what your prospects need.

The most important thing you should consider is that almost all web users go online to look for information, not necessarily to go and buy something. Above all else, make your website full of original, relevant and useful content. People will love articles that are appealing and helpful. Keep in mind that, in the internet, content is still king and good quality content will not only build your credibility, it can also help you achieve a higher search engine ranking. By posting relevant and useful articles, you establish yourself as a credible expert in the field, making you a more trustworthy endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good reputation is a good step in building up a loyal consumer base.

Important Tool #2: Incentives

Competition is extremely tight in the internet world. You must always be one-step ahead of your rivals to ensure that you capture a significant share of your target market. Therefore, you must use every possible means to encourage people not only to visit your site but also to click and proceed to the websites of the products and services you are promoting. Building an opt-in email list is one of the best ways to gather prospects. Offer a newsletter or an e-zine. Better yet, offer incentives to your prospects to encourage them to subscribe to your newsletters. You can present free softwares, access to exclusive services and other freebies that will be helpful to your prospects.

Important Tool #3: Link Popularity

The importance of driving highly targeted traffic to your website cannot be emphasized enough. The all-important web traffic is at the top of the list of the most important entities in the internet world. Attracting people to your site should be the first step you should carry out. Do everything to achieve a high search engine ranking. Link Popularity is one of the factors that search engines use to determine search engine rankings. Therefore, to enhance your link popularity, you must launch an aggressive reciprocal link campaign.

One of the best ways to do this - at no cost at all - is by submitting articles, with your website's link at the resource box, to e-zines and free article sites. You will not only gain exposure, you will also have the opportunity to advertise for free, just include a link back to your site. The more sites you submit your articles to, the better your link popularity is. Make your articles original, relevant and useful so that more websites will pick it up and post it.

These are but three of the many tools that an affiliate marketer can use to maximize earning potential. The possibilities are endless and are limited only by your imagination, creativity, resourcefulness and determination. You can always explore other ideas and adapt other strategies, which you think might help you become a high rolling affiliate marketer.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Viral Marketing Is Going Mobile!

Mobile devices, mobile phones and PDA's are one of the last great frontiers of viral advertisement opportunities. However, we have become experts at filtering everything, our air and water, our e-mail and pop-ups, and our mobile devices as well. We are good at filtering.

The very idea of unwanted advertising streaming through our Blackberries is abhorrent. Mobile devices are the ultimate opt-in medium and, therefore, a great way for marketers to connect with users…if that’s what the users want. “WANT” is the key word here. How should marketers approach the medium?

There are three main ways to achieve this. They are:

  1. Offer exclusive content. Anyone can offer ring tones. It’s the unique content, such as exclusive mobile images of new brand concepts, that drives interest and calls them out in other media like e-mail campaigns, newsletters, websites, etc. So a wireless campaign is most effective when it offers exclusive content for wireless devices.
  2. Make it useful and timely. Think about what would be handy and helpful to have on a mobile device. Last year, for example, Food Network enabled Sprint customers to download shopping lists for their Thanksgiving dinners. There was a lot of “Sprint-envy” going around among non-sprint customers.
  3. Clearly define objectives. Usually, one of two business objectives drives successful mobile experiences: incremental revenue of brand intimacy. On the intimacy factor, a text message usually takes priority over almost any other form of communication. Why? Because we haven’t yet been saturated with mobile spam, and this is what causes us to prioritize wireless messaging over voice.

Mobile marketing has been out there for a while but we marketers have new territory to explore. Video offers fantastic opportunities for engagement. Consumers already bypass their filters for highly useful or entertaining content and will do so for rich exclusive, compelling content.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

How To Use Web Forums For Viral Marketing

Web forums can be a good platform to jump-start your viral marketing campaign. To become successful in using web forums to do viral marketing, here are some things that you should know.

Do Your Homework: Prior to joining any forum, you must do some research.
  1. Join relevant forums that are in some way related to the promotion’s primary sales market. For example, someone involved with a health related product, many types of forums could apply... everything from holistic medicine to stay-at-home moms.
  2. Choose popular forums. There is no point in wasting your time and energy on forums that few members and few posts. Page raking and the amount of active members are two good ways to check for this.
  3. Choose forums that allow signature tags. If it’s possible read the rules before joining and pay attention to them. Your time is important, too. It is better to find out that a forum doesn’t allow posts with sig tags before you go to the time and trouble of joining.

After You Have Joined: OK... you have chosen two or three forums that meet your requirements... now what?

  1. Keep your sig tag short and update it regularly. The ideal thing is to limit yourself to one link, preferably to your main website.
  2. Never create posts that are nothing more than an advertisement. This all but a universal rule and only displays the marketers lack of experience if he does so. At best this kind of post will be deleted by the monitors... at worst, it is grounds for being banned.
  3. Work the room. Be an active member on the forum. Plan to spend at least an hour each day there and take the time to get to know the users. Take the time to introduce yourself with intelligent questions depending upon the forum’s topic.

As a marketer becomes a regular member, they will hopefully develop a good reputation and without saying a word about their promotion, those who are interested in their product will approach them.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Article Marketing - 3 Steps for Massive Free Traffic

There are a lot of methods to get free qualified traffic for your website. The method that I recommend most is article marketing because it is relatively easy to do and best of all, it's free. In addition, it can generate hundreds if not thousands of natural backlinks to your website in a short time.

The immediate result of article marketing is the massive traffic to your website from article directories and other websites that reprint or publish your articles. In the long term, your Google PageRank will increase due to relevant backlinks from article directories which usually have high PageRank, and thus will your ranking in the search results.

Article marketing is quite easy. Just follow the three steps below to jump-start your article marketing:

  1. Write a few articles, preferably with topics related to your website's niche. Articles should be between 400-800 words in length. Remember to spell check and proofread your articles for spelling and grammatical error. It is preferable to write your articles yourself, but if you really can't write or don't have the time to write, you can hire a ghostwriter to help you. Make sure you request a few sample articles from the ghostwriter so that you can judge the quality of the articles before you commit.
  2. Prepare a short signature. This part is the most important because this is where you put the links to your websites. If you are promoting an affiliate program, do not put the affiliate link directly here. Instead put the link on a website you created and put your website link here. You can use relevant keywords as anchor text of your links.
  3. With the above 2 steps done, you're now ready to submit your articles to the article directories. There are hundreds of article directories on the Internet. For a start, I recommend you submit to the following article directories and article distribution sites:
That's it! If you've done the steps above correctly, you'll get tons of targeted and qualified traffic to your sites for free.

Adding Google Analytics to Blogger

Just added Google Analytics to my blog. Didn't know it was so easy. Basically you just need to sign up for an Analytics account. Add your blog URL to your Analytics account. Then follow through the remaining steps till you're shown your Analytics code block. Copy the code block to your clipboard. Don't close this window yet.

Now sign in to your Blogger dashboard. Click on the Template tab. Then click on Edit HTML. Scroll down to the end of your template's HTML. Now paste your Analytics code block just before the ending </body> tag. Something like this:

<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
_uacct = "UA-XXXXXXX-X";
urchinTracker();
</script>
</body>
</html>

Save your template.

Now go back to your Google Analytics account. Click Continue to finish the remaining steps. That's it!

Viral Marketing - 6 Ideas You Can Use

Here are six ideas to help you start your viral marketing campaign:
  1. Purchase the branding rights to a viral E-book. Allow people to give away your free E-book to their visitors. Then, their visitors will also give it away. This will just continue to spread your ad all over the Internet.
  2. If you have the ability to set up a forum or other bulletin board, you really have a great tool. Allow people to use your online discussion board for their own website. Some people don't have one. Just include your banner ad at the top of the board.
  3. Do you have a knack for web design? Create some templates, graphics, etc. and upload them to your site. Then, allow people to give away your free web design graphics, fonts, templates, etc. Just include your ad on them or require people to link directly to your web site. Make sure that you include a link back to your site in the copyright notice and require them to keep your copyright notice in tact.
  4. Write an E-book. Allow people to place an advertisement in your free E-book if, in exchange, they give away the E-book to their web visitors or E-zine subscribers.
  5. Write articles that pertain to your product or service. Allow people to reprint your articles on their website, in their E-zine, newsletter, magazine or E-books. Include your resource box and the option for article reprints at the bottom of each article.
  6. You can easily find products on the Internet that will sell you a license allowing you to distribute the product free of charge to other people. Look for those products that provide "branding rights". That is where you can include your own name, website, and contact information.

Niche Marketing - What Is It and Why I Need It

In ecology, a niche refers to the place or position occupied by an organism or a population within an ecological community called the ecosystem. It is the term which defines the role the organism or the population plays in the general scheme of things. The niche an organism or a population holds is the one responsible for dictating the ability of the species to survive. It is the one which spells whether an organism or a population will perish or thrive.

In marketing, a niche refers to a service or a product that occupies a special area of demand. It is that small corner in the market that accounts for a certain kind of specialty concerning an unmet customer need. To be able to attract a strong, solid market, the choice of a niche product should ultimately complement the website one owns. It is through this scheme that he is able to generate a specific market for the niche product he is trying to sell.

Niches are involved in niche marketing, the process of finding market segments that are small but potentially profitable nonetheless. To maintain a profitable quantity of sales, this marketing strategy relies on increasing the loyalty of customers so that their corporate objectives will be met or surpassed. Illustrative of this is the fact that the quality of the product or service sold will generate customer satisfaction and, consequently, customer loyalty. The result is profitability garnered through a solid market base that trusts in the ability of the product or service to really deliver.

One of the great things about niche marketing is that it encourages those who indulge in it to be unique and one-of-a-kind. Here one is not forced into the lion’s den and made to compete against established marketers. He is made to occupy a strong and secure position that ultimately wins him a real place in the market. Niche marketing differs from other online marketing strategies because this particular quality allows it to operate almost autonomously and without having to contend with corporate sharks that tear each other to pieces.

One of the most important things that should be thought over by those involved in this type of business is the niche business that is going to be involved in the process. It is important to consider the type of business that one is going to work on to be able to ensure himself of the success that he hopes to have. It is also important for him to know everything about the niche business at hand. Learning the tricks of the trade in is one of the things that one could do to make a niche business prosper tremendously.

Being able to reach the niche market is another consideration to make. In doing so, one should know the exact phrases that people are searching for. The use of tools can help a lot in knowing the type of keywords that should be used to make the business profitable. Targeting the right keywords does a lot in making this type of business soar.

Those who engage in niche marketing know that determining the potential of a niche before doing everything else is a must if one wants to save all the time and effort that might be wasted if he plunges into everything head on. Building a niche marketing site that proves to be profitable should be done after an unsatisfied customer demand is identified, and marketing the site appropriately by reaching out to customers the best possible way is what niche marketers should consider if they want their business to reach skyrocketing success.

Is niche marketing needed in a world teeming with a hundred like systems designed for people to make money online? Those who know how the system works will answer in the affirmative, because niche marketing is the only system capable of filling up a gaping hole in the market by catering to the unsatisfied needs of customers - needs that are usually not given notice by those in the big league. Though niche marketing, one is able to gain a foothold in the market by being a needle in a haystack. Small and inconspicuous it may be, but its ability to sting someone so madly once it is found will render him more than surprised.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Pointers To Avoid Common Advertising Mistakes - Part III

Tabloids -vs- Adsheets

Another question about advertising that many people have is whether its better to advertise in tabloids or adsheets. Many people will sell you information on the best day to mail and the best time of the year to advertise. They think they have it down to a science and will convince you of their methods.

However, there is NO set rules that can be employed by everyone. That's because there are a wide variety of ways to approach various products. If you sell travel services and read a report that told you not to advertise during the summer months, you'd go broke. The summer is the travel industry's biggest money-making season!

Don't get hung up on specific statistics made by people who claim to be expert researchers. There is no way to determine what is best for you than to try it yourself and see what works. You are the person in control of your business and you are where the buck stops. Take advantage of your authority and try every angle you can think of until you determine what's best for your company's product and/or service.

Tabloids are a fantastic advertising vehicle and adsheets are too. Sometimes people feel a small 1" camera-ready ad gets lost in a tabloid filled with 100's of them. This may be true in some circumstances and not true in others. Do you look at 1" ads in tabloids? Of course you do. You scan the pages and your eye is always directed to one or two on the page that catches your eye. Ask yourself "why" they caught your eye. Was it because the ad was placed in a specific area on the page? Was it because of the headline or the word "free"?

Classifieds work well in tabloids and adsheets and sometimes they don't. Look in the back of the Globe or Enquirer. Don't they have page after page of classified ads? If nobody was reading them and responding to them, the advertisers wouldn't be submitting advertising to the Globe or Enquirer for them. So evidently, people DO read classified ads even if there are 100's of them. Test the waters and do what works the best for you.

Pointers To Avoid Common Advertising Mistakes - Part II

Don't Stop With One Publication

Just because you locate the target market of people who are interested in purchasing your product there is no reason you can't advertise in more than one publication. In fact if you don't, your ad will become stale. If the same people continue to see your ad every month they will probably get tired of looking at it. Besides, if they wanted the product they would have ordered it by now. Don't tire them out! Alternate different size ads and get rid of ones that don't work well.

Leave your ad running as long as it brings in orders for you but also advertise in 5, 10, 20 or 50 other publications also to generate a steady stream of orders and to reach more people.

Key Your Ads

Many beginners in mail order never key their ads so they know what publication people saw their ads in. In fact, I personally never did this myself and ended up losing a lot of money. So please don't make the same mistake I did. Keying your ads means that you place a code of some sort in your address so that when people write and order something from you, you immediately will know where they saw your ad. Keep a record of every name and address of the publisher you send an advertisement to. Record the date you sent the ad and the date you received a checking copy, proving that your ad appeared. Also record the "code" you used so you can immediately identify where it came from.

If your address is "123 Anytown St," it could become "123 Anytown St, Suite A" for one publication and "Suite B" for another. The postman will still deliver your mail to "123 Anytown St." Of course, if you live in an apartment complex and there are apartment numbers you could turn "111 Johnson Apt A" into "111 Johnson, Apt A-1" for one publication and "Apt A-2" for another. Post office box addresses are also simple. Turn "PO Box 585" into "PO Box 585, Dept A-1" for one publication and "Dept A-2" for another.

People will sometimes even change their name on the ad for keying purposes. You might see the name "Harriet's Recipe Book" instead of Harriet Ranger. Harriet might also use "Harriet's Cookbook" or even "Harriet's Solution to Stress" on her ads relating to these products. Use your own imagination and pretty soon, keying your ads will be a normal part of your life. Be sure and keep track (on your Record Sheet) of how many responses you receive from each publication. After 3 months, look over your Record Sheet and get rid of the publications that didn't do well. You'll go broke if you spend $10 per month advertising a 2-inch ad if you only receive $1 back in orders. After awhile you'll be able to see where it pays you to advertise your particular product and then you can send in larger ads to those publications. Never stop using this method and you'll never stop getting orders in your mailbox. It's a win-win situation for everybody!

Pointers To Avoid Common Advertising Mistakes - Part I

Advertising isn't hard to do. You prepare an advertisement or write a classified ad to sell your product or generate interest to send people more information. But the way most people make mistakes is either by their inability to write effective ad copy and by sending it to be published in the wrong publication. Here are some pointers to follow:

Writing Effective Copy

Never try to sell anything costing more than $5 in a small display ad or a classified ad. First of all, you don't have enough room to tell people everything they need to know to entice them to order.

Instead, you need to employ the "Two-Step" method of advertising. Request the reader to send you $1 or 4 first-class postage stamps for more information. When they respond, you will send them a brochure, flyer, order form and cover letter so they can place an order for the real product.

Now that pricing is out of the way lets talk about writing your ad copy. The best way to learn how is to read the ads other people have written. Don't copy them word-for-word, but use them as a guide to write your own ads. Once you get the hang of it, you'll be writing effective ad copy just as well as the pros.

Advertising in the Right Publication

Although this may sound a little silly and you think it is only common sense to know this - people will often overlook this fact when choosing the publication they will be advertising in. Instead, they will look for the lowest price for the amount of circulation they receive. Unfortunately, this does not work out. Even though you need to look for good deals that make it easy on your pocketbook, you will be throwing money away if you don't pre-qualify the publication you choose.

One way of pre-qualifying the publication is to send for a sample copy. Most publishers will send them to you free of charge for the asking. If you don't know of any mail order publications, just write to Glenn Bridgeman, PO Box 10150, Terra Bella CA 93270 or William Lee, Rt 1, Box 10790, Madisonville TN 37354 and ask them to send you some. (Be sure to enclose $1 or 4 first-class postage stamps in with your request to offset postage costs.) If you tell them you are new to mail order and are interested in publications to advertise in, you certainly will find the $1 you spent is well worth the effort because both of these publishers are very reputable, honest and helpful.

Study the publication to see what other people are advertising and how they are advertising it. Contact some of the people who sell items similar to your own with the hope of networking with them. You would be surprised how much free publicity you can get just from corresponding, calling and networking with others.

Once you locate a publication you want to advertise in, give it a try for 3 months. If you don't get any response or only a few orders, try another publication. There are millions of them and eventually you will hit the right target market that will be interested in what you have to sell.