Making Money with Your Blog!

A place for finding the Nuts and Bolts for Making Money Online with Affiliate Marketing Business Opportunity!

When people talk about Search Engine Optimization they immediately associate this with getting high ranks with the most popular search engines in the Internet arena Google and Yahoo. While it is true that Google and Yahoo stand the strongest position in giving the website ranking, getting an optimized search engine would also mean that you satisfy the readers needs. To arrive at a satisfying end-result, the following tips may be used.

Create a top caliber site with contents that are informative, relevant, and up to date. Make sure that you essentially give to your readers what they are looking for as information without compromising the quality of your web site. With these characteristics in mind, there is a guaranteed assurance of an optimized search engine on.

To attain high ranks, you may want to engage in submitting your site to some directories. While the submission process is relatively tedious and lengthy, the end result is seemingly effective.

Allow inbound links on your site. By allowing other sites to embed their links onto your site, it only means that these site owners trust so much on your website and that they rely also on your website for their sites to generate traffic and eventually earn a good ranking from search engines.

Create articles that will be directly embedded on your own site. When this is effectively done, directories can actually capture your site to having a great content of linked articles, thereby facilitating more traffic on your site.

Want to learn more about it? Download the free ebook, Steps to Article Marketing Success.

Three Things You Must Do Before You Submit To Article Directories

To all writers and non-writers out there, now is the time to start digging up those creative writing skills.With modern communication technology comes the popularity of information-based marketing, which is one of the oldest and most effective techniques in getting targeted prospects to sites and converting them into buyers. This is

Continue your success after the holiday season by learning how to target the dollars still out there! Many online retailers will relax their sales and marketing efforts, believing that they cannot overcome the so-called post-holiday slump. However, for those retailers savvy enough to target the substantial sales still to be made, continued success can be achieved.

Here's an outline of post-holiday sales expectations, in perspective. $23 Billion Dollars. That's how much consumers spent online between November 1st and December 16th 2007. From January 1st until the end of October, consumers spent $93.6 billion. Roughly 20% of the year's online business was done in six weeks. The average for the weeks after Christmas is expected to be about $2 billion (per 2006's numbers plus the 18% increase seen over last year's numbers to date). While this is only about 60% of the holiday shopping average of $3.25 billion per week, it's still a sizable amount.

Why the post-holiday season is a great time to continue marketing efforts

The good news is: People still buy after Christmas. This is due both to retailer efforts and seasonal customer behavior.

1. Suppliers must get rid of holiday overstock. Many suppliers load up with inventory in the weeks leading up to the holiday season. They are forced to clear out excess inventory after the holiday buying rush has ended.

2. People are looking for complementary products. People bought and received a number of big ticket items over the holidays, and will be looking for the accessories that go with them. Customers who bought gaming systems look for games and controllers. Customers who bought home electronics need cables. DVD, HD, and BluRay players need DVDs, HD, and BluRay disks to play. Think about what products you can carry that complement the products you sold.

3. People receive cash as holiday presents. This is money that they now have available to spend on the big ticket items they didn't get - or products to complement the ones they did. Or, they may look for interesting products they didn't know they wanted before Christmas.

4. Hot products - the products that were in the highest demand - were invariably marked-up in price by suppliers and retailers. Those hot products are now priced to clear... or at least back to normal levels

Tips for successful post-holiday marketing

There is still a lot of money out there to be spent, but what can you do to attract the spending to your site? Here are some tips on getting started with your post-Christmas marketing.

1. Send your customers an email inviting them to return to your site. Keep in touch with your existing customer base. Let them know about any promotions your store is running. Existing customers have already purchased from you - they are more likely to buy from you now that they have had a positive shopping experience. Winning their trust means you can work on getting them to buy more.

2. Create coupons or offers that will attract business. People love a deal. For example, a reputable sandwich company just held their "Christmas Special": two six-inch subs for $6 - which looks like a good deal. Then, you look up at the menu and see that a twelve-inch sub is $5.99. While we don't recommend perpetuating false economy, this example shows how the prospect of a "deal" can motivate sales.

3. Continue to advertise and drive online traffic. Keep up your efforts. The pool of active online consumers decreases after Christmas, so you'll have to make sure your store retains visibility. In the process you'll attract the more passive, "window" shoppers. Consider using pay-per-click advertising.

4. Provide additional support for your website visitors. You have to be willing to give your customers those little extras. Sales in the post-Christmas period are more elusive than during the holiday frenzy. It will be the extras that keep customers coming to you. In addition to giving a little extra help to your visitors, adding services like Live Person's Live Call to your online store act as trust marks to consumers.

Do your research.

The information you need in order to be successful is available to you - often free of charge. You just have to look in the right places. You can pay to get industry information, or you can try out the following ideas to get that info for free.

1. Products that sell after the holidays are different than the pre-holiday best sellers. Visit as many of your competitors' sites as possible to see what they are selling. Check out the big box websites that are selling similar products to your store. Take advantage of the research that your competitors have done in their product selection.

2. Talk to friends and family. Nothing beats talking to people when you want info. Word-of-mouth puts you in touch with what consumers want.

3. eBay and Amazon both publish the best-selling products on their systems. That information is free. Have a look and be in the know.

4. Keep your eye out for seasonal products. Those miniature MLB pennants sold fairly well... but baseball season ended months ago. Keep your product line in line with seasonal variations.

5. Christmas isn't the only holiday with sales spikes. Find products that correspond to upcoming holidays. Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, 4th of July, et cetera, are all great sales opportunities.

6. Read high-level industry research. Sites like comScore.com offer raw data and interpretation of online sales trends. Visit and have a look at what the market is doing. You'll get a first-hand look at retail: Leverage that information to tweak your sales strategy. If sales numbers are in a trough Internet-wide, you know that consumers just aren't as active - so you'll have to be more active in driving sales. If online sales numbers are at a peak, and your sales are not, then you know you'll have to make some changes to your marketing tactics or your storefront (new products, more content, etc.).

Conclusion

To sum it all up: Don't stop marketing just yet. If you stop your efforts now, you're missing out on your part of the estimated $100 billion in next year's pre-Christmas online sales. Sales are an all-year event. Follow the tips above, and get active in developing your sales strategy for the New Year.

(All sales figures taken or extrapolated from http://comScore.com/)

Thomas Altamont is a Communications Analyst for Shopster.com.

Shopster.com is an industry leader in eCommerce. Shopster provides online storefront, dropshipping, and product source solutions for professional online sellers, as well as those just getting started in online retail.

Visit Shopster at http://Shopster.com/

Viral marketing is a methods of list building

There are multiple methods of list building, and if you are just getting started, until you have gained mastery over one or two methods, it is advisable to use multiple methods of list building strategies. You’ll see every step of the process, no matter how small, in exacting detail so

When you are writing articles either for a print publication or for online distribution, you may want to write them yourself. This could be for a number of reasons but if you are a busy professional, chances are that you would be best of hiring an online copywriter or freelance writer. By hiring a professional, you can save money by focusing on what you do best while making sure that you articles are their best. Dont risk your reputation by publishing inferior content under your name. This article will have a few tips on how to find a great freelance writer that you can depend on.

The first step for finding a good freelance writer is to determine where you would like to have your articles published. If you are planning on publishing them in an industry or trade association journal, you may want to find a different freelance writer than if you were publishing them exclusively online. Remember that print publications usually only accept articles of between 800-1500 words or more so this can cost more and be much more complex. It is often more complex to write one 1500 word article that 5 300 word articles, so take this into account.

You should then think about cost to determine whom you should hire. Due to off shoring and outsourcing, there are a very large number of freelance writers in the Philippines and in India that can write your articles for online distribution. These people can be extremely proficient and work for very low rates, but still be well off. You should expect to pay between $5-10 for a 500-word article of decent quality for online distribution. For print publications, you should expect to pay between $100-200 for a 1500 word article. Also, due to online freelancing, there are a very large amount of freelance writers in America that will work for low wages because they can afford it online.

When you first contact the writer, ask for a few samples of their work and preferably where they have been published. You can also ask fro references and check these out as well. Make sure that the writer never plagiarizes as this can ruin your reputation almost instantly.

You can find freelance writers over online sites such as elance.com or craigslist.org and post in a few different sections. Try offering a low price and moving up to where you find a good deal with a writer that you can trust. You should also look to see if you can find a writer who specializes in writing for publications in your market or industry.

Finally, on a last note, beware of "private label article packages". These will claim to give you a large number of pre-written articles for you to put under your name but these are often junk articles that have been sold to hundreds of other people. It is very bad business sense to do this because you will be pegged as lazy and unintelligent at the best and a plagiarizer at the worst. More about these in later articles. Thanks!

Drake Dawson is a sales, marketing and advertising coach and trainer who has researched and lectured on sales techniques for 10 years. He is now focused on writing articles and publishing them online. You can visit his site at http://www.ultimatesalestips.blogspot.com

Viral marketing is a methods of list building

There are multiple methods of list building, and if you are just getting started, until you have gained mastery over one or two methods, it is advisable to use multiple methods of list building strategies. You’ll see every step of the process, no matter how small, in exacting detail so

Anyone who has a website knows how important it is to generate as much traffic as possible to draw in potential clients. This is what Internet marketing is based upon. Without website traffic you will not generate sales and your business will fail.

It is the website owners responsibility is to drive traffic to a website. The main tool that he or she uses are search engines such as Yahoo or Google. Advertising can be effective, however it is very expensive. When you use a search engine, you can only those consumers who are interested in your product for a fraction of the cost of advertising.

When you have visibility on a search engine, your website is being seen by millions of people who are looking for your product. Many website owners do not understand that this is what drives traffic to their site. Having a great website is wonderful, however it will do no good if you do not have traffic. There are common mistakes that many website owners make that are costing them traffic every day.

Misuse of Keyword

Keywords are the most important part of your site. Choose your keywords very carefully as they are what will direct traffic to your site from search engines. If you choose the wrong keywords you will get very little traffic.

Repetitive Keywords

You may think that using the same keywords repeatedly will get you listed more often, but in reality, the search engines will lower your standing or skip your site altogether. Using keywords repeatedly is called keyword stacking and it is not recommended.

Stealing from competitors websites

Whether it is on the Internet or not, stealing is wrong. Despite what friends or colleagues tell you, it is not acceptable to Borrow icons, text or even whole pages from another website. Search engines are designed with a feature that can find any type of duplications. If you have been found to have Borrowed from another website, you risk being banned from listing your website by search engines altogether.

Unrelated keywords can get you banned

There are may people who think that they can drive traffic to their website by using Keyword that are unrelated to the product that they offer. They choose the most popular keywords on the Internet today that have proven to drive traffic to websites. They do this on the premise that with these keywords, their visibility will increase and people will view their site. This is not only unethical, it is also considered to be spam. The website owner can hide the keyword in a Meta tag, and they will not be noticed. Search engines will find them, and in some instances, the website can be banned for search engine listing.

Keyword stuffing.

Keyword stuffing is similar to keyword stacking. The only difference is that the website owner uses an alt=HTML parameter. When the search engine discovers that the keyword text does not describe the contents of your website, the consider it to be spam and your site will be eliminated from the search engine.

Hidden Text

Many website owns will hide their keywords within their text. This is also highly unethical. They think that of they set their keywords to the same color and background of their web page. They think that the keyword become invisible, when in reality, nothing gets by a search engine.

Tiny Text is also unethical

Tiny text is just as unethical as hidden text. Tiny text is done by reducing the text size until it is barely readable. Again you cannot hide tiny text from search engines, they find any abnormality.

Assuming all search engines are the same.

There are a lot of people who are still under the impression that there are rules that all search engines have to adhere to. The fact is, that each search engine has their own rules of conduct that they go by and can amend them any time they choose to. It is crucial for website owners to research the requirements for high visibility for each search engine.

Free web hosting is not for serious businesses

When you are serious about driving traffic to your website through search engines, it is important not to use free web hosting companies. Search engines will remove pages that are using free web hosting.

Missing elements from your web pages

Double check your web pages to make sure that there are no missing links and that the graphics are complete. This can be difficult at times, however there are companies on the Internet that will assist you some even at no charge.

Your Internet business is your livelihood. By following these steps, you are ensuring that you will not be banned from search engines or be given the reputation of a spammer.

It may be tempting to try unethical methods, but in the end you will be caught and all the months of work trying to get your website noticed will only get it noticed for the wrong reasons. By taking the time to research what is acceptable and what is not is will aide in the success of your internet business by driving the traffic that you want to your site.

Leon Edward helps people in growing business income online and continuous self improvement. He writes on marketing, promotion, internet residual income and provides FREE content for websites and ezines. Search Articles, Internet Business Blogs, ideas, opportunity reviews and Successful Internet Business Case Studies at his website http://www.HomeBusinessIT.com .

After spinal cord and head injuries, Leon Edward committed his life to continuous self improvement in mind, body, spirit and finances. Now he helps people in Personal Development, Brain Improvement, Focus, Concentration, Memory, Goal Setting, Time Management, IQ, Public Speaking, Leadership, Communication, Stress Management and more through articles, blog, online training, IQ Mind Brain Memory Self Improvement Library, Self-Help Roladex and FREE Content at
http://www.AwesomeSuccess.org

Viral marketing is a methods of list building

There are multiple methods of list building, and if you are just getting started, until you have gained mastery over one or two methods, it is advisable to use multiple methods of list building strategies. You’ll see every step of the process, no matter how small, in exacting detail so

Network marketing is a great business to get into. While many people think it's a simple sort of business, the ones who are truly successful understand that there are many different layers and many different techniques. The network marketers who have hit the big time know that success lies in utilizing every one of these techniques and peeling back every layer of opportunity. Articles are one great way to improve your marketing strategies. Here are just a few different ways that they can help you get ahead:

Article Marketing -

Part of network marketing is to get your name out there and get the opportunity out there to as many interested people as possible. Article marketing is a great way to do this. You simply have a freelance writer craft an article that is based on the opportunity or is related somehow, and you submit it to one of the article marketing databases. Of course, the writer has placed strategic keywords within the article, so that when someone searches for those keywords, your article will pop up. Then, as the readers read the article and become interested, there is a link at the bottom that leads to your website. This is a great way to generate traffic to your site and get the information out there to more people. Also, others are able to use these articles as long as they include your byline and information, so this is another way to get your information out and around the web!

Articles on Your Site -

This is another great way to improve your strategy. Readers who may be interested in joining your network will trust you more if they can read about the opportunity, or things related to the opportunity. This can be accomplished with articles that you write, or that you have a ghostwriter take care of. This simply means that you pay once for the article, and the copyrights are yours. You put your name on the article as the writer. When people read the information that you provide, you establish yourself as an expert in your niche. This makes you the "go to" guy or girl when someone wants to learn more or even join your network. People would rather go with the person who they feel is more experienced and who is the expert. Through informative pieces on your site, you can build up this persona of the expert.

Newsletters -

You can include informative pieces in your newsletters to people who are in your network, or people who may want to join your network. This is simply another way to get your information and your name out there. When you add articles to your newsletter, you can add interest and another way to build your list and your network. Articles really are a great way to boost your existing strategy and create a magnet to draw people in! Using the articles in the different ways described above will help you create and establish credibility and interest with all of your pursuits.

Are you a freelance writer who is tired of others profiting from your hard work and effort? Do you want to maximize your online income and secure financial freedom for you and your family? Now you can! Combine your writing talents with the power of Internet Marketing and watch your income soar! Visit http://www.internetmarketingwriter.com and join the new revolution of financially secure and joyous freelance writers.

Viral marketing is a methods of list building

There are multiple methods of list building, and if you are just getting started, until you have gained mastery over one or two methods, it is advisable to use multiple methods of list building strategies. You’ll see every step of the process, no matter how small, in exacting detail so

Marketing is the whole process of delivering, distributing and selling your product. In marketing you have to find out what are the customers needs. Marketing is about finding new customers and marketing in the real world is completely the same like in home based business.

If you run a home based business, you need to know how to market your product, service and business opportunity, because getting traffic and finding new customers is the most important thing. Without good traffic you won't make those sales or you won't find people who would like to join your network marketing opportunity. Now lets talk about basic five ways of internet marketing which should be used by everyone.

The first way is to use Blogs. Start blogging about your product, network marketing opportunity, your home based business, your Google AdWords campaigns and so on. Blogs are free to use and they can really can boost up your business. Give it a go, try if it works.

The second way is to use forums on the internet. Whatever your niche is, there will be always a forum for your niche market and you can start posting in that forum, sharing your knowledge and experiences with others. People would start to recognize you and they would like to know more about you. This is why you should put your website on the forum signature, so that people could come directly to your website.

The third strategy is to use your friend lists of your MySpace, MSN messengers and so on. Probably you have got more than twenty, thirty, fifty friends. So why you should avoid to advertise to them? Tell all of them about your business opportunity, introduce them to your business and give them a hand if they need. You could even ask them to help you advertise your website to their friends.

The fourth strategy is to use emails correctly. When ever you send your email, add your link in the end of the text. Yes, let people know about your business and I bet at least 20% of your emails will attract new customers.

The fifth strategy is to advertise in real world. There are many companies which make leaflets or posters very cheap. You could make about a thousand leaflets, put a description of your business opportunity and your website link on your leaflet and you could deliver them around your neighborhood. You shouldn't avoid this advertising opportunity, because it is cheap and you can find a lot of potential customers.

Now you have got a clear view of what are the basic ways of marketing.

Robertas Domarkas is a seventeen year old, successful internet marketer. Visit his personal blog to find other great internet marketing techniques ant tips http://www.succeedo.blogspot.com