UND-Pilsa Blog

Copyright 2006 Joel Sussman

One of the disadvantages of traditional marketing is that it often lacks credibility. Why should someone believe you when they know you’re trying to sell them something? However, there are free or inexpensive techniques for gaining business-building, positive exposure through a number of channels that may not be occurring to you or that you may not be taking full advantage of.

1. Send out a press release to the media when your business opens, expands, diversifies, invents something or innovates a process, partners with another business or organization, hires, takes a position on an non-divisive issue, or sponsors an event or a worthy cause.

2. Suggest feature articles and news story ideas to reporters and editors concerning your field or area of expertise. Offer to be interviewed or to provide quotes for an article.

3. Make yourself available as a speaker at Chamber of Commerce meetings, professional associations, community groups, and seminars. Announce your speaking engagement to the press in the form of a news release, phone call, email, or post card.

4. Write a ‘Letter to the Editor’, but avoid taking a controversial position on an issue which could cost you clients. You don’t want to alienate people. Make it a practice to read the editorial pages to see what’s being written about.

5. Teach a class at the local community college or continuing adult education program. It’s a great way to increase your credibility, visibility, and acquire new clients.

6. Become a columnist. Speaking of credibility and visibility, if you can arrange with a print or online publication to run a regular column of yours, especially with a photograph and brief bio at the end, you’ll gain a lot of valuable, free exposure.

7. Word of mouth is the best kind of free and credible advertising. Keep focusing on providing exceptional service and going above and beyond what clients expect, and word of mouth advertising and new business from referrals is virtually guaranteed.

8. Write informative articles that would be helpful to your clients or prospects and post them on your web site. Let people know about the articles in every way you can think of: talk it up, add a one sentence blurb at the end of your outgoing voice mail or answering machine message, include it in updates of your brochures, flyers, business cards, print ads, and broadcast commercials. If you’re editing and uploading the articles yourself (as opposed to having a web designer or search engine optimization expert do it) make sure you liberally sprinkle the article with a few appropriate and repeated key words that would help Internet searchers find your articles. When choosing key words and phrases, think in terms of what a customer or prospective client would enter into a search engine when looking for the topic or service you’re writing about. One website where you can get a list of keyword phrases arranged by popularity (the number of times they’ve been searched) is at Overture.com . Click on ‘Visit the Resource Center’, then go to the Keyword Selector tool.

9. Invite people to sign up for your monthly email bulletin in which you can provide clients and prospects with news, helpful tips related to your business or profession, and new product or service announcements. Four recommendations if you do this: Don’t sign anyone up without their permission, assure subscribers that their email address and other personal information will remain private (have a publicize a privacy policy), tell people they can ‘unsubscribe’ from your list whenever they want to (immediately honor those requests), and avoid making people feel like they’re being inundated with your information and offers. For more information on the responsibilities of email marketers, visit: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.htm

While marketing tactics that cost money are a necessary part of almost any strategy, make sure to get the most mileage you can out of techniques that are either free or extremely economical. Remember, even if your marketing budget is tight, there are still plenty of things you can do to increase inquiries, boost referrals, and expand awareness of the unique aspects of your business.

Joel Sussman, a business writer and Internet publisher, has created an online resource for small business owners called “Marketing Survival Kit.com”. Visit www.marketingsurvivalkit.com for proven sales and marketing templates, software, downloadable manuals, and articles.

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A ClickBank merchant account allows you to define and sell up to 50 separate products. If you have more than one product in your range, it makes sense to sell them from a shared ClickBank account. Here are three good reasons why:

• Every active ClickBank account incurs a setup fee of $49.95. Why pay this more than once?

• Managing multiple ClickBank accounts adds unnecessarily to your administrative effort

• The combined sales of multiple products through one account will significantly boost your Marketplace ranking

Unfortunately, the architecture of the ClickBank system has, historically, not been well suited to selling multiple products from a single account, especially for merchants who use affiliates to promote their products. The problem is that, although you can define 50 products within ClickBank’s account control panel, you can only specify a single landing page URL - the destination page that your affiliates will refer their prospects to.

The result is that all referrals must arrive at your site via a common page. This forces you either to present all your products on a shared sales page or to create an intermediate page, from which your visitors must click through to see the product of their choice. Neither option is ideal as they both create obstacles that will distract your prospects and seriously reduce your conversion rate.

For optimum sales effectiveness, affiliate referrals should go directly to the sales page for the product of interest. This is known as deep linking and is widely acknowledged as the best way to convert affiliate referrals into buyers. But ClickBank’s lack of support for this technique is a major barrier that inhibits effective use of its growing affiliate network.

To tackle this problem, a number of pioneering merchants have developed their own techniques to work around ClickBank’s shortcomings. Some of these innovations have even evolved into successful commercial software products. Most implementations rely on intercepting the inbound referral and automatically redirecting it to the relevant product page, as indicated in URL parameters passed by the referring affiliate. There are several variations on this theme, but they share a common gambit - using scripts, installed on the merchant’s web server, to intercept and redirect requests.

However, the need for smoke and mirrors to fix ClickBank’s limitations may soon be a relic of the past. In October 2003, ClickBank announced plans for major improvements to its hoplink system - improvements that will all but eliminate the need for workarounds or enhancement products.

The new architecture - known as the enhanced hoplink system - employs a more flexible referral URL format, in which affiliates are able to specify the numeric code of the product they are referring their prospects to. Using this code, ClickBank’s server will look up the corresponding sales page URL and send referrals directly to it, handling cookie-tracking and other admin chores in the normal manner.

The main attraction of the enhanced hoplink system is its simplicity of implementation and maintenance. Whereas add-on products require at least a moderate understanding of script installation and configuration, the hoplink system is maintained entirely via the ClickBank account control panel. This means that a merchant selling multiple products (even across multiple web domains) can expose them for affiliate deep linking, simply by configuring the relevant sales page URLs in his account.

At the time of writing, ClickBank has published the format of the enhanced hoplink URL, but has not completed the database and control panel changes that will allow the configuration of multiple landing pages. So, although we can visualize the new architecture and dream of the benefits it will deliver, we remain in eager anticipation of its release.

About The Author

Copyright © Tim Coulter. All rights reserved.

Tim Coulter is a consultant and software developer who helps netpreneurs to harness marketing technologies.

He is also the author of “ClickBank - The Definitive Guide” The Ultimate ClickBank Tutorial & Reference Manual.

http://www.clickbankrevealed.com/

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There is a lot to be said regarding Paid Per Click Advertising and Link Popularity. I will briefly explain the two and the merit of each.

Paid Per Click Advertising, simply abbreviated as PPC Advertising, is performance based advertising where advertisers spend money for every visitors that go to their website, depending on their objectives. This is a new way of advertising pioneered by Google. With this kind of advertising, webmasters will be able to quantify their return on investment and adjust their marketing dollars accordingly.

Why do advertisers use PPC advertising? Quite simply, advertisers can get an idea on how much they spent and what they expect from it. If one click costs an advertiser $ 0.50, then he can expect certain number of visitors with certain budgets. Furthermore, PPC advertising is one of the fastest way of getting visitors to a website. Registration is simple and an ad campaign can be prepared for as little as 5 minutes. If a webmaster want to grow big and quickly and he has the means to do that, then PPC is probably the best way to go.

Link Popularity on the other hand is geared towards a long-term survival for a website. One of the drawback of link popularity is the time taken to receive considerable amount of links from other websites. It can take months or longer. On the other hand, link popularity is more permanent than PPC advertising. Once your budget is spent on PPC, your source of new visitors are gone. Link Popularity stays there. If you have 1000 backlinks and it draws 50 visitors per day, then the chance is you will get that much visitors for the foreseeable future.

Another nice feature of building link popularity is that it costs you nothing in term of money. All you have to do is writing more contents or submit your websites to free web directories widely available.

One of the biggest drawback of building link popularity is time. As you may know, time is money. You won’t get lots of backlink in a short amount of period without spamming or buying a text link. Furthermore, you may not have much content and writing contents take time. This constraint can be solved if you have money to spend. You can spend money buying copyrighted articles for your websites’ content. You can also buy some individuals who will then submit your websites to hundreds of directories.

It all goes back to you. If you are pressed for time, you need to spend money to speed up the process. But if i were to choose, I’d prefer spending money on building link popularity rather than PPC advertising. The reason is simple. In attracting constant new visitors, link popularity lasts longer than PPC advertising.

Submit your site for free to our web directory at www.noviceinvesting.com/Directory If you are pressed for time, Hari can help you submit your site to hundred of websites for a small fee.

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For the past years, many have seen how optimizing a website evolved. Before, it was just simple link building to a list of various tools. This is what we call Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Because today, most businesses is better be seen online, too. By using the internet, there are no limits in finding clients and customers.

There are many entrepreneurs and business owners who want to go online. But they know nothing about starting business online. Search engine optimization services takes place. Lack or very little knowledge does not have to be the reason not to pursue of going online. These people and company that offer such services will do it for you from scratch. They do it from hosting to developing the website to promotion. There are so many SEO services that are not costly and worth the money.

Also, online entrepreneurs have to be careful in choosing the right SEO services. There are so many who claim themselves as gurus but can not even optimize their site well. Know more about these services and search for reviews. That person or services needs to be reliable.

But if you are the one who will cater this kind of services, you must first have a good reputation and has used useful and effective tools for search engine optimization. A good experience in optimizing websites and work blogs is always a plus. There are two categories of SEO services, the off-page optimization and the on-page optimization. SEO services would include training, site assessment, and consultation.

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When promoting any product or service every hit
to your website counts.

So assuming your site converts a percentage of visitors
to sales, the more traffic, the more sales you make!

I have read a number of articles lately on how to write
good ad or sales copy and optimising websites.

What I have not seen is how to get consistent numbers
of hits to your site. Well may be, that is not quite true
as you are constantly blasted with email about driving
traffic to your site. But most of these options require
you to get your bank card out. You know the rest !

I was checking the stats to my web sites and noticed
2 new referrers to my site. It occurred to me the
importance of getting consistent visitors or hits
to your site.

One site referring traffic was the Ryze Network where
I have been posting in the “Promote It” network and
receiving a slow but steady number of site visitors.
The Ryze network is a place where you receive your
own free web page where you are able to add a photo
and information about your personal and business
interests.

I’m also a member of the “ItsYourCoach” and the
Entrepreneurs Opportunities, Ryze Networks and there
are hundreds of others to join.

To learn more here is my personal Ryze page.
http://www.ryze.com/go/VoIP

You are able to contact other members and join any number
of networks which focus on a whole range of topics. Then
you are able to go that one step further and upgrade to
full membership where you can edit the html on your page
along with other options.

One of my personal websites is receiving hits most days
from Ryze and I am most likely receiving to affiliate
sites that I’m promoting through Ryze too.

While I was looking at the posts in a forum I found a new
Search Engine - Directory. It is offering Free membership
until it officially opens. You are able to add your site
to their directory - search listings http://www.4az.com
If you list your site it is displayed, highlighted at
the top of revaluate search’s.

At present they are offering free membership listings but
when they open, any new members will enter an affiliated
program.

Another slow but steady number of hits come from
Opportunity.com This only works if you get new members
to join. You are able to send email to targeted prospects
every week - 100% Free to join and real easy to set-up.
You even receive a free email alias and an ID.

http://www.opportunity.com/r/VoIP_NZ

I have used an opportunity.com redirect link or Sub-Domain
for my ezine. You are provided 10 sub-domains - redirect
links. Having your link in an email ending in an Affiliated
link has a good chance of getting your email filtered (dumped)
by many ISP’s. So using an Opportunity.com sub-domain for
my ezine looks like this.

http://www.the-index-ezine.opportunity.com

If you are getting visitors to your site, Thumbshots Ranking
is a way to compare search engine ranking between Google,
Yahoo and a few others. Your ranking determines the amount
of traffic you will likely receive from search engines.

One thing I noticed was that Google would only list one link
where as Yahoo would list all links to the site or page you
typed into the two text boxes. I have a couple of sites at the
top of the ranking and for my Internet-Income-Index.com
site Google listed one link and Yahoo listed 100. So you
can see that each search engine uses different methods of
ranking and listing your site.

http://www.thumbshots.org have a poll on search engines
preferences. Google has 76% and second is Yahoo with
only 8%. That is a big difference.

The Idea behind http://thumbshots.net is to provide a thumb
nail image of your site when it is listed in search results.
Thumbshots (ThumbNails) are screenshots of web pages
to help you locate web sites quickly and easily. Thumbshots
display exactly what you would get before visiting a link.
Millions of people trust and rely on thumbshots to take
control of their surfing.

This is similar to Alexa.com where you are able to ask
Alexa to visit your site and take a thumb nail image of
your home page to display beside your site if it comes
up in the top 3 results in a search.

Ask Alexa to take a Thumb Nail of your site.

http://thumbnails.alexa.com/update_thumbnail

I am sure getting side tracked from getting hits to your site
but this is all good info to keep. This is how easy it is to
get side tracked when researching one topic, But it still
relates to promoting your site.

So now to explain more about Thumbshot.com, .org and .net
They have a large directory with results from Dmoz.org and
other sources. There are a number of search engines placing
Thumbnails of web pages beside search results already.

ThumbNail.com are going one step further in that they are creating
a directory like Dmoz with ThumbNails and are supplying other
Directories and search engines with listings.

My prediction is that in the very near future as more people
change to Broadband and WiFi many search engines will
provide a ThumbNail beside their search results. Who
will be first Google, Yahoo or MSN ?

But in the next year or so you may have to manually submit your
site to Alexa.com or add either the Thumbshot.com image or test
link at http://www.thumbshots.org/attribution.pxf to your site
before they will display your Web page thumbnail next to your
listing. As most home or index pages appear in search engines
add their link there and on any page that comes up in searches.

NOTE: But Some of my website pages are coming up with
a ThumbNail some aren’t. Now work this one out. Some
pages are coming up with a ThumbNail view of the “Home Page”
but then there is no ThumbNail displayed beside the home page
when I do a search in the directory at thumbshot.net ??

My Internet-Income-Index.com site shows the ThumbNail
without me adding the image or link to my site so they must
also be indexing some sites and taking the screen shots.

NOTE also that Sites that look cool in real size may not look
so hot as a Thumbnail.

PETER GREEN.

Editor of ~ The INDEX ~ ezine.

Editor@Internet-income-index.com

http://www.Internet-Income-Index.com

Your Free Weekly Internet Marketing News, Ideas, Resources and Sources Ezine.

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The webmasters of the world have become absolutely obsessed with obtaining high quality one way links to their websites in order to increase their Google Page Rankings in order to increase their visibility when people search the internet for coffee makers or “coffee makers” or coffee + makers. People are spending so much time begging for back links and reading SEO books like “The Google Secret to the new Google Algorithm” that the average rate of coffee consumption has increased from 3 to 9 cups of coffee per day among webmasters. And this is one perfectly legal way of increasing your website’s visibility. Just write out some baloney like the above nonsense inserting the words “coffee” and “maker” into the text of your homepage and inner pages.

The obsession with obtaining high page rankings has now become a complete mania which has replaced the male obsession with size. This has been fuelled by money and by the Google graphic for PR. The difference between a 3 and a 4 PR looks like the difference between a small one and an average one. Once you get into the 9 area you are now into Wilt the Stilt country. The man scored 100 points in a single game according to ESPN, which has quite a nice sized PR itself. Because of this back link mania, the American Medical Association has now added a new category to the new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatry DSM IX.

The doctors have categorized every single human emotion into a full blown major mental illness for which they can dole out medication, line their pockets, and make insane bids for keywords like “coffee” and “maker” for their spouse’s home based internet business. The doctors have labeled the happiness and the sadness felt at the poker table computer screen as manic depression. They call having a drink alcoholism. Being afraid that Osama Bin Laden is going to reduce your page ranking overnight from 7 to 0 is called paranoid schizophrenia. The United States of America is preparing to send war planes armed with nuclear weapons to Iran to protect the Page Ranking of the Department of Defense Website. Said Donald Rumsfeld in an interview on “Meet the Press” last Sunday, “No Muslim is going to mess with my page ranking, you can be sure of that Tim.”

Yesterday Osama Bin Laden accused the United States of waging a Crusade against Islam. What could possibly have given him that idea? Four years ago shortly after 911 the President of the United States publicly announced that in retaliation for 911 he was launching a Crusade. Every Muslim man, woman and child knows that the Crusades were a thousand years ago when the Pope marched his Christian Army across Europe massacring every Jew in their way to reclaim the Holy Land until they stood knee deep in Muslim blood in Jerusalem.

Why did the 19 Saudi Arabian Muslim men attack the twin towers on 911? In the Koran Allah aka God of Mount Sinai, aka The Good Doctor who gave the 2 tablets to Moses aka Jesus Christ aka Elohim says, “Make War on the Christians and the Jews. In return I will bring you up to Eternal Paradise with crystal clear springs and 72 virgins and endless French wine with no side effects and extremely high Google Page Rankings with absolutely no need for back links. Everyone will be number 1.” (Koran Sura Chapter 9:29-30, Sura 56, The Event, Mecca in the Sky.)

The 19 Saudi Arabian men who on 911 devastated the most sophisticated armed forces in history including dismembering the Pentagon fully believed to the core of their souls that the moment they hit the twin towers they would wake up in Sky Mecca with their websites number 1 on every search engine in the Universe, which would send their egos soaring along with their bank accounts. This is why they say that truth is stranger than fiction. No author would dare write such baloney because no one would believe it. If you want high web visibility without the need for back links then follow President Bush’s lead. Conquer the middle east oil fields and then pay for it with the proceeds. It’s easier than drinking 9 cups of coffee a day which you made yourself with your new coffee maker.

Karen Fish is a writer currently living in Los Angeles California. The Temple of Love http://www.thetempleoflove.com/ The World Peace Site

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In the technologically advanced world of today, websites are a great way in which to distribute information, gain business and more. Many people wonder how certain websites receive such a great response while others are viewed hardly at all. The answer to this may lie in the area of website promotion. Two ways in which to promote a website are through articles and press releases.

How Articles Promote Websites

Articles are a great way in which to get traffic to one’s website. If someone using the Internet is utilizing a search engine to find an answer to a question that they may have, they will most likely be looking for articles which talk about the topic that they are concerned with. If a website owner has various articles written and then posted on his/her website, the individual searching for information on that topic may be directed to the business owner’s website. While reading the article which is posted on that website, not only may the Internet user buy something from that business owner but he/she may also bookmark it for future reference and/or recommend the site to friends and family members which will ultimately result in more web traffic to that particular website. Articles are not only a great way in which to get people to visit one’s website but also to refer to it at a later time.

Another benefit of articles is keywords can be placed strategically throughout and when individuals search those particular keywords the articles will be returned as high results from the search engines. Articles are great ways to provide information to visitors, but keyword articles is a great way to get visitors to your site so they can view these articles.

Press Releases Are Also Useful In Promoting Websites

Frequently an individual will be researching a topic and come across a press release regarding that particular topic. Within the press release, the text may include a website reference which the readers can simply click on to be directed to that site. This is a great way to obtain new visitors to one’s website and frequently new clients for a particular business owner. Press releases are a wonderful way in which to get the word out about a specific website.

These are just two methods that promote websites and ultimately gain business for the website owners.

SitePromotionResources.com features hundreds of tips and tricks for webmasters looking to increase their search engine positioning, build links, and promote their web sites on a limited budget. Visit http://www.SitePromotionResources.com today.

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