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Brand Equity is defined as the value (positive and negative) a brand adds to an organizations products and services.

How do you know that a product has brand equity?

A product with brand equity will:

1) Be able to charge a premium for it’s brand (i.e. the cost of Heinz ketchup versus generic)

2) Evoke long-term loyalty (I’ve eaten KD since I was a kid and it MUST be the real KD)

3) Have a significant market share (notice that McDonald’s has more market share than it’s next 3 competitors combined).

SOURCE: Ad Age (Jan. 1, 2007)

I personally have never been satisfied with traditional ways to measure Brand Equity. Hard numbers such as market share or ROI are great but these metrics are far too broad to attribute to just Brand Equity.

Models and methodologies like The BrandAsset® Valuator (Young & Rubicam) or Winning BrandsTM(ACNielsen) tend to be the current standard.

(source www.zibs.com)

(source www.zibs.com)

But these are soft metrics that are difficult to assign value to. And it’s difficult to separate from other influencers i.e. Does a brand have top market share because of it’s brand power or because it’s got the best packaging? Maybe you spent more on marketing than your competitors?

Jonathan Knowles (branding guru) suggests that “the focus needs to be on the metrics that capture and explain customer behaviour, not simply customer attitudes”.

So can we use social media to measure a product’s Brand Equity?

Most frequent users of social media will say YES!

A quick search on Digg shows 11 front page stories featuring Apple (iTunes, iPod, Mac) in the last week. Will Ferrel earned over 5000 diggs this week and he’s often a favorite with the Digg crowd.

Compare this to our “Brand Leaders” Heinz Ketchup has only been “hot” twice in the past year and Kraft Dinner not at all.

But McDonalds. Oh, yeah they’re hot! A quick search of Digg shows that they are firmly ingrained in our culture with 15 front page stories in the past month alone.

Does this mean that social media is just a barometer for what’s current? No!

Social Media is more than just a ‘top of mind’ radar for Brands. Social Media can be used to build a brand (Will Ferrel) and to reinforce a brand (McDonalds).

Moreover, Social Media Monitoring provides Marketers with a very powerful Leading Indicator. When used in conjunction with Lagging Indicators such as ROI and market share, Social Media Monitoring provides Marketers with REAL metrics.

Author:  Jennifer Osborne writer and marketer for Search Engine People.

When you think of how blogging started so many moons ago, it was used as an online diary or more commonly a travel log. This would keep track of where you have been, what you saw and where you were going.

You could easily keep your family and friends updated on your latest excursion in a new place. The blogging world exploded and more often you were seeing political blogs, photography blogs and now corporate blogs? Did you hear me right? Yes.

Corporate blogs are the (not so) new seo tool that are vastly becoming popular on a number of sites showing up on and around the web. How do blogs help your SEO campaign? Well there are a number of factors that blogs can help you with in terms of SEO.

First of all, they are adding content. What is content? Content is king. When you decide to add a blog to any site you must first of all commit to actually adding content, at the very least on a weekly basis. The best content of course is original articles written by you or someone within your company. If you are not as scholarly as you would like and find it difficult to write articles on your desired subject, you can find yourself a content writer, there are many available for just this purpose, and you can verbalize what you would like to be told in an article and have them then put that verbage into an article, and voila! This can of course become very costly.

Another great way to add content, is to read articles written by other authors and comment on them. Find articles that you agree or disagree with and add your own ideas to that article (Alway’s remember to cite those authors). Finally the true tested method is keep up to date with the latest news in your field and keep your readers and customers up-to-date on the developments. Anyway you decide to keep your blog updated, just be sure you do just that. Blogging is a dedication and you will gain the benefits in your SEO efforts.

Secondly, a blog can be independently marketed within your SEO campaign. There are a number of blog directories such as blog catalog and Blogorama that you can add your blog to for free. These directories are great places to gain traffic to your site and find other interesting blogs to read and learn from.

You may be familiar with blog traffic sites which can gain your blog a number of loyal readers. These sites like Blog Mad and Blog Soldiers offer you a way to increase the number of times your site is being seen by simply surfing through a variety of sites included in their data base. Another great marketing tip for your corporate blog marketing.

A blog needs to be a functional and helpful resource and this will gain a number of subscribers to any blog. The more subscribers the blog has commenting and reading the content, the more likely your blog will create a buzz and become a useful tool to a number of people in your industry or field. What happens next, you ask? Natural linking. The ultimate in link development. By natural linking I mean, if your site is known as the ultimate resource other websites will naturally link to your blog as a tool for their clients and customers. We call this link baiting in the SEO world. Blogs are some of the best link bait there is in the seo world. So make your blog as creative, fun and informative for your readers so they will come back time and again.

In summary, SEO consists of two major components. Content development and link development, both of which can be achieved with the assistance of a blog. The initial stages of any new search engine optimization campaign can be difficult, but if you commit and stick to the power of blogging, you can create a community within your field and be a huge success in your SEO efforts.

Author:  Carrie Haggerty has been working in SEO and Internet marketing over the past 3 years. She has started her own SEO Firm, http:// www.cmhwebservices.com. She also has started her own SEO article website strictly for webmasters to submit, and is marketing it the new internet business owners as a resource.

As any good search engine optimization company knows, in search, more so than any other medium, you have a very short window of opportunity in which to engage your prospect.  The only way to get a solid competitive advantage in this arena is to utilize various techniques in order to make sure that you are giving a prospect exactly what it is that he or she is looking for. Otherwise, your prospect will simply click the back button and visit one of your competitors – a process that only takes seconds.

One way to gain a competitive advantage, of course, is to work on the website itself.  Any search engine optimization company worth its salt will also be involved in conversion testing on your website – in other words, making certain that the visitors who arrive on your site are likely to take a point of action that eventually leads to a sale.  Split tests, modifications in content, different color schemes, and numerous other variable elements can all have a measurable impact.

There is also another way that a quality search engine optimization company will seek to maximize the value of the prospects that find your website through search engines.  In this case, however, it is using your company differentiators in the keyphrases that they target to make sure that the traffic that comes to your site is of a very high quality.

Gaining a Competitive Advantage with Differentiators

As more and more companies turn to organic search to gain a competitive advantage while promoting their products and services, it can be increasingly difficult to achieve high rankings for the generic terms that everyone in your industry is pursuing.  While any ranking is ultimately attainable, eventually a search engine optimization company has to decide whether the effort involved is worth it, especially when it recognizes that you can get overall better results from the campaign by making sure that a very high percentage of people that are typing keyphrases into search engines are looking for exactly what you offer.

This is why your search engine optimization company should be able to leverage differentiators in your keyphrases to give you the best competitive advantage available.

What Keyphrases Will Work Best for Your Business?

Suppose that you are in an industry where companies can have a wide array of prices, approaches, customer service levels, and so on.  Instead of targeting, from the outset, the general keyphrase that defines the industry (for example “email marketing”), a good search engine optimization company will take the time to help you gain a competitive advantage by realizing what is different about your company in order to a.) attract very highly targeted prospects who know what they are seeking and b.) reduce the competitiveness of the keyphrases they are choosing.

Let’s take a look at a high-end provider of email marketing that has advanced web-based functionality and focuses on the B2B market. This fictional business is seeking a competitive advantage by working with a search engine optimization company.  We can safely assume that the percentage of people that type “email marketing” into a search engine who are looking for this exact type of company is anywhere from between 0 and 100%.

By looking into the popularity of other variations, however, we can see that it is nowhere near 100%.  Phrases like “cheap email marketing” or “free email marketing” are very popular, demonstrating that many people seeking “email marketing” are not looking for exactly the service that the provider is offering.

Imagine that instead of targeting “email marketing”, a daunting task (that, even if achieved, assures that a high percentage of visitors that come to the site are not looking for the provider’s particular type of solution), the search engine optimization company takes advantage of the provider’s differentiators.  In this case, the search engine optimization company would instead target phrases such as “business to business email marketing” and “web-based email marketing”.  Suddenly the two objectives have been achieved - the provider knows that a much higher percentage of visitors that are typing these terms are actually looking for the right kind of company and the competitiveness of the phrases has also been reduced, leading to faster and higher rankings.

Using Modifiers to Give You the Edge

There are hundreds of modifiers that can give a competitive advantage by reflecting a company’s differentiators, including words such as “free”, “affordable”, “high-end”, “full service”, “proven”, “turnkey”, etc.  The point is that by making use of your unique differentiators in the search terms you target, your search engine optimization company is already setting the table for your prospect before he or she even clicks over to your website.  When the message that is seen on your site then supports the keyphrase that was typed, you now have an engaged visitor.  This can mean more leads, less site abandonment, and better overall website performance.

Conclusion

Remember, your company is better than the others out there.  Ask yourself why, and then tell your search engine optimization company to take advantage of these differences in your keyphrases to give you a competitive advantage in your industry.  The subtle addition of a few seemingly minor modifiers can have a huge impact on your bottom line.

Author:  Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was named the number one organic search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld in 2006 and 2007.  Scott has contributed content to many publications including The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Brown, 2008), Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide.  Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

Deciding exactly how you’ll market your next product, business, or campaign is one of the most important questions you can ask your self. And I do hope you even bother to ask. The correct answer will decide your success or failure.

Should you go for the sale in one step of marketing magic? Or should you spread it out over two or more steps? There’s no clear, one-size-fits-all answer. And here’s why…

The general guideline is to use a multi-step campaign for higher priced items, or products that require a shift in your prospects behavior. We humans tend to resist change, as you know. So you’ll have to engage in some wining and dining, and education to persuade them to believe the benefits vastly outweigh the price or inconvenience.

A new product on the market scene will usually perform better with the multi-step approach. Again it has to do with human nature. Allowing some time and space for people to ‘warm-up’ to the new kid on the block.

If you think about it… the best solutions to many marketing problems can be found simply by considering good ‘ole human nature! Ask your self how you would react to your own marketing message. Or, ask others you know.

But remember what I said earlier. Sometimes the very best approach isn’t always clear-cut. I’ll explain…

Think of the marketing context. Example: What if you want to sell a high ticket product to your ’segmented’ list of previous buyers? Here’s a quick sidebar…

I hope you do segment your marketing list. Categorize your list into those who have bought from you and those who have yet to buy. You can take it further by categorizing by product price-points. Low-end and higher-end buyers. See?

It makes for much, much smarter marketing. If you segment your list you’ll be setting your self up for maximized ROI.

Ok… back to the example…

Offering a higher priced product to a segmented list of previous ‘higher end’ buyers won’t require as much wining and dining. And remember these buyers are 100% warm prospects… assuming they’re satisfied with what they previously bought from you!

You can usually get away with sending them straight to your sales page. What are some examples of effective online multi-step marketing?

There is no clear winner in the online world. This is simply due to so many variables such as product, market, origin of traffic prior to seeing your message, quality of traffic, keywords that capture prospects in different buying stages, etc.

There are many more variables involved. But those are just a few to think about.

But… landing pages can be extremely effective for several reasons. The first useful task they perform for you is to filter out prospects who’ll only waste your time and bandwidth. Why… ?

Easy. If someone is NOT willing to give you their contact information, then they’ll more than likely not respond to your message on the other side.

And landing pages also serve as a mini pre-sell. If your landing page copy is good and full of great benefits, then they’ll click through with demonstrated interest in what you have to say.

Other online forms include pop-ups. You have entries, delayed, and exits. Each one can be effective, and the only way to find out for sure is to test. Pop-ups form the initial consent by your prospect to enter in a long term, multi-step marketing campaign. More on that in a minute…

You need to be aware of several important concerns with ‘pre-exit’ pop-ups.

Perhaps the greatest risk you run is distracting your prospect with too many messages. Ideally, you want your reader to focus on your most desired result. And an entry or delayed pop-up, of any variety, will only serve as a distraction.

Exit pop-ups can be effective for converting some who you would have lost, anyway. And with effective copy, you can capture those who were sitting on the fence.

One of the greatest marketing sins committed by BOTH online and offline businesses is failure to adequately follow-up. Amazing as it sounds, many offline businesses make NO effort to follow-up with their contacts.

And this is where you can set your business apart from the rest.

Keeping sincere, valuable contact with your prospects and customers will compel them to remember you. They’ll remember that you continued to provide them with valuable information. They’ll also remember that you cared enough about them.

Entire books have been written about multi-step marketing! This is just a taste that’ll get you headed in the right direction.

Author:  A former college dropout, Dan Lok transformed himself from a grocery bagger in a local supermarket to a multi-millionaire. Dan came to North America with little knowledge of the English language and few contacts. If you’re ready to take your online business to the next level, go to: http://www.websiteconversionexpert.com/public/department32.cfm

Creating a feed is not enough - not if you want people to read it. You need to let people know that your feed exists and try to get them to subscribe to it. Promoting a feed is similar to promoting a Web site or an e-mail newsletter. You have to work at it a bit. Luckily, some easy-to-use tools are available to help you, and im going to show you each, and how to use them effectively.

Registering Your Feed with Directories

The number one way to let people - those outside your usual range of contacts - know that you have a feed is to register it with as many directories as possible. This concept is similar to registering your Web site with Web-site directories such as Yahoo!

Of course, you should also promote your Web site content itself. When you get people to your Web site, if they like the content, they may look for your feed so that they can keep up to date on any changes that appear on your site. Check out this article for more tips on promoting your website/feed. Online Marketing Techniques.

RSS is a relatively new technology that’s causing a lot of excitement, and many people want to get in on the act - so they start directory sites.

Some sites hope that you’ll come for the free feeds and stay to buy customized, specialized feeds or other RSS-related services.

So, you need to do the legwork and register with as many directories as you can. To get you going, checkout Kevins article, a post where he has listed the best and most valuable sites and directories to submit your blog/rss feed too.

If your feed is based on a blog, you can still register at all the RSS directories, but you should also register at blog directories. Blogging is a whole world onto itself. In fact, more blog directories exist than RSS directories. Do a Web search using the keywords blog and directory, and you’ll find what seems like millions of listings.

To reach those who aren’t as RSS savvy or as motivated to find feeds, read on, as we look at other ways to promote your feed.

Linking to Your Feed

Of course, when people do find your site, you want your website visitors to subscribe to your feed, so you need to put an RSS or XML button on your site. I recommend you stick with the universally known orange rss button.

Add a hyperlink to the button, linking to your RSS feed’s file. To add a hyperlink to a button, select the button, and use your web creation software’s hyperlink command. In the HTML code, the result looks something like the following:

<a href=”autocad_tips_newsletter.xml”><imgsrc=”images/rss_btn.gif”></a>

Now visitors can easily subscribe to your feed.

You need to make clear what the RSS feed is about. If you have a page that includes many different types of content, label the RSS button with the name of your feed. If you have a place on your site for visitors to sign up for an e-mail newsletter, that’s a good place to put your RSS link. Then people can choose which way they want to receive information from you.

Getting Auto-Discovered

Some RSS readers can automatically find RSS feeds on a Web page. This feature is called auto-discovery.

You can ensure that this auto-discovery works by using the link HTML tag and the code on any web page that contains an RSS feed. You place this code in the head section of your page, which means between the <head> and </head> tags. Here’s the code:

<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”RSS” href=”http://www.your_URL_here.com/feedfilename.xml”>

You can put anything you want for the title attribute, but it should relate to your feed, because some browsers display this text. If you have more than one feed on a page, create a separate link tag for each feed, giving each one a different title.

For an Atom feed, the type should be “application/atom+xml”.

Explaining Just What RSS Is

Let’s face it - not everyone knows what RSS is yet. Unless your clientele is very geeky, you need to explain it to them. Most sites don’t, but some do.

When explaining RSS, keep your explanation simple and appropriate for your audience. You don’t really need to explain the technology, just what it means for them and how they can subscribe. If you want, recommend some RSS readers to make the process painless or refer them to a browser-based reader.

Helpful text next to the RSS button can say something like “Subscribe to My RSS Feed on Widget Technology.” Here are just a few phrases that you could use:

• Get regular updates about widget technology
• Keep informed about widget technology
• Don’t miss the latest news about widget technology!

More people are finding out about RSS every day, so even if they don’t sign up right away, they may the next time they visit. Having an RSS feed shows that you’re “with it.” The implication is that if you are up to date enough to have a feed, you’re similarly up to date in your field - and that’s what your visitors want.

So evangelize a little, strut your stuff, and brag about being on the RSS bandwagon.

Telling Others All about Your Feed

To market your Web site, you do more than just register it and hope that people come. You probably proactively tell people about your site in many ways. Web-site marketing is a huge field.

Some common ways to market a Web site also apply to marketing your RSS feed. These methods are:

• Cross-link with other sites: Ask sites that link to you to add a phrase about your RSS feed. Using the phrase “RSS news feed available” may be enough.
• Send out press releases: Because RSS is new, you can send out press releases about your news feed. That’s right; the feed is news in itself.

Tip: When marketing your website or RSS feed, be sure to avoid the most common Internet Marketing Mistakes

RSS feed links in your e-mail signature

A signature is text that automatically appears at the bottom of every e-mail you send. Almost all e-mail programs let you create a signature. You can often add links to this text. Your Web-site URL should be there. Why not a link to your RSS feed as well? Think of it as an RSS button in every e-mail!

Writing articles for other sites

A great way to get links to your site is to write articles for newsletters and sites that cover your field. The way others pay you is to link to your site. You probably don’t want to substitute a link to your RSS feed for the link to your site (but then again, you may). However, other sites can also give you a byline. You can mention your RSS feed in the byline or perhaps even in your article.

Telling everyone you know

“Hey! Guess what? I have an RSS feed! Pass it on.” Wherever you go - conferences, business meetings, and so on - or whomever you talk to - friends, colleagues, and customers; let them know about your new RSS feed. They’ll probably say, “What’s an RSS feed?” and you can tell them all about it. It’s a great way to break the ice at a party.

Tip: Why not put the URL for your feed on your business card, stationery, or brochure?

Keeping Your E-mail Newsletter

If you have a successful e-mail newsletter, I don’t recommend giving it up. E-mail is still the way that most people get their news. But you should definitely mention your RSS feed in your newsletter as an alternative way to get the same information, with a link to your site’s explanation about RSS.

You can - and should - update your RSS feed when you update your Web site. If your newsletter is monthly, for example, and covers updates on your site throughout the previous month, people who subscribe to your RSS feed receive the news before your newsletter subscribers. You can plug this advantage to your readers. One of the major advantages of RSS is to notify your readers of changes as soon as they happen. By comparison, an e-mail newsletter is old news by the time you get it published.

Branding Your Feed

You probably hired a Web designer to make your Web site look beautiful, if you’re not a designer yourself. You carefully use your logo on your site, your letterhead, your PowerPoint presentations, and all your publicity materials. Why not brand your RSS feed as well?

You can probably think of more ways to publicize your feed. Remember that publicizing your feed also publicizes your website and your business. If you know of any more please feel free to comment or leave your feedback.

Author:  Andy MacDonald, CEO of Swift Media UK, a website design & search marketing company. For daily tips on Blogging, Marketing, SEO & Making Money Online, Checkout our SEO & Marketing Tips for Webmasters blog or Subscribe by RSS.

The golden achievement in organic search is the accomplishment of acquiring a “one box” in Google.

The one box is when you conduct a search and the site in question has such an enormous amount of themed content that it returns the main URL with subcategories underneath it to provide searchers with an extended selection.

Our site recently graduated to it’s own one box for the term SEO Design Solutions. Over time, your site can acquire additional keywords when referenced in searches as indicated by a prominent SEO company in this search for the keywords SEO Services.

Speaking from personal experience, this occurs when your site has amassed enough links and pages that are themed in nature about a particular subject and the search engine now views your content with a degree of authority and grants it the most relevant result for the query in question.

This is not limited to standard queries, according to this informative article in Google Operating System from 2006 this phenomenon is nothing new.

Deliberately creating the one box for your content represents (1) that you understand the value of delineated site structure for your internal links as a definitive factor of relevance and positioning and (2) your content has reached critical mass for your links per page equation or (3) it is simply the most relevant result. How Google determines that is a mystery to most, unless you happen to be one of the hundreds of PHD’s responsible for administering the algorithm. However, if you have more than 500 pages indexed in Google, then you are a candidate for the one box if your content is organized and linked appropriately.

Ways to toggle this are through positioning your site as a solution which involves numerous steps such as (1) creating an index or glossary of related terms and segmenting them into keyword rich folder names (2) then by linking to those references in your documents the value of the supported material lends authority to your entire site as a resource (wikipedia’s internal linking practices in essence).

The “One Box” is a graduation on one level as the first noticeable step that the spiders are referencing your data as a resource. Search engine spiders are smart enough to determine what an about us page is, read and organize your product offerings into subcategories for the sake of consolidation in the quest for returning the most relevant results.

To help search engines along however, you can use descriptive sub folders to augment this phenomenon (such as putting all of your services in a services folder, then taking a step further by adding specific information silos inside of each folder such as 3-5 pages of related content like SEO Services, Web Development Services, Keyword Research Services, etc.). Then build links to each of the pages until they are sufficiently positioned and ranking on their own accord (it may take 50 links per page or 100 links per page to set off the effect).

Although it may not be clear exactly what spawns the one box (aside from a well planned site structure and strategic linking), one thing is clear. With the advent of universal search replicating this phenomenon will become a true crowning achievement utilizing video, podcasts, news feeds and other forms of aggregated data to solidify a dominant search position.

Author:  Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

When you think of branding, you might think of logos, colors, taglines, and names relating to a given product, company, or service. Although branding encompasses those element, true branding is a far more powerful and subtle issue than you might expect.

Successful branding is about creating an emotional relationship between an individual and the representative company or product. This means that good branding creates a response in people—whether a tagline makes us feel comfortable, or a logo makes us feel energetic, or a color scheme makes us calm—these responses are the desired results of effective branding.

Branding can be achieved using a variety of techniques. Contemporary marketing theory breaks down branding into two types:

• Direct Experience. In direct experience branding, the emotional relationship is one-to-one. If you have a great burger at Ye Olde Burger Shoppe, the satisfying results of that meal relate emotionally to the product and brand.
• Indirect Messaging. The indirect method uses slogans, sponsored events, and promotions to connect people to product brands. The key to successful indirect messaging is repetition, usually in the form of TV and magazine ads, and billboards.

Websites can benefit from both forms of marketing, although websites themselves are almost always going to be a direct experience for people these days. You go to a site for a reason—to read aWeblog, purchase copies of a favorite author’s books, and so forth. You interact with the site, and your experience there creates the emotional one-to-one feeling found within direct experience marketing.

When creating a lasting relationship between an end user and a product, company, organization, or service, Web designers need to plan the direct experience to have a specific emotional result.

For example, my bank’s website provides excellent service, useful management tools, and provides me with an emotional sense of security. This kind of bonding between a site’s visitor and a product can be accomplished using a range of specific usability techniques.

But we can also draw from indirect messaging techniques to enhance our goals. All of the following things can work on the indirect level by providing repetitive images:

• Using consistent placement for logos from page to page
• Using consistent color and graphic styles

Ads on websites are considered indirect messaging, but the actual website itself is a direct experience.

• Typography
• Iconography

Combining an effective direct experience and consistent statement of brand will help you to bond your site visitors to your site, creating lasting, rewarding relationships. When you embark on your branding efforts, be sure to checkout our corporate branding mistakes post to ensure you dont make the mistakes that many others do.

Author:  Andy MacDonald, CEO of Swift Media UK, a website design & search marketing company. For daily tips on Blogging, Marketing, SEO & Making Money Online, Checkout our SEO & Marketing Tips for Webmasters blog or Subscribe by RSS.

While we all dream of building that website that will be a home run, and make us rich, here’s an easier way to establish a dependable income stream.

It’s a lot easier to set up a simple website that generates just $10 - $20 profit per day. Imagine if you had 100 of these. That would be $1000 - $2000 per day. That would be $365,000 - $730,000 per year. Now that $10 to $20 per site, per day, doesn’t sound so small does it.

This is sort-of like owning a vending machine route. The route owner realizes that no one of his machines is likely to make him wealthy. However, week after week, the cumulative sales from a route of… say 100 machines… provides a very nice living for him and his family. I do know people who own vending machine routes, and they do earn above average incomes.

Getting back to setting up these website “vending machines.” It doesn’t have to be very complicated. In fact most of us make things so complicated in our minds that we never even get started.

Let me give you a plan for setting up one site a day over the next month. We need to get you to commit to yourself that you won’t make excuses. We need to get you to commit to yourself that you won’t look for reasons why it “might not work.” Instead, you need to decided that it can work, and then just do it.

Here is your fast and easy plan for the next 30 days:

1) Identify 30 profitable niches, or topics, that you can build a simple website around. To make it really simple, these can be websites of only a few pages. I’d recommend a homepage which can be a direct sales page, or a blog. Off to the side you can post some articles related to your topic that you can write yourself, or find on a site like EzineArticles.com The articles, or blogs, are “search engine bait” and are what will bring in free traffic for you.

2) Locate 30 products that you can market from these websites. Ideally, these will be digital products that you earn a very high commission on. To make that even easier, let me GIVE you 30 products that you can (with just a little reworking) market as your own new and unique products.

Go here, and grab at least 30 private label rights products, with totally unrestricted private label rights: http://TheRealSecrets.com/Free-Private-Label-Rights.html

You’ll be able to sell these products as is, just by putting your name on them, but I recommend spending an hour or two: - Renaming each one - Creating, or having created a new graphic for each one - Doing minor edits to each one

3) Register 30 keyword-rich domain names at your favorite registrar. You can register all 30 at one time, or do one at a time.

4) Get a very inexpensive hosting account with lots of disk space and lots of bandwidth. HostGator at: http://TheRealSecrets.com/CheapestHosting/

will give you unlimited domains on one account for only $7.95 per month. If you put 30 domains on the account that first month, that’s only 26 cents per site in hosting fees. As you add more accounts later, the per-site fees drop to practically nothing

5) Set up your homepage on each domain and use that to promote your product. My personal technique is to make the homepage a WordPress blog where I periodically post articles, reviews or comments pertaining to the topic. You also want to post a review of your product. In the menu bar you want to post a prominent link for ordering your product.

If you do make your homepage a blog, you also want to set up another direct sales pages, on the same domain, whose only purpose is to sell the product.

Each time that you post to your WordPress blog it will “ping” the search engines, notifying them that you’ve updated your site, and the search engine spiders will come and re-index your entire site.

On a semi-regular schedule you want to post to your blog. Those posts can just be a new article, or really… anything pertaining to your topic.

6) To “plug in” additional traffic you want to write short (400 - 1000 word) articles on your topic, or product reviews, and submit those to article directories. In the resource boxes of those articles, link back to your homepage. People reading those articles will click through to your site, and the search engine will also follow those links back to your site.

This is a very simple formula that DOES work. I use it regularly. Please don’t over-complicate things.

You basically need a product that solves a pressing problem, and you need to make it easy for those who want it to find and purchase it. I’ve just told you how to do that, and I’ve told you how to do it for practically nothing.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is simply to decide to make today the day that you start taking responsibility for your own success. It’s to DECIDE that today is the day that you drop all excuses.

The easiest starting point really is to grab the free PLR products that are in step-2. That will point you in the direction of some proven profitable niches. Get those now: http://TheRealSecrets.com/Free-Private-Label-Rights.html

To me this plan is simple and do-able. However, I also realize that you may want to go at it more slowly. If that’s the case, it’s ok to put out just a few vending machines this week… but do get started. It’s far too easy to put it off, and then drift back into that world of excuses and talking negative to yourself.

You’re not going to allow that to happen - are you?

Get started now.

In case you’re wondering how the $10 - $20 per day comes into the equation, that’s an average figure per site, which actually means that most of your sites will not even need to average a sale every day. You’ll only need to average a sale ever 3 - 4 days with many of your sites. That’s even easier, isn’t it?

Author:  Willie Crawford is an internationally-acclaimed speaker, author, seminar and radio show host, and leading Internet marketing expert. When not out fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, Willie can be found sharing his 11 1/2 years of online marketing experience with members of The Internet Marketing Inner Circle. Join them at: http://TheInternetMarketingInnerCircle.com

The Internet user’s mailbox is every day full of mail. Much of this mail is unsolicited and treated as spam, which together with viruses is a problem of today’s Internet. That is why it is crucial to create such a message that would interest the recipient and would not be treated at the very beginning as junk mail. Preparing a professionally looking email is only half the battle and it would be of any worth if it is directed randomly without taking into consideration market segmentation.

A crucial element of the mailing campaign is the appropriate selection of recipients, bearing in mind their preferences and interests! Only sending emails to groups of recipients who have previously given their assent, makes sense and allows to achieve the intended goals. The mailing list plays an important role in business. It constitutes not only the list of email addresses, but it is also a powerful tool in marketers’ hands, a tool which allows to gain new clients and to keep old ones.

A professionally prepared website from which email recipients could gain additional information on the marketing news sent, as well as take appropriate actions, such as buying the product or booking the service, is needed in order to launch the mailing campaign.

The principles of writing effective e-marketing messages

The email content is vital, but this constitutes only an element of the efficient letter. The information about email sender, in other words, what is written in the field ‘From:’ is the most important element on the basis of which the recipient decides whether to read the message or not. It is, therefore, advisable to determine once, for instance John Smith Company X, and not to change that field.

The field ‘From:’ has to identify the email sender unambiguously. The name John Smith may stand for the group of people who send newsletters from your company and John Smith himself can be the newsletter’s coordinator or the author. Mailing readers place more confidence in a person than in a company or a branch’s name seen in the sender data. The possibility of easily determining the person responsible for mailing from your company helps the clients build their confidence. It is also important to set up a personal email account (or an alias) for sending bulletins. It is better to use john.smith@yourcompany.pl than newsletter@yourcompany.pl.

The field ‘To:’, i.e. a primary addressee, is another important element of the email. To place a list of recipients’ addresses in the field ‘CC:’ (where every recipient can see other clients’ addresses) or ‘BCC:’ (the addressee sees the text Undisclosed-Recipient) is unacceptable among inexperienced marketers. Every recipient of mailing would like to be treated individually and therefore it is advisable to personalize the field ‘To:’ by placing the addressee’s name (or company’s name) there, or at least his/her email address.

The field ‘Subject:’ is also a significant element of the email, which decides whether the email is read or not. What one writes here influences the addressee’s decision to read or delete the email straight away. Therefore, the Subject must be short and encourage reading.

The subject advertises the remaining part of the email (it is a counterpart of newspaper headlines) and should raise curiosity, intrigue, pinpoint the benefits for the client, provoke to action or even shock!

It must be remembered that the subject should be connected to the content of the email. It is also advisable to put oneself into a client’s position before writing the subject and think about whether it interests us. In some cases it is possible to personalize the subject, but only when it would not be odd, e.g. John does not have to return 1% of tax…).

The subject should be short (maximum 50 characters) and contain the most important words at the beginning due to the fact that email programs display only the initial fragment. What is more, long subjects prove that a person does not have the ability to create the precise goal of the message. One should not use exclamation marks, great number of space and words (this concerns also the message itself) such as promotion, for free, bargain in the subject because most anti-spam filters when finding those words immediately mark the email as spam.

Only when the subject and personal data analysis of the sender persuades the recipient to read the remaining part of the message, the content appears. The first paragraph is the most significant and should draw the reader’s attention. This paragraph should be like the headline in the news, which arouses curiosity, and similar to the subject, makes the recipient read the remaining part. The advertisement’s success hinges in 80 % on the headline.

It is advisable for the author to put oneself in the reader’s position and answer three elementary questions before writing the message: ‘So what?’, ‘Why should I care?’ and ‘What I will get from it?’ Answering those questions will help the author prepare a persuasive email.

In the process of writing, the message should always be directed to one person only, as if he/she were the sole addressee. One should not address in plural unless the message is directed for instance to the Marketing Department of a given company. The email has to contain the expressions ‘Mr’ or ‘you’. The content can be personalized by putting in a personalization field like Name, Surname, and the Post etc. Some programs allow to decline names and to insert information depending on the addressee’s feature. Thanks to that procedure, some recipients may think that the email was sent to them only. Moreover, the number of visits of the website from the emails with personalized content rises even by about 650 % [according to HMO3], because recipients to whom we first-name feel related to the sender.

It is also advisable to make use of information about the clients, which is gathered in the database and the message’s content is adjusted on its basis. If companies’ directors are the addressees, the mailing has to be prepared in a way they would like to receive it.

The email should excite and influence all senses. It is needed to explain why the recipient should take a particular action and how he/she can benefit from it.

Author:  This article was translated by mLingua Worldwide Translations, Ltd. mLingua provides professional language translations in all major Western and Asian languages, software localization and web site translation services. Please visit http://mlingua.pl

If you are looking to buy expired domain name, you may find it very relevant and productive to carry out a thorough research to know more details about the expired domain that you are intending to buy. When you buy expired domain name, you are involving a third party and an administrator (usually the registrar) in the process of transaction. Thus, you will need to be very careful in how you are carrying out the process of buying the expired domain. There are a number of factors that you must evaluate, consider and examine, before arriving at a decision to buy the expired domain name. Expert and professional people buy expired domain name after spending enough time to evaluate the possible advantages and benefits that come attached with the domain.

Before proceeding to buy expired domain name, you will need to consider the following factors and parameters:

• Is the domain name precious for you? Is it very important to buy expired domain name in spite of perceived demerits?
• What is you budgetary allocation for the purchase of a particular expired domain?
• How quickly or how soon you want to complete the transaction?

Example: Let us say that you are in the business of selling flowers to your consumers. Now that you have enough experience of running this business and with your own personal experience, the likelihood of finding a simple, but powerful domain name is quite difficult. Thus, you want to keep aside a portion of your budgetary allocation towards buying a good domain name.

Now, you will start searching for a good expired domain name and later you will create an extensive checklist of most probable names. Let us say that you will end up in creating a shortlist of names like:

• Flowersforsale.com
• Flower-sale.com
• Flowersforsale.net
• Beautifulflowers.com

Now that you have the names at your disposal, it is the time for choosing the best name for your business and buy expired domain name of your choice. To perform this delicate task, you will now need to examine and inspect the exact use for which you are seeking the name for. Now, you can check each of the above names by entering the URL’s on the address bar of the browser and examine if any of them has an association with similar sites.

Once you make a survey, you can observe the following issues with your probable expired domain names and later buy expired domain name.

• The search findings are related to your domain names and there is actually a thriving business with some of the web sites found on the search engine. In such a case, you may find it very difficult to find a suitable expired domain name.?
• The search findings relate to your probable domain names and there is a thriving business related to some of them, but these web domains do not use a primary URL. Under such a scenario, though it is quite difficult to buy an expire domain, you can still find one that is good for your business. ?
• The search findings relate to your prospective domain name, but the searched material contains old and out dated materials. Some of the searched domains may display broken links, wrong pictures and other sundry notices. Here, your chances of finding a good expired domain name will become brighter and easier.?
• The searched domain names relate to your list, but most of the searched domains link to one or more affiliate programs. Under such a scenario, you may find sourcing an expired domain name little easier.
• The searched list will always point to “Domain for Sale” page: Though this scenario offers plenty of opportunities, it could still be the biggest challenge in front of you. You can buy expired domain name that is most suitable for your business.

However, ensure that you will never buy expired domain name that imitates or mimics a popular web portal; when you buy these kinds of expired domains, you may land in deep legal and copyright trouble.

Author:  John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is the owner of the path breaking web site called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.