Home Business The Easy Way - SEd Update http://www.blogmoneymiracle.com en-us EasyRSS
By Alex Cleanthous

I always get the same question when it comes to website design...

"Is website copy really that important?"

Well, if you are interested in actually making a profit from anything you do online, it is CRITICAL that you have killer website copy!

Now I know what you are probably thinking...

What is killer website copy?

Writing killer website copy simply means using words on your website that are SO GOOD that anyone who is interested in what you are selling is COMPELLED to do business with you... right now!

The best way to write copy for your website is to imagine you are right there with your prospect selling him / her on the benefits of doing business with your company over all others.

Here is a quick exercise...

Imagine you have a 'hot' lead that is ready to buy and is enquiring about what you are selling...

Imagine that you only have one chance to convince them that your offering is the best in the market...

What would you say?

How would you say it?

What would you have to say to convince somebody to buy from you right here, right now?

Write down the answers to the above questions. This is your sales presentation.

Now that you have the answers to the above questions, you need to answer the objections as well. Remember, you are not actually there with them, but they will definitely have objections.

You only have one opportunity to get them to buy your offering. In addition, if you leave any objections unanswered, you risk losing them forever.

So what would the possible objections be? Write them down.

In addition, how would you answer them? Write down your answers.

Then combine your sales presentation with your objection handling and you have your core sales pitch.

Now it is time to rewrite your copy.

Go over the entire copy and rewrite it so it flows. In addition, when you are rewriting the copy the most important thing to remember is to...

KEEP IT CONVERSATIONAL!

Do not write as if you are a big institution (unless you are). You will get far greater results by writing as you talk.

Write as you are sitting right there with them 'talking' to them. Use stories, examples, sub-headings, bullets, and most importantly, a headline.

Usually, I recommend writing at least 50 to 100 different versions of a headline and then selecting the best headline from the list.

IMPORTANT...

The headline is the most important part of your website because it is the reason that most of your website visitors will continue to read your sales copy. Without a great headline, hardly anyone will read your website copy.

Alex Cleanthous runs a full service online marketing agency helping businesses generate profits from the Internet. For a free report on The 6 Critical Steps To Generating Profits Online visit http://www.webprofits.com.au..

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By Verena

There is no disagreement that effective branding through 'use of a name, term, symbol or design, or a combination of these', (Quester et al, 2001), can create brand awareness and recognition in the quickest manner. Companies use different kinds of 'Brand Name', that is: a word, letter or a group of words such as AOL, Intel Pentium III, etc., to project their companies. Sometimes, such words, symbols or marks are legally registered and copy righted to a single company known as trademarks (for product oriented companies), and service marks (for service offering companies), (Perreault & McCarthy, 2000).

However, in any form, use branding to create brand familiarity among consumers in terms of brand recognition and brand preference, (Papers4you.com, 2006). The advantage of using branding effectively is for consumers and marketers. For instance, it becomes easy for a customer to choose preferred brand among 1000s of other items just because of famous well-recognized symbol, word, or trademark that cannot be possible without effective branding, (Quester et al, 2001). For example, imagine you are driving down the road with hunger. Suddenly you see a symbol 'M' on a signboard with red background and yellow font. It is not difficult to realize that McDonalds is waiting for you, easily manifest effective projection of McDonalds' through brand symbol 'M'. Similarly imagine buying a computer accessory from among thousands of unknown brands, suddenly you observe 'Intel (r)' sign. A quick reminder prompts recognition of this symbol. It is a well-known brand symbol common everywhere in media and at your own computer.

Keep these examples in mind. It is obvious that marketers can cash in such advantages as well, (Papers4you.com, 2006). One way to use word and symbols is while launching new products under same brand names, (Quester et al, 2001). Every one is aware of 'Coca Cola (tm)'; any new soft drink introduced under this brand name has a high probable chance to achieve awareness and attention of coca cola lovers. Similarly, no matter if 'IBM' entered into so many IT related services, it initially became famous for IBM computers. Whenever you observe its trade mark of 'IBM' written in horizontal lines, the consumer is not bothered about checking the background of the company. As a result, it also saves huge promotion costs that a company with less famous brand names and symbols needs to incur.

To conclude discussion, see the outcome of effective branding in terms of 'brand equity', that is the value of a brand in terms of its perceived brand awareness, recognition, loyalty, and associations from customers. To give the advantage of effective branding, the brand equity of the Coca Cola brand is valued at $ 43 Billion, IBM brand at $ 18 billion, and Kodak's at $ 12 billion, (Kotler & Armstrong, 1999).

References

Kotler, P & Armstrong, G, (1999), 'Principles of Marketing', Eight Edition, New Jersey: Prentice- Hall Inc

Quester, P, G, McGuiggan, R, L, McCarthy, E, J & Perreault, W, D (2001), Basic Marketing- A Managerial Perspective', Australia: McGraw Hill Book Company Australia Pty Limited

Papers For You (2006) "P/M/457. What is successful branding?" Available from http://www.coursework4you.co.uk/sprtmrk31.htm [19/06/2006]

Papers For You (2006) "P/M/270. A consistent brand identity can only exist because of a well-planned advertising strategy, which has clearly stated communication effects and one, which considers exposure to appropriate target audiences and positioning strategies. Discuss", Available from Papers4you.com [19/06/2006]

Perreault, W, D & McCarthy, E, J, (2000), 'Essentials of Marketing- A Global Management Approach' International Edition, USA: McGraw Hill Companies Inc

Papers4you.com.

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One Of The Most Popular And Rewarding Home Based Internet Businesses For Starters

By Alexandre Sobolevskiy

Ever wondered where self-made millionaires come from? Starting a home-based Internet business could be your first step into the life of your dreams. A home-based Internet business is often the choice of people who are keen to combine work and home-life. Ever wondered why?

Starting a home-based business requires little time and capital than other forms of business. You do not have to worry about paying office rent bills or high transport costs from traveling from home to work and visa-versa. If you are the type who works best outside of regular office hours, then a home based Internet business is for you. A HBIB (Home Based Internet Business) also has the potential of generating profits even if you are away on a vacation or personal things like shopping, sports, etc.

One of the most popular and rewarding home-based Internet businesses is selling products of others. The principle is not restricted to home businesses, and many companies become affiliates to supplement their revenues. If you are looking for a business opportunity that does not require an initial investment and does not require you to stock any merchandise, online affiliate programs can be a great venture. As an affiliate, you essentially become part of the company's sale team, but you work on commission.

The whole idea started from Amazon's books. In July 1996, Amazon.com launched its "associates" program. The basic model works something like this: A small website owner registers with Amazon (or any other affiliate program), she then puts various links, banners, and products on her web site. When her visitors click through on these links and purchase a book or other product, the small web site owner is paid a commission for generating the sale.

. Affiliate Marketing is a revenue sharing venture between a Website owner and an online merchant. The website owner will place advertisements on his websites to either help sell the merchant's products or to send potential customers to the merchant's website, all in exchange for a share of the profits. For many Website owners, this is a great way to earn some extra money without actually having to "do" anything. All it involves is placing an ad on the affiliate's Website. There is no selling or promotion of any kind. The affiliate can just sit back and wait for the profits to roll in.

It is also beneficial to the merchant. By placing affiliate marketing advertising on websites all over the Internet, he has free advertising and does not need to do much selling on his own. The more websites a merchant is affiliated with, the more exposure his products get, and all he has to do is allow ads for his products to appear on someone else's Website.

Affiliate marketing is considered one of the best ways to earn money online. If this were an avenue you wish to pursue, you would be well advised to research each merchant thoroughly. After that, there is not much else to do except wait for the profits to roll in! As an affiliate, the first thing you will need is a Web site where you can display the promotional information for the company you work for. You may be able to generate leads for your sponsor company using just email newsletters, but a Web site is essential if you hope to make serious income.

So, decide by yourself that you are the biggest loser, rich dad, or poor dad.

If you are seeking for some job in Canada you can visit www.workopolis.com. Workopolis is Canada's leading provider of Internet recruitment and job search solution.

To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit: http://www.ProfitMacnine.com

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By People Building

I find it fascinating that as people, we are drawn to the idea of being part of something bigger than ourselves. We want to find unity and yet still be unique. We want to have similarities but not be the same.

For me, religion is a classic example of where people can find unity and common ground, or common beliefs. A couple of weeks ago, I tried out the whole religion thing. I've not been bought up in a religious family, nor was my school particularly religious- although we sang hymns such. Prayer time was more of an opportunity to sit with my eyes half shut whilst sneakily looking around to see who was genuinely into this praying malarkey, and then usually discovering that the rest of the school was doing the same.

So this was my experience. My boyfriend has been bought up in a very religious family and for him, popping off to church for the evening, was probably equated to the ease at which I could pop off to the pub. But church for me was quite an event, so I took the plunge one week and went with him.

We got fed (great!) and it was cheap (very great!), but I have to say I was quite surprised to see a bunch of Christian grandma's dishing out rice and vegetables, with a decent sized lump of chicken breast on each plate. “That's funny”, I thought, “They've managed to get God’s permission to eat his creatures. There must be some sort of arrangement, where they spread his love and he lets them know it's ok to eat chicken”. Still I know that Jesus ate fish and if it's good enough for him….

After the food, the vicar got up and did a presentation about Jesus and how we can know that he really existed. It was a good presentation. The vicar was quite charismatic and pretty funny, too. Afterwards, we sat at our tables having a chat about what the vicar had talked about. It seemed all the regulars were pretty sold on what the vicar had said. I felt like a troublemaker by throwing some new ideas into the agenda. It's not that I didn't believe that Jesus walked the earth, in my opinion, he probably did. But I don't think he was the only smart spiritual being to have ever set foot on our planet. There's a lot of convincing stuff about other religious folk from other religions. This concept wasn't welcomed I found. Now, don't get me wrong, they were a nice bunch and no one accused me of being in cahoots with the devil, when I told them that I'm a hypnotist (although that has happened since!) When they began to discuss the power of prayer, and I linked this to a higher consciousness rather than a higher being, I knew I was pushing my luck.

Life is filled with possibilities, all the time in everything that you ever do or say. You have an abundance of other possibilities you can take. How then, could anything you ever do, be wrong or sinful? Would someone so great, powerful and majestic as God really spend his time watching a DVD of each of us throughout our entire lives, ready to place judgment on us when our time is up, and tell us if we're spending the rest of eternity in his kingdom or in the fiery furnace of hell? That's a tough call. How would He ever decide? Some people have done some really bad stuff, but they might have done it with a positive intention.

You're probably guessing by now that I am in no way qualified to speak about religion. I don't claim to be, but bear with me.

My other concern for a long time has been that there are a lot of good people in the world. Surely then, heaven must be suffering from over crowding, not least from the vast array of rabbits, hamsters, and goldfish I've had over the years, that my nan told me had all gone to heaven when they'd popped their clogs. I guess there are dead architects up there, god must have gotten them to create a high rise building like they have in China. Especially since Jesus said that the entire kingdom of heaven is smaller than the mustard seed.

If you were married and your partner died, then you met someone else and got married again, which partner do you end up spending the rest of eternity with when you die?

In my confusion, I decided to relate what I'd learned to the presuppositions of NLP, since they have for me for the last few years, been my bible.

This is what I came up with.

Everyone has a unique model of the world. This could mean that what you absolutely believe to be true is true, (for you at least), so if one person has absolute belief in god, then he exists, and if someone else believes that he doesn't then, for that person, he doesn't.

The map is not the territory. In quantum physics, the whole contains the part and the part contains the whole. In the same way that an apple contains a part, which is just a seed, the seed contains all the information required growing into a tree and creating further apples. So I could be god (it has been said!) at the quantum level. When I die the tiniest quantum part of me that remains, could be god, who has the power to create further things.

The meaning of all behavior is dependent upon the context it exists in. This might means that there is no judgment at death.

All behavior has a positive intention and everyone one is doing the best that they can with the resources that they have available. No hell maybe?

Everyone has all the resources they need to succeed and to achieve their desired outcome. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you.

There is no failure only feedback. My flesh and my heart may fail, but god is my strength forever.

I'd never thought about NLP as a spiritual tool before, more as a series of change techniques, but this ever-evolving subject continually inspires me to take on new perspectives in my life. I'm thinking now about starting up a spiritual group- no not a cult! - Something where people can meet together and discuss their ideas about the meaning of life, etc. It will probably create more questions than answer, but what's the harm in that. When we think we know the answer to something, we become cut off from all of the other possible answers. When we have only questions, we also have the wealth of possible answers - you might like to call that confusion! Possibilities create many opportunities. I suppose the one thing that I discovered about my introduction to religion, is that sometimes religion is about stating what you can and can't do, say or believe, how you should or shouldn't behave, and this could limit life's opportunities. I'd like to be part of something that is open to limitless possibilities of being. I think that that's the way god would like me to be.

Welcome to People Building, a self-development company dedicated to inspiring growth, progression and better results in your life. The mind, body and human behaviour have fascinated us for many years now. It is our privilege to present to you authentic NLP and Hypnosis training for the betterment of your skills in Business, Education, Therapy and many other areas. Our unique trainings have been designed as one of the most innovative trainings available in the NLP field of learning. We will never cease to evolve, and it gives me great pleasure, to invite you with us on this epic adventure.

http://www.peoplebuilding.co.uk
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by Karen Hurd

If you are marketing online, it's essential that you know how to write effective ad copy. If you can string two sentences together, you can learn to write effective ad copy.

Best advice -- "Enter the conversation already going on in your prospect's head."

People don't care what you're selling. They care if you can solve their problem, or meet their need. Talk about what they want to buy, not what you want to sell.

1. Use a hand written letter on your ad copy instead of text. Write the ad on a piece of paper, scan it and publish the ad on your Web page. Adding a personal touch will always increase your sales.

2. Publish a list of famous and respected customers who have bought from you on your ad copy. People are more likely to think that, if these people bought from you, they should also trust your business and purchase your products. Make sure to get their permission first. Local personalities and celebrities count!

3. Show "before" and "after" photos for your products on your Web page copy. Show the problem picture and then, beside it, show the picture of the resolution to the problem when they use your product.

4. Need more testimonials? Hold a contest: the top five people with the best testimonial get their product order for free. Boost your sales!

5. Include an article or review that has been written about you or your business with your ad copy. This will show people that your business is respected and will increase your credibility. To get the article, send press releases with pictures to the local paper. Make sure your press release is in the paper's best interest, not yours!

The paper won't do a story on your business, unless they think it will matter to their readers. Getting published will get you the publicity you need.

6. When you offer free bonuses in your ad copy, also list the dollar value beside each bonus. People will feel they're getting a good deal and it will increase the value of your product. Keep it honest. The good feelings and excitement of the bonus will turn to cynicism and distrust if your customer feels the value of the bonus was inflated just to get the sale. Would the bonus truly excite you?

7. Include your own picture on your ad copy. This will show people that you're not hiding behind your ad copy and will increase their trust. Also, include your contact information below the picture and a brief statement or quote. Got kids and pets? Include a family picture too.

8. Tell your potential customers on your ad copy that you will donate a percentage of their purchase price to specific charity. This will show them you really care about the people. They may just buy your product to donate to the charity.

Speaking of donating to charity, set up a program where customers can refer charities.

9. Ask your potential customers plenty of "yes" and "no" questions in your ad copy. The questions should remind them of their problem and make them think about what will happen if they don't purchase your product.

10. Tell your potential customers they will receive a free prize if they find the five words in your ad copy that are misspelled or spelled backwards. The longer you can keep someone reading your copy the greater chance of them purchasing.

And -- test, test, test. Keep making adjustments until you are getting the result you want. You can write the cleverest copy, but if you ain't getting the action, the copy is a waste of time. You'll be surprised at how the simplest changes can sometimes increase results significantly.

Karen Hurd is a former Marketing executive. She's been a top producer in network marketing since 1988. She is a writer, teacher & wellness educator. She lives in Virginia, with her husband & 5 children. Karen built her business while her children slept, and now she makes money while she sleeps. Home business ideas (http://www.squidoo.com/ezmoney) MLM Maniac:

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By Wayne Van Dyck

There are plethoras of things you can do online and you should know how to do this. MARKET YOUR OWN BUSINESS ONLINE!

Now with the incredible power of the Online World to reach millions of people, online marketing is definitely an amazing tool every business should utilize. The simple fact is that advertising can be very low cost and sometimes even practically free. The ability to get the results of thousands of dollars in free publicity is practically unheard of in the business world today. Only recently have more and more people figured out how to utilize the ever-exploding online world to market their business ventures.

There probably is not a business in existence that would not benefit from free publicity! Properly utilizing free and low cost advertising raises net profits to unbelievable levels! Using any or all of the major online services can help you market your business efforts.

Let us begin with plain advertising. For example, on AOL, they will let you place classified advertisements free! They have a variety of classifications and categories to choose from. By placing some of these free ads, you can generate some quality leads that can turn into sales. If you are an excellent marketer, you could sell something straight from your free ad.

Other services offer free advertising from time to time. When they do charge for classified ads it is usually a very low cost, and they still are a great deal, considering how many people may see them. When you place any ads, you should always "track" your ads. This means put something in each individual ad that will tell you, if you get any business from it, which ad it came from. This way, you will probably find that some sections are better producers than others are, and you will want to concentrate on these sections and not the ones that were not making any money.

To track an ad, you could make them request a certain "report" for more information. You should give each report different tracking links for each ad. Such as "ask for report #1tv”, this way you would know that this request came from the ad on television, for sale category, and so forth. If they send you an order straight from the ad, make them give you order #, which would be different for each ad. THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE WHO ARE ADVERTISING ONLINE ARE NOT USING THESE AD CODES!!! THIS IS A MAJOR MARKETING MISTAKE!!!

If you do not track exactly which ads are making money, then you are wasting your time by continually placing ads in "loser" categories that do not provide any sales. ALWAYS keep track of every ad you place. Make a note of what it said, where, and when it was placed. You will be pleasantly surprised when you analyze your "ad data" and see some positive trends developing. Just repeat these trends and it will help you to make more money!

Would you like to have a name list of several hundred (or even a thousand) people who might be interested in the particular product or service you are selling based on their jobs or interests? That would be great!? Well, you can! Moreover, the Online Services supply this service as a part of your regular membership.

This little unknown tool is called the "Member Directory!" You can do searches in the directory for other users with certain characteristics. For example, if you were selling fishing equipment, you could do a search by "fishing." All the people registered in the directory and listed fishing as one of their hobbies would show up on that search list. You could now send each one of those people an e-mail message telling them about your product or service, it is just like using a mailing list, but you have no postage! (*Make sure you check with your online service to see if they allow unsolicited email.)

The bottom line is that you "test" and record the results of your Online Marketing efforts. Then just repeat the steps that are making you money and expand on them to reach more people. You should conduct split testing on your site. Methods were, you have two different pages, performing the same function but with different copy, so you can tell which one is converting better.

You will also find hundreds of articles on the World Wide Web. By searching one of the WWW search engines like Webcrawler, you can find all the information you can read. Use search strings such as: "online marketing", "internet advertising", "selling online", and so on.

You can also find many books on the subject at your local bookstore or being advertised online.

Wayne Van Dyck is a former venture capitalist and builder of offline technology companies. He is the founder and developer of Simple Money Machines. Simple Money Machines is all the money making technologies in one, easy-to-use, hosted application… enabling non-technical people to set up online businesses in less than 30 minutes. It is made for people with 9-5 jobs, retired folks, stay-at-home moms and college students. To get a FREE copy of "STARTING A HOME BUSINESS MADE SIMPLE", go to: http://tinyurl.com/ykyoqx.

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By Stephen Wright

This article provides specific details for becoming a home based business and Internet marketing guru through careful and selected networking opportunities. Accomplish this ability through an on-going process of networking.

Becoming a home based business and Internet marketing guru is not something that happens overnight. It takes significant dedication to develop your knowledge, skills, and abilities. During the course of this evolutionary process for yourself, you must develop the relationships and respect of your peers and potential clients/customers. Accomplish this through an on-going process of networking.

Networking in this manner includes spending time in various home business forums, relevant groups, boards, loops, and discussion exchanges. Appropriately, each of these has a primary purpose or relevance focus designed to facilitate and enhance the field of Internet Marketing through ideas, promotions, and topic exchange.

You must personally participate in a significant manner in these sorts of activities and venues. You have the "opportunity" to market yourself, your ideas, suggestions, input, advice, and counsel in support of and in a contributory manner to the field of running a Home Based Business and Internet marketing, as well as to the betterment of others --- your peers. All of which is critical to building a proper foundation of service to others.

There are countless numbers of groups for any given topic or subject area of interest. In addition, the best part, many are free to join. The array included popular Internet topics such as; Internet Marketing Ideas and Tips, eBay buying/selling, Work at Home, Employment, Web Hosting, etc.

As you start the effort of building your "online resume", a word of caution: time management can be critical. It is not uncommon to hear or read about the toll taken on unsuspecting web marketers who get totally and utterly immersed in spending time on the Internet that it can quickly have a detrimental impact on their personal and physical well being. The internet can be time consuming and addictive in nature, compounded by the significant amount of distractions continually vying for our attention while interacting on the Internet. You must find ways to allocate your time and resources, allowing ample time both on and off the web!

Diversification is a key element in building yourself and your abilities. This means continuously taking information and feedback you gain from the networking activities, to be applied back with other activities. For example, gaining information and input from a product development forum allows you to give information as a more informed user on a user forum, exchanging information on similar issues. This allows you to utilize your skills, knowledge and abilities, and continually refine your knowledge base. This also helps build credibility among various groups and users. It is a known fact that people do business with those whom they know or trust. Being successful with a home based business is not different.

Using this approach allows others to see you in a supporting role, not necessarily as one just "interested in profits and making a buck!" Networking in this fashion allows you to establish yourself as a knowledgeable fellow entrepreneur, not as someone only out for self-promotion or worse yet "a Spammer"! The trick to subtle self-promotion is a graciously accepted practice. Shameless and abrupt advertising will get you no-where. Once you have this level of respect and credibility, the revenues and profits will not be far behind. If you want real success Free Reprint Articles, get started networking your way there today.

Stephen Wright is President & CEO of www.InternetMarketingUSA.comWeary from failed programs, tips and makes them rich advice? Get it ALL, step-by-step, the gory details, and the handholding to Get You Rich. It is all waiting for you: http://www.internetmarketingusa.com/pips.html

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By Mohd Sharulnazeri Bin Mohd Ali

Multiple streams of income are the best method to make money online. But does everyone know how to make it happen? Most of the Internet entrepreneurs fail to implement it because they do not have the proper business plan and lose focus on the objective to have multiple income sources.

To realize the multiple streams of income in the business require determination, patience, and proper business plans because you will be running several businesses simultaneously. You will not require a first-rate business plan, just enough to explain the objective and to track the milestone of the project; so you will be able to tweak and take necessary action to make sure the business runs smoothly.

The purpose of multiple streams of income is to build a stable online income and make it recurring for every month. The multiple streams of income can be achieved with minimal work and maintenance. You just need to monitor and do some tweaking to ensure your business is continuously growing month after month.

Having multiple streams of income will enable your Website or your business more exposures. This means continuous growth for your business. Your Website will have more exposure month after month. The best way to achieve multiple streams of income is to have lots of product from different niches and promote to different markets. This is your chance to build a bigger online affiliate income.

Multiple streams of income offer the opportunity to branch out from your first product and market. This will help you to have better profit margins because some products sell better at certain times. This also can teach you how this product can fill the need for different people and different markets. As I said before, multiple streams of income will always earn a big buck for you.

I will share how to branch out from your first product. First, find the products you want to work with. Make sure you learn and understand the product and market segment because you do not want to promote a low quality product to your customers and wrong target markets. Then, learn how to promote it to your customers. This is important because you now have different customers and different markets to capture. Promotional programs are vital to you because it can determine the success of your business. The most important thing with your multiple streams of income success is spending some money for running this business. Do not be afraid to spend some money; but, make sure what you are spending achieves the returns expected within your set time frame.

I share the resources used to better understand how to start multiple streams of income, which delivered results to my affiliate business and made me money. This resource will cost you a small one-time fee, but really has value for you to start the multiple streams of income for yourself. For more detailed information visit their Website below.

I hope this article will give you a better understanding and guide you to start multiple streams of income online.

Multiple streams of income resource: http://www.intincome.biz/multiple.html

Mohd Sharulnazeri Bin Mohd Ali is a one of the successful online marketers. Learn more about affiliate marketing business at http://www.affiliate-marketingtips.blogspot.com and get the free adwords coaching at http://www.intincome.biz

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By Kirsten Hawkins

Some people think it is easy to choose the right eBay category, and often it is. Sometimes, though, it might not be quite clear exactly where to look.

Why is it Even Important?

Many people use the category system to find items, when they are not looking for something specific. If you list the item in the wrong category - or you have just given up and listed it in 'Everything Else' - then these people are not going to find your auction.

In addition, listing items in the wrong categories is against eBay's rules. EBay says they will remove any auctions that are in the wrong categories. They do not often do this, but it is not worth the risk - especially since breaking any rules can cause them to penalize your account, including losing PowerSeller status if you have it.

So What Can You Do?

EBay will suggest categories for you when you sell your item, if you type in a few words to describe the item on the category selection page and click 'search'. You can make the best of this feature by typing in exactly what your item is, with brand name and model number (if any), so that eBay can find the best category for you.

If that does not work for you, then search yourself for items like yours, and pay attention to which category most of them seem to be in (you can see this near the top of each item's description page). Try different words and see which ones come back with the most results. You can also browse through all the available categories from eBay's front page.

Remember the more specific the category is the better - use as many subcategories as are appropriate. Do not just list your HP laptop in the 'Computers' category, for example - list it in 'Computers > Laptops > HP'. Do not worry: your item will still appear in the 'Computers' category, as well as 'Computers > Laptops', because items listed in subcategories will list in every category above.

Take some time to look through all the categories and get familiar with the way eBay, as a whole, is structured. After all, that is better than a few months down the line and you find that you still think of eBay's category system as some scary jungle.

What if More Than One Category Fits?

Do not worry, eBay has you covered. For a small extra fee, you can list your item in an extra category, to increase the number of potential buyers who will see it. This is not always worth it, though - some items only really fit properly in one category, and listing them in extra categories is a waste.

Once you know where to list your item, the next step is to write your auction's title. The title is the most important thing about your auction - the difference between a good title and a bad title can be the difference between $10 and $100. That is why I will take you through the dos and don'ts in the next email.

Kirsten Hawkins is an EBay and internet auction enthusiast from Nashville, TN. Visit http://www.auctionseller411.com/for more great tips on how to make the most from EBay and other online auctions.

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By Anthony Braide

Spammers have done their best to give email marketing a bad name. Email is such an all-pervasive communication tool, and its use as an extremely effective means of building customer relationships and selling products and services remains un-dented. Imagine trying to run your business today without access to email - it would be impossible. In fact, surveys have found that the vast majority of internet user's site email as their primary reason for using the internet, despite the spammers' best efforts.

While we are on the subject of spam, here is a quick word to the wise, do not do it!

It is an effective way of upsetting future clients and associating your company, products and services with dodgy Viagra, porn, and scam artists. Most importantly, spam does not work. It is as simple as that.

However, opt-in email marketing is exploding because it does work. Companies are lured to it by incredibly low costs and high response rates. It is easy to get started, and it puts any organization, large or small, on a level playing field.

There is a right way and a wrong way to do anything and the vast majority of email marketers are getting it wrong. The industry is young. Those who are doing well are not falling over themselves to share the secrets of their email marketing success with competitors. However, there is some good news. Unlike conventional direct marketing pieces, email marketing is both cheap and easy to test, and the results can be comparatively easy to collate and analyze.

If that is the case, then why do so many of the marketing emails I receive get just about everything wrong? Why do not the senders never seem to learn from their mistakes?

Learn from your mistakes

The advantage that email marketing has over any other type of marketing is its tractability. Instant, live results from your marketing campaign were a marketers dream just a few, short years ago. Now they are a reality, but not everyone is taking advantage.

Emailing your database from Outlook or using bulk email sending software is usually a waste of time for both you and the recipient. The main reason being, you get little or no feedback, unless a recipient chooses to email you back. True, you can set up a read receipt in Outlook but that only tells you a very small part of the story. Imagine if you could tell, at a glance, who is not interested in your services and really does not want to hear from you again, (do not waste any more of your valuable time on them). Alternatively, who opened your email and read it repeatedly, (wow, those people must really be interested!) Better still, imagine if they clicked directly through to your website and you knew what link they clicked on (you would know exactly what interested them). Useful stuff like that!

Fortunately, all that information is easy to obtain if you use a good email-marketing tool like www.livewirecampaign.co.uk rather than Outlook. There might be a learning curve of a few days, but it is worth it, to make your emails 100% more effective, right?

With this kind of marketing intelligence you can really start to harness the power of email, because email can give you something special - instant, live, two-way communication from every address you deliver. That is right, every single one. Even emails that bounce back tell you something - it's likely those addresses are dead and you need to update your database. If you are getting 20% opens and only 22% reads, then you know something about your email is not connecting with your recipients. If it was; they would be reopening the email to re-read it or show it to the boss, so you would be getting a much higher percentage of 'reads' to 'opens'.

With this kind of in-depth information, you can begin to learn from what you are getting right and what you are getting wrong. You can begin to mould your campaigns and target your messages. Improve your response rates and follow up on click throughs. In essence, learn from your mistakes and find out what works for you.

To start you on the right track, here are five tried and tested ways of improving the effectiveness of your emails.

1. Keep your subject lines short and to the point. Longer than 40 characters and they will be cut off by many email clients. Do not use words like OFFER or FREE or exclamation marks for emphasis!!! You will be relegated to the spam folder.

2. Keep it simple stupid. Do not make your emails too long or try to cram in to many offers. You have got a second or so to grab your readers' attention so keep it concise.

3. Let your readers know what to do next. Put a clear call to action on your email; use a link to your website or your telephone number, big and bold.

4. Make it time limited. Putting a deadline on your email proves to increase response rates. Make it clear to your recipients that if they snooze they loose!

5. Time it right. Do not send your email at 10'o'clock on a Monday morning when everyone is manic. It is going to get deleted. Timing is everything so choose a time of day when your recipient will be more receptive.

Pay close attention to just these five rules and I guarantee you will improve your response rates. Good luck and remember the power of email marketing; customer knowledge!

Anthony Braide is Managing Director of Gencia Media Ltd, makers of http://LiveWireCampaign.co.uk

LiveWire Campaign is a UK Company that gives you access to free email marketing to you clients and candidates. No need to pay for expensive software, just create your free account and start your first campaign today. Send a campaign to up to 50 recipients per month free. Purchase a unique Pay-as-you-go voucher if you need to send more.

Visit the website at http://www.LiveWireCampaign.co.uk or call 01565 641481 and speak to an Email Marketing Specialist.

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By Dechen Lau

Content is the soul of a website. Content is comprised of the words or text on a web page along with the graphics and structure of a website. Today Web content is the best tool for building relations with your potential customers. The look and feel of a site is crucial, but quality web content may be more important.

Two of the most popular methods of getting traffic from search engines include PPC – (Pay Per Click), and SEO – (Search Engine Optimization).

PPC:

Pay per click advertising on search engines allows you to choose keywords that you would like your site to appear for, when a search is performed. You decide how much you are willing to pay each time a person clicks on the search results. The more you are willing to pay per click, the higher your site will appear in the results for the keywords you choose. Pay Per Click is advertising provided by the search engine providers (Google, Yahoo! and others) where you PAY for top placement. Their strategies for placement differ slightly. Some search engines will give you higher placement if your ad has a higher click-through rate, (meaning more people click on your ad in ratio to the amount of times your ad appears); others give top positions to the highest bidder.

You already know surveys are excellent for finding out what your target market wants. However, if combined with low cost, quick and dirty Google PPC, surveys can also send many targeted prospects to your site every month.

In either case, you PAY. It is a quick way to be listed in the search engines and a smart way to get your traffic flowing. You could spend far more than is profitable for your business, if you do not know what you are doing.

Search Engines: While crawling pages of a website, search engines look for content more than anything else. Search engines can pick up quality content and it is the only factor that they emphasize and value most while ranking a website. For the benefit of their users, search engines try to find the best and most useful content on the Internet for any given set of keywords.

SEO:

Search engines are extremely competitive (in terms of placement). The major search engines account for over 90% of all traffic. With that though in mind, companies that are serious about earning a share of the internet market should be committed to securing top 10 rankings for the keywords or phrases that pertain to the products and services that they offer.

The best way to ensure a solid return on your website investment is to employ the services of a Search Engine Optimization firm with a proven track record of success, knowledge of current and cutting edge techniques, and experience working with the business community.

There are a lot of companies working ‘behind the scenes’ to help website owners get plenty of traffic from the natural search engine listings. Natural listings mean the search engine has ranked you according to the value it believes your site will offer an individual searching for a specific word or phrase.

Understanding exactly WHAT the search engines want to see when ranking sites requires knowledge of the algorithms. These algorithms change all the time as search engine providers try to outwit the search engine optimizers trying to find loopholes in the ranking system.

Some SEO companies will promise you top spots for a certain cost. Some are honestly creating optimized websites – others may be using techniques that could possibly get your site BANNED from the search engines entirely, (once the search engine catches on). However, optimizing your website for better placement in the search engines is a technique that you should become familiar with and use to your advantage.

Both of these traffic methods have their pros and cons for generating traffic from the search engines. You will find out more about using them properly later on. First, you need to know what REALLY works…

Dechen Lau., is an Author, Speaker and Internet Marketing Consultant
http://www.powersuccessmarketing.com
http://www.powersuccessresponder.com

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By Aran Kay

To view where the facts came from to write this article, please click on the links below:

1. Jakob Nielsen for Sun MicroSystems (http://www.sun.com/980713/webwriting/)
2. Stanford Poynter Project (http://www.poynterextra.org/et/i.htm)

This article will highlight the differences between writing copy for the web and writing copy for print. Some of these facts go against intuition and against cultural norms. However, these facts detail how people read on the web.

There is no use in arguing against them. Instead, you should embrace them and use this knowledge to your advantage. Here is what the facts are and how they are going to affect your website.

1) Where Do Eyes Go First When Your Homepage Comes Up?

Contrary to what you might think, it is not towards the graphics or photos like in print advertising. Instead, your prospects eyes will first go to the copy, specifically, your headline and sub-heads. Therefore, your first chance to engage the prospect is through copy, not graphics.

Most web users look at a web page for only 3-15 seconds before deciding whether to stay or move on. The fact that they look at copy first has massive implications for your website. Fancy graphics will not make a prospect stay on your website. However, a strong headline and strong sub-heads will.

2) How Much Of Your Copy Do Users Actually Read?

The fact is that online users, on average, read 75% of the length of any given page. This is big news because most web pages will have the important conclusions, calls to action, and order information on the bottom 25% of any given page. That is a big no-no, because it will never be read.

You have to have your call to action and order information presented early on your web page to ensure it is read.

3) Why Do Most Banner Ads Produce Poor Click-Through Rates?

How long will an average user look at your banner ad? 1.25 seconds. That is just enough time to perceive one image or six words (based on college student's average reading speed of 350 words/minute).

Therefore, banner ads that have animation, taking 4-5 seconds to run through a cycle, or more than 6 words must be reconsidered. However, if you really must keep your animated banner ad because "it just looks so cool!" I would suggest that you at least keep your company logo visible throughout the entire animation sequence.

4) Why Is Reading Online More Frustrating Than Reading Print?

Reading from a computer screen causes a person's reading speed to slow by 25%, when compared to reading print. This means reading long copy online can be very frustrating. Break up the copy to help users through.

Have a few one-line paragraphs.

Use headlines and sub-heads to summarize information. Users who are tired of reading word-by-word can quickly scan the rest of your document.

5) Are Your Web Page Users Not Getting The Whole Picture?

If you have not made your web page truly scannable, prospects to your site may only be getting part of the sales message. Only 21% of online users read word-by-word. The other 79% scan a web page headline-to-headline, sub-head to sub-head, picking up only the larger, bolded, or italicized copy.

Your sales message has to be read by both scanners and word-by-word readers. Therefore, all your major selling points, benefits, call to action, and order info must be in easily scannable type.

Otherwise, your website will only generate 21% of the sales. In addition, for the money you put into your website, which is not good enough.

So, if online reading is so different from offline reading. Clearly, your web copy has to follow suit. Take home message? Make sure your website is performing on all cylinders. Have a professional web writer write your website. It will save you money in the end.

Aran Kay is a marketing consultant and freelance copywriter with experience working for Nintendo, Direct Energy, Kellogg's and more. He has written numerous marketing articles, and includes a selection of them on his web site. http://www.ProfessionalCopy.ca is also your source for "The 52 Best Marketing Web Sites." It is a great resource and yours FREE just for visiting his web site.

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By Dee Cohen

Writing articles are effective ways to get one-way links to your site, as well as, to have people learn more about your website or service. There are ways to do this that can make you more successful versus having your articles be overlooked and not considered.

Shane Pearce has written the ‘Lazy Man's Guide to Article Writing’, which outlines some helpful tips. I was impressed with his tip that when you submit your article to an ezine publisher or a webmaster, you can offer that he uses his own affiliate link in place of your own. For instance, if you have written an article on motivation and have a link to a Clickbank ebook on motivation and goals, you can offer the publisher that he uses his own affiliate id instead of yours. What this means is that the ezine or website publisher will be getting a free article already written with a link that may give him some monetary income. You would still have your own information in your resource box at the end, so people can click to your website, as well. Think about what the website publisher you write to will get out of the exchange and find a way to make his or her life easier.

Other tips he gives are to read ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ to find out what people want to know about in terms of popular topics. Shane discusses how to make a viral ebook based on a FAQ niche that can be passed around. If there are frequently asked questions on a topic, it is a sign that the topic has an interest, as well as, there may be an interest in some guide or tutorial.

In addition, I like the sample autoresponder examples he uses with different ideas for a signature file at the end of one's article. I think he is very good at showing how to integrate a couple of affiliate links without being pushy. He recommends sending people to opt-in to a mailing list as part of your signature file.

Another section I found useful discusses how to create checklists and use them both for your website and in articles that lead back to your website. People like checklists. Shane discusses how to use these. They also help break through writer's block or paralysis because you can have a list of steps.

There are ideas given about utilizing both 2-tier affiliate programs and residual income programs that will help you keep you earning as your articles circulate around the net. Shane gives some interesting suggestions on types of sites that work for this.


I also like that Shane gives an example of a flop he did of an unsuccessful attempt at marketing. He analyzes it and compares it to something someone else wrote he feels was better expressed. It is a very interesting study covering various ways to get your articles noticed and published. I publish articles regularly but learned some valuable tips from this ebook.

Dee Cohen is an author and publisher at http://www.socialsitesmarketing.com/article-writing.html; you can visit to learn effective ways to gain traffic by writing free articles.

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By Sharon Housley

Let us look at slogans and how just a few words can say volumes. A slogan is a memorable phrase used in conjunction with a political, commercial, or religious advertisement. Slogans convey a deeper meaning. Slogans elicit emotions, or the slogan might paint a visual image that implies something more.

When considering a slogan or a tagline, keep in mind your objectives. What image do you wish to portray? Slogans should be short, but not to the point of being curt. Slogans should conjure positive images and distinguish the value your company or product provides.

The best way to analyze slogans is to look at a few.

Slogan: "The toughest job you will ever love" (Peace Corps)

Message behind slogan: This is much more than just a job; it takes heart to be in the Peace Corps; join the Peace Corps and you will be a better person. This job is not about money, it is about helping people.

Slogan: "Be Seen, Be Sold" (Shareware Promotions)

Message behind slogan: Being found on the Internet is not easy. Use us to be found on the Internet."

Slogan: "You could learn a lot from a dummy. Buckle up" (National Highway Traffic Safety Admin)

Message behind slogan: Learn from test dummies, be safe and buckle up.

Slogan: "Parents who use drugs have kids who use drugs" (The Partnership for a Drug-free America)

Message behind slogan: Model what you preach; do you want your children to do drugs? It is your responsibility to model appropriate behavior for your children.

Slogan: "This is your brain on drugs" (The Partnership for a Drug-free America)

Message behind slogan: Do you know what this stuff does to you? Taking drugs is stupid.

Slogan: "A diamond is forever" (DeBeers '1948)

Message behind slogan: Diamonds represent marriage; marriage should be forever. If you really want your marriage to last, seal it with a diamond.

Slogan: "It takes a licking and keeps on ticking" (Timex Corp)

Message behind slogan: It does not get any more durable than this, other watches cannot stand up, but Timex will endure regardless of the treatment.

Slogan: "For all you do, this Bud's for you" (Budweiser)

Message behind slogan: After a long hard day, drink beer to relax.

Slogan: "Where's the beef?”(Wendy’s)

Message behind slogan: Our competitors use small patties, but our burgers are big.

Slogan: "I love New York" (NYC)

Message behind slogan: New York is a special place, everyone loves NY, you should come and visit, you will love it too.

Slogan: "See what brown can do for you" (UPS)

Message behind slogan: We do more than just ship packages; we have additional offerings and can do more than just ship.

Slogan: "The few, the proud, the Marines" (US Marines)

Message behind slogan: We are a select group of very special individuals. Do you want to be elite? Take pride in representing the US.

Slogan: "Friends don't let friends drive drunk"

Message behind slogan: You will die if you drive drunk. It is your responsibility to protect your friends. Be responsible, do not let people drive drunk.

Effective slogans leave impressions in the minds of people who see or hear the slogans. Often slogans will have hidden meanings, or be a play on words. The goal of the slogan creator should be to create a memorable tagline that conveys a key benefit or differentiates the brand. Slogans will often help position the product or service in the marketplace. Slogans with just a few words can indicate superior value, excellence, or inspiration.

A business identity and image conveyed through a short statement will affect the way that consumers, competitors, and others in the industry perceive your business. Slogans will distinguish your company in a unique way. Words are powerful, and if used properly, they can be an important sales tool.

Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net a wireless text messaging software company.

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By Alex Nghiem

In the Internet marketing world, there are many misconceptions and outright lies. However, the biggest secret is one that is so obvious nobody wants to talk about, or even being aware. In this article, I share what I (and many world-class marketers) consider the biggest “secret” in Internet marketing.

At this point, you are probably wondering. “What is the BIGGEST secret?”

Before I share this secret with you, let me share a common mistake committed by 99% of Internet marketers. Almost all Internet marketers I know can quote you their opt-in rate and spend hours, days, weeks, and even months tweaking their landing pages to get the highest opt-in rate. This is accomplished by asking for as little customer information as possible and casting as wide a net as possible. This usually requires asking for only the first name and the primary email address.

In many industries, this results in optimizing for the wrong results. What do I mean by that?

I spend a lot of time in multiple industries other than Internet marketing (including real estate, art, etc.) and for a long time, I was focusing on increasing my opt-in rate, but rarely closed any sales (my sales for my products and my clients’ products range from $997 to $25,000 per sale). When I thought about it, I realized that in all of these industries and especially at these price points, the sale is accomplished via the phone, not via the Web.

Thus, without realizing it, I was not collecting all the necessary information for me to complete a sale (that is, I was not asking for a phone number because I knew this would reduce my opt-in rate). Most of the “gurus” who are teaching list building do not take into account industries that conduct business primarily offline and/or the fact that high-end products are not closed via email alone. I am not sure any of them has ever tested their methods in offline businesses!

Now, I do a 2-step opt-in rate that allows me to have the highest opt-in rate on the first page and then ask for additional info (including the phone number and mailing address) on the “thank you” screen. This enables me to follow up via offline methods including postcards, direct mail, and even telemarketing.

What does this have to do with the biggest secret in Internet marketing? Simple…the most valuable leads often require you to follow up using offline methods. However, this contradicts almost all list building techniques being taught, which usually teach how to get the highest opt-in rate. In this case, I made more money by having a lower opt-in rate…but I got higher quality leads, which enable me to follow up via offline methods. Again, in many, many industries, the sales happen via the phone and in some cases via the fax and direct mail.

Therefore, before you spend too much time focusing on optimizing your opt-in rate alone, think through the sales process and figure out the best way to close the sale. Collect information for that to happen, even if it means a lower opt-in rate.

Now you know the biggest secret in Internet marketing. The next time somebody brags about their 50% opt-in rate, you will know that he/she is probably optimizing on the wrong thing and leaving WAY too much money on the table.

To get regular notifications on high-end product creation secrets, visit http://www.backendcashmanuscript.com/fromarticles

© Blue Samba Publications – All Rights Reserved
http://www.backendcashmachine.com

Alex Nghiem is the founder of Blue Samba Solutions, creator of the Backend Cash Machine, a proven system for enabling clients to make up to 10X by building a backend of high-end products. His system has been used in multiple industries including art, real estate, and many offline industries.

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By Krishna De

Are you losing credibility and damaging the brand of your business through lack of attention to one of your critical marketing tools in your business, your business card? Discover how your business card can enhance your brand and ensure that you stand out from your competition.

When we are at a networking event or meeting a client, exchanging business cards occurs.

Very often, without realizing it, we are assessing our colleague by their business card, and asking ourselves:

- Is the business card professionally designed?
- Is the business card crumpled at the edges?
- How does the weight of the business card feel - substantive or flimsy?
- Does it look like the business card was made on their PC - or worse, does it have a message at the bottom of the card to say where you, too, can access free cards?

I have collected thousands of business cards over my time in business. I am sub-consciously assessing the professional status of them and their business when I receive their business card.

We review someone's card at least 3 times:

1. Once on receiving it
2. A second time when we put it in our pocket, folio or bag as we leave the meeting
3. A third time as we make a decision to keep it, transfers the information into our data bank, or bin it!

Our business card is a critical part of our marketing collateral. If you cannot afford to put in place other marketing materials, short changing the investment in developing a professional business card is definitely not something we should do, if we are looking to develop a professional brand.

When meeting someone in person, alongside how you present yourself in person, your business card can enhance or devalue the strength of your brand, and it reveals how others perceive you.

Here are four tips to enhance your brand through your business card:

1. Ensure that you work with a professional designer to develop your business card. It is not whether you like the design; it is about whether it will represent your business effectively and professionally to your target audience.

2. Ideally, have your business card printed on 400g card and by a traditional lithographic printer. Yes, it is more expensive than digital printing, but the quality is worth investing in and a litho print gives far greater definition to your corporate identity and the color of your brand.

3. Matt laminates your card on the reverse for extra stability and style. Do not laminate both sides as people will not be able to write on your card - we often note down things to remember about the person we met on their card.

4. Use the valuable real estate on the back of your card to provide a call to action, for example, how to access your white paper or special report on your web site.

Take action:

Over the next 30 days, take the opportunity to review the business cards of your contacts and assess their card against yours.

1. What can you learn from other people’s business cards?

2. How could you take those learning’s and further enhance your business card?

Your goal is to ensure that your business card is a positive reflection of both you and your company, and it represents a strong brand.

Invest in your business card, distribute it widely and you will be sure of expanding your professional success.

Krishna De invites you to join her in conversation with experts from around the globe to discover how to build your brand and grow your professional services firm at http://www.bizgrowthlive.com/. You will also receive access to Biz Growth Express a weekly newsletter bringing you strategies, inspiration and tips to grow your professional services practice. Register today at http://www.krishnade.com/.

©Krishna De, Oneocean Ltd 2006. All rights reserved Worldwide. Reprint Rights: You may reprint this article providing the article is printed in its entirety; you leave all of the links active, do not edit the article in anyway and include the copyright statement.

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By Shane Hunte

Why is article marketing so great? Why do the greatest marketers on the planet employ this method of marketing?

The greatest remain in the front seat because they know what works. The fact that they continue to use article marketing as one of their main methods of marketing shows. You guessed it, article-marketing works for them.

The possibilities for your articles are endless. It is an investment of time and not money, which makes it cost effective. All you need is patience and commitment and you will succeed with this marketing method.

The greatest marketers use this method because:

It is cost effective. Actually, let me tell you plan and simple, there is no cost to do this, it is free.

It builds credibility and expert status on the internet on any subject there is under the sun.

It drives floods of traffic to you promotions.

You reach a laser-targeted audience with you articles.

This method proves to give you quality back-links to your website, and subsequently, raise your website rankings, which equals more traffic.

These are just previews of the wealth that article writing can bring to you. Although these are not all the reasons, these should be enough reasons for you to use this method of marketing.

The most successful people have one thing in common; they copy the best, as we can see, the best marketers all said yes to article marketing as one of their most frequently used internet-marketing methods.

What is the magical blue print for writing articles like the big guns?

Here is the step-by-step blue print that the greatest use to build their articles at lightening speed:

Step 1. Plan your article.

This may sound elementary but very few people can write articles and they try to skip this step entirely.

When you plan your article, it makes it easier to write on the topic that you choose. You need to dedicate time for this step because it is the doorway for the other steps to follow.

Step 2. Brainstorm your article topic.

What are you going to write about and why? Do people want this information? Can you solve a problem that others have? Asking yourself these questions coupled with a little research can get you a long way.

Step 3. Brainstorming your article points and organizing them.

You have a good topic. Now, what are the points that you want to discuss on that topic? Organize these topics into the order in which you want to hit on them first, and then expand on it.

Step 4. Write selflessly about the topic to give quality information to your readers.

This often separates the good from the great. People want information that helps them solve a problem. We usually get the wrong idea with this form of marketing and dive into a sales letter for a product we promote.

You are not promoting a product right now. You are trying to build your credibility in the minds of readers.

This will make them trust you more. They will be more open-minded to your recommendations for your promotions. Sales letters not only will it turn off readers, it also turns off publishers to post your articles on their sites because it is not of value to their website traffic.

Step 5. Double check and triple check your article for mistakes.

You do not want your articles filled with spelling errors and other major or minor mistakes because this will make people not like your writing.

Publishers will review your pieces. If multiple errors show, then it will not be submitted to their audience.

Print out the article, read it aloud, and pass it to a close friend to read it for you, and provide and objective opinion on what they think about your article. Two sets of eyes are better to find mistakes. Use the feedback you get to write better.

Now that you have a simple blue print to follow, consider using it to write articles. Article marketing is the lifeblood for many great marketers out there and you should make it part of your marketing plans. It continuously adds $150-$200 a day to the pockets of those who use it. Maybe that alone could be your motivation to try.

Shane Hunte is an experienced internet marketer who makes a full time income online. If you to would like to learn the simplest way to make money online then learn article marketing. Go to http://www.internetrevinue.com/Jim_Edwards.html to find out everything you need to know today about profiting fast using your own articles.

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By Damon Smith

Everyone in online marketing or affiliate marketing, earning an income, has to research all over the internet to get the information he or she needs to succeed.

I have seen people spend hours, days, weeks, months, and even years just to come out making little or no income at all. As a publisher online, for Hailey Comet Weekly, I have met some of the most powerful people that have made thousands, even millions of dollars with the time they have been online.

Some have done it in as little as a few months and then retired. Then you have those who work very hard every day, no matter how much they make to help others to do the same. Do you remember when the doublers programs hit the internet and people made hundreds even thousands over night? Do you remember what happened within two months of them hitting the internet? People that were dealing with Storm Pay were stuck holding an empty bag because they went under and all kinds of trouble broke out.

The only true programs that make money are ones that last. There are very few of these. One that has made it to the top is Success University, because of the people behind the program, not because they have specials all the time, but because there are REAL people to talk with and to learn and teach you. I have met with people that joined the so-called PAS program and paid out $3,900!

In addition, most of them did not get anything from it. Do you know why? Because there was no one to teach them how to market the program, to make a profit, and they ended up being burnt!

Look at this link, http://www.damonday.net

If you take the time to read it, you will not only see that this group of master marketers are online to help you make a living , but also to teach you how to talk with others in a way to make them buy from you, and learn to work together as a team.

Success University is just what the name stands for. They have been online for quite sometime. The companies that I own depend on the things that I learn online. I would only suggest what I know will work to my own list of people, and not something, that is gone the next day.

My own list of people in my newsletter trust me because they all know, over the past 9 years, that when I have something to tell them it is only the truth and not something that will break their bank accounts. I have been called "The Howard Stern" of publishing and my newsletter is in most of the biggest Co-Ops and directories and forums. The reason for my success is because of people like Damon Day (It is funny we both have the same first names)

However, a "FLY BY NIGHT" company Success University is not. Some of the biggest companies there are back it. It is not just for people who are into affiliate marketing but also for people just starting out online and do not want to lose a lot of money. I will tell you from the start that it takes money to make money. This one company can take your funds, and turn it into something to be proud of. Right now, they are running a $2 14 day trial offer, and the monthly cost is less then a night on the town. So do not miss something that will give you everything you need to earn online.

So take five minutes of your time and look. It will surprise you to see what some people will do to help others instead of just thinking of themselves and what they can get out of people that don’t know any better.

Example: http://www.damonday.net

If you talk with Damon, tell him that I sent you to him so he will know that after everything we have been through, I still believe there are good people online!

Damon Smith is the publisher of Hailey Comet Weekly eZine that gives you the truth about online marketing and advertising. You can check out his newsletter at http://www.haileyscometweekly.com and get some of the best insight info on how he went from nothing to earning thousands a month by helping others.

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By Jeff Neil

Usually when we think of multilevel marketing, what comes to mind is recruiting. We try to find people who want to earn money from home, and then convince them to join our opportunity. Convincing is the key word here. Nobody wants to join a convincing business. However, that is what we do in our industry.

Then we wonder why we have a hard time building a solid organization.

Initially, people join an mlm opportunity for the money. I mean, that is why we do this, for the money right?

Maybe.

If you look at the leaders in this industry, and in your own organization, I mean really look. You will see they offer something to their downline more than just “How to Make Money". Because the ‘how-to's’ can be found in your local bookstore, or even the public library.

Sorry to tell you, but just the "how-to's" will never be enough.

One of the things your leaders are doing is they are busy climbing the mountain. They are going on ahead of the pack. They make sure the mountain is safe to climb. While you are climbing that mountain, your leaders are encouraging you. As if to say "Yeah, you can do it, if I made it this far so can you".

Your leaders are also yelling down to you, they are pointing out where the rocks are. In addition, giving advice on how to go over the rocks, or under them, or around them. A great leader will even try to get you up the mountain even higher than the leader is.

Remember, MLM is certainly not the only way to make money. Just watch late night television.

Pretend you watched some infomercial on TV, and ended up buying an ATM machine, or some Internet Kiosk Thingy. Are those companies going to do all the stuff your upline does? No. They will not, "because they don't care about you.” However, your upline does!

It is this extra attention. The caring leadership. The built in self-development that appeals to so many people. In addition, do not forget, people are becoming more spiritually aware than ever before.

I am not talking religion here either. People are tired of the corporate, do not give a damn rat race, tread mill, life they are living. They want purpose, and passion. People want to feel good inside. They want to feel important.

Like they belong to something, a movement. In addition, they want to feel that what they are doing with their lives is of value to other people. Because when you uncover all the B.S., people, almost all people, are really, nice.

So let us point this back to you. I know you are a nice person. However, what can you do to inspire people? If you can inspire others, you will set yourself apart from all the other, "please join me" net workers.

In addition, you do want that, right?

So first, forget about the money. The money will come. However, stop focusing on it when you are dealing with people. Think about your vision, and all that when you are alone.

Pretend you are doing mlm free. As a volunteer thing. Alternatively, charity. Ask yourself why. With the money issue gone, why would you do mlm? If you cannot find an answer, you are in the wrong industry. Go sell vacuum cleaners or something.

Because if you do not love this, if you do not feel this business, people will not follow you. In addition, you will never be able to grow much of a downline.

Find the desire to be better, to do more, to grow as a human being, and to bring up as many people as you can along the way. Think about how you can give increase to everyone you meet. Even if you have no intentions to do business with them.

Think about what your purpose is. It does not have to be to save the world, just something you feel very strongly about. In addition, how being in the network marketing industry is helping you with your purpose.

In addition, you need to have confidence. Yes, things can get scary. However, just do a tiny little thing you have never done before. Something small that you know will help you or others. Then do just a tiny little bit more.

All those little actions will become big actions. You will build your confidence and be someone who takes big actions.

If you think about it, you already know what to do. Because growing yourself and others is a very natural thing. Just allow yourself to do it. In addition, fine-tune it as you go along.

Jeff Neil is a tattooed, bald headed ex-cop who sells candles in his spare time. However, you do not care about that. What you might care about is how to be a leader in this industry. Find out at his mlm blog http://www.4mlm.com/category/mlm-leadership/.

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By Obono John

You are ready to launch that new product or promotion. You are really counting on a piece of advertising copy to come through for you.

You are looking for stellar results! In addition, you are determined to do everything in your power to get them. This means surveys, thorough testing, and ongoing refinement of your ad copy.

Hold the phone!

You finish your draft and run it through this 12-point inspection. Cover all these basics, and you can be certain you are off to a running start.

1 – Do You Have A Compelling Headline?

Does it generate curiosity or envy? Does it promise a benefit that will compel someone with an interest in what you are selling to keep reading? Remember, your headline is the ad for the ad.

When I write direct response ad copy, or a sales letter, or have a very important sales objective of my own, I normally write 25 headlines before I begin the body of the piece.

Then I will pick half a dozen that I think will work & test them. The best of the rest, I use as sub headings throughout the piece to propel readership, and draw skimmers & skippers back into the copy as they move down the page.

2 – Are Your Headlines Pleasing To The Eye?

I most often find that headlines work best when centered on the page, and present a balanced appearance in terms of the shape they create. Encasing them in quotation marks also serves to grab more attention.

Long, top headlines tend to reduce readership, but if they help qualify more effectively, they can improve sales! Try them, but look for ways to modularize the text using punctuation and spacing so your readers do not suffocate trying to read them. Sometimes a long, top headline needs to be two or even three separate headlines.

3 – Is Your Opening Provocative & Arresting?

Does it trip the reader, interrupting the internal turbulence of the day? Each line of your ad copy must serve to "sell" the reader on continued reading, especially at the beginning.

You are looking to build enough momentum and interest to convey the points necessary to generate a greater desire for the product than its price. The higher the cost of the product, the more words required.

4 – Are You FAB Balanced?

You must focus on painting a picture of your prospects future life, because of their purchase. Does your copy promise emotional benefits? Does it pledge the realization of positive feelings, or the relief of negative ones?

Does it show how to achieve these outcomes with concise descriptions of the features and advantages that will deliver them? Your ad copy must strike a balance between emotion and logic if it is to be effective.

5 – Are You Creating Excitement & Enthusiasm?

Demonstrate your personal belief in what you are selling. Will your message quicken the readers pulse? Is it upbeat, positive, & full of inspired energy? Is there a sense of WOW?

6 – Is Your Body Copy Highly Readable?

Remember simple is best. Keep sentences short. Use a plain 10-point to 12-point font. Keep paragraphs to a few lines. Use words that are comfortable and specific to the audience you are targeting. Inject subheads to break up text. Highlight important points.

7 – Do You Have High ‘YOU’ density?

Remember to use the words ‘YOU’ and ‘YOUR’ to the hilt. Your reader is auto-translating to ‘ME’ and ‘MINE’.

8 – Are you speaking intimately?

Can you get a strong sense of personality when you review your letter after being away from it for a while? Visualize yourself, or the character you are personifying, writing a personal letter to your perfect prospect. Never write to a crowd.

9 – Are you inspiring the reader’s imagination?

You must trigger mental images with your writing. The mind has difficulty distinguishing between vividly painted word pictures, and reality. Daydreams enchant, and emotions flow in their wake.

When you have emotion, you have desire. When you have desire, you have suggestibility. When you have suggestibility, you can direct action. Your levers are allegory (storytelling), metaphor, similes, verbs, adjectives, and specificity.

10 – Do you offer proof?

Specific testimonials and convincing guarantees worked into your ad copy are essential.

Obono John is the owner of http://www.butterflymarketzone.blogspot.com, The Viral Marketing Experiment.

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By Alvin Phang

Before you decide what to sell on the internet, you have to develop an Internet Marketing Strategy. It is the essential part of your online success on the Internet.

You have to take into consideration the following:
1. Find a large and easy to reach niche market
2. Find a Product or Service the niche market demands
3. Set up your website
4. Have a great sales copy (your 24/7 sales man)
5. Create an opt-in page to collect email address
6. Have a great sales process
7. Make your website scalable and search engine friendly
8. Backend, backend, and backend

Each step plays an important role to your success in your Internet Marketing Strategy Planning. If you miss one-step, you will not be able to see the results you would like to see, as each step is equally important to the other.

1. Find a large and easy to reach niche market.

Your first step in your Internet Marketing Strategy planning requires you to do your research. Find a large and easy to reach niche market to promote your product. From here, you can go to Free Keywords tools and search for niche keywords that have high click through and low competitions.

Example, the keyword “Dog Food For Sale”, when you search that on Google, there are actually 5,650,000 which is seriously not a lot of competition but you also have to check is there a demand for it by using tools from www.seobook.com to look at the KEI rate. The higher the KEI rate the better the keyword.

2. Find a Product or Service the niche market demands.

After you have found two or three keywords that you would like to target, you would want to find products that will serve the market that demands it.

Example the keyword “Dog Food for Sale”, you would not want to promote Cat Food, as it does not relate to the topic you want to promote. So find related products like an eBook “where to find a great sale for dog food” or “dog products that dogs like to eat.”

3. Setup your website.

After you have decided what product or service you want to sell online, you would want to setup a website to promote your product. The best way to do it is by creating a Blog talking only about Dog Food that is for Sale, because Google and Yahoo search-engines love Blogs so much. You virtually get listed just 24 hours upon updating, compared to a normal website, which will take at least a few weeks to be ‘cached’ into the search engine.

4. Have great sales copy (your 24/7 sales man).

Do not be mistaken, sales copy is not the sale. A sales copy is a page with descriptions and details to promote your product on your website. When I first heard of this term sales copy, I was totally stunted how important it was to have a sales copy.

Depending on how good your copy writing skills are, you can get people to write your sales copy, or simply teach yourself to write one. If you can try to write it yourself, as copy, writing is a very good skill to learn, especially when you are an Internet Marketer who plans Internet Marketing Strategy.

5. Create an opt-in page to collect email address.

This is another important step that many do not have. It is the most important. Why? It is because they fail to collect email address from their website. With the email address, you can design out your sales process in the next step, which I will explain further.

6. Have a great sales process

With your opt-in page in place, you can use the captured email address and name to follow up with people who are interested to know more about what you are promoting in your opt-in page. This is a way to build your email list, and keep, and send them information or promotion products to sell those products again in the future.

7. Make your website scalable and search engine friendly.

With all that done, you would now need to read up on Search Engine Optimization. Practicing this will allow search engines like Yahoo and Google to spider your website easily. The good thing about Blogs is that you can ping the search engines to spider your site easily and you can be listed very quickly within 24 hours.

8. Backend, backend, and backend

Upon completion of all seven steps, you just need to keep on sending backend information to your list from your opt-in emails that you receive and keep on driving traffic from your opt-in page to get more email address to sent out promotions to your customers.

If you constantly follow this eight-step formula for your Internet Marketing Strategy Plan, you will see great massive results after 3 months upon setup. So do the math and start planning your Internet Marketing Strategy today!

Alvin Phang is the owner of http://GatherSuccess.com. Get the right Internet Marketing Strategy for your Internet Business with our free resource of Tutorials, Video and much more...

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By Ian Simpson

One of the most effective forms of low-cost Internet marketing is using email to reach a targeted audience. While email marketing has undergone changes over the years, in particular, the outlawing of spam email, it still has great appeal and is one of the most widely used internet marketing techniques. It is quite simply the best way to keep in touch with your customers on a regular basis on autopilot. Providing you respect the spam laws and use email properly, you will have a trouble-free email marketing business.

Email marketing is more commonly associated with the use of an autoresponder service. It allows you to import your email messages into the autoresponder and send them out to your customers at a fixed date and time - you could have a series of messages sent over a period of weeks, months or even years, if you wanted. The exciting thing is that once the autoresponder has been set up, that part of your business will run hands free, allowing you to concentrate on other important things.

The costs associated with an autoresponder vary considerably from free up to $100 a month. Try to avoid free autoresponders where possible, although they are free, they come at a price! The price being the restrictions on usage, and they will nearly always carry an advert of some sort on your message, which can distract your recipient from the real reason, why they have received the message. In addition, it is not necessary to pay a silly price for an autoresponder, big companies may want to pay top price because they can afford to but as an individual, you do not need to. Excellent, cost effective autoresponder services can be obtained from aweber.com or getresponse.com. These are web-based programs so they will work for you 24/7.

You could of course, use a desktop-based autoresponder such as Mailloop. This type of program is a software application installed on your computer and it allows you to manage your email campaigns from your desktop. You need to be aware that you will need to leave your computer running all the time or else you will not be able to receive or send emails automatically. However, it is a great way to have a series of autoresponders for a one-time payment and no recurring fees.

So, having decided on using autoresponders for your email business, what do you do with one? Well, building up a customer database should be a priority. Initially, you will want to create a form for your website that allows potential subscribers to insert their details. When they agree to subscribe, they enroll automatically onto an email course that you will have loaded into the autoresponder. The course can, as long as you want it to be, sent automatically over a period of time - this is where the automation of your email business will come into its own. It is essential that any information you send to your subscribers is of value and instructive. It is no good sending rubbish; you will lose your subscriber quicker than you got him! Quality email courses you can use are found in the Turbomembership.com.

If you offered a 14-day email course on internet marketing, for example, then you could provide links to various marketing ebooks or resources. In each email would be a link to a different ebook. Of course, each link would have your unique affiliate code. The unique Turbomembership.com affiliate program provides quality marketing ebooks and software scripts that you can re-sell at 95% commission.

This is just one of the many ways you can use autoresponders in your email marketing business. Finding and using the right autoresponder service, setting up your autoresponder, and loading, it with quality information is just the tip of the iceberg where marketing is concerned. However, it is a good place to start and gain the necessary experience for future marketing projects.

Ian Simpson reviews and writes about software and informational products on the internet. Great marketing resources can be found at http://information4income.com/sfpr.

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By Andreas Sundstrom

Running a traditional brick and mortar business with an online presence, is one very good way to make a part of your living online. However, for the purposes of this article, we are going to assume that you do not have your own business. Therefore, I am going to discuss two of the biggest online moneymakers right now: online business opportunities and affiliate marketing.

Network marketing

The typical online business opportunity built around a network-marketing concept, inheriting the basic qualities of the offline business model that has been available for many decades. The basic idea is that you recruit two or more people, who in their turn recruit two, and in this way your efforts, (at least in theory), are greatly leveraged.

The main difference doing this online is that, utilizing the power of the Internet, you as a network marketer can literally reach people all over the planet.

The problem with the network marketing, or "mlm", concept is it sounds so good on paper - excessively good. Most people who join with a company of this type tend to get a dose of Mr. Reality rather soon.

They discover that recruiting new people, which is what mlm’s are all about - even if they try to tell you differently -, is not at all a simple process. There have been plenty of fraudulent businesses in this niche, and people tend to stay on their toes as soon as they hear the words mlm or network marketing.

To further complicate things, this business model is also based on you paying a set monthly fee - whether you make any money or not, which means many people who start this kind of business actually end up losing money.

It is definitely possible to make a good living in network marketing, but it is definitely not for everybody. "Getting in on the ground floor" is allegedly not always as good as it seems.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is similar to network marketing, in the sense that you will be promoting a product produced by another company or person. This can make life simpler for you, as the merchant usually takes care of all shipping and customer support issues. Amazon.com is probably one of the most well-known (and respected) companies utilizing the power of affiliate partnerships.

As an affiliate, your task is simply to refer new clients to the merchant. When these people buy something, you receive credit with a certain percentage of the sale.

Contrary to network marketing, acting as an affiliate marketer, is generally free. There are certain companies that have a hybrid structure between network and affiliate marketing, which require you to pay a start-up and/or monthly fee to market their products. Most affiliate programs are completely free to join. I would personally stay away from those using their affiliate programs as an income generator, in its own right, or "affiliate sharks”, as one marketer aptly named them.

Affiliate programs are a great way that anyone can start to make money online, without having to invest a lot of money, if indeed any at all.

However, there are certain strategies and marketing methods you need to be knowledgeable of, if you are to make anything but peanuts with your affiliate marketing.

Choosing the right affiliate program, and promoting it to the right people in the right way is an art form in its own right. The people who are good at this, generally referred to as "super affiliates", make a very good living doing nothing else than selling other people's products.

If you are looking to make an additional income from the Internet, or eventually even replace your current income altogether, affiliates marketing is a great way to get started. To achieve the success you desire, you should study and learn the same techniques “super affiliates” use on a day-to-day basis.

Andreas Sundstrom has made a full time living online for the past six years, largely thanks to the power of free affiliate programs. At his website http://www.webhosting-tips.info/affiliate/ he will share some of the most important super affiliate secrets.

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By Paul Mccord

Whether you know it or not, your database of current and past clients is your best source of new clients. “Prospecting” for a new clientele is time consuming and expensive. If you can find a way to increase your sales without the time commitment and expense of cold calling, mass direct mail, advertising, or purchasing leads, would you be willing to implement it? Of course, you would!

Taking the time and effort to keep in contact with past clients will grow your business through new direct sales to the client and generating referrals to qualified prospects.

Often sales people complain that keeping in touch with past clients takes too much time, effort, and money. Considering the return on investment, this is not true—at least for most sales people. The key is finding a way to communicate that is time efficient, relatively inexpensive, and effective.

Studies indicate that in order to keep your name at the top of your customer’s mind, you need to “touch” your customer a minimum of 14 times per year—more if possible.

What is a “touch?” A touch is any communication from you to your client—email, telephone call, snail mail, postcard, holiday card, in-person meeting, or any other method of getting in front of your customer. If you are communicating with the client, you are touching them.

What is the most effective way to touch your past clients? Studies have shown that there is not a “best” way to touch the client, but rather, the most effective client communication programs enlists a number of communication formats.

Is sending 14 emails a year effective? Is sending 14 snail mail pieces a better choice? Is making 14 phone calls a better option? Is sending 14 postcards a viable option? What alternatives will work the best? However, constructing a campaign using a combination of these methods could be a very effective program. For instance, setting a marketing calendar to send 4 postcards per year, 6 emails, 2 snail mail letters, one phone call, and one holiday card during the course of the year allows you to touch your clients approximately once every 3 ½ weeks during the course of the year.

However, what do you send? What do you say 14 times during the course of the year? The content of your communication is just as important as the fact that you sent something. When you communicate with a past client, the fact that you have something in front of a previous customer is not necessarily a good thing, in and of itself.

Many traditional marketers will disagree. Much traditional thinking says that any time you get your name in front a client it is a good thing. However, is a 3-second trip to the trash for your expensive postcard or letter the best use of your money?

Whether or not your communication campaign is effective will depend on what you are communicating. If you send junk, just to send something, your customer will quickly learn to ignore you and your communications and everything you send will take that 3-secnd trip to the trash. On the other hand, if your communications offer something of interest and value, you will train your client to pay attention to you.

Which would you rather have: a client that ignores you or one that pays attention to you?

I assume you would rather have a client that pays attention to you. To train your clients to pay attention, and, therefore, to keep you at the top of their mind, you must figure out how to send them communications that give them value. Can you offer a special for them or someone they refer to you? Can you provide them an annual or semi-annual update on their purchase? Can you send or email them articles of interest that relate to their purchase or an interest of theirs? What you send does not have to be large or costly—it just needs to be of interest to the client.

A program such as this requires thought and considerable customization of content, but the payoff can be enormous. Think about what you are sending and what it will—or will not—communicate about you and your business. If you want your clients to think of you and not ignore you, then take the time and the effort to make sure you are sending value. If you are not sure it has value, it probably does not. Marketing to your client database should be at the top of your “to do” list and your campaign should be constructed with the thought and care as if you were marketing to the most important people in the world, because for you, they are.

Author and trainer, Paul McCord is a leading authority on prospecting, referral selling, and personal marketing. His book, Creating a Million Dollar a Year Sales Income (John Wiley & Sons) teaches the strategies the million dollars a year sales superstars use. http://www.powerreferralselling.com

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By Mikhail Tuknov

For many casual internet users, the terms SEM and SEO rarely enter their minds when they are busy jumping from one website to another. However, these terms establish much of what comes out on the results page whenever we type a word in the search tab of any accessible search engine. These terms are also responsible for all those advertisements and pop-ups that link us to even more websites, whether they connect to our original search or not. So just what are SEM and SEO?

In the simplest way possible, SEM and SEO are tools which website creators, especially those who are promoting and selling a certain service or product, use to gain a lot of exposure and a better ranking for their website. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, the simplicity ends there.

To make it a tad bit complex, SEM and SEO are not the same.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM), deals with how a website markets to gain exposure in the different search engines available on the internet. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), deals with how the web creators develop and redevelop the content, quality, and structure of their entire websites. When an internet user types in a particular word in the search tab, their websites have a better chance of appearing on the first few search engine results pages (SERPS).

To make it even more complex, although the functions of SEM and SEO seem different, they are more effective when used together. Since the main function of SEM is to gain further exposure for a website, the common means for attraction are more online advertisements, blogs, internet articles, partner and sponsored websites, and anything that can catch the eye of the internet user.

SEM also makes use of PPC (pay-per-click), and paid inclusion to push a website’s visibility. Lastly, it is also an important process in SEM to submit the name and URL of a website to different search engines and web directories, if only to inform them of the website’s existence. This is carried out to ensure the popularity of a website.

So how does SEO come together with SEM? Despite having all the advertisements provided by SEM, truly the SEO allows the internet user to easily and conveniently find what he is looking for. Since the function of SEO is to gain a better ranking in the SERPS, the web creator has to constantly optimize his website in order to cater to the needs of the internet user; making it easier for spiders or web crawlers to judge whether the website’s content is relevant to the words being searched. Optimization is not a simple and easy task. It involves having to restructure the website regularly, (by editing the html code and meta tags, changing content, reorganizing the site map, developing an easier navigational structure, etc.), to adapt to the rapidly changing demands of the internet user. Still, when done properly, not only does SEO help a website become more useful and therefore, more often visited by the internet user, it also helps gain more exposure since it increases the website’s chances of gaining a better rank in the SERPS.

Both SEM and SEO success rely heavily on the words or context which Internet user’s type in when they search for something on the internet. Take PPC under SEM, for example. PPC is an ad that is triggered by a particular word or context used by an internet user. Once a particular word or context is searched, a corresponding PPC ad for a website comes out. SEO works in the same way. The web creator inputs a particular Meta tag (or keyword) in his html that he believes many internet users will use when searching for information; information, which the web creator’s website may contain.

Although all of these processes involving SEM and SEO are tedious and time-consuming, it all boils down to knowing and serving the target audience. A web creator must be discerning enough to know what the internet users need and want, and at the same time, he must have the real passion to inform and provide the internet users with the right service and product.

Mikhail Tuknov, search engine optimization specialist and a 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 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 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 Michael Cordova

A landing page is a website page created for one purpose - to persuade the site visitor to convert into a customer by making a sale, completing a form (thereby becoming a qualified lead), signing up for a newsletter, etc.

We provide this landing page quick reference so you can pull it out every time you are creating a persuasive landing page; divided into four sections to use as an all-inclusive tip sheet. Most importantly, consider that you have eight seconds or less to convince your visitor to act. If you have not convincingly made your case in this time, then your visitor will move on and will be lost, as the Internet has created the most fickle customer in sales history.

Page Layout

- Place your logo at the top left. Visitors expect it there so display your branding where it counts.

- If the visitor came from a search engine, keyword search, or a PPC ad, then place the keyword terms in bold at the top of the page. This reinforces, to the visitor that they came to the right place.

- Always, keep the Golden Triangle in mind. It is the most important and scanned part of the page. It is the area of the page that starts at the top left, moves to the top right side, then down diagonally to the bottom left of the page just above the fold. The fold is the area of a web page that the visitor sees without scrolling vertically. You should never force a visitor to scroll horizontally. This means your landing pages should be seen completely on an 800 x 600-screen resolution. Place your UVP in the middle of the Golden Triangle.

- Contrast your Calls to Action with respect to the rest of the page - use contrasting colors, round vs. rectangular, straight vs. slanted, warm color vs. cold color, big vs. little. Make sure you can spot the Call to Action from six feet away.

- Place assurances, testimonials, and guarantees in the far-right column

- Place logos to appropriate associations or online companies at the bottom of the page to show credibility - Verisign, BBB Online Reliability, certified by..., Alexa rank (if good), powerseller, live support, credit cards supported, open 24 hours a day, Hacker Safe, as seen in Entrepreneur Magazine, Chamber of Commerce, etc.

- Don't place external links on a landing page. Just allow them the option to proceed into completing the form and converting into a customer.

- Place privacy policies on the landing page. This instills confidence.

- Think of the Amazon.com website. Note their Call to Action is the hotspot at the top-right of all pages - add to cart, one click ordering, etc. This may also apply to you

Writing Style and Content

- Spend time on your Unique Value Proposition (UVP), and place it into the center of the Golden Triangle. A UVP is the core differentiation of a company's product or service from those of competitors. A complete UVP will describe the market and a company's competitors and the key difference between competitors and your own company.

- Ensure that you do not have big paragraphs. Visitors tend to scan pages instead of reading all of the text on them.

- Write using headers above paragraphs that summarize the following text.

- Use bullets where possible as visitors can quickly scan them. Search engines also prioritize bullets instead of