Archive for August, 2009

Make Money on Craigslist How to Use the World?s Best Classifieds

August 31, 2009 @ 2:59 pm posted by John Brython

Do you know how to make money on Craigslist? Craigslist is the world?s largest and best classified site. And the best part is that almost all of the classified ads on Craigslist are free.

Craigslist started out as a simple email list that Craig Newmark sent to friends in the San Francisco bay area. At first it was a list of the weekend?s parties and events. As his personal list of recipients grew, people began asking him to list a roommate vacancy or a job opening.

Eventually, he decided to put the list online and let anyone post to it. At first, the site was only for San Francisco area users. But in 2000, they set up separate listings for Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Portland (OR), San Diego, Seattle, Washington DC, and Sacramento.

The site currently has more than 550 cities in 50 countries around the world.

Craigslist gets 12 billion page views a month and is the world?s 8th most popular English language website.

Knowing this, do you think you could make money on Craigslist?

Well, you need to keep in mind that Craigslist has an internal culture that isn?t overly friendly to internet marketing sales. In fact, the official url is www.Craigslist.org with the .org reflecting the company?s ?relatively noncommercial nature.? There is a sense that it?s okay to list your couch for sale but not an ebook.

Still, internet marketers have found ways to make money on Craigslist.

There are several sections to Craigslist including community, housing, jobs, for sale, and services. Craigslist asks that you post internet marketing opportunities in the appropriate services section. For instance, a debt consolidation offer should go in the Financial Services section.

Not all marketers agree with the Craigslist guidelines and they post to other sections at their own risk. For instance, you can create ads for ebooks and place them in the books for sale section or give away subscriptions to your free newsletter in the free section.

Many people promote affiliate marketing and other internet business opportunities in the jobs section. This can be risky as these ads often get flagged. If you get flagged too many times you can lose your rights to post to Craigslist.

The most visited cities are posted under ?US Cities? on the right hand side of the screen. San Francisco is, by far, the most visited page on the site. If you want to get your web site indexed quickly, make a post to the San Francisco page.

You can make money on Craigslist if you use the world?s largest and best classified site wisely.

Sell Online Products through Affiliate Marketing Strategies

August 30, 2009 @ 2:56 pm posted by John Brython

Do you want to sell online products? It is actually not all that difficult to get started selling products online.

You don?t even have to create or develop your own product to sell online products. Affiliate marketing is a strategy where you sell other people?s products.

In affiliate marketing, you are the middleman between a buyer and a seller. Your job is to pre-sell products and deliver warm buyers to the end seller?s home page.

Pre-selling is an art that not everyone has mastered. You may be so used to the continual onslaught of advertising that you think that in order to sell online products you have to ?sell, sell, sell.? In fact, you are better off providing a good user experience to your visitors and then making softball recommendations to people who have come to trust you.

For instance, if you want to sell an ebook on planning a wedding on a budget, you could create a blog about your own wedding. You could talk about the trials and tribulations of mother in law interference, dieting so you can fit into the wedding dress, and how your caterer cancelled at the last minute.

Then, from time to time, you will mention just how much good advice you?re getting from an ebook you bought which has helped you to plan your wedding on a budget. Include a link to the wedding book with your affiliate code imbedded into it.

Another way to pre-sell to your visitors is to offer a free report in exchange for their email address. You can put affiliate links for 5 or so products in the report.

But, once you have their email, you can continue to promote products. There are two ways to do this. One is to offer a series of emails offering useful advice and have an inconspicuous link to an affiliate product at the end of the email. The other is to send stand alone advertisements to your list from time to time. Remember that you can?t just ?sell, sell, sell? even in email marketing. You have to continually deliver good value to the customer.

If you want to sell online products, the opportunities for the type of products available abound.

? One way to find products is to look at major networks like linkshare, shareasale, and commission junction for physical products and clickbank for digital products.

? Another strategy is to go to large stores such as Wallmart and Amazon that offer a variety of products to promote and set up an account directly with them.

? A final strategy is to type in your keyword plus the phrase ?affiliate product? into a search engine. For instance, a search of ?Debt Relief? + ?Affiliate Program? turns up more than 90,000 results. Many of these are affiliate programs in the debt relief niche.

Start to sell online products today through affiliate marketing strategies.

Start a Computer Business in Your Spare Time

August 29, 2009 @ 2:53 pm posted by John Brython

There?s never been a better time to start a computer business. While the overall economy is in the tank, advertising expenditures on the internet are constantly going up. The internet is sucking all of the advertising from print and television.

What is even better is that it is incredibly easy to start a computer business. There?s very little cost involved and you can get started in your spare time without leaving your job.

The first thing that I have to tell you about starting an internet business is that there is not one single model to follow. Many people who want to get started online find that there are so many models that it is overwhelming. When you do your research, keep in mind that there are many ways to make money and you have to find the one that is right for you.

There are three different basic business models for those wanting to start a computer business. You can either create a product to sell yourself, sell other people?s products, or provide a service. All business models boil down to one of these three concepts.

When most people think of products, they think of physical goods. Indeed, you can sell physical products like crocheted doilies or your home baked chocolate chip cookies through the internet. But remember, when people go online, they are largely looking for information. So, creating an information product is the fastest way to make money online.

It is interesting that people will pay $15 for a paperback book at the bookstore that runs 300 pages, but they will pay $47 for a 60 page ebook that they download and print out on their own paper. However, that?s the economic reality of the internet. And, instead of having a publisher who gives you a dollar or two for the product, you get to keep the whole amount.

The next thing you can provide is services. If you write well, have graphic design skills, or can whip up a software program with ease, you can offer your services on the internet. There are sites like elance and rentacoder where buyers and sellers of such services meet. You can also go to forums where internet marketers chat and strike up relationships with people who can help you get started and who want to use your services.

Finally, if you want to start a computer business, you can sell other people?s products. This is called ?Affiliate Marketing.? Basically, you are the middle man between the buyer and seller.

You can sell physical products ranging from house wares to diamond jewelry as an affiliate marketer. You can also sell other people?s information products.

Affiliate commissions range from 4% to 75% of the total sale price. Because many information products offer 75% of relatively high purchase prices, many affiliate marketers begin by selling information products. The largest clearing house of information products is clickbank.com where 10,000 products are available for you to sell.

Once you choose a business model, you can begin to figure out how to make sales. But don?t jump around from one thing to another always in hopes of jumping the ?next big thing? bandwagon. Rather, decide on a model that works for you and run with it. That?s how you start a computer business in your spare time.

Benefit With Top Ecommerce Marketing Strategy

August 28, 2009 @ 2:50 pm posted by John Brython

You might think that the best ecommerce marketing strategy is advertising. Banner ads, one line text links and larger graphic ads on websites and in newsletters are one way to advertise. It?s usually a fairly expensive way, though. Especially if you have the graphics made to be eye-catching, like animations that are sure to get people to notice them. But just because someone notices the person doing cartwheels on your graphic ad, that doesn?t mean they?re going to click it. And many people are so annoyed by ads, particularly moving, flashy ones, that they run software that automatically blocks them from ever having to see such things. How are you going to reach them?

And even of those who see your ad, what percentage of them is likely interested in whatever you?re selling? Like a billboard on a highway with everyone passing, not many are actually going to be looking for what?s in the advertisement. So if you base your ecommerce marketing strategy on those kinds of ads, it?s kind of like throwing rocks into a crowd and hoping you accidentally hit someone.

There are techniques you can implement in your ecommerce marketing strategy, though, that are very focused and take much of the randomness and guesswork out of your plan. Search engine optimization is an important part of your strategy. This will help you design your content and web pages to get noticed by the search engines. You?ll focus each page on certain keywords surrounding your business, and when someone?s searching on that phrase, your company comes up high in the search engine results.

At least that?s it in theory. In reality, it?s not nearly so simple. Just optimizing the content you already have will definitely help. But the key to this type of ecommerce marketing strategy is to show new content on a regular basis. This shows the search engines that the website is active and updated regularly with keyword rich content. As far as the search engines are concerned this makes one site more valuable and vital than another site with similar content that?s not updated as often. So an important part of your ecommerce marketing strategy should always be new content that?s also search engine optimized.

Four- to five-hundred words on each keyword is a good plan, at least to start with. And care must be taken to make sure this content isn?t just attractive to search engines, but important to people, too. Gone are the days when site could list keywords or be filled with gibberish full of keywords just to get good rankings. Now it?s important that the content is there for more than just your ranking. So your ecommerce marketing strategy has to address the quality of the content not just how many times a keyword might appear within it.

Where at one time a simply repetition of the keyword many times in a row might have attracted a good ranking, you should avoid this in your ecommerce marketing strategy because search engines recognize most of these tricks.

Online Marketing Promotion

August 27, 2009 @ 2:47 pm posted by John Brython

There are several online marketing promotion strategies. You need to find the combination that brings the amount of pre-targeted traffic to your website in order to make sales.

The big online marketing promotion strategies that I?m going to cover in this article include pay per click, search engine optimization, and article marketing.

Pay per click will give you the quickest bang for your buck. You will be able to evaluate your success immediately when you use PPC. Unfortunately, this means putting some of your money on the line. Google?s Adwords program does not require you to pay for up to a month, but if you don?t make the money back immediately, you will be in debt.

When you do pay per click marketing as a form of online marketing promotion, you write a short ad (usually 90-125 characters) that appears alongside the search results on Google, Yahoo, or MSN. Your ads may also appear on relevant web pages if you don?t turn that feature off.

The position of your ad will depend on a combination of the amount you are willing to pay for each visitor and the percentage of people who see your ad and are willing to click through. Therefore, writing a good ad for low competition keywords is the way you make money with pay per click.

Now, you don?t have to pay to show up on Google?s search, but you do have to work for it. You no longer get visitors just because you build a web site. You have to entice Google to list you.

If you want Google to list you high in their search rankings, you must do a number of things on your web site and off your web site to attract the computer programs (also called ?spiders?) that Google and the other search engines run to determine search ranking.

Your site itself must be search engine friendly which involves having the right coding in your html as well as contextually driven content. You should also update your site frequently adding more pages to improve your search results.

But you also have to build a web of links to your site. You can do this by submitting your website to directories, making blog posts about your website, and posting to classified sites. One of the best ways to build links is to submit articles to article directories.

Article directories have two valuable purposes for online marketing promotion. One is to build links which increases the chance that your own site will be indexed in the search engines.

But there is another valuable feature to placing articles about your topic on article directories. Established directories have high page rank themselves, and the article you place will get the benefit of that. When someone types in a search term related to your site, it might not show up, but if you have submitted an article to a directory, your article might. Once the person reads the valuable content you have submitted in the article, they will be induced to click through to your website that you list in your resource box. Some of the best article directories include EzineArticles, GoArticles, and IdeaMarketers.

A variation on the article directory is Squidoo. On Squidoo, you create a lens which is several short articles and refer visitors to your site for more information. Squidoo also offers a variety of tools such as embedded YouTube videos, polls, and guest books which make it a unique visitor experience.

There are many ways to get visitors to your site. Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization, and Article Marketing are three online marketing promotion strategies.

True Value Of An Internet marketing Center

August 26, 2009 @ 2:44 pm posted by John Brython

An internet marketing center online should be your place for finding good promotional ideas, marketing help and information about various programs available online. It should be the equivalent of a small library that?s focused on nothing but helping you succeed in business and assisting you in finding the best way to marketing your product or service online. While there?s no doubt that it?ll try to sell you something, perhaps many things, there should be enough free and complete information there to keep you well-informed and assisted whether or not you spend a dime.

When you?re looking online for answers to marketing and promotion questions or looking to see how others have solved the problem you?re facing, you?ll find a lot of information that?s designed only to get you spend your money. This type of information becomes quite easy to spot after a while. You?ll think you?re finding an article that?s going to help you with your dilemma or give you some idea for your new marketing campaign, and instead you?re faced with one long page extolling the benefits of a package that?s for sale.

You?ll probably find an internet marketing center with the same type of search, but this time you?ll actually find some good and helpful information right along with the products for sale. The sales pitch will be about the same?it?ll explain to you how you need a particular product, maybe several products?and you?ll soon wonder how you ever got along without some of them. That just shows the effectiveness of the internet market center and its own promotion goals. At least if you?re reading about promotion and how to sell from within a site like that, you know that they practice what they preach.

Any site where you find information that helps you is useful. But it?s important, particularly when it comes to an internet marketing center, you learn to weed out the useful information and disregard the rest. This isn?t always easy, especially when you first discover sites like these. It tends to all seem useful. And the long sales letters with all the testimonials are very compelling. But it pays to go slowly and never make spur of the moment purchases from an internet marketing center. Chances are good that you?ll find the same marketing and promotion information for free and you won?t need to spend all that money for ?insider secrets.?

A good website of this sort will have a forum or message board where visitors can interact and ask questions about various aspects of internet marketing, about the different programs available, and about specific strategies and opinions. Some sites offer these forums to people who have paid a membership fee or purchased a certain product. But if you look carefully, you?ll find other sites that offer free forums to anyone interesting in marketing and promotion online. Overall, a good internet marketing center with active user forums where you can bounce ideas off other marketers can be a valuable tool in your marketing arsenal.

Discover The Secret To Specific Campaign Internet Marketing

August 25, 2009 @ 2:41 pm posted by John Brython

Discover The Secret To Specific Campaign Internet Marketing

Whether you?ve already got a campaign internet marketing plan in effect or you?re just starting out, it?s vitally important for you to understand what your target market wants. This is true of any marketing campaign, whether it?s online or at the small store on the corner. And it?s never been truer of the niche businesses online today.

When you have a business aimed at a certain target market, identifying that target market is the most important first step. But once you know whom to market your products or services to, where do you go from there? Aside from just getting yourself in front of your target market, how do you better narrow things down to appeal to those within that market who might want or need your product or service now? With a campaign internet marketing plan that knows what your customers want and appeals to them on that level.

So you already know your target market. Whether your target market is made up of pet owners, whether they?re people in the market for new electronic equipment, or they?re people who want to make money online, you have to figure out what exactly they want within those general groups in order to get to this level of detailed campaign internet marketing.

A pet owner, for instance, will want to take good care of the pet?s health. They?ll want their pet to live a long, happy life, have fun, be comfortable. They?ll also want the pet to behave, and not make messes in the house by pottying indoors or chewing things up. Pick a want and appeal to it for especially effective specific campaign internet marketing. If you want to market potty training pads, books about potty training dogs or a CD-rom with an instructional video onboard, then take the customer?s desire to potty train a dog and appeal to it when promoting the products.

Break down why they might want what they want. When it comes to potty training a dog, they want to keep their floors clean and avoid the sight and smell of a puppy mess indoors. And maybe they want to be able to say how quickly and easily the dog was trained, to boast on the animal?s intelligence. Use that in your campaign internet marketing. Advertise the product by pointing out that it can help them avoid odors and messes. Point out how it will teach their dog to behave in a way that will help the customer avoid those things, and point out that it can do so more quickly than if the customer attempts to potty train the animal without it.

For campaign internet marketing when it comes to people who want to make money online, think of the reasons they want to do so. Do they want to quit their job, take more vacations, spend more time with family? The best campaign internet marketing strategy is to take each reason and devise a way to convince the customer that your product or service will help them achieve it.

Email Marketing Software Design A Quality Email

August 20, 2009 @ 8:54 pm posted by John Brython

If you?re ready to implement your email marketing campaign, and you?ve already selected some quality email marketing software, you should take time to analyze what factors make for a quality email in an email campaign. Below you will find some great tips for designing a quality email that were derived from various experts in the field of online marketing.

Target your emails to the right recipients

Most failed email marketing campaigns didn’t work because the sender treated every email recipient the same. The person who loved blue wallpaper got the blanket email featuring the green wallpaper. While the people who like green wallpaper were happy, the rest of the email recipients were alienated. Don’t make the same mistake. Gather as much data as you can, from geographic location to customer buying habits. Study that data and divide your list accordingly. If you have a group of people who love one type of service you offer and another group that couldn’t care less, strategize accordingly.

Personalize your emails

Call your customers by name in emails if you can. Send your emails from the same from address every time. The more personal you can get, the easier it is to build trust. You’ll also have a better chance of your emails being opened and read.

Keep your layout simple

Don’t overload your layout with flashy graphics, huge fonts and other in-your-face items. Keep your layout clean and simple. Your layout should look professional and easy to navigate. A overly busy layout will turn your recipients off and send your email campaign or newsletter right into the trash file.

Don’t overload on copy

It’s tempting to use three paragraphs to describe a product you really love and think your customers should love as well. But don’t do it. Use small paragraphs and economy of language to cater to the short time frame your customers have to go through all their emails. If you have something you want to expand upon, link to the rest of the story via a landing page on your site.

Include a call to action

What’s the purpose sending an email touting products if you don’t ask your customers to do something beyond look? Your call to action can do many things: ask customers to click on a link, ask customers to fill out a survey, ask customers to make a purchase. Whatever call to action you choose, just make sure you actually have one in the emails you send.

Create a compelling subject line

Your subject line will make or break whether customers open your email or delete it. Do your due diligence. Come up with an honest, compelling subject line meant to grab the attention of your customers. Avoid hot-button words and phrases like ?make money!? and ?earn cash!?. Go for subject lines that pique the recipient’s curiosity, but tells the truth at the same time.

Keeping these things in mind as you create your campaign won?t guarantee your success, but they?ll dramatically improve your chances to generate sales and improve your ROI.

People often ask if article marketing is a new way to do internet marketing, but that is not exactly how things work. Article marketing is only one facet of internet marketing, and is not meant to be a complete replacement. Article marketing is only meant to be one facet of an entire solution, as internet marketing is intended to be a complete solution implementing multiple different types of marketing rather than one single form of marketing.

In other words, if you want to create an effective strategy for internet marketing to make money through your website, affiliate marketing or ad revenue, then one of the forms of marketing that you need to implement in your system is article marketing. No single form of internet marketing is going to drive results, so implementing numerous marketing techniques is the best way to attract visitors, and income, to your website. Article marketing is a powerful addition to any internet marketing plan, because it is completely free to get into and can drive some seriously effective results in the process.

Article marketing is a unique form of internet marketing that makes marketing your website more efficient and effective through the use of informative, valuable keyword driven content. If you are serious about marketing your website and driving new visitors to your site, article marketing is an extremely advantageous way to get it done. Article marketing involves writing valuable and informative articles relating to your niche or keywords, and posting them on public submission websites where other websites can pick them up, search engine spiders can find them, and hoards of new traffic can read them and follow valuable links to your website.

Article marketing is a simpler form of internet marketing, and it is also one of very few free ways to make money and generate traffic to your website. Once you submit articles to article submission and article directory websites, people will begin to access your website from the links that you place in the resource box or signature part of each article. Article marketing is an excellent way for you to establish yourself as an authority on a particular subject, and once people begin to regard you as an authority, they will be much more willing to follow your links and travel to your website for more information.

If you are looking for a powerful way to jump start your internet marketing campaign, then article marketing can be a powerful tool in your arsenal that will drive results and give you the traffic, income, opt-in sign ups and other vital activity that your website requires in order to thrive. Every website can benefit from internet marketing, and one of the best ways to get an internet marketing campaign going in a positive way that drives results is to implement cot effective article marketing as a means of building authority, creating one way links and driving traffic in to your website from numerous sources all over the internet.

Email Marketing Solutions Your Must Have Check List

August 18, 2009 @ 8:54 pm posted by John Brython

It?s time to launch your email marketing campaign; what should you know prior to setting your plan into motion? Well, before you do anything, you should first make certain that your sales staff and all sales departments are prepared to make the transactions generated by your email marketing campaign. Once your confident your business can handle a potential influx of sales, you should follow a few regimented steps to insure you?re making the most of your email marketing solutions. The below checklist will help you to determine what to do and when to do it.

Determine what day of the week to send your messages. The theories on this choice are numerous. Many experts suggest targeting individual customers over the weekend but business-to-business hopefuls on a Friday. However, a recent study indicates the best day to issue B2B email marketing messages is Monday or Tuesday. The truth is, there is no hard and fast rule for this factor. Do your own research to determine what day you think is best. Consider testing several days and determining which one gets the best response.

There are two times of day that are historically best for sending a marketing email, mid-morning and right after lunch. At these two times, people tend to be more receptive to what lands in their inbox.

After you?ve determined when and what time you?ll be sending your marketing email, you should prepare to monitor responses. Your monitoring efforts should cover everything from replies to unsubscribes. Monitoring your responses early can help you to eliminate and even avoid certain link and spam problems.

Now it?s time to deliver that email and the final step should be creating and email that is attractive, but not too ?spam like? that customers will take time to read and find easy to navigate. An effective interface will enable you to track the results of your email campaign and move ahead as a result of that tracking.

Below you will find a summarized ?tip list? derived from various email marketing experts. Take some time to review these tips and then be on your way to email marketing success.

Offer something to your customers!

In exchange for their contact info, offer your customers something in return. (i.e. a free newsletter, or seminar, or more information)

Be economical about the info you gather!

When gathering customer contact information, only ask for the information you need.

Make it easy for them to unsubscribe!

Make absolutely certain you provide a way for customers to unsubscribe from your e-mail marketing solutions campaign.