Over 100 Different Resources for Marketers to Start

February 21, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment 

How do new marketers learn SEO and Pay Per Click? How do professionals stay current with search marketing tactics considering the sheer volume of social media distraction? Below are the top categories selected by readers. However, we’ve taken it a step further and listed over 100 different resources for marketers to start, maintain or advance their level of SEO, PPC and any other type of search based marketing. Enjoy!

Search Engine Marketing Blogs

SEO/SEM Blog Aggregators:

Testing Tactics on Your Own Web Sites

Search Engine Marketing Forums

Paid Subscription SEM Communities

Search Engine Marketing Webinars

Search Marketing White Papers, Research, Special Reports

SEO & SEM Email Newsletters

Online Groups for Search Marketers (Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning)

The Big SEM Conferences

SEM Consultant/Agency Advice

  • TopRank Online Marketing – That’s right, we put our own agency :) – The reality is, your current SEO/SEM agency or consultant should offer some kind of ongoing education and/or training on top of ongoing consulting services. If not, call us!

Print Magazines

Offline Networking Groups or Meetups

Books on SEM

Niche or Regional SEO/SEM Conferences and Workshops

Search Marketing Industry Web Sites

SEM Workshops, Training & Certifications

Search Marketers on Twitter

SEO & PPC Focused Podcasts

What did we miss? Please share in the comments.

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Internet Business Models

July 5, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment 

Unlike traditional models of running a business in the bricks-and-mortar world, techniques to generating revenue online continue to evolve and be defined.

These website business models are as follows: the Ad Units Revenue model, the Subscription Revenue model, the Commission model, the Data Distribution Revenue model, eCommerce, and Build to Sell.   Below are descriptions of each model with some examples and advantages.

The Ad Unit Revenue Model
Displaying ads on a website is one of the most popular approaches to generating revenue. The Ad Unit Revenue model works best when the volume of traffic is high or very targeted. With this model the assumption is that visitors to a website will be attracted by the related advertisements. Both contextual and/or image based banner ads are displayed on top, beside, under, and in between articles, services, search results, or other published materials. Many of the earliest websites employed this method and it continues to be popular today.

The Subscription Revenue Model
This model generates revenue through subscriptions to a website’s premium content such as articles, videos, audio, software, tools, and applications or service. The offering is information or service that cannot otherwise be easily acquired.  This model works off of economies of scale. Once a break-even point of memberships is reached, every additional subscription is strictly profit. An example of  a “pay as you go” version of this approach would be Slashdot.com. The Subscription Revenue Model is sometimes combined  with the Ad Units model.  However, if the subscription is a paid one, ads are less likely to be presented.  National newspapers or magazines in print often use this model to establish their online presence.

The Commission Model
This website business model is based on generating revenue by taking a percentage of a sale. eBay, PayPal, and Priceline.com are best examples of the Commission Model, where the item being sold is not owned by the website administrator but available via  referral. This approach relies on the advantage of offering a hassle-free way of selling personal items and products through a website that promotes and brings in the right prospects. As a pay-per-performance approach the affiliate pays commission only after a sale is made. Arbitrage is another form of this model that has to do with buying of traffic in bulk and reselling it and/or making profit using other business models. Here’s a scenario of this approach in practice.  You bid on  pay-per-click keywords for a word that directs the visitor to a landing page with multiple advertisements. Instead of paying on your own for each click, in this manner you share the expense and still have fewer competitors to fight for attention. With enough clients, the re-seller of the bulk purchase can make profit on each keyword.

The Data Distribution Revenue Model
This approach is exemplified by  websites that sell  their network contacts or data about its consumers and their habits.  The Data Distribution revenue model is about providing valuable material for target marketing initiatives. Online business directories, like the Yellow Pages, and newsletter distributors like the Apple store that sells audio files, and Amazon’s Kindle are perfect examples of this approach.

eCommerce
This most recognizes model is employed by websites that sell products and services online, and are referred to as ecommerce websites.  Selling products online is a lot less expensive then selling in a traditional retail store.  Advantages of eCommerce include less overhead, more efficiency, and the ability to track visitors’ experiences. This approach is a natural progression for a typical retail store that wants to expand its market reach into the online world.  Amazon is the most renowned example of this business model. Online stores will continue to grow in popularity as people become more comfortable buying through the web and as more different products and services become available.

Build to Sell
If a business model’s success is measured by a track record of sales, this model could be the most valuable to a purchaser. The Build to Sell approach refers to a website’s approach that builds a strong online presence with the goal of selling it to another company that can capitalize on its online value. The website’s value is established either with its domain, value in its website application, content, number of members, or  high position in the search engine results, and/or all of the above.  Mostly used during the 2000 Internet boom, this model still has a lot of potential.

It’s difficult to say if one approach is more effective than another in generating greater return. As with traditional business models the success equally dependents on the value of the proposition being offered. It’s important to keep in mind that none of the methods are exclusively independent. Variations of the basic website business models can create levels of effectiveness that are as unique as each business – with the objective of healthy revenue growth, of course.

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Ways and Tips to Succeed with your Website

July 5, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment 

Wether you are hosting an online forum, an ecommerce store, an informational website or a promotional website for your company, here are some best practice tips for the beginners. Some one of these strategies may be useful for you in your business.

• Create a mailing list amongst your friends, family and professional connections. This is an old school method but it never hurts to try. You wish for all the traffic you can get at this point in time.

• Make use of web tracker statistics. These statistics can provide progress reports. It helps to review the trends with your management team to help plan new directions.

• Submit articles to article directories. If you are a professional in any subject (and you should be, bearing in mind that you’re selling something) then it’s time to share your knowledge with the world by posting at an article directory site. At the very least, you get an bonus link which will help your search rankings.

• Have a look at social media sites. This is the signal of the future and traffic reporter sites advise this is where nearly your entire customer base is. Travel to them and take an interest in their lives before you try and sell them anything.

• Use ample of original pictures. Products are only as attractive to the public as they appear online. Don’t make use of stock photography if you have a camera and can take a attractive picture of a product that’s ready to sell.

• Offer a free something as an incentive. This free product can be anything from a free download to free advice or even a free give away. Everyone loves free stuff right? Hence, why you’re reading this free article rather than subscribing to ten high priced news magazines.

• Brand your company whenever possible. Think about letterheads, logos, clipart, promotional giveaways, catchy slogans and punchy nicknames. You’re not selling yourself literally, as in an ordinary guy…you’re selling a company and idea that’s larger than life.

• Look into joining an affiliate network. Even if you can try and catch the attention of your own advertisers, it also makes sense to join an affiliate network and earn income from a entire network of traffic.

• Blog your heart out. Blogging is what keeps people interested in your business. If you don’t feel like blogging then simply add search-friendly articles to your website on a regular basis. Maintain fresh information rolling in!

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Facebook’s Holocaust Controversy

May 22, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment 

Facebook is under fire for allowing Holocaust denial groups to remain on the site, claiming they don’t violate the social network’s terms of service

Facebook is under pressure to take a stand on groups that want to use its pages to air views that are at best controversial and at worst hateful.

A series of blogs brought the issue to light when they decried the proliferation of groups on Facebook that endorse the idea that the Holocaust didn’t occur. “The Holocaust denial movement is nothing more than a pretext to allow the preaching of hatred against Jews and to recruit other like-minded individuals to do the same,” Dallas attorney Brian Cuban wrote in a May 10 “Open letter to CEO of Facebook”.

Hate Speech Online

The presence of Holocaust deniers on Facebook underscores the challenge faced by social media in cases where content is offensive but may not overtly violate laws or a site’s terms of service. Facebook and other social networking sites, for example, prohibit pornography and hate speech but are reluctant to ban groups simply because their views are inflammatory. “All of the fault lines of society and all of the hatemongering that existed long before Facebook was ever even conceived have now moved front and center to their corporate reality,” says Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international human-rights organization.

After extensive internal debate, Facebook opted not to remove the groups. “The mere statement of denying the Holocaust does not constitute a violation of our policies,” says Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt, noting that users are forbidden from posting material that is “hateful” or “threatening.” It later removed two of the groups identified as offensive by Cuban after users posted comments to those pages that did violate service terms. Cuban is the brother of investor, blogger, and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.

Controversy surrounding speech on Facebook won’t end with the removal of a handful of offensive groups. A report slated for a May 13 release by the Simon Wiesenthal Center will shine added light on hate speech on the Web. The number of Web pages and shared online documents promoting racism or other forms of hatred has surged to 10,000, a 25% increase from last year, according to the report. Cooper estimates that Facebook is the biggest venue, accounting for about 30% of all these online instances of hate.

Critics Press for Tougher Rules

David Ardia, an attorney and director of the Citizen Law Project at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, says that by allowing controversial groups, Facebook is acting well within its rights. “Facebook can decide what’s appropriate for its users,” Ardia says. The social network was lambasted by bloggers who said its reluctance to ban the groups was cowardly. “If Facebook doesn’t want to take a moral or ethical stand on the issue, they can easily make a case that the groups violate their terms of service,” tech blogger Michael Arrington wrote on May 10. Unlike other forms of speech, Holocaust denial has been outlawed in several countries, including France.

Facebook has come under attack in the past for hosting anti-Gypsy groups. The site currently contains several groups defending “white pride.”

In February, Cooper met with Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, to discuss the existence of offensive content. He brought along a PowerPoint presentation filled with examples of potentially hateful material on the site. “The scope of it at this point may be overwhelming them somewhat,” Cooper says.

Facebook Policy Review

Facebook’s Schnitt says the company does not actively patrol for such content; instead, Facebook relies on users to flag objectionable material. That list goes before a team that is trained to “use their judgment” to delete or permit each item based on guidelines drafted by the company’s lawyers and communications staff, Schnitt says. In exceptional cases, including Holocaust denial groups, the operations staff escalates content for the higher-ups to debate.

At the same time, the company seeks outside counsel. “We don’t pretend to know everything,” Schnitt says. The company regularly meets with groups like the Simon Wiesenthal Center, as well as government agencies such as the State Dept., to help inform its view of what should and shouldn’t be permitted.

Cooper says he disagrees with Facebook’s view that the Holocaust denial groups on its site are not threatening. “Holocaust denial in the Muslim world is a way to express hatred for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and to call a group of people a bunch of liars, and it is a threat,” Cooper says.

Of course, Facebook isn’t alone in having to deal with controversial or offensive groups and other content. It and other companies, including Twitter and News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace, may have to get more explicit about their policies, rather than continue to debate what can be considered “hateful.” “As we see in the [Facebook] terms of service, they have very broad discretion,” says Harvard’s Ardia. “They can describe other things which are far less hateful. So far, Facebook has been very circumspect in exercising that control but they don’t have to be.”

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What Should You Spend on Advertising?

May 22, 2009 by admin · 2 Comments 

It’s an interesting question for every company. See what your rivals are doing, and then think about what’s going to be effective.

hiqbvmruu6 – One of the questions I’m frequently asked is: “How much should my company spend on marketing and advertising?” It’s a conundrum that vexes many corporate leaders, from emerging entrepreneurs to seasoned CEOs. Unfortunately, instead of seeking a rational answer to the question, many of them just ignore it and hope it will go away.

As a rule, emerging companies focus most of their time and talents on meeting the needs of customers, as well they should. If they don’t take care of the customers they already have, everything else will be academic. Strangely, however, many neglect the function of winning customers in the first place. Others naively assume that if they simply provide excellent products or services, their reputation will precede them. Call it the “build a better mousetrap” syndrome. But the world has too many other things to do with its time than beat a path to your door. That means you need to structure your profit-and-loss statement in such a way that you can profitably allocate a reasonable percentage of your revenue to marketing.

The Big Question: How Much?

While there is no definitive answer as to how much any business should spend on marketing, there are general guidelines any company can use to develop a formula that works for them.

Your first step should be to try to find out what the advertising-to-sales ratio typically is in your field. Public companies in your industry may give a figure for their marketing spending in their financial statements (found in their annual reports). With a simple calculation, you can figure out what percentage of their overall revenue that represents. If you can’t find any public companies that seem similar enough to yours, you might want to start at 5% and then adjust your projected spending up or down based on the size of your market, the cost of media, what you can learn about how much your competitors are spending, and the speed at which you’d like to grow.

You’ll also need to ask yourself if your business is built to leverage volume or to leverage margin. Even within industries, there are substantial differences in the marketing spend of volume-driven companies compared with margin-driven ones. Volume-driven companies tend to spend a tiny percentage of sales on marketing, in part because their large revenues enable small contributions to add up fast, and in part because of the margin pressures they face in having to compete with other high volume companies. By contrast, margin-driven companies tend to spend a larger percentage of sales on marketing: They have room in their margins to afford it, and they’re often working from a smaller revenue base.

The retail industry provides some good examples. While Wal-Mart (WMT) might spend a meager 0.4% of sales on advertising, the sheer size of the company turns that tiny percentage into a significant budget. Wal-Mart’s nominally higher-margin competitor, Target (TGT), spends closer to 2% of its sales on advertising, while Best Buy (BBY), as a specialty retailer, spends upwards of 3%. Finally, more upscale stores like Macy’s typically spend on the order of 5%.

The same kind of ratios can be seen in the car industry (automakers’ generally spend 2.5% to 3.5% of revenue on marketing), liquor (5.5% to 7.5%), packaged goods (4% to 10%), and every other industry.

If you’re in a services business, you might want to bump your starting point higher than 5%. For example, like most professional services firms, my company is more margin-oriented than volume-oriented, so fueling its growth requires that we spend a higher percentage of our revenues. Last year, our number was just over 8%, and I’ve seen companies spend upwards of 15% when warranted—especially young companies that need to invest to build their brand.

Marketing, Not Just Advertising

It’s important to make a qualification here. Giant consumer corporations such as automakers, packaged food manufacturers, and retail chains spend a huge percentage of their marketing dollars on paid media advertising, the most visible (and expensive) tool in the marketing toolbox. Depending on the size of your company and the business you’re in, advertising might not be the right (and certainly not the only) tool for you.

A professional services company like my own is a good case in point. While we serve a national clientele, we are much too small to effectively advertise on a national scale. As a result, we don’t purchase paid media advertising. But we do have an aggressive marketing program built around tactics like direct mail, online marketing and public relations. For a variety of reasons, paid advertising might not be right for your company either, but events, vehicle wraps, point-of-sale displays, or other tactics certainly could be.

The important thing is intentionally and deliberately to set aside some rational percentage of your sales to get out there. That way, the question you have to answer isn’t “How much should we spend?” but rather, “How do we spend most effectively?”

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Your Startup on a Shoestring

May 22, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment 

How much money do you really need to start your business? Probably not what you expect, and certainly less than before the Internet

You think you have it tough scraping together enough funding for your startup? Well, let me tell you about the old days, when funding a startup cost real money.

O.K., we didn’t have to wear second-hand clothes and skip meals. But when I became involved in helping a team of entrepreneurs launch a health-newsletter business in the mid 1980s, the expected expenses were daunting, especially for a enterprise that likely wouldn’t be specially attractive to venture capitalists.

The then-newly introduced Apple (AAPL) Macintosh computers, ideal for publishing, were $2,500 apiece, and we needed four. A laser printer (black and white was the only option available) was $5,000. There were photocopy and fax machines, which would be another few thousand dollars. A phone system was thousands more. Rent for a small office in Mansfield, Mass., would be $1,500 a month, or $18,000 annually.

The Tip-of-the-Expenses Iceberg

And then there were the marketing expenses, the main one being a direct mail campaign to obtain subscribers. We figured the cost for renting lists of potential subscribers, putting together a mailing package consisting of a pitch letter and glossy brochure, and postage at about $1 per package. Figuring a 1% response rate, it would cost us about $100,000 to send out enough pieces to reach our initial goal of 1,000 subscribers. Monthly expenses for printing and mailing the newsletter could be expected to be another $4,000, or about $50,000 annually.

So we were looking at something approaching $200,000—in the neighborhood of $400,000 in today’s dollars—and we hadn’t even begun accounting for salaries. Moreover, this was merely a test of the concept—even assuming we hit our 1% response rate, we wouldn’t know for sure if the venture was viable until a year later, when we saw what the renewal rate was. In any event, we’d have to invest possibly another $100,000 or more to go after additional subscribers.

Today, a similar consumer publishing venture could dispense with nearly all these expenses. The computers, copier, and fax, together with a color laser printer, could be had for $5,000 or less, total. No need for rent, since the team could work virtually for the first year. Forget, as well, about the phone system, since the team would communicate by e-mail and cell phone. There’d be no snail-mail direct-marketing approach, or printing expenses, since everything would be on the Internet.

Use Your Savings for Marketing

Now, this isn’t to say today’s publishing venture wouldn’t have any startup expenses. But contrary to what startup consultants may advise, the expenses for tangible things—equipment, offices, and brochures—are much lower today than they were 20 years ago or can be avoided altogether.

And even more significant, today’s startups can use the money they save on traditional fixed costs to deal with their key challenges: building and managing a web presence and marketing their products or services, online or offline.

The cost of handling these challenges can vary widely. Many startups reduce the expenses associated with building and maintaining their Web site by subcontracting out key tasks to low-wage countries such as India or the Philippines and by using free open-source software.

Money-Saving Techniques

On the marketing side, it’s possible to run up huge charges generating clicks via Google ads. One entrepreneur I know tells the story of how he neglected to cap his expenses and wound up with $4,500 of ad costs in a 36-hour period from click-throughs on his Google ads—costs that failed to generate any revenues.

Smart entrepreneurs shave such marketing costs by collecting e-mail addresses of prospects and using search engine optimization techniques to increase the rankings of their Web sites via links and traffic.

Here is how these techniques translate into an overall startup approach designed to take advantage of today’s low-startup-cost climate:

• Reduce fixed expenses by going virtual for as long as possible. To the extent the founding team members can work from home and use e-mail and cell phones to communicate, fixed expenses like office space and furniture can be minimized. At some point—usually when the team finds it must bring other people aboard to accommodate growth—an office will likely become necessary.

• Avoid hiring people—engage contractors. Even when it’s necessary to bring in additional help, using contractors can be cheaper than employees. Individual projects and per-hour expenses may be higher than employees, but using contractors enables startups to retain spending flexibility.

• Keep online development costs in check. Setting up a sophisticated Web site usually is more involved and takes more time than expected. It’s essential for startup companies to monitor progress and expenses closely, especially if offshore developers are involved. Divide such projects into segments and set a project cost for each segment, if at all possible.

• Put as much of your money into marketing as possible. Professional investors always like to see a company’s major investment going into sales, public relations, and promotion. Using Internet tools such as search engine advertising, entrepreneurs can quickly and easily test different messages and measure return on investment—say, by monitoring click through  against sales.

The main goal of any startup is to test assumptions and obtain feedback. It’s increasingly possible to carry out that goal at a lower cost than ever. The old days don’t look very romantic in today’s climate.

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Venture Capital Firms Exposed

May 22, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment 

One expert estimates that VC firms fund only one of every hundred proposals they get. And certain industries have a statistical advantage

The possibility of landing a venture capital deal entices many aspiring entrepreneurs, but the reality is harsh. Although VCs invest significant amounts of money, the number of companies that get funded is tiny. In 2007 there were 3,813 deals that totaled $29.4 billion, according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers/National Venture Capital Assn. MoneyTree Report, which measures VC activity in the U.S. Data are scarce on what proportion of companies that seek venture funding actually get it. But anecdotally, National Venture Capital Assn. spokeswoman Emily Mendell estimates that of every 100 business plans a venture firm receives, 10 get a serious look, and one gets funded.

Does your company have a shot at being that one? First ask yourself whether your business can deliver the expected returns. “It’s incredibly rare for a company to hit the sales targets that venture capitalists have,” says Scott Shane, professor of entrepreneurial studies at Case Western University and author of The Illusions of Entrepreneurship (BusinessWeek.com, 1/23/08). He suggests that most VCs want businesses to hit $100 million in sales within six years (a goal only 200 companies each year reach), though Mendell says the expectations vary from firm to firm.

VCs Go for Fast Growth

Venture firms focus their investments on the handful of industries where explosive growth is possible. Biotech and medical devices made up 23% of 2007’s venture deals, according to the MoneyTree Report. An additional 24% went to software companies. Retailing and distribution, consumer and business products and services combined accounted for 289 deals, or 8% of the total. Location counts, too. California is home to 41% of the companies VCs funded last year. An additional 13% were in New England. If you’re not in a medical or tech sector and you’re not located in a hotspot like Silicon Valley or Boston’s Route 128 corridor, your chances of getting VC funding are virtually nil, Shane says.

But say you still think venture capital is right for you. You’ve shepherded your business beyond the startup stage. You’re in a high-growth sector and located in a tech hotspot. You think you’ve got a shot at being one of those few thousand companies that will get funded this year. What else can you do to improve your odds?

Researchers say networking with VCs and people who know them (BusinessWeek,com, 11/28/07) is important. Without a referral from a mutual acquaintance, your chance of getting venture funding drops dramatically, according to David Kirsch, director of the Business Plan Archive at the University of Maryland. “It’s almost impossible to get funding for a business plan that comes in over the transom,” he says. Kirsch and UMD professor Brent Goldfarb analyzed hundreds of dot-com era business plans submitted to an unnamed East Coast venture firm. They found that companies were far more likely to get funded if their plans were referred to VCs than if they were sent cold. Their conclusion: “At the margins, an entrepreneur should focus less on perfecting the plan and more on expanding the network,” Kirsch says.

Big Ideas Count

Other research suggests you should spend more time developing your idea than assembling your team. Despite some VCs’ assertions that they’ll fund “an A team with a B idea over a B team with an A idea,” a new study suggests that your team matters less than they say. A pair of doctoral students at the University of Louisville found that entrepreneurs need to meet a minimum level of trust for VCs to consider funding them. But beyond that threshold, companies were funded based on their idea’s potential, rather than the founders’ credentials.

&quoIf I had a choice to allocate my efforts, I would have an O.K. team, but I would not spend too much time on putting up a star team,” says Pankaj Patel, who wrote the study with Rodney D’Souza.

Entrepreneurs can also improve their chances of landing venture capital by getting angel investors on board. “The expectation is if you can’t interest an angel investor in your company, that’s probably a signal that it’s not a great investment,” Kirsch says. Angel funding is particularly important because venture firms are often wary of very young companies; just 11% of last year’s VC deals went to startup or seed-stage outfits.

Living Without Venture Capital

While it’s clear that venture capital is out of reach for the vast majority, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In their research, Kirsch and Goldfarb also found that 48% of the companies they sampled—mostly dot-coms founded between 1994 and 2000—survived the bursting of the tech bubble in 2004. The number, Kirsch says, is consistent with survival rates in other emerging industries. Getting venture funding did not improve a company’s chance of success. “What that tells us is that those firms didn’t need venture capital. What they needed was 10 grand for some servers and a few customers,” Kirsch says.

The conclusion should hearten entrepreneurs. Abandoning the chase for venture capital frees business owners to concentrate on bootstrapping or raising smaller amounts from informal investors or lenders. The average startup is financed with $25,000, and that usually comes from the entrepreneur’s savings or from a personally guaranteed bank loan, according to Shane. While that’s less seductive than big checks from venture investors, it’s easier to find.

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Small Business Marketing Tips – 5 Ways to Market Your Small Business Online

May 1, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment 

As small businesses naturally don’t have the necessary resources to launch huge marketing campaigns, they will have to compensate this with resourcefulness and innovation. If you’re running a small business and you’re searching for cost-efficient marketing solutions, here’s how you can use the wonderful World Wide Web to your company’s advantage.

5 Ways to Market Your Small Business Online:

Build a Website – You don’t have to pay for web hosting even if you’re running a commercial website just as long as your company can be properly categorized as a small business. Having a company website is the means for prospective customers to learn everything they have to know about the products or services you’re offering. Compared to other online media, a website allows your customers to see and hear about your offer and perhaps interact with you as well.

Know about SEO – Your work doesn’t start and end with building a website. To make your website work as a marketing tool for your business, you need to incorporate SEO – or search engine optimization – elements in it. SEO can help your website zoom to the top of search engine rankings and provide it with all the exposure you need.

In regard to SEO, make sure that you focus on your design and content. Besides needing your website layout to be visually attractive, it must also have easily located links to facilitate navigation. Use HTML as much as possible as this is more SEO friendly than, say, CSS. As for the content, refresh or update it as much as you can because new information will always encourage old and new readers to visit your website. Also, think about the appropriate keywords for your website and use them as much as possible – without committing grammatical errors or ruining the coherence of your content – to delight search engine spiders all the more.

Have a Blog - A blog is one of the most effective online marketing tools today, and if you don’t have one yet then you’re wasting a huge opportunity day after day. A blog allows you to directly interact with prospective customers and almost immediately update them with anything new about your company’s products or services.

To increase the marketing effectiveness of your blog, make sure that you’re writing about one topic alone. This topic must be directly related to your company’s products or services. Furthermore, it must be something that you know and love a lot to enable you to write in a convincing and interesting fashion.

Build Your Network Contacts – Although websites sometimes seem to be creatures of their own right, always remember that a website can’t really operate by itself. It gets updated and achieves success because of its webmaster or owner, and that person should be the one you’re concentrating on getting friendly with. Do your best to build your network by establishing good working relationships with other website owners. This is a give and take situation so be ready and willing to shell out as many favors as you hope to receive. As you become good buddies with these people, you’ll end up exchanging links, and this, by the way, is called affiliate marketing.

Join the Podcast Revolution – Although the popularity of blogs is certainly not waning, that doesn’t mean you have to completely rely on blog marketing alone. There are other marketing fishes in the Internet, and one of them goes by the name of podcasting. Make new podcasts regularly and insert your ads in between. You have to make them short and interesting enough to discourage your listeners from wasting energy just to press the fast forward button.

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Top 20 Opportunities as an Internet Marketing Consultant

May 1, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment 

As an internet marketing Consultant it’s hard to tailor in to reach each individual but at least I believe I’ll be able to give some definite direction to every subscriber.

Regardless of your career, you must realize that marketing is not a department but it’s the business and you must therefore from today, start thinking like a marketer if you want to achieve your financial objectives and stay away from debt.

Most Guru’s or Internet marketers will teach you ways of monetizing your business online and teach you on how to make money on the internet but none of them teaches you how to be a marketer.

For you to succeed online you must start thinking like a marketer and do so onwards.  You must try and see how you can make money in every way and every situation.

Let me break the news to you… Money is good.

Most arguments at home and in the workplace are a lack of money.

Money used as a source of power to do the wrong things and defy justice is evil on the other hand the lack of it can be a source of even greater evils, stealing, killing, and conning.

As you see the title above, it promises on 18 ways of making money online, before I reveal to you I’ve laid a foundation first, subsequently I’ve illustrated a cash flow quadrant that shows how all the money in the world is made. Thereafter, I’ve elaborated on the importance of being a marketer so as to make money online.

Lets get this clear, it’s not like I despise other careers and am obsessed with marketing after all who wants to be a “Sales Person”. However, if you change your attitude you will realize that no money can be made in the world unless a sale has been made. Other than just making money by being a marketer, you also improve other areas of your life, e.g.

  • You sell your skills to others easily
  • You get good social skills
  • You pay for products at reasonable price other than hyped prices.
  • You get others to agree with you more easily and much more.

Let’s head to the online Opportunities: but first answer the following questions:

Am I willing to run my own Business?

Am I willing to be a Marketer?

If you have answered positively, then I believe you are ready to embrace the context of Building an Online Business.  Below are the various opportunities and remember, my way is not way is not the only way, there are a million other ways. If you have all the time in the world, you might want to test every method out there or invent your own, just hope you don’t get lost in the wilderness and will make it eventually.

1. UzaNunua.com

It’s easy for me to write eBay as a portal for buying and selling but as a Kenyan am trying to remain in context to my subscribers and reveal to them opportunities that are for real and can make money for them. Here you simply list your products, whether it’s old furniture, used books, new or old cars or any form of services that can be paid for.

2. Information Products or Digital products

People want to benefit from your expertise, but the problem is, you have not written it down, maybe you know of an accounting formula on excel that can remove duplicate records, or you have much knowledge on child care and pregnancies. People are willing to pay for this information. That’s why we buy newspapers, magazines and hardcopy books. Sometimes don’t you wish you could have all these on an electronic book in your computer or by just typing a few keywords on Google? You can start your own site and start selling eBooks and software. A personal friend of mine George Ngondo is a good example on the same. He’s the author of “The Effective Job Search Guide” cv-guide.net he started selling the book on book stores but today he’s making sales in the Global marketplace.

3. Work from Home

There are diverse opportunities in this one. You can be someone’s virtual assistant, or writing medical transcripts e.t.c. You can also do personal services e.g. article writing, web design and shared projects. Also you can identify with companies abroad who have interest in your country for certain products, you can therefore develop a site targeting local people, send introduction letters when you identify a buyer they ship for your client and you are paid some commissions without incurring investment costs. You can try AliBaba.com and see how.

4. Adsense

Adsense is a program from Google. Especially if you own a content website you can easily join and allow Google to randomly place ads on your site and every time someone clicks on the ads you are paid for it. You could earn a few cents per click or even a few dollars per click. I participate in this program in my other websites and I receive checks every my cumulated earnings reach USD 100.00

5. MLM – Multi Level Marketing

These programs use the same marketing model as the offline businesses like Tianshi Kenya and GNLD. They are based on a technology that generates a special link to its members. A good model is the success university. Where members pay a monthly subscription fee to access internet marketing materials and the members make more money by referring others to fall under them. In this category one needs to be careful just like in the offline MLM there is genuine programs like Tianshi Kenya and scams like the pyramid schemes same case applies to the online business.

6. Coaching/ Consulting

Hope you have seen ads of online universities and so on. There is much in this field that you can explore. If you are an accounting expert and employed in an auditing firm you can choose to monetize your expertise by put up a website to market yourself. There are entrepreneurs and business people who prefer to get expert advice from individuals as opposed to companies.

7. Web Hosting

Most people think web hosting requires one to invest in huge servers and a satellite of bandwidth, but that it’s not true. You can always become a reseller of an established company and get to repackage the products in your own way. Follow this link to become a reseller; all you need is a general purpose Visa card.

8. Social Network or Web 2.0

Yes social networks like face book, digg or stumble upon. You can start one that is more targeted. The owners of these sites do the task of gathering people of similar interests together and when everyone is busy doing their thing they sell advertising space on a pay per action or rental basis.

9. Free Lancer

Don’t wish there is someone who can develop your company Logo, do some emarketing campaigns, draft a terms and conditions for your services, update something on your site, draw a balance sheet or profit and loss account for your business. You can make money in two ways in this kind of opportunity. One you can develop such a portal for the local market or participate in bidding for those jobs in the global sites. Check rentacoder.com

10. Business Process Outsourcing – BPO

This is a more advanced business model of freelancing where you can set up a call center and bid for contracts from companies willing to outsource some of their processes offshore. You can start here: outsourcing.org, however to get big contracts you might be required to travel abroad to seal deals with targeted business partners. Learn more here, Business Process Outsourcing in Kenya

11. Paid Blogger

An example of a blog is Supreme Internet Marketing I can get paid to review a product A for a company X and post it here, especially if the product is beneficial to my readership. However, there are 3rd party companies that link advertisers and bloggers and get bloggers paid from USD 5 $ to USD 100 per post. PayPerPost is one of them.

12. Domainer

This is not the same as web hosting or reseller hosting. In actual sense a domain is like a virtual real estate. You can register a domain add value and resell it as a website or you can secure premium domains and sell them at a higher cost than the annual rental. Right now .co.ke domains are up for grabs and you can reserve generic names that cannot be trademarked e.g. “capital”, “finance”, “love”, and “kiss” and so on the list is endless. You might make huge amounts of cash but it requires patience. Also be careful not to be caught up in trade mark issues and so on. You can reserve .co.ke domains at the cheapest rate possible on this link: http://www.superprofitsmedia.com/eac

13. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is what drives the internet. It means that you refer people to the product owners’ site and they and when they get to buy you receive your lion share of the commission. Some service companies give recurrent commission for the period the customer you referred is with the said company, while others pay huge one off finders’ fee or commission.  These companies use an affiliate tracking software that places a cookie on the buyers’ computer and when they register their details the customer is placed on the affiliates account. You can promote you special link on social sites like face book, email signatures or even on your website. You can try several affiliates and see how the system works. Use these links and register at no cost, send the links to your friends and try to monitor your stats inside your account.

http://www.superprofitsmedia.com/eac

*On the landing page try and identify an “affiliate” or “Partner” link to register. Have this in mind and try to identify such links and you might just land on a program that will earn you money. I will post more on this topic in the coming days.

14. GPT – Get Paid To…

Maybe you have received these kinds of requests on your mailbox. Get paid to take surveys, get paid to view ads, get paid to read email, get paid to surf, and get paid to send eCards and so on. As for me I don’t consider them to be serious sources of income especially if you are a serious business owner. However, research companies can adopt these methods to take survey online. I believe most people are more than willing to give more information in governance, banking and other sectors. There is potential though, I know people who earn a stable income using such methods.

15. Sports/ Gaming

These involve opportunities like playing online poker, games, online Casinos. It’s just a form of Gambling. I don’t recommend it, but if your lifestyle is such you can participate in the same. A word of caution: Avoid Scams, refrain from giving your credit card details, your residential address, banking details and form of personal information. People are cruel out there and may use your identity to commit cyber crimes. As much so, there is need to worry if you are dealing with a legitimate company.

If you dream of the jackpot today might be your lucky day. Try this link

http://www.superprofitsmedia.com/gamble

16. Trading

In its broadest sense it involves trading of commodities both locally and in the Global marketplace. There are stocks that trade stocks online or even much popular is the Online Forex trading. With online Forex trading when you understand the online technicalities you just apply the offline tactics of buy low and sell high. The beauty of it is the business is legitimate and in any business you are bound to make profits or losses depending on various factors including your decisions and timing. I know several individuals who have invested in these systems

Copy this link to download Forex trading software

http://www.superprofitsmedia.com/forextrade

You can as well trade in commodities by being creative. Sky is the limit. I’ve a friend of mine who started an online car bazaar with only a small investment of Kes. 35,000. Like I told you earlier Building a business online is just about being a marketer. Allow me to call my friend “Joe”. Joe invested in a website after visiting various car bazaars and agreeing on a commission per lead and per sale. He took pictures from the car sales yard and posted them on the internet. He started promoting his site using different methods including email marketing and he was able to make sales of cars he has not invested a coin in. When you continue learning from my tips your creativity is the only constraint that keeps you apart from making millions online.

17. Services

You can offer services online and charge per transaction. A good example is mamamikes.com. I’ve also seen other websites coming up offering directory services, classifieds and so on. As for me I write killer email campaigns that have proven to be a success, I also let Newsletter subscription services, hosted and local mass email programs, sms and autoresponder services among others. There is so much more I do I even forget to market and package all my services. Knowledge is power and it increases on using. I want you to be rich and/or stay rich by increasing your revenue streams. Now keep your ears wide open.

18. Membership sites

In offline thinking, why do people pay for membership clubs? It’s the benefits that come along. Today you can start your membership site where members pay a passive income on a recurrent basis and now it’s up to you to think of the benefits. A site like Success University uses an MLM and/or affiliate marketing program to recruit new members. However, the principal foundation is that members acquire resources and training at discounted rates and at a centralized place as opposed to otherwise gets the resources for themselves in scattered places.  There are unlimited ways in which you can create a membership site.

19. Money Transfer Services

No matter how you automate services there still people who do not want to change and adapt to new methods. You can start a small business where, you can use your PayPal and/or Money Bookers account in and allow people in the Diaspora to send you cash through any of the above accounts and then submit the funds to their loved ones upcountry through m-pesa then earn some commissions per transaction or in percentage. You might need to find on the required licensing so as to run a fully fledged Business and win peoples trust.

20. Donations

NGO’s run on donations, so don’t be surprised. There are lots of Softwares and services out there offered out there where they are given for free and the users donate to support the programs so that they can continue benefiting on the same. There are products out there which are sold by donations i.e. there is no price tag, you just put the amount you want to pay and proceed to check out. In a society where people are obsessed with free things and no heart for charity, then you might not want to try this. Otherwise your efforts will be for nothing and offering your products henceforth might bleed you dry. Also if you believe in a course or some form of activism then this might be a good choice. Remember the Obama Campaign was purely run on donations from his supporters. If you have successfully run a not-for profit organization you might want to try this option.

Filed Under: Marketing
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5 Ways to Outsource your Internet Marketing Business

May 1, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment 

All internet and network marketing professionals can do with some help at times.

In fact, this goes for any network marketer, internet marketer or any online home based business professional.

Some entrepreneurs start out with their small home based businesses, not realizing they have the potential to expand their business into something huge.

One-man eBay stores grow into full-fledged online shops run by a team of dedicated sales people, logistics and customer support personnel. At the end, you can never manage every little aspect of your online home based business when it grows to a certain extent, and this is when outsourcing comes in handy.

Care must be taken to choose the right people to outsource your tasks and equal detail must be paid attention to provide the best working environment for greatest productivity.

What should you outsource?

From those mundane and repetitive jobs which eats into your productivity, you can hire virtual assistants, freelancers, ghostwriters and freelance designers to spice up your network marketing blog.

Make sure that your instructions are extremely clear, especially when you outsource more fragile tasks like assistance with building your online website presence.

This ensures while you hand some of your responsibilities to other people, they have the least chance of messing up. This is essential when you outsource in countries where English is not the first language.

Still not sure what to outsource?
Apply the 80 / 20 rule. Run through your daily tasks and determine the 20% that is producing 80% of your income and outsource the rest.

Depending on your work load, you do not need to hire these people on a regular wage because once their job is done, they don’t have much follow up work to do for your business.

Here are the top 5 resources for outsourcing:

1. Elance

Elance provides an online workplace to connect businesses with professionals who are qualified to help you. Since it is the largest network of talented freelancers and has certified technology. Elance can help businesses by connecting them with freelancers to get work done.

2. Guru

Guru is the world’s largest online marketplace to find freelance talent. Guru provides the ability for businesses to get help from different varieties of worldwide Freelancers.

3. Rentacoder

Rent A Coder connects freelancers and businesses in the areas of translation, writing, graphic design and numerous other services. Since it is a web-based marketplace, Rent A Coder can connect you with a global, freelance market of programmers to help you with any computer programming.

4. Brickwork India

Brick work India is basically a one-stop shop for any business needs providing two different services: Basic Services and Premium Services. Some Basic Services are PowerPoint presentation, meeting scheduling, bookkeeping, outlook management, database maintenance, simple internet search, scheduling, accounting, website design, etc. Premium Services consist of providing consulting and research services on a global basis.

5. Connect2Pro

Connect2Pro can help any busy entrepreneurs or small businesses with dependable virtual assistance with top virtual professionals for assistance in your online business marketing. They can also assist you in setting up membership sites and full service website solutions as well.

When your business reaches a certain extent, you may find it hard to keep track of everything and this may mean it’s time to outsource some of your Internet and Network Marketing Business. Hiring other people to do some of your daily tasks may earn more money from the increased productivity.

Filed Under: Outsourcing
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