Internet Marketing Hints And Tips » Advertising

Generating Revenue With Good Planning

Gary Knox — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 12:38:36 +0000

For anything to work well, care must be taken to create firm, viable plans to accomplish it and the same holds for website design. With a well thought out website design, you will be able to create a web site that generates multiple streams of income for you. As a matter of fact, many websites turn into an online wasteland because they are not well planned and do not get a single visitor. Gradually, the webmaster will not be motivated to update it any longer and it turns into wasted cyberspace.

The all-important point of planning your site is optimising it for revenue if you want to derive any income from the site. Separate your site into major blocks, ordered by themes, and begin building new pages and subsections in those blocks. For instance, you might have a “food” section, an “accomodation” section and an “entertainment” section for a tourism site. You will be able to then write and publish relevant articles in the respective sections to attract a stream of traffic that comes searching for further information.

When you have a broader, better-defined scope of themes for your website, you can sell space on your pages to people interested in advertising on your page. You can also earn from programs like Google’s Adsense and Yahoo! Search Marketing if people surf to those themed pages and click on the ads. For this very reason, the advertisement blocks on your pages want to be relevant to the content, so a themed page fits that criteria perfectly.

As the Internet becomes more widespread, advertising on the Internet will bear more results than in magazines or any of the offline media sources. Hence, it is essential that you start tapping in on this lucrative stream of profit right away!

Placing Profit Centers In Your Free Report

Gary Knox — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 11:31:58 +0000

Free reports are hot items today among Internet marketers. Most of the very savvy ones have discovered just how valuable a free report can be and how it can serve to help build those all-important opt-in lists. Free reports do help to build opt-in lists, that’s true, but they can serve other purposes as well.

A good free report is something that your average, garden-variety Internet surfer actually seeks out all by himself. You never have to beg people into taking free stuff. When a surfer is looking for information on any given topic, the first thing they usually look for are free reports on the subject. People do pay for information but only after they have gotten the free information first and are looking for more specific and detailed information. One thing that you can absolutely count on, though, is that people will download and read free reports if they are interested in the topic of the report. That’s a given.

So, the next question is how do you get the most mileage out of a free report? After all, that ‘free’ report is only free to the people who download it. It sure isn’t free for you, the marketer. You have spent time, effort and energy writing it yourself or you have paid a ghostwriter to write it for you so you need to get something back, right? Yes, you do need to get something back and that’s what we are going to talk about.

The first, and maybe the most important thing you get, is the name and email address of the person who downloads your free report. That is usually the main object of producing a free report, after all, but you benefits don’t have to stop there. There are other ways to profit.

In a free report, you can strategically place advertisements for your affiliate products or even for your own products. Now… the free report cannot be a blatant advertisement… hat is just not acceptable but that doesn’t mean that you can’t place links to products or services that you will make a profit on, does it?

You do need to use good judgment and possibly some restraint in placing links to products and services that you can profit from. Remember that the people who have downloaded your free report didn’t expect nor want to get yet another advertisement. They intended to get information and information should stay the main focus in your free report.

You can add links to products and services that you make a profit on but only within the context of the information being supplied to the reader.

Another way that you can make your free report even more valuable to you is to sell advertising space in it to other Internet marketers.

Paid advertising needs to look like paid advertising, however. It should not be disguised to look as though it is a product that you are specifically recommending in your free report. It really isn’t surprising that people expect to see advertisements. It’s true. You really expect to see advertising, don’t you? Others expect to see it as well and it will not aggravate those who download a free report if the advertisements look exactly like what they are…advertisements.

The amount you can charge for advertising space in a free report varies with the report and the size of the circulation it will achieve. A long report can generate a larger advertising charge than a short report. A report that will be downloaded thousands of times can bear a larger advertising charge than one that will only be downloaded a few hundred times.

Advertisements can be shown as sponsorships. Example: “This free report is sponsored by” just above the advertiser’s logo. This kind of advertising is less annoying to a reader and puts the advertiser in a better light than just an advertisement.

Remember, however, to hold your advertisements down to a very reasonable number… even if you list them as sponsorships. Too many advertisements make a free report appear to be nothing more than a cheesy way to slip advertising in disguised as something other than what it is…and people really hate that.

There is even one more way in which you can profit from a free report. You can provide a capture method so that you can collect the names and email addresses of those who have not yet downloaded your free report.

You can give your free report a viral quality.

Each visitor to your website is a potential customer or, at the very least, a potential member of your opt-in list. Another way to give your free report a viral quality is to include coupons that provide dollars off on a product or service that would be of great value to those who download the report as well as to their friends, family and coworkers. People love coupons!

Each of these techniques to add to your opt-in list or increase your potential for profit from a free report by selling advertising space or strategically placing links to products and services that you profit from or by giving your free report a viral quality is worth your time and effort to investigate and put into action. Free reports are only free to those who download them…they are supposed to make money for you.

Know Your Audience When Marketing Online

Gary Knox — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 11:32:40 +0000

Internet marketing is quickly becoming one of the most popular advertising options available. The Internet reaches a worldwide audience and is available 24 hours a day. For this reason more and more potential customers are turning to the Internet for a variety of reasons including researching products and services and making purchases. As more and more consumers turn to the Internet for these reasons, it is important for businesses to establish an online presence. This is so important because failure to do so may result in their competitors gaining an edge over them in competing for sales. While it is important for business to begin Internet marketing campaigns it is also important for these same businesses to realize basic advertising principles still exist and they cannot neglect these principles. Most importantly those who advertise online have to be aware of who their target audience is and how to reach this audience.

As with any marketing campaign, business owners should do some market research before they launch their Internet marketing campaign. Ideally this will involve hiring a research consultant with a great deal of experience in conducting and evaluating this type of market research. The results of this research should determine the basic demographical information for the target audience. The results should also include information on how to reach this target audience. A business that cannot afford to hire a consultant to conduct this market research should still make an effort to obtain this information on their own. This can be done through informal polls of current clients. This information may not be as comprehensive as the information obtained in a more formal study but it can still provide a great deal of insight into the best way to reach the target audience.

Once this information is obtained, it is important to tailor the Internet marketing campaign to appeal to the target audience. There are a number of different variables which can be modified to ensure the right message is reaching the right people in a manner they can understand and in which they can relate. Some of the ways in which your Internet marketing campaign can be tailored in this way include the aesthetics of your website or advertisements, the wording of your copy and the use of more advanced design features such as audio and visual or interactive tools.

The aesthetic appeal of a website can greatly contribute to how the website is viewed by the members of the target audience. A website which is designed to attract the attention of an older generation with more conservative tastes should include muted colors, clean design and conservative graphics. This will help to ensure the target audience enjoys the website. Conversely if you are looking to appeal to a younger audience with more liberal viewpoints you might chose to design the website with bold colors, eye catching graphics and creative design features.

The copy you include on your website should also take your target audience into consideration. Consider the examples of a conservative and a liberal audience listed above to create a better understanding of how the copy on your website can appeal to the target audience. When marketing to a more conservative audience, the copy should be tailored to use formal language and use facts to back up viewpoints. However, when you are marketing to a more liberal audience or a younger audience you can consider using less formal language which is likely to appeal to the target audience. You can also focus more on emotion to express viewpoints.

Finally, when a website is created for the purposes of Internet marketing it is important for the design of the website to appeal to the target audience. You may wish to include audio and video clips on your website but these clips should appeal to the target audience. For example if your website sells skateboards you might consider incorporating audio clips from punk rock bands as opposed to country music bands. There may be some skateboarders who enjoy country music but in general punk rock music more closely represents the skating culture. Keeping these details in mind is very important for Internet marketing.

Understanding Email Marketing

Gary Knox — Tue, 03 May 2011 07:05:17 +0000

Do you understand email marketing? If you do not, you do not have to worry just yet. This is because the concept of email marketing is still comparatively new, whilst it has been around for some time many business owners have not started to capitalize on this marvellous marketing tool yet. Nonetheless, there are some savvy business owners who are already applying email marketing techniques to create additional business for themselves and to gain an advantage over the competition. Whilst not having a great deal of knowledge about email marketing is not an immediate threat to your business, you should start learning about this concept to ensure it does not turn into a problem for you later as increasingly more business owners in your niche start to take advantage of the concept of email marketing. In this article it is intended to provide information on email marketing which should be of value to business owners who do not have experience with the subject matter.

Business owners should first understand the choices available to them in terms of email marketing. The most common options include sending out mass emails with promotional materials, publishing and distributing e-newsletters and offering correspondence courses via email. The advantage to all of these marketing strategies is the ability to attain a universal audience. Unlike traditional ways of marketing such as television and radio adverts or print media adverts which only reach an audience in a specified area anybody with access to the Internet can profit from your email marketing techniques.

Mass emails are the most popular form of email marketing. This includes emails which are sent to hundreds, thousands or even millions of recipients at once. The problem with this type of marketing is the potential for having your emails considered as spam. This is likely to occur if you send your emails to recipients who have no interest in your products or services and have not showed an interest in having emails from you.

E-newsletters are also becoming more and more popular as a form of email marketing. E-newsletters can be a simple or as complex as you choose and could include text, graphics, advertisements, links or any combination of these components. Among the first decisions you will have to make is whether you wish to make your e-newsletter purely text or include graphics in the e-newsletter. If you are on a tight budget, it might be worthwhile to only include text to avoid the need to employ a graphic artist. You may be able to integrate graphics yourself but they will not look nearly as professional as the graphics supplied by a professional. Likewise you can certainly compose your own copy for your e-newsletter but you will probably create a much better impression if you hire a professional copywriter to produce the content for you instead.

Employing a professional graphic artist and a professional writer might appear like an extraneous expense but it is actually quite important. Your e-newsletter may be the first impression many potential customers get of you and your work so it is important to make certain everything is of the highest quality.

Correspondence courses provided via email is the final email marketing strategy I will discuss. These courses could be either provided for a fee and turn into a source of revenue themselves or they may be made available free of charge. The hypothesis behind offering these courses for free is they frequently contain subtle advertising urging visitors to invest in the products and services provided by your business. Whether you charge for your email correspondences courses or offer them for free, attention should be taken to check the information incorporated in these courses is entirely accurate. This is vital because potential customers who receive these email courses will be gauging your business based on the quality and accuracy of these email courses. If they are filled with errors the potential customer may question the quality of your work and search out the products and services offered by others including your direct competitors.

How to Write an Attention-Grabbing PPC Ad

Gary Knox — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 12:50:12 +0000

Pay per click is perhaps one of the best advertising medium available for Internet-based businesses and for small businesses in general. It allows them to cautiously cut the advertising fat by deciding exactly what they will pay for and what they won’t.

They not only get to select the keywords they want to bid on, but they only pay when someone actually clicks through one of those adverts and is directed to their site.
This is a far cry from paying for advertising on a billboard, which might generate a lot of impressions, but few actions.

Regrettably, though, advertising through PPC programs, such as Google’s Adwords, is no piece of cake – despite what numerous gurus may tell you during a sales pitch. In fact, it might be extremely hard or even impossible to get a reasonable return on your investment in certain niches using pay per click advertising.

Nevertheless, if you keep a few basic principles in mind, making an excellent ROI on your PPC advertising investment is nearly guaranteed. So where do you start? Arguably, the most significant part of creating a successful PPC advertising campaign is writing an ad that will increase your click through rate (CTR), so this is a good place to start.

Writing an ad that commands a high ROI can be broken down into the following steps:

1. Select the right keywords for the ad. Whilst this seems like it has nothing to do with writing the advert, it actually is the first and most important step. If you want your ad to have a high click through rate, it must be narrowly focused around a set of keyphrases that all have the same root keyword in common. This will permit you to repeat that root keyword 1-3 times throughout the ad. Whenever someone searches for one of those keywords and your ad pops up, the root will appear in bold, since it is part of the keyword they searched for. This will make it stand out clearly, drawing them to click on it.

2. Avoid fancy stuff in the headline. Here, all you want is a simple description of the product or service offered. Also, remember to include that root keyword in the headline to make it jump out more. People need to immediately see whether or not your ad is relevant. And the best way to communicate that is to say exactly what you’re selling.

3. Communicate the best feature associated with your product on the first line of your ad (below the headline) or clarify exactly what is you are selling.

4. Last, in your second line, communicate a benefit associated with your product. Here, rather than saying something physical about your store or product, you will explain what the product can do for the person. The product might ?Save You Hundreds or Teach You How to Make Millions. Make certain it is compelling and relevant. Ask yourself (and possibly a friend) whether or not this is something that would make you take action.

And there you have it: a 4-step blueprint for creating an attention-grabbing PPC advertisement. Once you put your first ad up and allow it to rotate, you will then want to start testing competing ads.

The best way to do this is to alter one part of the ad at a time. For instance, start off by altering your headline until you get a better CTR. After that, work on your first line – and so on. After a few weeks of working out changes, you should have an effective, powerful ad.

Using Affiliate Marketing To Promote Your Business

Gary Knox — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 14:25:11 +0000

Even if you are already using the Internet to market your business, you should consider adding affiliate marketing to you Internet marketing campaign. Affiliate marketing, when done right, can yield a great deal of positive results for your business. Furthermore, even when affiliate marketing is not done right, it will not likely be financially detrimental to the business. This is because affiliate marketing is essentially an advertising program in which you only pay the affiliates when their marketing efforts yield financial results for your business.

Affiliate marketing essentially involves having website owners, known as affiliates, post advertisements for your website on their own website. Affiliate advertisements encourage visitors to click on the link and visit your website. The advertisements are specially coded to allow you to determine how many visitors enter your website through this advertisement. Unlike other types of Internet advertising where the business owner pays for the opportunity to place the advertisement on the website, an affiliate program does not work this way. Instead the affiliate is paid when the advertisement yields a desired result.

Affiliate advertisement can work on a pay per impression, pay per click, pay per lead or pay per sale basis. Pay per impression means the affiliate earns a profit each time the affiliate advertisement is served. This means for each unique visitor who views the advertisement the affiliate is given a predetermined amount of money. This amount will depend on a number of factors and will be agreed upon by the business owner and the affiliate before the advertisements begin appearing on the affiliate’s website. Pay per click programs reward the affiliate each time a visit clicks through the advertisement. Pay per lead programs reward the affiliate when a visitor not only clicks on the advertisement but also performs a desired action such as filling out a survey or registering with the website. Pay per sale programs reward the affiliate each time a visitor clicks through the advertisement on the affiliate’s website and also makes a purchase during this visit. The compensation plans associated with affiliate programs are so desirable because the business owner can have a number of affiliates and they only have to pay these affiliates if the advertising on the affiliate’s website is effective.

Affiliate marketing does not always work. When seeking out affiliates it is important to look for a number of different factors. An affiliate with a great deal of experience, a website with high traffic and a proven track record for producing positive results will likely be a good choice for an affiliate marketing program. These affiliates rely on their advertising knowledge to promote the businesses and do not necessarily have to understand the business they are promoting. Another excellent choice for affiliate marketing is to select another business that is closely related to your own business but does not compete with your business. This is a good idea because they may share your target audience and their website visitors will also likely be interested in visiting your website as well. For example if you sell running shoes you may wish to run an affiliate marketing campaign on a website that promotes road races such as marathons, half marathons, 10Ks and 5Ks. This website does not directly compete with your business but they are likely to attract an audience that would be interested in and have a need for your products or services.

Deciding whether or not to implement an affiliate marketing campaign is easy. As we previously mentioned there is very little risk in this type of campaign so it is worthwhile in just about any situation. A more important decision to make is how you plan to compensate your affiliates. The compensation for pay per impression programs is typically pretty low because your business is not necessarily generating a sale from each impression. Conversely, pay per sale programs usually compensates the affiliate better because the business does directly generate a profit from the advertising on the affiliate’s website. This amount may a flat fee or a percentage of the sale depending on the affiliate agreement.

Advertising in your E-book?

Gary Knox — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 13:05:31 +0000

From affiliate links, to upsell, there are many forms of acceptable advertising in your E-book – advertising that you can take advantage of to create additional streams of income, or promote your own products more.

One of the most common ways to add advertising to your book is to add an appendix of recommended resources and more – these resources can be considered a valuable and viable advertising method. These can be from your own products, of matching niche, or area of sale – or from other, select marketers that gives you benefit that you can measure and justify to your readers. Its not a good idea to promote too much, or your book will lose perceived value – add only carefully selected affiliate links.

Another powerful advertising method in your arsenal is to add a promotion for a product right at the start. This should be for one of your own projects, and will give your readers a reason to automatically sign up.

In freely distributed e-books you can build up reasons as to why your customers should buy something – in an ideal world, everything would be free, but the reality of marketing is that the most important tools cost money – whether they are yours or not, you can promote them in the book, making it a viral way to push your own affiliate link to others. These e-books are usually in support of your main ‘niche’ area, and make your point all the more valuable, and attainable.

Any tool you choose to promote should be one you’ve personally used in the past and has produced tangible, measurable results for your projects, should match your overall theme of your niche, or supplement it in greater detail. This will produce a higher trust metric, which, in turn leads people to buy from you far more often.

Blogging for Profit

Gary Knox — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:08:41 +0000

Blogging is becoming an increasingly popular way for entrepreneurs to earn a living online whilst doing something they really enjoy. In many cases bloggers can profit with very little effort. There may be quite a bit of work involved to begin with in designing a method of earning revenue and promoting the website but once this is established simply maintaining the blog with regular postings could be enough to keep the revenue rolling in. Two of the most popular methods for generating a profit from blogging include advertising methods. These are advertising with AdSense and securing independent advertisers.

Using AdSense to Generate Revenue

Using AdSense is among the most popular ways for bloggers to generate revenue from their blog. This method is so popular because it is also very simple. AdSense is a program offered by Google where bloggers agree to have advertisements on their website and are compensated when users click on these advertisements. Bloggers simply have to create a blog and submit the website address of the blog as well as some other information to apply for participation in AdSense. Once a blog is approved the owner is given code they can simply copy and paste to have adverts displayed on their blog. Google then serves appropriate adverts each time the blog is accessed. Whenever possible, the advertisements served on the blog are closely related to the content of the blog because Google crawls the website ahead of time to determine which advertisements are relevant to the content. Blog owners do have some ability to place restrictions on the types of advertisements which may appear on the blog. For example the blog owner can specify adult advertisements are not to appear on the blog and Google will filter these out.

How Advertisements on a Blog Generate Revenue

Many bloggers use advertisements on their blogs to generate a profit. This method of advertising is more difficult than using AdSense but it can be significantly more financially beneficial to the blogger. This method of advertising is similar to the type of targeted advertising often seen in magazines. For instance magazines for parents often feature adverts which will appeal to parents such as advertisements for toys, children’s clothing or foods popular with children. Likewise a magazine for runners may feature advertisements for shoes, athletic clothing, races or training equipment. In these cases the advertisers pay for advertising space in the magazine in the hopes that the magazine’s audience will be tempted to purchase products or services after seeing these advertisements.

Blog owners can employ this type of advertising but it can be hard to find willing advertisers. However, there are some factors which may make an advertiser more willing to have an advertisement appear on a blog. One of the most important factors for advertisers is the amount of traffic the blog receives. This is important because advertisers who are paying for ad space are more likely to invest in a blog with high traffic than one with very little traffic.

Another important factor for advertisers is the focus of the blog. Advertisers are more likely to purchase advertising space from a blog with a specific focus of interest to the advertiser’s target audience. As with the examples listed above, advertisers want to advertise on a blog which is already reaching the same target audience.

Bloggers who employ advertising on their blog could be compensated in a number of different ways. Some advertisers may pay a set fee for the advertisement to run on the blog for either a set amount of time or for a set number of page views. This means the advertiser may purchase space for a set number of days, weeks or months or may purchase space for a set number of times the advertisement is served to visitors.

Alternately the advertiser may choose to compensate the blogger according to the number of times specific actions occur. This may include users clicking through the advertisement or users making a purchase after clicking through the advertisement. The type of compensation offered will have to be worked out between the blogger and advertiser beforehand to determine a fair method of payment.

The Pros and Cons of Internet Advertising

Gary Knox — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:04:13 +0000

Advertising had long since been a major determining factor of a business’ success. This includes the presentation of the product / service to the consumers. What really matters is how it is presented to the target market in order to capture it.

Whatever the package, the advertising medium also plays a great role in influencing the success of the product or service awareness.

What may be its advantages over other proven medium like the best-selling TV ads?

Advantages

1. Low Cost

Even though the Internet advert might be deemed “classy” or far-reaching, as compared to other medium, this is probably by far the cheapest method.

2. Capture market

Should your product / service aim to cater to the younger generation or the corporate-oriented ones, Internet adverts would be best because they would always be “hooked-up” to the net surfing sites that may have a link to your own site. Result, a large number of “hits” on your site!

2. Hassle free

All you really need is a PC (and some knowledge and bright ideas about how to advertise) so that you could open your site, search for the best Internet advert package, and check / update the status of your adverts. Of course most of this could be done without leaving the comfort of your own home.

3. Updated adverts

Unlike the TV adverts that need to be updated on a regular basis, Internet adverts could run for quite some time without the need for change. Once again if change is required, it could be minimal, and con be accomplished once again from home.

Disadvantages

1. Scope

There is the possibility of limited market capture if you solely use the Internet for advertising. Although most people now are now using the internet, there is still a majority of the average consumers that still relies on the traditional forms of advertising as a means of gathering information about certain products / service.

2. Additional cost

If you enlist the assistance of another professional or establishment to produce the site for their product or service, this would entail additional costs on the part of the entrepreneur.

Given the stated list of advantages and disadvantages about low-coast Internet advertising, an entrepreneur may now consider in its suitability to their product or service.

The aim of Internet advertising is to offer the widest range or “Maximum Exposure” of the brand at the least possible cost. Now, does that not sound good or what?

As always your comments are welcome.

Are Affiliates in Demand?

Gary Knox — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:45:43 +0000

Let me ask you a question.

Is there a demand for affiliate marketers today?

The answer to that question is most certainly yes, there is a huge demand. Among the challenges faced in the affiliate marketing industry is that it occasionally sounds too good to be true: advertising that is guaranteed to work or it’s free! Newbies wonder if it is possible, and doubters claim that the cost effective prices of affiliate marketing lower the bar for online advertising. But there is a good reason that affiliate marketing has experienced a continued stable increase throughout the ups and downs of online advertising – it works. And affiliate marketing has developed in to becoming a dependable source of sales for a wide range of marketers.

Affiliate marketing has evolved from the early years when a few touted it as the future of online advertising, and others claimed it was the downfall of the medium. It is now without doubt a sophisticated channel that generates anywhere from 5 to 25% of online sales for several of the world’s biggest brands.

Virtually all major multi-channel marketers have an affiliate program of some kind. he important thing to remember is that affiliate programs now come in all shapes and sizes. The concept of a wide-open affiliate program with an unlimited and uncontrolled number of affiliates is a thing of the past. Virtually all marketers agree that affiliates add value to an online marketing effort, but the program must be tailored to meet the marketer’s objectives.

Affiliate marketing did not bring about the end to other, higher priced forms of online media advertising. The success of the affiliate marketing in delivering sales cost effectively by means of a pay-for-performance model paved the way for other forms of performance-based advertising, such as CPA-based search and portal advertising, to create acceptance among direct marketers. Affiliate marketing has certainly evolved, with affiliates and marketers becoming much more sophisticated and programs more integrated with other forms of online marketing.