How to Write Effective Copy for Your Company’s Blog

Weblogs, more commonly known as blogs, are spreading feverishly across the Internet. According to Robyn Aber of Cisco Systems Inc., about four million blogs populate the Web. Though most private individuals maintain blogs, many companies are beginning to launch company blogs to communicate and interact with their clients, customers, and the public.

How can you create a company blog that outshines and outlasts every other blog? And how do you hypnotize readers to keep coming back? This article provides tips to write effective, attention-arresting blog copy and shows how you can develop reader and customer loyalty.

1. WRITE CONVERSATIONALLY.

The most engaging blogs speak to their audience in a casual and conversational tone. A big benefit of a blog is its ability to speak to readers in a way that is personal, candid and straightforward. Write your blog the same way you’d speak to your audience, face to face. The personal element is almost always what attracts people and keeps them coming back to your blog.

Amy Joyce of the Washington Post says, “Web logs—or blogs—started as a way to talk about new technologies, vent about life and interact in a no-holds-barred forum. Since blogs became the next big thing, an increasing number of companies have come to see them as the next great public relations vehicle—a way for executives to show their casual, interactive side. But, of course, the executives do nothing of the sort. Their attempts at hip, guerrilla-style blogging are often pained—and painful.”

To avoid this pitfall, simply be yourself. The best blogs reveal the interests, opinions, and personality of the writer. Your perspective, personal and professional, is unique in all the world. Let it shine through, and your blog will automatically be one-of-a-kind. An interesting blog will bring back customers again and again and will generate priceless interest in your company.

2. TELL STORIES.

Readers want to know things they already don’t know about your company. They want to know what the products, services, people, challenges, and innovations in your organization are really like. If you give them a glimpse of the inner workings, express your opinions boldly, and tell engaging stories, you will foster reader interest and loyalty. In a biography, both interviews and quotations usually are the most intriguing parts. Think of your company blog as a business biography. Personalize it with your unique thoughts and perspective.

3. MAKE IT PERSONAL.

Write about what you know. Draw from your expertise to inform the public about the finer points of your business. Detailing development ideas, setbacks, successes, and reactions reveals the human element and engages the reader. It’s fine to talk about new products and innovations, but blogs devoted mostly to marketing and promotion are the most boring and least popular of company blogs. Make these topics more appealing to readers by framing such announcements with personal impressions and insights. Customers want to feel a kinship with the brand. Letting them in on the details of your business will make them feel part of your company culture and increase the chances of their lifetime loyalty.

4. UPDATE FREQUENTLY.

Once you have established a good reader base, offer new insights regularly to reward surfers for coming back. Not only does this provide more information and exposure, but it also reflects that your company is active and on top of things. Link to current articles from other sources to keep readers abreast of developments in your sector. A rarely-updated blog feels stale and tired. This is not the reputation you want your company to have!

5. ADHERE TO COMPANY RULES.

You are personally responsible for whatever material you publish on your company blog. Respect the confidentiality of your organization and employees. Though you may express disagreements or concerns, do not make personal attacks or use the blog to air petty complaints. Do not reveal proprietary information; and avoid discussing revenue, share price, or other financial statistics. Observe copyright law, and quote sources as you would in any other document. Make sure what you write in the company blog reflects the company’s goals. Keep in mind the ultimate goal of most company blogs is to increase visibility and promote the exchange of information. While most companies allow and encourage blogging on company time, you should avoid letting your writing time interfere with your regular workload.

6. WRITE GRAMMATICALLY.

Finally, make sure that what you write is grammatical. Your blog entries reflect your company, and you want to give the best possible impression of the organization and its personnel. The Internet is rife with bad English. Though blogs tend to be relaxed in tone, it is no more appropriate to ignore standard English than it is to wear flip-flops and swimming trunks on casual Friday. Use a program like StyleWriter ( http://www.StyleWriter-USA.com ) or White Smoke ( http://www.WhiteSmokeSoftware.com ) to find and fix embarrassing grammar mistakes and help you write like a pro.

A company blog is an excellent tool for promotion, communication, and information. The tips outlined here will help elevate your blog and generate traffic and interest. Good luck, and welcome to the wonderful world of blogging!

For more articles on business writing and writing for blogs, visit http://www.ElectronicWritingCourse.com or http://www.ReadabilityFormulas.com and click on “Free Articles.”

Tips For Buying Collectibles On eBay.

Buying collectibles is one of the most enjoyable things to do on eBay, simply because you can find so many things that you just can’t get anywhere else. Here are a few tips to help you on your way.

Find your Category.

You’ll probably find that all the items you’re after are listed in a single category. Add this category to your browser’s Favorites, and keep coming back.

Look for Mistakes.

If you collect something, the chances are you know a lot about it. This can be your opportunity to make a mint from a seller’s mistake. They might not realise that they have a rare version of an item, or they might have left off the key information that makes it valuable. If you’re willing to email the seller and ask them a few questions about the item to confirm that it is what you think it is, then you should be able to buy items like these. You can then resell them at a big profit, if that’s what you want to do.

Don’t Always Believe Descriptions.

If you find something you haven’t heard of, and the description calls it ‘rare’, don’t assume that it actually is. Far too many sellers just put ‘rare’ into all of their descriptions – the chances are that the item is common and has just been described wrongly. Don’t bid unless you know what you’re buying.

Stalk Other Users.

When you collect something, you’ll probably notice that there are four or five sellers who seem to come up with consistently good items – and the same buyers buying them. Add their user pages to your Favorites, and check back often to see what they’ve got – or what they’re bidding on – that you might be interested in.

Don’t Get Too Attached to an Auction.

There are millions of items being listed every day on eBay – whatever you want, it’ll come around again, and if you don’t get it there are plenty more things to buy. This is similar to the golden rule of negotiating: always be prepared to walk away. If you can’t walk away, then expect to pay over the odds. There are few things so rare that another seller won’t have one to sell. Go and bid in a lower-priced auction, instead of getting into a bidding war in one that is already expensive.

Beware of the Postage.

If you collect lots of small things with a relatively low value, you might end up paying as much for postage as you do for each item. You should take these costs into consideration when you make your bid. Another good strategy is to always buy a few things at once from the same buyer, as they will almost always offer you a discount on the postage.

When you’re bidding, you might notice that some auctions go more slowly than others, going days at a time without any new bids. The next email tells you how to take advantage of these ‘slow’ auctions.

Changing Domain Name – The Best Way!

Accept the fact that there are really some times that you need to change your domain name. Changing domain names is not in fact a very rare situation, but the fact that is widely common today. Many were now changing domain names for certain purposes, and along with that, many people were also encountering problems.

The process of changing domain names, according to some veterans in the field of domain name, is somewhat very time-consuming and the potential for some mistakes is very huge. Well, every problem has its own solution, right? So a fairly simple solution and a safe alternative for a smooth and seamless switch in changing domain names is made possible through the application of the mod_rewrite and a .htaccess file.

Now, what is a mod_rewrite and .htaccess file?

According to certain studies, a mod_rewrite as it becomes important in changing domain names is an Apache module that grants the mode for the rewriting of the URL. Many considered this tool for changing domain names as transparent to the end-user and thus require no special software on the user’s end.

In an instance of changing domain names, the user who applies the mod_rewrite in changing domain names will still see the old domain name in their browser address bar on the first page that they visit, but then will typically be seeing the content under the new domain name. By using the mod_rewrite in changing domain names will also provide you with a very user friendly search engine.

On the other hand, the .htaccess file plays a role in changing domain names as containing particular Apache directives for specific requests, including security, redirection issues, and it also contains the answers on how to handle certain errors. Such function of the .htaccess file is very necessary in changing domain names for the reason that the Apache that it contains is a very common web server that helps a smooth and easy process of changing domain names.

Knowing the facts about those two important tools, it is therefore important to note that before you do anything, you should consider some issues that surround such the domain name change. These issues must be considered for these will help for a smoother transition. So according to some experts for changing domain names, the first important move is to check the web host to make sure that they support the mod_rewrite module, otherwise the attempt procedure will not work. Then it follows that you must activate your new domain name. It is just necessary that you ensure that the file base construction and naming is accurately similar when it was under the old domain name.

After that, you create an .htaccess file. It is interesting to know that the .htaccess file in changing domain names can be done with a simple text editor like the notepad, and it should be noted that the file has no tail extension; the name should then be just .htaccess. If done, the syntax should then be inserted. Just be aware that when changing domain names, the old domain name will still appear in the browser window but you are viewing the content of the new domain name. Of course there are still some rules behind these steps for changing domain names, but unfortunately, that is beyond the scope of this article.

Are You Setting Up A Website For Your Business?

There are very few businesses these days that don’t have websites, and as a home business your website is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal. A good website can really work for you, but you need to know what you’re doing.

Hire Foreign Designers.

Web design really is something that you shouldn’t try to do yourself, unless you really know what you’re doing — I’m sure you’ve seen what happens when people try this. Hiring a web designer, though, can be prohibitively expensive. Luckily for you, the Internet puts you in touch with designers all over the world, and it’s easy to hire one of them very cheaply to design your website. They don’t do any worse of a job than someone in your country would, it just happens that your few hundred dollars is worth as much to someone in India as a few thousand would be to you or I.

Use Search Engine Optimisation.

There are a heck of a lot of websites out there, and search engines will return everything relevant to a user’s search. How can you possibly get your site above the thousands of others that the search engine thinks are relevant to your keywords?

The answer is to use basic search engine optimisation techniques. For example, make sure you often use phrases that you think your target market will be searching for (your ‘keywords’), and make your web addresses contain them too. For this article, for example, http://www.website.com/home-business-website would be a much better web address than http://www.website.com/articles/205. That’s just a brief introduction — there’s a whole SEO industry out there, if you go looking for it.

Have Lots of Useful Content.

When you have a website, you’re not just trying to reach people who were searching for you — you’re trying to get people to check your website, read your latest news and offers, and the rest. The best way of doing this is to have fresh and useful content on there. Write short articles about the kind of things your customers might be interested in. If your home business is computer repair, for example, you could keep track of the latest virus threats on your site and offer help to anyone affected.

Make It Easy to Update.

You should make sure that whatever software you’re using to write your website makes it easy to post new articles without too many problems. If you have go to around putting HTML tags into your articles before you can upload them, then you should think about changing the way your website works.

Keep a Weblog.

One of the simplest ways to have fresh, useful content on your site is to keep a weblog (or ‘blog’). A blog is a series of entries, like entries in a diary, that are displayed on your site starting with the most recent first. It is easy to log in and quickly write a new entry, and it can be as short or as long as you like.

For your home business’ blog, the only rule to stick to is not to post anything there that isn’t related to your industry and your work. It might be great that you’ve got a new baby or sad that your cat Mr Tibbles died, but you should start a personal blog on another website if you want to post about that kind of thing.

Let People E-Mail You with No Hassle.

One of the worst mistakes people often make when they’re starting a website is to think that it would be a good idea to give their customers a ‘contact form’ to fill in. People really, really don’t like filling in forms, and you’ll lose a lot of interested customers if you require them to tell you all sorts of things before you’ll even talk to them over the Internet.

The best thing to do is to simply list your email address on your site, as a clickable link, and advise customers near the link of the kind of information it would be useful for them to include in an email. It might sound strange, but people are far more willing to go to the trouble of typing things in when it’s on their own terms, and not into an annoying web form.

The power of google sitemaps

Dear fellow entrepeneur

Let me tell you. When I started with Google Adsense in 2004, I had my doubts. But today, three years later, I am convinced about Google Adsense.

Maybe you won’t believe me, but I’m making almost 30% of my monthly salary with Google Adsense.
You know, you get these so-called experts telling you how you can get rich in no time with Adsense. But let me tell you; it’s all a hype (not that I’m saying that it is impossible to get rich with Google Adsense.). You see, it all comes down to very hard work and experimentation. And believe me, I made a lot of mistakes! But I’ve learned. And I’ve learned a lot!. You see, when I first started my first website, I did not have any intention of making money with Google Adsense. I started a website with the pure intent to help other people. I mean, the internet is a great place and the perfect opportunity where you can help others if you like.

So many people just join the internet community to make money. It does not matter to them if you loose money or valuable time, as long as they get what they want. Not that I say you are not allowed to make an income off the internet.

Ok, enough talking. Let’s get to the real topic here. What is it about Google Sitemaps? Google Sitemaps tell the Google Bot / Spider about your wesite.
You know, the layout, where all the files are, which file is more important and which file is less important. The reason for this is that the search engine knows how to arrange your files in the search results.

A google sitemap is in xml format and there is alot of free tools available which will help you to create a sitemap for your website. Online as well as offline tools. Just type (free script google sitemap creator) in the search engine and you will see exactly what I mean.

I must admit, in my own experience that the google bot visits my site more regurlarly from when I started to make use of a sitemap. Everytime you create a sitemap, it tells the googlebot which files has been changed and what new files has been added or any other changes that you may have made to your site.

If your are a serious webmaster and did not create a sitemap yet, I suggest you do so. I do not understand xml markup language, but I can at least give you an example of how an xml sitemap looks like. With this example you will be able to create your own sitemap in no time (that is to say if you do not have too much pages), otherwise it will be better to make use of one of the free sitemap creators available.

Well, here is the example:

\n”);


http://www.example.com\n”);
2007-08-27
weekly

Well I think you got the basic idea now to enable you to create your own sitemap, get more visitors, and make more money with Google Adsense.

One more thing. You are free to use this article on your website provided that it stays unaltered and the links in the resourcebox is live, search-engine friendly links.

DO NOT STEAL. IT IS NOT WORTH IT.

Four Questions Before You Look For Affiliate Programs

I’ve been receiving emails from people asking for my advice on which affiliate programs are the best, who pays the most and most often, and many other basic questions. I’d like to answer those questions on this forum, but I can only type so fast.

I went out this weekend looking for content that I could publish here temporarily while I got down to writing. I had a hard time finding unbiased content. Most of the so-called reviews out there are infomercials, and that’s not what I was looking for with this blog. So you’re going to have to bear with me. I’ve been looking and learning and reading and talking, and I’ve got a lot to say. I just need the time to write it down, and I will, starting tomorrow. No, really I will.

In the meantime, you need to ask yourself this — are you ready for an affiliate program, or Internet Advertising in general? I put together four questions you should ask before you embark on your affiliate program or any Internet advertising.

Before I get to the four questions you should ask before you enbark on your affiliate program, I am going to review two concepts that I use often here on Affiliateblog. The first is what I call the macro view of your Internet presence:

Incoming visitors – Internet Presence – Sales or Actions

You are really running two campaigns with your Internet presence — the first campaign is concerned with getting visitors to the site, and the campaign is ongoing. The second campaign is to get those visitors to do something. That something may be just to spend more time at your site, or it may be to sign up for something or buy something.

The other represents the process of Internet advertising:

Impression – Click – Action

Most affiliate programs pay publishers in the last part of the process, the Action. I’ll be using both of these concepts in my questions. So here we go…

1. Do you know enough about your visitors?

There are literally thousands of affiliate programs out there. While some affiliate marketing hubs are experimenting with context-sensitive serving of affiliate banners and banner rotation on affiliate sites, YOU will be the one to decide what kind of products and services you want to offer your visitors. This seems like a minor detail, but it is a major factor in your success.

If you haven’t already, take a look at the stats for your web site over the past month or so. Where do your visitors come from? Have you paid for Google, Yahoo or other search engine traffic? What are the keywords that people used to get to you? More complex and specific search terms tend to result in more immediate conversions, while broader search terms may result in sales later. If people get to your site using what you believe to be broad search terms, you need to be sure that the cookie life (the amount of time that passes between someone from your site visiting the affiliate merchant’s site and the sale) is long.

Do you have textlinks or other advertising on other sites? Do you know the demographics of the visitors from those sites? Have you spoken to the webmaster, owner or manager of the sites on which you advertise and asked him or her about their visitors? Do you know the websites? Have you visited the sites that advertise on the same sites as you? When you investigate all of these things a profile of the visitors to your site should begin to emerge.

Which search engine brings you the most traffic? If it’s Google, the user is slightly more apt to be male, and in the middle (of MSN, Yahoo and Google) as far as propensity toward buying something (42% more likely than the average user). There’s a terrific article on marketingvox.com if you want to see more details. You can also find some interesting demographic info on the major search engines from AQABA.

You should pay particular attention to the domains of your visitors. If you have a lot of AOL traffic for example, you should consider that the profile of the average AOL user is 35 or older (77%) and married (62%).

If you have trouble with textual representation vs. graphical representation (as I do), there is a terrific product called VisitorVille that takes your web logs and animates them. The text is represented as pictures (buildings, people, buses for the search engines, etc). You can see it here. Disclaimer: I am a VisitorVille affiliate.

After all this you should be able to sit down and come up with the profile of a typical visitor. This profile should hopefully include estimates of age, country of origin, education and income.

Try to think like your visitors. Try to anticipate their interests and the products and services they might want to purchase. Affiliate programs raise the bar from PPC — your payment comes at the end of the Internet marketing process (the Action) rather than at the beginning (Impression or Click) like Google Adsense or Doubleclick. You need to apply more brainpower to the process, and you’ll make more money if you do it right.

2. Is your site perfect?

You’re asking someone to buy something from your site. If the pages have sloppy html code, broken links or instability from a bad Cascading Stylesheet, it makes you look cheesy. We’ve all been uncomfortable buying something off a cheesy website. You don’t want to be that website.

Let’s start with the html code. Are you sure there are no errors in it? Have you used an html checker like the one at W3C? I find mistakes in my code all the time. Unless you check your code on several browsers in several resolutions you might not catch an error. The validator will. If you use Cascading Stylesheets you should also visit the CSS Checker.

Speaking of validators, you should check your links often. W3.org also has a link validator.

The site should also be optimized for search engines, be easy to understand and navigate, and should have a sitemap for people (and spiders) to find their way around. You should have had ten of your closest friends take a look at the site and give you their feedback, and you should always listen to unsolicited comments from users with an open mind and place value on them. If someone takes the time from their busy day to send you an email about your site, they feel strongly about it and you should take a close look at what they’re talking about.

Understand that if your Incoming Visitors campaign is not working right, you’re wasting your time with your Sales or Action program.

3. Do you know what kind of ads you’re going to use, and where the ads are going to go?

People have been ignoring banners for ten years. That’s why they shake and make sounds (someday I’ll tell you about the screaming match I had with a creative director the day we put out the first talking banner ad) to try to get your attention. Where you put it on the page is going to make a huge difference. Briefly — banners need to go somewhere the eye naturally rests (next to the masthead, near the navigation, at the bottom of the page).

Placement of any ads is a huge part of getting them noticed or clicked.

A lot of people (including me) believe that text ads should be placed at natural breaks and be close to the same in text size and color as the text. You need to surf around and look at where people place their ads, and you need to figure out where you think they would work on your site.

If you plan to create pages for some of the products you endorse (a great idea), you need to figure out how prominently you want to place the advertising. Most people won’t buy something if they believe you’re shilling for a particular company. They will buy from someone they believe honestly endorses the product or service. You need to figure out how to keep the distinction.

4. What’s your hunch on the right kind of offers for your site?

I ask this question a lot. Now that you have a better idea of the demographics of your visitors, try to decide on which action you think they would be more apt to take — pay-per-lead, pay-per-sale or even pay-per-click (hard to come by) on your site.

If you have a general interest website that gives away free stuff it’s probably going to be difficult to sell people products from that website. It might be smarter to try to get them to sign up for a free products newsletter from one of the affiliate programs, or you may want to look for offers that target the age group of your site rather than offers that target a specific interest. You might be looking for smaller-ticket sales or only leads. Leads get the user to the end of the advertising process chain, but require less of a commitment.

Try to come up with the four, five, six or fifty ways to slice this all up, by type of action, by type of sale or lead, or any other way you can come up with. Then you can go out and find the different offers that might appeal to your visitors. When it comes time to place the ads, try to put different ads in similar spaces on the same pages, and see how they do.

Get your questions answered and you’re ready to take the plunge into affiliate marketing.

301 Redirect – The SEO way to rename or move files or folders

In this article I will discuss page redirection techniques, what works and what to avoid.

What is page redirection and why would you want to use it?

Let’s say you rename a page on your website, for whatever reason. Perhaps you decided to revamp your entire naming convention, perhaps you decided to restructure your site and need to move pages into different folders, or you just realized that you are missing valuable keywords.

Let’s elaborate a bit on the keywords issue, since it is part of your search engine ranking success.

Let’s say the page in question is about customized USB drives and you named it page1.htm. Then you read some SEO (Search Engine Optimization) articles and you found out that some search engines use words in the actual file name as search keywords. Next time you do a Google search, take a look at the results, most will have words in the actual file name (in the URL section) bolded, denoting a keyword match. Your USB drives page will definitely benefit if named something like custom_usb_drives.htm instead.

Now that you renamed your page, you just created a symphony of issues for yourself, for your users and for your position in search engine results.

Linking issues:

You will have to point every link on your site to the new page name. If your site is small, it should not be a big deal, but if your site is large, you will inevitably make mistakes, mainly forgetting a link or two. This will result in visitors getting the dreaded “404 page not found” error when clicking on your links, robots (also know as crawlers or spiders) avoiding you, etc. Also, if you are heavily relying on visitors from search engines, then again, people will get a “404 page not found error”.

Let’s use the previous example, for a long time your page1.htm was indexed by major search engines. If someone types “custom usb drives” in a search engine box, your page shows up on the first search results screen. That is fantastic, only if someone clicks on the link, they will be pointed to page1.htm, not to custom_usb_drives.htm, because the first page is the one in the search engine’s index. It will take time, sometimes months, before the search engines update their indexes with your new page name.

Lost Page Rank (PR) issues:

Google developed a proprietary algorithm that assigns a Page Rank (PR) to every page on the web. PR is a number from 1 to 10 (10 being the ideal) and is intended to be a representation of how useful and popular a given page is. PR is influenced by many factors, one of the crucial ones being Link Popularity. Link Popularity is a representation of how many “quality” or “relevant” sites link to your page. Without getting into too much detail, it is increasingly difficult and time consuming to achieve a high PR for your pages, especially if you don’t have a really unique website with exceptional and highly sought after content. If you are merely operating a commercial site, in a competitive market (such as selling custom branded USB drives, as in our example), then it takes a lot of time and hard work to build a good page PR.

When you rename a page and discard the old page, you also discard the PR of the page. Your renamed page will be seen as a totally new page, with 0 PR.

What is the solution?

I will start by enumerating some of the methods used by the non-initiated.

Not recommended solution 1: Duplicate content.

First thing that probably comes in you mind is: well, why can’t you just duplicate the page and let nature take its course. In other words, you will have two identical pages, one named page1.htm and one custom_usb_drives.htm. This gives you time to update all links and the search engines will eventually index the new page.

This solution is not viable because search engines will penalize you quite badly, ‘thinking’ that you are trying to scam them by using the ‘duplicate content’ technique.

Not recommended solution 2: Custom error message.

You could create a custom error page. However, you will lose rankings on the next search engine update as the file will appear to be non-existent. As discussed above, it could be some time before the page with the new name will be indexed and will appear in people’s searches. Also, your web site visitors will be frustrated by the fact that they now have to dig through your site to find the desired information.

Not recommended solution 3: An HTML Meta redirect.

You could implement a so called Meta refresh in a blank or customized page that has the name of the old page (in our example, page1.htm) that points to the new page. The redirect can be instant, or delayed by a predetermine amount of time. The delayed redirect has the advantage that you can place an extra message, such as “please be aware that the page you are looking for changed location….. etc., etc…. you will be redirected automatically to the new location”

In the past, this was probably the most used technique.

Without getting into the mechanics of the Meta redirect, which is basically a META tag statement you ad to your HEADER section, know that there are also Java Script techniques that achieve similar results.

What is bad about this is that this is a technique often used by spammers to trick search engines and it should be avoided, unless the page is in a section of your site that isn’t indexed (also known as spidered or crawled). Search engine spammers create a page that is optimized for certain keywords and phrases – it usually has no real content. The page is then picked up by some search engines, but when a visitor clicks on the search engine entry, they are redirected to another site, often unrelated. Most search engines have filters to detect this. Using this form of search engine deception will see a site eventually banned or penalized by major players such as Google.

The recommended redirect strategy – 301 Redirect

A 301 redirect is the most efficient, visitor friendly, robot (spider, crawler) friendly and search engine friendly solution around for web sites that are hosted on servers running Apache. If you are not sure, check with your hosting provider.

A 301 redirect is just a set of commands you type into your .htaccess file.

When a visitor (whether human or robotic) requests a web page via any means, your web server checks for a .htaccess file. The .htaccess file contains specific instructions for certain requests, including security, redirection issues and how to handle certain errors.

The code “301″ is interpreted as “moved permanently”. After the code, the URL of the missing or renamed page is noted, followed by a space, then followed by the new location or file name.

First of all, you’ll need to find the .htaccess file in the root directory of where all your web pages are stored. If there is no .htaccess file there, you can create one with Notepad or a similar application. Make sure when you name the file that you remember to put the “.” at the beginning of the file name. This file has no tail extension.

Some hosting providers offer redirect services through their “control panels”, so you don’t have to perform low level changes on the .htaccess file itself. Instead, they provide a user friendly interface for this. Check with your hosting provider to see what the optimal way to perform a 301 redirect is in your case. I will continue the article with the barebones solution.

If there is a .htaccess file already in existence with lines of code present, be very careful not to change any existing line unless you are familiar with the functions of the file.

Scroll down past all the existing code, leave a line space, then create a new line that follows this example:

redirect 301 /folder/page1.htm http://www.you.com/folder/custom_usb_drives.htm

It’s as easy as that. Save the file, upload it back into your web and test it out by typing in the old address to the page you’ve changed. You should be instantly and seamlessly transported to the new location.

Notes: Be sure not to add “http://www” to the first part of the statement – just put the path from the top level of your site to the page. Also ensure that you leave a single space between these elements:

redirect 301 (the instruction that the page has moved)

/folder/page1.htm (the original folder path and file name)

http://www.you.com/folder/custom_usb_drives.htm (new path and file name)

The same format applies not only to renamed files, but also to files moved to a different location.

The 301 redirect is the safest way to preserve your rankings. On the next indexing (crawling, spidering), the search engine robot will obey the rule indicated in your .htaccess file and index the new page name every time a link or its internal database tries to access the old page. In the next update (again, this could take months), the old file name and path will be dropped and replaced with the new one. Sometimes you may see alternating old/new file names during the transition period, along with some possible fluctuations in rankings as things settle. Don’t panic, this is normal.

What if your site is hosted on a Microsoft IIS server instead?

If you have access to the server, do this: In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect. Select the radio titled “a redirection to a URL”. Enter the redirection page, check “The exact url entered above” and the “A permanent redirection for this resource”. Click “Apply”.

If you do not have access to the server, ask your host to point you into the right direction.

In conclusion, the best and the most transparent way (to both human and robotic users) to rename and move files on your web site, while preserving your search engine ranks is the 301 redirect.

How To Suck An Army of Affiliates To Ram Streams of Income For You.

Do you have a product so good you want everybody to know about it? How about generating more profits from it? If you want the answer, affiliates are the key. Nevertheless, how do you actually get swarms of affiliates to promote your product? Look below:

1. Create An Affiliate Program
The first step of course, is to create your affiliate program. Make sure you have a good affiliate program that works perfectly well. Nobody will want to know that they have lost their commissions due to the malfunction of an affiliate program.

If you don’t have an affiliate program, you can use the service from ClickBank. They provide an easy, one step affiliate program that will send you checks every 2 weeks for your earnings.

2. Prepare The Tools
This is one of the largest mistakes an affiliate program owner ever has. Preparing the right tools for your affiliates is crucial as it can boost the response from your affiliates. When you do, you give your affiliates a big reason why they should promote your products.

They don’t need to start everything over from zero, they can improve, or upgrade your tools and sell more effectively, or they can save their precious time preparing and instead, start selling your products right away.

3. Urge Your Visitors
On your sales page, try and urge your visitors in affiliating your product. Many people just need a push on the back before they will do something. By urging them to do so, you not only get more affiliates, you can generate more profits as well.

4. Request Subscribers
If you have a list of subscribers, send out an email asking them to become an affiliate for your product. Your subscribers know you better than just normal visitors, they’ll be more responsive to your request.

5. Create Viral Reports
This is a very effective way of getting more affiliates to promote your products. A viral report consists of great contents to educate your readers and you’ll be able to request these readers in promoting your products as well.

Viral reports get passed around a lot, they are one of the greatest ways of spreading the word on the Internet. If you haven’t created your own viral report, create one today!

6. Have A High Ticket Product
Many affiliates are searching for products that have very high price tag so that they can earn more commissions upon a sale. Of course, make sure the price is reasonable so people will actually dig their wallets out for it.

7. Offer High Commissions
A high commission is a great motivation for affiliates. If they can earn a big portion of commissions from a product or service upon their sales, it gives them a reason to continue promoting your product or service to people. Be generous on this, because affiliates can earn you twice as much alone, maybe even more! As the saying goes “give and you shall receive.”

8. Embed the Tell-A-Friend Function
Did you place the tell-a-friend function on your sales page? Did you place any of it on your order page either? How about the thank you page? And the page after people subscribed to your newsletter? If you haven’t, you’re a sales killer, you’re an affiliate killer.

Humans are lazy, they need a nudge before doing anything. Many people think that the tell-a-friend functions are not effective but the fact is, they rock hard. Have you been on a page where you feel like telling a friend but it takes so many things to do that so you simply leave the page and forget it?

What if there’s a tell-a-friend function right in front of your eyes? You’d just fill in the form in 5 seconds and send it all to your friends. That’s how Tickle, MySpace, Friendster and all the other high traffic website works – the word of mouth!

Therefore, if you haven’t applied any of the steps above, take action now and do it today. To your success.

Things to look for before Signing up with an Affiliate Program

Affiliate programs are a great opportunity of making money online. Affiliate marketing is so lucrative that you will find thousands of programs to choose from. With so many options available, choosing the best affiliate program for your business can sometimes take a bit of time and effort. In fact you may make a few mistakes before settling into the ultimate profit-generating affiliate partnership.

To find your suitable affiliate partner there are a few things you need to look for: -

The first thing to check out is the affiliate program&s terms of service. For instance, if you intend to use Google Adwords but your potential affiliate partner does not allow Google Adwords for marketing, signing up will not prove fruitful. Thus, reading through the terms and conditions of prospective affiliates is a must. Steer clear of any affiliate programs which do not publicly post their terms of service.

Also ensure that the potential affiliate partner has clear payment specifications. These specifics will help you find out how much money you can earn and how often the payments will come in. You may receive a fixed amount for every sale generated or a certain percentage. For instance, if you are to receive 10% of the sale, and you generate a sale of $100, your earning will be of $10. If the product is good there will be several such sales and the earnings will accrue.

Before agreeing to promote your affiliate programs product, it is very important to check out how their website looks. The way a website looks plays a very important role in how well you can earn money promoting their products or services. For instance, you visit the website of a possible affiliate partner and find out that the website is crowded with several advertisements. Affiliate Programs will generate income for you only if a sale is made. If a potential customer follows the lead from your website to the affiliate programs only to click on one of the advertisements there, you make no money in the process.

The above are starter tips to help you set up a profitable affiliate partnership. Ensure that your affiliate program website caters to products and services that are similar to your line of business. Furthermore, do not have more than 2 affiliate programs at the same time. Place the banners at strategic locations and make sure they gel in with your website and do not stand out as advertisements. Also, concentrate on good content, good color schemes and keep the background uncluttered. All this well help your visitors locate the affiliate add easily, and if they find it interesting, they all click on it. If this visit gets converted into a sale, you earn cash. Its simple, yet complicated. Caution is the key word. If you observe the above mentioned guidelines, you are sure to find success and make fast money.

Shorten Your Blogging-RSS Learning and Submission Curve

A blog is a frequent, online publication of comments, web links, and news. It is an online Enzine of sorts. People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but the trend gained momentum with automated published systems, most notably is blogger.com. Thousands of people use services such as Blogger alone.

So start your blog now and be ahead of the crowd for a change. A secret I’ll share with you here before going any further is after you set up your blog goto
FeedBurner and follow the instructions to burn your feed. Then publicize your feed by inserting the msn and yahoo chicklets to your blog.

I know it sounds complicated but if you can follow simple instructions and cut and paste it should only take a few minutes. Caution you must be familiar with HTML so as not to make mistakes. If you’re not sure ask a friend or if you don’t know anyone I’ll be glad to assist. This info is for you if you’re familiar with the web – if you’re a newbie it&ll take a bit longer to implement

Once the chicklets are installed onto your blog, login to them using your yahoo and msn id&s and add them to your my msn and my yahoo templates. From then on when you make an entry to your blog it&ll automatically log itself onto msn and yahoo and broadcast itself to the web in addition to your rss feeds. Once this is done goto
PingOMatic and ping your blog to be indexed within days; not weeks or months.

Here are the reasons you should not ignore Blog advertising:

Remember when all search engines were free, and simply submitting your web sites got you listed quickly? Gone.

Then it was FFA pages, they brought in a ton of free traffic, built links to your site, and added to your mailing list like crazy. Tried one lately? Safelists were an online goldmine for a while… until bottom less email accounts were introduced.

Website sumbmissions now can take anywhere from 2 to 8 weeks to be indexed. While blogs and rss feeds can be indexed anywhere from 2-8 days which is better for you??

So once again I implore you to be one of the first in line and not be last again. This is the new trend just beginning to breakthrough. A few years or months from now you’ll be able to sit back and smile as you watch the rest of the net stampeding to catch up.

Top 10 Affiliate Website Mistakes an Affiliate Manager Sees

With over 12,000 affiliates to manage in 5 separate merchants programs, I review countless affiliate applications and their corresponding websites.

It isn’t a pretty picture. And that’s part of the problem.

So I thought it appropriate to share the 10 most common mistakes I see affiliates make over and over each and every day.

1. The affiliate’s website is poorly designed. A lot of times it’s just plain ugly. Ugly I can stand if it has a purpose. I started my Internet career doing web design and programming. I understand good website design, both for function and look. The affiliate site has to have at least one or the other to be effective, having both is the best. Without one or both of these factors, what are the chances for a visitor to be referred to my merchant’s site?
2. The affiliate site has no affinity to the merchant site. If you have a website without anything in common with the merchant, how do you expect to sell the merchant’s products to your visitor? If your site is all about computer equipment, why are you signing up for my wigs site? Why are you wasting both of our times?
3. The affiliate site has no voice or character. How will a visitor find value on the affiliate’s site long enough to have reason or need to clickthrough on my merchant’s text or banner link? None I would say.
4. The affiliate site has too many banners or text ads. How will the visitor differentiate my offer from the competition? If the site is messy and busy, I may get lots of impressions, but clickthroughs will be low and probably conversions too. Don’t junk up your site with too many ads that don’t have purpose.
5. Affiliate sites with expired coupons. Seeing a site like this implies it’s a “weekender’s” site a part-time affair. Many affiliates started out this way, but today it is highly unlikely that such a site will generate any traffic or sales for my merchants.
6. Affiliate sites with broken banners. It still happens, merchants change their creatives, affiliates don’t keep up and there is an ugly red “x” where a banner should be. Don’t let this happen to you.
7. The affiliate site has no privacy policy. This is a red light for visitors. This means the site is just trying to make a buck and has no interest in visitors for any other reason than getting them to make them money. A sophisticated consumer, as most are getting as Internet experience increases, wants a sophisticated site to convert through. Not having even a simple privacy policy is a giveaway as to the lack of sophistication of the site owner.
8. NO ABILITY TO CONTACT THE WEBSITE OWNER. If you will not disclose who you are, provide an email link or a site form, it is unlikely a visitor to your site will get warm and fuzzy about his site visiting experience and will not covert as a result.
9. NO CONTACT INFORMATION AVAILABLE FOR THE AFFILIATE MANAGER. In olden days affiliates didn’t want to be bothered by affiliate managers. Now with the tools and special offers merchants can offer through producing affiliates, it is essential for good communications between the affiliate manager and the affiliate. It means more money for both.
10. Affiliate website owner not participating in the industry forums. More and more as I talk with affiliates, we discuss forum postings, industry news and blogs. The top producers know what is going on in the industry. They are creating the news and are creating financial opportunities at the same time.

Internet and Affiliate Marketing: Celebrate The Small Victories

Most internet marketing ventures start as one-man operations. When mistakes are made, you know who to blame. But don’t just beat yourself up, remember that when progress is made, that was all you too. Celebrate the small victories.

When you are just starting in internet marketing, keeping a positive mindset can be a crucial ingredient of long term survival. On or off the web, most new businesses do not become profitable immediately. Sales can be mediocre as your marketing campaign gets going, and if you didn’t plan ahead for this fallow period you may begrudge the out-of-pocket expenses that arise. It is easy to get discouraged.

Worse, many marketers lack basic support and encouragement. In a normal workplace there are other employees to share the load and help solve problems. Not so for most start-ups, and your personal support network may lack enthusiasm. Your friends may think you’re a sucker involved with some newfangled scam. Your family may worry that your seemingly unprofitable internet career is interfering with your day job.

You must remember that you are your own manager, and good managers care about their employees& morale and motivation. Notice and enjoy the small milestones in your business as they pass by, whether it is finally getting your web design just right or suddenly nailing the top search position on a good keyword. Reward yourself with a day off or a good meal. Tell your friends about it even if their eyes glaze over; you listen to their stories about their dull jobs, right?

Verbalizing your success is for your own benefit, and it can help you assess your accomplishments and know when you’ve made real progress along your business plan. Don’t commit the common mistake of neglecting the hardest working, most under-appreciated person in your employ – yourself.

Making Big Money By Going Small on the Nets

You will hear over and over that the quickest way to find success on the net is to find an area with little competition. I second this advice.

Making Big Money By Going Small on the Net

Going small can refer to both marketing and business choice. In and of itself, you are trying to find a segment of the general market for a service or product line. One then develops a solution for the needs of that segment and then markets to it to get the word out. Let’s take a look at an example using one of the biggest companies in the world.

Toyota is a huge multinational company. At first glance, it appears that Toyota focuses on the auto business as a whole both from a marketing and production standpoint. This view is correct. Notwithstanding this fact, Toyota is excellent when it comes to identifying sub-markets that are wide open.

Toyota will search for niches for which it can supply a product in need. Toyota was one of the first companies to realize there was a group of car buyers who would be very interested in environmentally friendly cars. To answer this need, it came up with the legendary Prius. The Prius is the first mass production hybrid car. Where other car manufacturers saw Toyota taking a huge risk, Toyota saw it as an opportunity to identify a new niche and establish its brand. In marketing, it is often the first brand on the scene that takes the day.

Once Toyota took the plunge, it pursued an effective marketing plan. It didn’t promote the Prius in just any media. It focused on media outlets that were watched, read or listened to by people concerned about the environment. For example, it heavily promoted the car through environmental groups and their publications. As the only game in town at that time, Toyota not only dominated the business area – it was the entire niche.

Going small translates just as well to the Internet. In fact, your first sites should be focused on identifying niches and providing products or services to accommodate the need of those prospects.

One of the biggest mistakes made by new businesses on the web is biting off more than they can chew. You are not going to compete against Amazon for general book sales. On the other hand, you might be able to pound Amazon into the ground in the rare book market or in a specific sub-market such as home improvement periodicals. The point is to try to focus both your site and marketing on a segment of the market that is not already dominated.

Being a big fish in a small pond has its limitations, but it sure can be profitable!

How To Not Get Lost In The SEO World

The ever-increasing level of competition in the Web these days is like a mad scramble for most businesses, with thousands of sites and affiliates boxing-out each other for niche markets, increased traffic, and higher sales.

Website and business owners who spend money on optimizing their websites in the search engines want to know they are getting a good return on their investments. SEO firms and experts need concrete numbers to show that the campaign is working, and that they should continue to invest in optimization.

According to the experts, there are several good reasons why you should measure your SEO efforts, so that you wouldn’t get astray in terms of direction or investment. First, you need to justify how much you’re spending to management, your client, or whoever holds you responsible for getting traffic to your website. Second, is to make sure that all the time and funds you’re spending on SEO is actually working. Third, to enable you to secure more money for next year’s SEO budget. And lastly, to enable you to stay competitive always.

It is also notable to take note that you should understand industry averages, such as how much the average website owner spends on outsourcing SEO, and this could range from $100 to $500 per web page for example, and what sort of return you can expect to receive for paying premium cash. In finding out these spending averages, you are fully equipped with the knowledge when formulating a plan that will convince yourself, or the higher-ups, to spend the money on SEO.

Tips On How Not To Get Lost In The SEO World

It is far better to get started on your SEO journey of learning and make a couple mistakes, than to let months go by, never make a mistake and never get started. Here are a few tips on succeeding, and in preventing yourself from getting lost in the wide, and sometimes tricky world of SEO.

* Make a firm decision to get started. There are a lot of people who will buy a program or purchase a product, but for some reason have difficulty in getting to know how to use it: as a result, they never do.

* Gain self-confidence through experience and constant practice. Far too many people hesitate to try out their ideas. The sooner you strengthen your confidence, the sooner you will realize the potential for what you can achieve and do. In the beginning, start with a few of your own sites where you have full creative liberty without encountering the demands or pressures that come from a client.

* Gather advice from the SEO community by visiting respected forums and discussion groups. Although at times you may not get leading edge stuff, since most of that costs a lot of money, however you will get an awesome amount of pertinent information. Plus, you’ll also hear both sides of a story, both the pros and cons, from the debates that seethe within the community.

* Subscribe to reputable newsletters and learn from what the experts say. Many of them are free to sign up to and they can be a wonderful venue to start learning.

The Worst SEO Mistakes That Lead To Lowering Your Search Engine Ranking

Copyright 2006 Mark Nenadic

Though there are many different theories out there regarding what makes the best SEO technique, when it comes to some issues that will work against your SEO efforts, there are some issues where everyone agrees. Among these, the most prominent are:

• Not having a web page title
• Using too many graphics, images, or flash animation on a given web page
• Having a menu system that is prohibitively complex

It is extremely important that every web page on your site has a title. Without providing a descriptive title that is search engine optimized with the right keywords, you’ll not only hurt your ranking, but you’ll turn visitors away. Consider it the equivalent to owning a store without a sign and with blackened windows. To make sure that you’re doing your best on that level, make certain that each web page on your site has its own unique title that is specific to its content. Try to make sure that it includes the primary keyword for that page, to ensure proper SEO for search engine spiders.

By using too many graphics, images, or flash animation, you may be pleasing the eye, but search engine spiders won’t see it the same way. Search engines focus on the text content of your website. Their spiders crawl through your site looking for text, keywords, and other indications of purpose. They cannot, however, understand images or flash animations, nor will they ever understand their appeal. Therefore, though images are great ways to add appeal to your visitors, by adding too much to any given web page, you’re decreasing the value of your search engine optimization. To reduce this problem, try to create a balance on your page where the text content is given the true priority, and images, graphics, and flash animations are only a compliment, not a focus for the page. You can also help your website by adding alt tags to each of your images so that you are providing the search engine spiders with a bit of text, even when it’s an image that actually shows up on the page.

The menu system of your website is the key to being able to properly navigate around it. Search engine spiders are typically considered to be relatively basic programs and struggle with anything but the most primitive menu systems. For example, if your menu involves JavaScript or a Java applet, the search engine spider will not be able to recognize any of the features, and will not be capable of properly navigating the site. Certainly, these can be very appealing to people, but search engine spiders don’t have the same ability to interpret the features of a website as people do. For proper search engine optimization, a simple textual link is your best option as it is the easiest for a search engine spider to understand. It makes your site much more likely to be seen in full by the spider, and therefore receive the best indexing and ranking results. Furthermore, the majority of the time, an extremely complicated menu system can quickly be replicated and implemented using textual links and CSS. This will make an enormous difference in your SEO results, and will be welcomed by all of your visitors who are still using dial-up and other slow connections.

If you must use a complex menu or site navigation system, then make sure that you at least provide a site map that is readily available via a text link from the home page. This site map should use text to clearly link to every one of the other pages of your web site. This way, even if a spider is unable to use your regular menu system, it will be able to reach all of the pages by way of the site map.

By carefully watching to make sure that you’ve avoided these mistakes, you’ll be making a big difference in your odds of achieving high ranking due to your search engine optimization efforts. You’ll refrain from working against your own SEO efforts due to simple errors, and will enjoy much larger amounts of traffic to your website.

Linking Strategies for Newbies

One of the most crucial mistakes I made when I first started Internet Marketing was not completely understand the importance of proper back linking, anchor tags, keywords and the title tag. The most important things to search engines is providing relevancy to search results using keywords in the anchor tags and back links. Back links to your website has become one of the most or if not important aspects to better Search Engine Result Positioning (SERP) using your keywords in your anchor tags.

One of the most common mistakes that I personally made with my website was in the title was:

Title: Succeed Online with ES-Solution

The problem with that title was; What does that have to do with my website and keywords? Search Engines base a lot of importance on the keywords and the anchor tag contained in the back link. Additionally, I submitted my website to many directories and search engines using that title. What I am telling the search engines? That my most important keyword or keyword phrase is “Succeed Online with ES-Solution.” How many possible searchs do you believe would have that exact phrase or keywords? Zero.

My rankings for my keyword phrase “Internet Marketing eBooks” were even more horrible!

Steps to avoiding this same mistake:

Step 1: Never using a descriptive title

Step 2: Choose the most relevant Keywords for your Title

Step 3: Create back links using the appropriate anchor tag.

My actions:

1. I changed my title to “Internet Marketing eBooks”. Another important idea behind your title and keywords is that the search engines will shift around your keywords to make more phrases. I only have 3 Keywords but using different combination, I have 3 good keyword pharses:

(1) Internet Marketing eBooks
(2) Marketing eBooks
(3) Internet Marketing

2. And I began re-submiting my website to directories and search engines with the proper title (anchor tag): “Internet Marketing eBooks”

My results:

(1) I have several back links with the anchor text “Internet Marketing eBooks”, but unfortunately I still have some of the old back links with the anchor text “Succeed on with ES-Solution” dropping my overall relevancy to 54% when it should be 100%.

(2) I have managed to achieve the number one ranking as of 6 December 2005 for the keyword phrase “Internet Marketing eBooks” in MSN and the number two ranking in Yahoo.

Do You Make These Affiliate Mistakes?

You’ve just come across a fantastic product and you’re thinking of signing up as Affiliate but before you get carried away, here are a few pointers that can save you both time and money!

1.Is the sales letter any good, read the headline first it’s been shown that a good headline makes a big difference (it’s been proven that 75% of people make up their minds of purchasing a product just from reading the headline alone.)
Is the rest of the sales letter any good, do you find yourself reading being drawn through the sales letter? Would you buy the product yourself? If you would, others probably would as well.

2.Are there any “leaks” on the sales page? By leaks I mean are there any thing on the webpage to distract your visitor from making a purchase
or a way for you could lose out a commission.
For example…
• Phone numbers that the buyer could order from and deal directly with the seller, causing you to lose out on a commission,
• E-mail addresses for the same reason as above.
• Excessive pop ups or slow loading webpage’s that can frustrate your prospect. (People on the internet want everything in an instant so don’t expect them to hang around!)

3.Are there any testimonials on the sales page, the more testimonials the better especially showing how the person has benefited from using the product.

4.What kind of guarantee is being offered with the product, is it 30,60 day risk free guarantee. Don’t worry about a longer guarantee costing you money and people asking for their money back as its been shown that the longer the guarantee the less refunds you’ll get.

5.If you can, buy the product so you know yourself if it’s any good there’s no point sending traffic to a website, making some commissions and then finding out the products poor quality and everyone wants their money back.

These tips should save you a lot of time and frustration when looking for a product to become an affiliate of….And remember not everyone surfing the web
is going around with their wallet open looking to purchase something so don’t be disheartened if you get a lot of “No’s” before you get a “Yes.”

Choosing An Appropriate Affiliate Program-Learn More Now

Many affiliate marketers are either unsuccessful or only partially successful because they tend to lack focus. They go from one strategy to another without really taking the time to master anything. Most affiliate programs provide information on how to promote the product and they will give you the necessary tools such as, text links, banners and more. Choosing an appropriate affiliate program is going to be a challenge for beginners but it is possible, without too much stress involved.

The main and most important reason affiliate programs are excellent for beginners is you only need to concentrate on promoting and not making your product. This is your key to a very successful future indeed. Learning more about what an affiliate program can do for you and knowing how to go about choosing the most appropriate one for your needs is also just as important.

The internet is truly the greatest place to locate all of this type of information that anyone of you might need at some point in your life, for one thing or another. Many people are becoming more interested in learning the ropes of affiliate programs and why they are so very beneficial to any type of business. Keep you eyes open to any changes being made at all times so that you can remain on top of things no matter what.

Other ways to promote your affiliate link includes writing articles, commenting in online forums, creating pay-per-click campaigns etc. As you become more experienced in marketing you will make the necessary adjustments and start creating a wonderful income! Once you begin seeing all of this hard earned money rolling in, you are going to be so pleasantly surprised, no doubts about that people.

The key to success in affiliate marketing is first and foremost to know how to choose affiliate programs that you are interested in and then plan and stay focused. You do this by concentrating on one strategy for a period of time, at least a month or two. Find as many sources as possible about affiliate programS & How to go about choosing the most appropriate one for your needs, you might even realize it is not that complex really.

Remember being patient is very important throughout all of this because giving up too quickly could really end up costing you tremendously at the end of it all, which none of you want right. Working hard and finding that inner strength is really what is going to get you far in the business world and it is what it is going to take to earn you the amount of money that you were first hoping for.

If it is not returning any income, then take a look at an alternative strategy and spend some time developing it. If it starts to work then take a look at ways of making it even better. Perhaps there are some mistakes being made that you did not first notice until now. It is important to understand all aspects of an affiliate program, a little piece at a time.

While there are plenty of legitimate online businesses that you can start or you can take part in you need to avoid those scams that tell you about making millions with only a couple hours of work each day. An affiliate program can get you guided in the right direction if you pay close attention to this article and look closer into other sources as well.

It simply isn’t going to happen and the only one that will be making money is the scammer who placed such ads in the first place.Yet too many of these business ventures fail because they aren’t well planned or the person have the belief that they can just get rich quick without having to do any work.

When you sit down at your computer to surf the internet you have the access to almost anything you could possibly want to buy. This is one of the main reasons why millions of people take a look around online each day. On the other side of this coin are the entrepreneurs who know there is a great deal of money to be made with a successful online business.

With a successful online business though you can have the freedom to work when you want from your home. You also have the opportunity to make a very good living at what you enjoy doing. If you don’t have your own product to promote you can sign up for various affiliate programs. These allow you to market products that other people have for sale and then earn commissions from those sales.

Why Some Affiliates Don’t Make Enough Money

Affiliate marketing is most probably the key to the survival and progress of many cyberspace businesses. And this is why affiliates are being sought everywhere by almost every online company. One traditional marketing arm will not be sufficient for one online business who will be competing with other online companies which are offering the same products and services. Thus, affiliate marketing is very vital.

Fortunately, many people with business blood in their veins realize the important role of affiliate marketing in e-commerce. And conducting affiliate marketing seems like a relatively easy method that even a person without a masters degree in business can do it. This is why there are many affiliates signing-up everyday. These new affiliates are supposed to open the doors of new leads for the online business. But nothing like that is happening

Many affiliates are not earning enough money and they find no significant activity going on in their websites. Is affiliate marketing a mistake? The answer is “no”. This practice is based on sound marketing concepts. And the major reason why most affiliates don’t earn enough money is that they have committed one or more of these mistakes.

Mistake #1: Hard Selling

An affiliate must not do “hard selling”, which is basically shoving the product down the throat of the customer. An affiliate should leave the “hard selling” part to the website of the online business. The affiliate’s own website should not contain anything that resembles “hard selling”.

What an affiliate must do in his website is to “pre-sell”. To pre-sell is to slowly convince the visitor of the importance of a service or a product by having excellent, information-laden, and authoritative content. Then, the affiliate will “suggest” an action for the visitor, which may be to check out the service or the product.

Mistake #2: Too Flashy Websites

An affiliate is supposed to respond to the need of the visitor, which is to obtain information. This means that the affiliate’s website should have information. Unfortunately, some affiliates are lured into making their websites into one electronic show, in which there are too many banners and too many “blinking” features that seek attention.

If there are too many banners and too few content, the visitor will most probably roll his eyes and hit the back button.

Mistake #3: Ignoring Search Engine Optimization

Activity in the affiliate’s website can be increased if the website’s URL ends up in the results page of search engines. Otherwise, the affiliate’s website is doomed to silence. It simply becomes a lifeless stone in the ever increasing world of e-commerce.

A person who intends to make more money in affiliate marketing should re-evaluate his website and determine if he has committed the mistakes described here.

Affiliate Marketing – Do You Have What it Takes to be Successful?

The truth is that 99% of all affiliates make less than $100 a month, while the other 1% earn staggering incomes from affiliate marketing.

The difference lies in the way these two groups perceive affiliate marketing as a business model. Those who make good money view it as a real business, while others see it as a “get-rich-quick” scheme and consequently, never make any money.

Much of your success will depend on your attitude and your ability to stay focused and not give in to fears of failure. Failure can not be an option. You have to visualize and expect success. Otherwise, it may never materialize.

If you can answer “Yes” to the following questions, then you have what it takes to be a successful affiliate marketer:

* Do you have the patience and persistence required to build an affiliate business?

* Can you accept the fact that you will make mistakes and may even lose money at first?

* Do you understand that it takes time to build a real business and you will not get rich overnight?

* Are you willing to invest time into your continuing education?

* Are you willing to invest time and money into advertising and tools to build your affiliate business?

You can make an absolute killing in affiliate marketing, but it will take some work. And if you’re just starting out, you have a lot to learn. But as your knowledge and skills increase, so will your income. You will almost certainly make mistakes along the way, but you can’t give up. Just learn from your mistakes and move on. Right now, you have two choices:

1. You can take the plunge and start building a real business online… Or

2. You can keep looking for that “magic bullet” that will make you rich overnight without you lifting a finger. Unless you win the lottery, there is no legal business model that will make rich overnight. If you find one, let me know…

Think about this: if you had started three months ago, what would your monthly income be right now? What will it be three months from now?

eBay Selling Tips for Everyone

Ever wondered how to get the most out of eBay? First off here are some practical eBay selling tips:

You need an eBay account. Then, take note of this step-by-step guide for setting up an auction. This is the core of eBay selling tips that you need to know.

Before you sell anything on eBay you should be guided by the eBay selling tip of researching first to make sure that you are going to get the best possible result. There might be better ways to sell your items in the research what sells on EBay section of the eBay.

Auctions with pictures almost always sell for more than those without pictures. You&ll eventually want to invest in a digital camera, but for just getting started, you can take pictures with a regular camera.

On eBay selling tips regarding listing of products, one of the big mistakes when it comes to selling on eBbay is not listing the item at the right time and not for a long enough duration.

Try to write a clear and concise description and title. This will help save you time by cutting down the number of questions from potential bidders. If you do get questions, you should try to answer them promptly.

Research closed auctions to get an idea of what you might expect your item to sell for, and to figure out what to set your starting bid at.

The eBay selling tip on the best time start your auction is during weekdays so that it will finish on the weekend. The main reason for this is that most people are home on the weekends and have the time to sit and wait to the last minute to make their. Try to have your auction end by Sunday evening. This eBay selling tip is very advisable and have been experienced successful by most sellers.

It’s usually best to state in the auction what the shipping costs will be. The USPS usually has better shipping rates on smaller items. It’s a good idea to also check the rates at UPS and Fed-Ex if you’re shipping something heavy. UPS are better shipping transaction for heavier items, because they&ll pick the package up from your house for no extra charge.

You can get free USPS Priority Mail boxes and tape here: Free Priority Mail Supplies.
You can print a free shipping label with free delivery confirmation on Priority Mail by going here.

You should decide what types of payments you will accept. This is an important eBay selling tip. Make sure to include that information in your auction. There’s Paypal, C2it, StormPay, PayingFast and Postal Money Orders only. Electronic payment services are likeable because they allow you to take credit card payments and receive payments extremely fast.
It is a useful eBay tip not to take checks because risk is involved in this. As for money orders, take only the ones purchased from the post office. Recently we found out that banks treat all others the same as checks and people can put stop to payments on them. Also, Postal Money Orders can be cashed at the post office.

Here’s a list of payment services you might want to check into:
Paypal
StormPay
C2it
PayingFast
BidPay
Western Union
CCNow
PaybyCheck

You should ship items out as promptly as you can, once your received the payment. Some people like to ship items out immediately after receiving the payment. But if you don’t like running to the post office every day, especially if you have to take your kids along, then by all means, go about once a week.

State in your auctions that the item will be shipped within 7 days after payment is received, so that bidders know ahead of time that the item may not ship out right away.

There are other eBay selling tips which will be a great start in maximizing your profit potential. This can be achieved by giving your customers a professional look and feel to your auction listings. This presentation will entice more bids and hence more money for you.

There’s also some Auction E-Books that include in it more worthwhile eBay selling tips which will help you make money on Ebay. A lot of this information is absolutely free.

Top 5 most common mistakes with do-it-yourself SEO

I look at a lot of sites on a daily basis. There are a lot of common problems I see on sites. Some people may have tags set-up improperly or use tags that have no real purpose. I have compiled a list of the 5 top do-it-yourself SEO errors. It’s safe to say that many do-it-yourselfers may have at least one of these errors on their sites. These should help you omit these often costly mistakes and pull you up in the ranks.

1) Keyword tag – A keyword tag is for keywords, but not for any keywords. You can’t just stuff this tag with keywords that your entire site is related to. The tags should reflect keywords only on that particular page; not the entire site and not every keyword you think your site might be searched on. Also, you should have no more then 20 words in the tag. You should not repeat any word more than 3 times. If you sell tickets, for example, don’t write: Broadway tickets, circus tickets, hockey tickets, boxing tickets and so on. Do use Broadway, circus, hockey, boxing, tickets and so on.

2) Abstract tag – It is sometimes used as a replacement for or combined with a description tag. However, more and more people are using these to stuff keywords. Search engines like Google are interested in what is on the page. More specifically, what visitors can view. In my opinion, the abstract tag has no place on a site.

3) Description Tag – The whole point behind this tag is to describe what the “page” is about. Keywords related to the page should be implemented as well. The limit on words should be 20 – 25. I see many website owners stuffing this tag with keywords, or having a description that is entirely too lengthy. Stay within these guidelines and you will be fine.

4) Title tag – This, to me, is the most important tag. This is the first tag the search engine reads. It tells the search engine what the” page” is about. Don’t put your web address here. Do not add your company name in the beginning of this tag either. It should not exceed 60 characters.

5) Content- If you notice, I have been commenting on relevancy to the “page”, not your overall site. Each page has it’s own keywords. Tag the title tag, description and keyword tags. All of these keywords should be the same. Add them to your content as well. Now your page should be fairly well optimized.

Why do sites fall short? Simple, content is not optimized. Search engines are, for the most part, pretty basic. You type in a search term and it retrieves sites containing those terms while also taking a few other factors into account. So, if your site doesn’t have these terms, how will you be found? You won’t. Over do it with keywords and you will experience the same result, but for different reasons. Sometimes reading everything about SEO can be bad. Trying too many tricks, tips or methods is like too many cooks spoiling the soup. In the end they can do more bad than good. These are very basic rules that should be followed by all. In, doubt? Always consult or hire an SEO professional.

Ebay Ebook Success Tips: Auction Listing Design!!!

This month I have encountered two small problems which have affected my eBay business. If I had spent a little more time thinking about the design of my auction listings, these problems could have easily been avoided and I would have had more time to spend on other things instead of editing tiny mistakes in nearly 100 listings. There have been many similar occasions in the past where a little more forward planning would have avoided me redesigning all my eBay auction listings. Therefore, my advice to you in this issue is to think carefully about the design of your auction listings. More time spent on your listing now can mean MUCH less time spent redesigning them in the future.

Now the two actual problems I encountered this month were the down to my PayPal address and my eBay ID. The first problem was that for some reason the Pay Now button in eBay was not working for all customers. This led to me getting many emails from buyers saying the Pay Now button is not working, or worse many people sending payments to one of my email addresses that was not registered with PayPal. The end result was me having to explain and solve the problem via multiple emails to multiple customers. So how could I have avoided this problem? Well in my actual eBay listing and Payment Policy I made no reference to my PayPal email address but included all my other email addresses. I overlooked including my PayPal email address in the listings simply because I assumed that the Pay Now button would work at all times. Obviously not. I have now amended all listings to include my PayPal email address (payments@theebookcavern.co.uk if anyone is still unsure) and thankfully since then I have had no PayPal payments sent to the wrong email address.

So now all seems fine and dandy with my eBay listings when 2 days ago I received an email stating that I needed to change my User ID because the previous one (**www.theebookcavern.co.uk**) made reference to this website. Now on eBay you can get away with this type of User ID for a while but sooner or later eBay will catch you out and make you change it. I knew this so really I should have chose a more sensible User ID instead of trying to get a little extra traffic to my website. So how does this affect my listings? Well in every listing I include a link to my eBay feedback and eBay About Me page which now needs to be changed. So that means more fun for me as I will have edit all my eBay listings yet again.

So you may be wandering OK but what&s the point of this story. Well you (and hopefully me as well) can learn from my mistakes. These two examples illustrate how just a LITTLE forward planning would have saved a LOT of time for me and can do for you too. I will give you a few things to think about when designing your auction listings but you may think of more.

1) Ebay ID:- When choosing an eBay ID you need to think about using one that both reflects your line of business and also sticks to eBay policy. I know that it may be tempting to use **yourwebsitename** as a User ID but that is a violation of eBay policy and they will make you change it eventually. If you have to change your User ID then you have to change every Feedback and About Me link in all your listings. Choosing a User ID which is within eBay policy will save you a lot of time in the future.

2) About Me Page:- Do you have an About Me page? If not you should get one as it is one of the best promotion tools you have on eBay. If you do have one you really should link to it in your auctions as from the About Me page has much fewer restrictions than your other eBay pages (for example you can link to your own website). If you want to promote yourself on eBay the About Me page is the best way to do it and the best way to increase traffic to your About Me page is promote it fully.

3) Ebay Store:- If you have an eBay store then it is essential that you provide a link to it within your auction listings. Many customers who view your auctions will not know that you have an eBay store or if they do they may not know exactly what one is. If you want to maximise your sales potential you need to make as many customers aware of your eBay store as possible. Putting a simple sentence at the top of your auction listings such as “Can’t wait for this auction to end? Then Click Here to purchase it right now from my eBay store” will give your eBay store maximum exposure in your eBay auctions.

4) Email Addresses:- Make sure that all relevant email addresses are included in your auction listing. Your PayPal email address must be in here to avoid similar problems to the ones I experienced. All the email addresses you wish to be contacted on should also be included as well. For example I include my PayPal email payments@theebookcavern.co.uk, my delivery enquiries email delivery@theebookcavern.co.uk, and my general enquiries email sales@theebookcavern.co.uk. Even if you only have one email address which is the same as the one associated with your “Contact the Seller” you should still include an email link in your auction description simply because it makes it easier for the customer.

5) Ebay Store Custom Pages:- If you have an eBay store you are allowed to design custom pages for whatever purpose you see fit. If these custom pages are in any way relevant to the auction then you should include a link to them too.

6) Images:- Have you put in all the images you want to use to promote your auction. If not make sure they are all included. What about your eBay store? If you have one then a store logo is a great way to promote your store, make you look more professional, and hopefully increase traffic and sales.

These are just a few of the many things you should consider before listing an item on eBay. I am sure you can think of many more. These rules are especially applicable to ebook sellers on eBay because you will be constantly re-using the same auction listing to sell an ebook because you have an infinite supply. Getting the listing as close to perfect now will save you a LOT of time in the future. Good luck!!!

The Hidden Costs Of Selling On Ebay

There is little doubt that given the potential audience advertising on eBay can be very cost effective. Compared to other forms of advertising it is relatively inexpensive. However, many eBay users rarely bother to work out exactly what it is costing them to make a sale.

There are the obvious costs such as the listing, enhancements and final value fees. Also you have to add the charges made by Paypal if that is the option of payment chosen by the buyer. But then you should really also consider what I call the invisible costs. Let me explain, if for instance you buy many of the items that you sell from Flea markets and garage sales what value do you place on your time going to such events and don’t forget any travel expenses to get there.

Once you have got your items home you will need more time to research, photograph and list your purchases. Now add the time you spend packaging the items after sale and standing in line to post them. You could easily find that each sale you make on eBay could take an hour or more of your time.

If you really want to know how much time you spend on your eBay business you need to keep a detailed diary for a few weeks. Record the time when you leave your home on “eBay business” and when you return. Add any expenses other than the cost of any items you buy to sell on eBay. Once you are home log any time you spend listing, photographing and packing items.

Do this for a few weeks and this will give you a good idea of the non costed time you spend on your ebay business in an average week. Next decide what you think your time is worth $10, $20 or $50 an hour, this figure is entirely up to you and represents what you would expect to be paid for an hours work by someone else.

You can then work out how many items you sell a week on average. So your figures might look something like this. Average hours per week 6 at $20 an hour, average number of items sold per week 30. This would mean your time is worth $120 a week to you and if you sell 30 items it has cost you $4 of time per item.

So to work out your true profit on any item you need to add not only the cost of the item but also the other costs. eBay, the Paypal and shipping fees and your time costs. You will now be able to calculate what profit or lose you made on the sale. You should also include something to cover those “mistakes” that we all buy that disprove the theory that you can sell anything on eBay. After that you will be able to calculate the true profit that you are making from your ebay business.

I am not knocking eBay, quite the contrary; I think it is one of the best methods for anyone to build a successful online business. The point is that if you are to make real profits on eBay it is important to make sure that you use your time to best advantage. This can mean getting software to speed up some tasks and possibly reviewing how and where you buy the items you sell through eBay.

Article Submissions are an important tool for Search Engine Optimization.

In today’s internet information age your online presence is not only sufficient to make profit. If you want to achieve online success your businesses needs continuous promotion.
Article submission refers to the submission of articles to the article directories to get hyperlinks from websites who wants to publish your content. It makes your website content rich as well as bringing back links for you. Article Submission can be used to catapult your website to the higher rankings in the search engines. The most striking feature about article submission is free, simple and easy for even a novice. One should need not to be a SEO expert for article submission process. The process is so simple and least time consuming that any unprofessional can do it with negligible efforts.
There are hundreds of articles directories publishing articles online and are either paid or free of cost. Online article submission sites are an interesting business model in this Internet Information Age to achieve your goals from the internet marketing.

Benefits of Online Article Submission:
- Article submission is a powerful method of getting quality incoming links to your site. It’s an easy way to build links and costs almost nothing.
- Article marketing helps to achieve life time links for your website.
- Search engines love links from content-rich pages and articles submission open your doors for the search engine ranking.
- Article submission helps to build your site as an authority site and builds your brand credibility in the market.
- Consistent submission of articles ensures a steady flow of quality backlinks to your site. It really works for your marketing campaign.
- Article submission is one of the most effective marketing strategies. Nearly every professional search engine marketer considers article submission as one of the main part in their link building process.
- Article submission drives actual visitors towards your website which can never be achieved through the traditional internet marketing tools. Traffic driven by articles submission is highly result oriented and targeted enough.

Most Common Mistakes during Article Submission:
Most of the individuals either professional or non professional do some very minor mistakes while their article marketing or article submission services.
- Most of us are confused about where to submit the articles as well as where to submit the articles. Reality is the platform used for the submission of the articles is not as important as the process used for the submission of articles or how one is submitting the articles.
- There should be a proper strategy while submitting the articles; it should not be done in a very hasty manner. Submission of articles to less popular directories can be a better strategy.
- Instead of submitting your articles to hundred of article directories using automation tools to speed up the submission process is more beneficial for any one using the article submission services.

How It Works?
When you write SEO driven relevant articles the next step is to submit these articles either using article submission software or through article marketing services. Articles can be posted in the article directories by article submission software which is the easiest and fastest method of article submission. It is less expensive and less time-consuming as well. The procedure is so simple, one has to obtain article submission software, load the articles in it, and press “submit”. The software will then submit the articles to article directories and will open a new way of marketing for your business.