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Gurus Suck Blog
The Anti-guru rants.
Posted by: mitch in Blog Advertising on
Mar 08, 2009
There are several ways to monetize a blog. One of the most commonly used is by selling advertising space, either through text-based advertising or banner ads. But to do either of these, you will have to look for advertisers who will pay to have their ads placed on your web pages. If you're unsure on what to do and how to do it, here are tips to help you find blog advertisers to help you generate revenue with your website: Promote. Instead of just leaving possible banner ad locations blank, let advertisers know that they are up for grabs. Use 'Advertise Here' or 'Your Ad Here' texts to indicate their availability. When advertisers click on these areas, they will arrive on a page where information about buying ad space will be provided. Make sure that there is a webpage that will be used for this purpose specifically. This page may either contain information about your terms or it could be a link that will allow your advertiser to send you an e-mail. Seek out advertisers actively. Other than openly promoting your blog for ads, you could also find blog advertisers by targeting them. That way, you get to choose who will place their ads on your blog. A standard letter of approach to advertisers should contain: - a brief introduction about yourself - a short explanation of the purpose of your e-mail - a short explanation why you're soliciting their sponsorship or ads - a concise explanation of the benefits of placing ads on your blog - details regarding your advertising terms (type of ad placements, industry to which your advertisers belong, maximum number of ads in one webpage, cost, method of
payment, etc.) - important details about your site, such as your subject matter, audience, number of traffic, etc.
Offer sponsorship. Blog sponsorships are fast becoming a trend online, as the number of businesses utilizing blogs as an extension of their marketing efforts increases. Through sponsorship, you will be working closely with a company (your advertiser) and promote their products and services through your blogs. Your web pages will also carry that company's name, brands and logo. You could also come up with a sponsorship deal wherein specific parts of your blog's content will be sponsored by the advertiser. This type of blog advertising works well if your site is quite popular already and has a considerable number of visitors. Do a keyword search. There are many companies and individuals using Google Adwords who might be interested in an arrangement with you. Do a simple keyword or key phrase search regarding major topics on your blog. Then seek out sponsored links and find out about the companies that pay for them. Get in touch with these people and offer your blog for their ads. Take advantage of links. Blogs and other sites that link with your blog are potential advertisers. If they find your blog interesting enough to link with, they might be open for negotiations regarding advertising. You might want to send them an e-mail to let them know your blog is available for advertising. Tap people who use your forums or leave messages. Another way to find blog advertisers is to offer your ad spots to people who leave comments or messages on your blogs. Seek out people affiliated with a company, group or association. They might be interested to buy ads on your blog.
Posted by: mitch in Seach Engines, Email Marketing on
Feb 23, 2009
 Because they don't follow these Six Rules: Know your Audience
• Make it relevant
• Make it personal
• Make it worth their while Get to the Point
• Be Quick to engage, show me - don't tell me
• Answer ‘what's in it for me'
• Don't sell, inform Too many words
• People are too busy for fluff
• Pictures are better than words
• Abbreviate your thoughts Create a relationship
• Don't stop at one brief chat
• Build trust and expectation
• Reward your readers Plan, Test and Measure
• Every element, every time
• Broadcast Times and offers
• Clicks and Calls Clear Outcomes
• Answer why I should ...
• Be clear on the reader's next step
• Make your Call to Action obvious
 Everyone is looking for an angle. In business today, it is important to find the right way to reach your target customers. One way to do that is to have a product that no one else is selling in quite that same way. This is your niche. We are going to talk about marketing that niche. You will have already done your homework and found out that this is a product or service that no one else has marketed up until now. Check out other websites that sell similar products. A list of these may be somewhere among your files from the time you researched to find the right niche. Use their examples as a starting point. Inject some of your own creativity into the equation to expand on what they have already done. It could be a matter of adding a few extra features to your website for customers. What about forums? Business forums that deal with entrepreneurs who have made money with products similar to yours can give you hints about what works. Since there is no direct competition, they'll be willing to help you. Use the forum to discuss your business and make contact with people who can add to your business knowledge. Knowledge is the key. When niche marketing, knowing everything about that product or service you want to offer is essential to making the whole business work. Find out who would pay more for your specialized service and where those people are. Knowing where they are will guide your marketing strategy for reaching them. What if you have found a product that no one has tapped yet? It could be a rare book business or a special component in your product that makes it more valuable. If the demand is there, acquiring those items would be worth the extra time, effort, and expense. Identify the places where your products will sell best. You can promote the items on your website, but that is not the only place to market your wares. What about a marketplace like eBay? When you have found just the right niche, you can expand to increase your profits even more. What services would complement that product? Additional services drive up the value of your product. Take the time to cultivate these services and further cement the relationship with your existing clientele. Now that your product is selling, increase the field. Global marketing of your niche is the ultimate. Write expert content and submit it to magazines online and in print. Let others know that you are the foremost authority on that product. What is your niche? Are you doing everything that you know to do to promote that product or service? Maybe the above suggestions will help you to fine-tune and expand your profits.
 Affiliate programs are all over the Internet. It is a partnership between merchants and other websites to increase their traffic. At the same time, the website owners are also making some money from the clicks that they get on the ads. Increase your profits by administering your own affiliate program. Affiliate marketing works in this way: A merchant places their ads on another website for a price. The website is not in direct competition with the merchant but has a compatible business. Both are counting on the volume of traffic to the affiliate's website for sales. Once the visitor clicks on the ads, it is tracked from the affiliate back to the merchant's site. When your business can support it, begin your own affiliate program. All of the work falls on the merchant to administer and promote the affiliate program for those who participate. To alleviate some of the work, you can join an affiliate network. Affiliate networks are set up to help both merchants and affiliates to handle the management of affiliate programs. They help merchants track their traffic to various websites. For affiliates, these networks list a variety of affiliate programs available so the affiliate can choose the program that is right for them. Starting with an affiliate network will get all of your questions answered about administering an affiliate program. These networks also manage payments to affiliates and make sure that you have set up your program appropriately. It is wonderful that networks like this exist but they are not free. Joining a network requires a significant outlay of cash in the thousands of dollars. Ask yourself what you want to accomplish with the affiliate program. Are you seeking to find affiliates globally or in your country? How will you pay your affiliate members? Can you pay for leads, clicks, or actual sales? The answers will determine how well your business will perform with an affiliate marketing program. With the right websites advertising your business, traffic and sales will increase quickly. Before beginning an affiliate program, be sure that your business is in the black. You want to take advantage of the traffic on the Web but wait if you don't have the money to spare. After you have decided you are ready, work with a network to set up your program. The affiliate network will screen your affiliates. This is a necessary part of the process. You don't want to waste time on websites that are not compatible with your business or do not do a high volume of traffic. Affiliate programs work. They create additional income for your website with minimum effort. Using an affiliate network helps you to overcome the learning curve of administering the program.
 There are many ways to enhance your business. If you are looking to pursue one of those ways, consider using eBooks. EBooks are the easiest way for people to acquire books without needing a bookshelf to house them all. Here are some of the benefits of eBooks: 1. EBooks are inexpensive to produce. You can hire someone to take your manuscript and turn it into a professional-looking product or you can do it yourself using eBook compiler and design software. Make your eBook look as attractive as any volume sold in a store. 2. There is no cost involved in getting eBooks out to the customer. Since the customer can download them right from the Internet, you don't have to worry about the cost of shipping and insuring your product. Also customers will be glad that they can get your book virtually in an instant as soon as they've paid for it. 3. EBooks can be used in a number of ways. You can use them as a way for people to learn more about the aspects of your business. Written information on certain subjects are always in demand. Make sure that it is good quality information presented in a way that has not been done before. 4. Give them away as contest prizes. With each order, a customer is entered in a draw for an eBook of their choice. You are making money because the customer has to buy something from you in order to get a chance to have the eBook for free. 5. EBooks can be written by you. Having a book with your name on it makes you more credible with your consumer base. If you have a knack for writing, money will be saved by not hiring a ghostwriter to do it for you. All of the profit is going directly to you and your company. Once you get started you will get hooked on the idea and want to write an entire library of eBooks. 6. The money that you spent to have the eBook created will be recouped as soon as you sell the first few eBooks. People are willing to pay for convenience. Having a book at their fingertips as soon as they want it is as convenient as it gets. As long as you are willing to put in the work, the earning potential is limitless. 7. Sell your eBook in other marketplaces. EBay is the most noted marketplace on the Internet. Creating how-to books and other books dedicated to subject matter of interest to the public is a moneymaker. Who knows? A publisher may get a hold of it and want to offer you a deal to publish it in hardcopy form. There are many uses for eBooks that can bring extra profits to your business.
 Passive income is money that we earn from projects we've set up in the past. Something we have set in motion is still making us some money. Here are a few ways that a person can earn passive income. * Use your website. If you don't have one, here are some reasons why you need one. A website is more than just a business beacon for whatever your products may be. While you are working hard to make money, let the website do some work. Sign up for affiliate programs. Businesses with compatible products for sale but not in direct competition, partner with other websites to get more traffic. Once the ads are placed, all that is required is to wait for the traffic. One useful program is Google AdWords. The ads placed on your website will be compatible to the theme of your website. When people click on these ads you make money. If they actually take advantage of the offer, you stand to make even more.
* Discover your talents and skills. They will lead to the ideas that can make you some money. Writing a book is a form of passive income. After the book is published, the revenue that comes is because of initial marketing of the book by yourself and the publisher. A popular book will have paperback rights and possibly movie rights. * Invest in stocks and bonds. With the unpredictability of the stock market, look for long-term investments. Over time stocks will drop but they will also recover and can turn into a tidy sum over ten or more years. As a self-employed individual, don't neglect your own retirement fund. Open a Keogh account or other IRA so that you are earning money for a more secure future. After the fund is set up and the stocks, bonds, and mutual funds are chosen for investment, nothing else is left to do except to monitor the account. * Write content. Everyone wants good information and the Internet is often the first place that they look. Good content also needs a way for people to find it. Joining sites like Associated Content and others that pay on page views is considered passive income. Associate Content will offer upfront payments also, but they have instituted a performance payment that is based on the number of page views the articles receive. To get your content noticed, research popular keywords and use them in appropriate densities throughout the articles. Promote the content on your site and through friends and family. Now, wait for the traffic to do the rest. This content can make money for years to come if the topic is one that will stand the test of time. There are a number of ways to make passive income. Don't forget real estate when money allows. Check out the Internet for more ideas that can help you.
Posted by: mitch in Web 2.0, Twitter, Traffic Secrets, Traffic Generation, Online Business, Internet Traffic, Internet Marketing, Google Traffic, Free Traffic, eMillionaire, eBusiness, eBillionaire on
Feb 13, 2009
 Perhaps you've heard about Twitter. It's a social media tool which enables people to post via instant message. Originally designed to help people stay connected it's quickly becoming a tool used by businesses around the world. So how do you respond to the question, "What are you doing?" and make it about your business? How do you respond and make it interesting, something your target audience will respond to? Here are some options to use Twitter to market your business: Drive traffic to your blog. Post a question on Twitter and include a link to your blog. For example. If you're a pet trainer or sell pet products you could write a blog post on how to train your dog. Using twitter you could post the following question - "How do you get your dog to stop jumping on visitors?" Follow the question with a link to your blog and then track the traffic to your blog post. Another way to drive traffic to your blog is to write a twitter post using some of the more interesting or unique comments to blog posts you've written. These can start very interesting conversations and drive traffic to your blog and company website. Announce contests - with a link to your website where the contest details are offered OR post a question and challenge someone to be the first response. Give them something related to your business for answering the question correctly first. Again, using the pet store example, you could give away a pet food bowl or training book. Share personal adventures which relate to your business. If you're having a company picnic, share a picture or post a funny or thought provoking quote the CEO just made during a speech. Anything that helps build your brand, company philosophy, and marketing strategy is worthy of posting. Post interesting or thought provoking statistics, quotes, or headlines and start a conversation. During the conversation, when appropriate, it may be possible to link to your company website. Make an announcement. Have a new wonderful product or service to share with the world? Use twitter to make an announcement - amplify the power of the announcement and post a code to give the first 5,10, or 50 customers. Make it an event. Like any social marketing tool the key is to market subtly. No one wants to read an advertisement for your business - however it can still be a valuable marketing tool. Be creative. There are a wide variety of ways to make Twitter more than just a fun social tool, use it to build your business.
 If you want to create your own websites, there are several skills you need to get the job done. Some need a steep learning curve, meaning that they are easy to learn, while others need more effort in order to be executed properly. We've listed down some of the skills needed in creating websites. 1. Using a graphics editor - this is important when you wish to create graphics for your website. A good graphics editor can do jobs such assimple photo editing to more complex ones such as creating gradient and reflection effects. Photoshop and GIMP are popular graphics editors used by designers. 2. HTML - is another important skill any web designer needs to have. HTML is a markup language, and just like other markup languages, it tells the computer how the graphics and other elements of the page will be displayed. Basic tags are enough to let normal users get by, but knowledge of more specialized tags are needed by those who want to build better websites. 3. CSS - is short for Cascading Style Sheets. Having a style sheet for a website makes it easier for designers to design a page by assigning values to tags such as those used in
paragraphs, lists and the likes. With a style sheet, a style can be easily applied by using a variable on any part of the site. 4. Flash - is a program used for creating animations, games and entire websites. Knowledge on how to use this is a must
among web designers. While the basic commands will be enough for most users, Flash's ActionScript gives people more control over their creations. Building a Web 2.0 application is crucial for any Internet Marketing plan. When using the internet to market products or services, how your customers respond to your internet marketing will determine whether your marketing will convert your traffic into customers or not.
 You may have an online business and you need to figure out a way that you can get your business out there to all potential customers. The way to do that is through search engines. Search engines are used most often to find almost anything on the web. Search engines provide a service that is similar to a telephone book except with URL's that take you directly to a place that you can find what you are looking for. With the help of search engines you can drive business to a direct website. When you use domain name marketing you are starting to circulate your name around the World Wide Web and when you start to connect to customers you may find that the search engines have picked up your link and you can now be found fairly easy if someone uses the right keywords. If your domain name marketing was this successful with only minimal effort imagine if you aimed to get your domain name into search engines all over the web. Your potential could be endless. You can start by using keywords when promoting your domain name. If you can link to other sites with the same interests your website can be viewed more often. Your name can either be appealing to customers or it may turn them away. You won't know until you get your name out there for everyone to see. Start your domain name marketing today to see what happens.
 Some people have made a business of domain investing. They deal in the buying and selling of domain names. If you know what you are doing, it can become a business that will make you money. The big part of the process is in knowing when to sell a domain. The same principles that they use to make decisions for their business can be used by you when selling your domain. Here are some tips to make selling easier and more profitable. Join forums. There are forums out there that are dedicated to discussing everything about domains. This includes buying, selling, what extensions are popular, what domain names are selling, and tips on choosing domain names. You can find out some useful information in these forums. Being a part of such a forum establishes you as a member and people get to know you. When the time comes for you to search for a buyer for your domain, others will know that you are not just a newcomer to the forum looking for buyers. Look to sell your domain when it is going to expire. Unless you want to be responsible for the upcoming fees, prepare the way to sell at least a couple of months before expiration. Starting early will give you a chance to gauge the market and see if you even have a chance of getting a good return on your investment. The truth is that most domains will get you a couple of hundred dollars in profit. Some names do sell for a whole lot more money but that is not the norm. However, you don't have to follow the norm if you learn the ins and outs of the domain business. If you have come up with your own domain name and didn't buy it from someone else, then you know the work that has gone into it. Its uniqueness will add to the price. The market is not as big as it was when everyone was jumping on the dot.com bandwagon, but businesses are still looking for good names to use and yours could be that name. If you are looking to invest in domain names, then choose quality names to buy so that they will bring in a good price when you sell them. Beware of scam artists when it is time to sell domain names. There are people whose sole job is to separate you from your hard-earned money. They may promise you that they can get a certain price for your domain. Remember what they say about an offer that is too good to be true. Selling your domain can be done at any time. Selling for the maximum profit is a matter of timing and know-how. Learn from people who know about domains so that you possess the knowledge you need.
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