Thursday, December 22, 2011

How to pick a domain

If you are reading this you might be close to setting up your first website ever or you can be a person with experience that is just curious to see if there are things that you might have missed. Whatever the case is I hope to be able to provide you with a few of the things that I personally feel are important when you are picking the right domain name for your new site.

I assume that you have already found the topic that you are going to be focusing on and therefore I will not go into any of the things that relates on how to find a profitable market online. The reason I say this is that I assume that you new site will somehow have a business related theme as a personal website with pictures of your family and stuff doesn't need much consideration when choosing the domain name.

So let us get into the things that I strongly feel you would have great benefit from.

It is a know fact that more and more traffic (aka visitors to your site) comes from the search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN (which has now launched their new site called Live). So with this fact in mind you will need to find out how to get the best possible placement in the search engines so that people will come visit your site.

Most online marketers agree that from a SEO point of you the right keyword rich domain name can help your site rank better that if you are not using a keyword rich domain name. You might say that site like Nike.com, Amazon.com and Ebay.com doesn't have keyword rich names and you are absolutely right.

However the difference between you and the great site is that they have much larger advertising budget than you have and therefore they can get away with having names that doesn't make much sense. So if you are on a small budget I suggest that you go for the keyword rich domain name approach.

Choosing a keyword rich domain name does not mean that you will have to end up with a name that nobody will ever remember. That can be the case but it doesn't have to be. Let us say that you are going to create a site that deals with pets. Maybe you want to sell pet toys and other accessories.

What I would do is to go to the site called: http://www.wordtracker.com/free-trial.html and sign up for the free trial. Once you have received the e-mail from WordTracker you would enter "pets" in the field.

You'll see that the word "pet supplies" has a count of 2,000-2,500 visitors in a 90 day period. If you had paid for the full version of WordTracker (I strongly recommend that you do) you would have found that for the keyword phrase "pet toys and supplies" and that 145 people are searching for that particular phrase every day and that there are only 857 sites competing for that exact phrase.

Now that is great information and you can now use it for finding a domain name that will 1) Tell your visitors what it is that you do and 2) hold some really great keywords that you will want to target to rank in the search engines.

If you go to the site called: http://idenion.dk/tools/multidomaincheck.aspx you'll be able to enter domain names in the box and test whether they are available. I have just tested the domains pettoysandsupplies.com and pet-toys-and-supplies.com and both of them are available. That is great news as the domains names will help you some of the way to get the high rankings that you want.

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10 Steps to Successful Selling On Ebay

Step 1: Identify your market.
Take a while to sit and watch for what sells and what doesn't out of the items you're interested in. Any market research data you can collect will be very useful to you later on. You'll probably see the sweet spots quite quickly - those one or two items that always seem to sell for a good price.

Step 2: Watch the competition.
Before you invest any money, see what the other sellers in your category are up to, and what their strategies are. Pay special attention to any flaws their auctions might have, because this is where you can move in and beat them at their own game.

Step 3: Find a product:
Get hold of a supplier for whatever it is you want to sell, and see what are the best rates you can get. Don't be afraid to ring round quite a few to get the best deal. If the eBay prices you've seen are higher than the supplier's, then you're set.

Step 4: Start small:
Don't throw thousands at your idea straight away - get started slowly, see what works and what doesn't, and learn as you go. Remember that it's very cheap to try out even the craziest ideas on eBay, and who knows, they might just work!

Step 5: Test and repeat.
Keep trying different strategies until you find something that works, and then don't be ashamed to keep doing it, again and again. The chances are that you?ve just found a good niche.

Step 6: Work out a business plan:
A business plan doesn't need to be anything formal, just a few pages that outline the market opportunity you've spotted, your strategy, strengths and weaknesses of the plan and a brief budget. This is more for you than it is for anyone else.

Step 7: Invest and expand:
This is the time to throw money at the problem. Buy inventory, and start spending more time on your business. Set a goal number of sales each week, increasing it each time.

Step 8: Make it official:
Once you've made a few thousand dollars worth of sales, you should really register yourself as a business. Don't worry, it's not expensive or hard to do - a lawyer is the best person to help you through the process.

Step 9: Automate:
You'll probably find that you're writing the same things again and again in emails or item descriptions. This is the time to give up on the manual method and turn to automated software that can create listings for you, and respond to completed auctions and payments with whatever message you provide.

Step 10: Never give up:
Even when it looks like it's all going wrong, don't stop trying until you succeed. If you keep working at it then you'll almost always find that you make a real breakthrough just when things are starting to look desperate.

Once you get into the swing of things, you might start thinking that you should quit your job and take up eBay selling part time. But it's not always as easy as that - there are all sorts of factors that you need to consider.

AdSense Tips For Bloggers If you have joined the blogging revolution that is sweeping the net, and you think you might want to make a little revenue - or a lot of revenue - from your blogging efforts, you need AdSense tips for bloggers. Blogging has opened up an entirely new way of how non-technical people interact with the Internet, and now, anyone can publish anything about any topic - without having a website - and anyone can profit without even having a product!

Adsense for blogs make perfect sense. Google's advertising programs are designed to work with sites related to the keywords for the ads that are being presented. Each time you add content to your blog, the Google spiders gobble it up. The more you update, the more the Google spider visits your page. Ultimately, you move up in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for the topics that you write about. You see where this is going. The higher your search ranking, the more traffic you receive, which ultimately leads to higher revenue from AdSense ads.

The beauty of blogs is their potential for rapid growth. If you become known as an expert in your area of expertise, word of mouth spreads quickly and your blog can become very popular. So it is vital that you always teach something with every blog entry. You want your readers to come back frequently and they will if they know they will learn something. Not only will your readers bookmark your blog and return often, but they will link to your blog enthusiastically as well. People in forums will refer to your blogs and discuss what they learned. Websites will link to you as a valuable resource. In short, an informative blog can grow very quickly if the information it provides is valuable.

It is important to write about specific topics, and sprinkle your blog entries with specific keywords to get the best results - and the highest revenue - with your Google AdSense ads. There is a method to the madness. Start your revenue generating blog by testing the waters.

Decide what area you would like to write about and then do some keyword research. Research is easy if you use Google's keyword tools found at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox. The keyword tools are located in your Google AdWords account. Yes, you need a free AdWords account to be successful but you don't have to fund it to use the keyword tools. Look for keywords related to your subject that are high paying. These are keywords where the bid amounts are high. Make a list of the top paying keywords, and use that list to determine what topics you will write about.

Remember, you want people to visit your blog time and time again, and build up a readership, make sure that your blog is well written and informative. Don't just target keywords for the sake of targeting keywords - the writing needs to make sense! Writing valuable content is the first step to generating traffic to your blog, and traffic is needed to profit from AdSense ads!

You are allowed to use the AdSense ad units in two different places on each page. You can accomplish this in a couple of different ways. First, you can add the AdSense ad code to the template for your blog. This is done through the control panel for your blog, and some knowledge of HTML is needed. The other option is to paste the AdSense code directly in your blog post each time you submit a new post. You can use it once at the top and once at the bottom, or once after a few paragraphs of the post, and again after a few more paragraphs.

Get that code in there however you see fit - but then pay close attention to the results so you can see what is working and what isn't. Tracking is everything if you want to make real money!

Of course, you need to advertise your blog as much as possible as well. Make sure that you provide Trackbacks to other people's blogs as often as possible, and that you visit blogs, leave comments - and leave a link for your blog as well!

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

How to Succeed as an Affiliate on the Net
When a company has a product or a service that they wish to sell they will often enlist 'affiliates' to do the job of finding customers for them.

You may know an affiliate by another name, for example: agent, reseller, associate, communicator.

Once the affiliate has managed to get the customer to make an order his job ends. The whole process of handling the order, the collection of payment, the shipping of goods, is done by the company (or distributor).

Who benefits?
This is a tremendous arrangement for both sides.

The distributor simply waits for orders to arrive and has no involvement in the marketing phase. The affiliate simply gets a customer, for example, to visit a web site and takes no further part.

Commission is paid to the affiliate on the value of orders made.

It is the power of the Internet with the possibility of cheap or free advertising for a vast audience which makes reselling such an outstanding business opportunity.

And if you have your own website, where you have the luxury of posting your own ads for free, then you have an effortless income-producing system.

Two things which make reselling even more exciting
If the product can earn you residual income, for example a monthly commission all the while that the customer continues to renew it. If you can recruit your own affiliates and collect commission either for each affiliate or for the products that they sell.
What should you look out for?
Here are some rules for checking out affiliate opportunities:

#1 The company

First, there would be no point in generating massive commission on 'paper' only to find that the company are unreliable, don't pay up on time, or eventually fold.

Test out the company first.

Make an inquiry as if you were a potential customer. Study the quality of their reply and of their literature or website.

How quickly do they respond? If their customer service is poor this does not give much hope for the way they will handle their affiliates.

Are they an ethical company, what guarantees do they provide for refunds ?

#2 The product

Is the product an item which is in good demand?

What is the rate of commission?

These two factors will determine your potential earnings.

As a guide commission should range from 25 to 50%.

#3 Assistance with promotion
Does the company provide advertising material for their affiliates?

In particular do they provide a personalised web site?

#4 The cost
What is the cost of becoming an affiliate ?

This can vary from completely free paying an initial one off payment paying a monthly subscription.
You don't have to be deterred by affiliate opportunities where payment is involved. These may offer greater benefits such as advanced promotion techniques and commission which will quickly outweigh the payments.

For example $30 per month may seem a high figure but if you regard it as one dollar a day to have the company's products displayed 24 hours a day to the whole world on your own personalised web site it could be viewed as the bargain of the century.

Can anyone become an affiliate?
Affiliate opportunities are ideal for both experienced online marketeers and for newcomers to the Internet. Here's why:

#1 Experienced online marketeers

If you have an established web site the minimum that you need to do is post an ad on your own site.

And there's no need to stop at one product.

Providing that you don't overload your web site with ads you could have many - and you can monitor how they perform so that you can judge which ones to give prominence to.

#2 Newcomers

One of the first and most important skills you will need to use for any online business is how to place adverts.

Here are some of the things that you start to learn when you submit ads:

The various locations where you can place an ad such as newsgroups, forums, ezines, web sites: and the different rules and methods used for each one such as frequency of posting and size of ads.
How to post information to a mailing list or newsgroup for free but using a signature file to promote your products.
How to code your adverts so that you can identify where the response originates.
How to organise your mail files to handle responses.
How to simplify your own systems so that you have standard replies to common questions.
How to set up autoresponders if necessary to take away the chore of responding manually.
How to deal with the unexpected (for example, even though you may clearly spell out in your ad that a reply should be made to an autoresponder many people will still reply directly to you).
By taking on an affiliate operation you have an ideal opportunity to practise these methods. This will provide the experience for whatever online venture you plan as well as an excellent source of additional income.

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8 Greatest Ways To Converting Your Traffic Into Your Greatest Profit

Do you have a website which pulls in large number of visitors everyday? You can actually benefit yourself with the traffic and earn a great, residual income if you give a little more effort. Here are some of the greatest ways you can convert those traffic into mountainous cash:

1. Sell a product/service
Of course, to earn money you need to sell a product or service to your visitors. It is the best way to profit from your own product. Usually, an e-book or software works the best - they can be downloaded right away, no shipping included, no handling to be done. You earn 100% of the profits without any investments to be taken before that.

Other than that, selling your own product allows you to set your own price.

2. Opt-In list
It is very crucial that you try to convert every visitor of yours to a subscriber of your mailing list. The most important asset that an Internet marketer has is his or her list of subscribers. They define whether you will go far in the online business venture.

With an opt-in list, there are tons and tons of ways you can profit greater in the future. You can make previous customers purchase again from you, making them your repeating customers - that is of course, if they are in your mailing list and you can urge them to buy again.

Building a closer relationship with your own subscriber will be the best thing you can do. By having your subscribers 'trust' you, you can endorse many other useful products to your subscribers and the chances that they will buy from you will be high - because they trust you.

3. Viral marketing
You can provide a free product or bonus to be listed on your site to be downloaded by your visitors. Usually it'll be an e-book where people can read from and learn useful information. In this bonus, you include give away rights and urge readers to give it away to anyone they want to. This way, you increase your own publicity and branding.

In the future, you will receive great benefits as when you are known, people will trust you more and this profits you. Between a product - let's say a tooth brush from a beggar and a doctor, who will you prefer to purchase from? Unless the beggar offers something special, it is hardly that you will purchase the tooth brush from him.

4. Pay-per-click
In this case, you don't pay for every click but earn instead. There are many advertising programs that give you a percentage of the bidding on a certain keyword. The famous ones are Google Adsense, Chitika, Yahoo Publisher Network and Kontera.

When people click on the ads shown from either of these advertising programs, you will earn a small portion of money. Nevertheless, if you have high traffic to your site - these programs alone can generate your residual income.

5. Offer an advertising space
Usually websites which brings in very high traffic will sell a small portion of space on their web page. You can charge a minimum of $300 for advertising someone's ad a single month on advertising fee if your web page is pulling more than 2000 visitors a day.

Other than that, you can also create exit pop-ups that advertise other websites as well. By doing this, you don't clutter your website with too many ads and you can earn a better reputation from your visitors.

6. Affiliate marketing
If you don't have your own product for sale, you can sell other's products instead and receive a commission on every sale. With affiliate marketing, you have an unlimited source of products to sell and you don't need to go through any problems after your sales.

No customer service, you don't need to issue any refunds, just let the owner do everything else for you after each sale. If you have a mailing list, you can endorse many other products and earn very great profits from your subscribers.

7. Pay-per-lead
Instead of earning money from every click your visitors clicked on, you are paid if you get your visitors to subscribe into other's mailing list. Nevertheless, it is not necessary that you just get visitors to become other's subscribers.

There are a lot of bigger companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi which holds survey every few months. By referring your visitors to them in order to complete a survey, you can also earn great profits from it.

Applied correctly, you can make a huge fortune on the Internet and build a steady online business - taking over the place of your day job. Take some time to put effort in either of these strategies, because it can make your day bright.

In affiliate marketing, you start selling other people's products online. Every product owner will pay its affiliates a part of the transaction which can amount to anything upto 75% of the cost of the product. Most of the affiliates with the right tools and knowledge can earn anything up to ten thousand dollars every month from affiliate programs.

But a majority of the affiliates fail miserably in their affiliate efforts or earn insignificant amount of money. Here are some of the Secrets of Success in affiliate marketing:

Secret #1: Treat Affidavit Marketing as a Business

This way, you will be able to give more due and attention to your campaigns. Market an affiliate product as if it were your own. Build a business around it, pre-sell the product by having a pitch page of your own, offer free stuff, follow up and have backend offers to maximize profits from every product you promote. Following this cycle is the Formula of Success in Affiliate Marketing.

Secret #2: Promote Quality Information Products

People are hungry for information. Every day, millions of people are searching online for information. If you really want to make money fast, then I highly recommend that you start selling information products. These products are available for immediate download, have high profit margins and affiliates earn high commissions. If you want to search for information products, visit Clickbank.com, open an account and enter ClickBank Marketplace.

Secret #3: Pick up the right products

Choose products that pay about 50% of the sales. Also look for % referred for the product. Anything above 50% is a reasonably good figure. You can search Top 10 products by category i.e. popularity, gravity, $ earned/sale, % earned/sale and % referred.

It may work out that you have chosen a product, but there is very high competition for that product which may force you to pay a very high CPC price. You can chose products for which there is less competition but you still have good chances of making good money as a lot of people are searching for those keywords. Remember, this exercise will involve a lot of home work by carrying out the market analysis. If you have time to spare, 'https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal' can help you to some extent. But I recommend Keyword Elite.

Secret #4: Know your Product

If you want to be successful in affiliate marketing, you have to know the products you are promoting. One option is that you buy the product. That will make your task of selling the product easier as you know the product and so can easily convince the people to buy it.

If you don't want to buy the product, do a good research about the product by going to merchant's site and know everything about it. Giving your unbiased opinion or review is the best way to warm your prospects up for better sales.

Secret #5: Create quality Ads

This task requires a lot of involvement and innovation on your part. First you have to choose how to advertise your product. PPC advertising is the best bet as your Ads are seen by only targeted visitors. Few points you should keep in mind for while writing your Ads are:

1. AdWords allow a limited amount of text in Ads. Hence 'brevity' is the keyword.

2. The only way to stand out from the rest is to be different.

3. Always pre-sell your product with your pitch page.

4. Instill some sort of urgency in your prospects for buying in some limited time.

5. Always bring out free offers if any.

Secret #6: Capture Leads First

Fewer than 5% of the people those see your Ads will buy the product on the first visit. So what happens to the 95% or more who don't buy?

Another big mistake that people generally make is spending time and money on advertising and send buyers directly to a product owner's website.

The truth is...If you aren't capturing your visitor's name and email address, you're wasting your money on advertising.
For long-term success in affiliate marketing, you must build an opt-in list of buyers...people who trust you and purchase the products you recommend. You can sell multiple products to the same prospects and maximize your advertising efforts. All you need is a simple pitch page to capture leads and an autoresponder.

Secret #7: Offer a Strong Incentive

If you want people to opt in to your list, you have to give them a strong incentive. If you can create a PDF report on a high-demand topic that's actually good enough to sell and then give it away, people will like to download it. But how much information you should give away in your free product. Give your customers just sufficient information to make them want more and then recommend a product that fulfills their needs.

Secret #8: Track Your Ads

Tracking is critical for determining how well you're converting visitors to leads and leads to sales. Sometimes you just need to tweak your ad copy and run the ad again for better results. You may also like to disable the keywords which are not converting.

You need to know how many visitors, leads and sales you get for each ad you place so you can determine whether or not you want to keep using that traffic source or discard it.