Internet Marketing

It is said that there are two functions to any successful business – innovation and marketing.  Innovation means you have a product designed to solve the needs of your target audience.  However, just because you have an amazing and innovative product doesn’t mean it will sell.

Here’s how to find out if your product will sell online:

Step One. Good old fashioned keyword research.  Keyword research is the old stand by because it works.  Keyword research is excellent at showing whether there is demand for your product because it provides accurate information about how many people are searching for your type of product.  It is a great first step however it is only a first step.

Great places to start researching keywords are:

• https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
• http://www.wordtracker.com/

Step Two. Explore consumer demand.  Check out online sites to see how well similar items are selling and for how much.  Ebay for example is a good place to begin.  Both eBay and Amazon offer best seller’s lists.  This can help you tap into your target audience and potential demand.  Read more or post a comment...

Blogging is a simple process but a lot of work. While it is not hard to post to your blog, getting the traffic and the revenue from your blog that you desire is a tougher proposition. Maybe you’ve been blogging for a while and still aren’t seeing the traffic numbers you’d like. Here are five ways that you can enhance your blogging skills.

1. Keep up with the times. No one wants to read last month’s news. A blogger has to know what is going on in the world yesterday, today and tomorrow. Some important issues stay in the headlines for months but your audience will want fresh updates on those topics. Knowing what is going on around you and what will interest others will make your blog content worth reading.

2. Change your content often. There is nothing worse than losing traffic you’ve worked hard to attract because you don’t update your posts. You might not post every day but you can be sure that your readership will drop off it you only post once a month. Readers like fresh content and they will go where they can get it. If you need to, hire a writing company to product interesting content on different topics and post the information on a regular basis. This would work well if you have more than one blog and not enough hours in the day to manage them all.

3. Network with others. Get your content out there. Register with search engines and join social bookmarking sites like Technorati and Digg so people can see what you are doing. Share your blog address with friends on your profile page on MySpace or Facebook.  Read more or post a comment...

Blogging is easy, right? Yes, for the most part, blogging is easy. However, on the way to achieving your blogging goals, there are mistakes many new and even experienced bloggers make. Here are the most common mistakes to avoid for successful blogging.  Read more or post a comment...

1. Not publishing often enough or not publishing regularly – If you want to build a community around your blog, the key is to create content on a regular basis. People like to subscribe to their favorite blogs and make reading them part of their daily or weekly habit. If you’re not providing enough content to satisfy their habit, meaning at least one new post a week, then you’re likely going to lose readers.Additionally, more posts boosts search engine results. Whether you post frequently or rarely is not as important as whether you publish regularly. You need to set your readers’ expectations, so find a rhythm that suits you and maintain it. If you are going to be away, write posts in advance and set them up to be posted automatically at your usual time. You need to maintain momentum.

Doesn’t it just bug you when you try to start a conversation and no one jumps in to help? That’s the way it is with blogging. You blog and blog and yet few, if any, people comment. It can make blogging feel like a futile effort. Well the truth of the matter is most of the people who read blogs, even if they read them on a regular basis, don’t comment. So what do you do?  Here are a few ideas to generate conversation and get more blog comments.

#1  Ask a question. Many people don’t comment on blogs because there’s not much to say. The old, “Thanks for the information” becomes tired and feels unproductive most of the time, unless you can actually contribute feedback or answer a question. So ask your readers to get involved, ask them a question.

#2  When people comment, ALWAYS respond to their comment and…ask a question. When subsequent reader see a dialogue going on they’re more likely to chime in and participate. This really works!  Engage your commenter’s, they’ll become more active on your blog and you’ll draw others into the conversation.  Read more or post a comment...

How do you get more subscribers to your blog? That’s a topic a lot of people struggle with. The truth is, it’s really not that difficult.

You first need traffic, and then you have to convert that traffic to subscribers. Here are six tips to make it happen:

#1) Focus on SEO

Getting ranked in the search engines will probably be your best source of long-term traffic. Just don’t have unrealistic expectations.

It will take some time to start seeing results with SEO. A lot of people get frustrated when they aren’t ranking immediately for their chosen keywords, and give up. However, if you are patient and diligent, you will reap the rewards.

What keywords should you target? It all depends on how much time you want to devote to your blog. If it’s going to be a smaller site, you will want to go after longer tail keywords. However, if you want a bigger site, then more popular keywords will work fine.

#2) Leave comments

This is one of the oldest strategies for getting more blog traffic, but it still works. All you do is make intelligent comments on forums and blogs related to your niche.  Read more or post a comment...

There are all kinds of SEO tips available today. And it’s no secret that the search engines can provide a lot of long-term traffic.

Getting ranked can be a challenge for those who don’t know what to do. However, it’s also not as difficult as you might believe. Here are two ways to make it happen:

#1) Have a good site design

Many people get so focused on off-page factors that they forget their page content makes a huge difference as well.

What’s a good design?

Make sure that your main keyword is the first thing the search engine robot sees. This is why you want to have it at the beginning of each page, as well as in the title.

How many times do you have to include the keyword?

Some people mistakenly believe that they need the keyword five to ten times on their page. However, three times should be good enough. Just make sure it looks natural.

#2) Beat the sites already ranking

Simply copy the sites that are ranking for your keywords. In other words, get the same backlinks as them. Since they are ranking, you know the backlinks are obviously working. So why not get those same links yourself?  Read more or post a comment...

How do you make money with online ads? It’s well known that traffic plus conversion equals profits. One of the best ways to generate traffic is through online ads.

They bring visitors to your site faster than search engine optimization. So if you want quick profits, paid advertising is the best strategy. The conversion part is up to your website, which won’t be discussed here.

However, while paid advertising does offer faster traffic, it’s hard to profit from. This is because of all the other sites that you are competing against.

Many people are lured into internet advertising because of the cheap cost. However, if you aren’t careful, you can lose a lot of money in a hurry. Here are two tips to help you become very profitable with your paid advertising efforts:

#1) Decide who your target market is

This is probably the most important question of all. Should you want the greatest ROI, you have to know exactly who your customer is.  Read more or post a comment...

Etsy is a popular site for retailing hand-made products. The site is based in the United States. However, people from other countries can sell there as well.

Why should you sell there? One of the reasons is that it is one of the biggest marketplaces for hand-made items. So you can really boost your popularity by using it.

It’s a very secure site, which means you don’t have to worry about your personal information getting stolen by a third party. And they accept many forms of payment, such as cash, check, PayPal, and so on.

However, while there are lots of potential customers that use it, there is also a lot of competition. So you can’t just put something up and expect it to sell. Here are four tips for making money on the site:

#1) Do good product research

Without knowing what sells, you won’t make a lot of money. So if you are marketing hand-made t-shirts, first check and see the average selling price of comparable t-shirts on the site. If the sale price isn’t sufficient to make a big profit, either market another product or sell your t-shirts somewhere else.

#2) Use pictures  Read more or post a comment...

Copywriting is one significant factor when you want to achieve excellent search engine ranking. Yet, a lot of times website owners think that all that they have to do is to incorporate keywords in page tags and include some keyword mentions in their articles. While SEO copywriting not exceedingly hard, writing for search engines is more complex than that.

“Search engine optimization copywriting” or SEO, is a method of writing viewable or easily scanned text on your web page which is very acceptable and readable for the internet user as well as targets certain or exact search terms, having the purpose of ranking high in search engines.

“SEO Copywriting” generally optimizes and enhances other on-page components for search terms being targeted, namely the title, the description and likewise keywords tags, alt text and headings.

Search engines require and look for authentic content pages, rather than additional pages which are designed solely for attaining high rankings; this then, is the concept of “SEO copywriting”.  And for this reason, search engines may not likely consider SEO pages with undesirable copywriting content.

Simply put, your site’s content must follow good marketing standards, having great interaction with your visitors because excellent “SEO copywriting” acknowledges the fact that humans make the purchasing decisions and not “spiders”.  Read more or post a comment...

Blogging is a wonderful way to connect with your audience, to provide valuable and useful information to prospects and customers, to sell your products and services, and to drive traffic to your website. However, before you begin to blog or even start to set one up, you have one very important decision to make. Which blogging platform will you use? Here are a few tips on how to use blog platforms successfully.

The Big Three and Beyond

A blog platform is essentially a product which a blog or website is based on. In many cases they’re the service you use to host and publish your blog. In the blogging world, there are three big players with a host of smaller platforms. The big three are:

• Blogger, now owned by Google
• Typepad
• WordPress

There is also MoveableType.org, which is an open source publishing platform. Another is Joomla, which offers blogging capabilities but is considered more of a website platform than a blogging platform. There are many other website hosts which offer blogging functions; however, they’re not traditional platforms.

When you choose a blogging platform, you’re looking for a few key ingredients. You’re looking for:  Read more or post a comment...

Article Writing: Can it Help my Direct Sales Business?

by Nicole Dean

Question: How can I get long-term advertising for my Direct Sales website without spending a fortune?

Dear Direct Sales Mom,

Very often, people in Direct Sales don’t realize they can benefit from the same methods of internet marketing that other online businesses use. Writing and submitting articles is one of those methods of marketing that is extremely effective for Direct Sales businesses.

If you’re unfamiliar with the way article marketing works, basically, you write and give away helpful, informative articles. Why would you work so hard and give away your information? Look at the bottom of this article. There you’ll see my name and a brief bit of information about what I do. I didn’t pay for that advertising. It’s free.

So, how does it work? You write an article about a topic that you are interested in – usually one that relates in some way to your business. If you sell makeup, there’s no point in writing about forest fires. So, show your expertise and share your love of what you do in a brief article. Then you’ll want to find article directories that will accept your article. You’ll submit your articles to the directories, including your author bio and a link to your website.  Read more or post a comment...

A crucial factor in getting (natural) traffic from the search engines is practicing proper search engine optimization. When you create pages for your website, taking the time to optimize them will greatly increase your chances for receiving natural organic search engine traffic. Surprisingly, most people don’t bother with SEO, which gives you a huge advantage if you do it.  Here are a few tips:

Pay attention to keyword density- It is helpful to make sure you are using your main keywords a certain amount of times throughout your content. To put it plainly, you don’t want to over use your keywords, or too little. A comfortable keyword density is around 2.5%.

Emphasize Important Keywords with Bold, Italics, and Underlining-When creating your page, you can use simple HTML tags to emphasize your main keywords. Here are some examples:

• Bold: your keyword
• Italics: your keyword
• Underline: your keyword

Header Tags-A header tags is a part of your page where the font is larger, and is reserved for the most important text on the page. To create a header tag, simply use this syntax:

<h2>your keyword</h2>  Read more or post a comment...