Archive for January, 2007

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Every online business provides great service to generate satisfaction among their customers. As each and every customer receives satisfaction over their products or the services they get, there is a great chance that they will become a return customer and buy again. Better yet, they will recommend you to other people that could generate more business for you and your site.

As more traffic is driven to your site, you can entice many of them to subscribe to your mailing list or opt-in list. This is a list where in website visitors agree to be sent promotional materials such as newsletters, catalogs and such that could keep them updated about your site or the niche of your site. These promotional materials are sent via e-mail to the members of the list in different time intervals.

When using e-mail as the media of your marketing and advertisements, you eliminate the need for high costs. Email is free and if you can manage to make your own promotional advertisements you can also save a bundle there. With an opt-in subscribers list, you are pretty sure that what you are sending out is received, viewed and read by the subscribers and not simply being deleted. They have signed up for service and have consented in receiving it.

This means that there are constant reminders to your subscribers about all your products, new products and services as well as any promotions and special deals you are having. There is also the chance that they can be forwarded to other potential customers as they tell their friends and families about you and your site.

Of course you should be also aware that a subscriber may unsubscribe when they feel that they are not getting what they want or expected. Make sure that they are satisfied with your opt-in marketing strategies and keep them excited in receiving your newsletters and catalogs. Here are some tips that can help you build a list of eager subscribers.

Make your promotional materials interesting and fun. Try to use a little creativity but not too over artsy. Build around what your product or service is about. For example; if you are selling car parts, put some pictures of what is new in the auto parts world, a new wing door possibly that can fit any car and make it look like a Lamborghini.

Try to research what people are looking for, these way, you stay one step ahead of them all the time and you will be their bearer of new tidings. They will be eager to receive what you are sending them because they new you always have fresh and new things to share with them.

Write good articles that can be very informational but light at the same time. If your subscribers enjoy your articles, they will go to your site by clicking the links that you will be putting on your newsletter to read some more. You can provide articles that can connect to many people. Be diverse in your articles. Put something humorous, then put something informational, then put something that has both.

Are you wary about this because you don’t like writing? No problem, there are many professional and experienced article writers that   can do the job for you for minimal fees. They know what they are doing and can provide the need that you have for your newsletters, the money that you pay for your articles are going to be met by the many sign-ups and the potential profit from the sales that you will get.

Create and send an E-book to your customers about anything that is related to your business or site. Use your knowledge and expertise in the field you have chosen to help other people who are similarly interested. Offer this e-book for free. You can write about anything informational and helpful to your subscribers. For example; you can do manuals and guides in so many things. This e-book could be used as a reference for many people.

Share this e-book with everyone, even other sites; just make sure that they don’t change the links in the e-book that will lead people to your site. If you want, you can always get some people to write it for you just like your articles. Your investment once again will be covered by the great marketing this will generate.

Add e-coupons in your newsletters that will help them avail to special discounts. Put a control number in your e-coupon so that they can only be used once. When people get discounts that can be found in your newsletters, they will be eager to receive your newsletter in anticipation of what you are promoting next.

If your subscribers can get benefits from your newsletters, they will be very eager to receive them. Just don’t flood your mailing list with mails so that you don’t annoy your subscribers.

Building a list is always seen as an important part of an online buisiness but while most people look at an optin page and how they want to structure their offer they are not looking close enough at those little parts and processes on their website to make it a trustworthy place for people to want to give up their email address to.

Opt-in marketing requires the permission of a willing customer to subscribe to your marketing materials, materials that take form in newsletters, catalogs and promotional mailings via e-mail. The more opt-in marketing mail is sent, the more chances there is to bag sales and more sales. To do this, you must build a list of all those who wants to subscribe to your opt-in marketing list.

From your list, you will get your targeted customer, this is a good list since they already have shown interest in what you have to show and sell since they have willingly signed in for your list. These are the people who have liked what they have seen in your site and have decided they want to see more and maybe even purchase what ever product or service your company and site has to offer.

Many people would think that building their lists would take hard work and a lot of time to build and collect names and addresses. This is not so, it takes a bit of patience and some strategies but in doing this list, you open your site and your business to a whole new world of target market. Take the effort to take your business to a new level, if traffic increase and good profits are what you want, an opt-in list will do wonders for your business venture.

There are many sources and articles in the internet available for everyone to read and follow in building a list. Sometimes they may be confusing because there are so many and there different ways. Different groups of people would have different approaches in building an opt-in list, but no matter how diverse many methods are, there are always some crucial things to do to build your list. Here are four of them.

1) Put up a good web form in your site that immediately follows the end of your content. While some may say this is too soon to subscribe for a website visitors application, try to remember that your homepage should provide a quick good impression. If somehow a website visitor finds something that he or she doesn’t like and turns them off, they may just forget about signing up.

A good web form for subscribing to an opt-in list is not hard to do. Just write a simple short statement about how they would like to see more and get updated about the site. Then there should be an area where they could put in their names and e-mail address. This web form will automatically save and send you the data’s inputted. As more people sign in, your list will be growing.

2) As mentioned in the first tip, make your homepage very, very impressive. You need to have well written articles and descriptions of your site. Depending on what your site is all about, you need to capture your website visitor’s fancy. Make your site useful and very easy to use. Do not expect everyone to be tech savvy. Invest in having good programming in your site, make your graphics beautiful but don’t over do it.

Don’t waste your time making the homepage too overly large megabyte wise. Not all people have dedicated T1 connections, the faster your site gets loaded, the better. Go for a look that borders between simplicity and sophisticated knowledge.

3) Provide good service and products. A return customer is more likely to bring in more business. Even then and now, a satisfied customer will recommend a business always. Word of mouth and recommendations alone can rake in more business than an expensive ad. As your clientele roster grows so shall your list. With more members on the list, the more people will get to know about what you have new to offer.

4) Keep a clean and private list. Never lose the trust your customers have entrusted you. If you provide e-mails to others and they get spammed, many will probably unsubscribe to you. Remember, a good reputation will drive in more traffic and subscribers as well as strengthen the loyalty of your customers.

Over at Copyblogger I just saw a few quotes on how important some fundamentals of advertizing are and the idea in the article was that the future is not so different from the past. David Ogilvy in this book Ogilvy on Advertising created a manual with truths that were very useful and profitable is a time when direct mail campaigns made millions of dollars and had a high overhead to test and market.

Read the quotes they are really great. The one thing that I would say is that the people NOW that we are trying to reach on the internet are no differnet from the people buying through print advertising 30 years ago. The difference between the past and the present and the online world is that We are marketing faster, we expect a shorter sales cycle, and we have a few more multimedia tools at our disposal.

Other than that everything stays the same.  We are now seeing more and more internet marketers buying into old school direct marketing concepts. These time tested ideas for getting attention, starting a conversation in the head of the buyer and finally closing with a pitch are really the same now as they ever were in the past.

If you are an owner of a tech site or blog then you already know that next to porn the biggest market on the internet is Technology. There are a lot of searches everyday for technology related terms and many tech blogs and sites are out there offering a wealth of information and opportunity for their webmasters.

The problem for tech webmasters is that viewers of technology sites are often blind to ads and just focus on the articles or news that they are reading. Most people will tell you that if you have a story dugg you will likely not be able to make any money off all of that traffic because Digg users are “ad blind”.

There are many factors to think about when monetizing your blog but I thought that a list of tips that you can focus on and implement in the next hour would probably be the best thing that I could offer so here they are:

1. Don’t use Google Adsense at all
If there is any type of advertising that tech people are actually blind to it has got to be AdSense. We see Adsense ads everywhere and usually the exact same ads because the topics we will look at are similar. Don’t waste the space on your site with this

2. Keep ads as close to the content as possible and blend them
Try to get into the head of your reader. Let’s say someone is looking through Google for a solution to some problem and hit your page. That user will scan the article looking for keywords and if it is interesting will continue to read through the rest of the text. You need your advertising close to get an eyeball close enough to see the ad even.

3. Find content specific advertising
Go off to Tiger Direct or Think Geek and join their affiliate program and then in your pages offer specific items that your viewers will be interested in. One of the best ways to offer these products is through text hyperlinks within your content. This will of course be seen and be very close to your content.

4. Offer articles with solutions
Stories of problems and the fixes that you offered as a solution are a great topic for you to use as content and in my tech tips blog I have done this as well in the past. As well as being a very satisfying way of sharing your knowledge it also offers you the opportunity to show a solution using a product that you are an affiliate for.

5. Write good solution based reviews
No one likes to just be sold in a review for a product. If you can review a product using solutions to problems that if offers as well as strengths compared to other products on the market then your review will mean a lot more to your readers.

6. Study the market
Now that you know this information look around. With other sites, what looks like it would work? What products would be great ones to promote or affiliate with? Do the research to see if you can offer products that you like somehow.

As you can see I have used none of these tactics so far on this blog. All that I ask is that you subscribe to my tips and hopefully one day in the future I will have the opportunity to steer you to a product that you can buy through me.

Getting customers in your site should always be ranked as high as the importance of the quality and the excellence of the product and the services you provide. They should go hand in hand in providing your customers the satisfaction they get in exchange for the money they have paid for them. Customer service should as well be as fantastic so that the customers are provided with the same satisfaction.

One of the ways you can combine marketing and customer service is through opt-in marketing. With an opt-in list you get the opportunity to introduce your site and products on a good time basis. Opt-in marketing strategy is a marketing strategy that is virtually low cost and not time consuming. Here, you get the consent of your website visitors to subscribe to your newsletters and other promotional materials such as catalogs and free promotions.

Opt-in marketing uses your list of subscribers to send e-mail to. These e-mails will contain the materials you will send to your subscribers. It is essential that you present your promotional items in a manner that will catch the interest and the eye of your subscribers to keep them wanting for more. The best way to do this is to provide fun, entertaining and informational articles.

Well written articles full of content and useful information will help in building your list as more subscribers will be enticed your list. When they have read the samples of your contents in your sites, they will be intrigued as to what will come next. Subscribing to your newsletter will offer them a glimpse of what you have to offer next.

Many sites and companies have captured the importance of articles and this also aids in search engine optimization. As more people are heading towards the internet for their information needs, serving the right information to them via articles in your site will increase the flow of your website traffic.  With more traffic, the percentage of your sales will grow. More sales turn into more profit.

There have been the rise for the importance of well written, information enriched and keyword packed articles for the content of their site as well as for newsletters. These articles provide the information many are seeking in the internet. If your site has them, more people will be going to your site for information and research.

Well written articles would also boost your sites reputation. If they are filled with many information you will be regarded as well informed and an expert on the subjects that you tackle.  Your articles must be well researched so that the people will trust you. When you have gained their trust, they will always come for you for their needs on that subject.

In connection, you must write articles or commission them to tackle subjects that are closely connected with your type of business. If you have a site for a medicine tackling a certain disease, your articles must be about the diseases. Or if you sell materials for home improvements provide articles with those themes. Most articles searched for are tips, guidelines, methods, manuals and such. If you provide these articles to your customers and you have their trust, they will always go to your site for help and advice as well as for your products.

With the loyalty of these customers, they may subscribe to your opt-in list to receive all the information you have. If you provide them with the answers for that need, they will be happy to be receiving your newsletters as well as other promotional materials to keep them well informed. Others may even forward your newsletters to other people when they find a certain article interesting.

You should provide links in your newsletter so that when other people are reading it and wants to read more, they may click on the link and go to your site. With the articles you have in your site that are good, they may decide to sign up as well for your opt-in list. This will build your list and make it bigger.

Make sure to keep your subscribers happy and interested in your newsletters and promotional materials. Keep on posting and writing good articles for your site and newsletter. If you are not interested in writing them or if you just don’t have the time, there are many available well experienced and knowledgeable writers available to help you out. This is an investment that will pay for itself in time.

PPC is one of the four basic types of Search Engines. PPC is also one of the most cost-effective ways of targeted internet advertising. According to Forbes magazine, PPC or Pay Per Click, accounts to 2 billion dollars a year and is expected to increase to around 8 billion dollars by the year 2008.

Let us take a quick look at how PPC Search Engines work
These engines create listings and rate them based on a bid amount the website owner is willing to pay for each click from that search engine. Advertisers bid against each other to receive higher ranking for a specific keyword or phrase.

The highest bidder for a certain keyword or phrase will then have the site ranked as number 1 in the PPC Search Engines followed by the second and third highest bidder, up to the last number that have placed a bid on the same keyword or phrase. Your ads then will appear prominently on the results pages based on the dollar amount bid you will agree to pay per click.

How do you make money by using PPC into your affiliate marketing business?
Most affiliate programs only pay when a sale is made or a lead delivered after a visitor has clickthrough your site. Your earnings will not always be the same as they will be dependent on the web site content and the traffic market.

The reason why you should incorporate PPC into your affiliate marketing program is that earnings are easier to make than in any other kind of affiliate program not using PPC. This way, you will be making profit based from the clickthroughs that your visitor will make on the advertiser’s site. Unlike some programs, you are not paid per sale or action.

PPC can be very resourceful of your website. With PPC Search Engines incorporated into your affiliate program, you will be able to profit from the visitor’s who are not interested in your products or services. The same ones who leave your site and never comes back.

You will not only get commissions not only from those who are just searching the web and finding the products and services that they wanted but you will be able to build your site’s recognition as a valuable resource. The visitors who have found what they needed from you site are likely to come back and review what you are offering more closely. Then they will eventually come back to search the web for other products.

This kind of affiliate program is also an easy way for you to generate some more additional revenues. For example, when a visitor on your site does a search in the PPC Search Engine and clicks on the advertiser bided listings, the advertisers’ account will then be deducted because of that click. With this, you will be compensated 30% to 80% of the advertisers’ bid amount.

PPC is not only a source of generating easy profits; it can also help you promote your own site. Most of the programs allow the commissions received to be spent for advertising with them instantly and with no minimum earning requirement. This is one of the more effective ways to exchange your raw visitors for targeted surfers who has more tendencies to purchase your products and services.

What will happen if you when you integrate PPC into your affiliate program?
PPC usually have ready-to-use affiliate tools that can be easily integrated into your website. The most common tools are search boxes, banners, text links and some 404-error pages. Most search engines utilize custom solutions and can provide you with a white-label affiliate program. This enables you, using only a few lines of code, to integrate remotely-hosted co-branded search engine into your website.

The key benefits? Not only more money generated but also some extra money on the side. Plus a lifetime commissions once you have referred some webmaster friends to the engine.

Think about it. Where can you get all these benefits while already generating some income for your site? Knowing some of the more useful tools you can use for your affiliate program is not a waste of time. They are rather a means of earning within an earning.

Best know more about how you can use PPC search engines into your affiliate program than miss out on a great opportunity to earn more profits.

Link building is incredibly important. Once you have created a great page I think that you are very well advised to optimize that page as much as possible. You know, title tag, header tag optimized keywords… anyway if you do not know that we can get into that another time. To build links from other sites to yours creates a nice warm feeling of trust to those search engines and the links are always good for traffic month in and month out. I just found a great article on the best startegies to get new links to your blog and thought I would share.

Five Link Building Strategies That Work | Copyblogger

 For sure check out the article but I want to give my 2 cents as well

Social media - If you can get a technological bent out of a story then you can submit to Digg or Reddit or any number of social networking sites. If you are trying to make Adsense or affiliate money from that link it is a lost cause in my opinion but if your content is good then you will get a lot of links and  that is the goal of thgis article right?

Linking out - Make sure that you write a lot of articles like this one. Link to an original story and then add to that story by providing your insights.

Networking emails - email other like minded bloggers for a link. I really don’t like this one, it is a lot like buying links

Guest appearances - If you get bored writing or run out of ideas then why not hand off your blog for a week and have someone else write in yours while you write in theirs. This is a great way to get new ideas and keep yourself fresh.

Article Directories - This is one that I have always liked to use. Change up a blog post and post to ezinearticles.com or/and goarticles.com

Anybody could own a web site. Anybody could up sell their own products and services to their target audience. Anyone could try to promote their web site with a low cost. But there are not many web sites that have a truly successful web site with traffic all day through. What these individuals or companies lack is the most essential factor of success – a low cost web site promotion that really works.

If you have been trying to promote your own web site and you have received traffic every hour, my hands are down for you. But for those people who need assistance, who does not have the patience to promote their own product and services, and lacks knowledge to properly advertise themselves, here are some guidelines to help you achieve success with a low cost web site promotion.

Search Engine Submission and Ranking are the two basic parts to a low cost web site promotion. Both of the parts have the same effect on the market of the web site – for your products and services presented in your web site catches the people’s attention.

The first inexpensive method of web site promotion is the search engine submission. This first part is the act filing information and submitting your web site to search engines. There are two types of Search engine submission – manual and automatic. For a low cost and effective web site promotion, automatic submission is ideal because after filling up the information, a software program would forward this information to other search engines.

The second money-saving web site promotion is ranking.  This refers to the numerical position in which your web site appears on a search engine, based upon the web site’s criteria. Some search engines rank the order in which your search results appear primarily by how many other web sites link to each page. The leading web sites on this order would eventually fulfill a low cost web site promotion.

Other types of inexpensive web site promotion you could use to boost up traffic on your web site are banner advertising, classified ads, text links and section sponsorship. Banner advertisements pop up above and below web pages, and sometimes in another window. Text links and section sponsorship may cost more, but these methods helps in promoting to your specified target audience. It wouldn’t harm your web site to try these methods.

Always remember that the effects of your not so costly web site promotion hits are increasing significantly each day.  Don’t waste time; find an effective and affordable web site promotion of your choice today.

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Bill Nadraszky=20
WestJet - IT=20
Phone 444-6062=20

Well this is my first post with the new upgrade of wordpress 2.1. I am excited to be starting with a new version of this fantastic blogging software with all of the new features and fixes. My only two issues so far is that my previously unused blogroll seems to be broken in the sidebar and that I have to go to the “code” tab to add a hyperlink. Have to try this more for the next few days but I am also excited to see that Matt has decided to do a regular feature release schedule with Wordpress with the next update slated for April 23rd.

Happy Blogging!