Your Internet Marketing Made Easy

Marketing online has become the preferred method of promotion and advertising for both web and home businesses. Internet marketing gives business owners the opportunity to target their chosen audience, while often receiving instant results. To accomplish your goals in the internet marketing field, you must first familiarize yourself with general promotional and marketing facts. Just a few simple tips can help you build your business into all that you desire.

To produce a significant income from your business, you must first find a way to gain visitors to your web site. Generating traffic is very important in internet marketing. It is a good idea to visit other web sites with a similar audience as yours to aid in the development of your internet marketing plan. Affiliate programs are an ideal source of traffic generation, as well as, web site advertising. As the internet expands, so do the many ways to bring customers to your site.

The word "free" is one of the most powerful internet marketing tools ever. Offering a free trial or sample on your web site is the perfect way to get potential customers excited about your business. As in any marketing plan, creativity is a must. If you are not able to dish out any free goodies, why not create a special offer or discount? It is essential that this offer is only offered at your site; this shows that you are willing to try something different from other business owners. Innovation can be the key to success in the internet marketing game.

Developing an honest and solid reputation in the business community is a necessity. Customers need to feel secure purchasing from you, and not worry about disclosing their personal information through your servers. Most consumers look for a seal of approval such as the Better Business Bureau Online icon. Once customers trust you, your business and internet marketing aspirations can continue to prosper.

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Your 1st 100 Days in Internet Marketing

Internet marketing draws people from many different backgrounds. It is as diverse an industry as you will ever find. People from all walks of life and from countries all over the world have carved out a piece of the internet for themselves with varying degrees of success and more people climb aboard every day!

If you have a computer and an internet connection, you can be in business today. The relatively low barriers to entry make this business a fascinating destination for many. With this experience comes the knowledge that someone somewhere is willing to pay for.

But the most common question is “how do I”. How do I take the information I have and put it on paper or word processor? How do I package it? How do I price it? Advertise , distribute, or sell it? All logical questions for the uninitiated.



So what happens? You go out you buy the knowledge you need to complete these tasks but something happens along the way. You wind up spending a small fortune with on titles like “How to get everything you ever wanted out of internet marketing for just $37”.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work that way! How do I know? Because October 6th, 2006 I started my internet marketing career and I can tell you there were times when I had to take my credit card out of my wallet with asbestos gloves. After learning a very expensive lesson, I decided I was going to help those that have come after me avoid such pitfalls. That’s how I came up with 100dayblueprint.com.

Right now I am passing this information on to anyone willing to listen and I suggest you AT LEAST listen. Why?

Because the most valuable lesson you can learn is the one some else paid for! In our newsletters you will:

1. Learn the top 10 steps to take in your 1st 100 days

2. Learn who the top 10 people are that you need to be listening to

3. Find out who the top 10 people are to avoid, BEFORE you take out your wallet!

4. And my favorite, learn what separates an internet marketer from an opportunity seeker!

You will Also Find out:

1. Who is the best hosting company and why

2. Who is the best Registrar? It’s not who you might think!

3. What software to use even if you can’t write one line of html code

The tips, tricks, and recommendations will hopefully help you avoid the pitfalls that most internet marketers make while showing you step by step how to raise the bar just a little bit higher than yesterday.

Remember, a journey of a thousand miles begins with the 1st step, or the 1st 100 days!

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Your RSS Marketing Strategy: Deciding How To Deliver Your RSS Content

You're interested in RSS marketing, but there either seem to be so many options of how to do it or you've only ever come across simple RSS feeds that just don't seem to be the approach you're looking for.

The problem with most RSS marketing plans is that the marketer doesn't really go beyond providing a simple RSS feed for all of his online news or his blog. But since you've been reading this column for a while now you know for a fact that RSS offers so much more.

To get started the right way you need to correctly plan your RSS Marketing strategy, starting by deciding how you are going to deliver your RSS content.

The right way to go, even if you're only starting out with a simple RSS strategy, is to provide individual RSS feeds for:

1. your individual target audiences,
2. your different types of content and
3. even your different content topics.

Think of this as a consequtive list of how to develop your RSS strategy.

TARGET AUDIENCES Start by listing the target audiences you want to deliver your content to via RSS. Each of your audiences has different content needs, resulting in different groups of RSS feeds that need to be created for these target audiences. One group for the media, the other for your employees, the other for the general public, the other for your existing customers and so on. You can even go further and divide your master groups in sub-groups, based on their prevailing interests.

CONTENT TYPES Now consider the different types of content you want to deliver to these audiences. For example your latest news, your blog posts, your how-to articles, your press releases, your podcasts, the latest posts from your forums, direct communications messages and so on. In most cases these types of content don't mix well together. If someone wants to receive your blog updates, which are full of your company representatives' personal opinions and commentary, they don't want to receive your corporate-speak press releases.

If someone is interested in what's happening in your forum and what the latest forum posts are, they don't want to receive your how-to articles in the same RSS feed, simply because these two types of content are so much different. And so on. Essentially, you will need to provide separate feeds for each of the different content types, and you will need to determine what content types you wish to deliver to each of your target audience groups and sub-groups.

CONTENT TOPICS Finally take a look at each individual content type for each individual target audience and further break that down by content topic, if needed. And if you're trying to cover many different topics for each content type, you will need to provide different RSS feeds for these different topics, because, again, people interested in topic A are not neccessarily also interested in topic B.

While this may sound complicated, it's really simple once you start doing it.

The point is, this is about giving your subscribers choice of what they subscribe to. Instead of forcing them to subscribe to everything, allow them to subscribe to only what they want and need.

Quite simple, right?

Just remember that you should only break this down as far as it makes sense, keeping in mind the actual content that your target audiences want from you.

Depending on your business, you just might only need to communicate with one target audience, deliver only one content type and deliver only one content topic for that target audience.

DECIDE HOW YOU ARE GOING TO DELIVER THIS CONTENT

Once you have your RSS content mapped-out, you need to consider how you are going to make this content available to your target audiences. This is especially important since it's going to influence the tools you need to get started with RSS publishing

ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL RSS FEEDS

This is about as standard as it gets --- publishing one RSS feed to meet the needs of all of your target audiences at once or publishing multiple topical RSS feeds, which always remain the same. The easiest to do, can be done with any RSS publishing tool on the market …

CUSTOMIZABLE RSS FEEDS

The more and more complex you get with the different feeds you're offering, the more difficult it is for your visitors to select what exactly they want, simply because an individual subscriber might be interested in 10 of your 100 feeds, but he doesn't want to be subscribed to that many feeds by your company.

In this case the best way to go is to also offer your visitors the opportunity to customize your RSS feed à they decide exactly what content type and content topics they want to receive in one or a few RSS feeds they'll be subscribing from you.

The opportunities here are quite endless, as you can allow them to customize their feeds based on topics, content types, authors and more.

If this is the way you need to go because you are offering so much content via your RSS feeds that it makes it difficult for someone to subscribe to only one or a few feeds from you, you will need your RSS publishing solution to support feed customization.

SEARCH-BASED RSS FEEDS

Search-based RSS feeds are a subset of customization RSS feeds, and they work just like a search engine. You type in a certain keyword or keyword combinations and the search engine gives you the most relevant or the latest results for that keyword combination.

You can do the same with RSS, allowing your visitors to enter specific keywords and then get the content from you only based on those keywords.

PERSONALIZED RSS FEEDS

Giving users the choice to customize the content they are receiving from you is one thing, but certain content may actually demand you to personalize the feed using your subscribers personal information.

The most basic variation, used to lift response, is addressing your subscribers by name or using other data about the customer from your database, such as his address, previous purchases etc.

In other cases a bank might want to deliver information directly relating to your bank account, directly via RSS, such as your latest credit card transactions, and so on.

RSS FEEDS WITH CONTENT TARGETING

Now imagine that you want to create individualized campaigns to individual subscribers, based on the information you already have in your database about their activities, demographics and so on, for example to send a promotion for product A only to those subscribers that might be most interested in product A.

In this case you will need an RSS solution that can pull this data from your database and then segment your subscribers based on the actual data.

AUTORESPONDER RSS FEEDS

Since their introduction, e-mail autoresponders have become a relatively mainstream internet direct marketing tool, although they haven't really made their way to the world of public relations.

The concept is simple à a certain action by your visitors on your website triggers a sequence of e-mail messages, delivered to that visitor, provided you have his e-mail address, over a period of several days.

Direct marketers use this to automatically communicate with the prospect after a certain action, trying to get him to do what they want.

The most common application is offering your visitors a free report, delivered to them via e-mail. After subscribing they start receiving consequtive parts of the report day after day or a every few days, receiving both new information as well as being exposed to the marketer's promotional message.

Other applications include autoresponder messages in relation to transactional e-mail:

Subscribe to a free e-mail newsletter. The first autoresponder message thanks you for the subscription and also gives you access to one of the newsletter issues. A couple of days later, while you're still "hot as a lead", you receive another e-mail, pertaining to the newsletter topic, giving you more advice or information on the topic and trying achieve a sales conversion. And so on.

Complete a webstore order. The first message thanks you for the purchase and recommends an additional product at a lower price. The second message tells you more about the product you purchased. The third messages makes a special additional purchase offer. The fourths message gives you some great additional tips, and so on.

Start an online order, but don't finish it. The first message reminds you that there are still products in your shopping cart. The second message reminds you again, giving you added incentives to complete the order. And so on …

The opportunities are practically limitless, but you get the picture.

Now simply transform this concept into the realm of RSS.

Someone subscribes to your RSS feed. The first couple of content items, spread-out through the first week, serve as a series of welcome messages giving the new subscriber access to your top content and inviting him to actively participate. Your latest feed updates come through as well, but your new subscriber also gets the extra treatment (content) in the same feed.

And now apply this to anything you're doing with RSS, where it makes sense to follow-up with additional information to your new subscribers once they subscribe, of course depending on the feed topic and target audience.

Very few RSS tools today offer autoresponder capabilities, but some do.

TO RECAP…

Think of your RSS publishing strategy and try to establish which of the these publishing models your RSS publishing tool should support:

--> Topical or Target Audience Oriented RSS Feeds --> Customizable RSS Feeds --> Search-Based RSS Feeds --> Personalized RSS Feeds --> RSS Feeds With Content Targeting --> Autoresponder RSS Feeds

Copyright 2006 Rok Hrastnik

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Your Internet Business and the Law

With the number of internet businesses being established on the internet setting new records seemingly every business day, it is no surprise that a growing number of these end with serious business and legal difficulties. A common excuse appears to be a claim of “ignorance to the law” or the fact that many are simply unaware of the existing regulations and laws. Sadly, as you might expect, ignorance is not a recognized defense for the legal requirements.

To protect yourself and your investment, it is strongly recommended that you follow a few basic practices and include legal notices in the content of your website. Generally, there are a few general business notices and a relatively short list of legal notices that if included, will provide basic coverage and notice to outside parties seeking to validate (or dispute) the credibility and legal sufficiency of your website activities.

There are a number of ways to obtain the notices and language needed for these purposes. Certainly, obtaining legal advice is a preferred method,if considered necessary. Without going to this expense, many web entrepreneurs are comfortable by performing a canvass of a given website’s competitors. Staying close to the coverage and language of other websites who generally sell the same or similar supplies and services of your site can be adequate. These should be altered and customized as appropriate to fit your specific circumstances (to avoid potential legal issues of copyright infringment). Of late, there are a number of internet websites who provide notice wording and online notice language generation (some free of charge, some on a fee basis). And of course there are software products available for this purpose as well.

As a basic primer into the notices needed, below is a representative sampling of those needed:

GENERAL CATEGORY NOTICES:

CONTACT INFORMATION/CONTACT US: Websites should contain a webpage which identifies various means to contact the company. These include valid email addresses and phone numbers. The new CAN/SPAM requirements stipulate that a full physical address be included as well.

ABOUT/ABOUT US: Websites should contain a webpage which identifies the general company information, including ownership information, historic perspective of the company, etc.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS/FAQ’s: Websites should contain a webpage which contains a listing of the most commonly asked questions regarding interacting with the given business. This page is entirely optionally, but can substantially reduce numbers of inquiries and questions by making this information readily available to potential customers in advance.

NOTICES OF A LEGAL NATURE:

EARNINGS DISCLAIMER: Many sales and promotional marketing websites contain specific claims of revenues achieved by owners, affiliates, or others using their products. For these websites, it is recommended that they contain a webpage with statements concerning potential earnings potential and the lack of “guarantees” regarding the amounts used. Any amounts used should be disclaimed as "results achieved by others - and in no way a guarantee that everyone will have similar results", or words to that effect.

DISCLAIMER ON USE OF DATA: Websites should contain a webpage which contains specifics regarding the limitations and liabilities for the use, sharing, or redistribution of data and information contained on your website. Also, for website that include information which may be downloaded by clients, disclaimers regarding limitations of your liability for viruses, spyware, worms, etc., or other calamities incurred during the download are appropriate.

PRIVACY: With the continuing SPAM problems, it is advisable that websites include a webpage which advises visitor’s regarding the company’s policy for safeguarding any data received from them. This should include the nature of the data gathering, purpose, intended use, disposition, and sharing of any data information obtained. And by all means, ALWAYS follow the stated policy. Website owners should resist the temptation to sell visitor information when the sharing of this data was not properly disclosed at the time it was obtained.

COPYRIGHT: Websites should contain a webpage which contains copyright specifics. This disclaimer is required to alert others regarding the legal standing of your products and services.

Legal Notice Support: To avoid even the potential of legal problems, anyone considering doing business on the internet is required to be fully aware of the rules, regulations, and laws which website owners are required to abide by. As a resource for conducting business within the United States, owners should review basic information at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) website. For the latest FTC coverage, visit the following website: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/dotcom/index.html

All website owners must be aware of the laws regarding unwanted email (SPAM). Current requirements mandate the inclusion of a physical address and an “opt-out” method for all email marketing campaigns. Check on all the latest SPAM regulations at the FTC website: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/spam/rules.htm

The requirements are not complicated or impossible to follow. Many agree, they are straightforward, but even so, being aware of the rules and laws, knowing where to go and what the “basic rules are” is absolutely critical. My disclaimer here is: “in no way are these tips and ideas intended to be a comprehensive all-inclusive listing of the legal and business notices needed to run an internet business. These are representative examples only. Legal counsel should be used when in doubt". However, this article is intended to raise your awareness to the issues and prompt you to appropriate action.

Copyright 2006 Stephen Wright

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You Really Can Make a Million on the Internet

The key to successful marketing on the internet is to drive traffic to your website. Having a website that just sits un-promoted in cyberspace is not only a waste of time, but also highly frustrating.

I have been intrigued by the idea of internet marketing for years, but it has taken me a long time to overcome all the gumption traps involved in actually getting started (the biggest one being that I am a cyber-dinosaur -- my only real experience using computers for anything other than glorified type-writing involved Fortran IV and IBM punch cards almost thirty years ago).

What I have learned is that the internet marketing process can be relatively simple. You have to find a market, develop a product, and build a website to promote your product and process transactions. But, all of your efforts will be useless if nobody visits your website.

I have been studying a course that discusses the problem of driving traffic to your site in great detail. There are at least six ways to increase the number of visitors to your site, including word of mouth from one web user to the next (you are reading this letter, aren't you?), buying targeted hits to your site using paid keyword advertising on search engines such as Google, sending advertising e-mails to your proprietary list of prospects which you generate by signing up previous visitors to your site, exchanging links for your website with other websites that have similar products to your own, paying someone else with a proprietary e-mail list to send sales letters for you (you can pay for this with a flat fee up front or in the form of commissions that result from the e-mails they send), and paying fees or commissions to other websites for putting your banners, ads, or links on their pages. By using these techniques you will increase the number of visitors to your site, which is almost guaranteed to increase your sales.

In addition to pointers on increasing website traffic, the course I am studying includes incredible amounts of information about many other topics. It is a free course (amazing, but true!) which covers every aspect of marketing on the internet. It covers material from the very basic to the very complex, including the nuts and bolts of building a website, the basic ideas behind the concept of selling on the web, and strategies for finding the right niche for marketing specific products. It is a tremendous resource for the beginning marketer, and is full of not well known tips for even the most experienced internet marketing experts.

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Your 2006 Web Marketing Plan

With the New Year right around the corner, we often resolve to improve our behavior, health, or personal relationships. Let me tell you, you're wasting your time. I'm OK, you're OK. It's our Web marketing that's a mess.

We've got out-of-shape Web sites, directionless Web marketing, and we're lost at the search engines. It's time to stop worrying about self-improvement and start worrying about Web marketing-improvement!

While every business has different goals and needs, please consider these twelve items in creating your own Web marketing plan for next year. Rearrange the order to fit your own schedule in 2006.

January: Set up a Web marketing budget. I know, this is your favorite part: the budget. However, once you've decided how much money you plan on spending quarterly or monthly, deciding what to spend your marketing dollar on becomes much easier. You'll also want to carve out some time for your Web marketing endeavors. After all, a lot of the following to-do's are more about time than money.

February: Audit your Web site (beginner.) Often we're surprised or dismayed at the material that's on our Web site: bios of ex-employees, links to sites that no longer exist, a 2001 price list. Spend some time reviewing the content on your Web site and get rid of anything that's out-of-date or no longer expresses who you are. Nothing turns off prospects faster than a neglected Web site.

March: Audit your Web site (advanced.) Review your traffic reports and decide if your navigation needs to be updated. Maybe certain parts of your site are getting a lot of traffic and should be further promoted on the home page. If other sections or pages are being ignored they may need to be removed...or promoted. Fill out all the Web forms (contact, search, etc.,) and read the "hidden text" that appears on landing pages. Rewrite the copy that seems dated or incorrect.

April: Start reading blogs in your industry. Download a newsreader (I recommend NetNewsWire for Mac users) or set up a free account at Bloglines. To find blogs in your industry you can do searches at Technorati or check out BlogCatalog among others. Make sure you're reading the blogs of your competition and your clients.

May: Start your own blog. You knew that was coming, right? Blogs are becoming an important, perhaps essential, part of business communications. No matter the size of your organization, a blog can be a great way to connect with your clients...and your clients-to-be.

June: Subscribe to your competitors' email newsletters. This is a fantastic (usually) free resource of advice that is targeted towards your clients. Shouldn't you know what your competition is recommending? Maybe they know something you don't!

You probably know many of your competitors already and can visit their Web site to see if they offer an email newsletter. However, you can Google "your industry + email newsletter" to find some ezines that are new to you. (You should also be reading your clients' newsletters as well; you can't know too much about their business.)

July: Start your own email newsletter or jumpstart your subscriber rate. If you're not publishing an email newsletter you're missing out on one of the most cost-effective Web marketing tools at your disposal. Use an Email Service Provider (ESP) to manage your subscriber list and publish an ezines regularly.

If you're already publishing an email newsletter try some new ideas to increase your subscriber base . Offer a free article for new subscribers, raffle off a prize to one subscriber each month, or advertise on a complementary newsletter.

August: Troll discussion boards in your industry. There are discussion boards on every topic under the sun, and certainly a few in your industry (or your target audience's industry.) By reading posts at these discussion boards you can get an understanding of what prospects are looking for and create products or services that meet their needs.

By posting responses you can quickly establish yourself as an expert and create links that drive traffic to your Web site while improving your site's ranking at the search engines!

September: Start listening to podcasts. The New Oxford American Dictionary named "podcast" its 2005 word of the year, so maybe you shouldn't wait until September before you tune in.

Whether podcasting ever becomes a part of your Web marketing, it's important to understand how podcasting works and how other companies (including your competition) use it. Visit the iTunes Music Store or a podcast directory like Podcast Alley and start sampling some podcasts. Not sure where to start? Adam Curry's PodFinder show (available at the iTunes Music Store) highlights new podcasts each episode.

October: Consider starting your own podcast. I can't recommend podcasting for every business, or even most businesses. I still believe there are more effective ways to communicate with prospects and clients. However, some businesses will benefit from offering a podcast. Keep in mind your target audience, and whether they will be downloading audio to their computer or mp3 player.

November: Submit some of your articles to article directories. A great way to increase your "findability" at the search engines is to have a lot of quality incoming links. One proven method to do this is to have articles you've written appear on other Web sites that link to yours. To get your articles posted at other Web sites check out article directories such as The Phantom Writers and iSnare.

December: Add share this page functionality to some or all of your Web site. As people suffer from information overload, they rely more heavily on the recommendations of friends and family. Make this word-of-mouth advertising easier by allowing site visitors to quickly "share this page" with a friend or colleague. You can even include your own marketing message embedded in the email that arrives at the friends' mailbox.

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Zero Investment Internet Marketing Techniques - The Who Loves Money Buzz Review

Seems like every time you turn around someone is hawking the latest and greatest new internet marketing ebook that is sure to make you rich. If you're an internet marketer chances are really good that you've been burned at least once by an ebook that was all fluff and absolutely useful information. Or worse yet, the author, deliberately or not,leaves out a step that leaves you scratching your head over how to execute what you did learn. It's enough to make you scream if you're really serious about learning how to build an online business.

By now you've heard the Who Loves Money buzz. It's the new ebook from Kyle & Carson, Wealthy Affiliate founders, that are claiming they can teach you how to make money online with zero investment internet marketing techniques. It claims to blow the lid off the current internet marketing theories that have been around for decades. The start up costs are supposed to be minimal and there are some techniques which require no money at all.

Most folks are thinking that it's just another internet marketing ebook. That's a true enough statement. However, the Who Loves Money buzz claims are that it's different in the fact that although the techniques presented are not necessarily brand new, these zero investment internet marketing techniques are said to be explored in depth and then explained in a way that is supposed to be easy to understand as well as easy to apply.

If you're new to internet marketing, then you should know that a number of standard website promotion techniques can get very expensive. If you aren't sure what you're doing, you could end up costing yourself money rather than making any. Here are some examples of what can be considered zero investment marketing techniques.



Niche Hunting - Deciding what topic to base your website on can be difficult. Building a site about a topic you enjoy doesn't necessarily mean that you can make a profit. You must learn how to choose a niche that has good profit potential.

Selection of Niche Keywords - You may have picked out a profitable niche, but if you target the wrong keywords for your webpages, you have just shot yourself in the foot. There is an art to selecting the keywords that will turn visitors into customers.

Affiliate Product Selection - You need to be able to review and select an appropriate product to promote on your site. A great website and a lousy affiliate product equals not many sales or lots of refunds. Refunds equal revoked commissions and that's something you don't want to happen.

Article Marketing - Writing topic based articles, usually 300-700 words, and submitting them to article directories. While this seems very easy, there is most definitely a specific technique to making it effective and productive.

Zero investment internet marketing techniques are not the hot new thing. They've been around for quite a while now, but are currently getting lots of attention. The Who Loves Money buzz is definitely building, but whether or not this e-book lives up to its claims still remains to be seen.

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