How To Effectively Start An Online Business

Within this article today on how to effectively start an online business, we are giving you the different ways of starting an online business which we feel to be very easy for you to follow.

On the internet, you may find many different online businesses that you can start with, but most of them come down to three broad categories which are: retailing products or services to customers, selling on eBay, and business-to-business selling online business.

When you are planning at creating and starting an online business, you must first find out what your specialty. Then, select one of these three broad categories.

If you decide to sell to retail customers, you will have to find a way to sell your products or services in a different manner. You must have a strategy that is different from many of the other retail websites out there doing online business.

If you decide that you want to sell on eBay, you must look for a wholesale distributor of products where you can buy your products at a great discount.

If you already work within the business-to-business online business forum, this will be an easy transition for you.

Each of these three categories can be broken into sub-categories, but you must decide upon which of the three online business categories you will focus.

Most people are very eager to start an online business but have no idea where they should focus their efforts on. By selecting on one of these three categories, you'll know where to start and in which direction.

If you decide to start with eBay for your online business, look for a reliable wholesale distributor to supply you with products with great discount. This is very effective for many start up, like you.

To find some wholesale distributors for you, look at the following website: http://www.worldwidebrands.com.

If you decide to sell products or services to online business retail customers, look for a niche that is underserved by your Internet competitors. Finding your online business niche is the key to creating and starting an online retail business because this is an area where there is little competition. This gives you vast opportunity to dominate the market with your online business.

To find some of these underserved niches, visit the following website: http://www.findhotniches.com.

Finally, if you decide to do business to business selling, think of how you can provide benefit to the particular market. Many people are working online as freelance writers. And you may be able to do this and potentially grow, like most of the freelance writers. But differ yourself from the competition if you market to one particular niche.

Business-to-business online business is closely related to the retail strategy in which you want to focus upon a niche and try and dominate that online business niche.

Hopefully gives you an idea on which of the three areas you would like to focus.

Oopps! Before I end, I add one more proven strategy to effectively start your online business. This is very easy and cost-effective. You can even do it without having a website.

This proven and effective strategy, which was hidden by most writers or is written in a separate and different topic, is the same strategy that made the likes of Shawn Casey, Mack Michaels, Jeff Steup, among others, become millionaires.

This is called affiliate marketing. It is an online business strategy of promoting other people’s products or services. No products of your own to sell. That means no inventory. No minimum quota or requirement.

The three persons mentioned above is sharing their experiences on online business to other people like you who would like to earn by starting an effective online business. They provide step-by-step guide on how to do it effectively, which means profitably.

FOLLOW THEM AND DO IT!

Is Affiliate Marketing A Viable Business Model?

Most popular "how to" courses, bootcamps, teleseminars and webinars are made around affiliate marketing as a viable work from home business model for success.

If you make a search on the Internet, you'll find thousands of home study courses, E-books, and affiliate marketing products for sale.

Can you really build a work at home business by selling other people's products?

Yes and no.

The truth is, there is a precise formula that can lead you to success if you decide to base your work at home business by selling affiliate products. This is called Affiliate Marketing.

But if you do it the wrong way, you may never make more than enough money to pay for your Internet connection and telephone bills each month.

Why is there such a big discrepancy between the really successful affiliate marketers (those who earn several thousand dollars every month) and those who are hardly making out a living?

Like any other business, it goes down to creating good systems that are quantifiable and can be duplicated to bring income to you from as many different sources on the internet as possible. This makes affiliate marketing a viable business model.

Here are some things you need to observe and follow when getting started:

Start with one single product. Make a research. Look for a market with a product that people need and are buying. Set up a system for promoting that product. This is called affiliate marketing campaign strategy.

Consider article writing, white papers, product reviews, case studies, workbooks, e-books, etc... Look for additional and complimentary products or services that you can sell after you make a profit with the first one.

Create a squeeze page where you can build a list of people who want to find out more about the affiliate product or niche product.

Send traffic to your Squeeze Page and offer them value-rich information in exchange for their contact information so that you can build a list to where you send your affiliate marketing campaign.

Find a way to keep in touch with the people on your list, and consistently promote the affiliate product and the additional products to them over time – but make sure that you're offering good and value-rich information to them as well, to help build your credibility and maintain their loyalty.

When you've got your first affiliate product selling very well, it's time to go into cross selling and upselling. This may take you from a few weeks to several months – but like any other business, it's important that you are willing to spend the time, money and energy necessary to build your affiliate marketing business.

When you've got the first product and cross selling is operating at a profit, you can now expand. You could go into another complimentary product or niche. Or, If you want something more advanced go into competition with yourself. This is a trick used by some of the Internet Marketing gurus in different niches.

That may sound foolish – but think of it like this: by competing against yourself – especially if you're able to place yourself onto the two of the top five positions – you're actually just giving yourself a bigger slice of the pie!

When you're the type of a person who gets bored easily, or is always seeking for a new challenge, you might want to go into a totally different and new niche. Look for something that doesn't have any connection with your first niche.

Whatever you want to do, just make sure that you follow the proven formula for success. Build each product or niche until it becomes profitable before moving on to the next one.

After following the proven formula for success, you can just "soak, rinse, dry, iron, wear and repeat" to your heart's satisfaction – and you'll be able to watch your bank account grow higher!

FOLLOW THIS AND DO IT NOW!

How To Use Viral Marketing Effectively

Before we get into the topics of how you can use viral marketing effectively to help make a buzz going about your small work from home business, let's begin with a definition of what "viral marketing" really means.

According to the Wikipedia, "Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use preexisting social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses.

It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily.

Viral marketing promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, images, or even text messages."

If you've ever had a G-mail, hotmail, or yahoo account, you've involved yourself in a viral marketing campaign every time you send an email to somebody, because all of the company inserted a small, and more often than not discreet advertisement, at the bottom of all of your outgoing emails.

This is done to invite the people you were communicating with to receive their own free email account and an offer for upgrading is also included.

So how can you set up a viral marketing campaign for your own business? – and more importantly, ask yourself: Do you even need to have a viral marketing campaign?

YES! You definitely need to take the time to come up with your own viral marketing campaign – even if you don't envision to be as big as G-mail, hotmail, or yahoo.

Why? Because a recent survey done by Forrester Research reveled that people are almost 65% more likely to believe and trust a review posted by a peer or even a complete stranger than they are to believe and trust the marketing or sales information made by the company.

Don't you believe me? Check out I-tunes and http://Amazon.com. Why should you do it? Because as consumers we have a tendency to think that the average "Joe" has less of a personal plan when posting his review and comment about the latest "Peter Pets" album and so we give it more value.

And, incidentally, this is a normal reaction – it's closely connected into all of us. People always share the things they like – or hate – with their friends, relatives and family members.

Back in the 50's and 60's, our grandparents used to converse to their neighbors over the "back fence," call each other on the phone or tell their friends during lunch or dinner. Nowadays, we use the Internet and cell phones.

What's more interesting though, is that with the reputation of the Internet, our trust - and believe in "social testimony" – has become even more powerful in viral marketing campaign.

By making your own viral marketing campaign, you'll be making more than spreading a word out about your new affiliate product. You'll be gathering social testimony that will help your sales to go up.

So, how do you set up your own viral marketing campaign? The first and foremost thing to do is to get back to the basics.

Here's the real "secret" to making a huge amount of money with affiliate products. Have the right mindset, have the right product, with the right message to tell the right people at the right time.

So, start with your affiliate product. Make sure that there's an eager audience for whatever product you're selling.

Then make sure that you're spreading out the right message – and in the right way.

If you're marketing a particular product to teens, you'll want to make sure that the product is something they want – and you'll have to know and reach them where they're hanging out. That might be on twitter, MySpace, Multiply or even Friendster.

What's the right message? Possibly it's a special and unique report. But it could just as easily be an audio mp3 file. Or a video. Match your message to your audience.

And finally, make sure that you're getting your message across at the right time – when your audience has the money and is ready to buy it, don't stop doing your viral marketing campaign.

Make your viral marketing campaign be noticeable from the crowd – because that's how to get passed through and around and become viral.

By understanding the basics – who your audience is, what they want, how they want to get your product and when they want to have it – all you have to do next is to make something that your audience really loves – or hates – or finds interesting enough – to pass through and around to their friends.

And because your product appears with an implied endorsement – social testimony – those people will pass it through and around to other people –and the buzz goes on…and on…and on… and on… and on…and you'll start hearing the "ka-chinnng!" of your cash register a lot more often.

And this is because of an effective viral marketing campaign!

FOLLOW THIS AND DO IT NOW!

Free is Not Good Enough

Why Nothing in Life is FREE

“Nothing in life is free.” That old saying rings true when it comes to offering online freebies. Even when you offer something FREE to consumers, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a “cost” behind that freebie.

Everyone is shaking up the Internet with freebies – sign up for this spectacular newsletter and receive a FREE SPECIAL report, whitepapers, or the latest and greatest trial sample.

Freebies don’t necessarily equate to “high value.” Have you ever tried a free sample and thought “Aw, no wonder they gave away that product for FREE!” It just wasn’t THAT great! You don’t want to be that kind of online marketer!

Sometimes the “buck stops there” – literally! Companies think they can blast out their freebies and consumers will automatically jump all over these freebies.

The Art of Persuasion

What makes YOUR freebie better than your competitors? With all the free offers floating around on cyberspace, you need to give people a GOOD REASON to sign up for your freebies.

How many times have you unsubscribed to newsletters because they were boring and didn’t offer relevant information? The last thing you want is to send worthless content to your subscribers.

“Time is money” and your visitors/customers don’t have a lot of free time on their hands. Monetary costs are just one aspect for consumers– what about the time it takes to READ your free content and marketing campaigns?

What can you do to PERSUADE people to actually WANT to read your content and actually USE your free samples?

It comes down to sales persuasion tactics!

Persuasion gives people the choice to make an informed decision – persuasion is not about manipulation or hype.

However, persuasion will only get you so far. Reel them in with free stuff BUT give people want they actually want. VALUABLE content is what makes people come back for MORE…and WHY people will buy your products and services!

•INCORPORATE POWERFUL CALLS TO ACTION

o HOW will your free content SOLVE crucial problems for people?

o What VALUE do you offer them to make them WANT free information?

oHow will it CHANGE THEIR LIVES on a positive, long-term basis?

o Add URGENCY to your call to action – they NEED to read/try your content or product NOW. Give them every reason to take action immediately!

• SOCIAL PROOF – People will “jump on the bandwagon” and copy other people’s action (especially if they like and trust them). Use testimonials and endorsements. SHOW benefits that other people have experienced as a result of signing up for your free newsletter or report.

• VISUAL ELEMENTS – Use photos, music and videos as part of your freebie offers. People are visual creatures and you are more likely to really CAPTURE their attention through visual elements.

• SHOWCASE YOUR AUTHORITY/EXPERTISE – Show you’re an authority/expert in your field. Link to third party sites to back up your facts when offering free information (people will trust you even MORE!) Reference figures of authority (i.e. government/political officials, health leaders, etc.)

If you liked this article, please tell your friends about it. If you really liked it, feel free to publish it on your blog or website (please don't forget to mention www.TheOutsourcingCompany.com/blog as the original source).

What is the Top Plan For Bear Market Investing?

The past was a horrible time for the market as decline fears scared away all the buyers. The Institute of Supply Management published a crucial index viewing that non-manufacturing concern interest fell Hugely. The Dow Jones Industrial Average followed suit, down 370 points or almost 3%. It was nasty and lots of people were losing profits.

I hope you listened to our alert.

The 200-day moving average had just bowed negative. When this last occurred, we Had a two-year recession in the market. We warned of rough era ahead.. . Who thought we would be correct so fast?

Looking at the full market, not a single sector was up. Conjecture who hurt the worst? That's right; the economic services industry posted a loss of 4.6%. They were outdone only by the construction & supplies industry which lost 4.8%.

I'll say it again. Stay away from the fiscal and construction industries for now. I know they are dealing at multi-year lows and appear to offer desirable dividend yields, but they are classic estimate traps. The bad news continues to filter in, losses are mounting and you won't make money being premature on this trade.

How can you profit in a bear market?

The secret to making money on the long side right now is short-term trades. Don't kid yourself. We're in a bear market, and the rallies will be short lived. Positioning your portfolio for a bear market is not difficult. Take a few moments and do it today.

One of the best ways to hedge a portfolio and profit from downside movement is through Inverse ETFs. The Proshares Short S&P 500 (SH) ETF is one of the best. As a matter of fact, you could have purchased this inverse ETF on Friday for $64. On Tuesday it traded for more than $66. That's a quick 3% on your money in just a few days.

I honestly like Inverse ETFs. They allow you to "short" the whole market in a single transaction. You don't need a margin account to place the trade. And, unlike open-end mutual funds, you can enter and exit your trades at any time during the trading day.

Although Inverse ETFs are relatively new to the markets, they have become widely used. For example, the Proshares Short S&P 500 (SH) was established in June 2006. Average trading volumes, however, are in excess of 563,000 shares a day. This liquidity makes the Bid/Ask spread tighter which helps us minimize our trading costs.

One word of Warning. These funds are collected of many underlying stocks. The estimate tends to fluctuate more than normal at the open and close of the market. Sometimes, these ETFs start trading as much as 15 minutes after the market opens. As a general rule, I suggest placing orders at least an hour after the open or an hour before the close.

Remember, we can manufacture money in a bear market. We just need to be suitably positioned. Inverse ETFs are a great way to accomplish this.

Make Money Online With Video Training

When you look into the many different online marketing programs, there is one aspect that really separates the good from the bad. That aspect is the video training course. The reason that this is the aspect for which you really want to look for in a program is because it can make or break your chances at succeeding in your online business venture. There are programs out there that do not even have any training at all for you and they still expect you to succeed. Obviously, those are not the right choice for you. You want to be successful and the best way to get on the right course is with this training.

One of the main reasons why a video training course is so vital to your success chances in online marketing is because it is so personal. Since it is a video, it almost is if the training is being done in person. Of course that never would be able to happen with an online program, so it makes sense to go with the next best thing. You actually will be able to see what you are to be doing with your program because the video training will be step by step.

Another reason why you want to look for a program that has a video training course is because it will seem as if the training video was made specifically for you. It will be as if the instructor is talking directly to you and no one else. In addition, most people learn better when they see someone else doing it compared to when you have to read a training pamphlet. With that, you will have no idea whether you are doing everything correctly because there are no pictures showing you the right way. In the video, you will see every step to getting your business up and running.

In addition to the actual learning aspect of the video training course, another reason why it is important to choose a marketing program that uses one is because you will see the program working for your own eyes. You will see how easy it is to get started. With programs that use document instructions, you will have no idea whether it will work or not because you are not seeing it for yourself.

Let me tell you something about myself. I have owned my own business for 30 years. It was a small photography studio with 8 full time employees. I love photography and I honestly lived my dream for 30 years doing what I loved to do.

Then digital photography and the recession hit. What was once a flourishing business was now almost gone. I knew I needed to do something fast to keep income coming in for my family but I had to ask myself who was going to hire a 56 year old in today’s economy. Well, after much searching I came upon a unbelievable online marketing business that I could work from home and also dramatically increase my income more than I ever dreamed possible.

Finally there is a new way to learn all about online marketing ideas in video format that anyone can understand. Imagine what it would be like to see behind the curtain of one of the most successful online marketers in the business and clone his success.

Did you find this article helpful? Are you ready to work from home and change your life? If so, then take a look at the awesome step by step video tutorials I found, tried and loved…I think you will to!

The 7 Components of Successful Landing Pages

Are your conversion rates nothing to write home about? Do you feel like the copy and design of your landing page needs a big makeover? Give your post-click marketing a boost by evaluating your approach and ensuring that your landing pages implement these 7 important components.

1. Match Your Advertising with Your Landing Pages

Does the pre-click content match the post-click content? Make sure that there is continuity between your advertising and landing page. If you have several different types of ads targeting a variety of keywords but you are leading people to the same few landing pages, the continuity is most likely not as tight as it could be. In order to match messages well, you must connect all of the dots for your site visitors and make sure that your advertising meets its promises. Make your landing pages as specific as possible.

2. Measure the Value of Your Landing Page Content

Does your landing page content provide visitors with value or is it full of superficial fluff? Landing pages full of keyword stuffed content and marketing-speak won’t get you anywhere. Provide users with useful, entertaining, and relevant information that is tailored to whatever they were searching for.

3. Visuals

Landing pages are a beauty contest and your chance to make a great first impression when building your brand. Make sure your landing pages are up to par by hiring a qualified graphic designer to spruce them up for you. If your landing pages are attractive, it says a lot about your brand.

4. Make it Interactive

Landing pages today should contain a lot more than just flat text and images. Flash, widgets, video, and social networking applications that reinforce your message rather than distract from it can go a long way in helping you connect better with users. The key to success with creating interactive landing pages is to ensure that these extras are well incorporated into the overall design and message of your landing page. Don’t slap things on as an afterthought.

5. Derive Value from Non-Converting Visitors

If approximately 20% of visitors to your landing pages convert, that doesn’t mean the other 80% should be forgotten. You can provide non-converting visitors with value because they may potentially convert in the future. For example, you can point them to another page on your website that they perhaps might be interested in and convert them there.
You should always deliver useful content on your landing pages to ensure that people derive value from it and leave feeling like they had a positive experience/interaction with your website. You can also analyze what non-converting visitors do by providing them with different options on multi-step landing pages. Measure what people click and when to determine what kind of targeted improvements you can make.

6. Keep it Fresh

Revisit your landing pages frequently to update them and keep them from becoming stale. Check your content regularly to be sure that it is current, along with any offers you are making. Nothing will turn site visitors off more than an expired offer. You also have to keep the design of your page up to date. The look and feel of your landing pages tells visitors whether or not you are on top of things.

7. Push the Envelope

Are your landing pages bold and unique or painfully commonplace? Don’t be afraid to be creative when you are creating content for your landing pages. Try standing out from the crowd rather than sticking with the well-worn messages you have used time and time again. Landing pages offer an unmatched opportunity for you to experiment with your message because they only receive a relatively small portion of your overall traffic. You can use metrics to measure your results and alter your methods if they are not panning out as hoped.

Discover 8 Secret Tips To Getting To The Top Of The Search Engines Rankings

Getting found by the search engines can be a frustrating experience if you are not sure what you are doing. There is nothing to be afraid of though, this article will help you get started on your way to much higher search engine rankings. So let’s get started:

1. Keep your old domain name and do not purchase a new domain name unless you absolutely have to. The search engines like domains that have been around for a while. You could also redirect your old domain to your new one in order not to go down in the ranking. If you're redesigning your site or building a new site and have to use a new domain, you can expect at least somewhat of a loss in search engine traffic. It could be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months or longer to get back where you were.

2. Don’t optimize your website for the search engines. Make sure you are optimizing for your target market. The search engines are looking for pages that best fit the keyword phrase someone types into the search engines search box. If these people are typing in search words that relate to what your website offers, then they are most likely part of your target market. Good keywords and keyword phrases, found through research, are crucial in getting high search engine rankings.

3. Design your website around your keywords. Don’t even start writing copy until you have found your keywords and then you will want to sprinkle your keywords all over your site and your pages. Also, make use of long tail keywords or phrases. These really help to qualify your target market and leads to higher quality leads. They know exactly what they are looking for and when they are led to your site they will be more likely ready to buy.

4. Make sure you make your site friendly to the search engine spiders. Search engines can’t interpret graphics, fill out forms and can’t read Java Script links and menus. You still want to use them, but make sure that the search engine spiders can navigate your site and can find the other pages on your site. The search engine spiders will never find a drop down menu and will never know about your other pages.

5. Label your internal text links and clickable images (alt tags) as clearly and descriptively as you possible can. Your site visitors and the search engines look at the clickable portion of your links (the anchor text) to help them understand what they're going to find once they click through. Don't make them guess what's at the other end with links that say "click here" or other non-descriptive words. Be as descriptive as possible with every text and graphical link on your site. Important hint, use your keywords and key phrases to describe.

6. Write copy for your website that uses your keyword phrases, but make sure your copy is compelling to you target market. This is so important for a successful website. The search engines want to read keyword rich copy on your pages so they know how to classify your site. Don’t hide your copy in graphics or in flash. Write your copy using your most relevant keyword phrases while you are giving your visitors the information they have been looking for.

7. Title tags are given a lot of weight by the search engines. What ever keyword phrase you have written about in your copy, should be used in your title tag. The information that you place in this tag is what will show up as the clickable link to your site at the search engines. Make sure that it accurately reflects the content of the page it is on, while also using the keyword phrases people might be using at a search engine to find your site.

8. Make sure that other sites can link with your site. The ability for other sites to link to your site is extremely important for successful search engine optimization, because all the major search engines place more emphasis on your sites link popularity. You also want to be very careful not to link to a crappy site. Both your customers and the search engines will frown on you and will hurt you search engine ranking.

If you have done the above 8 things correctly, you should start to see an increase in targeted search engine visitors to your site fairly quickly. Forget about where you rank for any specific keyword phrase and instead measure your results in increased traffic, sales, and conversions. Using free Google Analytics, you can track and measure the things you want to know. It is also a good idea to add new content every once in awhile. All of these steps taken together will go a long way in helping you with your search engine optimization and search engine ranking.

Money-Making Google Adwords Tips

Using Google Adwords is an effective way of making money via affiliate programs on the Internet. If you are one of the many individuals who are looking to make some quick cash other than your daily job, then using Google Adwords to your maximum advantage can help you generate higher traffic to your website which can eventually turn into sales.

If you are working as an affiliate marketer for someone else, this also means that you may be able to receive a higher commission for every unit of sale that is generated through your marketing technique. If you are selling your own product, then you can be making a higher profit.

Almost all companies working on the Internet use affiliate marketing as a technique to advertise their product. Since more people are depending on the World Wide Web to generate information regarding every subject, it is the fastest and most effective way of getting your point across to a large number of potential customers.

Here are certain things you might need to keep in mind when you start out on an affiliate marketing program of your own:

• You also need to choose the product you want to advertise using affiliate programming. There is no use selecting a product that does not have enough demand in the market. If people are not interested in buying it, then there is no point in wasting your time and resources into advertising for it either. Also, it might be so that the demand for the product in the market has not been exhausted. In other words, you need to find a product that is in demand currently.

• It is always better to place your resources into more than one genre of ads so that if one fails, your entire efforts will not be wasted as some of it will be salvaged by the ad group that has succeeded in generating some traffic. Using keywords is important in such a case. It is not enough to come up with unique keywords that have high conversion rates. They need to be relevant to your content and also need to be used intelligently.

• There are two kinds of clicks that are generated through such traffic: content clicks and search clicks. Content clicks can be perceived as default clicks by browsers on the Internet. They might not have been interested in the product you are advertising for; however, they clicked on your ad because they found it visually intriguing enough to do so. These clicks are usually the result of curiosity. Therefore, if you are bidding for your ads, you should not bid too high for this type of content clicks, as they tend to have low sales conversion rates. Search clicks are specific. The browsers in such a case mean business. They have been searching specifically for something. Therefore, their clicks will most probably convert into actual sales for you. Therefore, you should bid high on these search clicks.

You need to know your competition in the market and work towards your affiliate program accordingly. Everyone is facing the same rivalry as you; therefore, don’t think of yourself in a worse position compared to others.

PPC Advertising - Bringing Down the Cost

PPC or Pay per Click advertising is one of the most successful marketing strategies on the internet. Of course, it can also be one of the most expensive. It is not at all uncommon for a marketer to pay out several dollars for every click. This is depending on the particular industry or niche. If you have not had much success with PPC or you are spending entirely too much money in the process, here are some ways to bring down the cost of your marketing campaign, while still enjoying successful results.

On one hand, you need to understand why some companies pay the seemingly outrageous prices that they do. If you were to do a little research on some pay per click prices, you may think that most online marketers simply have thousands of dollars on hand to pay for their advertising. This is not always the case. In fact, most marketers have a budget similar to yours. There are many who dive into PPC simply because they believe it will be the ultimate turning point for their online business. Most of these marketers stop their PPC campaigns soon after they begin.

The high price that many pay for their pay per click campaigns typically comes down to just a couple of reasons. The first reason is that many get caught up in an ongoing bid war. When the first marketer makes a bid for his advertisement, then the second will make a higher bid and so on. With all marketers then trying to outbid each other to rise to the top ranking, many are simply spending more than they can afford according to their advertising cost to profit ratio. In the end, those who are vying to outbid each other typically run out of advertising money. This is when other internet marketers simply pick up where those who have blown their budgets leave off.

Another reason that PPC costs can seem outrageous is because many larger companies are willing and have the money to spend literally thousands to get their brand to the masses. Brand awareness is important and those larger corporations know that advertising to get their name to consumers will pay off in the end.

There are other aspects that can ultimately drive up the costs of advertising, although these tend to be the largest reasons that PPC costs can often get out of hand. There is hope however. Most companies who offer pay per click advertising will typically offer specials on their fees. Many run offers monthly or even more frequently, offering to match your deposit. For instance, if you were to deposit fifty dollars, then they will match that deposit, giving you one-hundred dollars in advertising. Be sure to do a little research into each PPC offer to choose the one that best suits both your budget and your marketing needs. If you are new to PPC, you should opt for companies that provide sign-up credits and new customer discounts. This will allow you to get used to the entire process of pay per click advertising, just to ensure that it will be beneficial to your marketing. The main thing to keep in mind for pay per click marketing campaigns is to never spend more than you can afford. You want your ROI to be in the positive and spending too much for PPC, while there are other forms of marketing available, simply makes no sense.

Facebook Marketing 101

• About 132 million users on Facebook are aged 21 and above. This represents about 66% of all users
• There are more females (55.7%) than males (42.2%) - 2.2% are of unknown gender.
• Largest demographic concentration is the college crowd of 18-24 year olds (40.8%)
• About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
• Ads Average CTR is 0.04%
• > 850 million photos uploaded to the site each month
• > 10 million videos uploaded each month
• > 1 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week
• 1% of apps account for 77% of volume, 2% account for 86% of volume, 10% account for 98% of volume

While organisations take their marketing efforts to social networking phenomena Facebook, here are some practices you can adopt to make your campaign a success.

Marketing to Facebook users requires communicating to them, which works better than simply advertising your messages. In order to communicate with them, you should first understand these users. In the U.S alone, Facebook has 60 million users. ComScore reports that the average number of unique visitors to Facebook in a month circles around 150 million, of which half of these users return to the site daily. Faccebook projects that 75% of worldwide users will be outside of college.

Based on findings from Nielsen and NetRatings, it has been observed from Facebook's U.S users that just over half are female, almost 60% have some college education, 14% are non-white, 34% are working professionals holding executive, sales, education or technical posts, 12% are full time students and 12% have children under 16. Not surprisingly, Facebook internal data shows that users have aged over the past year, with a high percentage of older users now.

Therefore, in line with these data, adjust your marketing plans and plan for flexibility according to the anticipation that the demographics will change rapidly over the next 12 to 18 months. With fickle college students who might be swept away easily by the next emerging social network hit and the 35+ age group of social network site users who are new to social networking sites , beware of relying on what worked yesterday as it might very well not hold through the year.

With the data portraits that users reveal online, target users beyond their basic demographic details. Instead, look at the psychographics to understand them better. Next, understand what works on Facebook.

The click through rate (CTR) for sponsored News Feed stories is 4 to 26%. Alternatively, Flyers give you a degree of self-service control to decide what you want. For sponsored groups, group pages allows a customized navigation, look and feel and usually includes a significant media buy to drive traffic to the sponsored group page. This cost usually figures around six digits for a three month engagement. However, do note that any company can set up a group for free.

Instead of taking the conventional advertising route, maximise the change to create a unique community around your brand and product. An effective example is the Victoria's Secret page. Although its page looks like an ad, the community is, in contrast, highly engaged.

In order to maximise the results from a sponsored Group, consider these practices. You should first understand how similar groups are meeting, or fail to meet, the needs of users. From there, create a unique experience for users that will encourage activity on the discussion board, comments on the wall, and photos. Your approach should be transparent about your organisation's role and purpose.

Another way to market your business on Facebook is through applications. Create useful applications that model what users are already doing - that is, sharing information, experiences and using humour. Plan your application such that it has a viral and rippling effect, and get feedback from users once it has been launched.

All in all, bear in mind that Facebook marketing is about communicating to the users, rather than just exposing them to advertising. Facebook creates the platform for communication, so make full use of it. Focus more on your content over passive advertising and think about why and what do friends share on Facebook to create your content. Lastly, as Facebook is still a relatively new marketing platform, keep your eyes and ears open to the interaction and participation that is going on in that space. Adopt a learning attitude and one that is ready to make, and learn from, your mistakes.

Email Marketing: Your Ultimate Guide

What Is It?

On the whole, email marketing refers to process wherein email is the method of communication employed by companies and internet marketers in keeping in touch with prospects and clients. Email is used to notify customers and clients about the latest product releases, new promotion offers, and important business news. It is also used for the online newsletter issues. Like the TV infomercials, marketing emails are intended to quickly catch the consumers’ attention and keep them interested.

Why Should I Use It?

1.) You will save a lot on the advertising cost

The traditional methods for advertising such as putting up ads in magazines, newspapers, and TV infomercials are generally expensive. Advertising is a crucial part of your success as an internet marketer so you must not put it aside just because of its cost. However, thanks to email marketing, you no longer have to shell out a huge amount of capital for the advertising. Email services are free! Creating your own newsletter is simple and easy, while sending a promotional broadcast through email is extremely fast!

2.) You can connect with a large audience

Any company or internet marketer will benefit from all forms of promotion. May it be a marketing email ad, infomercial, newspaper ad, magazine ad, classified ad, or billboard ad, an advertising avenue is sure to be advantageous to your business as it greatly increases your reach to the consumer population.

3.) You can have more earnings

The basic concept here is that the more customers you reach, the more money you will make. This is exactly why most businesses employ internet marketing in their overall marketing plan. Not only is it inexpensive, it is also exceptionally effective.

Keystones in Selling Your Email Program’s Value

1.) Your homepage

By having a label that says “Register now to receive email updates” and a link to the registration page beneath it will not exactly tell the potential subscriber why he should provide his email address. They would not even have a clue on what these “updates” are going to be about.

Instead, you should have something like “Sign up now to join our site and get to receive email-only bargain offers, advance sale notifications and discounts.” This way, they will know what to expect in their mails and look forward to it. You must also have these invitation ads not just in your homepage but in every page of your website.

2.) Your signup page

This is the best location to let the potential subscribers know why they should register to receive emails, what kinds of email you will be sending, how often you will be sending these emails, and what will the emails be about. Many businesses do not give this much importance; they would just slap up a checkbox and next to it, a single sentence asking the potential subscriber to sign up. Such a setup is blatantly focused on the subscription purpose itself.

Here are the things which should be included in your registration page to effectively communicate the value of your email proposa

- privacy policy (assure them that you will keep their email addresses confidential)
- an impressive explanation of benefits (tell them what’s in it for them)
- images, links, and transactions (such as links for signing up, confirming the registration, and even unsubscribing)

- graphics (it should model the email template to assist the potential subscribers to identify it quickly)
- a thank-you page (it must appear instantly after a successful registration. If must include the acknowledgement of the subscription, restate the benefits of signing up, and provide detailed instructions on how to verify the subscription)

You must, however, do the aforementioned carefully because asking for too many details up front might make you seem like coming on too strong. Just get the necessary information to begin the relationship, and then slowly move on.

3.) Your welcome program

Do not just let them be reminded that they are subscribed by using a “You are subscribed” message. Whenever they log in, such a message will not remind the why they signed up in the first place and the value of your email will not be conveyed. Your welcome program must be one that would bring subscribers into the fold and assist them in getting up to speed immediately.

How To Use Twitter To Build Your Network Marketing Business

Of all of the social networking sites, Twitter has most notably taken the web by storm in the last year. For this reason, getting in on the Twitter craze can be a highly effective method of building your MLM business. In two words, Twitter equals free leads. However, in order for Twitter to be an effective MLM and free lead building tool, it is essential that it is correctly and appropriately utilized for maximum benefit.

By following a few simple guidelines, it can be a very lucrative tool, both financially and in the number of free leads it produces. In fact, many highly successful MLM business entrepreneurs swear by Twitter and its unrivaled ability to generate word-of-mouth buzz, thereby generating free leads.

First of all, do not underestimate the power of reaching potential customers in masses. Even if a large percentage of them are never going to be buying what you’re selling, reaching potential customers in bulk is the single most effective way to get your name out there, and in turn build up a comprehensive list of free leads.

I mean, even if you have never owned a pair of Nike shoes, you can probably identify a Nike logo. Just getting your brand out there is the first step in building recognition. Twitter has roughly 5 million current members, and adds five to ten thousand more to that total on a daily basis. That is a huge potential free lead and customer base. (Even if a small fraction of those users follow you, each of these followers is a free lead. And if even a small fraction of those followers become customers, the income potential simply by utilizing this free social networking site is astronomical.)

Secondly, do not be afraid to put yourself out there. Follow the big fish. Let their free leads become your free leads. Chances are, when you follow someone, they will in turn follow you. And followers equal a free audience for your advertising. Don’t get discouraged if everyone you follow doesn’t start following you immediately. Followers are built over time, and every new one you get is one more free lead and potential customer. Also, don’t get frustrated if you lose followers. It will happen. However, to keep the loss of followers to a minimum, check out what some of the most successful (and most followed) people on Twitter do to maintain their base of followers. Almost universally, they provide their followers with something that they can find nowhere else. Some use links to obscure (and entertaining) news stories. Others simply keep their followers hanging on by making each Tweet a ‘to be continued.’ Keeping your followers hanging on your every word (or Tweet) is a great way to build loyalty. And if each of your followers refers just one of their friends, that doubles your number of free leads effortlessly.

Finally, you get 140 characters to Tweet. Use them wisely. Keep your Tweets informative, interesting and entertaining. Tweet often, but relevantly. Spam on Twitter is just as annoying as Spam showing up in your email inbox. The free leads you generate are invaluable, and you should recognize them as such. Keep your followers up to date, but do so in a relevant and non-repetitive manner. It is likely that you will lose followership if you come on too much like a salesman. Even though that’s what MLM is all about, being smarmy and pushy never helped anyone. Talk to your followers like they are your best friends, and it is likely that is what they will become. The trust and camaraderie that you build on Twitter can very easily turn into trust for and a willingness to do business with your Network Marketing Business.

5 Things You Need to Succeed in Affiliate Marketing

There seems to be a common aspiration for many of us to be in charge of our own destiny. We want to determine our destination and how and when we will arrive there. We even imagine the destination or outcome without a complete understanding of how to get there. As we are guiding ourselves to our destination, risk is now looked upon as opportunity, obstacles are thought of as reminders to alter the course.

This is the reason why more and more people are turning to a business that continues to grow in popularity – affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing gives us the feel that we are doing something, we are in charge of are own destiny. This business appears the be something a great many of us can do. Also, we don't feel hemmed in to market a product we don't like. Virtually any thing that you can imagine anyone would need there is someone somewhere that makes and markets that product. I know of a fellow that sells used Recreation Vehicles for a local dealer.

We are going to look at 5 things you need to succeed in affiliate marketing.

1. Willingness to learn and be trained. Affiliate Marketing is a very large segment of internet marketing. Being very large it is also very competitive and can be very complex. Study methods successful marketers are using. Take some training courses. There are many available online. Some are low cost and some free if you promote their products. Select a training course only after doing your due diligence. Remember free is not always free and a high cost doesn't always mean better. Look for a training course that tells you what to do and then shows you how to do it.

2. Willingness to spend time and effort even if results are slow coming .A training program that suggest it only takes a few minuets a day to rake in large amounts of money is probably not the correct one for you. Those programs are misleading. It is important to spend the time and effort to develop your business. You need to set aside time to do the necessary research and training. This well be more that minuets per day. When your business is going slow, keep going.

3. Self determination. Affiliate marketing appears simple, but, it is not easy. There will be upsets along the way. A temporary set back could lead to redefining the destination or altering he course. Develop the mind set that failure is not an option and stay the course..

4. Discipline. You know what you need to do, you know what to do, you know when to do it, NOW DO IT. Often what works best is to develop a schedule or a to-do-when list to remind us of any dead lines that we have set.

5. Optimism. Henry Ford has been quoted as saying “ If you think you can or you can't. Your right”. A positive attitude is so very important in affiliate marketing and any business. A positive attitude enables you to meet a setback or challenge head on and come up with a better solution. While we are building our business we will probably receive some negative remarks from well meaning friends and family members. Don't join the negativity, stay positive.

There is a lot of help available to help you build your affiliate marketing business. Become active in a few forums. A google search for your topic or niche forums will yield several results. Choose a couple that look active and participate in the topic discussions.. For the most part, forum members are seasoned marketers willing to answer a question if presented right. A positive and determined attitude will carry you a long way.

Why the Failure Rate is so High in Affiliate Marketing?

More and more people are lured into affiliate marketing and you might be one of them. Indeed, affiliate marketing is one of the most effective means of generating a full-time income through the Internet. It’s a fair deal between the merchandiser and his affiliates as both benefit from each sale realised. Like in other kinds of business, a great deal of the profits in affiliate marketing depend on the affiliate’s advertising, promoting and selling strategies. Everyday, as the affiliate marketing industry expands, competition heightens as well so an affiliate marketer must be creative enough to employ unique and effective ways to convince potential buyers to purchase the products and services he is offering.

Compared to traditional advertising practices, affiliate programs are more effective, risk-free and cost-efficient. But why do many people still fail in affiliate marketing? There are a lot of reasons and a lot of areas in the program to look into. The most critical aspect in the affiliate program is advertising. Many affiliate marketers fail in this aspect because they don't work hard enough. Although it pays to be lucky, you cannot merely rely on it. Affiliate marketing isn’t as simple as directing customers to the business site. If you want to earn big, of course, you have to invest time and a lot of hard work in promoting the products. As mentioned earlier, the competition is very high and customers nowadays are very wise, too. After all, who doesn’t want to get the best purchase—that is, to pay less and get more in terms of quantity and quality.

Lack of preparation is also a reason why one fails in affiliate marketing, whether he is a merchandiser or an affiliate. Part of the preparation is research. On the part of the merchant, he has to be highly selective in choosing the right affiliate websites for his affiliate program. In order to be sure he has the best choices, he must have exhausted his means in looking for highly interested affiliates whose sites are a sure fit to his products and services. The affiliates site visitors must match his targeted customers. On the other hand, the affiliate marketer must likewise research on the good-paying merchandisers before he signs up for an affiliate program. He must ensure that the merchants products and services match his interests so he can give his full attention and dedication to the program. He can get valuable information by joining affiliate forums, comparing different affiliate programs and reading articles on affiliate marketing where he can get tips from experienced affiliate marketers on how to choose the best merchants and products with high conversion rate.

The website is a very important tool in the whole affiliate program. As an affiliate marketer, you should plan how your site is going to be, from domain name to the design, the lay-out, the content, and ads. Some users are particular about what they see at first glance and thus if they find your site ugly, they won’t read through the content even if your site has great content. On the other hand, there are those who want information more than anything else. Affiliate marketers with “rich-content” web sites are usually the ones who prosper in this business because the content improves traffic to the site. Websites with high quality content with relevant keywords and more importantly, right information about the product and not empty hyped-up advertisements—allow you to earn big in affiliate marketing even when you’re asleep. If you can't sustain the interest of your site visitors, you won’t be able to lead them to the merchants site. No click-through means no sale and thus, no income on your part.

Selecting a top level domain name is also crucial to the success of the affiliate program. Lots of affiliate sites don’t appear in the search engine results because they are deemed by affiliate managers as personal sites. Major search engines and directories would think of your site as transient ones and thus, they won’t list it in the directory. Before you decide on the domain name, know first what you are going to promote. Many fail because their sites are not appropriately named, so even when they feature the exact products the customer is looking for, the customer might think the site is not relevant and thus, won’t enter the site.

Above all, an affiliate marketer must be willing to learn more. Certainly, there are still a lot of things to learn and so an affiliate marketer must continue to educate himself so he can improve his marketing strategies. Many fail because they don’t grow in the business and they are merely concerned about earning big quickly. If you want long-term and highly satisfactory results, take time to learn the ins and outs of the business. Continue to improve your knowledge especially with the basics in affiliate marketing ranging from advertising to programming, web page development, and search engine optimization techniques. Likewise, study the needs and wants of your site users and how different merchandisers compete with each other.

Keep on trying; don’t get disappointed if your first attempts don't pay off. Thousands are attracted by the possibility of generating skyrocketing incomes through affiliate marketing and so they sign up in any affiliate program without carefully understanding every aspect of the business. When they don’t get instant results, they quit and sign up for another program and repeat the process of just copying links and referring them to others. When you sign up for an affiliate program, don’t expect to get rich in an instant. Work on your advertising strategies and be patient. You’ll never know how much you can get if you don’t persevere.

Here is the "Secret Back Door" When Advertising on Google AdWords

This is my first time writing on this site and I hope you get a great amount of information out of it.

I am part of an elite club created by an internet guru whom has hundreds of hours of internet marketing step-by-step videos that will teach absolutely anyone how to perform like an expert. I will share just one little fraction of this information.

This article is about using Google AdWords. I am pretty sure everyone is familiar with Google AdWords. If your not, I can give you the gist of what it does. Google AdWords is Google's paid internet marketing section, which anyone can sign up and use. Just type AdWords on the Google search bar.

Google will help anyone use the AdWords properly, which will get your ad impressions and clicks to your website. I will show you the other way to advertise on Google, which you CAN find, but is kind of hidden. I will show you what to use and how to use it, so you get the maximum traffic to your site.

When you sign up on Google AdWords for a free account there will be a big button that says start campaign here, which Google wants everyone to click on because you will be advertising on Google's main search site.

This is perfectly fine, but how many people do you think are advertising on Google? There are millions of people advertising on Google, and how many people do you think are advertising the same kind of product or service, even the exact same product or service as you?

When you type a word or phrase in the search bar on Google and press search, there is hundreds, if not thousands of pages of websites that come up. If you look to the right of the page after you click search, there will be a column that says sponsored ads. This section is where your ad will be posted if you do Google AdWords that way.

To reach the top you need to have hundreds of thousands of people visiting your website and have a high bid on your keywords. If you have those, then Google will like your ad and move it up on the list and more people will see it.

I can show you exactly how to accomplish that as well, if you want to go that route, but, I will stick to the other way, which is more efficient to start out on. There is a link on the top of the main page after logging into Google AdWords that says campaign summary, and if you click that, you can go through the back door of Google AdWords.

Create your ad with your link, to any website you want people to go to after they click on it, so they can purchase a product or service to make you money each time there is a sale. You can place your ad on other business' websites. That is the secret. There is millions of businesses that get hundreds of thousands of traffic to their website each day.

Click on the link called "placements." Your ad can go on any website you want, and anyone of those hundreds of thousands of people searching their website are bound to click on your ad. The odds are with you 100%

You will get clicks, which will get you sales of a high volume.

This is the blueprint to using the back door of Google AdWords.

If you want to know how to advertise like this by watching an easy to follow video tutorial, which will show you how to use this part of Google AdWords and get huge amounts of traffic to the site of your choice, then check out my site.

Internet Marketing Business Is Worthless!

Are you familiar with the story "The Fox and The Grapes?" It's a classic fable that goes this way:

One hot summer day a fox was walking through an orchard when he came upon a bunch of grapes just ripening on a vine high off the ground on a lofty branch. "Ahhh, just the thing I need to satisfy my thirst," said the fox.
Stepping back a few steps, the fox ran toward the vine throwing himself high into the air, just missing the bunch of grapes.

Not easily discouraged, he took a few steps backward and again ran toward the vine, launching himself high into the air, once again he missing the grapes.

Again and again he persisted launching himself higher and higher into the air, coming up short each time. Tired and frustrated, the fox finally gave up and walked away muttering to himself: "The grapes are probably sour anyway!"

The moral of the fable is:

"It is easy to despise what you cannot achieve."
So what does any of this have to do with internet marketing business?
Well, two days ago, I got a private message from one of the small business forums that I'm a member of. The message was from another forum member chastising me for trying to assist other members of the forum.
In a nutshell, he said internet marketing business was worthless and that you can't make any decent income doing it because he had tried many times without any success.
Hmmmmm...sounds a lot like our fox in the previously mentioned fable.
"It's easy to despise what you cannot get!"

He went on to tell me that I was giving people unrealistic hope by encouraging them with my advice. Anyway, that message got me wondering.
There are probably a lot of other people out there who mistakenly think the same exact thing about internet marketing business, because of a negative experience they had. You may even be one of those.
If you are, this is my message to you and the forum member who sent me that private message:

Internet marketing isn't worthless. Internet marketing does work!
How do I know? Because I'm personally making a comfortable living on the internet, as are many of my friends, colleagues, associates. But it didn't just occur by chance. It's like anything else in our brick and mortar world, you have to LEARN how to do it.

For example, nobody was born with the knowledge of how to drive a car. You have to learn how to drive by getting behind the wheel and practicalizing the act of driving.

The same applies to internet marketing business. You have to learn the basics, and you have to practice them. Along the way you may encounter difficulties a few times, but remember practice brings about perfection.
I failed at internet marketing several times, before that little light bulb finally came on and I finally figured it out.

But I never gave up on myself and I never quit learning. I read every online marketing ebook, newsletter and article I could get my hands on.
You see, the secret is in the LEARNING.

If you want to succeed at internet marketing business, I implore you to start with a personal e-commerce website of your own and learn how to drive a steady stream of targeted visitors to your site.
Most entrepreneurs who receive up to 500 targeted visitors daily earn up to $5,000. The key is in the LEARNING.

7 Tips to Make You a Better Ezine Article Author

In the competitive world of article marketing, the more one knows about how to write an effective ezine article, the better his chance of getting a sale or customer through that article.

When a person ( i.e. prospective customer ) reads an ezine article, he must be immediately impressed, or else he may be lost forever. Using ezines is one of the most effective means of reaching new prospects, as well as giving free valuable content to existing customers, or just friends who read your articles.

The first rule of an internet article is that it must consist of real content, and not just a sales pitch. The purpose of article marketing is to inform the reader on a particular topic, and perhaps gather a following of readers who will look forward to reading your specific ezine articles.

Using ezines is possibly the fastest way ( without paid ads) to get your article in front of the people you want reading your ezine article, thereby making article marketing a very effective tool for the internet marketer.
Perhaps the only way to get visitors to your site faster than article submission to ezines is pay-per-click advertising, but that is expensive, and probably best left to the more experienced marketer, at least until one understands the complexities of pay-per-click advertising..

For an internet marketer fresh on the scene, trying to make his mark in the world of internet articles marketing, ezine article submission is definitely one of the best, if not THE best, way to break into the world of article marketing.

For my money, using ezines to market ezine articles is the most practical form of free advertising on the internet today
One must be careful, though, when writing for an ezine article, to be sure and include the main words of interest, or keywords, throughout the article, in order to be noticed by the search engine ‘spiders’, and get indexed into the search engines.

One must be equally cautious of too much density, or using a keyword too often, or too close together in the body of the ezine article. This can cause the search engines to pass right over, and not even consider your site for indexing.
Most ezine article sites or submission services will not allow a URL destination (website address) to be placed in the body of the article. Neither will they allow a direct attempt by the author to sell a service or product from within the ezine article. Pornography and/or obscene language is also a no-no on most sites, save for the few who deal in such things. Those are not ones that I am interested in posting in.

Article submission may be done manually by submitting to each directory that one wishes to be published in, or by using a paid article submission service, wherein you may write one article and have it submitted to hundreds, or even thousands of directories for you. The cost is really low, and you must check with each submitter for their terms of service, and agreements.

I have noticed that some ezine article sites want 250-500 word articles, some others have a minimum of 500, with a limit of 2,000, or more

How To Make Money With An Online Niche Market - 8 Proven Strategies

It's not hard to find a niche to start your own online business if you have the right resources. Here are some insider tricks you can use now to find your niche goldmine and start making Internet money right away. Once you start taking action and develop an income it's wise to re-invest into your business to keep ahead of the competition & grow your online venture. Making Internet money success is based on the following information.

Understanding The Market & Going For It!

Internet Marketing is not as hard as you may think. Many Internet Gurus want you to believe this so they can interest you in their product that usually is presented as an easier way to make money. If you have been doing this for awhile then the following steps will seem simple to you.

Note: Don't get discouraged if you are a newbie, everyone started out like you. Patience is a virtue when starting out, you can not hurry this learning process but once implemented will reap huge rewards. Your online business will never be perfect but just get started and you will learn more than you ever imagined as you start making Internet money & develop your money making machine.

In This Article We Will Discuss:

1. Finding Ideas For A Niche Market

2. Picking A Niche Market From What You Know

3. What Subject Are You An Expert In?

4. Researching A Profitable Niche Market

5. Looking for A Buying Market

6. Finding Dedicated Believers and Followers

7. Offline Market Research

8. Online Market Research

1. Finding Ideas For A Niche Market

Building a business in your preferred niche would be the most beneficial. Your passion for a certain niche will steer you through anything that stands in your way. But passion is not everything, you must make sure your niche will be profitable before you spend your time developing it.

A Niche Market can be described as A subject that is not too general but not too small. Another factor is to find something that has long term appeal.

Here is a general list of some Niche Markets:

1. Dog training
2. Wedding Planning
3. Camping
4. Wrestling
5. Karate
6. fishing
7. Needlepoint
8. Recipes

If these Niches are too general then go a little deeper:

1. Bass Fishing
2. Labrador Dog Training
3. Needlepoint Patterns
4. Sumo Wrestling
5. Outback Camping
6. Chinese Food Recipes
7. Wedding Favors

You Get The Picture? Now you need to know some techniques on how to generate income from your Niche. Below are the most popular strategies you can think about while choosing your Niche Market.

1. Build a mailing list
2. Affiliate promotions on site
3. Personal product sales
4. Selling ad space
5. Displaying Google Adsense
6. Selling traffic
7. Sell your site

For your Niche to be successful you need a buying market or a volume of traffic. As long as your Niche Market falls into any of these two categories you are on your way.

2. Picking A Niche Market From What You Know

Your Personal Preference is important like hobbies and anything you enjoy doing. If your Niche is a favorite hobby then you will be excited and enthusiastic about building your business around it. Be specific as possible like "fresh water fishing" not "fishing".

What Are your Passions? Baseball, knitting, judo, mountain climbing, the list is endless. Follow your passion and like your favorite hobby you will find a deep motivation to learn more about it and keep your business thriving for a long time.

3. What Subject Are You An Expert In?

When you are an expert you will find a lot of content and feel more creative about writing informative articles that help others. This is the basis of building a list of hungry information seekers that would consider you an expert and open up their wallet to get your expert knowledge into their hands.

If you are not an expert on a subject you love why not become an expert and dig up all the best information you can to impress and inform your readers visiting your blog or website. Your opinion can be worth a lot of money and it is not hard even if you do not have a website.

Other Niche finding techniques are Niche Magazines, Ebay Pulse & Amazon Top Sellers categories (especially in the "books" section). Search for Google Trends on your browser and you will find the current market results for any niche you can imagine. Now you can make a list of your passions and hobbies in order of preference and go to the next step.

4. Researching A Profitable Niche Market

One of two things you need to support your Niche of choice is either a buying market, a volume of traffic or both. A sizeable market is acceptable compared to a huge market with tons of competition.

It is easier to dominate a sub niche like "German Shepherd Training" compared to "Dogs". You want to become an authority and create an alliance with your competitors. A specific sub niche will be much more focused on your target market.

Researching your market is essential. You will need a keyword research tool to find the number of searches and competition for you specific keyword. Do a search for wordtracker on Google and pick up their free keyword suggestion tool. This will give you daily search stats for your niche keywords and determine whether there is a large enough interest in your niche.

5. Looking for A Buying Market

Is your niche market a buying market or just looking for free information? You have to target the decision makers. If you're selling horse tackle to someone who does not ride horses then you affiliate program or product sales will suffer.

If you want to sell a dating book for teenagers you may get loads of traffic but if they do not have a credit card then you will not get any sales. Your information will be helpful but with zero profit. Trying to sell a product to people with credit card debt or looking for a job are other niches that have no money to spend.

6. Finding Dedicated Believers and Followers

People who really need something like golfers will spend endless amounts of cash to get the latest golf club, golf shoe or golf ball. Golf is a huge niche and hardcore golfers are spenders even in sub niches.

"How to save a marriage" is another niche that have desperate money spenders that have a sense of urgency in their minds and will stop at nothing to find a product to help them out. An ebook on Clickbank is a perfect example of a product you could sell as an affiliate. Electronic goods on this site move like hot cakes and free you from having a site and processing financial transactions.

7. Offline Market Research

If your niche has publications in magazines and books then this is a good indicator it has a large following in the market. Publishing is not cheap so if see a magazine on yachting in local book stores then it is a popular niche worth pursuing.

8. Online Market Research: Are There Lots Of Google Adwords For Your Niche?

When you search on Google look on the right side and see how many ads there are. These are Google Adwords that advertisers pay money for. The more ads the better, this indicates there is a very good market going on for this niche. These are advertisers that are making money selling products and in some cases paying up to a dollar a click or more for visitors to come to their site.

Summing All This Up...

You may not get a total knock out punch result with this research but if your niche has traffic even around 5000 visits a month then consider going for it. Your niche must have buyers who love to spend money and need to hook up with marketers like you who will inform them on their hobby or passion. Ask yourself the questions above, do the research and go with a niche that motivates you. Making Internet money will become a reality sooner than you think when you get a pulse on your niche market.

3 Tips on Marketing Your Small Business With Articles

Article marketing the most effective way to define yourself as an expert in your field and market your business. Understanding the basics of marketing with articles will help tremendously with your marketing campaign. A complete article marketing campaign includes more than sharing of information.

Quality content with a catchy title is only the beginning. You must know how to create a great author biography, often called an author resource box. Article submission and distribution will ensure a wide reach and deep, targeted placement in article directories. Getting your content circulating is important; getting it read by your target audience is even better.

Quality Content

Due to the power of the Internet, consumers never blindly purchase products or services. Your goal is to promote your business in a positive light and provide information to potential customers. Make your readers want to come back for more.

The article title should be a short, informative snippet that grabs your readers' attention. Keep your title around 65 letters. The purpose is to draw readers to the article out of curiosity or some other emotional response.

The article body needs to be short, simple and easy to scan. Don't make people hang on every word to get the full benefit of what they read. Article content needs to be at least 400 words but no more than 900 words. Very short articles are perceived as not nearly informative enough. On the other hand, very long articles require more time to read; time your reader could be spending making a purchase.

Content needs to be informative and concise. Don't fill your articles with a lot of fluff. Write each article like it is the one that will produce your next sale. Use perfect grammar and spelling to help cement your position as an expert in your field.

Catchy Author Resource Box

The author resource box is the last thing your readers will see. Make it something they will remember. Publisher limits and restrictions usually only allow 300 to 500 characters and some allow you to create links to your website. Use your author resources to provide an easily clickable link to your website's home page or even to a specific product or service.

Continuous Distribution

No proper article marketing strategy is complete without distribution to multiple article directories. Publishing to thousands of directories can be very time consuming but it doesn't have to be. Look for distribution services that submit your articles for you. Such services are not free, but they are worth the minimal cost.

Free article distribution is a great start if you're working with a startup and limited funds. The objective is to simply get your articles published and circulating. Make use of social networks, forums and blogs to help push your marketing campaign.

Not a Writer? That's OK!

In many cases, entrepreneurs are not necessarily the best writers for their own articles. It's perfectly OK to hire someone to write your articles for you. Provide the writer with potential topics and information you'd like included in the article. If you have a unique way of providing products or services via your business, make the writer aware of it. Each professionally written article should reflect who you are and how you do business.

Some entrepreneurs feel that the integrity of their business will be threatened if they hire a writer for articles. They worry that their expertise will not be taken seriously if they don’t write the content themselves. The best way to avoid letting the world know you didn't write it yourself is to hire a ghostwriter for articles.

Writing services are just that; writing services. They rely on the articles they provide as examples of their work. Ghostwriters pride themselves in providing quality content while ensuring their clients' anonymity.

Choose your writing service carefully. Ask for examples that prove the writer is worth your money. Writers may produce any type of article to prove their skill. A ghostwriter will provide an example that does not belong to one of their clients. For best results, look for a ghostwriter you can trust to help build a complete article marketing campaign.

Making Your Website An Effective Marketing Tool

There are two key elements to having an effective online marketing strategy. Firstly, a website that is suitable for its intended purpose and secondly driving the right quantity and quality of traffic to that website. In this article I will focus primarily on achieving the first of these two elements and therefore developing a website that is an effective marketing tool.

When planning a new website the main factors to consider are:

Get your domain name correct - Select the best domain name, this may be the company or brand name or something that describes what the website offers e.g. holidaystochina. Decide if your customer base is likely to be country specific or international – this will affect your selection of url i.e. http://.co.uk or .com, etc.

What do you want from your website - Decide what you hope to achieve with your new website, what is its function? Are you trying to sell direct from your website, use it to generate enquiries or will it be a place to refer your prospects to obtain more information about your products and services.

Get the navigation correct - Decide what information or features your website is required to offer then draw up a website map to include all that is necessary. When considering this it is important that website navigation is clear and easy i.e. that visitors to the website can get where they wish simply and easily. Most visitors are likely to arrive on your Home Page so make that a centre of navigation with direct click through to key pages and features in addition to the main menu and include calls to action. The website should also be quick to download as few people have time to wait while a website ‘forms’ - to this end avoid over complex flash intros.

Make sure you have quality website design - Professional website design is vital, so many online businesses will fail because of poor quality of design for the website itself. There are excellent low cost options out there for obtaining a quality website that will impress and captivate visitors from the second that they arrive on the website. With so many websites, so much competition it is vital to make your website a place that engages visitors as soon as they arrive on the website. To that end, as well as having a professional website it is also worth considering including a presentation or video feature to enhance the ‘website experience’ and help sell your services. This type of ‘organic’ content can also boost search engine position.

Good copy but not too much – Visitors are unlikely to spend long on your website so it is important that you get your key message across quickly and effectively. Keep your copy short and to the point, before you start writing think carefully about what the key points are to make on each page. A strong visual website with brief but informative copy is likely to be most effective.

Search Engine Optimisation – Of course the best website in the world is no use without any traffic! Ideally what you want is quality and quantity of traffic but given the choice the former is preferable. There are two key factors in driving traffic to your website. Firstly, keyword selection - the right keyword will be something that sufficient people will use so that there is traffic to be won and yet something that not too many sites are using so that you have a chance of reaching page 1. To get your keyword density correct check out websites at the top of page 1 for your keyword and see what keyword density they are using. Secondly, build links to your website, ideally one way links from directories and article directories but also exchange links with other suitable websites.

Building an effective online presence can be vital in the success of your business but it is a complex operation. The best way to succeed is to obtain professional help for the important stages in the development of your online presence. To that end, let the internet work for you, use the internet to source the best and most cost effective means of building your own online presence.

3 of the Easiest Steps to Make Money Online

Making money online isn't rocket science. It's very simple actually. Below is a simple and short guide of the important things you'll need to know in order to make money online

First - The Right Partner (Affiliates)

I recommend that you sign up with an affiliate network like Clickbank, Commission Junction or Rocket Profits. There are a lot of them out there. Just do a google search for "affiliate network" and a bunch of them will pop up. The other option is to find a site that has a product or service that you'd like to promote and join there affiliate program. The important thing to remember is to find an affiliate site that you think has a great landing page. The page should be good enough to sell you on the product. Remember that people are not stupid. They think just like you and me and there buying habits are the same as ours...to some degree.

Second - Wear a Mask (The art of deception)

After you've signed up for there affiliate program you need to hide your affiliate ID or tracking number. You can do that easily by registering your own domain name and having it forwarded to your affiliate link. Register your domain name with a reputable source such as; Yahoo, Godaddy or Network Solutions. Besides the fact that you won't have to worry about someone steeling your domain name from underneath you, these better known companies have easy to use interfaces that allow you to forward your domain quickly and painlessly. By having a forwarded domain you are preventing the buyer from becoming leery of a super long domain name on the home page and increasing the probability that the buyer will trust the site enough to make a purchase.

Example:
Without domain forwarding your link would look something like this www.joeshmoe.FrankiesComics.com

With domain forwarding the buyer would see something like this: www.FranksComics.com

Third - Time to Reel in The Dough (Marketing = Money)

Marketing....It's all about the marketing (really...it is!). Use a mix of Pay Per Click search engines. Most people go with Yahoo, Google, and MSN, but don't spend most of your budget there. Try using the less commonly used search engines to get more bang for your buck. I would suggest Exoclick, Lycos (great results) Myspace and facebook. Using a combination of the major search engines and the less common ones will ensure that you are using your marketing dollars wisely and at the same time reaching the customers that your competitors are overlooking.

Other marketing methods that have proven results are:

Online Classified Ads- UsFreeAds and Craigslist both work great.

YouTube Videos- Make a video that displays your domain name. Try to make it a funny video or a "how to" video.

Join Google Groups- Join a bunch of Google Groups, but do not spam people. First, send links on the message board that people will find funny in order to build there trust. After you've done that for about 3 to 7 times you should send your link out with a head line similar to: "Is This For Real?"

Be Creative- Remember...try to be one step ahead of the other guy and keep pushing the limits to what you can and can't do. If you fall...get back up and try again.

Good Luck and Much Success

6 Ways To Make Money With A Town Or City Portal Website

Owning a town or city portal website is a great way for you to make money online by providing local residents with the information they are looking for about local businesses products and services, and making money by providing advertising for local business owners. Aside from making money from allowing local business owners to advertise on your portal, there are several other ways that you can monetise a portal website. In this article I’ll outline 5 other ways that you can make money with a town portal website.

1. CPA networks. These are networks that pay a commission on a visitor taking some kind of action, like buying a product or signing up for a free offer. Joining one of these networks you can offer visitors to your portal website products or services that are outside your local area but of interest to your local visitors. This could include insurance services, loans service, telecom services to name just a few.

2. Very similar to CPA networks, affiliate marketing allows you to offer your visitors with products or services that may interest them. For instance, if you take a look through the Commission Junction Marketplace you could find products or services that you know will be of interest to people in your local area.

3. It’s long been known in the Internet marketing world that Private Label Rights products are a lucrative way of making money online. However, choosing the right products you could use PLR to make money from your local website visitors. As an example you could find a PLR product about green living, a subject close to many peoples hearts, and sell it via your portal website.

4. JV brokering. As the owner of the portal website you will come into contact with many local business owners and many of these owner, who by the way will know very little about marketing their business, may have complementary products or services that they could offer to each other customers. By being the middleman in bringing these business owners together, you can charge a fee to bring about these Joint Ventures.

5. In a similar theme to JV's and allowing business owners to advertise on your portal, you could allow business owners to plac coupons on your website, saving them money and making you money.

6. Provide a website design and marketing service. Getting a portal website to rank highly in the search engines isn’t a difficult task. Using minimal Internet Marketing skills you can easily get your portal to rank well, and the good news is that it isn’t very difficult to do the same for local business owners. Even better you don’t need to do it yourself, using what you have learnt in the Internet Marketing arena you can outsource most of the tasks required, including website design, article writing and direct response marketing. You simple become a project manager, taking a large cut of the profits for yourself.

Owning a town or city portal website opens up a huge amount of opportunities for anyone with minimal Internet Marketing knowledge to make money in many different ways.

Marketing Strategies You Can Use

If you are an owner of a marketing company, you should definitely have some marketing strategies ready. The customers that give you marketing projects should be satisfied with your strategies. Thus, you need to design strategies that may please all the possible customers that you have. Your advertisements should speak about these marketing strategies in the easiest but most attractive way. A marketing company with no marketing strategies may lead to bankruptcy for the company. Given below are some marketing strategies which can come handy for all those marketing companies out there.

1. check your employees:
The first and foremost need of strengthening your company is to check its employees. Your employees should be polite, ready to work no matter what background they come from. They should be helpful and handle the customers efficiently enough to get maximum customers. This may help to keep your customers happy and content. You should also try and provide services to your employees like insurance, shopping coupons and gifts time to time. As we all know, you get some more only when you pay some more.

2. relate to your customers:
You should maintain a rapport with your customers. They are the ones who pay you and they are the ones who are going to help you increase your customers. Customers refer you to their friends or equals if you provide them with the maximum services and the main objective of our marketing strategies is to get more and more customers. You can get into good relationships with your customers by sending them greeting cards on their email ids on birthdays and anniversaries or even on the occasions of festivals. This may help them remember you.

3. give what you promise:
Customers believe your ads and give you work. They expect from you all the services that you promise them when they select your company. If you fail to provide them, you may not get new customers and in addition you may loose your current customers too. Thus, you should try and provide all the services promised by you. This is one of the most important parts of the marketing strategies that you design because if you don't provide what you promise your customers lose their belief in you.

4. give them the best:
Give your customers the best you can. Ask them to demand for things and provide them with the services they want if possible. Provide them with services that they demand or some added services from your side. If you fail to or if you can't provide some service to your customers, apologize to them for the same and give them some thing as compensation.

5. provide offers:
Provide offers to your customers like giving a free advertisement once a while or giving them gifts if they stay with your company for a specific period. Mention these gifts in your advertisements. Your customers may definitely mention this to their friends and colleagues. Thus, you may get some new customers. This may help building good rapport with your current customers also.

Finding a Low Risk Internet Business

When you talk to people about internet business, there are two concerns that are the most common. The first and most ill-informed question is, how do I know this isn't some pyramid of Ponzi Scheme? The vast majority of people who raise this concern are unable to even define what a pyramid or Ponzi scheme is, and are simply parroting catch phrases they have have heard in the news. In reality, every business involving more than two people is in the shape of a pyramid, and working for corporate America is the worst pyramid scheme out there. Think about it, the CEO of a company makes much more money than the average employee. The latest statistic I heard is about 400 times more, and that has been rising fast since the end of the 1980's.

Even though this question is rarely well founded, I will answer it quickly. A pyramid 'scheme' is one where the company offers no product or service, and the people at the top make the vast majority of the money at the expense of the people below them. Pyramid schemes were all over the news in the 1980's and today's regulations all but guarantee any predatory schemes will be shut down.

However, the second question is much more legitimate; how risky is it? This is perhaps the most important question you can ask about any financial venture you are considering undertaking.

So let's talk about risk. Anyone serious about making money knows that the more risk in a financial venture, the bigger the pay-out for its success. The stock market for example, is is a fairly high risk system that has the potential to make people a lot of money if they play it right. Looking at marketing businesses, it's important to figure out how much risk you are willing to take. The difference between risk in something like the stock market and risk in internet business is that with internet commerce you have almost complete control over your risk. The quality of your decisions directly effect your chances of success.

No internet business is without risk, but neither is any other way of making money. Consider this; if you have a job working for a large corporation, the risks are no less, and you have almost zero control over them. You might be laid off, your job could be shipped to China where people will work for a fraction of what you were paid, the company could go under, or you could be fired for unfair reasons. It's no stretch to say that these things are all too common in today's job market.

With all of the risks facing workers these days, are they being fairly compensated for these risks? Absolutely not! Wages adjusted for inflation have been on the decline since the 70's. For example, if the minimum wage had kept up with inflation, it would be well over $10 an hour. CEO wages on the other hand, have been skyrocketing fast. They are taking much more while the average employee is working more and making less. Not only are we being paid less, but workers are paying more and more for healthcare than ever before. The days of employers providing full benefits to workers and their families is becoming a thing of a past.

So how do you assess the risks of a particular business? One of the best ways to get unbiased opinions is by searching for personal testimonials. A great resource for this is youtube. Try doing a search for 'name of your business' review, or 'name of your business' scam. If there are no videos about a business, it probably means there aren't many people in it excited about it enough to market it aggressively. If people are marketing a business like crazy and seem genuinely exited about it, chances are they are doing well with it. You can also check social networking sites like myspace, facebook, twitter, and marketing forums. Also, blogs can be an invaluable source of good information on an opportunity.

I have to say that if you are afraid of a little risk, you may not want to get into internet business. In some ways it is still a jungle out there. But, if you do your homework and research an opportunity well, you can minimize your risk to a level far below that of working a 9-5 job. Perhaps because of the risk, the potential pay-out of working from home and being your own boss is much greater than the vast majority of jobs out there today. Beyond just money, the personal satisfaction of being in control of your own financial destiny is worth its weight in gold as far as freedom and personal satisfaction.

I wish everyone luck in their search for financial freedom and personal satisfaction. Remember that the longer and harder the climb, the better the view from the top.