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By Paul Grant

In a rapidly changing technological landscape, some high profile brands are facing the challenging decision to embrace 'viral' marketing campaigns. As there can be no assurances with each viral project, executives do not have the 'usual' facts and figures to make a well-informed and substantiated decision.

By its very nature, a viral project is unlike anything that has been done before.

This means there is no formula, no statistics, nor guarantees. Results can only be proven retrospectively. It can be too late for those results to have any extra meaning than the knowledge that viral marketing works in principle. The most successful new media viral campaigns would not be able to generate the same results if replicated by another company wanting to emulate that same success.

Viral marketing is a high risk, high gain means of marketing. It is changing all the time. There are no experts who can accurately predict how the marketplace will respond. Fortunately, the cost is not measured in financial terms, but only in the way, the public perceives the brand. Get it right and a brand can suddenly become very prominent in secondary media articles and traditional media. Get it wrong and it affects the brand's reputation negatively. Sometimes this secondary (and free) publicity ends up impacting the campaign more than the viral content itself.

Large, slower moving corporations are being startled into responding to these changes. Smaller and more progressive companies are challenging the old stalwarts of business by using whatever viral means necessary to establish greater market share.

Often the biggest, most well respected brands are unfamiliar to this radical and non-traditional approach to marketing. It took many years to establish an expensive, rigorously consistent, and highly polished corporate identity. Their company identity may have evolved over several decades. For such a company to consider the idea of diluting the brand into something generic, cheap, gossipy, comic, populist, or otherwise remarkable to the masses; raises red flags and executive concerns. These executives naturally fear losing the 'consistency' of their on-brand message, or the particular 'look and feel' of the brand, as predetermined in their own internal corporate style guides.

Those corporations taking risks in the way they present their brand by embracing this viral trend are already observing great benefits, with lower costs and higher response rates from their target market. They are perceived by their target demographic as 'cool', 'hip', 'cutting edge', and 'in touch' with a changing world.

Consider Nike(tm), Adidas(tm), and Pepsi(tm). All three brands have used viral marketing as a mainstay of their digital FIFA World Cup 06 football campaigns.

The power of viral marketing is people willingly pass it on for free. It means there are no manufacturing, packaging, licensing, or distribution costs. The total cost of ownership includes only the cost involved in creating the initial idea and the actual content.

How viral marketing works

In all instances, an initial 'viral' concept must be developed and published either to a website, in an email, as a mobile phone message, or through some new or emerging distribution channel.

Some of the most effective viral content is quite poor in production quality, often quite controversial, offensive to some; but if successful, will be high in public appeal. This can be an obstacle for some executives who build their brand to maintain the highest production and moral standards in all printed and televised materials.

Occasionally the more professional or polished something looks; the less likely the end-user will be to consider the source credibly worth passing on. In some cases, the corporation funding or initiating the viral content will actually distance themselves from the content. They will claim to have no knowledge of how it came to be, nor did they have anything to do with its creation. This is all a public relations angle to improve the chances of the mass market accepting the content as non-intrusive.

People know, only too well, how annoying it is to receive materials that are not directly known beforehand to be of value to the recipient.

If, on the other hand, the recipient or user is actually stimulated to respond emotionally to a piece of viral marketing; i.e. anger, disgust, joy, sadness, laughter etc., they will likely want their circle of friends to experience the same thing. It is the 'much-targeted' nature of a 'circle of friends' that makes viral marketing so effective. The old anonymous saying has some merit in this context...

'Birds of a feather flock together.'

If a company or brand can make a solid impression on any single individual within a selected group, that person will likely share about it with their 'flock', knowing it will also be of interest to them.

A viral campaign could end up affecting several million highly targeted consumers, which to achieve using traditional media would potentially cost as many Dollars, Pounds, or Euros, as the amount of consumers reached. Generating a return on investment using traditional media has a greatly reduced profit margin in comparison to the miniscule investment involved in initially creating a piece of viral marketing.

The importance of embracing viral marketing

Increasing bandwidth is now making possible, for the first times, such things as video on demand, live video, IPTV, and other formats of rich media interactivity. Those companies harnessing these trends in a creative and viral way are finding themselves to be moving ahead of competitors who previously held the greatest market share by spending large sums of money in the traditional media.

The success of a viral marketing campaign can only really be measured in terms of how many people visit or view a viral site, or how many times an email has been read and so on. In some cases, it may also be possible to measure click-through conversion via a call to action, although this level of transparency can often also become an obstacle to the tool becoming viral in an epidemic way.

Currently, there is very little hard statistics that demonstrates conclusively that viral marketing makes a difference to the bottom line. There is no doubt that this type of content is being seen by millions of people. Much like television advertising, it is not always clear whether people are buying product because of the advert or in response to a variety of brand promotions across multiple platforms.

Those large corporations struggling to resolve whether to embrace the idea of viral marketing now have the advantage. They can learn from some of the world's largest and best-known brands. As these brands have been forced to change their understanding of marketing on a day-by-day basis, so too will all companies wanting to compete in tomorrow's world. In the coming years, many more companies with traditional established brands will need to concede; the concepts of marketing are changing right now and very quickly at that.

By apparently diluting their brand in order to create generic viral content, these companies can in fact capture the interest of the next generation of media users, thereby building a massive community of loyal customers that not only buy but also recommend their products and services.

Paul Grant is a convergence evangelist and digital media strategist, having spent eleven years managing and implementing rich media projects. He is now a partner of London-based consultancy Interactive Strategy Ltd (http://www.interactivestrategy.tv).

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By John Dow

In the past few months, I decided to re-dedicate myself to increasing my SEO on several of my web sites. Most have been around quite some time and have good page rankings, but have slipped in position on many of my most effective keywords.

Like many, I have Google Adwords campaigns running that produce sales. It's been easy to ignore my basic Search Engine Optimization and keyword positions. Moreover, Google has been up to its favorite pastime of making changes to its ranking algorithms, which has had an impact. In addition, right now Google is the big dog so you have little choice but to listen to the music.

If you have the basics covered (good content, relevant keywords, H1 tags, etc.), that will take you so far. However, in the last few Google updates, the linking (quality of links, not necessarily quantity) has become the dominant factor. Do links increase the value of the site to the searcher? I'm not going there, its Google's playground, so you have to abide by their rules.

Web site promotion is an ongoing battle, especially with the search engines. Web site search engine traffic has a habit of ebbing and weaving due to natural cycles. In fact, the Internet cycles are starting to look more like retail cycles every year. Throw in the different algorithms that each of the big three use and it becomes quite a challenge.

Besides paid advertising, search engine traffic is the only other good source of targeted visitors, and hopefully buyers. Therefore, although I do not depend on search engine traffic, it is still a big source of daily traffic and provides potential buyers. So doing your basic SEO chores is not very exciting but is definitely necessary.

SEO is also a moving, constantly changing target. In addition, thanks to Google's Adsense program, there are 1,000s, if not 100 times that, new web sites created every day. New web sites are as rain drops during a cloudburst.

For those of you who have never heard of it, Adsense refers to publishing Google's AdWords client advertisements on a web site. When someone clicks on one of the displayed ads, the web site owner is paid a fee or commission. Now that sounds easy to do, but there is the small item of getting traffic to click the ads, and hence, all the new competition for traffic.

Just the other day, I was doing some research on one of my keywords for a website that had fallen on hard times in rankings. In the area above the search results on Google, a blue line shows info on how many results came up out of how many possible results. I keep good records and the last time I did some checking that figure was a possible 5,344,882 web sites that have my keywords.

Now 5 million is a lot, but now the info showed 61 million possible web site results. Whoa, no wonder my position has changed. I now have 12 times the number of competitors. I have records back to 2003 on this web site so I went back and I looked, and in 2003, I had a mere 950,000. Therefore, in three years it went from 950,000 to over 61 million.

Holy Cow Batman, that's incredible. However, I have a feeling that is just the beginning. The competition is going to continue to grow. In addition, this is not a major product area; this is a sub niche web site. Thank you Google Adsense. I have to believe that many of these web sites are Adsense oriented without even looking.

Ok, it's time to do some serious resuscitation on this poor downtrodden web site. The fastest way I know to breathe some new life (or initially launch a new web site) is content and links. I've already done the basic on page optimization so more content, and off page, linking is my best bet. Content will be easy, I have a ton of new stuff I can add from multiple sources.

I can write some new articles and post them on some popular article sites too. I could also do some new interviews with industry experts but my niche is limited, so that my not apply to this web site. Google likes both of those methods and neither will take too much time. I can also do some new links (the text on the link is important too - use keywords in the actual link) on my other related sites.

Now links outside of my other sites are going to be an issue. Links always seem to be a problem. Your web site link partners should have both a good page ranking and very relevant content. Then you also have to have something of value to the web site that will be linking to you.

You can join one of the link web sites, although I usually don't since there is an outside chance of trouble. Alternatively, you can do the Google search on your keywords and email to like web sites. My web site has a good page rank so I should be able to pick up a few that way.

I can also buy some links on some directory sites. There are some good ones at reasonable prices. Look for a good interior ranking (on the category page you will be putting your link). The going rate is anywhere from $10 to $50 per year.

In addition, always keep in mind it is the quality of links, not quantity. They need to be PR4/5 and above with matching content. I figure 10 new outside links, and maybe another 10 pages of new content each month for the next 90 days will help my rankings quite a bit.

Therefore, you really should keep an eye on your organic search engine listings. In addition, even though you may not depend on it for all your traffic, it should be a part of your ongoing web site promotion plan. Just getting 10 new links and 10 new pages of viable content a month can have a big impact.

SEO involves a lot more than just content and links but that is a good starting point. In addition, both these are very easy to do for anyone. There are more sophisticated SEO tactics, which I'll cover in another article soon.

John Dow owns http://www.WebSiteBluePrints.com, a website that specializes in web site tools and marketing. Check out a great software tool by clicking here Web Site Blue Prints.

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By Lubowa M. Planet

Drawing traffic to a website is no longer a secret. It is believed that with internet marketing, the speed at which innovations change is three times faster than the way things change in normal life. This is why you will hear about one superb internet marketing strategy or trick, and within three months, it is no longer effective. That is how fast things change in internet marketing.

Fortunately, with all that speed, three strategies have continued to work effectively throughout a number of years. If you incorporate them in your website marketing strategy, they will form a basis for your online success.

So what are the three strategies that have stood the test of time since their invention or discovery? One is the use of PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising, such as Google Adwords. PPC (with well-written ads) will drive you targeted traffic instantly. The only drawback is that it will cost you money (as much as you are willing to pay), but there are some techniques to drive more clicks for less money.

To learn how to use Adwords in a way that will drive a lot of traffic for less money, I suggest the Google Cash guide. Another recommended guide is Rich Jerk guide. It teaches many useful web-marketing techniques in a very humorous but effective way.

It is not recommended to try Adwords campaign without any basic knowledge. If you make mistakes (such as choosing the wrong keywords, the wrong countries or the wrong ads) Google will penalize you by raising your clicks cost, so do not try a campaign before reading an expert Google guide.

The second strategy to draw traffic to your website is to use viral marketing.

This is one of the most effective techniques you can use to drive traffic to your website. However, it requires hard work at the start and a lot of patience. Viral marketing is like word of mouth in the offline marketing.

An example is where by X will learn about your great product or service, and then informs his friend Y, who will then inform his friend Z. However, it is rare that X will inform only Y. He will inform more than one individual. Therefore, your customer base will grow exponentially. However, how do you start viral marketing?

There are many ways to do this. Some include:

-Write a book on a topic related to your product or service. Inside the ebook, include links to your website. Then give this book out for free and give who ever downloads it the right to give it away for free on their website. For effective results, design promotional materials such as banners, text links, and others that they can easily use to give away your ebook. This will spread a virus across the internet that will gradually explode the traffic to your website.

-Design free but useful software, and give it away for free just like the ebook above. You do not necessarily have to develop this software on your own. You can out source people to design it for you. My favorite places to get software designers are Rentacoder.com, elance, and many other places, if you check on Google.

-Join viral marketing websites such as freeviral.com. These will also help you in starting your viral campaign. The only problem is that these are now over saturated. It may be hard to raise a significant number of traffic from these.

To learn how to use viral marketing and the latest developments in viral marketing, I suggest you first read and try out the viral marketing chemistry set by Mark Joyner and Telman.

When viral marketing is used effectively, It can bring you a lot of traffic and targeted traffic in this case.

The third effective strategy to draw traffic to your website is to use Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

SEO requires more work, and some patience. It won't drive you traffic instantly but it has a great advantage over PPC - once your site is optimized and reaches a top place in organic search engines, you will receive tons of traffic for free!

Organic search results (Visitors from search engines) are considered by most people as more reliable than sponsored results, so they drive more sells.

A well-optimized site would take several months to reach a top position (depends on the keywords used and the level of competition).

Gaining a high rank is done by analyzing the competition's sites SEO properties for your main keywords, and trying to copy their methods and do a little bit better to out rank them.

1. Onpage Optimization

2. Offpage Optimization

Onpage factors include:

Title - The title of the page should include your main keywords and be as short as possible to give them more weight.

Header Tags - You should include your main keywords within header tags, particularly the H1 tag that is simply the title of your content. Other keywords should appear in sub-headings, which are your H2 tags. You should also bold and underline these titles containing your keywords.

Keyword Density - You should include your main keywords as often as possible without making the content seem spammy or nonsensical.

Meta Tags / Descriptions - You should use meta tags to write a description of your webpage's content. This will not appear on the actual webpage, but in the description in the search engine results. It should be compelling so visitors click on the link to your site, as well as, including your main keywords for optimization purposes.

Image Tags - If you have any graphics on your site, you should include your main keywords in the alt tag of each image.

Offpage Optimization:

While onpage optimization is still something you should do, it is NOT what will get you high search engine rankings. It is the offpage optimization factors that will. Offpage Optimization forms the biggest percentage of a website SEO campaign. This is where most of the time goes and where patience is stretched. This can basically be summed up in one word- LINKS.

Google and most other search engines place great emphasis on the quality and quantity of inward links to your site. You want to get as many links as possible, but you should place more emphasis on getting quality links from sites similar in subject to your own, and from pages with high page rank (PR).

Offpage parameters include:

- Which websites link to you
- The number of websites linking to you
- The PR of the website linking to you
- The page title of the website linking to you
- The anchor text used in the link linking to you
- The number and type of links linking to the website that is linking to you
- The number of outbound links on the website that is linking to you
- The total number of links on the website that is linking to you
- Whether or not the websites linking to you are deemed by Google as an authority website.

Doing search engine optimization can be done manually, but it is very time consuming. There are several programs that automate SEO processes.

I personally use WebCEO and SEO Elite. This software will allow you to analyze your competition for any keyword, and will tell you what sites link to them, their respective PR, how valuable each link is in terms of SEO, contact address of link partner, and much more.

This will enable you to contact these good link partners yourself and get them to link to your site as well. The software will also allow you to find link partners for any keyword of your choice, as well as checking that all your current link partners are still linking back to you. It will also tell you where you rank in the major search engines for any given keyword.

Lubowa M. Planet provides cheap internet marketing software to work at home moms and dads. Discover over 127 cheap internet marketing software from his website: http://www.most-important-marketing-tools.com.

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By Marcia Yudkin

A few months ago, I turned down a naming assignment from a company seeking a business name that would correlate with a domain and a toll-free number, both currently available. Impossible, I thought. Nope, not impossible if you know how to go about it, says Bill Quimby of TollFreeNumbers.com.

The key is to find the vanity phone number first, Quimby says. Many available toll-free numbers spell out something related to your business; more than you would imagine. For instance, when he ran a search for toll-free numbers related to naming, he came up with 888-DR-NAMING (which I immediately reserved), 866-NOW-NAME, 877-PRO-NAMING, 888-WEB-NAMING, 877-TOP-NAMING and hundreds of other options.

Once you find a toll-free vanity number, the next step is to make sure the corresponding domain name is available for registration. 888DRNAMING.com was available, and I reserved that as well for future use. Then I was set for a radio publicity campaign, a national advertising campaign, or just rebranding.

Some points to keep in mind if this sort of naming strategy excites you:

* Although North American phones show letters on the keypad, telephones elsewhere in the world may not. Likewise, toll-free numbers in North America cannot be dialed from other continents. If you have a global business, branding only through a toll-free number that works only in one part of the world may not be a smart idea. However, it can still be a good way to attract North American customers, since you can forward the toll-free number for just pennies a minute almost anywhere else in the world.

* The cost of getting calls through a toll-free number can be as low as 2.85 cents a minute, with no monthly fee or monthly minimum charge. Aside from the one-time cost of getting a vanity toll-free number, it does not cost any more on an ongoing basis than a toll-free number that does not spell anything.

* Although numeric numbers are easier to dial, vanity numbers spelling out words get more calls than numbers comprised of random numbers. In a study done by Bellcore, print ads that had an 800 toll-free number attracted six times as many calls as regular, non-toll-free numbers. In addition, contrary to what you might expect, this held true regardless of the socio-economic status of the caller.

* Older telephones do not show the "Q" (which correlates with 7) or the "Z" (which correlates with 9), but most recent models do. Note also that you will get more misdials if your vanity words include the letter "O," which can be mistaken for the zero key.

* The more you advertise on billboards, trucks, radio or TV; it is important to have a number that spells something. If you are a small company, a vanity number makes you seem bigger and more established. When Bill Quimby tells people to call him at 1-800-MARKETER, few would guess he works from his home. A toll-free number also emphasizes that the company wants to hear from customers.

* Whereas so many great domain names are already taken, many more of the 800YourName.com types of domain names are still available.

Marcia Yudkin is "Head Stork" of the naming company Named At Last, which brainstorms new company names, new product names, tag lines and more for cost-conscious organizations, at http://www.NamedAtLast.com . Download a free ebook on obtaining vanity toll-free numbers at http://www.namedatlast.com/naming6.htm.

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By Brad Johnson

The hardest part nowadays is that someone who is in the field of Internet Marketing really struggles to devise 'the perfect website', to attract 'the perfect customers', and develop the 'perfect product'. You do this in order to construct 'the perfect amount of exposure', develop a list, put together 'the perfect email,; and hit the send button. Now watch the magic happen as your account populates with income. It is a wonderful dream, is it not? If only it were a possibility for every Internet Marketer, newbie, or veteran to get the attention needed...Well now you can.

PC-Tutorials.com is a new online resource website designed specifically for the Internet Marketer. Through the site, anyone can submit their promotional product, watch free video tutorials, and look at a collection of articles pertaining to the one thing they want to know more about: Internet Marketing.

Those who are just starting to cut their teeth into the business of Internet Marketing will be impressed to see the help this website generates for them: It gives them exposure to their own website, products, and articles for absolutely no cost.

Even the veterans who have been in the game a long time have a chance to increase their exposure even further as PC-Tutorials.com reaches out to a targeted audience that are visiting that very site to see their products, to view their articles, to interact with the pros. PC-Tutorials.com is literally a haven for the Internet Marketer.

At last, there is no more time wasted or money spent on anyone trying to get his or her site or product noticed. It can all be merged into a site solely created to helping others get the sales, get the leads, and get the results to the offer they want to share with the world.

It is not about membership, fees, or commitments. PC-Tutorials.com is a come as you go environment that welcomes you while your there and encourages you to explore. So if you're an Internet Marketer and want that extra kick to getting some income flowing in your bank account, or you just want to find an online resource to help get you noticed, look no further as PC-Tutorials.com is created solely for YOU.

Brad Johnson is the founder of PC-Tutorials.com and has over five years experience as an Internet Marketer and Information Technology specialist. See the unveiling of this new Internet Marketing Information Technology website at http://www.pc-tutorials.com.

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By Michael A. Jones

When it comes to your online email marketing promotions, think out your signature file. It is an important feature of your message not an afterthought. It tells people about YOU, or specifically, it tells what your business is about.

The signature file is a little like a P.S. at the end of a message. It nearly always gets attention.

Here are 10 guidelines for creating a signature file that looks professional and gets clicks:

1. Make it brief, no more than about 6 lines, and make it concise. Put briefly, what you and your business are all about along with the URL, of course.

2. Use a single --- or double === divider across the top and/or across the bottom of the signature.

3. Adjust the signature file for the audience you are reaching. Newsgroups or mailing lists, adopt a soft-sell approach so as not to cause irritation. For an autoresponder message, a hard sell signature file may be acceptable.

4. Include your email address and the URL of your home page.

5. Don't go above eight lines including the divider(s).

6. Format to 60 characters so the line endings will appear neat in your recipient's browser.

7. Left justify the text.

8. Proofread it. That is worth repeating - Proofread it!

9. Cut and paste the URL into a browser and make sure it works! How frustrating to stumble on the fact that after you have sent hundreds of emails or you have been using the signature file for some weeks, the link does not work because of a typo or other error in the URL. Test it!

10. Send an email to yourself with the signature file and check the overall appearance and impression. Is it clean and professional?

In conclusion: Labor hard and long on the wording of your signature until it is just right. Sum up your main selling proposition and construct it into a slogan.

Michael A. Jones is a writer and webmaster with over 10 years experience. Punctuation marks used discreetly and correctly can really add power to your emails. Check Michael's punctuation guide here for ideas:
http://www.about-goal-setting.com/punctuation-guide.html

To utilize a highly successful advertising medium at an unbelievably low cost visit this page:
http://www.vitalstop.com/Marketing/post-free-classified-ads.html

See how to choose the right autoresponder and at the same time get a free 7-part email tutorial:
http://www.vitalstop.com/Business/autoresponders.html

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By Bobette Kye

Marketing online is a critical part of any marketing plan. Here are seven Internet-based marketing ideas you can integrate into your 2007 marketing plan:

Volunteer for Internet Interviews

Podcasts, Webcasts, blogs, RSS feeds and newsletters (ezines) are all venues for online interviews or discussions. You will want to approach publishers who regularly conduct interviews with guests of your caliber, so finding opportunities will take some research. Do this by searching general search engines (such as google.com) or directories. Some directories to get you started: podcast.net (podcasts), ezinehub.com (ezines), syndic8.com (RSS feeds/blogs)

Approach Bloggers Interested in Your Type of Product

Send your product to bloggers as a gift. You are doing this to expose your product to influencers in your category by giving them an opportunity to try it free (not to bribe or beg them to mention the product). If the bloggers like it, they may give it a mention in their blogs. Note that this is a subtle Internet marketing technique. Choosing to mention (or not mention) your product should be solely up to them.

You can find and read blogs by searching blogging directories such as technorati.com.

Join One or More Online Networks

Online social networks allow you to set up a profile page and interact with others who have your same professional (or personal) interests. Each network has different features and may appeal to a different kind of user. As with all Internet marketing techniques, there are dos and don'ts, so you will want to read some of the profiles and learn a particular site's rules before aggressively working the network. Some networks to explore: linkedin.com, ryze.com, myspace.com, orkut.com, friendster.com

Send Out One or More Press Releases

First, the release must be something newsworthy to the media (if you need ideas, read the article here: http://www.websitemarketingplan.com/pr/NewsAngle.htm). Also, be sure to include a link to your Website or blog in the press release. Finally, distribute the release through an online press release service such as PRWeb.com.

Survey Your Website Visitors

Surveys can help you identify opportunities for improvement. Since online attention spans are very short, try asking a single two-part question such as Fred Reichhold's Ultimate Question: "On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend __________." Fill in the blank with your Website name (or other relevant product). To those who reply with a six or lower, ask why they are not more likely to recommend. You should see a pattern in the comments. These will lead to ways of improving your site. There are software packages to help you set up an online survey. In addition, surveymonkey.com is a popular Web interface for producing online surveys.

Convey Patrick Hanlon's 7 Primal Branding Pieces Online

According to Hanlon, the seven "Primal Branding" pieces -- a creation story, creed, icons, rituals, sacred words, nonbelievers, and leaders -- form belief systems that inherently attract people who want to believe in a product. Those people form the communities that surround successful products and services. Conveying as many of these as you can online can help build followers online.

Study Your 5 Closest Competitors' Websites and Online Marketing Activities

By studying the competition, you will not only gain a better understanding of trends in your industry, but also gain new insights into promotional strategies for your own business. As you research, brainstorm a list of ideas and use that list to plan a new online strategy or technique for your own business.

There you have it -- seven ideas for improving your Internet marketing presence. Integrate one or more into your 2007 marketing plan and you will be on your way to greater success.

Bobette Kyle draws upon 15+ years of Marketing/Executive experience, online marketing experience, and marketing MBA as inspiration for her writing. Bobette is proprietor at Web Marketing Place LLC and runs http://WebSiteMarketingPlan.com -- http://www.WebSiteMarketingPlan.com -- where you will find free marketing planning articles and resources. She is also author of the marketing plan and Web promotion book "How Much for Just the Spider? Strategic Website Marketing For Small Budget Business."

Copyright 2006 Bobette Kyle. All rights reserved. Reprints must have URL in "About the Author" box hyperlinked and clickable.

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By John C Vincent

Once you have performed all the necessary steps to acquire an Opt-in Subscriber through proper Opt-in Email Marketing, i.e., created a Squeeze Page with your Opt-in form attached, you will find that after a follow-up email campaign to your list, a percentage of these folks will take the opportunity to join your affiliate program.

If your program has a 15 or 30-day free trial listen up.

I received this email from an individual who had joined my team:

Hi John,

I have a couple of questions for you from my downline.

1. What type of letter do you send to your new trial members?

2. How do we convert the 30-day free trial people into paid members?

I was sending just a short personal email but was wondering if you had an outline of something we could use. The second question is more important as we have one person who has signed up about five free members and we are wondering how to help convert them. Thanks for your help, John :-)

Warm regards,

Hi__________,

LOL ...I have tried every welcome message I could ever think of and I have come to these conclusions. In my opinion, three types of marketers join affiliate programs:

Type1- The "OK ... We'll See" Referral"

This person joins every program and then...DOES NOTHING. Then, he or she (mostly males) never answers your initial welcome email. In addition, because they do nothing, they get nothing in return. And the weird thing...they wonder why the program didn't work...Go Figure :-)

Type2- The "I'm So Excited" Referral"

This person joins and is so over-excited and enthused that you become excited as well but Watch Out For This Person. This individual comes in two categories...the newbie...and the person who moves from program to program, (similar to number 1 above BUT with enthusiasm). Then after two - three weeks have passed and they have not made a mi!ion bucks and it takes a little effort ... they drop out.

Type3- The "Let's Do This!!!" Referral"

This is YOU in other words, someone who is like YOU ...mature and a serious marketer and someone who knows that you have to build in order to make money. Someone who will Do Whatever It Takes to Succeed. This is the individual who WILL Make A Full Time Living from the internet. In addition, it is this type of referral you want to fill your team with.

REALITY
You will get a lot of 1s and 2s and the gems, the number 3s, will come. Type 3s will make you rich. In addition, ________...you are really lucky...your team is being filled with Type 3s...your duplicates. That does not happen often...it did not happen for me at first...and then I started getting less of the 1s and 2s and more of the number 3s and the rest...as they say...Is History.

So the answer to your question: :-)

It does not matter what you send as a welcome message as long as it is warm, friendly and offers assistance.

In addition, to your second question:

You Convert a 30-day trial member by teaching, educating, and The Giving Of Yourself.

Think of the things I have done for you and all who join my Team. My instant responses, my guidance, my tips, tricks, and strategy...I hide nothing from you and there is more to come :-).

But let me ask you: Would you have taken me seriously in my welcome message to you...if I hadn't offered to help you Fr ee Of Charge, with NO CATCHES, No Strings Attached Initially...I was Sincere in wanting to help YOU...and you felt this sincerity and your referrals must feel this from you as well.

The REAL Secret To Internet Success:

Giving NOT Taking...Educating NOT trying to make a deal...Recommending
NOT Selling.

You might try to Sell to a Stranger but you should always Recommend to a Friend.
(yeah I created that phrase and you can steal it, lol).

To Give Of Yourself...Unselfishly! This is how you convert the 30-day free trials. You may not get all of them, but you will get a higher percentage with this very unselfish strategy than without it.

Opt-in Email Marketing and the elements incorporated in this procedure makes it a "Sweet Science" (sorry boxing enthusiasts :-) that ALL Internet Marketers should learn at the very beginning of their marketing career, that is... if they truly wish to Succeed ...

______________________________________

John C. Vincent runs The Opt In Marketing System Web-site, which provides Free Downloads, easy-to-follow free guidelines on how to build a massive Opt-in list that will continuously make you money online. Content Rich.

http://OptinMarketing.net
http://Opt-in-Magic.blogspot.com/
http://Opt-In-Wizard.com/

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By Keith Londrie

Do you ever sense you are short on cash? How would you like to learn how to save what you earn? The average consumer's focus is on spending, and there is no focus on saving. In Money to Be Made Online, you will learn some of the ways you can save money while doing business. If you fit into the category of "not rich," before you can go on that wonderful vacation, or buy a new house, you need to save up some cold hard cash. Nothing is better than money well spent some say. Well I think nothing is better than money well saved. Before you can spend wisely, you have to have good saving strategies.

So what is the secret to saving money? I am going to outline a few simple tricks that if followed, will leave some extra cash each month. Why is it that people are always spending more than they earn? Because they are in the business of helping other people save money. That is right; they are providing the retirement funds for the debt collector, or credit card executive. First, I want to let you know where some of your money goes, besides, when it goes down the drain.

Most people forget completely about their money after it leaves their pocket. Money is not just a piece of paper or numbers on a screen. For the purpose of this article, imagine that money is a type of energy, like electricity. Like electricity, most people do not think or care where it comes from, or where it goes, and how it is transferred from place to place. Each time you use electricity, or transfer it to another place, you lose some of its potential. Most appliances do not use 100% of the potential energy available, maybe in the future but not currently. When you buy something, taxes are taken out, plus the middlemen's fees, and then profit for the top of the pyramid.

The first thing you should do is become aware of WHERE your money goes. By thinking of where money comes from, and ends up, it will open your mind into new avenues of perception. You have to fight your way out of the "consumer" box and create a new box, with a new label, so you are comfortable. It is good to think "outside the box," for people who live in boxes, they did not create themselves. But when you create your own box, when you design your own life, and are finally free from all debt, worry, and create your own experiences, then I suggest you think inside that box instead!

So now, practice thinking this in everyday life. Where is my money going? Imagine all the little middlemen in between, and then maybe you will respect money a little more. You will realize how big and industrious the world actually is. After you have reached this stage of awareness, you should be more motivated, and ready to save some money. By saving money in this state, you might realize how important that one little dollar of profit is. When multiplied by a good product and millions of consumers, you have just made a million dollars.

If you are ready to start saving some money, be ready to follow these simple tasks, and expect some extra cash! First, you need to be organized. Saving money is not just about being cheap, but it is also about management. You must organize well! Most successful people are great at saving because they are natural organizers, and when they make it big, they get a secretary. After a while, these tasks become natural, and do not feel like a bother at all, so keep it up and after a while, you will get the hang of it.

Organizing your cash flow is essential. Everywhere you go, carry a notebook, small note pad, or a PDA if you have one. Most PDA's are compatible with finance software, so buy some or find a free version. DO IT NOW! This is the most important aspect of saving money; you first need to know where it is going! Therefore, for the first week, I want you to do two simple things. Everything you spend money on, write down the date, the cost, where, and how you felt. At the end of the day, create another separate sheet with a total of the amount spent. List all the things you do not need to have. Now try to think of where your money went, and imagine the process it took to make the products you bought. Did you purchase gas? There are many things needed to get gas into the country, so imagine the process and your mind will open!

After one week, take a look at all the data you have collected. Do not do this review until a full week's data has been collected! Determine what was essential and what you can alleviate. Take your daily essentials and total them up. Look where you can eliminate needless expenses! One of the things you can do, are follow the guidelines in Money to Be Made Online. Follow the experience of seasoned veterans, and save money for your business today!

Keith Londrie II is a successful Webmaster and the owner and publisher of moneytobemadeonline.com a website that specializes in providing tips on how to REALLY make money online that you can research on the internet in your pajamas from the comfort of your own home. Visit http://moneytobemadeonline.com/ today!

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By Lisa Packer

You absolutely must trigger an emotional reaction with your copy, if you intend to get response - whether you are looking for a lead or a sale. It does not matter whom you are marketing to, either: Business - to - business sales are still decided by human beings, just like consumer sales. All human beings buy on emotion.

With that in mind, here are seven ways to trigger emotions in your copy:

1. Tell a story. A good story captures attention, and draws the reader in. Right away, his emotions are stirred, and he cares about the outcome. Meanwhile, a lesson or sales message can be conveyed without resistance. That message will be remembered much longer, as good stories are hard to forget.

2. Paint a picture. Be vivid in your descriptions. Let the prospect see himself enjoying life after your product or service has solved his problem.

3. Stimulate all five senses. By merely describing the sight, smell, feel, sound, and taste of something, you make it real to your prospect. You mentally transport him to where you are - or transport your product to him. He will be aware, engaged - and emotionally involved with what you are telling him.

4. Promise benefits. Show him what you are going to do for him. Tell him how his life will be better, how time will be saved - and what he will do with that time - by using your product. Let him know, "What's In It for Me."

5. Use power words. Give your copy punch and excitement by using action words and vivid descriptors. Avoid all forms of the verb "to be." Show your product or service in action, and it will impact his heart.

6. Use a friendly tone of voice. Speak directly to your prospect, and sound like you are talking to a friend. Read your copy aloud and see if it passes the "barstool test." If it sounds like you are talking to the person on the barstool beside you, this is good. If any line or sentence makes you stumble, rewrite it.

7. Be honest. Banish all hype and half-truths. Emotion is conveyed subtly, and so is dishonesty. The same prospect "radar" that will pick up your passion and sincerity will also sound the alarm if you are lying. Your prospect will catch on, and you will lose him.

Use these tips to trigger honest emotion in your prospects. If you combine them with an offer that truly brings value to his life, you and your prospect will both be winners.

Does your marketing forge an emotional connection with your prospects? It can. Lisa Packer, author of "The Power Of Emotion: 6 Triggers That Turn Prospects Into Customers," specializes in copy that does just that. Get a FREE copy and explode your response rates at http://www.lisapacker.com today!

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By Paul Tobey

Most web marketers would agree that the number one and most fundamental aspect of any successful websites are; "The more traffic, the better!" In keeping with that strategy, please let me share a few thoughts on how to actually accomplish this.

If you own a car, you can always count on being stuck in traffic. There are those who experience this on a daily basis; and for the rest of us who do not drive to work, hopefully, only occasionally.

Why is this a huge source of frustration and stress for most people? Drivers hate the very thought of being stuck in one place when they want to be in another place. Look at the people around you the next time you are in a traffic jam. Is everyone smiling and having a good time? Probably not...

How many of you want to know how to alleviate the upset and the anxiety associated with being stuck in traffic? Here is the thing, traffic jams are not going to disappear anytime soon! As long as our society relies on cars and trucks to get around, there will always be traffic! However, even though it sounds crazy, I personally have learned to love traffic jams. Here is why....

I have always maintained there are only two things you can do in any stressful situation; you either accept it or you can remove yourself from the situation. Beating yourself up or blaming someone else for the traffic jam only makes it worse. That is what most people do not understand. The traffic jam is not the problem; it is your resistance to it. It is that resistance causing the stress. The amount of energy you put into resisting your situation causes the stress, not the situation itself.

In the case of traffic however, it is obvious that you cannot remove yourself from it if you are already in it. So, the only other thing you can do is accept it, right? Complete 100% of acceptance of the situation is the only way to alleviate 100% of the stress. Now, I can hear your brain malfunctioning right about now and your saying to yourself, "how can I possibly learn to accept traffic?" Ah ha! Therein lays the secret to getting what you really want. Because that is, what life is about, getting what you really want instead of what you do not want, right?

What you really want is more success. Success means various things to many different people. It is still something that most people strive for daily, to achieve big things.

Success? In a traffic jam? You are saying to yourself, "now, I'm really confused!" You see, there is one place where a traffic jam is a beautiful thing...the Internet! That is what we call in the internet marketing business the key to any successful website, "lots and lots of traffic." The more traffic jams we can create on our websites, the better!

If you want more business success, start getting more traffic to your website. There are many things to consider when designing your site to make this happen; but without traffic, a website is useless.

Therefore, know what you truly want - more success. Now you know what to do to get it - generate more traffic to your website. However, the most important part of this 3-part formula is, knowing HOW to do it! Without knowing how to do something, you will never get the success you most certainly deserve. Business is about customers - the more customers you have, the more success you will have. Knowing how to get more customers to your website to create a traffic jam is a science and is definitely a learned skill.

Let's look at the many resources offered to you to generate the traffic you need to run a successful website; search engines, affiliate programs, content submissions, email campaigns, joint venture partners, link exchanges, blogs, pay-per-click advertising, and a whole host of other resources too numerous to mention here. If some of these things sound unfamiliar to you, my highest recommendation is to find out what they are and what you need to do to make them work. For the purposes of this article, we are going to focus on one thing; search engines. Why just search engines? Statistics have shown that 70% of your website traffic will be driven through search engines like, Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. Plus, it is free!

How do you make search engines work for you?

First, optimize your website to get a high search engine ranking. Select relevant targeted keyword phrases. Place those keywords strategically on your web pages. How do you know what keyword phrases to use? That is where many people make huge mistakes. They actually optimize their sites for keyword phrases that nobody is actually searching. HINT! First, find out what people are searching for; then build your web pages around those words. There are tools available to help you chose what search terms are relevant, such as; Google's free service called Overture, and WordTracker, which is a paid service.

After choosing your keywords, it is time to place them on your site. We call this keyword density. My suggestion, place one or two keyword phrases on each page in your; Page Title, Meta Description Tags, Meta Keyword Tags and a few times in the text of your webpage, for optimal results. This alone will significantly increase the ranking of your site for engines like Google and Yahoo. These engines think like people. They look for what is important on your website and how relevant your site is to what key phrases you are optimizing. Do not optimize your site for "free movie downloads" if you are selling cosmetics. Bad idea! You can actually be penalized by search engines for trying to trick them into sending you traffic.

Incoming links are the most significant factor in increasing your search engine optimization. Are you wondering how important this is? That is the million dollar, drop the gates, and release the hounds, key to the universe! Why? If you optimize your site with relevant keywords, which says, are you any good at what you do? Who has to say your products and services are any good? That is the way engines like Google think. They want to know from others if you do what you say, and if you are any good at doing it. How do they do this? By finding links to your website, on other sites, that promote what you are saying on your site. The more links into your website promoting what it is you do; the better!

Are you ready for the kicker? You mean there is more? Yep, there is more! If the last paragraph was a million dollar technique, this is definitely a two million dollar technique. Make sure that the links on other websites, which lead to your website, use your keyword phrases. Therefore, your links in from outside should look like this... Piano Music by Paul Tobey - where the link underneath "piano music" is the url of your site ie: http://www.paultobey.com. An engine like Google searches for the keywords first and then follows the link to see if it is relevant. If it is relevant, which in the case of the preceding example it is, then the ranking for the keyword search "piano music" will go up every time Google or another search engine, finds one of these links.

So, the next time you are sitting in traffic and you are agitated, stressed, and filled with anxiety, think of all the traffic your website will be generating while you are stuck in the car. Take a look at all the angry people around you, give a big smile, and say aloud to yourself, "I Love Traffic Jams."

Paul Tobey:

In addition to writing a number of articles about web design and search engine optimization the author owns a successful web design company in Toronto, Canada.

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By Donovan Baldwin

One overlooked or misused form of advertising is free advertising. This can be a very important means of growing your business.

There are innumerable free classified advertising sites on the internet. Obviously, some will be better than others will, and the value of any site may be anywhere from good for your business to a total waste of your time.

One immediate, visible advantage of free advertising is the adjective, "free". Many people starting internet businesses simply do not have the funds to buy advertising.

One disadvantage to free advertising is, that since it is free, everybody floods it with all kinds of ads. It is easy for your message to get lost in the flood of advertisements.

Another drawback is, that unlike people who look through newspaper classifieds or advertising papers such as are found at the local convenience store, few people on the Internet actually visit online-classified sites in hopes of finding a car or piece of stereo equipment. Even if they do, they are not likely to see your ad if you are trying to interest someone in an internet income opportunity.

So, how can you turn free advertising to your advantage?

First, some sites will have the potential for improving your business, in one way or another, and some will be worthless. The advertisement itself may or may not be effective, or may or may not be successful at a certain website, testing is necessary. Try different ads, and try them on different sites.

A complexity in determining the value of a given free advertising site is the fact that with the advent of automatic advertising submitters, many sites are hardly ever visited by humans any more. Only the automatic programs drop by and leave off their ads and move on to the next site. Therefore, one of the first criteria to look for might be whether or not ads must be manually posted. At least in that case, humans will visit and may actually see your ad.

By the way, even a site which can be posted to automatically may be of value in the area of linking and search engine optimization. Most of these links will be fleeting or of little value to a search engine spider, but you may be able to build a little stable of sites which will help search engines find your site. I know of several sites where I regularly post ads exactly for this purpose. Ablewise.com (which requires manual submission) for example is regularly visited by search engine spiders, and if I place an ad there, the page I have linked to will soon show up in search engine listings.

Second, free advertising is most effective if it is not used to sell anything. In fact, it will operate best when you use the free advertising to give something of value away in order to establish a condition of trust between yourself and a prospective customer. In the heyday of mail order advertising, this was often referred to as the "two step" method.

It worked, and still works, like this. The seller offers a free report, such as "How to Make Money from Your Kitchen Table". The ad simply makes the offer, and often would request the reader to send a "free, self-addressed, stamped envelope" for the free report. In this way, the seller was able to get his materials in the hands of several interested parties for only the cost of the report and the ad. The seller was saved the postage by the reader who provided the envelope and postage. Enclosed with the report were materials offering other items, often more reports, which were sold by the seller.

If the seller had provided a report of value on the first mailing, it was possible that the reader would purchase one of the items. If not, the name and address was still on the seller's records (mailing list), and the reader would receive more mailings and/or a collection of such names and addresses would be sold to others who had not built their own lists as yet.

The same thing is done on the internet, and many successful advertisements offer free advertising, software, reports, or services in order to entice the online reader to respond, thus placing his or her contact information at the disposal of the advertiser.

This sort of advertising on the internet has spawned two distinct "advertising" methods, which, while free, are not actually advertisements. These two methods are the writing of articles and the creation of lead capture pages.

When someone writes an article of interest or value, you can publish it free at several sites on the internet. They are usually allowed to include a little information about themselves, including a link to their business website. Generally, to be most effective, the article will be on a subject relevant to the topic of their website and product. Since these articles may eventually be placed on hundreds of websites over long periods and are mainly read by those interested in the topic, they are very effective as "advertising". If the author writes well and provides value, the reader may come to respect the writer well enough to accept their advice or guidance, and purchase goods or services from them.

With a lead capture page, the reader cannot get the free gift, which is often information, but sometimes a service or product, without giving the advertiser their name and contact information. The advertiser will then use this information to make offers of their products. It is quite common for an internet surfer to leave his or her name and email address in order to receive a course of some kind, which is delivered, by email to their inbox. The course will be delivered as a series of messages over time, and each will contain the advertiser's sales message. The content of the course will often be relevant to the product being sold. In time, the advertiser assumes the stature of friend and expert in the eyes of the reader, and this will often result in a sale being made.

Free advertising can often be effectively used to lead potential customers to the lead capture pages or even to the articles where they can begin to make the acquaintance of the writer. While the free advertisement seldom is effective in actually spawning a sale, it can be an excellent means of gathering customers.

Donovan Baldwin is a Dallas area writer and network marketing professional. He is a graduate of the University of West Florida, a member of Mensa and is retired from the U. S. Army. Learn how to get free advertising at http://www.donovanbaldwin.com/free_advertising/hits2u.html

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By Gary Wollin

Batteries not included. These are three of the dumbest words.

Your Company spent millions of dollars to develop this wonderful product. Engineers spent countless hours creating and refining it. You spent additional millions of dollars in advertising to get me to buy it.

I bought it. I took it home and now it will not work because YOU neglected to include the only part that WILL make it work. For a couple of extra bucks, your cost and mine, I am frustrated and angry with you and your Company.

It is the same with customer service.

No matter what you sell; whether its goods or services, big ticket or small, sales and customer service are not two separate pieces. Every sale must come with the customer service built in.

Exceptional customer service is NOT an extra cost of doing business. It is an investment in your own future success.

In the early 1950s, my uncle had a very small clothing store in Miami, Florida. In those days, Miami was a major entertainment center, with the biggest names in show business appearing at the major hotels, very similar to Las Vegas today.

One evening, as he was leaving the stage at the end of the early show, a young singer ripped his tuxedo jacket on a nail sticking out of the wall. It was after 8 P.M., all the clothing stores were closed.

The hotel management called the major stores and owners because the singer did not want to go on stage with a torn jacket or worse, no jacket.

None of the fancy clothing shop owners would leave their homes to accommodate the young man. Finally, in desperation, my uncle got the call. Would he come downtown with a couple of tuxedos?

Within an hour, my uncle was at the hotel with four tuxedos. He did the fitting and tailoring right on the spot.

The young singer and the big hotel management were ecstatic. The singer tried to shove a few extra hundred-dollar bills into my uncle's hand, but he would not take the money, explaining it was an honor to have the opportunity to earn the business.

The singer promised he would never forget my uncle's kindness and would tell his show biz friends about my uncle. True to his word, the singer continued to tell his friends about my uncle, even as his singing career skyrocketed.

The young singer - Frank Sinatra.

My uncle - went from a tiny clothing store on the edges of oblivion to "Mickey Hayes - Clothier to the Stars"; his walls covered with hundreds of photographs of the biggest names in show business.

On the other side of the coin is INTEL, the major manufacturer of computer chips, and, a great company.

Some years ago, Intel's newest chip had a design flaw that caused a problem in only the tiniest number of calculations, and only in highly complex situations. As this problem began to unfold in the press, owners of computers built with these new chips wanted replacements.

Intel's management stated that these customers were somewhat stupid since only highly complex calculations in specialized situations would experience that problem and then, only on the rarest occasions. They said that they would replace the chip if the customer could substantiate the claim that their chip was flawed.

How stupid. If it only goes bad once in a zillion times, why not give a lifetime guarantee? Most of the customers would never run into that problem. If Intel had immediately offered the lifetime replacement guarantee, ALL of the customers would have had a high degree of confidence that they would never need to take Intel up on their offer.

Intel finally did offer lifetime replacement - after worrying, offending, and insulting millions of their customers.

We can all learn a valuable lesson from Nordstrom's; the department store famous for customer service. Their service to customers is so incredible, that people go out of their way to shop there.

Mr. Nordstrom calls it 'customer heroics'. "We do it because we want more business - NOT simply because we're nice guys."

I have always told my employees - "don't save me 'MY' money. If it helps the customer, SPEND my money. Even if they make a mistake, they won't be criticized if it helped the customer".

Nordstrom, over a period of many years, has developed a corporate culture of service to the customer. Any corporate culture, if it is going to endure successfully, MUST take on a life of its own, apart from the wishes of management. It has to be adopted by every employee, because each ONE thinks it is a good idea.

Whether you are a one-person operation or the largest company, you know what good customer service is. It's the Golden Rule applied to business - "Do unto others".

Listen to your customers' spoken requests - and unspoken. They will tell you what they want. Add a large portion of your own good common sense. Make a commitment to yourself that you will give your customers, service beyond their highest expectations

If you will do these few simple things, I can guarantee you success beyond YOUR expectations.

Gary Wollin is a Warren Buffet style investment advisor with 45+ years of Wall Street experience. He has been regularly featured in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and many other publications around the world. He writes and speaks on sales, customer loyalty, and the stock market.

For more information, please visit http://www.garywollin.com.

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By Miki Zakay

I will keep it as simple as I can - a PRACTICAL TOOL.

First, I would like you to consider these four facts:

*A DIRECT MAIL PIECE costs about 50-cents in postage alone. (Then you have to factor in paper and printing costs).

*A PHONE CALL can cost just as much - or more - than a direct mail piece.

*A PHONE CALL wastes time (and time is money) because you will spend precious minutes - sometimes hours or days - trying to contact the right person.

*A MESSAGE left on voice mail is usually a waste of time, and therefore a waste of money.

Depressing? Not at all. After you read today's "Insider Marketing Strategies" lesson, you'll be able to say "NO" to the downside of phone calls and direct mail, and "YES" to the upside of email.

Read on...

Given the inherent problems with traditional marketing techniques, it is important to master the BASIC STRATEGIES FOR INTEGRATING EMAIL into your overall campaign.

As I have just shown you, sending out an EMAIL CAN BE MUCH CHEAPER than other marketing methods. Proceed with caution, however. Email can also cost you a fortune -- in lost opportunities AND cold hard cash -- IF you do not know the basics.

Therefore, that is where we are going to start.

First, always keep in mind that your "primary objective", the master key that unlocks your "Success Vault" in Internet Marketing is to build your mailing list - your EMAIL MAILING LIST. (Often referred to as your "In-house list.").

The addresses you collect are going to mean the difference between the middle-of-the-road results that Average Joe and Jane are achieving and the through the roof, over-the-top, to-the-moon-and-back MEGA-success that top online sellers achieve. (The difference really is that dramatic.) So do not miss the boat: The time is NOW to start building your list of email addresses (prospects).

REVIEW

You can begin to grow your list simply by capturing emails from people who visit your website, as we have already discussed in a previous lesson.

=> Pop Quiz: What is the easiest way to convince people to give you their email address? (Answer: Offer an irresistible freebie with a sign-up form on your site or in a pop-up box, drive traffic to your site, and watch as people start entering their email address. Don't have a freebie? Get a good one from the Cashflow Magic treasure chest!).

Okay, so now you're "in the groove". You're capturing people's emails like crazy. If you are just sitting there - well, you know the old saying, "Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there."

So what is next?

-- Let me take a moment from telling how to build your email list to remind you why. It's been said that - YOU CAN GET RICH WITH AN EMAIL LIST OF JUST 1000 PEOPLE!

Think about that. Then stop thinking and get going on new ways to capture and keep email addresses. (By the way, if you haven't already "gotten with the program" yet, I wanted to remind you that CASHFLOW MAGIC http://mikizakay.cashflow123.com presents an unparalleled opportunity for you to build a mountain of wealth with a program that rewards you quickly and generously).

GIVE 'TIL IT HURTS!

If you want to keep getting addresses, start giving stuff away! Give, give, and keep finding more things to give! In addition, since you can't send a TOASTER through email, why not give the far more valuable -- and far more affordable for you -- INFORMATION PRODUCTS, business tools, and expert advice - maybe even a no-cost/obligation email-marketing course like this one!

DRIP, DRIP, DRIP.

You'll want to have a series of letters already set up so that they can be "dripped" on your prospects on a regular basis. Send a message daily, every other day, or on whatever schedule suits you best, but make contact AT LEAST EVERY 7 DAYS.

If you're not confident in your writing skills, you have two choices: you can hire a professional to write the letters for you or you can use a system already set up with letters to help you build your email list. (I suppose the third choice is to just give up and bury your heard in the sand, but that's no way to make a million!).

If you're serious about this - and you should be, believe me -- you really should consider tapping into the system offered by Paul Birdsall & Cashflow Magic. At Cashflow Magic, you can access an entire AUTOMATED leads/giveaway/database marketing.

ALL-IN-ONE SYSTEM that makes it easy for your revenues to soar.

If you have found that PRACTICAL, which I believe you have, Please do use it. It is only in your power to change your abilities and earn commissions from you E-business.

Remember! "The only LOSERS are the QUITTERS" and "All the beginnings are tough... but it's tougher to stay".

For more information, Please DO CONTACT ME at my FREE INTERNET MARKETING SCHOOL - http://mikizakay.payitforward4profits.com

To your success!
Miki Zakay
MikiZakay@TheNextLeader.ws
http://mikizakay.payitforward4profits.com
http://mikizakay.cashflow123.com

Miki Zakay has been an Internet & Network marketer for the past 8 years.
Miki's monthly income has increased in the past 8 months and is now stable around $25,000 a month. Zakay Served the Israeli Army as an Officers Course Commander and now teaches the skills of war and leadership among the business section as well as the army section. Considered a Pro business consultant, always happy to help others.
All his Knowledge can be found in his Internet Success Guide at http://mikizakay.cashflow123.com

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By Jennifer Green

Although social bookmarking might be something you've only just come across, it has in fact been around for a few years. It's certainly getting more popular every day. If you're involved in Internet marketing, it's also a great way to help generate traffic and page rank to your site. The sooner you learn about it, the quicker your Internet business can benefit.

Put simply, social bookmarking is a way of saving your favorite URLs online. You probably have a "Favorites" folder on your computer. Social bookmarking is just an online version of that. The main difference is that your social bookmarking favorites are publicly available for anyone to see. The big question is - how can this benefit your business?

If you do a Google search, you'll soon come up with a list of the most popular social bookmarking websites. Look at http://del.icio.us, which is one of the most popular. Once you've joined the social bookmarking site, all you need to do, is to start adding your URLs. With each URL, you also add a list of tags, or keywords, so that people know what that URL is. So if you have bookmarked a site about dogs, for example, then make sure you use the word "dogs" as one of the tags.

You can also choose to make the listing public or private. Use a public listing, if it's a website you want other people to find, such as your own website. A public listing will also show other information, such as who created the bookmark, when, and give an indication of how popular that particular keyword is on the site. You can use the private setting for other URLs that you will want to access while you're traveling around, and do not have access to your home computer.

In some ways, a social bookmarking site is like a search engine, except that it only searches entries on its database. The good part about that is that the only sites other people recommend are listed. It's easy to find a list of sites on any topic that might interest you. Type in dogs, for example, and you will see sites that other people have recommended.

For Internet marketing purposes, you would add your website to you social bookmarking account, pick your main keywords and use them as tags, and potentially generate traffic to your site. Another idea is to have a link to your social bookmarking account from your blog page, so that people can see a frequently updated list of your recommended websites about that topic. You also get a backlink from the social bookmarking site to your website, which helps to boost your popularity in the eyes of the search engines.

For optimal results, you should open as many accounts on different social bookmarking sites as you can. The only problem is that posting your website to these accounts can
become very tedious, especially if you have a large number of websites or if you are adding the bookmark to a large number of accounts.

Recently, a new Wordpress plug-in has been released to eliminate some of this tedious work. It can automatically add bookmarks to all of your bookmarking accounts, hands free. I highly recommend this great time saving tool to anyone who wants to take advantage of social bookmarking without spending hours bookmarking his or her pages manually. Check it out here http://www.autosocialposter.com

Social bookmarking is only in its infancy, and will probably develop in ways no one could even imagine. There is no doubt it is a great way to get traffic to your websites, so what are you waiting for?

Online marketer Jennifer Green has fast become an expert on the benefits of blogging and social bookmarking. If you are looking for an automated bookmarking solution for your blogs, check out http://www.autosocialposter.com.

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By Akhil Shahani

A well thought out game plan is a winning strategy in any battle! Your business is no less than a battle. Every moment, your competitors are trying to outsmart you. To win this war, you need a game plan for your business. In other words, you need a marketing plan.

A marketing plan is a highly researched, well-written document, which details all marketing actions necessary to achieve business objectives. It could be for a product, service, brand, or a product line. From time to time, you need to stand back and see if your plan is working, and whether your day-to-day activities line up.

So let us begin with the basics of writing a marketing plan:

1. Title Page - This must include the name of your company and the management team, which is instrumental in developing strategies.

2. Executive Summary - This is a quick overview of the main points in your plan. Although the summary comes first, it is best to write this last. This will ensure that you have not overlooked something and that your plan makes sense.

3. Current Situation - Here, you need to analyze both the macro environment, as well as, the current market situation. The macro environment analysis will give you an insight into the economy, and larger legal and technical aspects that can affect your business. The current market situation will throw light on the potential market segment, competitor landscape, industry structure etc.

4. Consumer Behavior - Present an analysis of your customers' demographic profile and buying habits, talk about key motivators, loyalty segments, and similar issues.

5. Company Analysis - This is your chance to do some 'blah-blah' on your company. Just kidding! Analyze the internal situation of the company in terms of its vision and mission, long-term business objectives, short-term goals, resource position, etc. This is also an appropriate place to do a thorough SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis. This will help you identify the sustainable competitive advantages of your company, and understand the key success factors for your business.

6. Market Research - This chapter describes the process of data collection, method of analysis, and key findings.

7. Marketing Strategy - Step 1 - discuss product mix, product life cycle management, brand name, brand image, etc. Step 2 - analyze market share by products, customer segments, and geography Step 3 - it is all about money, honey! This is where you talk pricing strategy Step 4 - share your advertising and promotion plans Step 5 - put down your ideas about how you will distribute your product.

8. Implementation - discuss the nitty-gritty here. Chart out resource requirements, key deliverables, time frame, and other issues related to implementation.

9. Financial Summaries - include projections of income, break-even analysis, and payback period. List assumptions clearly.

10. Outlook - this contains predictions for the future and plans of action for alternative scenarios, if any.

11. Appendix - include all supporting material, tables and data.

Generally, a basic marketing plan will run into 30 - 40 pages. While you could abridge your report, make sure you do not overlook any important aspects.

Finally, we will leave you with a thought - if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail!

Hi, I am Akhil Shahani, a serial entrepreneur who wants to help you succeed. Over the years, I have run many successful businesses & made many mistakes on the way. I have created http://www.aykya.com to help you benefit from all I have learned on my journey. Please visit us & download our special 'Freebie of the Month' as a thank you for your visit.

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by Paul Speziale

Take your average super successful sales person, the person that has brought the most sales to your business (usually it is just one). Multiply them by a million, and send them off to visit one qualified prospect each...all at the same time. Do you think that would increase your sales a bit?

If you had answered yes, then you now realize the potential of a well-crafted piece of copy designed to sell your product.

The ability to write a letter to sell your product/service is an even greater skill.

So then, why do so many businesses send out copy, through advertising, mail order, telemarketing, radio or TV ads designed to be flashy, humorous and clever? When was the last time you bought from a person in a store when they were using all sorts of clever tricks on you? Tricks like, play on words, weird images, advanced humor etc... No... chances are you were scared of a salesperson that was so crafty. It raises the question, "Why are they trying so hard?"

We are going to call that flashy sort of copy: "Everyday Copy" because you see it so often...many times a day. In addition, the copy that sells your product, we will call "Copy that sells".

With your everyday copy, you have your English majors, freelance writers, and ad agency employees. Now, these people are brilliant, they can write so nicely, with such advanced command of the English language that they sometimes win prizes in literature, become legendary, and known throughout history as producing beautiful works of art and literature, often win awards, and widely recognized.

They use English devices like play on words, puns, humor, and other things in their copy.

They have not sold your product...

Don't believe me? Key your ads...put in a tracking mechanism to see if people are responding to your ads...you will be furious when you find out exactly how many people respond and buy your product. Try it!

Unfortunately, their advanced work is all but lost on the prospect that is:

1) busy with two kids
2) balancing both a full time and a part time job
3) has a spouse who is not holding up their part of the agreement called "marriage"
4) poor diet habits from lack of time
5) stressed out from work with employees backstabbing them
6) bosses criticizing them in front of their co-workers
7) parents telling them how to run their lives and won't leave them alone
8) aches and pains in their body
9) the stress of keeping up with their next-door neighbor who always seems to have the latest and greatest stuff
10)not to mention being bombarded by sales and marketing mail, signs, commercials, sales people, telemarketers up to 3000 times per day.

Do you think with all that is going on, they have time to figure out the "play on words" that was used in your ad? If they don't understand what you said the first time and figure out how they will benefit from what you offer, they will toss it.

You have 3 seconds to get their attention:

1...2...3... that's it.

On the other hand, copy that sells will most of the time look dull, boring, and mostly full of text. Why does it look this way? Because the effort is made to put in as many benefits and reasons to buy into the ad as possible in a way that isn't pushy and in a way that can be tracked to determine results.

Let's look at some examples shall we?

Examples of Everyday Copy.

Actually, there is no need to put up any. Just open your newspaper and look for them. They are the ones with just a few words, many pictures, and if you feel confused at, a) what they are selling, and b) how it may benefit you, then you have found some Everyday Copy.

Example of Copy That Sold Millions.

The Wall Street Journal Letter, which sells its subscriptions, estimates selling up to a billion dollars for the WSJ. In addition, Gary Halbert's Coat of Arms Letter (a simple one-page letter), has been in circulation for a few decades and sold millions of dollars of coats of arms. The advertisement "They laughed at me..." sold the home piano study course for decades and has made millions. David Ogilvy's Rolls Royce Ad, entitled "At 60 MPH, the only sound the new Rolls Royce Makes is the Electric Clock", that sold out the entire national supply of Rolls Royce's. David Ogilvy used these principles in advertising copy, to which he owes his purchase of a 14th century medieval castle.

Some big publishers like Agora and Philips pay their copywriters up to a million dollars a year because they want to keep them...they know that if they don't pay them well, they will walk.

Another example of copy that sells is the National Enquirer and Cosmopolitan. The National Enquirer is read by more people than the bible and Cosmopolitan is also a big seller...why? Headlines that catch a reader's eye, produced by the copywriters, that's why. Are they trashy? For some, yes, but the fundamental human behaviors that they are aiming for is the same as those SUCCESSFUL copywriters that aim at selling to doctors, dentists, engineers, big business etc.

The good news; translate those fundamental human behaviors to match whatever audience you're selling to.

In conclusion, choosing which type of copy you wish to have is largely dependant on what you want to achieve. If you want to win awards then hire an everyday copywriter, if you want to sell your product, then hire a copywriter that sells.

Watch out for my next article "How to Hire A Copywriter To Guarantee Your Product Will Sell"

Paul Speziale is a direct marketing consultant / entrepreneur based out of Toronto, Ontario. He has served all industries from manufacturers to retailers, from entrepreneurs to professionals. Besides helping clients, he is working on his own projects. He also volunteers his time for several worthy causes both local and global. You can reach him at http://www.AnelloSolutions.com: Growing Your Business Through Low-Risk, Optimized and Results Based Marketing

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By Laurie Raphael

To succeed as a marketer, you must direct meaningful traffic to your website.

No matter how well designed or interesting your site is, it is a waste of time if no one sees it.

In the initial stages of your business, getting traffic is not easy with the steep competition of thousands of web sites all trying to get their message out there. There is hope, though, according to successful marketers. The following seven methods, applied consistently, can mean a great increase in the quality and quantity of traffic to a site:

1.) Utilize Search Engines

Use search engines to your advantage. You need to have your web site appear near the top of the results, ahead of other websites offering similar content to gain the maximum benefit from a search engine. How is this accomplished? See two.

2.) Popularity Linking

Your site must already be attracting a considerable amount of traffic to achieve high search engine results. One method for accomplishing this is by connecting to other relevant sites via links. These "popularity links" help drive traffic, and if targeted to the correct search queries, they can boost your search engine ranking.

Link popularity always starts with finding web sites that are similar but do not compete with your own. You would contact the website owner and request a link to your site. At the same time, you would offer a reciprocal link, which would advertise their website on one of your pages.

3.) Writing Articles

Writing your own rich content articles on topics targeted to your audience helps promote your web site by increasing the number of popularity links coming to your site (see 2) as well as attracting interested readers. Place your articles on other sites, in ezines, or even in newsletters. Always be sure to ad a source box with a link going back to your site.

4.) Joint Venture Marketing

Joint venture marketing, a marketing relationship in which two individuals cooperate to help promote each other, is also an effective way to promote a product or service. Joint venture agreements can also include swapping ads and exchanging links. Both parties benefit as they reach a wider customer base quickly.

5.) Joining Affiliate Programs

By joining an affiliate program as a merchant, you can get others to market your site. You will need your own product to start your own program, but accomplish this with private label content or product development ventures. Even a small-scale affiliate program can help direct significant traffic to your site.

6.) Creating a List of Subscribers

A subscriber list is a valuable asset for any marketer. Using an autoresponder or a personalized newsletter to promote your site will help you to build a repeat visitor base, providing direct marketing opportunities for now and in the future.

7.) Understand Your Market

Different niches need promoted in different ways. Use the techniques described up until this point to reach people who will be interested. You need to figure out who your target market is and how will you treat them once they get to your site? This will affect everything on your site including your ad copy and even the colors you use.

Use as many strategies as possible to generate targeted traffic. Relying on search engines is obviously important but there are numerous other ways to generate traffic. Combining these methods will maximize the traffic you get.

Laurie Raphael operates a website geared toward boosting your marketing results using various means of advertising and marketing strategies. For her private list of recommended affiliate marketing "secret weapons," visit her site at http://theadprocess.com.

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By Mikhail Tuknov

The world over, organizations are employing low cost techniques in different business processes. Production work is being outsourced to churn out low cost products. Consultancy is taken from a distant nation to bring in quality and reduce service costs. Educational tutorials are taken through e-learning systems.

The common thread to these is the - INTERNET, which is helping them to connect easily and deliver in time. In this scenario, companies have shown keen interest in their website. They now take them as virtual offices that should look good in design & content and should reach millions and billions of people worldwide. So International marketing has come to the limelight and metamorphosed into Internet Marketing.

Internet Marketing is done in a variety of ways, the most noticeable being Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO has given a new life to websites. It is making their presence felt in a galaxy of websites scattered over the virtual world of Internet. SEO has more to do with rankings that are noticed, than just listings at any page of a search engine result. Here is how SEO can benefit your organization:

Benefits, plentiful!

You can battle with your competitor on a level playing field no matter whether he belongs to a Fortune-500 club or is a small entity. The natural (or organic) listings in Search Engines get more clicks than the paid "Sponsored" links. Only SEO makes this difference. Even if bigger competitors pump in more money to get top listed through paid links, they cannot beat a well-marketed SEO website. It is a truth and it matters!

Rankings bring traffic.

Higher rankings get significant traffic. A website receiving top ranks is known to get business enquiries in abundance, particularly when the keyword is competitive. SEO gets you at the top and maintains it there all the time. It assures you a constant flow of new prospects and new business. All that may be done at a salary of an average single employee. It is worth investing!

Opportunities are on the Internet.

It is often seen that a brand's associates / affiliates rank higher than the brand itself. This is all because they bagged the first opportunity and held to the SEO bandwagon long before the Brand realized SEO's importance. Results; there has been phenomenonal business through the Internet. All thanks to Search Engine Optimization!

Businesses spend on email marketing, online banner advertising, paid search engine listings, and others to reach exponentially growing Internet users. SEO outclasses all of them. It is estimated to be costing 5-6 times lower than banner advertisement ; has best ROI than paid links, when worked for a longer period and highly effective than 'spam' labeled email marketing. No doubt, SEO is effectively better than the best.

Experts like Forrester Research put SEO, one up, than Email marketing. In one of their surveys, they state "search engines reach valuable, motivated, and ready customers. To capitalize on search as a marketing tool, marketers should shift acquisition email and ad dollars to search...." Google earns billions of dollars by selling ads through paid advertisement (sponsored links). The earnings are increasing year-by-year. All these are clear indicators of the importance of search engine importance and the related marketing. Should we say more!

It has been found that search engines, though being the top method to find sites on the Internet, is allocated a marketing budget by only a small percentage of businesses This gap between recognition of the benefits of Search Engine Optimization and actually doing it is anybody's' opportunity. By grabbing it, you can give your business a competitive advantage.

Mikhail Tuknov, search engine marketing specialist is founder of Infatex (Search Engine Marketing Company). With an extensive background in Internet marketing, Mikhail Tuknov offers SEO, PPC, SEM services.
http://www.infatex.com/

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By Mario R. Churchill

The world of advertising seems to be a magnet. It attracts those who dream to be in the advertising industry filled with high compensation, a fun and lax environment, and being acquainted with known personalities.

Those are just a small part of being in the advertising industry. The whole part of it entails dedication to work; wherein, you will have endless nights of brainstorming to meet the deadline. You will experience reproach from your superior because you did not meet the quality of work they expect from you. You see, it is not all about fun. It is being responsible with your craft and your attitude as a worker.

Learning is an essential factor for you to get hooked in the advertising industry. You need to gain knowledge. The initial acquisition of knowledge is from your stay in the academe. You need to nurture learning by reading.

Yanik Silver is well known in the advertising industry as a great copywriter and marketing consultant. His books can help you reach your dreams to become good as either a copywriter or marketer.

"Instant Internet Profits"

You can go over this book if you want to learn more about the products or services, which will be appropriate for you to sell. In addition, you will also find tips on how to make effective sales letter in this book. Other add-ons are guidelines on how to relate to your audience by the attitude you convey as well as the materials you utilize.

"Surefire Sales Letter Secrets"

Reading this book will help you be familiar with writing different types of sales letter. A sales letter is not applicable to all people. There is a distinct sales letter depending on your target audience.

Surefire Sales Letter Secrets is a book, which will guide you with the proper letter template and content so you will get that sale you wish to have.

"How to Make Instant Sales and Immediate Profits Using Cheap Fax Advertising"

Yanik helps you out find other means to disseminate advertising materials such as using fax broadcasting. Moreover, the book will also help you reduce the advertising cost you allot for every project you promote.

The book will also help you understand the advantages of fax broadcasting and how it can greatly help you achieve good business.

The above-mentioned books are some of Yanik Silver's work; to help you become familiar with some aspects in the advertising industry. There are still other books to read; all you need to do is research for those. To know more about the written work of Yanik Silver, you can search the internet. The bookstore is another venue to find books written by Yanik Silver.

Do not be magnetized by the reputation of the advertising industry. Being overwhelmed will most likely make you fall. Organize your thoughts first, and ask yourself; if being with the advertising industry is what you want.

After careful assessment, now decide if you are well fitted in the said industry; if yes, then it is high time to learn how to play the game copywriters and marketers play.

Do not stop learning. Apt knowledge is your key to get hooked with the advertising industry. Knowledge is still your best friend if you want to keep your career in the industry.

Mario Churchill is a freelance author and has written over 200 articles on various subjects. For more information checkout http://www.websiteconversionexpert.com and http://www.killercopywritingblog.com.

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By John Terry

An interested visitor, strolling through your site finally comes to just what she is looking for and is about to make a purchase. It is a sunny afternoon, and her cat, which 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 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 us say you have 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 you represent in your article list.

5. Create mailing lists. Inform subscribers to your articles when you have 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 effectively proves to increase sales. In your ad, put your autoresponder address where you can expose a visitor to numerous marketing materials. This multiplies the chances of converting visitors into customers. For example, if you are selling a particular product, put testimonials about how spectacular it is on your autoresponder, as it adds a detailed, enticing description of your product.

7. Distribute advertising. Let us 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. After a visitor has completed your course, automate a reminder about your service or product. 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. Alternatively, 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 to 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 use. 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 to notify visitors 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.

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 what I consider to be the best startup autoresponder in the business: http://goto-pro.com/go/to.pl?l=tw&cu=1&u=335&f=1

John Terry is a webmaster and networker.

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By Duane Norland

Have you always dreamed of sitting at home, doing nothing, and raking in the money? If you think you can daily spend the time on the golf course, instead of sitting behind a desk, you need to check out http://www.getintocash.com/recommends/pif4p and see what you can do about turning your dream into a reality.

The truth is that very few programs out there are designed to make you rich overnight.

They require you to spend a couple of months (a few hours a day) doing the legwork to set up your business. You need to get a web page, get it hosted on the internet, advertise, set up a leads campaign complete with an autoresponder; that stores email addresses of you clients and periodically sends follow-up emails to close the deal, and an online banking system to collect the money and pay you.

I know this may sound a little overwhelming, but if you get involved with the right program, all of your initial work will continue to generate income for you for life.

Some systems help set you up very easily and point you in the right direction for generating leads and sending emails. This makes it very easy for the rookie and levels the playing field by allowing them to make the same income the pros do. Of course, with experience comes expertise and niches, which the rookie may not discover or understand, but the potential exists for all.

I personally discovered two programs, which compliment each other perfectly. Completely automated, the first generates residual income. Once it is set up, it perpetuates itself automatically. The best part is that it is FREE to join. You can imagine, that since it is free, you cannot expect to become a millionaire overnight (otherwise, you would pay excessively to join). However, when combined with the hard-hitting tactics for generating traffic of the second system, you will generate a healthy income in very little time. I personally use these two systems and only spend about 15 minutes a day at my computer. The rest of the day is mine to do with as I please.

You too can set up a healthy, residual, long-term income. Just visit these two sites:

http://www.getintocash.com/recommends/pif4p
http://www.getintocash.com/recommends/butterfly

Duane Norland is Founder of http://getintocash.com

Duane has been operating on the Internet for 4 years and has built up eight flourishing businesses and growing.

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By Mario R. Churchill

Many people today prefer starting up a home business in the Internet to provide extra cash or a way to provide extra income for the household. Aside from their regular jobs, people today are now also starting home businesses. Besides, with the increasing prices of basic commodities, you would want some extra money to keep up with the household expenses.

However, you should consider many online businesses today. The number of online businesses available tends to create confusion as to which online business is the best type of business for your involvement. One good online home business that you can definitely earn money from is through affiliate programs.

Affiliate programs are now one of the things that you will constantly see and hear in the Internet. Because you do not actually need to sell anything, this kind of business is ideal for someone who does not have enough capital to start a home business. This kind of home business is a very good moneymaking venture, recommended for everyone.

You do not even have to have an MBA to start this kind of business. All you need is website with a particular theme. For example, if you are a fitness expert, you can take advantage of this knowledge not only in the gym as a fitness trainer, but you can also use this knowledge for an affiliate program business. Try to build a website that has a fitness-training topic. You can make an article about fitness training and you can post them in your website.

After making a website about fitness, you can now choose an affiliate program that is also about the same niche. It can be about fitness supplements, such as protein powders or pills, or it can also be about fitness equipments. This will be like a banner or advertising in your website. Once someone clicks on that banner or advertising, the visitor directed to your affiliate company's website where all the fitness products are displayed for them to buy. They will enter the website with your name as the person who referred that person to the company's website. If they purchase something, you will automatically earn a commission for every product purchased.

Now that you know how affiliate programs work, you now have to learn how to let people online know that your website exists. You have to advertise your website in order to generate targeted traffic. One way to do this is by publishing articles related to your website's niche in popular article publishing websites. You have to remember that you should include your website's URL in order to let them click on the link included in the article and instantly direct them to your website.

Since your article is related to your website's niche, you can be sure that people who are reading your article is interested in visiting your website. This means that you will be increasing the chances of generating targeted traffic and decreasing spam traffic.

Always remember that the key to affiliate program is laser-targeted traffic. This is why you should advertise your website well and spend a little money on programs that will improve your chances on generating targeted traffic. There are a lot of ways you can generate targeted traffic, and making articles and publishing them on article publishing websites is just one of them.

Mario Churchill is a freelance author and has written over 200 articles on various subjects. For more information checkout http://www.turnkeyaffiliateprogram.com and http://www.killeraffiliateprogram.com.

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By Paul McCord

Right this minute, you are probably sitting on tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of commissions. Most registered reps have a database of current and past clients whose potential referrals are worth several thousand additional commission dollars per month. Yet, this resource goes virtually untapped for most advisors.

Why? Simply because most reps have not learned how to successfully convert their client relationships into referral relationships. Acquiring referrals from clients is not as simple as "doing a good job" and then asking for referrals. Generating a large number of highly qualified referrals from a client is a process that starts from the moment the prospect is met, not a one-time act after the sale has been completed. It requires an understanding of what a successful referral is based on, and how to exploit that referral to insure a successful contact with the referee.

Every referral involves the interaction of three people and four relationships among those three individuals. The strength or weakness of each of these interactions will influence the success or failure of the referral for the advisor:

1. The Advisor/Client relationship:
In order for the client to be willing to give a quality referral, build a strong bond of trust between the rep and the client. A client may give a "referral" to someone they do not trust, but they will not give a referral to someone they know well and respect if they do not trust the salesperson. If there is only a weak bond of trust between the advisor and client, the "referral" the client is likely to give will be to someone the client either believes will not meet with the advisor or someone the client does not know well or respect.

2. The client's purchasing experience:
Clients will not give high quality referrals if their purchasing experience did not meet or exceed both their expectations and their priorities. All clients enter purchasing relationships with certain expectations and priorities. Expectations and priorities are not the same. A client may expect to be kept fully informed during the course of the sale and may have certain product or service functionality requirements as his top priority. In order to receive a large number of high quality referrals, the rep must make sure that they meet or exceed both the client's expectations and priorities.

Despite the current parroting of the buzz phrase, "exceeding the customer's expectations," meeting and exceeding client expectations is seldom accomplished. Few people take the time and effort to discuss with their client what the client's expectations and priorities are-rather most reps, and companies, assume they know. At best, all they can knowingly accomplish is meeting or exceeding their expectations of what they think their client should expect.

3. The Client/Prospect relationship:
The trust and respect relationship between client and referee are of great importance. The stronger the bond of trust and respect between the client and the prospect, the easier it will be for the advisor to set an appointment with and then sell the prospect. In referral selling, a great deal of the rep's credibility, or lack thereof, is built on the trust and respect the prospect has for the client who made the referral.

If the client/prospect bond is strong enough, the rep is virtually guaranteed a sale. On the other hand, if the bond is particularly weak, the referral is little better than a cold call. Consequently, it is of utmost importance for the advisor to know as much as possible about the client's relationship, and likely bond of trust, with the prospect.

4. The advisor's initial contact with the referee:
Based on the client/prospect bond, the advisor must determine how best to contact the prospect to produce the greatest opportunity to acquire a meeting. The weaker the relationship between the client and the prospect, the stronger the contact method the rep should seek to employ. If the client/prospect relationship is extremely strong, virtually any contact method, including a phone call from the salesperson mentioning the client's name will suffice, but for a weak relationship, the rep must strive to use the strongest contact method possible. In descending order, from weakest to strongest, possible methods of contact include a phone call to the prospect from the advisor, an email from the client, a client letter, a client phone call, a client/prospect/advisor lunch meeting.

Fortunately, the advisor can control most of the above interactions. Only the client/prospect relationship is completely out of the rep's hands. Even then, the rep can compensate for a less than ideal client/prospect relationship through using a stronger initial contact method.

If you understand the foundation of a referral, you can quickly increase your referral-based business and begin to mine that gold mine in your client database.

Paul McCord
Nationally known author, trainer and leading authority on prospecting, Paul McCord's latest book Creating a Million Dollar a Year Sales Income is available throughout the US and Canada. He also offers a free ebook Understanding Referral Generation: A Primer at http://www.powerreferralselling.com.

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By V. Michael Santoro

As an author, you possess the true secret to Internet book marketing success - your writing skills. Why? The biggest hurdles that Internet Marketers face is providing original content that is written to satisfy:

• The search engines to obtain good positioning

• Information hungry surfers searching for quality niche content

• The continuous need to provide quality content to maintain search engine positioning and targeted traffic

Becoming an Authorpreneur

An Authorpreneur does not compete using the traditional book-marketing model. Instead, they view their books as products and effectively combine their writing skills with proven Internet Marketing techniques to accomplish better results. This allows them to become an expert within a niche based upon their book's theme.

If you become an Authorpreneur, you can dominate your niche by doing what you love - writing. By understanding the writing process, you will accomplish what other Webmasters fail to either do or pay ghostwriters to accomplish. It is not a matter of well-written material from an editor's viewpoint. Rather, it is well written from an Internet Marketing perspective. For example, Web pages, sales letters, and articles all require different writing techniques to accomplish different Internet marketing goals:

• Theme-based Web pages pre-sell products and convince visitors to continue on to the product's sales page

• Sales pages drive home the product benefits and converts visitors into customers

• Articles provide links back to your Web pages to obtain good search engine positioning and drive targeted traffic to your Website's landing pages. They can also link directly to a Web page that is pre-selling a product, which is a solution to a problem that you discussed in your article.

The Importance of Providing Unique Well-Written Content

Too many Website owners are more concerned about cutting corners and rushing to get their Website online rather than:

• Ensuring that their site addresses the needs of their visitors

• Properly designing their Website's navigation

• Properly writing their Website content to place well in the search engines

• Developing a linking strategy that improves search engine placement and generates targeted traffic

• Developing a list of subscribers that grows into long term customers

By placing well in the search engines, you can increase your chances of making sales and gaining PR exposure by as much as forty-six percent. By knowing how to research your theme-based keywords, and properly optimizing them into your unique and original content, you will achieve what ninety-five percent of authors and Internet Marketers fail to achieve - dominating your niche in the search engines.

Just imagine your book sales, PR accomplishments, and the supplemental income you can acquire by becoming an expert in a niche based upon your book's theme while incorporating an effective Internet book-marketing program.

My prediction is that when we look back, 2007 will be remembered as "The Year of the Authorpreneur" for Internet book marketing. Writers without a solid knowledge of Internet Marketing techniques will not survive online. Internet Marketers without effective writing skills will either fail or have to continue to invest in ghostwriters to survive. By becoming an Authorpreneur, which blends both skill sets, you will be part of the next generation of successful Internet marketers with the added benefit of possessing publishing credentials.

V. Michael Santoro is a published author and successful Authorpreneur. For a free training course on how to become an Authorpreneur, visit his Website at http://www.proauthors.com and sign up for his e-zine. Additionally, you will receive a powerful PDF creation program as a special bonus.

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by George Marshall

Article Writing As A Marketing Tool

Whether you are targeting a niche market or a wider more general audience, one of the most effective tools to reach those interested in what you have to offer is writing and submitting articles concerning your particular craft. Article marketing is a great way for the average person to do some great things with their marketing efforts. One effective reason is that it allows the marketer to project the writer's ow