Internet Marketing Articles

Online marketing is not always a profitable business. It has its own disadvantages. Though people may sign up for free mails and reports, many of them regard it as junk and delete them or do not read them at all. Then, how do you promote your products usefully?

Simple, e-magazines or e-zines are the answer. They are extremely effective because of the following five reasons:

It maintains relationships unobtrusively
It is an easy way to keep in contact with your prospects and clients. It’s important to keep reminding your prospects about you, but in a subtle manner. However, it is not easy sending mails to tons of people.

Here is where e-zines come in. They help sustain the bond between you and your prospects without intruding on their privacy. Your prospects will, most probably, remember you and come to you when they need your help.

It’s an easy way to connect to your prospect’s contacts
Sending e-zines regularly with interesting information will impress your readers. If they like it a lot, they’ll forward it to their contacts and this will keep going on.

To facilitate this, you could set up a function enabling readers to send the e-zines to friends along with your URL. Your readers contacts can access your site, thereby increasing your traffic. This technique is called viral marketing.

It can help recognize you as a specialist
Sharing your knowledge with your clients and prospects will impress them and gain their trust. Spreading this knowledge will lure a lot of visitors. Eventually, you will be rated as an expert in our field. This will boost your sales and your traffic.

It helps get you the contact addresses of your visitors
Most visitors just casually browse through sites without any serious intention of buying anything. To get them interested, you can make them sign up for your e-zine.

Make sure you offer them information related to your field. It also wouldn’t hurt to throw in a few freebies like an e-book or a discount.

Then, try and convince your visitors about the benefits of your products. Do not forget to deliver on your promise and send useful information to them. You have a better chance of selling your product after sending a few e-zines.

It does not drain your resources and can be published without difficulty
It is an easy to connect with your target audience without shelling out too much of your resources. It can also be sent to a large number of people without incurring any expenditure.

It is better to keep your information simple and straightforward. This will give the reader more clarity. It also promote you as a simple and transparent company.

You are probably convinced about the benefits of an e-zine. If you are not, you should send one out and see the response you get. You will find that the results will speak for themselves. There is no harm in trying and you have got nothing to lose. It will also get you free publicity. So, go for it!

free 28minute audioat my website which is at www.the-million-dollar-desire.com

On the Internet, it is very possible to make money without selling any product. One way of doing so is through starting your own eZine, also known as an electronic newsletter.

In a nutshell, you send out your eZine issues on a periodical basis to your subscribers. The good part is that you have a flexible choice in automating the send process or you can manually send them on a periodical basis (this depends on the size of your list).

As an eZine publisher, not only can you easily achieve the benefits a conventional newsletter publisher enjoys without having to chop down several trees in the process(here’s to going green!), you can easily and conveniently spread your marketing influence and expertise to your base of subscribers from the shoes of an ordinary individual. In other words, you do not have to invest in expensive printing equipment, brick and mortar business, and hiring staff just to run your own newsletter publication-resulting in a lot of time, money and effort saved. Basically, all you need to start your own eZine are an auto responder and broadcast feature to go with, enabling you to reach out to your massive subscribers whom you can regard as your prospects, too.

All in all, if you do not have the commitments of creating your own product for sale, then publishing your own online newsletter can be one of the wisest decisions you will ever make, given the benefits of impressive marketing power and influence it can offer to you.

Once your newsletter creates a buzz and your list is quite large you can think about hiring a team to manage it. I recommend my clients to write the articles and leave the design, send management and spam issues to me. It’s a great task to deligate but by writing the articles your stamp will show through every newsletter! Now all you have to do is decide what topic to write about…

When choosing a topic to publish your eZine on, you must consider some important success factors that can determine the flow and goal of your eZine.

You are encouraged to write non-time sensitive contents such as short tips, mini stories and interviews. Doing so enables you to create content in advance so that you can conveniently dispense to your subscribers at a later schedule as well as create archives for future clients to view.

Topic-wise, you will do well to cater to a starving market that will always be on demand for the kind of content you offer. And by this, I mean that you should zero in on a demand that has been, is and will always be there.

Relationships and dating are niches that have been on Earth long before the World Wide Web came up, for example. The food niche will always be there as long as there are chefs cooking for anyone with a stomach to fill.

Having said that, you also want to have a steady stream of products or services of your own or an affiliate you can endorse to your mailing list and make even more money.

This is also the reason why the Internet Marketing niche will remain one of the hottest niches there is, as products and services are created almost around the clock. As long as there Internet Businesses cropping out, there will always be needs to be fulfilled.

So even if you have 1 subscriber open that word processing program and get started! “If you build it they will come!”

Melinda Janicki, Lead Virtual Assistant & Marketing Specialist - I am an Administrative & Marketing Virtual Assistant with more than ten years of experience. Find out more at OnDemandVirtualServices.com.

If you’ve been trying to make money on the internet for any time at all, no doubt you’ve heard the phrase, ‘The money’s in the list.’ The ‘list’ is a collection of names and email addresses from people who have ‘opted in’ to your website to get more information about your product or service or to get something free that you’ve offered them in exchange for entering their information into the opt in form.

Building your own list is one of the fundamental keys to successfully marketing on the internet … period. There are a number of effective ways to build your list. Some are more effective than others. The main thing is that you have a strategy and a system that makes building your list a priority within your overall online business plan.

It’s important to remember that building your list will take some time. But, while it doesn’t usually happen overnight, you can build your list to a healthy size relatively quickly with a little effort, a good strategy and a system in place.

The mistake that most people make is that they jump straight into their sales presentation before trying to capture their visitor’s information. This is not only a mistake - it is a HUGE mistake.

Most people, as I’m sure you’ve heard many, many times before, only respond to a sales presentation after they’ve been exposed to it at least six times. I’m not sure why this is. Maybe it’s a trust factor. Maybe it’s just that most of us take a long time to make up our minds.

But whatever the reason, it’s important. If you only have one ’shot’ at making a sale when a visitor comes to your website, chances are you will never hear from him or her again. If you can convince them to give you their name and email, however, you have a good opportunity to build a relationship with them (trust) and present your offer to them MANY times over the course of time.

I’m assuming here that you already know what an autoresponder is and how it works. Basically, an autoresponder is a program or service that sends out pre-written email messages to people who join your ‘list.’ For more information, visit aweber.com or one of the other autoresponder services on the web.

So what are some strategies and methods to build your own list? Here are ten techniques, in no particular order of importance, that have been effective for me and many others in building an email list.

1) Offer a Free Newsletter - Offering a free newsletter to people who visit your website is one of the most common, as well as one of the most effective ways to build an opt-in list. Since it’s free, more people are more likely to subscribe. This is one of the best tools for building a trusting relationship with your list.

Make sure your newsletter provides real value to your readers. Don’t just blast them over and over with a barrage of sales pitches. If you do, you’ll have a lot of people hitting the ‘unsubscribe’ button after the first few emails. Pack your newsletter full of useful information. Offer free resources, tips, tools, and anything else your subscriber list might be interested in.

Also, be sure to make it fun and add your own personality to it. When you do this, your subscribers will begin to look forward to your messages and get to know you (and trust you) at the same time.

2) Include Quality Content - The quality and relevance of the content on your website is probably one of the MOST important factors in getting people to visit and, subsequently, to opt-in to your newsletter or request form. If your content is good enough, other websites will begin linking to your site as a resource, which will drive even more traffic to your site and boost your rankings in the search engines. Eventually, this begins to grow exponentially, helping your list to grow into a virtual money-making machine as you are viewed by more and more people as an ‘expert.’

3) Blog - Blogging has become one of the most popular and effective ways to drive people to your website. For one thing, the search engine spiders absolutely LOVE blogs. Every time you post, the search engines view this as ‘fresh’ content and will revisit your blog, thus helping to boost your ranking. You can either have links on your blog back to your main website or even include an opt-in form right on the blog.

4) Write Articles - Writing and submitting articles helps to establish you as an ‘expert’ in your field, which, in turn, increases your credibility and the likelihood of readers visiting your website and opting in to your newsletter or request form. Plus, when your articles are published, you will have incoming links to your site which helps to boost your rankings with the search engines.

Make sure the articles you write are offering real value to your readers. Do your research and check your spelling. You should submit your articles to a variety of article directories and ezines.

Writing articles is probably one of the fastest and most effective ways to get quality visitors to your website and subscribers to your list. If your article is good, other webmasters will post it on their own websites giving you even more exposure. The ‘resource box’ at the bottom of your article provides readers with information about you and how to contact you (i.e., your website).

5) Post on Forums - Forums and topic-specific discussion boards are sites where people gather to discuss issues, to ask questions and to get one-on-one help from other forum members. Most forums offer a relatively high level of interaction among the members, which translates into a high level of trust.

When posting to forums, make sure that you actually contribute to the conversation and don’t just drop in a quick sales pitch. The verbal wrath of an active forum can resemble a violent shark feeding frenzy if members suspect that you’re crashing their board just to try to sell them something. Ultimately, you’ll end up doing more harm than good. Spend some time giving before trying to pitch anything. Usually a simple tag in your signature is enough to get visitors, especially if your contributions to the forum offer real value.

6) Keep It Simple and Easy - To get people to sign up for your newsletter or request form, it has to be a simple and easy process. First of all, make sure the form is easy to find on your website and easy to fill out. The opt in form should be at or near the top of the page or in one of the side margins. Don’t bury it too deep in the copy, although you can actually have multiple forms throughout.

Don’t ask for too much information. The minimum you need is a name and email address. Sometimes you can ask for an optional phone number, but just be aware that most people either won’t give it to you or will give you a fake one. Don’t get bogged down with asking for an address, city, state, etc. Most simply won’t fill it out and you’ll lose them.

Put a quick sentence or two near the top of your form telling people why your newsletter or request form would benefit them (i.e. freebies, access to resources, tips, tools, etc.) The more ‘ethical bribes’ you can offer, the better your chances that people will give you their information.

7) Write an E-book - Writing an e-book is much easier to do than most people realize and it is an INCREDIBLY powerful way to build your list. You can even hire a freelance writer through a service like E-lance to do it for you for very little. Internet marketers are constantly looking for freebies to give away on their websites as a bonus for purchases or to entice people to sign up to their own lists. An e-book is a great way for you to build your own list by letting other internet marketers give it away.

Your e-book doesn’t have to be anything elaborate. It could be collection of your best articles, tips for running a business or a list of motivational ideas you write down during an afternoon at the bookstore. The key is to include links to your own newsletter subscription and website in content of the e-book. You then give it away for free and watch it explode into a viral list building machine for your business.

Write a Press Release - Press releases are relatively easy to do and can be free or very inexpensive to release to the general public. They can literally be about anything having to do with you or your business. The best thing is to look at some examples on Google and copy their general layout and format.

Do a short press release announcing your website. Talk about the topic of your website and maybe even give examples of some of the content that visitors will find when they come to your site. If nothing else, you will have some curiosity seekers stopping by to see what all the fuss is about.

9) Build a Squidoo Lens - Squidoo is one of the most popular and most powerful social networking sites on the web. It is similar in many ways to blogging and some of the other social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, but offers a much more in-depth format for internet marketers. It is also extremely popular with search engines and is a great way to get more visitors to your website.

There are a number of helpful resources showing you how to effectively use Squidoo. The best thing is to open an account and jump in. You can play around and get everything just the way you want it before you actually ‘publish.’ Be sure to add links to your website and opt-in pages.

10) Email Marketing - The tried and true road to building a list is to send mail to other lists already in existence. There are hundreds of webmasters with huge lists of subscribers interested in the same types of things that you’re marketing. Subscribers in one list are more likely to join another.

There is a huge offering of free ’safelists’ where subscribers agree to receive your email in exchange for permission to send you theirs. There are also a number of very inexpensive paid lists that will send your offer to there members for a small fee. If you go this route, make sure your offer is enticing enough to get them to visit your site or to join your newsletter or request form.

So there you have ten of the top methods and strategies to build your opt-in list. Putting these tips into practice as soon as possible will yield dramatic results in building your list and increasing your online profits.

Happy building.

Tim Wright, Ph.D. is a freelance writer and busy internet entrepreneur living in Virginia.
Visit his website at: http://decisionsuccess.com

As an internet marketer, the one main key to making profits online is by advertising.

You can advertise several things at once even, including:

- Your own program, service or products…
- Other people’s programs, services or products as an affiliate.

:: How Can You Stay IN Profit?
The way to ensure that you remain in profit each month is to promote the products, programs and services that cost you money each month. By doing this, your outgoings will be self-liquidated by incomings from affiliate commissions.

Typically, if you own your own products, then you’re making pure profits by promoting your own products — and THAT makes good business sense if it’s possible.

But many people, especially those who are new to internet marketing, aren’t completely sure about the available sources of getting new prospects to their web sites.

This article is going to give you 12 different ways to attract site visitors to your site to view your offer. It will also give you a new marketing tool that you can utilise in your every day marketing to save you tonnes of time and effort. You’ll love it!

:: What Advertising Methods Can You Utilise?
There are many advertising methods that you can utilise, but for the sake of this article, we’re going to stick with free methods mainly — the reason being that most people starting out don’t have the funds required to continually use paid promotion methods.

Here are some good suggestions for free marketing that you can easily utilise:

- Banner advertising - Don’t believe the hype you hear about it being useless. On the contrary, banner advertising can be a great passive method of attracting new prospects, as long as your banner is professionally made and compels viewers to click it.

- Ezine advertising - You just can’t go wrong with this method, because for one — the audience is warm. They’re people just like you who subscribe twice, in most cases, to receive quality information. Your offer will fit into that niche right?

- Text advertising - These are great little eye-catchers, as long as you take the time out to construct your ad like a google ad… to literally attract attention by using keyword-laden, eye-catching text in the subject line and content. It’s definitely worthwhile to research your subject topic before creating ads, and use copy that attracts attention and change it to suit your personal offer.

- Link Exchanges - There’s absolutely no doubt that exchanging links increases your Page Rank and Popularity ratings with major search engines. It just makes good business sense to have as many incoming and outgoing links to your web sites as possible!

- Co-Registration Joint Ventures - Did you know you can build your list so easily by participating with other like-minded businesses online to build your credibility and exposure? These can be time-consuming, but it definitely depends on the link exchange system that you’re utilsing to conduct the link exchanges in the first place. [That means, forget about the manual email way and utilise a good online link exchange system script instead! Save HOURS of work and effort.]

- Traffic Exchanges - These are a great way to increase the hits to your web site and to get people viewing your web pages. Usually it’s a good idea to utilise splash pages, or lead capture pages in traffic exchanges. The reason for that is that you need to capture the viewer’s attention quickly and it’s easier to do that with a splash page that stands out. There are different types of traffic exchanges online including physically surfing and clicking the next button to progress to the next web page, or autosurf exchanges that automatically move onto the next web page. They’re a good way to keep abreast of the latest programs that are available online as well.

- Classified advertising - I don’t know about you, but I often read classified ads in ezines, just to keep abreast of what’s going on, what’s new and the latest offerings online. And which ones do I click on? The ones with the eye-catching headline and the teasing copy that compels me to click through to the advertised link… (tracked of course - then you know you’re dealing with a professional). How about you? Think about what YOU do and copy that click-attracting method. It simply works.

- Articles - Can you write articles? Well in this day and age, it doesn’t matter if you can or not. There are so many guidelines you can follow and software applications to practically do it for you… or download from libraries… If you’re lucky enough to have the ‘gift of the gab’, simply say what comes from the heart and soul and you’ll have written a winning article. But of course, you DO know that apart from giving very good information in the article, you need to have a killer resource box right? Because when someone enjoys your article, the next natural step to take is to read the resource box and click through to your recommended web site. TIP: Make your resource box brief, informative and like the best classified ad you’ve ever written.

- Blog advertising - Essentially one of the quickest ways to be listed online through Google, using their blog system (or many others) is a wonderful way to turn up highly ranked in search engines and to have your web site linked to in many ways. If you don’t have your own blog yet, checkout the search engines for blogs and start your own ASAP!

- Search engine listing - Well need I say that if you aren’t in any of the major search engines, then no one will find you. Period! It’s a must-have requirement to be listed in the major search engines. Just ensure your main web page is search engine optimised to include a good title, description (like a google ad) and includes relevant keyword metatags.

- Solo ads - Well these are the BEST way to advertise online, because you capture the reader’s undivided attention. The only thing they’re seeing is your ad. Did you use a must-read headline and extra good solo ad copy? If so, then you’ll have success. Please don’t think you can send out crap in a solo ad and expect a conversion rate of any kind. It just WON’T happen. People are very busy out there. Just remember that and write appealing copy.

- Web 2.0 - Have you made the move to Web 2.0 yet? It’s an incredible happening and something that we’ll cover in another article. But you’d better bet your bottom dollar that you can’t ignore it or forget the absolute power that audio, video and social networking holds for your business. Just ensure you find out more about it and utilise it in your marketing strategies for 2008 and beyond, and you’ll make out just fine.

These are just a few examples of the mainly free methods that you can utilise to promote your business, but know in advance that having a marketing plan in place helps you to keep on top of what needs to be carried out and when. Organisation is the key to optimum promotion.

Not only that, but it does take time and effort — just little money — to perform these must-do marketing tasks. But if you want to save time and effort, you can always pay for good quality services to carry out the tasks for you. One replaces the other… Just search the internet and listen to recommendations from online associates for good services that can help you to promote your business effectively.

As long as you can promote consistently and play the ‘numbers game’, which always includes tracking, testing and tweaking to get your offer through the number of interested prospects, then you simply can’t go wrong.

I wish you all the very best with your future marketing and hope that you can take the initiative to look up some of the methods that I’ve mentioned in this article, and put them to good use for your increased business profits!

Imagine how good it would be to had everything mentioned above ALL done for you… well almost… for every month of the year? If you’ve been online for any length of time now and realise just how much time, effort and funds are required to REALLY promote your business, then you should try automating your advertising as much as possible.

Eva Browne-Paterson lives on Keswick Island in the Great Barrier Reef, and is the editor of EvieB’s New-Z at www.EvieB.com, an ezine dedicated to free marketing. She also runs www.Autopilot-Advertising.com, a membership site for busy marketers.

Every Internet Marketer ought to know if they’re gonna make any significant income online they’re gonna need visitors. And not just one time visitors either - visitors who’ll keep coming back!

If you’re investing your time and money into writing articles, pay-per-click, creating videos, social networking, and other methods of getting that all-important traffic to your site, shouldn’t you try to make sure that people have an incentive to keep coming back to your site?

If your visitors will keep returning to your site you’ll be able to build relationships with them and increase their trust in you. It’s really only when you have this relationship with them that they will trust you, and then eventually buy from you - either your products or your recommendations for other people’s products through affiliate programs.

When traffic heads toward your website or blog you better have a sign up form and an offer for your free newsletter that they can’t miss! You’ve just got to capture your visitor’s name and email address so you can send them emails in order to let them get to know you!

Honestly, how can you expect people to buy from you when they don’t even have a clue as to what you’re all about? you’re kidding yourself! You have got to have a relationship with them!

Here are 5 ways to make sure your visitors are getting to know and trust you…

1. I’ve just mentioned this one - Put up a sign up form and an offer for your free newsletter prominently displayed on your website or blog so you can stay in contact with your visitors through your free newsletter!

2. Put up an RSS subscribe button on your website or blog so you can stay in contact with your visitors through your RSS feed!

3. Give away a free ebook, special report, ecourse, or anything of interest that will you to establish your brand with your subscribers!

4. Deliver useful and interesting content that will make your subscribers look forward to your next publication!

5. Create and display video on your website or blog to let your subscribers see and hear you!

Again, if you’re investing your valuable time, effort, and money into writing articles, pay-per-click, creating videos, social networking, and whatever else to get traffic coming to your website or blog, you certainly want that traffic to stick!

If it sticks, you then have an opportunity to build relationships with those people and gain their trust in you. Once they have that trust, they will feel much more comfortable spending their money with you.

Dan Brown is a successful Internet Marketer specializing in helping others succeed! Subscribe to his FREE “No-Hype” Internet Marketing Newsletter and get quality content you can learn from! Plus, you’ll get some Very Special downloads…
www.danbrownnewsletter.com

You have to be very careful when approaching potential clients, especially when using your autoresponder to sell a service or product.

There are not many individuals interested in a hard sell; successful entrepreneurs have known this for years. People go online to seek more information regarding to a certain product.

In most cases, potential clients have to read your message about 7 times before making a purchase. How can you do this with an autoresponder?

Autoresponders make getting your message out to potential clients possible and simple. Without a responder online, you would not be able to do this.

All too often, entrepreneurs mistakenly slam their potential clients with hard sales pitches with their first autoresponder message. This does not work.

You must build interest slowly. Begin with an informative message, one that educates your readers on something about the topic that concerns your service or product.

The first message should focus on solving a problem with the use of your service or product and only a small hint of the solution.

Build from there, moving up into how problems are solvable with the service or product. With the next message, tell about the benefits of using the product, while providing more actual information with every message. The sales pitch comes with the final message, not the first.

Just make sure you are giving the information concerning the topic to the client free. This builds excitement and keeps them interested in what you are telling them.

Marketing in this way is an art, although it does take time to master. Use examples from messages you have received from other entrepreneurs.

Organize a swap file to keep those messages. You can modify some of the better sales copy for your autoresponder, however do be mindful of the copyright laws and giving due credit. Sending out an exact copy of a sales message that belongs to another is not good business.

Do not begin with a hard sale. Slowly build the interest of your potential clients. Keep building on the problem situation and how your service or product fills the need or solves the problem.

When you do this right, by the time your potential clients read the last series of messages, you have accomplished two things. First, you have proved yourself knowledgeable in the subject area. Secondly, your readers naturally like to learn more about your product or services either by contacting yourself or making the purchase as a result. Ultimately, by creating your customers’ interest towards your product and services through automated email messages, you will win customers over time.

Roy Chan is a business consultant, providing useful online marketing information since 2004. To get your free email marketing software valued - $27 as well as a 7-Day Email Master Course at his website now, please visit:
www.email-autoresponder-review.com/subscribe.html