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Email Marketing Mistakes

By Anne Ahira in Marketing

Many business owners who opt to try email marketing make the mistake of believing any type of email marketing is beneficial. This is simply not true; there are a number of mistakes business owners can make when they organize an email marketing campaign. Examples of these types of mistakes may include allowing promotional materials to be tagged as spam, not following up with promotional emails, not being prepared for an influx of customers after an email marketing effort and not marketing specifically to the target audience.

We will begin our discussion on email marketing mistakes with spam. Spam is a problem which is reaching endemic proportions. Each day Internet users are bombarded with spam from around the world. This may include a host of unsolicited emails which are promoting products or services the recipients may or may not be interested in purchasing. A critical mistake business owners can make in email marketing is to issue emails which are likely to be construed to be spam. This may result in the emails never reaching the recipient or the emails being deleted, without being read, by the recipient. Avoiding the potential of falling into the spam category is not very difficult. It basically involves ensuring your promotional emails contain more useful copy than blatant advertising. This will make it more likely for your emails to be taken seriously.

Another email marketing mistake often made is failure to follow up on promotional emails. Sending out emails to interested parties can be very beneficial but it is even more beneficial to contact these email recipients by other methods such as mail or telephone to answer any questions they may have and offer any additional information they may require. This type of follow up can be much more effective than simply sending an email and allowing it to fall into the abyss of an overcrowded email inbox.

Business owners may also run into the mistake of not preparing themselves for an influx of customers after an email marketing effort. The express purpose of email marketing is to generate increased interest in your products or services. Therefore it is critical for business owners to anticipate an increase in business and be prepared to accommodate this increased demand for products and services. This is important because potential customers who have to wait for products or services may seek out your competitors who are better prepared to provide them with products or services immediately.

Finally a critical mistake made by business owners is to not tailor an email marketing campaign to their specific target audience. This can be a problem because it may result in the email marketing being less effective. Business owners typically make this mistake because they fall into the trap of believing that it is more important to reach a large audience than it is to reach a target audience. You may blindly send your email marketing materials to millions of recipients and only generate a few leads. However, you could send the same email marketing materials to a smaller group of only a thousand recipients who all have an interest in your products and services and will likely generate more leads from this smaller email distribution list. It is not only important to send your message to members of your target audience but to also tailor your message to suit this audience. Creating an email message which will appeal to a variety of individuals is not as important as creating a message which will appeal to members of your target audience.

You will need an autoresponder system to market with email We recommend www.Automatic-Responder.com for sending your email.

Author:  Anne Ahira Marketing Guru of My 1st Internet Guru. Anne offers a plethora of inside marketing information and step by step guides to make your online ventures more successful.

Article Marketing: What Should Your Article Be About

By Moe Tamani in Marketing

Article marketing is a wonderful tool to gain attention to your business. Article marketing has been around ever since the printing press but it has really taken off in these days of the internet.

The good news: article marketing is a proven tool for growing your business through your website. The bad news: you have to write a lot in order for it to be most effective – and I do mean a lot.

How much? Some article marketing experts advise you to write five or six articles a day to keep yourself in the public’s mind. Remember, this is electronic media: one minute you’re the hottest thing out there, the next minute, you’re gone.

So, what can you write about so the well doesn’t run dry? Here are some ideas to get your creative side working for you.

What are the newest trends in your industry right now? Are you a dermatologist who supplies Botox? Write about its benefits to your patients. Do you have an alternative to Botox that is even better? Why is it better? What are some factors your patients should consider before going that route?

Is there something confusing about your industry that many people seem to misunderstand? For example, are you an advertising copywriter and everyone seems to think you deal with legal copyrights? Write an article and explain the difference. Are there some terms that make your clients’ eyes glaze over? Write a brief glossary that explains the legalese in an easy-to-understand way.

What is going on in your industry in the next few months? Many industries are cyclic, with the same events happening the same time every year. Remember: think two or three months ahead on the calendar, at least, to give yourself some lead time. Is it almost tax season? If so, are there tips you can give your customers on how to save on their taxes? Or, is it almost Christmas? Does your business offer a unique item that would make a great gift?

Now think about your particular company. Have you received any feedback from a client or customer about how your company helped them through some crisis? That’s great! Write about it. However, for article marketing, remember, it can be tricky: Free article content is not supposed to blatantly plug your company. You will probably have to change the names and situations just enough that the client will be unrecognizable in the article. But you can write the article so as to say, “Carol Smith’s house burned down, but thanks to new trends in insurance customer service, she was able to get help more quickly.” Your article can have links to your webpage where you can include Mrs. Smith’s testimonial, if you have her permission to do so.

One very effective way to brainstorm for article ideas is to come up with lists. What lists are helpful to your customers? “Ten things to do before you meet your financial advisor”; “Five ways to tell if your dog is healthy”; Six ways to choose a dermatologist” are all ideas that your potential customers will want to read. Once they do, they will want to visit your website or contact your company for more information.

Do and don’t articles can also be entertaining and informative. “Do take your dog’s leash on a trip to the vet. Don’t let Spike run wild in the office” can be helpful reminders. You can even use it on your own website, published in a checklist format that your customers can print off and keep on their refrigerator. Of course, you’d print it in such a way that your business contact information is at the bottom of the checklist.

Fun bits of trivia and history can make for an interesting article also. You could just list fun facts or make a short quiz. Just make sure that the information is truly interesting to your clients.

These are just some ways to brainstorm for article ideas. If you are truly stumped for ideas, just walk away from it for a while. You’ll be surprised at how much your brain will keep working on it without you being aware.

While article marketing is an intensive way to build public awareness in your business, it can be very effective. Try these ideas and soon your free articles will build interest in your company.

Author:  Moe Tamani is a SEO Marketing expert and Internet Marketing Strategies consultant.

5 Fun and Free Ways to Get Leads to Find You in Facebook

By Tinu AbayomiPaul in Marketing

I’m so livid that I can still hear his voice in my head. Does that ever happen to you?

“You’re completely nuts,” he said. “You can’t get anything from Facebook but a sheep thrown at you!”

“No. YOU can’t get anything out of Facebook because you have a time management problem.” I hung up the phone, furious. I mean, how can you call yourself a marketer if you can’t manage to gain from a site where the leads come to you?

Since he obviously won’t listen , I’d like to tell you for free what I wouldn’t tell him if he paid me. (No, he’ll never read this - don’t get me started on That.)

What follows are Five Fun and Free Ways to Benefit from Having a Facebook Profile.

1. Import Your Blog Posts, or Social Feeds

Make sure you already have asserted your own copyright and that you read their T’s and C’s before proceeding.

Another thing Jeff Pulver mentioned to me in Facebook is that your audience in Facebook and in the Blogosphere may be different, so this isn’t for everyone. There’s not enough space to go into it here, but several variations on this can explode your results.

2. Get to Know Clients, Colleagues and Mentors Better

Many people think of LinkedIn when they hear about this tip, another of my favorite sites. (Google “Vincent Wright LinkedIn” and you’ll get tons of great, free information.) It’s a great site to network at if you have a specific professional purpose in mind.

However, if you want to get to know people, with no particular agenda in mind, Facebook is better. It’s not an either/or type of thing, they’re just different tools.

Once you’ve made some type of connection with someone in Facebook, you can unobtrusively learn about your online pals, and use the little tidbits to make small talk about common interests, which can lead to conversation, which can lead to phone calls and other offline encounters.

The reason this is so powerful is that it mimics the way we get to know people in our offline lives.

Familiarity goes a long way to establishing trust. Add in the transparency that occurs from them seeing your news, and you’re doing two things with your clients that your competition is not.

Who would you buy from, someone you trust, or a company where you’re just another number?

3. Participate in Groups

The emphasis is on participation. Interact and get to know people.

Be more concerned about connecting with others than about gaining site traffic. To get more involved, you can stop by occasionally and contribute content. You’ll get the best effect from joining the discussion board conversations.

If you’re looking for business related groups to start with, try Mark Joyner’s Simpleology, Jeremiah Owyang’s Web Strategy Group, Open for Web Business, or Facebook for Business.

Once people start to see your name come up in conversations, on their Facebook home page and in discussion boards, they click on your profile to learn more about you, which often begins interaction. Of course, they can also surf to your site through your profile. You can even start your own group, or a fan page about your business.

4. Upload videos

The kinds that seem to go over best are short, simple videos with just you, a plain or simple background (white wall or you at your desk). If you’re a bit too shy for the camera, think about a video capture of your screen as you demonstrate something important (also called a screencast).

They can be up to 15 minutes long, in a variety of formats, and up to 300MB in size. It’s free, and it automatically translates from their allowed formats into a format viewable by all browsers.

5. Share Links

When you share a link on your profile, your friends can get a notification of this, and they can also easily share it with their friends. Big deal right? But if you have 100 friends who average about 100 friends, the right link, exposed virally, can spread as if you emailed it link to 10,000 contacts.

As with email, not everyone will pay attention to it, and of those who do, not all of them will act on that information. But for the price of free, without spam? Can’t be beat.

If that weren’t enough, you can share links in Groups now on Facebook. So that means if you are an active participant in 20 groups of over 1000 people, you have added a potential 20K to your audience.

Hint: Link sharing works better when you’re being helpful and have a track record of being an open, sharing person, not just constantly posting links from your own site.

And there you have it, five fun, free ways to utilize Facebook to enhance your business.

The next time someone tells you that Facebook can’t help you, tell them to shut the hell up or talk about the things they know.

Okay, I’m kidding.

Just ignore them, and join the group of quiet marketers who are learning the laid back ways of social media marketing.

You don’t have to spend your day on Web 2.0 sites to promote yourself either. Often, when your profile is properly set up, it can generate leads for you with a minimum of upkeep- free. Not to mention advertising opportunities that are appropriate for some sites.

Try it yourself, then decide.

Author:  Confused about how to get clients, joint venture partners or more blog traffic from Facebook without violating their terms with traditional online marketing techniques? Go to http://freetraffictip.com/1-facebook to learn more about the ins and outs of marketing on Facebook.

8 Tips to Drive Video Viral Marketing

By Linda DiMarco in Marketing

The idea of companies using video for Web marketing is still new. Some companies are certainly experimenting, often by embedding video, typically hosted at YouTube into their existing blogs. The fact is, some of the best online video comes from unlikely sources.

Another fascinating example of a viral form comes from Tubes by Adesso. The campaign included a YouTube video, a press release, and a landing page. Sometimes a series of videos, works well as a mechanism for people to download additional information from the marketer.

Organizations of all kinds are now busy posting content on the internet, and sending people links to the content or hoping that it goes viral. Creating a simple video is really easy; all that’s required is a $300 digital video camera-or even a mobile phone-and a YouTube account.

There are all sorts of enhancements and editing techniques to make video more professional, but some organizations go with the grainy and jerky homemade look. Other companies create a regular series of video content that might be delivered through a vlog, an online channel at a company site, or a vodcast, which can tie into a syndication component with iTunes and rss feeds.

8 tips that will help with creating a successful video

Tip #1 creating a video is easy, and posting on YouTube is free. Copy to your computer, and then either upload or edit it, with such software as iMovie or Windows Movie Maker to add titles and special effects.

Tip #2 Your video should be no longer than two minutes (preferably less) - think very short. Although YouTube will accept a video that is less than 10 minutes (smaller than 100MB), try to make it between 30 seconds and two minutes.

Tip #3 Make your description clear and specific to best promote your video, create an accurate and interesting text description. Use descriptive keywords and language that people will use when they search for videos like yours.

Tip #4 Don’t attempt stealth fake customer insertions. Some companies attempt sneaky, stealth insertions of corporate-sponsored video in a way that makes it seem like it is consumer-generated. The internet community is remarkably skilled at ratting out inauthentic video, so this approach is likely to backfire and cause harm to a brand.

Tip #5 Consider inviting your customer communities to submit video. One of the most effective ways to use this technology to drive viral marketing is for companies to develop a contest for people to submit their own video, which then is made available for others to see. Would-be directors are given prizes, and the best videos are usually showcased on the company site. In some cases, the winners are played on TV as “real” commercials.

Tip #6 Sometimes a series of videos works well as in the case of “Will It Blend.

Tip #7 Tell everyone. When you upload your first few videos, you are likely to hear a deafening silence. You’ll check your video statistics and be disappointed by the tiny number of viewers. Create links to your from your home page, product pages, or online media room. Mention your video in your email or off-line newsletters, and create links as part of your email signature and those of other people in your organization.

Tip #8 Make sure bloggers know about the videos. Give them a link, or comment on other people’s blogs (and including a link to your’s) is a good way to build an audience. If you comment on blogs in the same space as yours, you might be surprised at how quickly you will get viewers to your video. And while your competition is still trying to figure out “that blogging thing,” you can tap into this world, and leave the competition behind. Content on the Web takes many forms besides video, including an effective content-centric site, webinars, blogs, and podcasts. Have fun with it and experiment for best results.

Author:  Linda DiMarco is an editor at Women Business Magazine. Check out the December issue for Herbal Female Libido Enhancers at: http://www.womenbusinessmagazine.com

6 Astonishing Viral Marketing Strategies That Will Get the Word Out Quickly

By Ontarian Hawkins in Marketing

Viral marketing or some may refer to it as buzz marketing, provides some of the most amazing results to almost any online business, products or services. It is a vast source of “one-way” links, sales leads and targeted website traffic. Surprisingly, several marketers are either not familiar with these particular strategies or do not recognize their capabilities or are not taking complete advantage of what they call the “viral factor” in their online marketing efforts.

Viral marketing pertains to the method of giving away something for free then allowing individuals to distribute or send it out to others. Viral marketing’s main purpose is to circulate your message or promotion to as various individuals as possible yet not spending any money for promotion or advertising. Although a very profound marketing tool, this method is probably the least used by many marketers online.

Generally, viral marketing strategies can be utilized by any online business or web site, be it small or big. Any online marketer can use such strategies provided that they are willing to devote some time to set up certain criteria to become positioned effectively. Viral marketing strategies done the right way will produce numerous benefits.

Simply put, the basic concept of all viral marketing strategies is to include a freebie in your ad that people can use or giveaway. The best benefits of viral marketing are:

• Increase link popularity
• Increase or improves targeted traffic
• Builds brand recognition
• Generates targeted leads
• Automates marketing efforts

With that said, here are 6 astonishing viral marketing strategies that will get the word out quickly about your business, product, or service.

1. Writing articles with a resource box. Write articles pertaining to your service or products. Allow your recipients to reprint or copy your articles in their newsletter, website, ezines, magazine or e-books. Your article must include or display your “resource box” as well as the option for reprints of articles at the bottom.
2. Using forums and discussion boards. When you are capable of setting up a bulletin board or a forum, then you actually have a very effective marketing tool. You can invite and permit online users to utilize your “discussion board” on their website since many internet users do not have these tools.
3. Providing free website. When you are making use of a “dedicated server”, you are able to permit internet users to register for a web site for free on your own server. And because you gave away some space, you can oblige them or demand that they display your “banner ad” at the uppermost potion of their site.
4. Distributing free software. Permit your website visitors to distribute your software for free. Simply include your online business ad within the software. The internet provides numerous available tools that permit you to “brand” your software with messages and your contact information. You can pay for the rights and then you have your own software for free! Or, there are programs available that permits you to make your very own software. Just search the internet!
5. Offering free graphics, banners, templates, etc. If you have the skill and talent for web design, then you can be able to make graphics, templates, banners etc., upload all to your website and allow your visitors to pass on your fonts, graphics, templates, banners etc., for free, of course. Simply display your ad onto your designs or oblige recipients that they “link directly” to your site. Also be certain that you incorporate a “link back” to your website in your “copyright notice” and oblige your recipients to hold intact your “copyright notice”.
6. Free redirect service. Permit your web visitors to impart your “free online service” to their visitors, web site, e-zine or newsletter subscribers. It can be a free e-mail, “search engine submissions”, e-mail consulting, etc. Let your imagination soar and think of things that you can offer for free.

Keep in mind that your marketing message that will be relayed or transmitted by any type of viral strategy should be brief and clear; likewise it should be simple for your visitor to obtain your free offer.

In the same way each free item should carry a very simple course through which a recipient is able to inform his links or friends about it, in order that they also can obtain your free offer and simultaneously be able to view your message then supply you with their email address and names.

Viral marketing strategies are very powerful marketing tools; however, these are tools that are required to be carefully used with substantial thought. When you are offering something for free, note that it needs to be of good quality, of good value, and targets the needs of your prospects.

Author:  Ontarian Hawkins is an established internet marketer, mentor, and business coach that teaches various pillars of marketing. To find out how Ontarian can help you with your marketing efforts go pick up his FREE REPORT on how he does it here => http://www.attractionwiz.com

Top 10 Internet Marketing Tips for 2008

By Gillian Meier in Marketing

Internet Marketing has grown phenomenally over the last few years but the shift has quite clearly moved to a market that is driven by the consumer and that is no longer dictated by journalists and corporates. Online consumers are responding more favourably to non-intrusive, relevant and socially attractive campaigns and have quite frankly had enough of intrusive, forced online advertising campaigns.

The top 10 internet marketing tips for 2008 are:

1. Optimise your website’s content
2. Create a content development strategy for your website
3. Invest in a paid search (pay-per-click) campaign
4. Publicise your website through article marketing
5. Develop a social media marketing strategy
6. Create a Company Blog
7. Experiment with video marketing
8. Engage your audiences with web widget marketing
9. Discover the benefits of mobile marketing
10. Create an effective email marketing strategy

Let’s look at each of these in more detail:-

1. Optimise your website’s content:

First and foremost, get your website content right. Make sure it is easily read by both humans and search engines. An essential variable applied by Search Engines in the way in which they rank websites is based on the relevancy of the content that the search engine is indexing.

2. Create a content development strategy for your website:

In addition to optimising the existing content on your website, it is essential that you develop a strategy to continuously increase your website’s content on an ongoing basis. All new content should be written specifically with the web reader in mind and should also be optimised for the search engines.

3. Invest in a paid search (pay-per-click) campaign:

When you pay for traffic (visitors) that click on your advertisements that are being advertised on search engines, this is called pay-per-click or search engine advertising. Paid search allows you to quickly leverage search engine traffic by bidding for keywords that are related to the products or services that you promote and sell on your website. Paid search advertising is particularly beneficial to companies who are not yet well ranked on search engines through natural search.

4. Publicise your website through article marketing:

Article marketing is regarded by Internet marketing experts as one of the most effective promotional methods to publicise your website and to increase the number of back links (incoming links) to your website content. To ensure ongoing awareness, articles should be submitted to suitable article directories, content publishers, article announcement lists and content syndication (RSS feeds). Each article should be published on your own website first and should include a bookmark button to encourage social bookmarking.

5. Develop a social media marketing strategy:

Studies show that by the end of 2007 more than 60% of top global companies will have had some form of social media marketing strategy in place. Corporates and small business owners should create a clear social media marketing strategy as part of an integrated communications and marketing strategy. Social Media has become an essential component of online marketing and search engines are adjusting their rankings to include search personalisation. One of the effects of the social media revolution is an exponential increase in the amount of content online.

6. Create a Company Blog:

In the past, corporates have been focusing marketing and communications efforts on becoming faceless. This has changes significantly. Where the online consumer has become very much in control, companies will no longer be able to connect with their customers in a meaningful and emotional way without having a personality. More and more companies are starting to realise the significance of establishing a company personality and we are starting to see more Corporate Blogs coming alive. Business Blogging will continue to become more lucrative as more and more people look to new media such as Blogs and social websites for insight.

7. Experiment with video marketing:

There is tremendous power and revenue-generating potential in Video Marketing. With the rapid ongoing growth of YouTube’s traffic in addition to the emergence of Internet Television websites, streaming video is dominating the international web and marketers are quickly scrambling to capitalize on this exciting channel. As companies seek to simplify video sharing, video marketing will become more interactive which could have huge implications for Affiliate marketing.

8. Engage your audiences with web widget marketing:

Widgets have made significant strides as an accepted marketing technique in recent months. Many new Blog oriented services are launching Widgets providing businesses with the opportunity quickly introduce their services and new products to audiences.

Web Widgets are small applets that live in HTML and provide miniature versions of a specific piece of content outside of the primary web site. Web Widget Marketing is not only an exciting new marketing technique; it is fast becoming one of the leading brand-building marketing strategies for businesses advertising online.

9. Discover the benefits of mobile media marketing:

Mobile media marketing has continued to grow at a meteoric pace as many web companies recognise the huge potential in mobile marketing. As new technologies emerge and standard websites are converted to ones can easily be accessed by mobile devices, companies will need to ensure that there websites are mobile-friendly. This leads the way for new and innovative opportunities to provide the consumer with improved brand and marketing experiences.

10. Create an effective email marketing strategy:

Introduce an effective Email communications strategy as part of your marketing strategy to grow your existing customer base and to expand your client base significantly through permission marketing and regular targeted communications. Engaging your customers with relevant, targeted information when, where, and how they want it is crucial to marketing success. By combining technological advances with tried-and-tested best practices, the future still looks bright for email marketers.

To conquer commercial combat, a significantly powerful Internet presence, supported by a brilliant E-Marketing Strategy, is paramount to ensuring that you remain competitive, increase revenue and magnetise your customers!

Author:  Blue Magnet is an Internet Marketing Training & Consulting company in South Africa. Visit http://www.bluemagnet.co.za for more information.

How to Convert Customers While You Sleep

By Kalena Jordan in Marketing

You might be surprised to hear this, but many of today’s Internet marketing millionaires actually make their money by doing nothing. That’s right, they make money by doing nothing at all. How? They have their Internet businesses set on automatic pilot. They’ve put systems in place to gather leads, generate content, follow up leads and convert them into customers automatically, while they sleep, travel abroad or laze around on a beach somewhere. Sound too good to be true? Well it isn’t.

For example, we use an autoresponder at Search Engine College whenever somebody decides to download our free sample SEO101 lesson. As soon as anyone enters their email address into our online form, they are sent an email by the autoresponder asking them to verify their email address and confirm their interest in opting-in to receive our information. The recipient does this by clicking on a link embedded within the email.

Once that occurs, it triggers a series of emails to be sent to the recipient at different time intervals following the original request e.g. a day later, a week later or a month later.  These emails can contain further information on the original item downloaded, links to other products, a special offer, a mini-tutorial or any other information you like. The primary aim of the autoresponder is to convert the lead into a customer over time. It’s a well-documented fact that it can take up to seven interactions with a lead before they convert to become a customer and your autoresponder can set this process in motion and manage it for you automatically.

Many people think that creating a series of autoresponder emails is difficult, but it is actually very easy! Your emails don’t have to be clever or witty or long. They just need to contain an immediate benefit to the customer or information that the reader will find useful. Ideally, you should create at least 10 initial emails and decide on a time-frame and order in which you want to send them. Then you can simply add 1 or 2 new emails to the list each week as you find time to write them. Any new leads added to your autoresponder will receive the entire series of emails, in the order you intended. Existing leads will be sent any new emails you add to the series, in the order and time-frame you specify.

Sound complex? Let me give you a concrete example. Imagine you are a jeweler that specializes in selling gold chains via an online store. Here is a sample autoresponder series (and trigger) that you could create:

Trigger:          Visitor signs up to receive your monthly jewelry catalog via email.

Email 1:          Welcome and thank you for signing up. Includes link to current catalog download page.
Time-frame:      Immediately

Email 2:          Follow up on catalog and request for feedback on jewelry selection.
Time-frame:      7 days after trigger

Email 3:          Special offer to members – 20 percent discount on all gold chains for 7 days only. [Includes unique discount coupon that expires in 7 days.]
Time-frame:      21 days after trigger

Email 4:          Reminder that discount coupon expires in 3 days. [Includes unique discount coupon that expires in 3 days.]
Time-frame:      25 days after trigger

Email 5:          Latest jewelry catalog. Includes link to current catalog download page.
Time-frame:      33 days after trigger

Email 6:          Helpful article about how to clean jewelry.
Time-frame:      47 days after trigger

Email 7:          Information about unique or value added service e.g. free monogramming or free shipping.
Time-frame:      54 days after trigger

Email 8:          Latest jewelry catalog. Includes link to current catalog download page.
Time-frame:      64 days after trigger

Email 9:          Special offer to members – free pair of earrings with every gold chain purchased for 7 days only. [Includes unique earrings coupon that expires in 7 days.]
Time-frame:      78 days after trigger

Email 10:        Interesting article about the difference between various qualities of gold e.g. 9 kt, 14 kt, 24 kt and why they are used for different pieces of jewelry.
Time-frame:      88 days after trigger

Email 11:        Latest jewelry catalog. Includes link to current catalog download page.
Time-frame:      94 days after trigger

Get the idea? The more leads you acquire and the more often you contact those leads, the more likely you are to convert them into paying customers. If you can add to your autoresponder series on a regular basis, you’ll have established automatic communication with your leads for months or even years to come.

I should stress here that you should ALWAYS use a double opt-in email sign up process to ensure your readers really do want to receive your communications. The extra verification layer prevents unintended subscriptions by persons who’ve had their email address entered into your sign-up form by others. You should also make it clear to subscribers what they are opting into – if you plan to contact them beyond the trigger event, make it clear on the sign up form or in the verification email exactly what type of communications they will receive and how often.  

You will also need to use autoresponder software, a host that supports autoresponders and/or an email marketing service such as A Weber that creates multiple autoresponders for you.

So what are you waiting for? Go switch your email marketing to auto pilot and convert customers while you sleep!

Author:  Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects. 

Successful Internet Marketing Without Search Engines

By Bill Platt in Marketing

Believe me or not, a business can survive and thrive on the Internet without good search engine placement. That does not mean that a Webmaster should not strive to get good rankings in the search engines, but it does mean that a Webmaster should not throw his or her entire advertising budget towards search engine optimization (SEO).

The SEO guys are rolling in their Ferrari’s as you read this. I would have said that the SEO guys are rolling their graves, but they are not dead, yet.

There Can Be Only Ten

How many web pages will be listed on page one of the search results at Google? How about on Yahoo or MSN? That is right; there can be only ten web pages listed on page one of the search results.

According to the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org), there are currently 85 billion web pages on the Internet. But, if you have ever used the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive, then you know as I know that they have not archived everything that is out there, so that 85-billion number is actually smaller than the real number of existing web pages.

With only ten listings on page one of the search results, there are going to be a lot of disappointed people in the world. They cannot all be on page one of the search results.

First Things First

Search engine optimization is an expensive undertaking, so it should never be taken lightly. I talk to people everyday who are building their first website for the very first time. These folks, bless their hearts, know just enough about Internet marketing to blow their savings on a website that may or may not deliver a profit to them.

There are steps that people should take when they start their website, and SEO is not one of those first steps.

Here is a checklist of steps that the new Webmaster should use in the development of his or her website:

Step One: Select the products or services that the website will sell.

Step Two: Determine if there is a market for what will be sold.

Step Three: Analyze the competition and determine the competition’s weaknesses. Competition is about building a better mousetrap or reaching customers that another might be under serving.

Step Four: Build the website to sell the chosen products or services. Sales conversion is the most important element in any successful business model.

Step Five: Run test advertising to figure out what will generate traffic to your website, and more importantly, to figure out what one needs to do in order to sell goods and services.

Testing And Tracking Advertising Results Is Essential

I sold advertising in my newsletter to a guy one time. He paid a nice fee to have his advertisement run in my newsletter, but he did not invest any money in writing or testing his ad first. The advertisement itself was written very badly.

I asked him if he would like to tweak his advertisement before I ran it in my newsletter. He said he did not care what the ad looked like. He just needed me to run his ad.

I offered to rewrite his ad for him to enhance his chances of getting traffic from my newsletter. He agreed and I did.

As the newsletters I subscribed to began rolling in the following week, I noticed his bad advertisement ran in dozens of those newsletters.

I asked him later his results, and he said he had spent $10,000 running that advertisement and closed four sales at $25 each. He spent $10,000 to make $100. Needless to say, his website closed down just a couple months later.

The problem was clearly his ad, but his website may have contributed to his lack of sales conversion.

Starting Small Serves A Very Real Purpose

As we saw with the guy who spent ten grand to make $100, starting small would have been beneficial. It is all a matter of figuring out how to get traffic to one’s website and more importantly, how to convert traffic to sales.

One should start small with his or her advertising to find the ad formula that will actually deliver traffic to the website. Once the traffic is coming to the website, the webmaster needs to tweak his or her sales copy to make sure that the copy will close enough sales to justify the expense of a large advertising run.

SEO should be treated in the same way. By using Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC), a webmaster can get an idea as to which keyword phrases will actually generate traffic to a website, and with the right analytical software, the Webmaster can determine which keyword phrases generate clicks that will lead to a sale. .

Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/) is a good program to help webmasters figure this out and it is free, but it has its shortcomings.

Popular paid programs include:

• http://www.opentracker.net
• http://www.keytrail.com

Another two-dozen web analytics applications are reviewed here: http://www.cumbrowski.com/CarstenC/internetmarketing_webanalytics.asp

SEO campaigns should never be undertaken until one knows exactly which keywords will actually generate sales for a website. To do otherwise, one runs the risk of optimizing a website for keywords that will not help the website convert traffic to sales.

Advertising Lessons Learned

While testing your advertising and your PPC advertising, a few very important lessons were learned.

First, you learned how to tap into the Law Of Attraction to bring people to your website.

You have learned what keywords you should target, if you decide to optimize your website.

You have learned how to track your successes and your failures with your website analytical software.

And finally, you have learned to tweak your website for the purpose of increasing your sales conversion.

All are very important lessons, because each will contribute to how much money can be earned from a website.

Building Links Is Not About PageRank

If you remember, the title of this article is, “Internet Marketing Without Search Engines.” That should imply that this article is not about getting good rankings in Google. By extension, the title should also imply that what I am telling you has “nothing” to do with PageRank.

The fact is that every person using the Internet is clicking on links to take them from one website to another. Some links are in emails; others are in paid adverts on websites, or in informational web pages. Even social bookmarking websites have links to other web pages.

Building links to your website is about getting your sales message, with its accompanying link, in front of the people most likely to buy what you are selling, in a way that encourages your potential customer to click your link and visit your website.

Once you understand who your customers are and where you might be able to reach them, then you will know what steps you need to take to get your link within reach of their mouse.

You may need to buy advertising at that location. You might be able to write an article to give to them, in exchange for a link to your website. You might be able to participate in the website’s forums and leave a breadcrumb trail of links for your potential clients to find. You can even create social bookmarks that will point to your website or to a page that points to your website.

The goal of linking is to give your potential customers more ways for them to find your website.

An Ironic Twist To This Tale

Although this article is about thriving on the Internet without relying on search engines, any person who undertakes linking for the sake of attracting customers will find their websites climbing in the search engine results, due to all of those links on targeted and relevant websites pointing to their own website.

Imagine that — a link that will attract and deliver potential customers to a website AND influence how well a website might rank in the search engines.

Author:  Bill Platt has been writing reprint articles for the promotion of his websites since 1999, and now he has written an ebook to share what he has learned. His book is called, “Article Marketing For Traffic, Sales and Profit”. Included in the book are many examples and the Five Essential Elements Of Creating A Successful Article. To learn more about Bill’s business, visit: http://www.thephantomwriters.com

How To Make Real Money Online Without A Website And Without Spending Any Cash

By Elaine Currie in Marketing

Would you like to know how to make real money online without a website and using only free resources? It is possible, I assure you, and it is not particularly difficult. Don’t get me wrong: I am not suggesting you join one of those programs which promise you will get rich without having to do any work. When I say it is not particularly difficult, I mean just that: this is a way to make real money online that anyone of average intelligence with an average education can learn to do.

The simplest way to make some extra income online is to do affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing means you join a company as an affiliate and promote their product in return for payment of commission on all sales you generate. Commission rates vary but it is not uncommon for commission to be as high as 70%.

Affiliate marketing is highly popular because it is straightforward and hassle-free. All you have to do is promote the products and you get paid commission when people buy; all the financial transactions, delivery etc are handled by the merchant direct. You can make money without having your own website because you will send potential customers straight to the merchant’s website.

If you need to make some extra money, chances are you won’t want to start off by paying out for advertising, and that is why we are going to look at how to make real money online without a website using free tools and resources. First we’ll look at the basic steps you need to take and then we’ll look at each one in more detail. This is the procedure in five basic steps:

Choose a product you want to promote

Sign up as an affiliate to the merchant company

Do research to find keywords to use in your promotion

Write an article relating to the product

Submit the article to high traffic article directories

1. Choosing your affiliate product.

You can choose to promote literally anything but it is obviously a good idea if you choose something in demand.

2. Become an affiliate

The easiest way to become an affiliate is to sign up to a reliable affiliate program directory such as Clickbank or Share-A-Sale. These directories also help you to find popular products to promote.

3. Do keyword research

If you are new to affiliate marketing, you probably got a bit lost at the third point but it is absolutely crucial to your success. If you type “free keyword research tool” into a search engine query box, you will get thousands of results. There are many excellent free keyword research tools available but you must learn how to use them effectively.

4. Write an article

Write an article of not less than 500 words relating to the product you are promoting. The article can be in the form of a review, a personal story, a “how to” tip etc; it doesn’t matter, as long as the article is relevant to the product and contains the keywords you selected.

5. Publish your article

Submit the article for publication at top article directories such as isnare.com and go articles.com. When submitting the article, you need to append to it what is called a “resource box” or “author’s bio”. This is where you include a link to the affiliate product website.

That’s the procedure, now a word about how it works. When potential customers use your chosen keywords in search engines queries, your article will appear in a high place because it is posted on a high ranking article directory. People read your article and, with any luck, will be sufficiently interested in what you have said to click on the link in your resource box. This takes them to the merchant’s website where they make a purchase.

That, in a nutshell, is how to make real money online without a website and without having to spend any cash.

Author:  If you want to know how to make real money online, visit Elaine Currie’s Work At Home Directory which features the best ways to make honest extra income at home

How To Increase Your Email Delivery Rates

By Willie Crawford in Marketing

Several months ago, I shared with members of The Internet Marketing Inner Circle what I considered THE key to a top-selling Internet marketing product. That key is to make sure that the product solves a HUGE, painful problem.

I also shared that one massive problem that I considered WORTH tackling is the dismal email deliverability rates that many email marketers are experiencing.

After all, what good does it do to build a list in the hundreds of thousand (which is where my database is at), if much of the email doesn’t get through.

This is a problem that I have discussed with numerous top online marketers. Many of these marketers, with lists in the hundreds of thousands, and even millions, long for “the good old days” when a much higher percentage of their email was delivered.

Many ezine publishers confide that they sometimes send out a mailing and then wonder if ANYONE received it. Responses can often be that low, and if it’s a well-written email, the problem HAS to be that it didn’t get through.

Many marketers have started doctoring up individual words used in their emails, thinking that this will partly solve the problem. I find that words broken up with strange punctuation, or deliberately misspelled, hurts overall response rates more than it helps!

Many marketers have grown so frustrated that they’ve started simply publishing their newsletters on their blogs, giving up on the notion of delivering their full message right to subscribers inboxes. They just send out a very short email inviting the reader to the latest blog post. I don’t consider that the best solution.

However, setting up your email system so that more of your email gets through isn’t beyond the capability of the average email marketer.

This is a topic that even those who don’t use email marketing need to understand because then they’ll know exactly why they often don’t get emails that they WANT to receive.

The step-by-step instruction on how to remedy this problem are beyond the scope of this article. It would take a book to explain ALL of the intricacies. In-fact, there is an excellent primer on the topic entitled, “Email Delivery Secret - EXPOSED.” This primer is brief yet thorough, and very inexpensive. You can get it at: http://IncreasedEmailDelivery.org

Both this ebook, and experts that I’ve talked with on the topic, explain that the key is how the server that the email is sent from is configured.

Things that kill email deliverability, but are easy to correct are:

1) Having open DNS server settings… allowing spammers to send email through your server, and also causing many ISP’s to block all email from your server. I once had a host that had ALL email from ALL customers blocked for this very reason. Hundreds of screaming customers forced them to fix that oversight!

2) Having an improper DNS server configuration. This may be beyond your control, but may also indicate that you need different hosting. 3) Missing Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records, which other servers use in deciding whether or not to accept email from you. The SPF record is used to prevent or detect forged “from” email addresses.

4) Missing key mailboxes on your server, such as abuse@yourdomain.com, and others.

On the other side of the coin you need to understand that ISP’s such as Yahoo.com, Hotmail.com, and AOL, have fairly strict guidelines on what email is allowed onto their servers…. and into their customers’ inboxes.

The thing is, conditions that cause these ISP’s, used by million of your potential customers, to block your emails are all published polices and procedures.

To get more of your email through to customers who receive email at those ISP’s, you really only need to make a few changes in your email setup. These are things that make for logical, secure email practices in the first place.

The bottom-line is that you CAN get a much higher percentage of your emails delivered if you’ll just set aside a little time to discover why it’s actually not getting through. Those reasons aren’t secrets that the ISP’s hide from you! You just need to learn them and then start working WITH the ISP’s.

As previously pointed out, a good starting point is the ebook, “Email Delivery Secret - EXPOSED.” It will point you to a lot of tools and resources to check things such as whether your domain (or IP address) is blacklisted, and how to get it unblocked. That inexpensive ebook, with some excellent screenshots for the various server control panel setups, is at: http://IncreasedEmailDelivery.org

Here’s another thing… just taking the time to learn these few good email practices will put you light-years ahead of your competitors. Many of them just seem to prefer “sticking their heads in the sand” and pretending that the problem doesn’t exist.

Low email deliverability rates are a real problem. Now, you know how to do something about it.

Author:  Willie Crawford has been teaching others uncomplicated methods of building successful online businesses since 1996. Today, he does most of his teaching inside an exclusive membership site filled with other experts dedicated to uncovering the truth about how to succeed online. Join Willie and dozens of other “old-timers” at: http://TheInternetMarketingInnerCircle.com