Wednesday 28 March 2012

Internet Marketing Strategies - Where Do I Start?

Trying to decide how to strategically market your product or service (or yourself) on the internet can be overwhelming. There are a myriad of marketing possibilities to choose from, and more great strategies are being offered almost daily. How can an internet marketer decide on the best strategic marketing plan that works for their business?

There seems to be as many answers for which strategies to use in what situation than there are internet marketing strategies themselves! There are definitely too many strategies for any one marketer to utilize them all. If you have a very large team with access to multiple internet marketing specialists, your marketing strategies can incorporate most available methods. However, most of us do not have access to that kind of resource.

How Do You Choose Your Internet Marketing Strategies?

There are too many internet marketing options to discuss them all in a short article, but there are three general principles that can make a huge difference to your marketing efforts. Following these principles will not just improve the success of your current internet marketing plan, but can help you figure out where to start focusing your efforts in the first place.

Three Principles for Making Appropriate Strategic Marketing Choices

1) Be Capable in your Strategic Marketing

Not all marketers are created equal. We all have a variety of strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately we tend to focus more on how to fix our weaknesses rather than how to harness our strengths. It is true we should all strive to improve ourselves, but sometimes the time and effort placed on learning the internet marketing strategies we are struggling with would be better placed finding and perfecting strategies that we already have an aptitude for.

When a strategy works well for the majority of marketers it does not necessarily mean it will work well for you. If a particular strategy does not come easily to you, it will take more time and will likely not generate the top quality you need to stand out against your competitors. If you are not adept at something, use a different strategy that you can implement effectively with the unique capabilities you do have, or make the investment to outsource if you have the means to do so.

This does not mean we should not learn new strategies! If you are not constantly learning, you will also not succeed. Make sure you are not perpetually spending more time learning something that is difficult for you than you are taking to actually market your product or service. Some great internet marketing strategies are better left for others who have a better aptitude for them. Their expertise will allow them to do it better than you anyway.

2) Care About your Strategic Marketing

Let's face it; everything we do in marketing is not fun. It is work, and most definitions of work do not include the word 'fun'. However...take a second and think about sitting in front of your computer to work on your latest marketing project. If you would rather be sitting in the dentist's chair getting a couple of teeth pulled, you are spending your time with the wrong strategies. Work can actually be enjoyable. At the very least, you should be able to find a few good strategies that beat getting teeth pulled. There are many strategic marketing choices on the internet. Pick the ones you enjoy and care about.

"But my current marketing strategies are supposed to be the best for my product!" "My upline says this strategy has been working for everyone on the team!" If you hate what you are doing, it will show in your work, just as your passion will shine through when you are doing something you love. It will be difficult to put in extra hours when necessary, you will be more apt to give up prematurely, and you will be unable to do exceptional stand-out work if you hate every minute of it.

Start by learning the marketing strategies you are most interested in, see which ones you like, and master those first. Eventually learn them all so you can find which methodologies you most enjoy and are best at. These will be the marketing strategies that perform the best for you and are more sustainable in the long run.

3) Be Consistent with your Strategic Marketing

For many marketers, the strategy seems to be: 'Chase the latest and greatest marketing options as soon as they appear.' They work on something, get mediocre results, then three weeks later when a great new idea comes along, abandon their current efforts and 'try' something else. This is not a recipe for sustainable success.

Sometimes the latest hot new marketing trend can work wonders and inject a lot of cash into your business. New ideas should be taken advantage of when appropriate. However, if it's new it is unproven and may fail. Has it been tested in your niche market? Will it still be working a week from now? If you change your marketing plan more often than you change your socks, you will never get really good at anything. You will be spending as much time learning new things as you do actually marketing your product or service.

Consistency is the key. If your strategic marketing plan is based on solid and proven strategies and you do not give up and start something new every couple weeks, you will become an expert in those strategies. They will get easier, less time consuming, and start running like clockwork to bring you a consistent stream of clients. It is easier and less risky to learn and test new methods when you have a proven and profitable system already in place to fall back on.

Points for Choosing the Right Internet Marketing Strategy

- Develop a good strategic base of internet marketing methods that you enjoy and are capable of implementing effectively.

- Be consistent with these marketing strategies so you become an expert and are profiting from them with minimal effort.

- Try almost everything, including the 'hot' new methods that look like they have potential, but don't abandon the tried and true methods that have already been proven to work.

- If you find new marketing methods that you enjoy and can utilize effectively, add them to your long tern internet marketing strategy and use them consistently until you master them.

Follow these steps, be patient and consistent, and you will succeed in finding your own strategic path through the internet marketing jungle. Happy Marketing!

Thursday 22 March 2012

A Simple Way to Make Money Using YouTube

YouTube is one of the most visited sites in the world and it also act as second biggest search engine. And that means lots of opportunities. You can take advantage of YouTube's popularity and make money. Here is a simple yet powerful step by step guide for making money using YouTube.

This method is all about going local, though when you master this method you can take it to the next level and go national as well. But if you want to get your share of YouTube money quickly, focus on your local area. Usually ranking locally for a keyword is much easier, and that is why this method works best with local businesses. We will use YouTube videos to rank well for the keyword since YouTube videos are hot and rank easily for their keywords. Here is what you need to do to make money with YouTube:

Find a local Business

The first step of making money with YouTube is to find a local business. It doesn't matter what kind of business, it could be a restaurant, car repair shop, hair salon, bar, thrift store or whatever. But, this method works best with businesses that can be best presented visually. For this guide lets assume you choose a local bar.

Make a video of the business

Go to the bar owner and tell him or her that you would make a free advertising video for the bar and upload it on YouTube, which will help him gain more business, IF he lets you shoot a short video of his bar. Most local businesses will have no problem with that. In fact they will be happy to let you advertise their business for free.

Take your camcorder and shoot a short video of the bar and what its all about. Be creative, you want to make it as interesting as possible. Maybe ask the owner about any special event they may have, like a karaoke night or free beer for ladies night or what have you and plan to shoot your video that night to capture how people are having fun and are happy and blah blah blah. Remember, you want to make people want to come to this place.

But what if you don't have a camcorder or cant shoot a video for some reason? No worries, you can simply take a few photographs of the bar and the crowd. Capture what you can about this place in a few pictures. Keep it simple and short.

Make a slide show

Use a free tool like Animoto to turn your photos into a professional video slide show. You can also use this tool to enhance your video (if you were able to shoot video) and make it more professional. you can add music, headlines and etc. This free tool lets you crate professional looking slide shows easily. You don't have to be a geek to work with this thing.

Important: Don't forget to place your name, website, phone number or any other info in the beginning and at the end of the video, This is how people can find you if they want a similar video made for their business. This is how you will be making your money!

Upload your video to YouTube

Now, take your video/slide show and upload it to YouTube. After all, the question was how to make money on YouTube! To get the most out of your YouTube video, use rich keywords that describes the video, like local bars in Chicago, best local bar in Chicago, bar in Chicago,...

Next, write a very descriptive summary of the bar and what it is all about. Simply write a review of the bar and link to the bar's website, twitter page, Facebook Page and etc. Most businesses have a website and a page on most big social networking sites these days. If your targeted bar doesn't have it, you just found another opportunity to make some money, offer to create a simple website or Facebook fan page or what have you. But that requires another article. Lets focus back on what we were doing.

Build a few backlinks to your video

Just like many other money making methods that are promoted online, making money with YouTube require a little bit of link building. Though, in most cases you don't have to do much. As I said, ranking locally is pretty easy. So, your video with good keywords and description will likely rank high for its keywords. But, to be on the safe side, you can build a few backlinks to the video to help it rank higher. All you have to do is write a few articles related to bars and include a link pointing back to your video (of course with your keyword as anchor text) and submit to a few top article directories. You can also upload your video to other video sites as well.

Competitors keep an eye on each other

This is all based on one very important fact, competitors always keep an eye on each other. So, pretty soon your video will be seen by other local bars. And as any sane competitor would want to do, they would want to be the one on that video. That's where your business info in the beginning and at the end of your video comes to play.

You have got clients

Prepare to receive calls from local bars wanting to pay you to make a video for them to help them promote their business. It really is that simple. Don't make it complicated for yourself, Just do it. You can always add things to it and make changes here and there. You will learn as you go along. The important thing is to get started.

Remember, you don't have to limit yourself to bars, you can use this method for any other local business, as long as you can make a video of it and put it on YouTube.

It really can't get any easier than this. Its a straight forward plan that doesn't require money or even any experience and best of all you can start right away. However, it still requires action on your part. You have to really commit yourself and do the work. If you are willing to put enough time and effort into this method, you can easily make money with YouTube.

Sunday 18 March 2012

First Steps to Start an Online Business

With the internet making millionaires and changing the way business is done people from everywhere around the world are looking for easy steps to starting an online business. Some of the ways to start an online business is to follow these next steps.

Making a Website

It is critical to have some sort of website or blog to start your online business. With all the blog sites and template websites available now, it is easy to start a blog or website quickly with sites like blogger or WordPress. You also need to be clear about who your target customers are so you can have a good title and theme for your site. It will make it much easier to start making your site and writing advertisements if you have a clear plan of who your marketing to.

It is also important to make sure that your blog name or website name has either your company name or whatever you are advertising for in the title. This will help people find your site and also give it better ranking in the search engines when certain keywords are searched for. Keywords are the words people type into Google or yahoo when they are searching for something. Finding out what keywords people are using before you set up your advertisements and article blogs is very important for high rankings. Use keyword tools like wordtracker or Google's AdWords keyword tool. Once you know what your advertising for and who your marketing to you can register for a domain name for your website. You will find a great website design tool link later in this article.

Concentrate on Content

You have to make sure the content on your site is not only relevant but interesting enough to keep people coming back continually. Keeping the content relevant to what your advertising for will keep people coming back and also rank your site higher in the search engines. Regularly updating the content is also important because people will stop coming to your site if there is nothing new to see. Updating content is a very important step to start your online business.

You Can Monetize Your Site

Besides whatever your selling on your site you are also able to monetize it by placing ads for other companies on your web pages. You can earn through pay per click and cost per impression techniques from the ads.

Marketing

Make sure you promote our blog or site with effective marketing techniques like article marketing, video marketing and forum marketing. Doing this will make sure more targeted traffic will visit your site. Make sure your articles and videos have back links to your site and your forum posts have a way for people to contact you with questions. Giving our rss feeds and sending news letters will promote your site also.

Use Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the promotion of the products and services of an already successful company. Since the company already has an online presence with a web site and way for customers to purchase online most of the work is done for you already. All you have to do is promote the companies site by doing article marketing, video marketing or pay per click campaigns. Once the customer is redirected to the site the already successful company website will do the rest to sell the customer and pay you a commission for bringing the prospect there.

Two-tier affiliate marketing is one of the best ways of making money online today. Since the products and services are there already you don't need to come up with ideas yourself. There is online mentorship and guidance given to you because the work you do and money you make directly affects your business affiliate partner, so they want to make sure you do well. All you do is find affiliate partners that want to make money online and teach them how to promote the same website products and services that you are. Whenever they earn commission you earn a percentage of that income also. Teaching them how to promote effectively is very important to you and will leverage you time and income. Following these steps will help promote starting your online business.

Saturday 17 March 2012

Expert Processes Expose How To Rank In Google

The primary thing you must figure out is that Google is your key customer and it is critical that you give the search engines precisely what they yearn for. Nearly everyone get this utterly incorrect and end up mistakenly somewhere out in cyber land. A reasonable question you should be asking yourself is what does Google want? How can I best help them and my intended customers?

Here are an assortment ofmethods that you can put into action immediately to improve your ranking results. The more of these techniques you have operating for you the greater your odds are of being revealed to the search engines clients. We can start out by being sure that the title of our website or page has the main keyword in it or is the main search term that we would like to rank for. It's also a good idea to have the keyword phrase as your domain name if it's obtainable.

Let's learn some optimization techniques that you can use to instantly improve your relevancy and placement results. It's always a magnificent idea to make use of multiple strategies as this successfully increases your odds of appearing before the engines viewers. We can begin by ensuring that the title of our internet site has the main key phrase in it or is the main keyword that we would like to rank for. It's suggested that you do a domain name search on the keyword phrase that you are trying to rank for as having your domain name the same as your key phrase gives you a boost in the search engines.

Here's what takes place behind the scenes in search engine land when someone searches on a search term phrase. Lets say someone does a search on "types of exotic fish." The engine will search for the keyword phrase exactly as it was typed across the internet in the following places: domain name, page title and subject matter of the page. If you have all of this in place that's a plus for you. Next the engine will look for keyword phrase density in the webpage subject matter. In other words it looks for how many times the keyword appears on the page in the relevant content. What is key phrase density anyway? Keyword phrase density is in basic terms how many times a key phrase is used on a webpage in relation to all the other words on the page. It's a ratio. This ratio should be between 1-3%.

Engines search for links to your web site in the form of backlinks as well as other sites that are linking directly to your website. The more internet sites that link to your website the more important a search engine will deem your site to be. Here's a few ways you can achieve back links: Submit content to article hosting web sites. Forum posts with your link in the post. Social media posts and fan pages. Post in book marking sites. Post optimized video clips. Submit to directory listings. Comment on other blogs. Contact other website site webmasters and exchange links with them.

Links to your site from other internet websites tell the engines that your website is worthy and has power. Here's an example you can relate to of social proof to a search engine. If you were going to choose an application for a smart phone and one had 500 thousand downloads and another had 20 which one would you choose as more relevant to your needs? The most would select the one with 500 thousand downloads. Websites are ranked in much the same way by the search engines programs in terms of links to your web page.

Speak to other webmasters and ask them to swap links with you. Some sites will happily trade links as the link exchange is a win win for you and the other website owner. The higher a internet site ranks that links to your website the greater the boost in the rankings to your site. The smart bots and spiders adore links. An effortless win is to be sure all your websites are linked as this also allows the spiders or bots to travel from one page to another very easily. Make sure that the key words or keyword phrases are visible in your website map.

Video tutorials should be integrated into your ranking strategy. When you make a video be doubly sure to use the key phrase you are trying to rank for in the video clip. Here is how to optimize a video: Make sure your key phrase is the file name. The title of your video should be identified with the precise search term your optimizing for and situated if at all possible at the begining of the title. To make sure relevant videos for its users, engines listen for the exact keyword in the video clip. The video tutorial web hosting site provides a box for a description. You will want to make absolutley certain to have your site url in there first followed by the search term you're trying to rank for. There should be no more than 60 characters total with no more than 5 search terms comprised of 20 or less characters each used in the tags box.

Strive to consistently strengthen your authority on a daily basis and in no time at all you'll own a colossal web existence. Subject matter duplication is looked at by the engines as a form of spam and they may reprimand you for this by sandboxing, banning or delisting your website. Outstanding web page rankings don't happen immediately. Grow your web existence optimizing for the search engines and your target audience & you will soon be dominating your niche all across the web.

Wednesday 14 March 2012

7 Vital Techniques of Using Facebook for Marketing Your Business

Using Facebook for marketing is a new concept compared to the other outdated modes of reaching out to the public. The question that bothers many new entrepreneurs is that whether using Facebook for marketing is actually a good idea and if it is; what is the way to start. The answer to the first part of the query is actually very simple. Getting a wide showcase for your business is your first priority. With over a billion users and an audience that ranges from ages 18- 70, there could not be a better platform than Facebook to market your business. Using Facebook for marketing is an excellent way to reach out to a huge audience but you need to know these 7 vital techniques to start on the right foot:

Create a Profile Page

Creating a profile is the first and the most important part of using Facebook for marketing, so put some thought effort and creativity in to it. Ensure that your profile photo speaks volumes about your business. Add as many friends that you can because you need people to spread your network and you may soon start receiving friend requests too (don't forget to accept them). Photos are another great way to improve the experience of using Facebook for marketing, but make sure that they are relevant to the product or business that you are promoting.

Create a Fan Page

Fan page is an excellent tool to add credibility and professionalism to your business. You may need to encourage users to become fans and by doing so you are adding to your future customer base.

Create a Facebook Group

There are many benefits of creating a Facebook group. You can post multiple messages to all members of the group with a single click. Another advantage is that you can engage your group members in any discussions that involve your business and is an easy way to connect with all of them at the same time.

Create Updates

No one wants to visit a Facebook page that is boring and does not have anything new to say. Keep posting updates and do it on a regular basis. Let your friends, fans and group members know something new or interesting about your business with each update that you post on the wall.

Create a Different Landing Page

Don't make the mistake of treating both your new and old members in the same manner, especially while using Facebook for Marketing. Design different landing pages for them. New users should be taken to a page that requests them to 'like' you and let the old members be taken to another landing page; maybe your wall or any other page that holds their maximum attention and interest.

Create an Active Interaction

Don't limit yourself to your page, your wall, your members and your friends. Search for businesses or products that are similar to yours and indulge in some active posting or commenting. This will not only attract attention by other members but also adds a touch of professionalism.

Create an Social Plug-in

You certainly have a blog or website if you are engaged in an online business. Make sure that you link all of your blogs, sites etc with your Facebook page. Add a Facebook button that enables readers of your blog to leave their comments, and this will be displayed on their Facebook update. These updates are visible to their friends too and it is a great way to attract new members or fans.

Using Facebook for Marketing is no doubt still in the beginner stages, but it is up to you to use this fact to your advantage. Start right away and you could build a huge fan base in another 2 / 3 years from now.

Tuesday 13 March 2012

The Secrets To Making Money Working From Home

To start making money working from home you need to have clear cut goals of what you intend to achieve and then build a marketing strategy. Your marketing strategy should revolve around tried and tested marketing methods. Since online business is constantly evolving, you need to keep abreast of new ideas and developments by research and an ever ending desire to improve by reading.

Undoubtedly, you will get a lot of advice from "marketing gurus" and other so called experts. Their opinion will be as varied as their intentions are suspect. Many will try to get into your wallet by telling you how their proven techniques have made them millions of dollars.

Successful internet marketers have the following traits in common: Focus, self discipline and a desire to succeed against all odds. With these traits, you will not be sidetracked from your venture. You will find that your drive to succeed will be increasing and infectious pulling other successful activities towards you.

Once you have done research on the niche you want to excel on, your determination will be your greatest key to success. Spending many hours in front of your computer may not augur well initially, but with a clear objective to succeed, you will be propelled to work even harder

There is always the fear associated with starting a new venture and if your self discipline is wanting, you will find yourself unable to make the first critical move.

Putting down your goals both short term and long term will ensure that you stay focused as you are trying to navigate the vast ocean of internet based business opportunities.

Many people jump from one venture to another and a few months later join the thousands of unsuccessful internet entrepreneurs. Success rewards those who figure out their path to making money online and single-mindedly follow it.

If you are able to make your first hundred dollars in say a month, use this as the launch pad to your home business. Look at it this way, a hundred dollars today could mean two hundred dollars the next day and three hundred dollars the day after that. After that, you will have realized what is working and you can multiply the hundred dollars to three hundred dollars a day and so forth until you have made a consistent income to make it worthwhile quitting any other job and concentrate with your home business

With time you will manage to free a lot of your time by outsourcing most of your activities and concentrate on what you are good at. This will lead to a more fulfilling and rewarding home business venture

Sunday 11 March 2012

Marketing On A Budget

Having traffic to your home business site is crucial to generating the much needed sales. You could have a great product, but if nobody knows about it, then it's all useless. You need to have a good strategy in place to bring the traffic and visitors required, and ultimately sales to your site. You can then reinvest the proceeds back to your home online business to move it to the next level. Remember that the main objective of your home online business is to add value to the consumer. Profit should be a byproduct of that objective. So if you have a great product or service, marketing it properly will lead to traffic that keeps coming back for more.

Marketing involves creating awareness to your website through such things as Search engine optimization, blogging, article writing and advertising

Advertising as a free mode of marketing is generally ignored as many people associate advertising to spending lots of money. However, you can effectively use social media like Twitter and Facebook to reach out to thousands of people without having to spend your money. A well written tweet that goes to thousands of people can lead to a massive inflow of traffic. Forums are a great place to advertise because most of their visitors have similar interests and want to make great posts so that they get noticed or they simply visit to get a solution to their problems. You can also use email marketing to reach out to potential clients.

Traffic from search engines is one of the best longterm sources of visitors as its able to sustain itself without having to spend loads of money. There are two major techniques when it comes to Search engine optimization. This can be divided into: "on-page" SEO and "off-page" SEO.

"On-page" SEO involves getting a target keyword and placing it intelligently on your webpage. It can be placed from your URL, title, description and a number of times in the body of your webpage.

"off-page" SEO on the other hand involves the "reputation" associated with your website. The more links coming from other sites (especially high authority ones), the better. It is more of a longterm strategy rather than a short term one. As such don't be in a hurry to get first page ranking for your keyword. The results over a longterm campaign in proper "off-page" SEO will have tremendous positive results in ranking your site well and bringing a constant flow of the much needed traffic from search engines. Many people give up after a few months of trying and never see the results of their efforts. Don't fall into this trap

The main attributes of "off-page" SEO involve backlinking and anchor text. This is where you have links emanating from other sites with your anchor text. Anchor text can be defined to be the visible text that appears in a hyperlink. The objective is to have as many links as possible to give your keywords the much needed push in search engine ranking.