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Online social networks, like the World Wide Web itself, are a microcosm of a vibrant human community.  If you participate on services like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace for some time, you’ll notice the same types of people as you might on a trip to the shopping mall or a weekend at the beach.

There is but one difference.  While ‘offline’ you see people, on the Web you see their personality.

Understanding this is core to your effective use of social networks for marketing.
While others will rush into these digital fora blatantly spe.wing advertising messages willy-nilly, you’ll be able to tap into their minds more intelligently.  Because by following some simple principles, you’ll create an online persona that people WANT to engage with and listen to.
Over 2 years of intensely being involved in various social media marketing channels, I have learned some lessons you may find useful too.
Less Is More

When you’re getting started, it is natural to explore many different services.  This ‘flit and fleet, dip and dabble’ approach is often necessary, because each of them vary in significant ways from the other.

But once you find the right one(s) with the ideal mix of audience, features and convenience to suit your personality, stick with it instead of trying desperately to sample all the available alternatives (there are over 1,000 of them as we go to press, so that’s practically impossible).

By honing in on your preferred social networks, you can better carry out the important other steps of engaging your audience and participating actively in your online community.
Engage Your Audience

Be yourself.  Let your personality shine through.  It is your unique advantage over everyone else in the online social media marketing space.

Carried away by the potential to drive more traffic or make more sales, eager marketers often explode on the social networking scene like a bombshell.  They launch into what is the online equivalent of a full-throated sales pitch right in the middle of a Sunday morning sermon in church!

Won’t that shock the others?  Of course.   And then, they’ll ignore you.

Engagement is not instant, automatic or easy.  It is however powerfully effective.  Over 9 months, I have 1,000 ‘followers’ on Twitter.  We share a relationship - even if it is at arm’s length.
Build Your Following

The conventional approach of herding audiences into closed spaces so that you can market to them are long gone.  Social media marketing is not as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.  These fish are swimming in a vast ocean.  You need to reel them in - by using powerful bait… intelligently!

The formula that works consistently is simple.  Be interesting.  If what you share on social networks is useful, valuable, funny, entertaining, new, insightful or soul-stirring, people will find you - and stay with you.

And because control is in their hands, you have little choice in the matter anyway.  Social networks are all about ‘attraction marketing’.  You attract them into your circle - and keep them there.
Be Real

That does not mean you need to reveal every intimate detail of your life, like what you ate for breakfast or what you watched on TV this morning.  Or even where you live, work or play.

It does mean that you should have a persona - and be true to it.  All the time.

I’m a heart surgeon.  I also have a little daughter, love reading, travel to interesting places and blog actively.  All of these aspects of my life make their way into my posts on social networks.
Almost incidentally, I also slip in the stuff that makes my social networking effective - like my Internet infopreneur business and my non-profit Foundation that raises funds to help children from poor families receive expensive, life-saving heart surgery.
Give To Get

Many people are selfish and self-centered.  And these people are on social networks online.  While you may hope and wish it were different, in reality, they do it for what’s in it for them!

To smartly levereage social media marketing, you must take advantage of this knowledge - and give enough value to satisfy your audience, and turn them into raving, loyal fans.

Only then do you ask for something in exchange - a visit, a click, a sale.

When you do this consistently, you’ll notice a reciprocal benefit that grows and swells until you are swamped by a return far in excess of anything you ever gave.
Now, It’s Up To You

Will you make your social networking and marketing effective using these simple insights?

They are deceptively simple.  But when you try following these principles, you’ll discover how effective and powerful they really are.

Another test of their impact is to try and ignore them.  You’ll see how badly social networks can burn you.  But then, you’re not going to try, are you?  No way… You’re smart!

Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian is a social infopreneur and uses his Internet marketing to fund heart surgery for under-privileged children in India.  He blogs at Money.Power.Wisdom - http://MoneyPowerWisdom.com - and is on Twitter (drmani), Facebook and MySpace too.

Tags: Marketing

Coming from an art background I know a few things about graphics, layout and design. I can usually manage to produce passable graphics for my different sites. But they are just that - barely passable.

Quite frankly, until recently, I didn’t have the money to spend on professional graphics for my sites. Now, as my sites are generating income each day, I can afford to re-invest some of my earnings into professionally produced website graphics.

That’s exactly what I did!

I just wished I had invested funds into these website graphics when I first started online because professional graphics will give you a much better conversion rate. Can’t begin to imagine the revenue I have lost by not having professionally produced graphics by web design specialists or experts. A well-done graphic is worth its weight in gold because you get a much higher response rate.

I am talking from first-hand experience here… for my latest site I invested in some professional graphics and the sign-up rate is much better than for my other sites. Plus, when I added these graphics to my other existing sites, my sign-up rates jumped 25% to 50% - just by adding this graphic beside the sign-up form.

So if you have a product, newsletter, ezine, guide… make sure you place a good graphic or picture right beside your sign-up form… this will increase your conversions and sales. If you’re thinking about creating a new site, consider investing in professional graphics - header, footer, logo… you won’t regret it.

Mainly because most surfers or visitors to your site will be a net-savvy crowd, within seconds they will make the decision if your site is worth their time or not. Unless you instantly project a professional image or site, they will have clicked that back button before they even blink.

Image vs. Trust

In order to have a successful site you must create trust with your visitors. Having custom graphics done will give your site that unique professional look that web-surfers now demand. First impressions are the only impressions you get on the Internet. You must hook your visitor at the first click, or it’s game over. Sad but true.

No matter what kind of site you have, using professional graphics will prove helpful to achieving your goals. These graphics will give your site a fighting chance to at least capture your viewer’s attention and allow time for your brilliant content to reel them in!

Here are some other reasons why you need professional graphics on your site:

- To give and project a professional image

- To give your visitors a tangible image of your product

- To improve the quality of your site for everyone IS a critic

- To help increase your sales or sign-up rates

- To make navigation of your site easier

Always remember, the web has become a very competitive place, you must do everything you can to give your site a competitive advantage over your competition. Professional graphics will make your site stand out; killer graphics will firmly place your site in your visitor’s mind and help them remember your site and entice them to visit it again.

Professional website graphics are very useful tools in creating a consistent overall image of your site. They will aid in your site’s navigation and give your visitor a good impression of your site. Well-designed graphics will help your site project a professional image and keep visitors from instantly clicking that back button. Professional graphics will give your site a fighting chance at making that sale or sign-up. In other words, professional graphics greatly increases your chances of having a successful site. That’s the main reason why you should use them.

The author is a full-time web marketer who owns and runs numerous websites, including two sites on Internet marketing. He contributes his online affiliate success to using the best Internet Marketing Tools: www.bizwaremagic.com and his proven strategies at List Building: www.bizwaremagic.com/opt-in.htm 2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Tags: graphic design, professional sites, Webmasters

As of this writing, there are five top Internet search engines: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and Ask.com, and while Google and Yahoo! get a lot of the press (particularly lately), the Ask.com search engine is a rather interesting engine that deserves a closer look. This article will cover some of the highlights in its 12-year history, from its start as Ask Jeeves to its innovations, as well as the most recent developments behind the scenes.

The Beginning

In 1996, “Ask Jeeves” was founded by David Warthen, who had founded EyeGames - a children’s video game company, and Garrett Gruener, a venture capitalist. At its start, the concept of the Ask.com search engine was to allow searchers to type questions in natural language in order to get results, rather than to type in a random string of keywords (although that would work as well). The Jeeves character, based on the butler in the Jeeves and Wooster books by P.G. Wodehouse, was designed as the company’s main identifier. (However, the company did not ask Wodehouse’s estate for permission to use this character and legal action was threatened, though the issue was later settled for an undisclosed amount.[1]) Jeeves was phased out in 2006[2] in a humorous manner, with the engine saying he was retiring,[3] and the company was renamed simply Ask.com and the search engine was reborn.

Ask3D and New Innovations

In June 2007, Ask, still one of the top Internet search engines, launched “Ask3D.” Part of this new direction was to allow users to add “skins” - or customized images - to the Ask.com search engine home page. The 3D offering also meant that results would be customized based on the user’s search. This meant that, in a similar manner as Google’s Universal Search concept, a user’s search for a location would get not only pages about that location but also maps and details about it. If the user searched for music, he might also be able to listen to song clips or read news stories about the artist. In addition, the Ask.com search engine included a preview feature for its search results. When available, users can click on an icon of binoculars next to a result and see a small screen capture of that page. Plus, a new toolbar was added to the left-hand side of the page, giving searchers options for narrowing down a search.

Missteps

Ask isn’t shy about going after its main competitors - Google and Yahoo!, two of the top Internet search engines. In early 2007, the company ran a series of ads, primarily in England, without identifying itself as the entity behind those ads. The ads touted an “Information Revolution” and declared that Internet users needed more choices - for a short time, users searching on the Ask.com search engine for Google were given a link to information-revolution.org - an anti-Google site sponsored by Ask.[4] This initiative was not well received,[5]^,[6] as it was seen as attacking the very users it sought to attract.

Also, in mid-2007, the Ask.com search engine introduced “Ask Eraser.”[7] This was Ask.com’s response to searchers’ concerns about privacy and security breaches - a simple way to opt in and have one’s searches erased automatically. The site explains it by saying, “When AskEraser is enabled, your search activity will ordinarily be deleted from the Ask.com search engine servers within a number of hours.”[8] The concept is sound, but many bloggers[9] are not impressed.[10]

What’s Going On Today

Today, Ask is searching - pun intended - for a new direction as it tries to keep its small piece of the search engine pie or regain its state of being at least one of the top Internet search engines. Layoffs are happening, although the company is holding onto Teoma, the technology that powers the engine,[11] and the company is looking to focus on a specific subsection of searchers (women, although the company isn’t specifically saying this[12]) rather than to try to serve as a competitor to the other top Internet search engines, like Google and Yahoo!.

It remains to be seen whether or not the Ask.com search engine can hold onto its existing niche and/or expand its search engine market share. The company seems to be working on finding a direction and a focus, but it just hasn’t yet. I will update you in future articles as to what the status of Ask.com is and whether or not it has managed to remain a key player in the industry.

About the Author

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

[3] http://sp.ask.com/en/docs/about/jeeveshasretired.html

[4] http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-03-18-n76.html

[5] http://virtualeconomics.typepad.com/virtualeconomics/2007/03/asks_mistargete.html

[6] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/29/william_davies_ask_vs_google/

[7] http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/askeraser.shtml

[8] Ibid

[9] http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/10/ask-lets-you-delete-your-search-history-yawn/

[10] http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-12-11-n81.html

[11] http://www.searchenginejournal.com/future-of-askcom-layoffs-but-keeping-teoma/6447/

[12] http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2008/03/06/askcom-shifts-their-focus

Tags: ask search engine

If you’ve been involved in the design of your company’s web site, you probably already know how difficult it can be to convey the type of website design you want.

Website design is a matter of personal taste. What one person finds attractive and professional, you may not and vice versa. Oftentimes, what you want is a matter of “I’ll know it when I see it,” but unless your graphic designer is a mind reader, that’s not enough information to assure you’ll get what you visualized in your own head.

Below is a list of questions to help you solidify in your own mind and communicate to your website designer the look and feel you believe would best represent your company.

Website Design Questions

• Do you prefer website designs that contain many different colors

(<http://www.reductionengineering.com/> as an example) or designs that use

fewer colors (<http://www.reissbuilt.com/>, for instance)?

• Do you prefer bright colors (as on http://www.hmroyal.com/>) or muted

colors (as on <http://www.reissbuilt.com/>)?

• Do you prefer website designs that have white backgrounds behind

the text (like <http://www.isternplastics.com/>) or colored backgrounds

behind the text (such as <http://www.purgeusa.com>)?

• Do you prefer sites with black type for the main text (such as

<http://www.reliable-resins.com/>) or those with colored type for the main

text (like http://www.naturalgas-electric.com/)?

• Do you prefer website designs with a horizontal layout (such as

<http://www.rotomachines.com/>) or a vertical layout (like

http://www.elmonteplastics.com/)?

• Regarding navigation, which button locations do you prefer - horizontal across the top, down the left (as on <http://www.dbi-global.com/>) or the right side

(http://www.elkayplastics.com), in blocks (as on <http://www.be-ca.com/>),

or a combination of some horizontal and some vertical (as on

<http://www.jomarcorp.com/>)?

• Do you want a straightforward, rendering of the logo,

or would prefer something with more color gradation or artistic treatment

(<http://www.utility-savings.net/> as an example)?

• Does your company have a motto or tagline that should be incorporated into the design?

• If yes, do you prefer the site tagline in a straightforward, headline-style format or do you prefer a more stylized format (as on

<http://www.evidencebags.com/> or <http://www.tecpapersdigital.com/>)?

• Some sites have faded terms related to their businesses embedded in

images (<http://www.unitedpolychem.com/> and <http://www.pilotfishseo.com/>,

as two examples) -Do you like this technique?

• Do you prefer sites with actual product images (as on

<http://www.elmonteplastics.com/>), or those with stock photographs that

evoke specific responses, such as a sense of dependability or

professionalism (<http://www.hmroyal.com/>, for example)?

• Do you prefer website designs with straightforward, realistic photographs of

products or those that contain artistically altered images of products

(<http://www.airpowerusainc.com/>, <http://www.rotomachines.com/> and

<http://www.evidencebags.com> are examples)?

• Do you prefer to have your product images on the left side (as with

<http://www.firestonepolymers.com/>), along the top (as with

http://www.polysort.com/ntm/index2.html) or down the right side (as with

<http://www.airpowerusainc.com>)?

• Are there any logos for industry quality, certification programs or

association memberships that should be part of the site’s design? (See

<http://www.hmroyal.com> for example)

Of the sites you viewed above, please provide feedback on the following questions:

• Which sites from the list of examples do you like best? And why?

• Which do you dislike the most? Why?

• As you review the sites, which company logo placements do you feel are the most appropriate for your company?

• Which color schemes do you prefer, as you look at these sites? And why?

• Which color schemes do you absolutely hate? Why?

• Are there any other web sites that you have seen that you like or feel demonstrate the style of design you prefer?

Answering each of these questions will go a long way in helping your graphic designer to create a website design that satisfies your graphic sensibilities.

Angela Charles is president of Pilot Fish, a website design and SEO firm based in Akron, Ohio.

Tags: website design

The best decision you can make as an online business owner is to decide to get out of your own way and begin to delegate those tasks which really don’t require your time and attention. A simple way to do that is by hiring a virtual assistant.

A virtual assistant is a business owner who specializes in handling the administrative details of your business from the comfort of her home office. Now that virtual assistance has been around for awhile, you’ll find virtual assistants who specialize in different types of administrative services: real estate, Internet marketing, and event management, to name a few. You may actually discover that you could use several virtual assistants in your business, each with a different specialization.

I can hear you now. You’re thinking, “There’s no way anyone can do this as well as I can.”

Are you guilty of “I’ll-do-it-myself-itis? If so, you’ve got much in common with most other online business owners in the world. We never think that anyone else will give something the time, attention, and dedication that we will. And, you’re right, to some degree. No one cares as much about your business as you do. However, if you don’t choose to delegate those things that prevent you from engaging in business development, marketing, and sales activities, you won’t be in business very long.

Whether you’re just starting out or have been in business for awhile, the thought of bringing on a support team member can be daunting, and you wonder, “How can I bring in someone else when it’s just going to increase my expenses?”

You need to make the shift to seeing this cost as an investment in your business, rather than as an expense, and let go of the need to be in control.

To help you evaluate what you might delegate to an assistant, take out a piece of paper and on the left side write, “What I Love to Do” and on the right side write. “What I Don’t Like to Do”.

Then, think about all of the functions you manage and roles you perform in your business, like planning and setting strategy, marketing, providing the service or product in which you specialize, dealing with financial issues, speaking, writing, networking, customer service, order fulfillment, etc. Most of my clients have three or four items on the “What I Love to Do” side — speaking, coaching/consulting, training, and writing. The remainder of the other functions and roles fall on the other side. The items on the right hand side, the “What I Don’t Like to Do” list, will serve as a great indicator of the types of things you need to be delegating in your business.

Based on my past experience as a virtual assistant and online business manager for a number of clients, here are 5 tasks should delegate to your Virtual Assistant right away to help you begin to generate additional income in your business:

1. Ezine. An email newsletter will help you get prospective clients into your marketing funnel. Your VA can format the plain text and HTML versions of your email newsletter. All you need to do is write your primary and filler articles each week and forward those to your VA to format and send the finished product out to your newsletter list.

2. Media. Have your VA research an industry-specific media list . This value of this list is in developing relationships with these media contacts so that you’re the expert they immediately think of when they’re doing a story on your area of expertise.

3. Article Marketing. Write once and have that article work for you again and again. Have your VA submit articles you’ve written to online article databases to increase the number of links back to your website and to send more visitors to your website.

4. Strategic Alliances. Once of the quickest ways to grow your business is by creating strategic alliance or joint venture relationships. Have your VA research potential strategic alliance or joint venture partners who provide a service to a similar audience or whose client base could benefit from your product or service.

5. Product Development. Got recorded interviews sitting around gathering dust on your hard drive? How about information you’ve created for presentations that you’ve never done anything with? Have your VA coordinate the transcript and audio editing of any recorded files you might have and help you polish those into saleable products. Your VA can also help your format printed material into an ebook, ecourse, special report, etc. and before you know you, you’ll become an information marketer!

What operational aspects of your business could you delegate to someone else? If you had extra time, how could you increase the revenues of your business? Give these questions strong consideration–and use your Virtual Assistant to help you make more profit with less of your time today!

Online Business Resource Queen (TM) and Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their expertise on the Internet, and get more clients online. To claim your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at http://www.OnlineBizU.com Ask Donna an Internet Marketing question at http://www.AskDonnaGunter.com.

Tags: ezines, seo, Webmasters

In Cajun cooking, almost every dish starts with what’s known as “The Trinity” onions, celery and bell peppers. These 3 ingredients are the foundation of almost every savory dish. Whether you’re eating gumbo, jambalaya, or even a Cajun soup, they all start with these components. These form a delicious base to each of these dishes.Like Cajun food, getting a small business listed on the search engines also is based on a trinity of components. These components give your search engine efforts a base to be built off of, and ensure that you’ll be successful. Those are: the ease of getting listed, the effectiveness of your listing, and then finally, the level of placement.

1. Ease: If you’re like most small businesses, you’ve got a lot going on. You’re running your business, doing your marketing, creating your products and/or delivering your services, and trying to squeeze in some life balance on the side.

Hours and hours of search engine optimization work are the last thing you need to add to your to-do list. You need a simple, easy system to get the most search engine attention for the least amount of work.

2. Effectiveness: Effectiveness is two-fold. First, you want your efforts to be effective with the search engines. You want them to look at your site’s code and to rank you well.

Second, you want your listing to be effective for your searchers. If a searcher is looking for products or services like yours, then you want them to see your listing’s description, read it, and to be compelled to click on it.

3. Position: Your website probably doesn’t have to be ranked #1 for your best keywords to get all the attention you need being in the top 10 is just fine for most small businesses. You also probably don’t need to be ranked well for a very general term, like “consulting”. You have to find the combination of search terms and position on the search results that works best for your business and gives you a balance of ease of maintenance (staying in the rankings) and bringing you good clients.

How do you take advantage of the trinity when you work on optimizing your site? Here are some suggestions on how to address each of these issues in your plan:

Ease:

1. Start with solid advice. There are a lot of search engine systems out there, and a lot of “how-to” advice. Make sure that the system you’re using has been tried and tested, so that you’re not just going to be spinning your wheels as you work on your optimization.

2. Break your efforts down into short activities. Optimizing your site for the search engines takes several steps and trying to sit down and just do them all, end-to-end, will take a while. To preserve your sanity, and to do things in a way that will make your efforts have the most impact, plan to do each step one at a time, and then upload your revised files and wait a bit before making additional changes. That way, you’ll avoid going crazy, and you’ll also be able to evaluate the effectiveness of your efforts along the way.

Effectiveness:

1. Really look at what you want your site to do for you. Is it really important that you get huge numbers of visitors to make lots of sales? It may be if you’ve got a product to sell. But, if you’re a one- or two-person service business, then it’s more likely that you only need a few well-qualified visits to make all the sales that you can handle.

2. Experiment with your description in your listing. Use different description tags on different pages of your website to see which compels more searchers to click. By looking at your site statistics, you should be able to see which page your visitors are coming in through.

Position:

1. See where you really need to be ranked. If your optimization efforts have gotten you to the second or third page, then you’ve already got a good start. You may just need to do a bit of work to raise your ranking to the first age.

2. Ask your best clients and visitors how they found you. What words were they searching on? Which search engine did they use? You want to get more of these “best” clients through your website, so asking clients who you already work well with about how they came to work with you will help you to make your listing more effective.

These few tips will help you optimize your website with a solid base of the optimization trinity�making sure the process will be easy, effective and will get you the position you need.

Erin Ferree is a brand identity designer who creates big visibility for small businesses. As the owner of elf design, Erin is passionate about helping her clients stand out in front of their competition and attract more clients. One of the best ways to do that is with Search Engine Optimization, which you can learn about in her eLearning product, Raise Your Ranking, which is available at http://www.howtoraiseyourranking.com .

Tags: search engines, Webmasters

What site would you prefer to go to? A site that has 100 pages of content but has not been updated in a year, or a 50 page site that keeps adding new content once a week?

Search engines think the same.

As you start to build out the content on your site, space it out and try to upload a new 200-500 word page every week.

Each one of these pages should go after a different keyword or keyword phrase. Use the top keywords from your PPC campaign.

We’ll repeat this point since it is so important: a website that is stagnant and has not changed content over the last year will never lead the pack in search engines.

What are the easiest ways to add fresh content to your page?

A) Build a site that is easy to update and change.

We recommend that you build your site in a modular way. Just think of a site built out of Lego blocks. Every page on your site will consist of a lot of Lego blocks and you can use the same Lego blocks on each of your pages.

Let’s say for example you want to change your top header. Most websites navigation bar at the top. If you are using a modular site that uses Lego blocks, then one Lego block would be for your top header. Now you can just update this one Lego block and the header on all of your 68 pages is automatically updated.

This will save you hours of work and make it far easier to update your pages and keep them fresh. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a programmer to use this. Building a modular site with Lego blocks is very easy. We cover this in detail in the module on Site Design.

B) Add dynamic content into your site.

Dynamic content is content that automatically keeps changing. In the past, adding dynamic content used to be very hard but with new advancements it has become super easy to do.

Here’s an easy way to get updated content into your website effortlessly. Let’s say that you are trying to build an expert site on “web design.”

In this case, you could go to a site such as BlinkList and automatically add the latest “web design tutorials” that people are finding online to your site. To do this, all you would have to do is:

1. Go to BlinkList
2. Look for the instructions on the sidebar to BROADCAST the content.
3. Copy and paste the javascript code that is provided by BlinkList into your site If you did the above, you would have a section on your site that would constantly show the latest web design tutorials that people are discovering online.

This is not only great content for site visitors but would also keep your site fresh and help significantly with SEO.

C) Attach a blog to your site.

Blogs are very easy to update and should be a key part of every search engine optimization. Search engines like Google love regularly updated, content-rich sites ‘ which is exactly what blogs are!

Most blogs are updated with new articles and information on a daily basis; over time the search engines recognize them for their wealth of information and boost their ranking.

Blogs also contain a rich supply of links. Since bloggers are always looking for ways to keep their blogs fresh, they are likely to use links rather than create all the content themselves.

Links to quality sites, including blog search engines and directories, can lead to high search engine rankings.

If you have a great site with excellent content that visitors love, this will start to work in your favor. If you are just spamming search engines and not providing value for the visitors, then Google will eventually catch up with you.

Bjorn Brands is a successfull enterprenuer who transitioned from having his own building company to a great online business. Check out his site and see for yourself how his FREE course can help you do the same at http://www.moneyacces.com

Tags: Web Design, website

Now that you’ve attracted bidders with your auction title, you have to get them to bid on your item by telling them why they should bid. What you are essentially doing is writing sales copy. You want to get them excited about what you are offering.

You should start off with a headline and a sub-headline. This is something that most eBay sellers fail to do is use a headline to begin their description. A good headline should create a problem that the reader can identify with and stress the main benefit of your product in solving that problem. It should also generate excitement and a desire to learn more about your product.

After the headline, you introduce your product with an overview. The overview shows the value of what you are offering and shows them why it’s a great solution to the problem you introduced in your headline. Then you describe your item in detail. You want to include all pertinent details of your item, such as brand, make and model, condition, warranty, packaging details and any other relevant information. Tell any interesting features about the product that make it stand out, what you can do with the item, and so on. All this will help demonstrate the value of the item.

After you describe the features of the product, you should translate these features into benefits. A feature is an attribute of an item. A benefit solves a problem for its owner. In other words, benefits answer “What’s in it for me?” for the buyer. It answers why they should bid on or buy your product.

It’s very important to establish your credibility in the eyes of potential bidders. There are several ways this can be accomplished. If you are positioning yourself as an expert, back up everything you say with details of your experience, qualifications, or awards in your chosen category or industry. Do this by placing a link to your About Me page or My World Page where you can include details about your background. Be honest when describing your items and don’t leave out anything. Be up front about any defects will boost your credibility. Use testimonials from people who have bought from you before by using your eBay feedback. Last but not least, use proper spelling and grammar. If you present a sloppy image with bad grammar, you won’t encourage people to bid on your item.

Make use of as many images as you can get of your item. The more the better. Make sure you use good lighting and make certain the images are clear. This especially true for high value items. It is a good idea to acquire some good lighting equipment and a good quality digital camera. The picture don’t have to be professional quality, but they need to show as much of the product as possible. If you are having items drop shipped for you, ask the supplier to provide you with several pictures of the item to use in your description. Or you can order one item as a sample and use it in your pictures.

It’s also important to give clear terms and conditions. List your terms and conditions such as payment options, bidding and shipping restrictions, shipping and handling fees, taxes and duty, warranty and refund policy, feedback guidelines, contact information, and delivery details(clearly state when you will ship the item).

Add a strong guarantee. Offering a money back guarantee is a proven marketing technique that is an excellent way to increase bids and sales. It may be tempting to place a time limit on your guarantee, but these guarantees don’t carry much weight. It is far better to not include a time limit because it will send a strong message that encourages more bids and sales. If someone has had an item for more than 30 days they are not likely to suddenly turn around and send it back. If someone does send it back, it’s usually because they have a genuine problem with the item and it’s only right they get a refund. You may get a few returns, but they will be outweighed by the extra sales you will generate with your guarantee.

Create a sense of urgency to encourage immediate bids. Auctions are urgent by their very nature but it’s a good idea to create a sense of urgency in your auction. One way to do this is to repeat the benefits of your item. If your item is no longer being made or is hard to find, emphasize its rarity and the fact this might be the last chance to buy it.

Now that you’ve written your description and offered a guarantee, you now need to ask for the sale. You’ve convinced the buyer they want the item and you need to ask for the sale. It doesn’t need to be long, just compelling. You can restate the benefits of the item and ask for the bid.

This is by no means a complete course on writing sales copy, but it will give you a good place to begin writing auctions that will improve sales.

Allen Owen is an enthusiastic home business entrepreneur and engineer. Have a look at his eBay tips e-zine: http://www.thedigitalresevoir.com

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

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.