Internet Marketing Hints And Tips » Marketing

Promoting Your Free Membership Website

Gary Knox — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 11:24:39 +0000

Promoting a free membership website is done exactly the same way as any other website is promoted.

When you build any website the only person that is aware that it exists on the Internet is you so it is up to you to promote and advertise your site and let the rest of the world know where to find you.

You accomplish that task while you are building your own credibility. One will not exist without the other. A free membership website builds credibility and credibility builds a free membership website. There are several very well established ways to promote a website on the Internet…and the first three listed here are free.

1. Write (or have written for you) short articles, 300 to 400 words, and put them into article banks for others to use.

Your resource box will include a link to your free membership website. The same is true for E-Book. Either write short 10 to 15 page E-Books or have them written for you. List these E-Books with E-Book repositories for others to use and be sure that there is a link to your free website on every page.

2. Post to blogs and forums on other related websites after you join them.

Do not go in like gangbusters promoting your free membership site…that will get you kicked out. Simply include a link to your free membership site in your signature tag and post thoughtful and helpful information.

3. Find link exchange partners and exchange links with them.

Since you are not actually selling anything it should be very easy to find link exchange partners.

4. Buy advertising for your free membership website in related E-zines.

This is a very cost effective method of advertising. The cost of advertising in Ezines is usually less than say $20 and the advertisement is sent directly to those people who are going to be your best prospects for your free membership sites as well as for the products and services that you will be marketing to them.

Viral Marketing: What Works and What Does Not

Gary Knox — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 11:31:08 +0000

Stop with the enforced e-mail forwards already! Trying to coerce or bribe people to forward your information to friends or family in order to be rewarded or win looks distasteful in today’s ultra-permission-based world. Particularly when you tell visitors nothing about their friend’s or family’s privacy in the space immediately adjacent to the e-mail form.

A true viral campaign works because consumers are compelled to do so by the glory of the content, not because you bribed them with points or something else.

What absolutely will not work:

Proposing that e-mail recipients forward your message to their friends and family will not work. Adding a line at the bottom of your e-mail that reads ‘Please feel free to forward this message to a friend’ is more likely to get it deleted than forwarded.

What absolutely will work:

Offering something worthy of sharing like a valuable discount, vital information or offering an inducement for sharing like further entries into a sweepstakes or an added discount or premium service.

Relevant or timely information, research, or studies that are included in your e-mail may encourage the receivers to share with their family and friends. Interactive content like a quiz or test, especially if it is fun, will inspire forwarding.

Jokes and cartoons are nearly always forwarded to everyone the recipient knows. Why? Because they are entertaining and entertainment is meant to be shared.

A very cool multimedia experience is always going to achieve a lot of pass-along. Rich media is new and the novelty and tech components alone are often enough to make the e-mail recipient eager to share it.

Oops! Almost forgot one really significant thing.You can craft a brilliant e-mail adopting all the rules, but if a consumer visits your site and has an experience less than what was anticipated, you are going to achieve viral marketing, without doubt – but the bad kind. So be sure that your product or service is ready and is as promoted.

Marketing With Social Bookmarking Sites

Gary Knox — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 11:35:59 +0000

Social bookmarking sites allow you to create a profile then bookmark your favorite sites. These bookmarks will be shared with other users. When you book mark a site you will give a brief description and then pick a category and add keyword tags to your bookmark. These keyword tags allow your book marked site to show up when a user searches for book marked sites for that key word. This of course is the basic explanation of social bookmarking.

For your use you are going to bookmark your website and your blogs to better enhance your marketing potential. You will need to pick the appropriate category, give a short but to the point description of the bookmarked site and then pick the appropriate keywords to tag your bookmark with.

Not all social bookmark sites will have a category that fits your website. Some social bookmarking sites are geared toward a specific theme or a limited amount of topics. Should your website not fall into their theme or any of their topics then do not try to bookmark your website or blog on those social bookmark sites. This is considered under some circumstances as spam. Even when it is not considered spam to do this, it is still unprofessional. So stick with social bookmarking sites that offer your theme or category for your website.

Keywords should cover what you are bookmarking. Use as many keywords as possible that are relevant to your website or blog. Your account can be terminated by some sites if you are loading your bookmarks with a lot of irrelevant keywords. So refrain from doing this. Do not be afraid to use both singular and plural forms of words or variations of words for your keywords. In addition to creating a profile some bookmarking sites require that you download an application that will run in your browser bar. The purpose of this is so that when you are on a website and you wish to bookmark it all you have to do is click on their icon in your browser bar and you will be able to bookmark that site. Not all bookmarking sites will require this.

Most bookmarking sites offer you a feature so that you can place their buttons on your website so that your website visitors can bookmark your site themselves. Now while you are going to bookmark your site yourself, it is still a benefit to have these buttons on your site. Your site visitors who wish to bookmark your site will click one of these buttons and discover that it has already been bookmarked, now they have the option of voting on it. Since they were going to bookmark it themselves the chances are they will go ahead and take the time to vote it up. This means that you are moving up in the ranks with no extra work on your part.

To increase your review on these social bookmarking sites you should also bookmark other quality websites or articles that you find on the internet. Now you are probably wondering why I am telling you to bookmark other people. The reason is that if you are seen as a contributor who contributes quality bookmarks then your other bookmarks that you are bookmarking to promote yourself will also get good reviews.

Therefore, bookmark things that are of quality that are informative, useful and you will gain a reputation and thus increase your own traffic. In fact some social bookmarking sites will terminate your account if they feel you are spamming their site with your own promotions. While it is ok to promote your own website and such, you do not want to give the impression of spamming. You need to understand that a lot of traffic can come about as a result of bookmarking your website on one of these social bookmarking sites. Digg is one of them that if your content is good, other users will digg, your bookmark and thus raising you up in the ranks. As you rise up you will be hit with more and more traffic to your website, there fore make sure you have a server that can handle this possible traffic overload. While this does not happen to everyone there is still that chance that users on the social bookmarking site will love your content and thus your traffic increases.

Whilst you can end up with more traffic than you know what to do with, remember that this can take time to happen. As mentioned above you will need to have your website placed in the right category, use lot of relevant keywords and offer a good description. When you apply all of this you will have a better chance of getting known and rising in the ranks on these social bookmarking sites. This is all needed to see the huge amount of traffic that these sites are capable of delivering to your website.

Beginning Blog Marketing.

Gary Knox — Mon, 09 May 2011 08:20:27 +0000

Blogs which are also known as weblogs are among the more recent innovations on the internet. They are basically a platform that allows you to post your thoughts on almost any subject that you wish to. They can be used for writing, publishing and promoting anything that your heart desires. However, if you are a beginner and new to blogging as well as marketing, there are a few very important things that you should know.

Blog marketing is reasonably easy if you have a marketing mind. You will no doubt find that some people use their blogs as a diary or online journal, and when someone does use their blog for this purpose it is not their intention to make money, but it is simply a way to put their thoughts out there and discover others that are going through the same thing. If you have never had a blog before, the simplest way to get started is probably to just start one as diary or online journal. This will allow you to learn just what it takes to keep a blog going. When you are just posting your thoughts and what is on your mind, you have nothing to lose and nothing to gain. You do not even have to make your blog public if you do not want others to read what you have to say. That of course is a personal preference. However, by making it public will let you see how a blog really works. Then you will be able to progress on to trying to market a product or a service.

Employing a blog to market something is cheaper than using a website. This is because there are so many free platforms out there, such as Blogger.com or WordPress.com, that you can utilise to get the word out, and they are really just as good as having a website that you pay for. There are of course a few advantages to having your own URL, but for a beginner, a free one will work until you master it and want to move it all over onto your own server. A small problem with some free blogs are that they are not that customisable, but this is getting better. If you are not familiar with HTML, you are going to find that your blog will look like everybody else’s. But, this is fine in the beginning. You will be able to always make changes later on once you are have started to become successful.

When you have your own blog, you are in charge of the content that is posted on it. You can decide what is said, and what is not. You are after all writing it all, right? So, the sky is the limit. Whether you want a blog that does website reviews and takes nominations, or you want to sell things that you make out of your home, the choice is yours. Employing a blog to get the word out about whatever you want too is a great way to market and promote something.

Blog marketing can get complicated if you let it. It is actually only as hard as you make it. Whilst there are a few bloggers out there that are making a six figure income with the use of blog marketing, we all know that it can be done. We just want to know how. Well, for any beginner, start small, and be consistent. The six figure bloggers all did. They started with one, built it up, and then added another blog, built it up. Then, keeping up both blogs and not letting them fall behind, they continued to add more and more content. Of course they had help, and they outsourced a lot of their work. If you are looking to make a massive income with blogging, you will need some help.

Blog marketing is a great thing to learn. If you are able to sell things from a blog, you will be able to sell them almost anywhere. Making money by using a blog is one of the most satisfying things that you will ever learn how to do. Just do not expect to make money over night, know that you have to work at it consistently everyday, and remember to put into it what you want to get out of it.

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.

Building Your Mailing List with Downloads

Gary Knox — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 13:51:15 +0000

A mailing list is the lifeblood of your online business. The old adage “the money is in the list” cannot be true enough — if you had a targeted list of prospects to contact each time you have a new product, you will be able to save a lot of effort by marketing it to your existing list of targeted prospects.

You can actually build up a targeted list of prospects that are interested in your products by offering a relevant download on your website. For example, let’s take a look at a very good example — apple.com. When you download the free iTunes and Quicktime software from their site, they will ask you to fill in an optional name and email form so that they can send you offers on songs that you can purchase via — guess where — iTunes!

In reality, you do not need to offer such a “heavyweight” download such as a full-feature software like iTunes. You can attract prospects equally well with some quality freebies such as a simple report, a free wallpaper, and so on. The important thing is that your download offers enough value for the prospect to be willing to give away his/her own email address to get it.

However, slapping together a simple download and putting a link on your website won’t be enough to attract qualified prospects. You will have to do some homework in order for your lead-generating mechanism to work well for you.

First of all, you must place your download form prominently on your website. Preferably, dedicate a page to it and link to that page from every other page of your website. That way, there is no way your visitors cannot find the download page, and when they do, you’ll get some of them converted into your prospects!

Also, you have to put a little effort into promoting your download. Explain and elaborate on the values of the download, and why your visitors should download it. You might think why would anyone want to pass on a freebie, but most of your visitors would be too lazy to take the effort to download it because most of their downloads just sit on the harddisk collecting virtual dust. It is hence important to show your visitors why they should download your freebie.

One Way To Reuse Your PLR Content

Gary Knox — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 13:18:03 +0000

Create a Membership Empire

One of the most profitable ways to reuse PLR Content is to charge members a monthly fee to access a membership site where they can download your content.

Everyone knows how profitable and popular these things are. The appeal comes in that they offer passive, monthly profit. Unfortunately the main issue with regular membership sites is that you need to continuously be creating new content and updating your site. You also have to keep it up, pretty much, forever.

The Answer: Give your membership site a fixed time period!

Instead of going on indefinitely, members sign up and pay a monthly fee for a pre-determined amount of time, such as three months, six months or one year. You set the duration based on how much content you have. If the website becomes wildly profitable you can always extend the duration and offer promotions.

By doing this you can avoid having to create an entire website with a members area. You can just load the links to new content in your auto-responder and send the content on a fixed schedule (Daily/Weekly/Monthly) to every new customer.

The normal method of making membership sites requires you to constantly update and maintain a member‘s area. Plus every member is getting the same content
every week so you have to stick to your predetermined schedule.

By using the auto-responder you avoid both of these problems AND you do not necessarily have to tear the buy-in website down after a set amount of time. Instead of placing a time limit you can just set a content limit. People will sign up to get a certain amount of free content every week or month until the content is gone. For instance: On your sign up page you could write, “Sign up today for our 52-article program and get 4 articles every month.”

That way your customers know they‘re getting a total of 52 articles and you can leave your site up for as long as you want. New members will just start from the beginning of the 52-article cycle. This is great when you have low-bandwidth content like articles and e-books along with inexpensive hosting. You can just leave the sight up for years and make money off of it. Make sure to do some occasional marketing so your site doesn‘t go stagnant.

Another way to keep a membership website going for ever is to use a WordPress blog to manage the members area, and then use a script like WishListMember. This great script can drip feed content to your members, so no matter when they sign up they will always be starting with month one‘s content, and if you have created two years‘ worth of content they will be able to stay a member for two years.

This works much better than just delivering all of your past content to new members right when they join and then they only get new content that you add it in the future as their membership progresses. They already have everything which means they are likely not to stay long, however with a script like the one mentioned above they are starting as if the membership site is brand-new.

Hiring a Consultant for Internet Marketing

Gary Knox — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 13:53:15 +0000

If you are considering jumping into the world of Internet marketing but do not have experience in this type of marketing, it is definitely worthwhile to consider hiring a consultant to assist you in your advertising endeavor. This is important because they can do a great deal to assist you in ensuring that the marketing effort is a success. You may pay more for their services than you would to handle the Internet marketing on your own but the results you gain from the effort will likely be significantly higher. Hiring a consultant to assist you in your Internet marketing campaign is even a worthwhile endeavor if you have some experience in Internet marketing but are competing in a competitive niche and need some additional assistance to help you rise above the competition.

The key to hiring a consultant to assist in an Internet marketing campaign is to hire the right consultant. You will find there are many different options available to you as Internet marketing has become a huge industry. However, not all consultants are created equal. You may find that some consultants can create significantly better results than other consultants. There are, however, a few characteristics to look for when seeking a qualified consultant in the Internet marketing industry. Surprisingly cost is not one of the most important considerations. Experience and past performance are much more important. You can compare costs among consultants who are similarly qualified but using cost as a primary source of evaluation is not recommended.

Experience is very important when it comes to selecting a consultant to assist you in an Internet marketing campaign. Experience is critical because consultants who have a great deal of experience also have a great deal of understanding of which techniques work best and which techniques are not as effective. This can save you a great deal of time and money as there will likely not be as much experimentation necessary as there would be with a less experienced consultant. More experienced consultants will also likely be better skilled at dealing with clients and will likely answer your questions more quickly and keep you better informed about the progress of your Internet marketing campaign. All of this is important because you will likely be very interested in receiving progress reports and staying up to date on everything that is going on with your Internet marketing campaign.

Seeking out a consultant in the Internet marketing industry with an excellent past record of performance is also very important. This is so important because consultants who have had a great deal of success in the past will likely have a great deal of success while assisting you as well. Past performance is considered to be one of the best indications of future performance. This does not mean that new consultants are necessarily going to perform poorly but there is some risk involved in selecting a consultant who does not have a great deal of experience or who has not performed well in the past. You can feel much more confident putting your Internet marketing campaign in the hands of a consultant who typically generates the type of results you are looking for in your own Internet marketing campaign.

Once you have evaluated consultants on the basis of experience and past performance, it is time to start considering price. Considering price early in the process of seeking a consultant may cause you to be influenced by price over performance. Some consultants may be incredibly affordable but if they are not capable of producing the desired results, it may end up being a complete waste of money. However, once you have narrowed your list of potential consultants down to a few qualified candidates, it is definitely time to start comparing prices. Once you are confident each of the candidates on your list is well qualified, choosing the least expensive candidate is worthwhile. However it is important to note all of the fees involved to ensure you are making an accurate cost comparison.

What Is Niche Marketing, and Do I Need It?

Gary Knox — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 13:24:29 +0000

In marketing, a niche relates to a service or product that occupies a particular area of demand. It is that little corner in the market that accounts for a certain kind of specialty pertaining to an unmet customer need. To be able to draw in a strong, solid market, the selection of a niche product should ultimately complement the website one possesses. It is through this strategy that the website owner is able to generate a specific market for the niche product they are trying to sell.

One of the great things about niche marketing is that it encourages those who indulge in it to be unique and one-of-a-kind. Here one is not coerced into the lion’s den and made to contend against established marketers. The niche marketer is made to occupy a strong and secure place that ultimately gains him a real place in the market. Niche marketing differs from other online marketing strategies because this specific quality allows it to function almost autonomously and without being forced to contend with corporate sharks that tear each other to pieces.

One of the most important things that should be contemplated by those involved in this type of business is the niche business that is going to be involved in the process. It is important to study the type of business that you are going to work on in order to be able to assure oneself of the success that one hopes to have. It is also important for you to know everything about the niche business at hand. Acquiring the tricks of the trade in is one of the things that you could do to make a niche business flourish enormously.

Being able to reach the niche market is another consideration to make. In doing so, you should know the exact phrases that people are searching for. The use of tools can help a great deal in recognizing the type of keywords that should be employed to make the business profitable. Targeting the right keywords does a lot in making this type of business surge upwards..

Those who engage in niche marketing know that ascertaining the potential of a niche before doing anything else is a must if one wants to save all the time and effort that could be squandered if they dive into everything head on. Constructing a niche marketing site that proves to be profitable should be done after an unsatisfied customer requirement is identified, and marketing the site appropriately by reaching out to customers the best potential way is what niche marketers had better deliberate if they want their business to skyrocket to success.

Is niche marketing called for in a universe teeming with a hundred like systems designed for people to make money online? Those who know how the system works will always answer in the affirmative, because niche marketing is the only scheme capable of closing a gaping hole in the market by catering to the unsatisfied demands of customers – needs that are normally not given notice by those in the big league. Through niche marketing, one is able to attain a foothold in the market by being a needle in the proverbial haystack. Small and inconspicuous it might be, but its ability to bite someone so madly once it is discovered will render them more than a little surprised.

What To Consider When Commencing Business Blogging

Gary Knox — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:03:55 +0000

If you are already convinced with the potential of business blogs for marketing and targeting an increase in your sales, your are now ready to start blogging. But first, you have to be in tune with your business objectives and determine if blogging will really help you achieve your goal.

1. Several blogs are dedicated to teaching people the do’s and don’ts of blogging, READ them! Include in your reading materials blogs that are consumer-based too to give you an ideaon how your marketing should be structured.
2. Setup several test blogs right away.

If your initial experiment with test blogs worked well, you can now start setting up your blogs for real.

Study blog design. Blog hosting services provide pre-designed templates. But if you opt for paid blog service, you can ask your artist to design and layout your blog site to match the company’s identity and needs.
Choose a topic. It is good to have a selection of topics that you want for your blogs but make certain they are relevant to your business objectives. This would be a test of your flexibility and open-mindedness since results might be going against the set objectives.
Start blogging and complete 20 posts before proceeding to marketing.
Begin marketing.
Regularly monitor the traffic to the site and get updates on what your visitors want. Then, measure your results.
Adjust if needed. You can always play with your designs and layouts of each blog site as long as it retains the company’s identity.
Strive to be consistent with your topic all the time.
Try to have unrelated topics with general and broad appeal.
Schedule updates regularly.
Remember the following safety measures in blogging:

legal issues are sometimes involved in blogging; it is safer to include disclaimers and limitations of liabilities;
corporate communication and legal departments are responsible for educating the senior management on how blogs might affect business;
create blogging policies; set limits on who gets to blog and what information is allowed to be made public;
avoid outright marketing blog or you might frighten away your readers;
keep content updated, relevant and fresh;
reinforce the company’s core values; and,
encourage employees to use it.

Once you have done all these things, you can now ultimately enjoy the benefits of business blogging.