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Monday, August 25th, 2008
How to Find Email Groups to Promote Your Blog
Having a blog can be a great way for you to practice your writing and to allow others to find out more about you and to get to know you better. Moreover, in this day and age of Internet businesses, a blog can be a great way for you to make money.
In a system called affiliate marketing, you can get commissions whenever people click on ads that are posted on your site. In this way, you not only enjoy writing, you also get to make money from it. Of course, the only way that you can get money through this method is to get more visitors to your blog, and to have great content that everyone will want to avail of.
One way for you to get more visitors is to find an email group that you can use to promote your blog. An email group or mailing list is a great marketing vehicle: you can get in touch with a lot of people who have the same interests as yours, you can find a lot of people who may even have the same attitude as yours, and you can get the word out faster on a product or service that you like. In this same manner, you can get the word out much faster on your blog, and you may be able to spread the word if you know how to talk to people in your email group.
But how do you find the email groups? Here are a few tips that you may want to use as you search for a mailing list that will allow you to talk to a lot of people, keep in touch with people with whom you share interests, and have a lot of fun in promoting your blog!
- First, what are your interests?
Many email groups are built around common interests, be they movies, music, crafts, or even romance and love. List down all your interests. You can start with your hobbies, then your favorite songs, artists, movies, books, authors, and actors. You can use these interests as keywords when searching for email lists. Nearly all email list networks have a searchable database that you can use when looking for groups for you to be a member in. This way, you can be more sure to find people who have the same interests as yours.
- Second, what is your blog about?
Use keywords about your blog in order to find more email groups. For instance, if you have a blog about pets, you may want to look for email groups that talk about pets, feeding pets, grooming pets, veterinarian and vet visits, and just animals in general. You can be as specific as you like: there are whole mailing lists for proud owners of certain breeds of dogs, or for people who like a certain kind of reptile. You can also be as general as you like. However, you may have a harder time with large groups, as they can be filled with people who do not read carefully through all the posrs.
- Third, spread yourself evenly, but not too thin
The disadvantage with having too few mailing lists to be a member in is that you will also have fewer contacts in your network and a smaller range, as though you were putting all your eggs in one basket. The disadvantage with having too many mailing lists, however, is that they are much harder to manage on your part, and you could end up getting a lot of emails but not getting to respond quickly enough.
Posted in Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
Remember: Kabonfootprint is the SEO Parrot
Monday, August 25th, 2008
Building a Customer Base
Let me ask you a question: do you think it is easier to sell your product or services to a complete stranger or to a person you have had contact before; whether it’s an email conversation, forum participation or even an existing customer relationship (i.e. He has bought something from you). Without doubt, it would be harder to sell to a total stranger who does not know whether or not you are an honest seller, and whether or not they should trust your words and believe that your product or services will truly benefit them.
This is precisely why you should build up a customer base — a group of people who trust you and will most likely buy a product that you offer to them. This will ensure that you have a recurring and consistent source of income. When you release a product or make an endorsement, you have a group of people always ready to hear what you have to say.
There are several sources that you can tap into to start building a customer base. For example, you can participate in an online discussion forum and give advice and help for free. It won’t be long before people start to recognise your name and stop and listen everytime you have something to say. You will become a valuable friend and teacher, and gain the trust of these people. Would you buy something your close friend recommends?
Another way to build a customer base is to build a mailing list. There are a gazillion methods to collect subscribers, but when it’s boiled down to the very essence, it’s all about proving your value to the crowd and offering an incentive to make people become part of your mailing list. A typical example would be a website choke-full of freely available, helpful and quality articles on a certain subject plus a “special report” that can be downloaded for free provided you give your email address. The rich content provides value, and the “special report” is the extra incentive.
Yet another source for your customer base, which is often forgotten, is your existing customers. If you bought this product from this particular person and he answered patiently to your every question, would you buy from him again in the future? Definitely. When a customer has given you his money, that’s not the end of the affair because by keeping in touch with him and developing a flourishing relationship with him, you will have a lifetime source of income.
Imagine if 100, 1000 or even 10000 customers are waiting to grab your newest products even before they are released! Hence, it’s vital to build a customer base because it simply saves a lot of time and effort.
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Remember: Kabonfootprint is the SEO Parrot
Monday, August 25th, 2008
Basic Guideline about Article Directories
The Internet has given birth to a new way and purpose to article writing. It used to be solely for the love of the craft and the glee that a writer feels when their work gets published. But the cyber world has created concepts like article directories that prompted business people to think about articles in a different way.
Marketing Your Biz
Have you ever tried writing articles for directory sites? The first thing that you have to do is to establish yourself as an expert in your chosen field of interest. This doesn’t actually mean your personal choice but rather the one related to whatever your line of business is.
You see, this is all about spreading the word out about your business and promoting your products and services. But you will not do such task in a bold manner. Creating articles is a subtle way to let people know about you, get interested with the information that you are giving or writing about, then click on the link that you provide them with.
Why is it important to write good contents? Not because you can submit to these directories for free means that you will no longer care about the quality of your work. You need to get readers’ attention. And the only way to do that is by giving them what they want. You must give them useful information that they would definitely like to know.
You must have them hooked on what you wrote for them to take interest to click the link that you will provide on your author’s bio space. That link will lead your probable clients to your own web site. And there you can sing a different tune. That is the time you have to aim for the sale.
Basic Guide
You will actually find a lot of free submission sites once you delve on the task of looking for such. There are certain guidelines to each site. But here are some of the basic ones that can help you prepare and start on your articles.
1. Word count
Be very careful with this aspect. Some submission sites will reject your articles for the mere fact that you lacked some words in your piece. While others allow 300 word count for the articles, most sites prefer a minimum of 500.
2. Avoid spamming
Choose a category where you think your articles will best fit in. Do not post your material on multiple categories for each site. This will result to spamming and the site can ban you for such act.
3. URL
Read carefully what the site’s guideline is about placing your URLs. Some may allow this to be included on the body. And other sites would only accept URLs if these are included on the author’s bio box.
4. Language
Basically, the language of your articles must be in English. You can use other languages and look for submission sites catering to such market. This can be done if you really want to broaden the reach of your materials.
You must remain professional sounding when it comes to your work. Do not use any obscene language as this may be taken as a negative thing against you.
Choose the right article directories that you will be submitting your materials to. You can check the web page rankings on Google and Alexa to gain more knowledge if such sites have high traffic or not.
Posted in Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
Remember: Kabonfootprint is the SEO Parrot
Sunday, August 24th, 2008
How Do Search Engines Work – Web Crawlers
It is the search engines that finally bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers. Hence it is better to know how these search engines actually work and how they present information to the customer initiating a search.
There are basically two types of search engines. The first is by robots called crawlers or spiders.
Search Engines use spiders to index websites. When you submit your website pages to a search engine by completing their required submission page, the search engine spider will index your entire site. A ‘spider’ is an automated program that is run by the search engine system. Spider visits a web site, read the content on the actual site, the site’s Meta tags and also follow the links that the site connects. The spider then returns all that information back to a central depository, where the data is indexed. It will visit each link you have on your website and index those sites as well. Some spiders will only index a certain number of pages on your site, so don’t create a site with 500 pages!
The spider will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the moderators of the search engine.
A spider is almost like a book where it contains the table of contents, the actual content and the links and references for all the websites it finds during its search, and it may index up to a million pages a day.
Example: Excite, Lycos, AltaVista and Google.
When you ask a search engine to locate information, it is actually searching through the index which it has created and not actually searching the Web. Different search engines produce different rankings because not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indices.
One of the things that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page, but it can also detect artificial keyword stuffing or spamdexing. Then the algorithms analyze the way that pages link to other pages in the Web. By checking how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about, if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page.
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Remember: Kabonfootprint is the SEO Parrot
Sunday, August 24th, 2008
3 Necessary Tools for the High Rolling Affiliate Marketer
What does it take to become a successful Affiliate Marketer? What are the ingredients of an affiliate marketing success story? Is there a shortcut to Affiliate Marketing glory? All these questions play around in the minds of affiliate marketers who want to make it big in this business.
Although affiliate marketing is touted as one of the easiest and most effective ways to earn money online, it is not as easy as it sounds. The wise affiliate marketer plans every action and executes it the best way he can. He should also maximize the potential to earn by utilizing the right tools necessary for a successful Affiliate Marketing business. We have consulted some of the most successful affiliate marketers in the business and below are the top three necessary tools for a successful affiliate marketing business.
Important Tool #1: Your Own Website
The most important and indispensable tool in Affiliate Marketing is your own website. The first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking website. Your website is the jump off point of all your marketing efforts. Thus, you must first build a user-friendly website, which will appeal to your prospects and encourage them to click on the links to the products and service you are promoting and make a purchase. Therefore, you must first concentrate your efforts in building a website that will cater to what your prospects need.
The most important thing you should consider is that almost all web users go online to look for information, not necessarily to go and buy something. Above all else, make your website full of original, relevant and useful content. People will love articles that are appealing and helpful. Keep in mind that, in the internet, content is still king and good quality content will not only build your credibility, it can also help you achieve a higher search engine ranking. By posting relevant and useful articles, you establish yourself as a credible expert in the field, making you a more trustworthy endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good reputation is a good step in building up a loyal consumer base.
Important Tool #2: Incentives
Competition is extremely tight in the internet world. You must always be one-step ahead of your rivals to ensure that you capture a significant share of your target market. Therefore, you must use every possible means to encourage people not only to visit your site but also to click and proceed to the websites of the products and services you are promoting. Building an opt-in email list is one of the best ways to gather prospects. Offer a newsletter or an e-zine. Better yet, offer incentives to your prospects to encourage them to subscribe to your newsletters. You can present free softwares, access to exclusive services and other freebies that will be helpful to your prospects.
Important Tool #3: Link Popularity
The importance of driving highly targeted traffic to your website cannot be emphasized enough. The all-important web traffic is at the top of the list of the most important entities in the internet world. Attracting people to your site should be the first step you should carry out. Do everything to achieve a high search engine ranking. Link Popularity is one of the factors that search engines use to determine search engine rankings. Therefore, to enhance your link popularity, you must launch an aggressive reciprocal link campaign.
One of the best ways to do this – at no cost at all – is by submitting articles, with your website’s link at the resource box, to e-zines and free article sites. You will not only gain exposure, you will also have the opportunity to advertise for free, just include a link back to your site. The more sites you submit your articles to, the better your link popularity is. Make your articles original, relevant and useful so that more websites will pick it up and post it.
These are but three of the many tools that an affiliate marketer can use to maximize earning potential. The possibilities are endless and are limited only by your imagination, creativity, resourcefulness and determination. You can always explore other ideas and adapt other strategies, which you think might help you become a high rolling affiliate marketer.
Posted in Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »
Remember: Kabonfootprint is the SEO Parrot
Sunday, August 24th, 2008
Benefits of Joint Ventures
Let’s imagine a situation where we have two Internet marketers who know each other. One has a great product that will sell very well but he has no mailing list, no affiliates, nothing. The other is a great marketer with tens of thousands of subscribers in his mailing list, but the problem is he has nothing to sell to them. The very obvious solution here is to give the product to the great marketer with lots of contacts, and split the profits between them. This, my friend, is the very essence of Joint Ventures.
As more and more people start their own home based businesses online, the market is going to get more and more saturated and the competition will grow fiercer by the minute. The fastest, most effective and easiest way to build your own online business empire is through joint ventures. That is, join forces with other marketers to sell your product.
When you joint venture with another marketer, you can ask him (or her) to send an endorsement of your product to his existing mailing list, so you do not need to worry about collecting subscribers from scratch. You already have an easily accessible target market. The trick is to find the right marketer whose subscribers will be interested in your product. Once you achieve that, you won’t even have to worry about generating traffic to your salesletter or finding affiliates to promote your product. All of that is already done for you.
When you joint venture with a solid player in the field, your perceived value and reputation will instantly increase because if this well-known person in the field is willing to work with you as a team, you must have some substance! Hence, when you manage to hook up a joint venture with someone who’s a “regular player” in your niche market, your status will instantly change from “total newbie” to “guru status” overnight!
Last but definitely not least, you will get a chance to build a lasting relationship with a big figure in your niche market, and that alone will worth more than the profits you pull in over that single Joint Venture. When you have a dominant figure in the market as your friend, you will gain a lot of privileges and perks that no newbie like you could ever get their hands on – for example new insights into interesting product ideas and marketing strategies. You can’t even buy that for hard cash!
So, start looking up a potential Joint Venture partner and try your best to convince him or her to strike up a deal with you!
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Remember: Kabonfootprint is the SEO Parrot
Saturday, August 23rd, 2008
Email Listing Creation – Possible with Your Blog
Email opt-in lists are very important. They provide you a legitimate way to keep in touch with your customers, not to mention a way to ensure that you don’t lose them to the competition as well.
Subscription Software
Choose the best software that will allow you to automate the registration process for would-be subscribers. Once you have this up and running, visitors of your blog can automatically opt-in to your email list even without your physical supervision. As the settings for these programs are configurable, it’s up to you to choose whether approval of subscriptions would be automated or manual.
Offer and Link
Use an attention-catching image or decorative text when inviting people to join your email list. Be sure to place it in a prominent area of your homepage. As for other pages, just choose a spot where it’s highly visible and which you could maintain for your entire website.
As for the link, just keep it simple and remember to make regular checks in order to ensure that it’s always in good working order.
Call to Action
Since building your email list is your current goal, it’s best to end every blog entry you write with an invitation to join your email list. Your call to action for now should offer strong encouragement on joining your email list.
For an effective call to action, just keep your sentence short but powerful. Use action-packed words and if possible, try creating a sense of urgency with your words.
Deadlines
Speaking of urgency, one way of making people even more aware of the need to join your email list is by offering an incentive with it. This can be special discounts, membership privileges, or free ebooks and the likes. Whatever you end up offering, just remember to place a deadline on your promotion.
With the clock ticking, your blog readers are sure to experience just how necessary it is for them to avail of your offer.
Benefits
Besides those incentives you’ve mentioned, there must also be other benefits for a customer to enjoy once they do sign up for your email list. Explain to them what you hope to accomplish with your email list and how they’ll benefit from it at the same time.
Signing up with your email list, for instance, will allow them to receive regular updates about the latest additions to your blog. They may also be able to receive newsletters containing special members-only data.
Safety and Confidentiality
Another way to encourage people to sign up for your email list from your blog is by giving them the assurance they need when it comes to safety and confidentiality. Purchase and register for what you need in order to provide your customers as secure platform for the registration process. A secure platform is one that keeps customer data safe from getting hacked.
As for confidentiality, you should also give your solemn word not to share any information they submit with other parties.
Overall Improvement
Of course, the real clincher is your blog itself. If you consistently work on providing the best content for your blog, you’re giving them the best reason to sign up for your email list. If you don’t prove to them that there’s something to look forward to in your blog, they will never think there’s any reason for them to join your email list.
Posted in Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
Remember: Kabonfootprint is the SEO Parrot
Saturday, August 23rd, 2008
Article Marketing Must Always End With a Resource Box
When we look at books in the store, we always see the cover with the title and the name of author printed on both the front and the side. In article marketing, details of who wrote it the article and other important details about the individual must always be placed at the bottom which is known as the resource box.
The resource box is the “author’s bio.” It is also called “sig” which is short for signature. There are certain things that should be placed here which you must never forget to include so people will know who you are.
First, is your name. Some people use their real names while others use a pen name. If you are a doctor, mention your title as well because this adds credibility to your article.
If the article that you wrote is promoting a business and you want others to see your previous work, don’t forget to indicate your website address.
To create a teaser, you need an elevator pitch which is usually composed of 1 to 3 sentences that gives a brief summary of what you are offering.
You will also need what is known as a call to action which is much shorter than the elevator pitch. It could be something like.
“If you want to know more about my product… visit http://www.mysite.com.”
Other items which you can include in your resource box could be the ezine subscription address. This will allow you to send them fresh articles and information about new products which you are selling. If you decide to do this, make sure there is a separate ezine subscription address.
Your contact information can also be included in the resource box. This will allow people to contact you by phone if they want to avail of your services since you won’t be in front of the computer 24/7.
There is also the free report which will strengthen or justify your call to action.
Some things which should not be added to your resource box include a list of previous websites which you have worked on in the past because this information may not be relevant to the article you have written. Given that the resource box is not a resume but merely a short summary of who you are, you should not mention every accomplishment you have ever done because no one cares.
If you post your article, make sure the ads are applicable or related to your topic otherwise don’t post any at all.
Don’t make the resource box too big because what you want the readers to focus on is what you painstakingly wrote. As much as possible, this should only occupy 10% to 20% of the webpage.
Article marketing is a give and take sort of agreement because you contribute articles which reach out to a specific audience in the hopes that people will be able to visit the site without any cost to you. The resource box which is found at the bottom of the article is the key to making this happen so it is important to put your name, website address, elevator pitch and call to action.
So in order for you to reach a larger audience, it is best to post your articles in different sites.
Posted in Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | 2 Comments »
Remember: Kabonfootprint is the SEO Parrot
Saturday, August 23rd, 2008
Creating Unique Sites for Affiliate Marketing
Establishing yourself in the affiliate marketing world is no easy task. However, once you have, the rewards are much greater than one could usually expect. Your products and affiliate marketing sites will get you that success you want. But how do you get them to do that?
You are probably just starting out with affiliate marketing by trying your luck with just one product, or like many affiliate marketers, marketing multiple products to maximize profits. Either way, you should acknowledge the fact that the method in which you utilize your affiliate marketing sites is a major determinant of your success.
Creating unique affiliate marketing sites for your affiliate products pave the best way for maximized profits. Unique affiliate marketing sites allow for your prospects to focus highly on the certain product they need or want, or the niche in which that product belongs to. Further reasons why you should create unique affiliate marketing sites (and how these sites should look like) for your affiliate marketing ventures are stated below.
WHY CREATE UNIQUE AFFILIATE MARKETING SITES?
1. TO GET YOUR PROSPECTS FOCUS ON ONE PRODUCT. Your prospects probably landed on your page because they were specifically looking for your product. They would want to know more about the product, and considering just how patient (which isn’t much) customers can get these days, they wouldn’t want to know anything more. Imagine how they would get if you placed the descriptions of totally unrelated products beside the one they were looking for (for example, sneakers beside a computer)? You wouldn’t want to know just how much that would hurt your profits, except that since you care about your profits, you have to.
By focusing on one product at a time, you give your prospects the chance to get to know your product more. Plus, unique affiliate marketing sites are quite easy to maintain and establish: at most, a day or two to get everything (links, layout, entries, photos, etc…) right. You’d be extremely surprised just how these unique affiliate marketing sites focused on promoting a single product could bring in profits disproportionately high compared to the effort that went into making them.
2. TO GET THEM TO FOCUS ON A CERTAIN GROUP OF PRODUCT. Sometimes, customers who aren’t satisfied with the features and benefits of a product want to find other alternatives. It would be such a sad thing if you can’t provide them with that. By grouping similar products together in one unique affiliate marketing site, you can pretty much capture the market, despite all its preferences and specific needs.
The only problem with establishing unique affiliate marketing sites focused on a certain group of product is that they are much harder to do than single-product sites. The work is tedious, and you might end up having to hire someone else to do the job for you, which calls for money—money you would rather earn than spend. The trouble also is that these sites may not work right away—it may take awhile before profits come pouring in—and this could get quite a bit discouraging. If you have the patience for everything (creating the site, waiting for profits), then you could try your luck at this.
THREE QUALITIES YOuR UNIQUE AFFILIATE MARKETING SITES SHOULD HAVE
It isn’t enough to know what kind of affiliate marketing site to establish. Even if your site caters to a single product or multiple ones, they have to have a certain qualities to ensure success. To encourage profits, your unique affiliate marketing site should be:
1. USER-FRIENDLY. Create affiliate marketing sites that users could find easy to navigate. Keep links and buttons within acceptable reach, and at enough frequency.
2. WELL-FORMATTED. Do with a format or a layout that does well for the product you are trying to sell. Do not ever do the mistake of creating an affiliate marketing site meant for Big Bikes (ie, Harley Davidsons) with a layout composed of butterflies and pretty flowers (this is a thing for the insane to do).
3. ORGANIZED. Keep your unique affiliate marketing sites organized by placing appropriate links where they are most likely to be seen without interfering with everything else. Categorize your links and products as well (don’t just place hundreds of your links under one category). Keeping your site organized will entice your prospects to discover more, and click away.
Posted in Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
Remember: Kabonfootprint is the SEO Parrot
Saturday, August 23rd, 2008
Increase Your Repeat Visitors,
Website Stickiness and Add a Viral Twist To Your Site
with Webmaster Sticky Scripts!
If you have ever wanted to quickly and easily add something to your site that that makes visitors stay longer and keeps them coming back again and again – this is exactly what you have been looking for!
“It’s like instant website stickiness in a box”
Let’s fact it… having an interactive element to your site is hands down the best way to make your website stickier than a tube of superglue.
Interactive tools that require no maintenance on your part are better still because you set it up once and can forget that it’s there (but your visitors wont forget)!
Imagine the repeat traffic from visitors who bookmark your site and use your tools again and again. Not to mention that webmaster tools make great “linkbait” for sites like Digg, forum sigs and other viral traffic builders!
These tools won’t just increase your traffic, they can increase your income as well! Integrate these scripts in to your site, add some ads above and below the scripts to promote your own list, products, adsense ads, or affiliate products to a loyal repeat audience.
And thats not all! Because this package includes MRR (Master Resell Rights), you can upsell your visitors on the script package it’s self so that they too can place it on their sites!
Usefull front end viral tools with a built in backend upsell…
It doesnt get better than that!
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Remember: Kabonfootprint is the SEO Parrot
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