Writing your first ebook may seem like a daunting task. But like many projects, it won’t seem so bad when it’s broken down into manageable chunks. Not all projects are successful, so don’t be too disappointed if your first ebook isn’t a best seller.
Whatever the outcome of your first ebook, you can at least say ‘You did it’.
Like many things in life, what often seems impossible can be attained with the right attitude and the right equipment. It could be a marathon run, climbing a mountain or finding parking space at the supermarket.
If you want to play golf, you will need clubs, balls and some practice. There’s no guarantee you will become another Tiger Woods but you will become a golfer.
If you want to write an ebook, you will need a computer, software and some directions. Assuming you have a computer and software or access to them, here are some directions.
Establish Your Reasons
Your reasons for wanting to write an ebook will have a major impact on your success. It may be for financial gain, promoting a business, advancing your career, education, self satisfaction or something entirely different. Whatever your reasons, write them down. It will help to motivate you if the going gets tough.
Choose Your Subject
There are countless subjects that you can write about. It’s wise to choose something you have an interest in or knowledge of. It is worthwhile spending time on this. The more you know about your subject, the easier it will be to write about.
Choose Your Title
After you’ve chosen your subject, you’ll need a title for the ebook. It’s worth writing down a few different ones before deciding on the one you’ll use. This will help to keep your focus and may give you some other ideas. The title should give a clear indication of the content in your book. A catchy title may help to sell it, but remember to balance this with clarity to keep it in context. I’ve written down two examples. Feel free to use them if you have a sense of humor.
A Clubbers Paradise - Golfing in Ibiza
20 Minutes Late – The Future of Trains
Choose Your Audience
The subject and style of your writing will determine your audience.
Decide who your desired audience will be. Age, gender, culture, social background and education are factors you may want to consider. What you write should be targeted at your desired audience.
Write Your Thesis Statement
Although it’s possible to write your ebook without a ‘thesis statement’, it is not recommended. If you are unfamiliar with this term, there are many sources available that will provide you with all the details you need. Unfortunately, there are some differences of opinion that may lead to confusion.
The ‘thesis statement’ deserves a separate article of its own but for now I have written a general definition of a thesis statement for ebooks. This may leave the door open for criticism but is a small price to pay if it removes some of the confusion. More importantly, it will give you a base on which to start. Only use it as a guideline. If you want a more specific definition, Google is a good place to start your search.
A thesis statement is a sentence or two written to clearly show the reason(s) for your ebook and what you expect to write about.
Although I have referred to this as a general definition, keep in mind that your actual statement should be as specific as possible.
Think of it as the foundation for your ebook. It should contain the following:
1) Your subject
2) Your opinion on the subject
3) A supporting reason for your opinion
4) The significance of 1), 2) and 3)
Create Your Document
Now that you have the foundation, you can begin writing.
A standard application like MS Word is a good choice.
While you are writing your document you can revise your thesis statement at any time up until it is published. This provides a good degree of flexibility.
Choose the format and layout of your document, including chapters, headings and introductions. Dependent on your subject, you may wish to add photographs, anecdotes or testimonials that keep the reader’s attention.
Since an ebook is generally read from a screen, you may want to break up the text more than in a printed book. Experiment with a few different fonts and look at other ebooks for ideas you can use. Spell check and save your document regularly. MS Word has an auto recovery feature. This is useful if you don’t save the document on a regular basis and later experience a system crash. Always backup your document. As a precaution you should also keep a copy on another media such as CD.
Choose Your Ebook Format
This is a personal choice. You may decide to create an executable (.exe) file or a Portable Document Format (.pdf) file. By no means an exhaustive list, here are some points to consider before you choose.
EXE files are compiled using an ebook compiler
EXE files may offer features that are not available with PDFs
EXE files can only be read on a PC
EXE files don’t require any other software to be read
EXE files are easy to open, easily branded, and good viral marketing tools
EXE files may be susceptible to viruses although some compilers offer virus protection
More information on the better compilers can be found at
http://www.ebook-site.com/ebook-compilers.html
PDF files can be created using Adobe Acrobat
PDF files can be created with several other 3rd party applications.
PDF files are an industry standard
PDF files can be read by both PC and MAC
PDF files require Adobe Reader to be read
PDF files are highly unlikely to become infected
More information on PDFs can be found on the Adobe website
Create Your Ebook
Create your ebook in your chosen format. Congratulations you are now an author.
About The Author
Bryan Quinn is an IT consultant and webmaster of http://www.ebook-site.com
Article Source: http://www.articlematrix.com
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Monday, November 28, 2005
Affiliate Marketing - Ten Excellent Reasons Why You Should Do It By Elaine Currie
There are many opportunities to make money working on the Internet. Becoming an affiliate marketer is a great way of having your own online business. Here are ten excellent reasons why you should choose affiliate marketing for your home based business.
1. Be Your Own Boss - What a magical ring that phrase has to it! This is my absolute favourite reason for being an affiliate marketer. Actually, it is my top reason for having any home based business.
2. Low cost set-up - Most affiliate programmes are free to join, so all you need to start your business is an Internet-connected computer and word-processing software. You can work from absolutely anywhere in the world and it makes no difference whether you have a cosy office or work from a corner of your kitchen table.
3. No shipping costs - You don't need to worry about paying for postage or buying packing stuff such as boxes, wrapping paper, parcel tape, labels and so on. You never have to struggle with carrying heavy packages to the post office. The cost and bother of packing and shipping products to customers belongs to the merchant, not the affiliate.
4. Choice of thousands of products and services - All you have to do is decide what you want to sell (and, of course, what you think people will want to buy), just about everything is available online. With affiliate directories like Clickbank it's easy to find products to sell.
5. No merchant account or invoicing software required - You can forget the problems associated with invoicing, collecting payments and processing credit cards. The merchant handles all payment processing; as an affiliate, you never have to worry about chargebacks, fraud or losing your merchant account.
6. On sale everywhere - Your sales area has no geographic limits but you don't have to leave home. You can promote your web site worldwide, every Internet user in the whole world is potentially your customer (and you call this a small business!).
7. High income potential -With your own affiliate business your income level is limited only by your desire and effort - not by corporate salary scale structure or the whim of your boss.
8. No inventory to carry - You can sell any item, large or small without having to worry about storage space. You could sell trucks from a one-bedroom apartment! You don't have to the worry or expense of insuring stock or having extra security to protect it.
9. Low running costs - Apart from a modest budget for advertising and a small amount to pay for your internet connection, you have nothing much in the way of overheads. You work from home, so the big expense of renting premises is avoided and it is possible to get income tax reductions to cover some things such as part of your electricity and phone bills.
10.Always open for business - As an affiliate, your business keeps running and pulling in profits for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, even on Bank Holidays. You are open for business even while you are asleep. You don't have to worry about business hours or delivery deadlines, all that proceeds on autopilot. You don't have to worry about scheduling staff holidays: you don't even need any staff!
About The Author
This is one of a series of articles published by the author, Elaine Currie, BA(Hons) at http://www.Huntingvenus.com.
Subscribe to Online Profit newsletter by huntingvenus@SubscribeMeNow.com. 100’s of free tips and advice on working online.
© Copyright 2005, ArticleJunction.com
1. Be Your Own Boss - What a magical ring that phrase has to it! This is my absolute favourite reason for being an affiliate marketer. Actually, it is my top reason for having any home based business.
2. Low cost set-up - Most affiliate programmes are free to join, so all you need to start your business is an Internet-connected computer and word-processing software. You can work from absolutely anywhere in the world and it makes no difference whether you have a cosy office or work from a corner of your kitchen table.
3. No shipping costs - You don't need to worry about paying for postage or buying packing stuff such as boxes, wrapping paper, parcel tape, labels and so on. You never have to struggle with carrying heavy packages to the post office. The cost and bother of packing and shipping products to customers belongs to the merchant, not the affiliate.
4. Choice of thousands of products and services - All you have to do is decide what you want to sell (and, of course, what you think people will want to buy), just about everything is available online. With affiliate directories like Clickbank it's easy to find products to sell.
5. No merchant account or invoicing software required - You can forget the problems associated with invoicing, collecting payments and processing credit cards. The merchant handles all payment processing; as an affiliate, you never have to worry about chargebacks, fraud or losing your merchant account.
6. On sale everywhere - Your sales area has no geographic limits but you don't have to leave home. You can promote your web site worldwide, every Internet user in the whole world is potentially your customer (and you call this a small business!).
7. High income potential -With your own affiliate business your income level is limited only by your desire and effort - not by corporate salary scale structure or the whim of your boss.
8. No inventory to carry - You can sell any item, large or small without having to worry about storage space. You could sell trucks from a one-bedroom apartment! You don't have to the worry or expense of insuring stock or having extra security to protect it.
9. Low running costs - Apart from a modest budget for advertising and a small amount to pay for your internet connection, you have nothing much in the way of overheads. You work from home, so the big expense of renting premises is avoided and it is possible to get income tax reductions to cover some things such as part of your electricity and phone bills.
10.Always open for business - As an affiliate, your business keeps running and pulling in profits for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, even on Bank Holidays. You are open for business even while you are asleep. You don't have to worry about business hours or delivery deadlines, all that proceeds on autopilot. You don't have to worry about scheduling staff holidays: you don't even need any staff!
About The Author
This is one of a series of articles published by the author, Elaine Currie, BA(Hons) at http://www.Huntingvenus.com.
Subscribe to Online Profit newsletter by huntingvenus@SubscribeMeNow.com. 100’s of free tips and advice on working online.
© Copyright 2005, ArticleJunction.com
10 Things Every Business Web site Should Have By Abdillahi Abdillahi
10 Things Every Business Web site Should Have
By Abdillahi Abdillahi
Business web sites are not just like any other sites. Companies make them to reach a lot of prospective customers around the world.Some times people forgot a lot of good things their business web sites should have. Today in this short article I list and explain ten things every business Web site should have. There might be more than these ten things but I find them to be the most important ones for every business Web site to have.All right folks, I guess that is enough talk so lets get down into the topic ....shall we? OK then here they come
1 Detailed About Us Page.
You might say there is nothing about us but this page is very important.You should have it on your business web site and write detailed information in it. You should write about your company background, when you started it, who started it , contact information at the end of the page and if possible the pictures and names of your company workers/managers etc.
People want to learn more about your company before they can do business with you .Sometimes when I visit a site selling something online the first thing I do when it loads is to search for the About Us page and if I find a link I click on it to I can learn more about the company selling the products I'm interested in but I don't find a About Us page or find it no having a lot of information then what I do is just close the site and leave .
By having this page on your business web site you avoid a lot of emails and questions to be sent to your email because potential customers will find the answers to their questions on it instead of sending an email to you and asking those questions in the same time waiting a reply from you so if you don't have one on your business web site then it is the time to make one :) .
2 Detailed Contact Us Page.
This is another important page. In this page you should provide all the ways your current and potential customers can contact your company, don't leave anything. Customers and potential customers want to be able to contact your company by email, mail, telephone and fax etc. There are some people who would rather phone you than to send an email to you because they just want to get quick answers instead of waiting them from you . For that reason make sure you have a detailed contact us page on your business web site.
3 A News Page.
People want to know the news about your company so you should have a news page containing the news when your company started and its latest news.Try to organize it by year and month so it can be found and navigated easily .
4 Page Titles.
This is also important . Yo should have have detailed and descriptive page titles on your business web site . I visited many web sites which most of their page's titles had Untitled Document and NewPage1. As you can see it is not professional to have such titles on a business web site
Great page titles help your site and your business in the search engines as some SEO(Search Engine Optimization) experts said a catchy title is better than a one that isn't so a good way to make a good title is like this companyname.com-page name e.g. Kooshin.com - About Us or About Kooshin.com etc. These are just simple examples and I'm sure there are many other ways that you can make a catchy page title.
I use this for my site and sites of my web design clients .Just open any search engine web site and type something to see the search results .....I'm sure you see the keyword you searched being the title of every page that is in the search results.So give a lot of attention to your business web site's page titles.
5 Page Names.
The page names are also important as the page titles. They should be descriptive for example you can name the about us page as aboutus.htm or combine the company name and the page name like this aboutcompanyname.htm so it takes its part in the search engine optimization .For that reason you should give page names and page titles a lot of attention because they simply work together and are good for your web site.
6 Web Site Language.
Business web sites should have clear language no matter what language you use for your site it should be plain , very easy to understand and if you use abbreviations then make sure to explain and write what they stand for .I have seen business web sites using slang throughout the site.
I find this very unprofessional language for a business web site to use , I mean when you see a business web site which uses this language - wazz up instead of what's up , we have 2 instead of we have to ,you can find a lot of examples if you look around and mostly in chat rooms - would you buy something from it?
You should stay around from using this language in any part of your web site and make sure you spell check the text on every page even if you checked it you need to double check or use some spell checker software because after all we are humane and we make mistakes!
7 Design, Colors, and Images.
These three are also important for every business web site . Business web sites should have an easy to use design and all of your products should be easy to find. If the potential customer don't find all of the important information about all of your products then they will just leave the site and visit a competitor's site.
And about the colors you should use them carefully. Business web sites should have a bright colors . Stay away from dark colors not all but like the color black shouldn't be used for any business web site .
Now for the images you should use images that have something to do with your business and products . If you have a lot of images , big ones then you should make small thumbnails and link them to the big ones so they load faster.
8 Free From Broken Links.
Well basically every web site shouldn't have any broken links but it is very important for business web sites to be free from having broken links. I remember one day when I was on a site selling something online and I wanted to order the products it was selling so I clicked on the order link and guess what did I get? A 404 file not found page .
At that time I no longer wanted to buy their products because I said to myself if I need help later how will they help me when their own order links are not working? It was a very important question to me and I needed an answer but I know I had to answer it to my self and said they will not be able to help you
Now I guess you got the point but if you didn't get it then it is because of those broken links you are going to lose sales just like that site which I was trying to buy something from did. For that reason and so many other reasons which I can't gather them together here your business web site shouldn't have any broken links.
If you ever change your file names then make sure you make a custom 404 file not found page designed as a site map so if a visitor visits a removed page from a search engine or a site then he will have that site map as a new guide to the new page.
9 Use Live Support and Ticket Tracking System.
Using live support system and ticket tracking system is very useful for every business web site . Sometimes potential customers want to get quick answers to the questions they might have so by using a live support system then they will be able to talk to a sales representative live. There are some good free ones and low prices ones which you can get and install and use within minutes .
And about the ticketing system , it makes email management a lot easier . You can track every email with a special ticket number and all the answers will be organized as threaded discussion. Most live support systems come with a ticket tracking feature so make sure you get the best one out there for your business web site.
10 SSL(Secure Socket Layer) Certificates.
Even though they can be used for certain parts of the web site but in the same time they can be used throughout the site.If you use some third party scripts and softwares to make payment processing etc then you don't have to use SSL because they are used for sending sensitive information such as banking information, credit card information etc and anything else you find sensitive through the internet . You decide it whether or not you need to use one for your business web site
Conclusion.
That is it, These were ten things every business web site should have and you should consider them whenever you design a business web site Of course any site can have them all but they are very important for business web sites to have. Until next time make sure you use the list :)
About The Author
Abdillahi Abdillahi is a web designer, founder and president of http://kooshin.com, a company providing affordable web hosting and web design solutions to small to medium sized businesses and individuals. For more information , please visit http://kooshin.com.
By Abdillahi Abdillahi
Business web sites are not just like any other sites. Companies make them to reach a lot of prospective customers around the world.Some times people forgot a lot of good things their business web sites should have. Today in this short article I list and explain ten things every business Web site should have. There might be more than these ten things but I find them to be the most important ones for every business Web site to have.All right folks, I guess that is enough talk so lets get down into the topic ....shall we? OK then here they come
1 Detailed About Us Page.
You might say there is nothing about us but this page is very important.You should have it on your business web site and write detailed information in it. You should write about your company background, when you started it, who started it , contact information at the end of the page and if possible the pictures and names of your company workers/managers etc.
People want to learn more about your company before they can do business with you .Sometimes when I visit a site selling something online the first thing I do when it loads is to search for the About Us page and if I find a link I click on it to I can learn more about the company selling the products I'm interested in but I don't find a About Us page or find it no having a lot of information then what I do is just close the site and leave .
By having this page on your business web site you avoid a lot of emails and questions to be sent to your email because potential customers will find the answers to their questions on it instead of sending an email to you and asking those questions in the same time waiting a reply from you so if you don't have one on your business web site then it is the time to make one :) .
2 Detailed Contact Us Page.
This is another important page. In this page you should provide all the ways your current and potential customers can contact your company, don't leave anything. Customers and potential customers want to be able to contact your company by email, mail, telephone and fax etc. There are some people who would rather phone you than to send an email to you because they just want to get quick answers instead of waiting them from you . For that reason make sure you have a detailed contact us page on your business web site.
3 A News Page.
People want to know the news about your company so you should have a news page containing the news when your company started and its latest news.Try to organize it by year and month so it can be found and navigated easily .
4 Page Titles.
This is also important . Yo should have have detailed and descriptive page titles on your business web site . I visited many web sites which most of their page's titles had Untitled Document and NewPage1. As you can see it is not professional to have such titles on a business web site
Great page titles help your site and your business in the search engines as some SEO(Search Engine Optimization) experts said a catchy title is better than a one that isn't so a good way to make a good title is like this companyname.com-page name e.g. Kooshin.com - About Us or About Kooshin.com etc. These are just simple examples and I'm sure there are many other ways that you can make a catchy page title.
I use this for my site and sites of my web design clients .Just open any search engine web site and type something to see the search results .....I'm sure you see the keyword you searched being the title of every page that is in the search results.So give a lot of attention to your business web site's page titles.
5 Page Names.
The page names are also important as the page titles. They should be descriptive for example you can name the about us page as aboutus.htm or combine the company name and the page name like this aboutcompanyname.htm so it takes its part in the search engine optimization .For that reason you should give page names and page titles a lot of attention because they simply work together and are good for your web site.
6 Web Site Language.
Business web sites should have clear language no matter what language you use for your site it should be plain , very easy to understand and if you use abbreviations then make sure to explain and write what they stand for .I have seen business web sites using slang throughout the site.
I find this very unprofessional language for a business web site to use , I mean when you see a business web site which uses this language - wazz up instead of what's up , we have 2 instead of we have to ,you can find a lot of examples if you look around and mostly in chat rooms - would you buy something from it?
You should stay around from using this language in any part of your web site and make sure you spell check the text on every page even if you checked it you need to double check or use some spell checker software because after all we are humane and we make mistakes!
7 Design, Colors, and Images.
These three are also important for every business web site . Business web sites should have an easy to use design and all of your products should be easy to find. If the potential customer don't find all of the important information about all of your products then they will just leave the site and visit a competitor's site.
And about the colors you should use them carefully. Business web sites should have a bright colors . Stay away from dark colors not all but like the color black shouldn't be used for any business web site .
Now for the images you should use images that have something to do with your business and products . If you have a lot of images , big ones then you should make small thumbnails and link them to the big ones so they load faster.
8 Free From Broken Links.
Well basically every web site shouldn't have any broken links but it is very important for business web sites to be free from having broken links. I remember one day when I was on a site selling something online and I wanted to order the products it was selling so I clicked on the order link and guess what did I get? A 404 file not found page .
At that time I no longer wanted to buy their products because I said to myself if I need help later how will they help me when their own order links are not working? It was a very important question to me and I needed an answer but I know I had to answer it to my self and said they will not be able to help you
Now I guess you got the point but if you didn't get it then it is because of those broken links you are going to lose sales just like that site which I was trying to buy something from did. For that reason and so many other reasons which I can't gather them together here your business web site shouldn't have any broken links.
If you ever change your file names then make sure you make a custom 404 file not found page designed as a site map so if a visitor visits a removed page from a search engine or a site then he will have that site map as a new guide to the new page.
9 Use Live Support and Ticket Tracking System.
Using live support system and ticket tracking system is very useful for every business web site . Sometimes potential customers want to get quick answers to the questions they might have so by using a live support system then they will be able to talk to a sales representative live. There are some good free ones and low prices ones which you can get and install and use within minutes .
And about the ticketing system , it makes email management a lot easier . You can track every email with a special ticket number and all the answers will be organized as threaded discussion. Most live support systems come with a ticket tracking feature so make sure you get the best one out there for your business web site.
10 SSL(Secure Socket Layer) Certificates.
Even though they can be used for certain parts of the web site but in the same time they can be used throughout the site.If you use some third party scripts and softwares to make payment processing etc then you don't have to use SSL because they are used for sending sensitive information such as banking information, credit card information etc and anything else you find sensitive through the internet . You decide it whether or not you need to use one for your business web site
Conclusion.
That is it, These were ten things every business web site should have and you should consider them whenever you design a business web site Of course any site can have them all but they are very important for business web sites to have. Until next time make sure you use the list :)
About The Author
Abdillahi Abdillahi is a web designer, founder and president of http://kooshin.com, a company providing affordable web hosting and web design solutions to small to medium sized businesses and individuals. For more information , please visit http://kooshin.com.
Shop: Is Shopping Online Secure? Contributed by Linda Quinones
Is shopping online becoming popular and safe enough for you and I to do the vast majority of our shopping on the Internet?
As I contemplated, when I initially set up my website: www.shopshopshop.org The first thought that came to mind was will they come and will they spend money? Sure people are always curious and some will visit but will they stay long enough to spend some money?
Safety was the first concern of those I had spoken to, they were somewhat skeptical and therefore reluctant to make any online purchases. It is our responsibility as online marketers to convince them to about the safety of online shopping.
We all know about the convenience of getting on the computer and viewing the sale that retailers are using to entice the shoppers into making a commitment. But are not always as eager to go ahead and complete the purchase online.
The internet today is as safe or safer than making purchase in person, I recently read an article where BJ Wholesalers was fined by the Securities and Exchange Commission for not having sufficient security to protect Credit Card users.
Most of the buying we do today is pay for by either a credit card or a debit card. So If you think that when you purchase gas and pay for it at the pump with your credit card or debit card that you are making a safe purchase think again.
I recently purchase gas at my favorite gas station and paid for it at the pump with my debit card, only to find out two weeks later when the bank call me to question some of purchases that were charge to my debit card.
It seems that somebody was making purchases that were very uncharacteristic for me. And the institution where I have been banking for many years was able to detect this and all my money was refunded and a new card issued.
I was fortunate in the incident just described, but back to online shopping, most of the retailers that do business online have very good security to protect the buyers. After all they would rather you make your purchases online,
Online shopping is much more profitable for the stores and safer and besides no shoplifting takes place on the internet, so the store want to protect this revenue source by making it safe as well as convenient.
Another willing partner is the credit card companies themselves they want you and I to continue using the plastic, and are doing all they can to protect the credit card user.
In our website we have a page titled credit card fraud protection, with direct links to the major credit card companies website and anti fraud page, so that shoppers can read what the credit card companies are doing to protect them from fraud and identity theft.
As more and more people become aware of the security measures being undertaken to protect them, they will avail themselves of the convenience of doing their shopping online and use the time they save for pleasure and family activities.
People today are always in a hurry and don’t usually have time to wait on long lines for cashier to ring them up, when they can accomplish the same thing without leaving the house.
This is more attractive to younger active people would rather play a round of golf or a couple of sets of tennis than fight the maddening crowds.
So I recommend that you get online and start spending! for safe convenient shopping visit: www.shopshopshop.org
Linda Quinones has been active in promoting her own site while trying to help others to succeed in the Internet marketing field. Previously she was involved in the financial sector for several years. Her website is: http://www.shopshopshop.org
Article Source:http://www.articlematrix.com
As I contemplated, when I initially set up my website: www.shopshopshop.org The first thought that came to mind was will they come and will they spend money? Sure people are always curious and some will visit but will they stay long enough to spend some money?
Safety was the first concern of those I had spoken to, they were somewhat skeptical and therefore reluctant to make any online purchases. It is our responsibility as online marketers to convince them to about the safety of online shopping.
We all know about the convenience of getting on the computer and viewing the sale that retailers are using to entice the shoppers into making a commitment. But are not always as eager to go ahead and complete the purchase online.
The internet today is as safe or safer than making purchase in person, I recently read an article where BJ Wholesalers was fined by the Securities and Exchange Commission for not having sufficient security to protect Credit Card users.
Most of the buying we do today is pay for by either a credit card or a debit card. So If you think that when you purchase gas and pay for it at the pump with your credit card or debit card that you are making a safe purchase think again.
I recently purchase gas at my favorite gas station and paid for it at the pump with my debit card, only to find out two weeks later when the bank call me to question some of purchases that were charge to my debit card.
It seems that somebody was making purchases that were very uncharacteristic for me. And the institution where I have been banking for many years was able to detect this and all my money was refunded and a new card issued.
I was fortunate in the incident just described, but back to online shopping, most of the retailers that do business online have very good security to protect the buyers. After all they would rather you make your purchases online,
Online shopping is much more profitable for the stores and safer and besides no shoplifting takes place on the internet, so the store want to protect this revenue source by making it safe as well as convenient.
Another willing partner is the credit card companies themselves they want you and I to continue using the plastic, and are doing all they can to protect the credit card user.
In our website we have a page titled credit card fraud protection, with direct links to the major credit card companies website and anti fraud page, so that shoppers can read what the credit card companies are doing to protect them from fraud and identity theft.
As more and more people become aware of the security measures being undertaken to protect them, they will avail themselves of the convenience of doing their shopping online and use the time they save for pleasure and family activities.
People today are always in a hurry and don’t usually have time to wait on long lines for cashier to ring them up, when they can accomplish the same thing without leaving the house.
This is more attractive to younger active people would rather play a round of golf or a couple of sets of tennis than fight the maddening crowds.
So I recommend that you get online and start spending! for safe convenient shopping visit: www.shopshopshop.org
Linda Quinones has been active in promoting her own site while trying to help others to succeed in the Internet marketing field. Previously she was involved in the financial sector for several years. Her website is: http://www.shopshopshop.org
Article Source:http://www.articlematrix.com
an aplology
Dear friends,
due to some personal inconvinences, i could not regularly publish here. Now you can expect a weekly publication of a minimum 2 articles
regards
kannan
due to some personal inconvinences, i could not regularly publish here. Now you can expect a weekly publication of a minimum 2 articles
regards
kannan
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Four Weapons Of Mass Traffic
By Thomas H�fter In this article I will show you that weapons of mass traffic are much easier to find than weapons of mass destruction. And after reading it you won't even have to search for them anymore as I will tell you exactly what they are and how to use them to help you promote your own web properties.
Please note however that those four methods presented here are just the ones that have returned the best results for me and my own websites at the least possible cost (which means, no cost at all). Of course there are many more promotion techniques around and their success does depend greatly on how you use them and for what kind of website so it might be clever to try as many different ones as you can find.
1. RSS Feeds
This one is a very easy promotion method that can still bring you very good results, depending on your content and how often you update it. The only thing you basically do is add your content to a RSS feed and then syndicate this feed on other big RSS lists and directories, which will then link directly to your content. Those sites will then update your listing automatically after you have added new content to your website (and your RSS feed) and "Pinged" them through a free service like the http://pingomatic.com/ program.
2. Link Exchanges
Link exchanges are mostly used for the purpose of search engine optimization and to gain a better Google Pagerank only but if you use them right they can bring very much traffic, too. And using them right just means using them with the right people at the right place. For example you don't want your link to be buried on a links page with hundreds of other links or on a page that is not read by anyone of your targeted audience. Instead, try to approach closely related websites to yours (but no competitors) and try to negotiate a fair deal with them.
3. Article Submission
You might notice that I am just using this technique because when I submit my articles to free article distribution websites like http://www.ezinearticles.com/ I can include some links to my own sites at the bottom of the article and therefore get one-way backlinks from everyone who publishes my article. Depending on the article's topic and how well it is written this might be several hundred different sites. You have to remember however that writing articles is hard work and does take some time however I can still recommend doing it.
4. Press Releases
A method that does rather require much work since you will have to learn how to write press releases for yourself (or you have to pay someone to do it). You do also need something newsworthy to write about, but after everything is done the hard work will surely pay off as this is a very effective method to gain new visitors. You basically get them by publishing your press release (that will of course contain several links to your website) on some of the free press release distribution sites like http://www.prweb.com/. After your press release got published there it will normally be read by hundreds of people and reprinted on many other sites. Sometimes, if your news is truly interesting, it might even be picked up by a newspaper or other print magazine and therefore drive thousands of new visitors to your pages. To improve the effect of your releases it might be wise to spend some money and make a contribution to PRweb because this will give you access to some special services like inclusion in Google News and file attachments.
Thomas H�fter is the webmaster and publisher of the Metal Music Portal Metally.net and the Smartphone Software Directory Smartphony. You can find more of his articles and tutorials at his personal website, the Lunatic Studios.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com
By Thomas H�fter In this article I will show you that weapons of mass traffic are much easier to find than weapons of mass destruction. And after reading it you won't even have to search for them anymore as I will tell you exactly what they are and how to use them to help you promote your own web properties.
Please note however that those four methods presented here are just the ones that have returned the best results for me and my own websites at the least possible cost (which means, no cost at all). Of course there are many more promotion techniques around and their success does depend greatly on how you use them and for what kind of website so it might be clever to try as many different ones as you can find.
1. RSS Feeds
This one is a very easy promotion method that can still bring you very good results, depending on your content and how often you update it. The only thing you basically do is add your content to a RSS feed and then syndicate this feed on other big RSS lists and directories, which will then link directly to your content. Those sites will then update your listing automatically after you have added new content to your website (and your RSS feed) and "Pinged" them through a free service like the http://pingomatic.com/ program.
2. Link Exchanges
Link exchanges are mostly used for the purpose of search engine optimization and to gain a better Google Pagerank only but if you use them right they can bring very much traffic, too. And using them right just means using them with the right people at the right place. For example you don't want your link to be buried on a links page with hundreds of other links or on a page that is not read by anyone of your targeted audience. Instead, try to approach closely related websites to yours (but no competitors) and try to negotiate a fair deal with them.
3. Article Submission
You might notice that I am just using this technique because when I submit my articles to free article distribution websites like http://www.ezinearticles.com/ I can include some links to my own sites at the bottom of the article and therefore get one-way backlinks from everyone who publishes my article. Depending on the article's topic and how well it is written this might be several hundred different sites. You have to remember however that writing articles is hard work and does take some time however I can still recommend doing it.
4. Press Releases
A method that does rather require much work since you will have to learn how to write press releases for yourself (or you have to pay someone to do it). You do also need something newsworthy to write about, but after everything is done the hard work will surely pay off as this is a very effective method to gain new visitors. You basically get them by publishing your press release (that will of course contain several links to your website) on some of the free press release distribution sites like http://www.prweb.com/. After your press release got published there it will normally be read by hundreds of people and reprinted on many other sites. Sometimes, if your news is truly interesting, it might even be picked up by a newspaper or other print magazine and therefore drive thousands of new visitors to your pages. To improve the effect of your releases it might be wise to spend some money and make a contribution to PRweb because this will give you access to some special services like inclusion in Google News and file attachments.
Thomas H�fter is the webmaster and publisher of the Metal Music Portal Metally.net and the Smartphone Software Directory Smartphony. You can find more of his articles and tutorials at his personal website, the Lunatic Studios.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com
Monday, November 07, 2005
Five Pay Per Click Strategies to Help You Make More Money with Your Internet Business By Joel Teo
Pay per click advertising started booming online when search engines like Google started featuring context specific advertising columns on the right of their organic search results. Yahoo together with Overture on the other hand started adding sponsored ads to the top of their search results. Many internet business owners seized on this chance to generate targeted leads for their home based business ventures but as a result today the cost of using pay per click advertising has increased astronomically.
This article therefore highlights important principles of using pay per click advertising to help you develop a more effective pay per click marketing campaign to help you make more money online.
Learn your cost per lead
The key advantage of advertising online as opposed to offline advertising is that you can know your click to signup ratio for any internet home based business advertising campaign. This means that you know how much you are spending to generate each lead in real time. To determine if you are doing well, you can compare your lead generation costs with that of the large scale lead merchants like Cutting Edge Media. So from a practical monetary point of view, if your costs are below theirs then you have it done right but if your costs are above theirs, you are better off purchasing leads from them for your internet home based business to feed into an autoresponder.
You would want to log into your back office and note how much you spent in total the previous day. Now divide the cost of all your clicks for the previous day by the number of signups you generated. Your goal therefore is to tweak your online bids so as to get the lowest targeted cost per lead. The trick is to spend at least one week tweaking this and once you get a good ratio, you can then increase your daily limit on your clicks.
Avoid spending money on competitive terms
As a result of many internet home based business owners flooding the pay per click market search terms like “make money” or “work from home” are very expensive. You want therefore to spend some time looking for keywords that are highly searched and yet cost very little at the pay per click search engines. Two of the popular programs that can help you find such keywords include Adword Analyzer and Word Tracker.
Use Smaller Pay Per Click Programs
Spend some time looking for pay per click search engines that are not as large as Google. Smaller Pay Per Click search engines have fewer bidders so you may be able to pay less for the similar keyword than in the larger search engines. However there is a possibility that you might get fewer page views in these smaller search engines. So you might want to divide your money for several search engines. Grabbing a top spot at some of these smaller search engines might be more lucrative for you in the longer term.
Use of Misspellings
The use of misspellings can help you save money with your bids. Google Adsense today allows you to add misspellings in search terms. The guys at Goodkeywords have a good free software that can help you spot and generate all permutations of keywords at Most people love to bid on highly sought after terms and you could reap some keywords quite cheaply from using misspellings. Get this free tool from http://www.goodkeywords.com
Avoid the use of FREE in your ads
Many people online think that by adding free into your ads you would be able to get more signups. While that is true as the search term free is very highly sought after online, the problem is that you get the wrong type of signups for your internet home business. People who are expecting all kinds of freebies are signing up for your business and when you tell them they have actually to work, they just sit there and do nothing. This would also drive up your cost of lead generation.
In conclusion, use these five strategies to work on your Pay Per Click results and see your ROI increase! Take massive action today and internet prosperity will be yours.
Joel Teo is a successful internet home business owner and internet marketer and he can show you how you can start your money making home based business. Go to http://www.massive-profits-online.com to learn how you can start making money by starting your own internet home based business today
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
7 Powerful Ways To Make Money From Adsense Using Only Free Tools: By Christopher Kyalo
There is really no doubting that there are amazing incomes currently being made on Google Adsense and the really interesting thing is that even relatively small sites and blogs are finding new ways to make money from their Adsense sites every day.
Actually there are a lot of increasingly creative ways to make money and maximize on Adsense earnings that are being discovered and also being put to use every day. And what’s even more fascinating is the fact that most of these tools being used don’t cost anything. They are actually free. Here are 7 of the most effective currently being used.
a) Ways to make money from Adsense by Distributing articles through ezine and article announcement lists
Some of the most effective methods ways to make money from Adsense clicks involve the simple step of just increasing the volume of targeted traffic to a site. One of the ways of doing this is by distributing interesting content to ezine lists and article announcement lists. It is not too difficult to quickly build a list that reaches a million or so email boxes and can thus give a lot of visibility and drive tons of highly targetd traffic to your Adsense site or sites. Probably the most popular place for doing this is at Yahoo groups, but there are a few others that you can find easily by using your favorite search engine.
Success here depends on three main factors. Firstly you should be careful to join article announcement lists and ezine lists that are as relevant as possible to your subject matter and offering. Secondly your headline has to be a killer headline that will grab readers by the scruffs of their necks and force them to open your email message amongst the dozens or even hundreds of others they receive daily. It goes without saying that the content must meet the promise of your sensational headline. Anything less will cause annoyance and leave all those potential visitors to your Adsense site feeling cheated. And believe me, you don’t want to cause this sort of reaction because it is definitely not one of the ways o make money from Adsense or any other program for that matter. Thirdly, you will need the sort of resource box in all your articles that will leave most of your readers with no option but to visit your Adsense site.
Within a very short of consistently applying this technique, my daily Adsense earnings increased seven-fold.
b) Ways to make money from Adsense by Distributing free articles to high traffic article sites Some people find the recent trends that have seen an increase in article sites surprising. I don’t. The net is primarily an information-seeking tool. Anything that will help improve the search and quality of information will greatly benefit the people making that effort.
Some of the older article directories receive very high traffic, mainly from web masters and site owners seeking quality free content for their sites. So apart from the immediate exposure these sites also guarantee plenty of future targeted traffic to your site, when folks find your articles useful enough to re-post at their sites.
The more new articles you release to these sites every week, the more targeted traffic your Adsense sites will receive. This is in fact one of the most effective ways of making money consistently from Adsense clicks. One of the reasons for this is that targeted traffic will tend to spend more time at your site or sites, and the more time they spend, the higher the chances that they will click one one of the Adsense ads posted there.
c) Ways to make money from Adsense by Using Articles And A Viral Marketing Website
Any online marketing technique that involves the use of referral marketing or viral marketing automatically has a huge chance of being a success. The net is ideal for viral marketing and in fact gives any viral marketer huge leverage. Viral marketing or referral marketing is one of the most effective ways to make money online. Just ask Bill Gates.
When Gates was trying to play catch up on the Internet after an earlier mistake of underestimating the future importance of the net, he launched his Hotmail free email service when rivals like Yahoo already had millions of users. He decided to use a simple referral marketing technique. Every Hotmail message that went out had a brief signature at the end requesting the recipient to sign up for their free Hotmail account. Within a few short months, Hotmail had millions of users. And there are many other amazing stories which viral marketing boasts of on the net.
There is one of the very simple ways to make money from Adsense by going viral. Sign up at a leading viral marketing site. You will automatically get your own viral site. You can then use some of your articles to point people to your viral site. The way these sites work is that anybody who signs up at your site will have to visit your Adsense site if you register it at the site. So within a very short time you will be driving thousands of visitors to your Adsense site.
Find more details on this at my blog whose address you'll find in the resource box below.
Admittedly this traffic is less targeted. Still the huge potential and possible numbers you are able to receive using this free tool more than makes up for this.
d) Ways to make money from Adsense With Your Email signature
People greatly underestimate the power and potential effectiveness of a simple email signature as one of the ways to make money online. Actually this is a viral marketing method because emails get forwarded all the time and are even copied to several other people sometimes.
Do not waste another minute. Go to all your email accounts right now and create a signature that points to your Adsense site or sites.
Writing effective email signatures is a skill that you will have to develop, but I have found that using famous quotes is more effective than a straight advertising message. Always remember that people hate to be advertised to online.
e) Ways to make money from Adsense By Asking Questions At Discussion groups
I recently had an interesting conversation with a young Internet and computer techie. He asked me whether there were quick ways to make money online by answering technical questions and helping people to solve their computer and web-related problems. My answer was that there were many discussion groups where participants would get these answers for free. I advised him that he had a better chance of making money by making use of this free advice available online rather than by trying to sell his own advice.
There are tons of online discussion groups where leading world experts will answer your questions and give you valuable insight for free. It is amazing why most people do not think of using these online forums to learn as much as they can about the most effective ways of making money from Adsense.
These forums can easily be found through you favorite search engine.
f) Ways to make money from Adsense By Bartering your online skills for valuable Adsense keywords
In the old days, before the invention of money, if somebody needed something, the first question they asked themselves was; “What is it that I already have that I can exchange for what I need? Barter trade seems to have been forgotten but it is a very powerful method of trading. More so online where people have plenty of skills but are slow to trust others enough to send them money for an item they need.
You can barter whatever it is you have, your skills, products or services, and exchange them for genuine valuable Adsense keywords. Valuable Adsense keywords are the most effective way for a small site with low traffic to earn big cash from Adsense. And you can do this barter trade on an ongoing basis so that you always have a constant supply of valuable Adsense keywords which you can use at your site or blog as one of the ways to make more money from Adsense.
g) Ways to make money from Adsense By Sending Teaser Emails
To Everybody In Your Inbox And Also To Your Opt-in Email List Most of us receive tons of email in our inbox every day. You’ll be surprised at the huge number of people you know by simply going through your email inbox. No matter how good your spam filters are, you are also bound to be receiving more than your fare share of SPAM or unsolicited email. All this is “gold” lying in your email inbox and there are ways to make money using these emails. All you need to do to process the emails into pure gold is to send out “teaser emails about the most interesting aspects of content at your site. The whole objective of teaser emails is to get people to visit your site. For instance if I were to send out teaser email on this content here is how I would construct it;
Subject: Free Tools Currently Being Used To Increase Adsense Earnings
Hello,
Just thought you might be interested in this subject, since so many folks online use Adsense these days. If not please accept my sincere apologies. Details are at my site.
www. your site's address .com
Regards, Chris.
I am sure you can write an even more effective teaser email. It would be a better idea to have a different message for your close friends, a different one for your business contacts and yet another one for those nasty guys SPAMMING you.
These are just some of the many creative ways to make money from Adsense.
Christopher Kyalo is a successful online writer and entrepreneur. Visit his blog to read the rest of this article; http://webcontentprovider.blogspot.com/2005/10/7-powerful-ways-to-make-money-from.html He can be reached at strongwallafrica at yahoo.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
In Internet Marketing You Must Have a Strategy. by Linda Quinones
In Internet Marketing You Must Have a Strategy.
Contributed by Linda Quinones
When you make the decision to start an Internet business or for that matter any business you must have a plan (strategy). This is essential in order to succeed.
You don't throw a dart at a list of possible business opportunities and settle for the one where the dart lands.
It must be a well thought out decision and plan on how you are going to make money in the business, if you read all the hype out there that tells you all you have to do is spend a couple of bucks, get a website and lay back and watch the money come in think again.
First don't spend any money on those fancy internet ads telling how they guarantee you that the money will start rolling in as soon as you buy the software they are peddling.
There is a lot of good software out there, but if you are somewhat technically challenged, spend some time doing research the time spent will save you money and aggravation.
Remember the old saying haste makes waste, so take your time and read as many articles as you can on what exactly it is that you want to do.
The Internet is loaded with information on Internet marketing some very good and some not so good, so spend some time sorting the information out.
If you have expertise in a particular area and there is room for one more then start formulating a plan. Companies without a plan will either fail or develop one in midstream. It’s preferable to have one from the beginning in order to measure your progress and see if everything is going according to plan.
The plan must be flexible and allow you to change directions as you go along, as you gain experience your will want to make adjustments.
BUILD YOUR OWN WEBSITE.
First step should to get a website with your own domain name, many people get involved in MLM’s to avoid doing the work.
That is the lazy men’s way to go, having your own website is a must, it allow to track the traffic and see where your customers are coming from.
If you are paying for business you want to make sure your money is being well spent, you are in business to make money.
SELECT YOUR BUSINESS.
Determine what type of product(s) you want to sell, if you are going to have different type of stores the select a mixture of well know stores and lesser known ones.
The well known names usually pay a smaller commission than the less known counterparts. You need the high paying stores to carry the low paying ones.
This will allow you to offer incentives to Businesses and other customers you want to make regular visitors to your site.
KEYWORDS.
Keywords are extremely important to your business plan, after all you want customer to be able to find you when searching by keyword.
So use every conceivable combination possible to allow for different variations and misspelling. When someone types into the search engine a product, you want to be found.
GET LINKS.
Have linking strategy- reciprocal linking is an important part of page ranking with search engines, reciprocal linking is another way of getting traffic from other sites that are similar to yours.
Links coming into your site will go a long way in optimizing your site, but don’t pay for links, some of the link farms out there with thousands of links will not do anything for you.
PAY PER CLICK.
Pay per click is the quickest way to generate traffic to your site.
Develop a strategy to have your customer willingly provide their email address so that you can inform them of money saving promotions by the affiliates.
Once you have developed a large enough mailing list this will provide you with a steady source of potential repeat customers.
If you don’t promote your site nobody will come so advertise your site and entice people to come and spend some money.
Visit www.shopshopshop.org
Linda Quinones has been active in promoting her own site while trying to help others to succeed in the Internet marketing field. Previously she was involved in the financial sector for several years. Her website is http:/www.shopshopshop.org
Article Source: http://www.articlematrix.com
Contributed by Linda Quinones
When you make the decision to start an Internet business or for that matter any business you must have a plan (strategy). This is essential in order to succeed.
You don't throw a dart at a list of possible business opportunities and settle for the one where the dart lands.
It must be a well thought out decision and plan on how you are going to make money in the business, if you read all the hype out there that tells you all you have to do is spend a couple of bucks, get a website and lay back and watch the money come in think again.
First don't spend any money on those fancy internet ads telling how they guarantee you that the money will start rolling in as soon as you buy the software they are peddling.
There is a lot of good software out there, but if you are somewhat technically challenged, spend some time doing research the time spent will save you money and aggravation.
Remember the old saying haste makes waste, so take your time and read as many articles as you can on what exactly it is that you want to do.
The Internet is loaded with information on Internet marketing some very good and some not so good, so spend some time sorting the information out.
If you have expertise in a particular area and there is room for one more then start formulating a plan. Companies without a plan will either fail or develop one in midstream. It’s preferable to have one from the beginning in order to measure your progress and see if everything is going according to plan.
The plan must be flexible and allow you to change directions as you go along, as you gain experience your will want to make adjustments.
BUILD YOUR OWN WEBSITE.
First step should to get a website with your own domain name, many people get involved in MLM’s to avoid doing the work.
That is the lazy men’s way to go, having your own website is a must, it allow to track the traffic and see where your customers are coming from.
If you are paying for business you want to make sure your money is being well spent, you are in business to make money.
SELECT YOUR BUSINESS.
Determine what type of product(s) you want to sell, if you are going to have different type of stores the select a mixture of well know stores and lesser known ones.
The well known names usually pay a smaller commission than the less known counterparts. You need the high paying stores to carry the low paying ones.
This will allow you to offer incentives to Businesses and other customers you want to make regular visitors to your site.
KEYWORDS.
Keywords are extremely important to your business plan, after all you want customer to be able to find you when searching by keyword.
So use every conceivable combination possible to allow for different variations and misspelling. When someone types into the search engine a product, you want to be found.
GET LINKS.
Have linking strategy- reciprocal linking is an important part of page ranking with search engines, reciprocal linking is another way of getting traffic from other sites that are similar to yours.
Links coming into your site will go a long way in optimizing your site, but don’t pay for links, some of the link farms out there with thousands of links will not do anything for you.
PAY PER CLICK.
Pay per click is the quickest way to generate traffic to your site.
Develop a strategy to have your customer willingly provide their email address so that you can inform them of money saving promotions by the affiliates.
Once you have developed a large enough mailing list this will provide you with a steady source of potential repeat customers.
If you don’t promote your site nobody will come so advertise your site and entice people to come and spend some money.
Visit www.shopshopshop.org
Linda Quinones has been active in promoting her own site while trying to help others to succeed in the Internet marketing field. Previously she was involved in the financial sector for several years. Her website is http:/www.shopshopshop.org
Article Source: http://www.articlematrix.com
Sunday, November 06, 2005
5 Simple Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques By Noah Ulrich
The lifeblood of any website/ecommerce business is traffic, and every
webmaster knows the best type of traffic is natural, organic search
engine traffic. There are two very important reasons for this: (1) it
is extremely targeted, and (2) It is FREE! The hard part is getting
top ranking for your sites keywords... or is it? The purpose of this
article is to provide a few simple, effective, and most important,
search engine friendly strategies to help boost your websites' ranking
and ultimately your traffic.
1. We will start with the Meta Tags. I know you have already heard
of, and are probably currently using meta tags on your site. This is
great. I just want to make sure you are using them effectively. We
will only go over 2 tags: the "title" tag, and the "description" tag.
We will not go over the "keywords" tag, as the major search engines
have placed less and less weight on this one, and some would argue
this tag has no weight at all. I still use this tag however, as I
feel there is some merit and no drawbacks to using this tag.
I have found it effective to use similar text in the "title" and
"description" tags, and to place your keywords prominently in these
tags (near the beginning and more than once). I have seen sites with
"sitename.com", "New Page 1", or "Welcome to my site" in the "title"
tag, which really does not help in their quest for higher rankings for
their particular keyword. Also, try not to use words such as "and",
"or", or "the" in these tags.
**Important note about your keywords. Search engines evaluate keyword
prominence, keyword weight, and keyword density when determining a
site's ranking. All three are calculated individually for the page,
the title tag, the description tag, as well as other areas on a page.
Keyword prominence means how close the keyword is to the beginning of
your page. Keyword weight refers to how many times a particular
keyword or phrase can be found on the page. Keyword density is the
ratio of the keyword to the other words on the page. You do not want
the keyword weight or density to be too high, as this can appear to
the search engine as "keyword stuffing" and most search engines
penalize sites that stuff their keywords.
2. Place your navigational links (and JavaScript) at the right or at
the bottom, but not on the left, of the page. When the search engines
"read" your site, they read from the top left to the bottom right.
Search engines place an emphasis on the first 100 words or text on the
site. You do not want these words to be navigational links or
Javascript. Ideally, you want to have your heading tags with your
keywords in the beginning of your page. This being said, placing your
links/JavaScript on the right or bottom of your page ensures the
search engine spiders get to the text first, giving more weight to
what's important on your page.
3. Place alt tags on all of your images. Search engine spiders
cannot "read" pictures or images. The only way a spider knows what an
image is about is by reading the alt tag. This is also another chance
to place more of your keywords in your HTML, improving your page's
keyword weight/density. Alt tags are easy to make and they can make a
big difference in your sites keyword ranking. A simple alt tag looks
like this: alt="put your keyword phrase here." Search engines
separately calculate keyword prominence, density, and weight in alt
tags as well, so optimize your tags.
4. Place your keywords at the bottom of your page. Just as search
engines place more weight on the first words of your page, they also
do the same to the last words. The general thinking is this, if your
site is about a certain subject, then the main points, or keywords,
should, appear at the beginning, be spread throughout the page, and be
prominent at the conclusion. But if you have all of your navigational
links and JavaScript at the bottom, your relevant page text could end
well before the HTML does. An easy way to have your keywords at the
bottom of your page is to include them in the copyright information.
For example, if you have a dog food website, you could have something
like this at the very bottom of the page:
copyright 2005 yoursite.com
World's best dog food
Search engines are not (as of this writing), penalizing sites using
this technique, and it wouldn't really make much sense for them to do
so.
5. The Anchor Text of your links. Anchor text is the actual
linking text on a site. It is what the user clicks on to navigate to
that particular site or page. If a search engine finds many links to
your site using the term "dog food", then the search engine concludes
your site is about "dog food". This is overlooked quite often, but it
seems to have a very large impact on your search engine rankings for a
particular keyword. Your anchor text needs to be the keyword or
phrase you are trying to target. Try to avoid anchor text such as
"Click Here" or "yoursite.com"
Also, if you're running a reciprocal link campaign, be sure to use
variations of your text. If an engine notices every link to your site
is identical, it could place less weight on these links or potentially
penalize your site. This is because search engines generally give
more weight to "naturally occurring" links, and less to "reciprocal
link exchange campaigns". Using different, but relevant anchor text
can dramatically affect your targeted keyword rankings, by making your
links appear more natural.
Effective SEO may seem difficult at first, but as you have read above,
little tricks that require little or no programming knowledge, can
make a huge impact on your website's keyword ranking.
Noah Ulrich is webmaster of http://www.informativeresources.com His
site maintains top rankings in all major search engines, and has
maintained an online presence since 2001. His site provides top
quality resale rights, guaranteed signups, and web traffic to
businesses worldwide.
Article source: ArticleWorld.net Free Articles
Saturday, November 05, 2005
10 Ways to Increase Web Traffic - Noah Ulrich
Internet traffic is the life of any website or e-commerce business,
and if you are an internet marketer, you already know that good
traffic is not always easy to achieve. There are however, some simple
and effective strategies for getting quality traffic to your site, and
most of them are FREE or low cost.
1. Good old fashioned search engine optimization. This is perhaps, the
most cost effective way to get many customers to your site, because it
does not cost a thing. A web site with top ranking on even a mildly
popular term, can get thousands of visitors per month. Visit any SEO
forum or article database and you can find hundreds of effective
search engine optimization tips and tweaks to apply to your website
for free.
2. Pay-Per-Click Campaigns (PPC). Almost all of the major search
engines offer some sort of Pay-Per-Click marketing. This is a great
way to get targeted traffic to your site, and with some bids as low as
$.01 per click, it can also be very economical.
Although Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture)
are the main players in the PPC market, there are really good deals to
be found with some of the smaller search engines, such as
ExactSeek.com and GoClick.com.
3. Traffic Exchanges. Traffic exchanges offer a website owner an
instant, free way to get traffic to his/her site. Traffic Exchanges
come in all kinds of themes and forms, but the underlying principle
remains the same: I view your site, you view my site. The ratio of
sites you view to your site views can be diverse, depending on the
individual exchange, however it is recommended you find one with a 2:1
ratio or better. Traffic exchanges also offer a multi tier referral
program that gives you a percentage of traffic earned by affiliates
you bring into the program. Traffic Swarm, NoMoreHits.com, and
StudioTraffic.com all offer a website owner great ways to increase
traffic, or you can simply search the term "traffic exchange" in any
search engine to find an exchange that fits you.
4. Link Exchanges. Link Exchanges are a fantastic way to increase web
traffic, and the benefits are two-fold. Not only do you get traffic
from the linking website, you also get the added benefit of better
search engine placement with every link that is pointing to your site.
Reciprocal linking has always been a major component of effective
search engine optimization, with more and more weight being placed
daily on the quality and quantity of links pointing to your site. Be
sure your anchor text is the keyword(s) you are targeting, but at the
same time, periodically phrase your anchor text differently so that
all of the links pointing to your site do not say the same thing. This
makes your links appear more "natural". Linkalizer.com and
Linkmarket.net are some good, free services to help you with your link
exchange campaigns, or you can also visit any SEO forum or
article/ezine database for more tips.
5. Banner Exchanges. Banner Exchanges work on the same principle as
Link Exchanges, and depending on the banner you decide to promote, can
be very effective at drawing targeted web traffic to your site. As
with link exchanges, look for ratios of 2:1 or better, with some
banner exchanges providing a 1:1 ratio. The banner you decide to use
is very important, as many internet users ignore most banners they
see. Your banner needs to be catchy and needs to compel the user to
take action and click it right away, but at the same time you do not
want it to be too flashy as to turn off potential customers. Most
banner exchange programs also have an option to purchase banner
impressions at very low prices, usually a few dollars for thousands of
impressions. This is a great way to put your business in front of many
customers, and helps to increase your "brand awareness".
Click4click.com and ThebannerExchange.net are some free banner
exchanges that can provide your site immediate advertising and
traffic.
6. Write Articles. Writing articles is a great, free way to promote
your online business, and can bring in a substantial number of
targeted customers to your site, usually within a few days. The key is
to submit your article to as many databases and directories as
possible. Hundreds of thousands of webmasters and other internet users
worldwide search these article databases and directories daily,
usually looking for quality content for their own websites. Every
webmaster who reprints your article has to include your resource box,
which should include a link pointing to your site. Not only will this
give your business tremendous exposure, it also improves your search
engine ranking with a free one-way link that your article provides.
EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com are very popular article
databases with free submission and fast approvals.
7. Paid-To-Read Campaigns (PTR). Paid-to-Read campaigns are an
extremely low cost method of getting real, guaranteed visitors to your
site quickly. With PTR campaigns, people are paid to view your site
for a certain amount of time. Because most PTR campaigns are not
targeted, this is not the most effective way to advertise. It is
however, a great way to build an opt-in list or ezine subscriber base
inexpensively. Usually for only a few dollars, you can send an ad out
to all of the members of a program. It is always a good idea to find
PTR programs that are well established, with many members in its
database. Most programs have the number of subscribers and other stats
prominently displayed on the main page of their web site
Donkeymails.com and Maxprofit.org are well established, have thousands
of members, and low advertising prices.
8. Email Campaigns and Safelists. Email campaigns and Safelists
provide yet another great option to increase web traffic. These
campaigns can run the entire pricing spectrum; from free, to hundreds
of dollars per email blast. Although spam concerns seem to have some
advertisers reluctant to use email, if you use a proper third party or
safelist, you can have targeted traffic to your site in hours.
BusinessWorldList.com and Herculist.com are some safelists with huge
number of opt-in subscribers.
9. Create your own Opt-In List. This is a terrific way to get your own
group of ready-to-buy prospects to your site. Getting the content for
your list is as easy as searching any ezine or article database, and
an easy way to get people to join is to simply give something away.
Another way to build a list is through viral marketing. Sites such as
ListFire.com can help you build a large list quickly with proper
advertising.
10. Purchase Web Traffic. There is not a more "hands-free" way to get
traffic to your site, than to just buy it. Pricing for quality,
targeted web traffic can vary greatly from site to site. It is
recommended to look for web traffic campaigns that offer targeting to
your specific audience, and real time stats.
This way you can better manage and track your advertising dollars.
As you can see, With a little effort, and not much money, you can
bring quality web site traffic to your site right away.
Although not every technique is appropriate for every site, choose a
few that fit you and watch your traffic surge.
About the author:
Noah Ulrich is webmaster of <a href=
"http://www.informativeresources.com" a> His site provides top quality
resale rights, guaranteed signups, and web
traffic to businesses worldwide.
Eight Simple Steps For Enhancing Your Website by Alden Smith
To be successful with your online business, whether you are selling your
own product, services or are selling for other merchants as an affiliate,
you need a Web site that focuses on that subject alone. The site must be
easy to build, maintenance-free, low cost, credible, and a powerful
traffic-builder and customer-converter.
Having the right tools or product alone will not insure the success of
your website. There are many factors to be considered when designing your
site. And unfortunately, most of these are usually ignored by Internet
business owners. Here are eight simple steps to enhance your site and make
it profitable.
1. Build It for Speed There is no denying that in this day and age that
people are in a hurry. You have between 10 and 30 seconds to capture your
potential customer's attention. To minimize your load time, keep graphics
small. Compress them where possible. Use flashy technology (JavaScript,
Flash, Streaming Audio/Video, animation) sparingly and only if it is
imperative to your presentation.
2. Target your Market Know who your market is and make certain that your
site caters to their needs. It is critical that your site reflect the
values of your potential customers. Is your market mostly business
professionals? If so, the site must be clean and professional. Is your
product aimed at teenagers and young adults? Then your site could be more
informal and relaxed. The key is to know your market and build the site to
their preferences.
3. Focus the Site Make certain your web site is focused on the goal of
selling your product or service. If your business offers many products,
dedicate a unique page for each instead of trying to sell them all from
one page. This can easily be accomplished through the utilization of
subdomains.
4. Build Credibility The most professionally designed site won't sell if
your customers don't believe in you. Become an authority in your chosen
niche. The internet is all about information, not just marketing. People
go to the internet to find information on a particular subject. Providing
clear concise articles focused on the subject of your site makes you an
expert in your field. Providing a clear privacy statement is also away to
build your credibility. Provide a prominent link to your privacy statement
from every page on the site as well as from any location that you are
asking your visitors for personal information. Provide legitimate contact
information on line, including your mailing address and phone number.
Don't hide behind a computer!
5. Keep navigation simple Make site navigation easy and intuitive. Simple
and smooth navigation adds to the convenience of the visitors. Add
powerful search and catalog features. Many times a lot of visitors do not
have the patience to navigate through the whole website to find what they
are looking for.
6. Keep it consistent Make sure the site is consistent in look, feel and
design. Nothing is more jarring and disturbing to a customer than feeling
as if they have just gone to another site. Keep colors and themes constant
throughout the site.
7. Make your site interactive and personalized Make your website
interactive. Add feedback forms as well as email forms that allow your
prospective customers to ask you any questions they might have pertaining
to a product. Personalization of your website is another key element that
can lead to customer delight and can increase your sales. Personalization
technology provides you the analytic tools to facilitate cross-selling and
up-selling when the customer is buying online. It would give you an idea
of what products to cross-sell and up-sell. For example, when a person
buys a CD player, a disc cleaner can also be offered.
8. Content is King Good content sells a product. Ask yourself the
following questions. Does your copy convey the message you wish to get
across to your visitors? Is it compelling? Does it lead your visitor
through the sales process? Have others review, critique and edit your copy
to insure it is delivering the intended message. Always double check your
spelling and grammar.
These eight, simple rules will go a long way toward the improvement of
your website and most importantly, turn visitors into customers.
About the Author
Alden Smith is an award winning author who has been marketing on the
internet for over 7 years. His site, <href:http://www.for-the-record.biz>,
is loaded with articles and information for the beginning blogger and
internet marketer. Articles are posted daily, addressing everything from
CSS to blogging for the beginning markete
So You Want to build a profitable website? A seven step strategy for the novice. By Kannan Balakrishnan
In an earlier post I had given website building as a profitable method.
But how does one proceed to build a website? This article outlines a
strategy for the novice.
1. Decide the type of website.
Websites are basically of two types. Content oriented and service
oriented. Content oriented websites generally provide useful
information, like a website on Kalidasa; whereas service oriented
websites give you services like selling a product or service. The
design of a content oriented website requires less programming
but more of data collection and updating. Service oriented sites
need programming and database skills. Depending upon your time,
skill level and financial power you must decide which type to
select and what content or service to offer. This itself is a
process and may require a feasibility study. (I will discuss some
of the possibilities in a later post.)
2. Design your site structure.
Prior knowledge about the structure and appearance of your site is
necessary in order to effectively organize your site . The navigation
structure of your site must be planned in advance by drawing on a paper
,or using some design tool. This will help you to organize the collected
data effectively. The site must not have too many levels to make
navigation difficult . Also the content have to be spread in such a way
that the home page is not noo much cluttered.( more about this later)
3. Collect the necessary data.
Once the decision about the content and nature of your site has been made,
the next step is to collect the details required .This may take weeks or
even months depending upon the type of site. This is the most interesting
as well as daunting task because organizing the raw data into information
that is appealing without violating copyrights is challenging.
4. Select a place to host.
This depends upon your financial state and speed and space
requirements.
If possible go for paid hosting. Also deliberation should be made
between Linux and windows hosting. (one or two articles on the subject
can be expected shortly)
5. Design your site.
A simple but elegant design is preferred. Too much graphics or flash
gimmicks will reduce the effectiveness of your site. Also efficient
utilization of space is highly recommended. The home page should be
compelling . also special care should be taken to allow navigation from
other pages to main page. Place should be left for advertising in the
design itself.
6. Decide on the promotion and advertisement strategy.
Various site promotion strategies are available. You should be
aware of them and decide which strategy best suits your site.
Also you earn additional income by placing advertisements in
your site.One important thing to keep in mind is that people
come to your site for a purpose and advertisements on your site
should not disturb the. Too much advertisement tends to keep
people away. Also advertisements in less traversed areas of your
site are of no avail.
7. launch your site and be in the path of continuous improvement
Once you launch your site ,you should continuously modify and monitor your
site. This will help you to analyze the traffic of your site and also
have an idea of trends. Also keep an eye on competing sites so that you
keep the advantage.
Most of the steps discussed above needs detailed deliberations and we will
be posting more articles on each phase separately.
Kannan balakrishan is a renowned Indian writer.
7 Effective Homepage Tips that will have your Visitors Begging for More! by Anthony Jewell
The truth is how you present your website will determine how customers view you and your product. This can directly translate into how effective your website actually is and whether or not you get alot of sales or just a few. Think of it this way. Whenever you go into a store you usually always go in from the front entrance, not the side or the back, but the front. Just like when people visit your website, they probably always come in from the home page and go around your site. Sometimes they may come in from another link to one of your subpage but trust me they will jump on your front page to check it out and rightly so.
The front page is where all of the best information should be. Now this is not to say that your subpages as useless and that there shouldn't be valuable information on them. I am just saying that the main page should contain timbits of all the valuable information located throughout your site. Usually your front page is the main attraction and includes features and elements that your subpages won't have. It is almost like a "wow page" full of rich content.
Here are some tips on how to impress your visitors as soon as they get to your site:
Tip Number 1: Offer something to the visitor as soon as they get to your site:
-This is important to really grab a visitors attention. Some things you may want to put at the top or near the top of your site are free offers like "free ebook" or "free domain" ect...
Tip Number 2: Give them content that is updated daily:
-Make sure you have content on your front page that is updated daily. This will not only give them something to look forward to every day but it will show that your site is updated often and gives them a reason to keep coming back.
Tip Number 3: Showcase new and featured product:
-Showcasing products on the front page will immediately get visitors interested on what you are offering. It will help show them what your site is about as well as it will make them want to browse more of your e-store.
Tip Number 4: Add highlights from other parts of your website:
Add little bits of info from your subpages to give them a view of what your site contains. For example if your site has an article section post a few new articles each day.
Tip Number 5: Offer sales and discounts on your front page:
Offering discounts and coupons will definitely get people interested in what you are selling. Saving money and getting a good deal is always a good reason to look around and purchase something off of your site. Make sure the sales can be seen clearly and do have an expiration date that you stick to.
Tip Number 6: Add content that is only specific for your front page:
-Another great thing to do is offer content that can only be found on your front page. This will give your visitors even more content to choose from without having to view it on every page. Some things you may just have on the front page are tips, news headlines or article samples.
Tip Number 7: Don't post full stories or articles on the front page but timbits of them so they click through your site:
-Whenever you are posting articles or stories on the front page make sure to post only a sample of the article. Include a "click here for more" link so that they can view the whole article. This will interest them more will have them going to new parts of your website. It will also help keep your front page from being cluttered.
Anthony Jewell has over 6 Years experience in the Web & Graphics World. You can visit my business and join in conversation at our forum at http://www.logo2d.com/forum & http://www.logo2d.com
©Copyright 2005 Logo2D.com : Feel free to use this article freely but please keep in the copyright
Article Source: http://www.free-articles-zone.com
The front page is where all of the best information should be. Now this is not to say that your subpages as useless and that there shouldn't be valuable information on them. I am just saying that the main page should contain timbits of all the valuable information located throughout your site. Usually your front page is the main attraction and includes features and elements that your subpages won't have. It is almost like a "wow page" full of rich content.
Here are some tips on how to impress your visitors as soon as they get to your site:
Tip Number 1: Offer something to the visitor as soon as they get to your site:
-This is important to really grab a visitors attention. Some things you may want to put at the top or near the top of your site are free offers like "free ebook" or "free domain" ect...
Tip Number 2: Give them content that is updated daily:
-Make sure you have content on your front page that is updated daily. This will not only give them something to look forward to every day but it will show that your site is updated often and gives them a reason to keep coming back.
Tip Number 3: Showcase new and featured product:
-Showcasing products on the front page will immediately get visitors interested on what you are offering. It will help show them what your site is about as well as it will make them want to browse more of your e-store.
Tip Number 4: Add highlights from other parts of your website:
Add little bits of info from your subpages to give them a view of what your site contains. For example if your site has an article section post a few new articles each day.
Tip Number 5: Offer sales and discounts on your front page:
Offering discounts and coupons will definitely get people interested in what you are selling. Saving money and getting a good deal is always a good reason to look around and purchase something off of your site. Make sure the sales can be seen clearly and do have an expiration date that you stick to.
Tip Number 6: Add content that is only specific for your front page:
-Another great thing to do is offer content that can only be found on your front page. This will give your visitors even more content to choose from without having to view it on every page. Some things you may just have on the front page are tips, news headlines or article samples.
Tip Number 7: Don't post full stories or articles on the front page but timbits of them so they click through your site:
-Whenever you are posting articles or stories on the front page make sure to post only a sample of the article. Include a "click here for more" link so that they can view the whole article. This will interest them more will have them going to new parts of your website. It will also help keep your front page from being cluttered.
Anthony Jewell has over 6 Years experience in the Web & Graphics World. You can visit my business and join in conversation at our forum at http://www.logo2d.com/forum & http://www.logo2d.com
©Copyright 2005 Logo2D.com : Feel free to use this article freely but please keep in the copyright
Article Source: http://www.free-articles-zone.com
Making Money over the Internet : 5 Cool Tips By Kannan Balakrishnan
The Internet is a fast growing medium, trancending the personal ,geographical, political and cultural barriers. Because of its popularity and diversity, for an ambitious and hard working person, it is the right medium to make unlimited wealth th the only thing is that you should know how to do it, the knack of doing it comes only with practice ,but a non-starter doesnt get any practice.In this short exposure i will be scraching some of the ways you can make cool money on the internet ,legally!!. the way you choose depends upon your skill , aptitude and taste.
1. create your own website :
Website creation is an easy task, provided you know it, there are many providers which provide you with space where you put your site.,and once you have a good site and the contents are intersting to others , people will start visiting your site. The internet also contains good advice as to increase traffic in your site. then you can place ads and links from other sites( affiliate links) and get money. Also if you build a site of interst to your local community, paid ads can be sought from the locality.
2. write an ebook and sell it .
If you have the slightest writing skills, the you can pack your ideas and experiences or even imaginations into an ebook, which can be downloaded by others and sell it. There are many sites offering the service of selling an ebook for you. By writing an ebook (any thing written in textfile format can be converted into an ebook),and 50 or 60 pages of your expressions can earn you an audience of thousands and good money.
3. Paid Surveys.
Abundant locations are availble in the internet which allows you to make money participating in survrys. these sites give you a questionnire and once you answer a fixed number of questionnires, you get paid!! this is trading your time for money, and generally require not much skill.
4. Share Trading
Internet is a good medium, where you can practice online trading. many agencies allow you to open an account, buy and sell shares. only thing is that you should know the techniques of trading ,otherwise you will loose money like anything.
5. For the lazy people:recieve emails and earn cash
Many sites allow you to earn money by just simply. reading your email. inly thing is that if you are willing to spend four or five hours a day reading emails, you can earn a lot of money. the amount you earned will depend upon the number of mails you actually opened and read
I just introduced some of the cool ways in which you can earn money on the internet!! I will like to hear your cooments and aquestions!! More in my next article.
Kannan Balakrishnan is a faculty at department of computer applications Cochin University of Science and Technology ,Kerala, India.He can be contacted at kannanb@post.com He expects to write for magazines and newspapers worldwide
1. create your own website :
Website creation is an easy task, provided you know it, there are many providers which provide you with space where you put your site.,and once you have a good site and the contents are intersting to others , people will start visiting your site. The internet also contains good advice as to increase traffic in your site. then you can place ads and links from other sites( affiliate links) and get money. Also if you build a site of interst to your local community, paid ads can be sought from the locality.
2. write an ebook and sell it .
If you have the slightest writing skills, the you can pack your ideas and experiences or even imaginations into an ebook, which can be downloaded by others and sell it. There are many sites offering the service of selling an ebook for you. By writing an ebook (any thing written in textfile format can be converted into an ebook),and 50 or 60 pages of your expressions can earn you an audience of thousands and good money.
3. Paid Surveys.
Abundant locations are availble in the internet which allows you to make money participating in survrys. these sites give you a questionnire and once you answer a fixed number of questionnires, you get paid!! this is trading your time for money, and generally require not much skill.
4. Share Trading
Internet is a good medium, where you can practice online trading. many agencies allow you to open an account, buy and sell shares. only thing is that you should know the techniques of trading ,otherwise you will loose money like anything.
5. For the lazy people:recieve emails and earn cash
Many sites allow you to earn money by just simply. reading your email. inly thing is that if you are willing to spend four or five hours a day reading emails, you can earn a lot of money. the amount you earned will depend upon the number of mails you actually opened and read
I just introduced some of the cool ways in which you can earn money on the internet!! I will like to hear your cooments and aquestions!! More in my next article.
Kannan Balakrishnan is a faculty at department of computer applications Cochin University of Science and Technology ,Kerala, India.He can be contacted at kannanb@post.com He expects to write for magazines and newspapers worldwide
Friday, November 04, 2005
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