BFK Publishing

4 Strategies To Help You To Make Money From Your Website

TreyPennewell — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:00:11 +0000

People always seem to be looking for new ways to make money online. There is nothing wrong with being innovative and trying new methods to make money online. The problem comes up when people, seeking new methods, forget to pay attention to the proven methods of making money online.

What has worked in the past for successful webmasters is still working today, and will likely continue to work into the foreseeable future. There are 4 primary areas that a webmaster must focus on to be successful. These four areas are important regardless of the type of website you run or the product or service that you sell.

Conversions

Conversions are critical. You can get a million visitors to your site, but that means nothing if none of them make a purchase at your site. Conversions are calculated as the percentage of people that make a purchase at your site, compared to the number of total visitors.

The higher your conversion rate, the less traffic that you need to your site. Many webmasters struggle with getting that all-important traffic to their site. So instead of exclusively chasing traffic, also work on increasing the amount of traffic that you can convert into sales. There are a number of ways that you can do this with your online business.

Many webmasters understand that having a compelling sales letter, or sales pitch, is crucial. If you do not have the best possible sales letter, then you are losing potential customers. If you do not feel comfortable writing your own sales letter, consider hiring a copywriter to do it for you. You could also ask the copywriter to develop a few sales letters for your business, and you can do a comparitive analysis to see which ones bring the best conversion results for your business.

You can also improve your conversion ratio by paying attention to the layout of your web pages. There are a lot of different opinions on the best layouts for selling your products or services. For me there are a couple of easy ways to determine web page layouts.

The first thing that I consider is what I like and dislike about other websites. Is it hard to find the product on the page? Is the price hidden? Is a description of the product easy to find? Is the ordering information easy to find?

The other factor that I look at is what successful webmasters before me have done with their layout. There is no need to reinvent the wheel here. Instead of spending weeks trying to develop my own perfect layout, I will start with a template similar to those that are known for making high conversions.

Linking For Traffic

Now that we have covered conversions, we can talk about linking for traffic. While your conversions may be very good, it will never be 100%. So what this means is that the more of that precious traffic you get (at whatever conversion rate you are getting) will result in more sales and more money. It is known that the more links you have to your website, the more traffic that you will get. The links to your site are critical in driving traffic.

First of all, people click those links. I value a link from a high traffic website as much or more than a link from a high PageRank site, because actual humans are likely to be clicking the link to my website. I also place a very high value on having articles published in ezines and newsletters, because it always results in a nice boost in my website’s traffic. The amount of traffic that comes as a result of having an article published in an ezine or newsletter will of course vary depending on the number of subscribers on the list.

A certain percentage of readers will always click the links that I have in a webpage or an ezine. And, a certain percentage of those who visit my website will convert to sales. Having my link appear in some ezines or newsletters can literally translate to thousands or tens of thousands of visitors to my website in a single day!

If you utilize article distributions, you can often get your articles published on a variety of websites and ezines. These articles will have your link in the author box, and you will also have the opportunity to discuss your web site and the products or services that you offer in your author box. This being said, the more effort you put into writing a good article and author box, the more likely you are to get some traffic as a result.

Linking Popularity

Building links for search engine placement purposes is just as important as linking for traffic. The more relevant back links that you have coming into your site, the higher your website will rank in the major search engines for your keywords. Back links are one of the best ways that you can get your online business to rank near the top of the search engines for your niche.

Be sure to use an anchor text on those links that is the same or similar to the keywords that you are targeting. Also, try to get those back links from relevant sites as much as possible. By this, I mean try to get those links from sites and webpages that have something in common with your site. A link from a webpage about bird watching will have little in common with your website about automobiles.

To illustrate the importance of back links, look at Digg.com (http://www.google.com/search?q=link:http://digg.com). They have a whopping 263,000 back links, which is why they are one of the most popular social book marking sites on the Internet.

Link Baiting

Link baiting is a great way to get those important back links, both for traffic and for link popularity. But, what is link baiting? It is when you have something so interesting / amusing / informative / useful that people will want to link to you, without you asking them to do so. Having something on your site that people will blog about, tell their friends about, or to send emails to their contacts about, is what constitutes link baiting. Your bait is so powerful that the fish will basically jump into the boat, without you ever needing to ask!

What kind of things work as link bait? This will depend a lot on the audience that you are trying to reach. In the SEO world, good link bait is placing free webmaster tools on your site. This means that people will bookmark the site; refer to it on forums, and possibly blog about what they learned by using your free webmaster tools.

If you are able to grow a reputation among your niche market as an expert, people will cite you and your website because of the quality information that you offer. If you run a humor site, people will forward the URL to their friends and tell them to check out a certain page.

Link baiting is also why the social book marking is exploding in popularity. If you have an article that gets onto the front page of Digg.com via link baiting, you will have an explosion in traffic. The same can be said for all of the major social bookmarking sites.

Link baiting is all about offering something unique that people will want to tell their friends about and that they will want to talk about. Spend some serious time thinking about what you can offer to your customer base that will result in successful link baiting for your website.

In Conclusion…

If you spend your time focusing on these 4 ways to make money with your online business, you are sure to be well ahead of most of your competitors. Optimize your site for conversions, build links for traffic, create links for popularity, and dangle some link bait for others to share, and you will find your customer base beginning to grow, and you will see your sales will start to improve.

About The Author:
Trey Pennewell is a writer, who writes about online marketing. Learn more about our Pay For Results SEO services at: http://www.linksandtraffic.com/seo-services/search-marketing.html Trey also manages article approvals at the free article directory located at: http://www.techcentralpublishing.com

There Really Is Such A Thing As Free PLR Content

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:30:47 +0000

Well as you guys no doubt know, to really succeed with our internet marketing careers, we need to have great digital products that convert all of our qualified leads into real, cash-paying customers. For many people, coming up with products will involve them creating them on their own, or it may involve them commissioning other professionals to do the hard work for them.

Chances are though, like most smart internet marketers, you probably want to save a whole lot of time and money. After all, if you were to create your own e-book for instance, expect to spend tens of hours doing the research you need, and then writing the book itself – and that’s if you’re only semi-decent at writing. If you’re a good writer, it will still take you hours and hours and if you’re terrible, well, forget it, because your e-book won’t sell!

Now, you certainly won’t go wrong by hiring a good writer to create a really good e-book, but think about how much a good writer is going to cost you. Wouldn’t you rather spend that money on getting visitors to your site so you can make more money?

I’m pretty sure, like me, you’re always looking for ways to save time and money on your internet marketing business. I’ll easily spend hours each week just reading up on the latest internet marketing happenings and news, in the endless search of improving the way I do business. In my latest search, I came across a really unique website, that’s well worth you checking out if you are serious about time and money saving:

AFF LINK HERE

Now the name is pretty self-explanatory. This site was created by an internet marketer for internet marketers, and it’s a one-stop shop for PLR material. E-books, reports, training videos, e-courses – you name it!

The really wonderful thing about this site though is that membership is free. You can sign up as a VIP Member, which won’t cost you a cent, and you can download a huge amount of PLR material for free!

You can sell that material yourself as part of your own internet marketing business, and of course, you can change any part of the product to suit your target audience.

Don’t be put off by the free part either, in terms of the quality of the material that’s on offer, because I’ve downloaded the free PLR stuff myself and it’s of a really high quality.

I’ve paid plenty of writers in my time to create digital products, and I can honestly say that the quality of this material is just as good, if not better – without me having to pay the money I would pay a writer.

In addition to the free PLR material you can download as VIP Member, you can also access heaps of great information about how to improve your internet marketing business.

You also have the option of paying a small one-time fee to become a Full Member of the site, and that will entitle you to even more fantastic PLR products to download and sell, plus you can become an affiliate of the PLR Wholesaler website itself, and receive a great commission whenever somebody you refer signs up as a Full Member.

Regardless of whether you’re a paying member or not, you will have access to a regular e-newsletter that gets sent out, and if the testimonials are anything to go by, it’s definitely one e-newsletter that’s worth your while.

I can vouch for that too, and I am a real pro when it comes to deleting emails that bore me!

So, please do me a favor and join now – this is a site that’s definitely worth your time regardless of your level of experience in internet marketing, so visit it now at:

http://plrwholesaler.com/download/clk.php?pid=2&a=38790

I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Until next time, may you keep on selling!

Elizabeth

Online Business Owners: Avoid These 5 Outsourcing Mistakes

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 15:56:18 +0000

For those considering outsourcing in their online business, the goal is to create a more profitable company while streamlining the owner’s work. Taking the time to avoid common outsourcing mistakes will make the process go much smoother and avoid the feeling that you are spinning your wheels and getting nowhere. Or to quote Nicole Dean of OutsourceWeekly “You must plan your outsourcing wisely. Otherwise, you’re simply throwing money into the wind.”

As with any part of business, outsourcing has its good and bad points, however if you are aware of the potential problems before hand, you increase your chances of an enjoyable experience.

Here are 5 potential outsourcing mistakes every online business owner should be aware of, in order to avoid making them.

1. Not Knowing Who You Are Dealing With

Most business owners who outsource will tell you the biggest benefit of doing so is the fact that their assistants work remotely. The number one problem when it comes to outsourcing, though, is not thoroughly checking out the contractor or company who will be performing the work. Keep in mind that sometimes this independence can work in the opposite direction if not taken seriously. Make it a point to carefully interview the people you are considering working with before assigning a task or project to them. The person or company should be someone you can trust to represent your business.

2. Non-Communication between Owner & Assistant

Whether you are outsourcing tech support, writing, web design or something else, there is a great deal of effort needed in order to keep the lines of communication open. If you allow your workers to do work for you without communicating your goals and what it is that you need, you will find that they your work will not be done as you’d hoped. Assistants are not mind-readers and do need guidance. Take some time to make sure that you and the people you outsource to understand your expectations. This is an important part of making sure that you get what you need.

3. Forgetting to Budget Wisely

In order for outsourcing to work properly, you’ll need to keep a good eye on what you are spending for the work being done. While some projects will require single payments to your assistant, others may involve recurring or retainer payments and you will more than likely have some type of contract or agreement that binds you. Some of your assistants may charge by the hour while others may invoice by project or expect payment based on a commission of some sort. Take the time to figure out how much money you can afford to spend on certain tasks and budget appropriately.

4. Under Utilizing Your Contractor & Their Resources

When you choose to outsource certain tasks, make certain you are using your assistant to their fullest capabilities and not just outsourcing for the sake of outsourcing or splitting up work between two assistants when it makes more sense to have one handle both jobs. Sometimes you can find freelancers who are willing to work on a recurring basis or who will complete larger projects at a reduced rate in order to get and keep your business. Don’t be afraid to ask potential contractors if they have room for more than just one or two jobs and don’t outsource something just to say that you’re on the outsourcing wagon.

5. Misunderstanding Your Role as the Outsourcer

As the one doing the outsourcing, you need to understand your role. In order for the relationship between business owner and assistant to flourish, you’ll want to keep the lines of communication not only open, but clear as well. Be detailed in what you expect from your help. Also keep in mind that you are probably not their only client and as much as you would love to have them all to yourself, that probably isn’t the case. Be respectful of their time and give feedback on their work. This will help them do a better job and respect your time in return.

Making yourself aware of possible problems that often occur in the outsourcing relationship now allows your business to grow by leaps and bounds. Don’t be afraid to start your outsourcing journey, especially that you are now better prepared to do so.

Outsource? Of Course! Get started now http://eaves.nocost.hop.clickbank.net

The One Traffic Tool Every Product Owner Should Be Using Daily

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 01:33:34 +0000

The One Traffic Tool Every Product
Owner Should Be Using Daily
By Jimmy D. Brown,

What if there was a magic bottle that you could rub and a
traffic genie would pop out to beckon to your every
internet marketing command?

After the initial shock wore off, you’d be quite happy to
have it in your possession, right?

Well, in a manner of speaking, such a genie exists. She
exists in the form of an “affiliate manager”.

An “affiliate manager” is someone who oversees the
operations of an affiliate program in exchange for
compensation.

And, out of all the traffic “tools” on the market, the
affiliate manager is the one that you should be using daily
in your business if you own your own product.

Why?

The bottom line is: more traffic, which results in more
revenue for you.

But, specifically, there are 3 reasons why you need an
affiliate manager…

1. Recruiting.

Your affiliate manager can recruit new affiliates into your
program for you. Instead of you spending time trying to
find (and then convince!) affiliates to join your program,
your “affman” can do this for you while you focus on other
things.

2. Rewarding.

Everyone knows that simply getting people to join your
affiliate program is not enough. It takes a lot of effort
to get passive affiliates to become (and stay!) active. An
affiliate manager is responsible for motivating your team
to remain involved in your promotions.

3. Running.

Beyond getting affiliates into your program and making sure
they stay active, your affiliate manager can “run” as much
of your operations as you want her to. Here are just a few
things my affiliate manager (props to Nicole!) does…

* Creates training materials
* Write follow-up mailings
* Communicates with affiliates
* Answer affiliate support questions
* Monitors contests and incentive programs
* Posts to our blog
* Clerical stuff (creates rebrandable files, etc.)
* Circulates content (article directories, etc.)

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

Perhaps the best part of hiring an affiliate manager is the
fact that it doesn’t have to cost you a penny in out of
pocket expenses. That is, you can setup your agreement to
be performance-based: you pay the affiliate manager a
percentage of the overall revenue generated through her
efforts … the more revenue she brings in through the
affiliate program, the more she earns.

Now, the question is –

** Where do I find an affiliate manager? **

There are actually quite a few ways to find quality
(emphasis needs to be on “QUALITY!”) affiliate managers for
your program. Let me share just one…

One of the easiest ways to find an affiliate manager is to
visit your favorite affiliate marketing (or internet
marketing) forum and post a request asking for
recommendations or responses for your needs.

You can do this in two ways -

1. Post a PUBLIC Request.

That is, you post a message for everyone to see, with brief
details on the position you have available and that you are
seeking recommendations or interest to explore further.

2. Post a PRIVATE Request.

The other option is to identify those participants at the
forum who appear to have experience and/or knowledge in
affiliate marketing who might be good affiliate manager
material. Then, you would simply contact them privately to
see if there is interest in discussing your needs.

Running your own affiliate program is a tremendous traffic
generation tool, but it has a lot of parts. There are many
different activities that are involved in successfully
running an affiliate program, and hiring an affiliate
manager to oversee your operations is a great way to free
up your time to work on creating additional products and
other “creative” work.

A good affiliate manager can bring in affiliates, train and
motivate them, and run your operations for you. Her efforts
bring in the traffic; your efforts turn the traffic into
orders.

It’s the closest thing to a traffic genie in a bottle that
you’ll find. Rubbing is optional. Using this strategy
isn’t.

———–
Jimmy D. Brown is the author of Sales Army Secrets, full of
meaty details on ways to find affiliate managers, how to
structure your agreement with them and tasks to have them
handle. Details at http://infoprofitshare.com/go.php?offer=eaves&pid=10

Affiliate Marketing Scams

BlakeEvans — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 18:09:01 +0000

Making money from home is such a powerful and persistent desire, that it can almost be considered an American dream. And, believe it or not, millions of Americans are achieving that dream. But there are others who get frustrated because they get sucked into scams. One of the most prominent schemes can be found in the affiliate marketing world.

To understand affiliate marketing scams, you must first understand how legitimate affiliate programs operate. And basically, they work by paying you a commission every time someone buys from your URL. They do not guarantee income because technically you are not an employee but an independent contractor. In addition, they do not charge you to join their program.

These scams work differently. Firstly, they promote themselves as work from home jobs, whether in the marketing or data entry sector. This should automatically send red flags, because traditional affiliate programs do not pay their contractors a salary. If they are paid a salary, they are considered a marketer or a copywriter… fields that usually require experience and/or degrees.

Secondly, these scams will usually charge victims money to join their programs. This is not necessary among legitimate affiliate programs, because companies expect to earn their profits once you bring customers to their site. Plus, it really doesn’t cost that much to run an affiliate program. Indeed, if a company is charging their affiliates, chances are that’s how they are making their profits. They hope they can sucker more people into their fraudulent web.

Thirdly, affiliate marketing scams tend to have an abnormally high number of bad reviews with the Better Business Bureau. Of course, even some of the best networks get negative ratings, but if you see more than 10 in a one-year period, something is wrong with that program. This is especially the case if the reviews talk about non-payment or refusal to refund.

Finally, scams of this sort will promise returns that are unrealistic, especially for beginning affiliate marketers. They may say you’ll make $500 a week typing ads from home. In reality, this refers to promoting their affiliate program through classified ads or Google Adwords, (a pay-per-click network where you must pay to advertise). You won’t get any upfront money for this, and as far as affiliate commissions, these venues don’t generate those kind of returns unless you really know what you’re doing. And assuming you do, you’re wasting your time promoting a scammer, because you’ll probably never see your commissions anyway.

In conclusion, don’t let the promise of easy money suck you into scams in the affiliate marketing industry. There are too many legitimate opportunities to waste your time and money with companies who will probably never compensate you for your efforts.

About The Author:
Blake Evans is a writer for InlineSEO.com, a site created to help businesses build web traffic through search engine optimization strategies. Gain advanced affiliate marketing tips and tactics online. Discover basic through advanced SEO topics at http://www.InlineSEO.com

Earn Twice As Much From Your Blog

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 03:15:16 +0000

If you are trying to make money by selling ad spaces and writing paid review then you are leaving behind a huge chunk of money on the table.

You can actually earn two times more from your blog by promoting affiliate programs.

How?

You can do so by linking specific keywords in your blog posts into affiliate programs.

Take the following example:

==>>Your blog is about Health and Fitness and you’ve talked about “healthy diet”. What you can do is you can link that very keyword to an affiliate program. Now your readers can follow that link to buy the related product and you’ll be the one earning commission out of it.

Let’s say you have another post and you have the phrase “aerobic excercise”. You can link this keyword to a good aerobic exercise tutorial video and if your readers buy the video from that very link you’ll be the one getting paid again.

Getting paid commissions out of the keywords that lead to affiliate links is not a small deal. Can you imagine how much impact will that be making to your overall blog income?

But how?

The reason being- you have those keywords already linked with the affiliate link and it is going to stay right there. This means you…. yes, YOU will be the one AGAIN to earn commissions even if someone reads that post after say, 5 months or 8 months. Now, think about all the hundreds of blog posts lying idle on your blog. Don’t you want to earn from them lifelong??

But its not possible to edit all of them, that might take a really loooong time or even forever.

Fact is: Ninja Affiliate (a powerful wordpress plugin) can do that. All your blog posts that laid idle and all those keyowrds that you wanted to link can be made affiliate links instantly, that can earn you passive commissions.

What about all those thousands of RSS subscribers you have? I can bet most of your loyal readers read your blog using RSS feed. That means they see no ads, and they don’t increase any page views. Unfortunately they just don’t do anything to increase your earning.

BUT linking your keywords to affiliate links will earn you money even from your RSS readers as well.

Check out what more Ninja Affiliate can do:
CLICK HERE

Think of the possibilities and fore-see how far you can go with your blog incomes. The choice is yours, whether to stick with your penny-wise income or learn an effective affiliate marketing HERE:

CLICK HERE for our Christmas Special

Travel Industry Management: Scam Alert

JonMinion — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 07:18:01 +0000

If you’ve been around the internet for any period of time, you’re well aware of the scams arriving by email informing you of the vast sums of money you have won. Or, if you help the Nigerian Princess move money out of her country, you can have a cut of it.

These scams have permeated the web so much that they have a name: 419 scams (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_fee_fraud). 419 is the Nigerian Criminal Code that deals with fraud. Most (but not all) of these scams originate from Nigeria.

If you read the Wikipedia entry linked earlier, you should take away two points:

1. These scams have been around a long time. The originated in the early 80’s and were run via letters, faxes, telex.

2. These scams come in ALL shapes and sizes. If a scammer can come up with a way to scam someone, they will try it over the Internet.

While there are countless variations of the 419 scam, I want to explain the version I’ve seen that targets vacation rental owners. Read on to make sure you don’t fall victim to a scam.

Imagine you make a booking for someone who pays you via a cashiers check. They accidentally overpay and when they find out, they ask you to send a refund via Western Union. Guess what? You’ve just been scammed!

As it turns out, the cashiers check is fake and it often takes your bank weeks to determine that it is fake. By then, the scammer has their money via Western Union, and you are left with nothing from the cashier’s check except possibly a fee from your bank and a lesson learned. Good times.

Don’t worry - it’s pretty easy to protect yourself. You just need to know how these scams work so you know what to look out for.

These scams work like this:

1. The \”renter\” pays you money (rent)

2. The \”renter\” ask for some amount of money back. The reasons are endless: Accidental overpayment, medical emergency, they want to cancel the booking.

If they’ve paid by check, money order, or cashiers check, you simply need to ask your bank to make sure it’s cleared and is not a fake before you issue the refund. If the \”renter\” asks for a refund via Western Union or other wire service, it’s a scam.

If you end up in this position, do not refund any money until the bank confirms the check isn’t fake. The renter will play on your emotions, telling you they need the money for medical bills or something horrible. Unfortunately, you cannot trust them.

These scams are so common now and so hard to prosecute, that the scammer will likely never be arrested for what they have done. However, if you find a scammer trying to scam you by booking your vacation home, please do the following:

Cease communications with the scammer

Notify the FBI here (http://www.ic3.gov/)

Notify the vacation rental listing website they used to contact you. That will allow the website to contact other owners that also were contacted by the same individual.

Notify the scammers email provider. This can usually be done by sending an email to \”abuse@\” and then putting the domain name for the email provider. For example, abuse@gmail.com or abuse@yahoo.com. The provider will usually shut down that email address which may help other owners.

Author’s note: This article is derived from the one posted here: http://www.vacationrentalsindustry.com/blog/vacation-rental-scams

About The Author:
Jon Minion helps the owners of vacation homes get their vacation rentals found by travelers looking for travel accommodations at: http://www.findvacationrentals.com/
Jon also offers marketing advice to vacation rental owners at: http://www.vacationrentalsindustry.com/blog/

Why Dot Com is Still Best for Domain Names

JudyMurdoch — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:18:06 +0000

Does this sound familiar?

You’ve decided to start a new business … or you’ve created a new product … or you’ve finally decided to create a website for your existing business …

and you need a domain name. So you go to a domain registration site like Godaddy and type in the URL you want (for example \”marketingforeveryone.com\”) and find out …

… someone else already owns the name.

In fact your three favorite domain names are taken.

But wait! Only the domain names ending with \”.com\” are taken.

You can still get the domain name you want if you register using \”.info\”, \”.us\”, \”.biz\”. In fact, you can register your preferred domain name as just about anything. Except as a \”.com.\”

Like many small business owners, you wonder, \”do I REALLY need to register my domain as ‘.com’?\” I’ve asked this question myself when trying to find the right domain name. It’s utterly maddening to submit one domain name after another only to learn each is taken.

==============================
The Reason to Choose Dot Com for Your Domain
==============================

The reason lies in why people visit your website to begin with.

People are visiting your website because your business offers them something that want: information, a solution, entertainment, etc. Whether or not they visit is based on how likely they think you can provide what they’re looking for. They also want to feel safe. They want to feel that behind the website there is a business owner who cares. Contrast this with websites domains like 1000leads4U.biz, loansnow.info, and cheapbizcards.us. Domain names like these feel opportunistic. They suggest the business owner is focused primarily on making a quick buck with the absolute minimum investment in time and attention.

Don’t know about you but those aren’t the types of businesses I want to give my phone number to much less my credit card number.

==============================
Bottom Line
==============================

It’s worth taking the time and energy to find a .com domain name for your business’s website or blog. Despite the proliferation of options (.biz, .tv, .us, .info), people still associate .com with the qualities of trustworthiness and commitment to service. Everything else being equal, customers will still choose .com over the alternatives.

About The Author:
Judy Murdoch helps small business owners create low-cost, effective marketing campaigns using word-of-mouth referrals, guerrilla marketing activities, and five-star strategic alliances. To download a free copy of the workbook, \”Where Does it Hurt? Marketing Solutions to the problems that Drive Your Customers Crazy!\” go to http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm
You can contact Judy at 303-475-2015 or judy@judymurdoch.com

Successful Article Marketers Help Readers Solve Problems

BillPlatt — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 12:27:02 +0000

Every week, I have the opportunity to speak with people about the benefits and challenges of using article marketing to promote an online business. Of course, article marketing is about getting your sales message in front of potential customers and to get links to your website, from the page where an article is posted online.

Where most people get confused with article marketing is with the idea that \”it is a method to promote one’s website.\” Many interpret this to mean that an article should directly promote the writer’s website within the article, but that approach is wrong and will reduce one’s success using this methodology.

Understanding The Overall Article Marketing Strategy

Consider this. Television has been a successful advertising medium for more than six decades, because TV stations understand the importance of providing content to anchor the advertising. In every television hour, there are 42 minutes of content to provide an anchor for 18 minutes of advertising. People tune into the content out of a desire to receive the content, and they accept the advertising as a necessary price to pay in order to get the content for free.

Article marketing works best when the writer emulates the television-advertising model, by anchoring a sales message to content that people want to consume.

The role of article marketing is to capture an audience for the writer’s website advertisement, which should be presented in the \”resource box\” / \”about the author\” information that appears in the paragraph immediately following the actual article. But, in order to capture that audience, an article needs to tell a story that publishers and webmasters desire to share with their readers.

How To Capture An Audience

When people ask me what they should write about in their articles, I always ask them a set of three questions to help them to define a successful strategy. Those three questions are as follows:

1. What do you sell?

2. Who is most likely to buy what you are selling?

3. What types of problems are common to those people that you may be able to answer?

Publishers and webmasters have a responsibility to their visitors to provide the kind of content that people actually \”want\” to read. I have heard publishers and webmasters state that if you want to sell to their readers, buy advertising. But if you were willing to teach something of value to their readers, then by all means, they would be happy to give you an advertisement in the \”about the author\” section at the end of your article, as payment for allowing them to share your information with their readers.

So, if you want an audience for your website’s sales message, you should strive to give publishers the kind of information that they would like to share with their readers. If you give readers what they want, publishers will be willing to give you what you want - a chance to share the story of your business with the publishers’ readers and website visitors.

Give Readers What They Want

When people go to a search engine, a website, a newsletter or blog, people are looking for information that will help them to address a problem they face. In short, people go online to find solutions for problems.

Since I desire to reach the people most likely to buy my products or services, I want to write content that will appeal directly to those people. When I sit down to write, I try to identify a problem that many people might have, and then I strive to locate and offer a solution to the problem.

When publishers and webmasters agree that the problem addressed is real and my solution is sound, my articles find huge audiences.

When my articles answer a reader’s problem, my \”about the author\” information gets read. When my \”about the author\” information appeals to the reader, my website gets a new visitor. And for every new visitor my website gets, I have one more chance to sell my products and services to another potential client.

In Closing

There are certain people online, whose articles you have seen frequently on many websites and in some of your favorite newsletters. If you read those articles with an analytical eye, you will soon realize that what I tell you is true. Those people who put the focus of their articles on helping others to solve problems are the people whose articles are published most often and in the largest range of newsletters and websites.

Article marketing works well for those of us who seek to help readers solve problems.

For those who are looking to escape this tried-and-true method of article marketing, I wish you well. But I stand firm in the belief that if you put more focus on helping people solve more problems, you will benefit from article marketing in ways that other people can only dream.

About The Author:
Bill Platt has owned and operated http://www.thePhantomWriters.com article distribution service since 2001, and he has published more than 125 articles in his own name. Article marketing is the perfect advertising system for small businesses, but if you find yourself spending at least $1000 per month on PPC Advertising, then you owe it to yourself to review Bill’s Pay-For-Performance Search Engine Optimization (SEO) service at: http://www.linksandtraffic.com/seo-services/search-marketing.html

Getting Better Research Materials By Using Better Search Tools

TreyPennewell — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 11:36:03 +0000

150 years ago people who dreamed of becoming rich often went to the mountains and streams of California searching for gold. Their tools were shovels; pick axes, and metal pans. A few became rich - most did not. Today, for those seeking to discover riches, or at least a decent living, there is still gold lying around for those who can find it - but most of it exists as information accessible over the internet - and the tools you need to find it are web browsers and search engines.

In doing research of any kind you have to be able to find and access information and materials. This used to mean books, papers, etc. collected and organized in a library. Catalogers reviewed materials, classified them, assigned a number, created a \”card catalog\”, and arranged the materials in sections containing like materials. Finding information was a slow, and often arduous, task.

You had to \”look up\” the subject in the card catalog. If you didn’t find what you wanted under the word set you selected you had find other words - the word or words that occurred to the cataloger, might not be the ones you were considering. There was never a consistent thread of analysis that one could rely upon for finding the right books, because as you and I might think of different words to find what we want, the book catalogers all have their own personalities and therefore, they would frequently select words to describe a book through their own colored lenses of analysis.

Sometimes a thesaurus, or a reference librarian, was able to help you find the book you wanted. And the catalog cards gave only a hint of the actual contents of a book. Then you went to the shelves, found the section, and looked at what else was near your specific item of interest. Often you found \”other things\” nearby, which were exactly what you were looking for in the first place.

The computer allowed the development of electronic databases and automated searches. The Internet allowed access to many databases. Search Engines are able to accomplish, in seconds, what a person could not complete in a lifetime. But always we are at the mercy of what is in the database, and how the analysis tools interpret the database. Nonetheless, these Search Engines are powerful tools, which you can use to accomplish market research to find information that can help build and grow your business.

Most people today are familiar with, and spend some time on, the World Wide Web - the Internet. So we know a little about web browsers and search engines (sometimes very little). When you go looking for information, it is the search engine that does most of the work, and like other tools, they don’t have the same talents and skills.

In doing a web search you first have to ask a question that contains one or more \”key words\”, words you hope will lead you to the information you seek. Common search engines include Google, Yahoo, and MSN - and there are dozens of others. They access different databases and are optimized for different kinds of searches. Their designers create various features to find, sort, arrange and display the search results in a comprehensible fashion. When I did a Google search for \”keyword research\” it reported 456,000 results; Yahoo reported 20,700,000 results. Braggart! But how in the world can the program, or the user, ever find what they are after in that many results?

One method that helps people find information that is more relevant to what they need is clustering, which is simply a feature of some search engines’ design, which combines different parts of the results together based on specific principles. Clustering can also provide built-in features, which provide a set of related terms, almost like a thesaurus, including in the results words related to your search keywords. Using clustered search terms will allow you to broaden the specific search and perhaps find something like that book on an adjoining shelf that is exactly what you need.

Search engines find web content using key words or phrases to locate items in databases. Both when doing market research, and when building web sites and web content, key words are extremely important. And clustering search features help you (or your potential customers) find similar terms, which will lead you to related (and possibly very important) information.

Using a search engine with clustered search features will lead you to these related items that may greatly enhance the results of your market research. Similarly, using appropriate keywords in your web materials can enhance traffic to your site or articles. One search engine that has clustering search features is http://widow.com/

Widow Search has a simple user interface. Doing a sample search by entering \”keyword research\” gave some interesting results. On the left side of the results page is a box displaying the results of the \”clustered search feature\”. Below this box is a second box titled \”Similar Terms\”, their suggestions for extended items beyond the keywords you entered. To the right of the boxes is a list of \”Resources\” which resulted from the search. The first 10 items found by the search are displayed, with brief descriptions, the URL and a link to the target site. Buttons between the screen header and the Results list gives access to subsequent items found.

The clustered search results for this case were as follows:

\”Keyword Research\”:

Search Engine

Analysis

Services

Review

Worldtracker

Blog

Right Keywords

Competition

Complete

Discovery

Some items have a plus sign ( ) in front of the listed item and that plus sign indicates that the listed word has a sub-list, which can be displayed by clicking the ( ) button. For instance, clicking \”Search Engine\” displays a list of 8 sub-items.

The \”Similar Terms\” box listed seven sub-items. This display is slightly confusing since the box uses word wrap and some links are split between two lines. Focus on the type font size - they toggle through 3 different font sizes - when the size changes, you are seeing a different link. Click on a link and it will take you to another list of items keyed to the specific similar term.

Widow Search (http://widow.com/) is a meta-search engine with significant research capabilities that produces excellent results. However, it still requires work, thought and judgment to achieve your goals. But, give it a try. You might just find that you will never have a need to go to any of the Big Three search engines ever again.

About The Author:
Trey Pennewell is a writer who assists the content creation and helps write ClickBank product reviews for: http://www.TrafficAndSubscribers.com If you are spending at least $1000 per month on PPC Advertising, please take the time to review our Pay-For-Results SEO service at: http://www.linksandtraffic.com/seo-services/search-marketing.html