Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords

The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords (Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords)is a great resource if you use or intend to use Google AdWords as part of your online marketing strategy.

Never before in the history of advertising has it been possible to spend five bucks, write a couple of ads and get instant access to more than 100 million people in 10 minutes. But that's exactly what Google AdWords does. It's an awesome concept-but you can lose a bundle if you don't know how it works.

Learn how to:

• Build an AdWords campaign from scratch

• Identify keywords that entice people to click on your ads

• Get the lowest bid prices on your keywords

• Defeat click fraud and other scams

• Use search engine optimization techniques

• Turn clicks into customers

Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords (Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords)is on sale for just $16.47. That's a 34% savings. Your AdWords improvements will pay for this book many times over.

Improving the CTR of Your Google AdWords Campaign

Here is short but good overview of how to increase your CTR (click-through ratio) in your Google AdWords campaign.

As you are aware, Google Adwords is one of the most popular PPC avenues because of several features.

* Low signup cost (only $5)
* Instant activation of your account
* Instant activation of your ad campaign
* Provision to set daily spending limits

As the Click-Through-Rate (CTR) goes up, your ad position improves and Cost-Per-Click (CPC) goes down. This really puts Google Adwords in a different league.

Here are some simple tips to improve your CTR --
1) Specific matching along with broad matching

Generally when you want to advertise for, say, online dating, you put online dating in the keywords list. I suggest that you all of these in the keywords list -

* [online dating]
* "online dating"
* online dating

This way, when a searcher types just online dating, the click is credited to the 1st keyword. If the searcher types a keyphrase including online dating in that order but as part of a bigger term like free online dating, it is credited to the 2nd keyword. And if both online and dating are present but not together and in that order, like online singles dating, it is credited to the 3rd keyword.

This improves the CTR for certain specific keywords and helps to lower your CPC and also improves your ad position.
2) Use a variable title

Did you know that your clickthrough rate (CTR) goes up when the searcher sees his keywords (that he searched for) in your ad? This is because Google shows these words in bold.

But you don't know what term this searcher has used. So how can you put the term in the title? Try this.

Put this string in the title field on the Adwords screen -

{KeyWord: Default Title} where you replace "Default Title" with a suitable text. Now Google will show the search term as the ad title if the searched term fits within the 25 character limit and your default title if the search term won't fit.

Example - say you use {KeyWord: Online Dating} as the title and dating as the keyword.

If someone searches for dating help, the shown title will be Dating Help. However if one searches for free online dating resources, Google will show Online Dating because the search term won't fit in the title space (25 characters).

Did you notice the capitalization? If you use Keyword, then only the first word would be capitalized. If you use keyword, all the letters will be in small case.

This tip alone can boost your CTR by 157% or more.
3) Variable destination URL

Did you know that Google now allows variable destination URLs? Why do you need that? Variable destination URL can help you identify the terms that the searchers are using and you can alter your page content to suit those terms for a much better conversion.

Let's see the syntax to get the search term in the destination URL --

http://www.articlestop10.com/pam.php?kw={keyword}

Here we are sending the searcher to a PHP program (you can use a Perl program also), which then stores the terms in a database for easy analysis. You can plan for yourself how you want to put this information to your advantage.

Frankly this tip does not increase your clickthrough rate directly but once you know what the searches were searching for, when they arrived at your site, you can change your message for a much better response.

Search Engine Optimization (CD-ROM)

Search Engine Optimizationis a helpful CD-ROM which allows you to watch in action what is involved in optimizing your site online and achieving good placement in the top search engines.

If you're out of sight on the Web, says Search Engine Optimization specialist Richard John Jenkins, you're out of mind. Braving the wilds of search engine myths and facts, Richard offers essential tips on how to appear at the top of search results in Yahoo!, Google, and other popular search engines. From purchasing placement to optimizing keyword variations, from avoiding "black hat" SEO practices to setting up a search-friendly site, Richard covers it all. He also shares how to best submit your Web pages for indexing, how to monitor page rank, and how to build a solid base of links to your site. A must-watch video tutorial for experienced website publishers and for those just getting into the Web game.

Topics Include

* Search engine optimization (SEO) vs. search engine marketing (SEM)
* Getting to know your searchers
* Crawler-based search engines
* Keywording to rank high in searches
* Keyword combinations, variations, and stop words
* Setting up a site the wrong way: what to avoid
* Creating a search-friendly site
* Submitting websites for search engine indexing
* Building link relationships

About the Author

Richard John Jenkins, founder of Web Search Engineer, (www.WebSearchEngineer.com) is a search engine optimization and marketing specialist based in Santa Monica, California. Richard is a member of SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization). He uses Bruce Clay's SEOToolSet and abides by Bruce Clay's SEO Code of Ethics for all of his SEO clients. Richard brings years of experience and a wealth of multimedia and Web publishing knowledge to his SEO/SEM company and to the training he offers. For many years he was a top multimedia trainer at the American Film Institute in Hollywood. He was also a popular staff software evangelist for Macromedia Corporation and a successful business development manager for Corel Corporation.

Strategic Internet Marketing- Increase Your Sales

Getting your online advertising seen takes both skill and a lot of research. Here is a great article that explains some of the ways that you can increase your chances of getting your ads seen by the right people.

With millions of websites out there being visited by millions of computer users, how can you make sure that your ad can be seen by your target customers and that your leads will be followed by these users? Here are a few tips.

1. Place an ad on the websites frequented by your target customers. Before doing this, you need to define who will be your target customers. Placing an ad on sites that they usually visit will increase the possibility that your ad will gain the attention and will be followed your target customers.

Also, consider the website's search engine placement, traffic, external linking and the other ads placed on it. External linking will determine if there are other sites that link to this site. This will mean that people can get to the site where your ad is placed, even if they are browsing a different site. Check if many of your competitors have ads on this site.

2. Placing ads on some sites cost some money. However, there are also sites that can place a link to your site, product or service in exchange of having their link being displayed on your site. This is also true about the newsletters sent by site owners to its mailing list members regularly.

Also, having helpful links placed on your site and having sites link to your pages help in boosting search engine ranking. This is similar to making a statement that your site's content is important that other sites have links to your web pages.

3. Pay-per-click (PPC) is also a good method in Internet marketing. You will only need to pay for the ad if the link is clicked. If you prefer this method of advertisement, make sure that you are using services that set limits on daily expenses. There are also services that help you determine effective keywords and monitor the PPC results.

4. Choose your domain name wisely. It is still being debated if domain names matter when it comes to search engine placement. Whether it does or not, having product related domain names help consumers remember your domain, that they can go back to your site even without the links.

5. Make sure you have useful content on your sites. While keyword density is important in search engine placement, having useless information or annoying repetition of keywords will not increase your customer's confidence in your site. It may even affect your sites traffic and can get your site removed from search engines. So make sure that keywords are used strategically.

6. When thinking of keywords, think like your target customers. What do you think are they going to search so they can get to your site? Also, use specific keywords or key phrases. Submitting a single word or a very general phrase to a search engine will not get you to the top of the search results compared to submitting specific keywords that describe your product and services perfectly.

7. Track your ads. Always check how much you have spent on placing links on frequently visited sites and on PPC. There are services that allow you to monitor PPC transactions and how many of these end in sales. You always need to consider if the ads that you have placed on these websites are getting you to your target consumers and if these ads can lead to revenue.

One final tip on marketing products and services, sell the benefits. It will help your marketing strategies a lot if you highlight the benefits of choosing your products and services instead of merely discussing the product specifications. Product specifications may not mean much to customers, unless they know what these stand for (how these specifications affect the quality of the product or service).

Many people say getting to the top of search engine results is difficult since millions of websites exist, which can be using the same keywords. While this is true, this doesn't mean that your website has to stacked under your competitors' websites when presenting search engine results. Strategic advertising and linking, together with useful content, can also get you to the top of the search results.

About the Author:

Samizr Khan teaches Integrity Marketing with blogs. Learn how to build a list & make more money online, visit his blog at www.samizrkhan.name.

Watch Your Search Engine Positions

A great article dealing with search engines and the important role that they play for any online venture.

Since search engines are the first stop for people on the Internet looking for goods or services, the position your website appears in search results is an important factor. If your URL shows up far down the results list, the chances of the consumer never finding you increase incrementally. Once you achieve a high search engine position, it is essential that you make sure you maintain the high ranking you have worked so hard to achieve.

This means you must come up with a strategy to monitor your search engines positions. This strategy is crucial to the success of any marketing campaign. Think of your search engine positions as your online portfolio. Would you let your stock portfolio be ruled by chance and market fluctuations, or would you keep close tabs on your stocks so you could buy and sell when the time is right? This is the way you must consider your search engines positions.

Be aware that at first, after you have launched your search engine campaign and done all the right things to increase your rankings, you will most likely see a continual upward climb. What you need to be on the lookout for is the moment that upward climb reaches a plateau. When this happens, your search engine position campaign moves into stage two, the monitoring and protecting stage.

In stage two, do not be concerned about the short-term fluctuations in your positions. These are similar to the subtle rising and falling of stocks in a portfolio. Short-term movement is an integral part of the whole process. It's the long-term changes that you must watch for and prepare to act on immediately.

Analyzing the long-term trends of search engines positions is imperative. The way in which search engines rank websites may change at the drop of hat. If you are unaware of these changes - many of which are subtle yet can be deadly to your ranking - your position may drop to the bottom of the list before you can get your bearings. To prevent this kind of precipitous drop, you must create a system to monitor your positions on a monthly basis. Devise a chart to keep tabs on your top ranking positions or your top pages, and make sure to watch "the market" closely.

Each search engine uses a formula to compute website rankings. When a search engine changes this formula in any way, it may raise or lower your ranking. Some search engines use a number of different formulas, rotating them so that a formula doesn't become overused or outdated. Depending on which formula is being applied, your search engine position may suddenly drop or rise in rank significantly. Therefore, you must check your positions frequently in order to catch when a search engine changes formulas and what effect it has on your positions.

You must also deal with your competition - a crucial factor you must always be vigilant about. Your competitor's position may suddenly rise, automatically lowering your position. Or their position may drop, pushing your position higher. Each month, expect position changes due to the continual changes that are occurring in your competitor's position, and be prepared to adjust your marketing strategy to compensate for decreased rankings. Monitoring these fluctuations will also give you vital information about how to improve your website to increase your position in search results.

Of course, you must discern what the most popular search engines are in order for your monitoring efforts to be effective. Right now, there are ten popular search engines that direct most of Internet traffic to your sites. The challenge you face is that these top ten may change from month to month.

This means that your must not only monitor your search engine positions, but you must also keep track of the ranking popularity of the search engines you are monitoring. Find out which search engines people use most frequently every month and be sure to live in the present! People are fickle about their favorite search engines, and it takes constant vigilance to follow their dalliances. The search engines they loved when you first launched your campaign may be old news in the next few months. You must adjust your list of engines according to the whims of the Internet users.

Another factor to monitor carefully is a sudden drop of your positions in all search engines. This is not the same as monthly fluctuations - this is a neon red warning sign! It could mean a number of different things.

It all your search engine positions have plummeted, it may indicate that search engines spiders - those sneaky programs that seek out your site and rank their positions - have found some type of problem with your website. If you have recently changed the code, for instance, the spider may become utterly confused and consequently drop your positions disastrously. If a spider creeps up on your website when it is down for adjustments or changes, you may actually disappear from a search engine index entirely. Or a search engine may drastically change its formula, and suddenly all of your website come up as irrelevant. If that search engine is a current favorite, it may create a domino effect, causing all of your position to drop in all search engines.

Some search engines rely on the results from other search engines, and it is vital that you know which engines these are and keep track of all the engines they influence. The biggest problem here is that search engines will sometimes change affiliations, and this can create a major shift in the geography of the Internet. For example, recently Yahoo decided to display only results gleaned from Google. So you must not only monitor your own positions, but you must keep abreast of seismic shifts in the landscape of the Internet as a whole.

Finally, pay attention to your keywords. Keywords are the foundation bricks of the entire search engine system, and they demand individual scrutiny in your monitoring efforts. If you have found that a number of your positions have plummeted, it may mean that a page of your website has become invisible or inaccessible to search engine spiders. Or the competition for that particular keyword or phrase has recently rocketed into outer space. In either case, you must act quickly and efficiently to regain lost ground.

Your search engine marketing campaign is an investment. If costs you time and money on a continual basis. Protect this investment as diligently as you would your financial portfolio. In the same way, track your positions from an objective perspective, and monitor your positions on a regular basis. Make sure your time and effort reap rewards by keeping your eye on the big picture - your long-term marketing campaign.

About the Author:

Tyler Ellison is a successful entrepreneur who teaches free traffic hits secrets and internet video marketing tricks.

Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers and Prospects into Leads

Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers & Prospects into Leadsis a book that primarily focuses on web design in relation to business and sales.

Your web site is a business—design it like one.
Billions of dollars in spending decisions are influenced by web sites. So why aren't businesses laser-focused on designing their sites to maximize their Return on Investment (ROI)?

Web design can do more than make a site look good—it can be a powerful strategic weapon that enhances financial returns and creates competitive advantage.

It's time to make web sites accountable. It's time to make design decisions based on metrics and business goals. It's time for Web Design for ROI.

In this book you'll learn:

* Why so many organizations think about web design the wrong way

* How small design changes can have a big impact on your bottom line

* Simple tips to increase web sales/leads by 10% – 50% (or more)

* Concrete design guidelines for:

* Landing pages
* Home pages
* Category pages
* Detail pages
* Forms
* Checkout processes

Packed with helpful examples from a wide variety of sites!

Website Design and Legability

Many web designers fail to take into account the importance of web colors and text legibility when building their site. Watch this video which talks about this at length.

How to Sell Online

Interested in selling online? Read on for a good overview of how it is done.

You do not really need a truckload of money to start your own home business. In fact, with just a few hundreds of dollars, you can start your own e store. The good thing about starting an e store is that you do not really need to keep lots of inventory. As long as you can deliver all your orders on time, nobody has to know that the item that you are selling is not yet in your possession. What is really important about setting up an e store is that you have a good site which is easy to navigate, a reliable payment system and you have a courier that can deliver your wares fast.

Choosing what to sell in your e-store

Breaking into the online business is not really easy. There are millions of online stores that are selling different types of good and services out there and if you are not selling something unique, you will probably be lost among the multitudes of e stores that are selling generic items. If you really want to succeed in the online business, you must find something unique to sell. Of course its not easy to find something that is truly unique these days but if you can find something that people would want to buy, then you are in business.

When choosing what to sell in your e store, consider the source of your supply first. It will not do you any good if you sell something that is unique and when somebody does purchase your goods, you will not be able to deliver the goods on time. Always remember that it is alright if you do not have physical possession of the goods that you are selling online but it is definitely not cool if you can not deliver what you promise. If you want to stay in the online business, make sure that you have ready access to the things that you are selling online. Always bear in mind that when you lose a customer, you most likely not going to get that person back.

According to studies 95% of the people who shop online never come back to an e store that gives them bad service. Another thing that you must remember when choosing the items that you sell online are that these items must be of good quality and they are exactly what you describe them to be. Never attempt to gloss up your product descriptions if you do not want to be into trouble. Note that a lot of clients would return the items that they bought online because these items did not correspond to the description given. Once your clients start returning your products and giving your site bad reviews, your business will suffer and you lose a lot of money.

Obinna Heche. Los Angeles - California Delivering the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home successfully.. www.homeincomeportal.com/obhmy365

Finding the Right Wholesaler

Here are a few things to keep in mind when looking for a wholesaler.

When you want to sell products in retail, the first thing you need to do is to find a reliable and trustworthy wholesaler. This is because there are a lot of wholesalers who do not deliver on their promise once you want to do some transactions with them. In fact, wholesalers are getting a bad reputation because of the few companies that cheat on their customers. And added to this is the fact that the inventory you will buy from these wholesalers may not necessarily sell in the market. So before you enter into the retail business, here are some tips you may find helpful. You may also have a look at one of my affiliate programs.

The first thing you need to do is to conduct market research on your target market. You need to know if the product you wish to sell will actually be saleable to them or not. This is because while a particular product may sell well in one area does not necessarily mean it will also sell well in another area. So even before you search for a wholesaler, you must know if the product you intend to introduce to your target market is actually viable because it would be a waste of time if you spend too much time searching for a reliable wholesaler only to find out that the product you want to sell is not going to be saleable in the actual marketplace.

The next thing you should consider is the product choice. Once you had determined which industry you want to enter, it is now time to know which product you need to stock up on. You should note that it is more viable to enter a niche market that will buy your particular product than enter the mass market at once.

Meanwhile, the third step is finding the right wholesaler. There are many sources and directories you can look up to find suppliers. But the advertisements and the websites you visit may not necessarily contain reliable suppliers that will really deliver the kind of product you requested. So it is recommended that you put up safety measures in place even before you pay for these products. You can find these wholesalers from online directories and even sourcing agents but always remember never to pay in advance unless trust between the two of you had been established.

It is also important to have patience in order to find the right wholesaler with the best price. However, you should not expect these wholesalers to provide unrealistically low prices. If there are establishments that offer prices that are too low then you need to conduct thorough research first before doing business with these kinds of establishments.
Then the last step you need to remember is to have faith in yourself because having confidence is important for success to be possible.

To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit: www.WealthyRich-Internet.com www.WealthyRich-Internet.com/articles

Website Marketing- Stand Out From The Crowd

Website marketing has evolved in many ways over the years. Way back when, website owners depended primarily on search engines for their survival. Today, the advances in technology have made the marketing game more competitive than ever. This article sums it up pretty well.

As a web site marketer these days, in the 21st century, you have to work harder than ever to stand out from the pack. Everybody's sending out ezines. Nearly all of us hold teleseminars.

Add your ezine and teleseminar and you're joining a parade down Main Street. Sometimes you can generate leads even more effectively if you also run through the alleys and knock on back doors.

Often these back-door "sneaky" strategies seem too easy to be effective. But simplicity can be deceptive. You need to plan carefully to avoid wasting time. Used incorrectly, the back-door approach can backfire. You have to play by rules that change overnight and that aren't easy to figure out.

Strategy #1: Contribute to a discussion list related to your topic.

For lead generation, join a group whose membership matches your target market as closely as possible. Choosing the right group can be challenging. For example, you may be eligible to join a forum after attending a workshop or purchasing a manual. Or you may pay to join a mentoring group. These groups create forums and discussion lists directly related to your interests, but moderators tend to be extremely cautious about self-promotion.

You can also search through yahoo or google for groups. For example, you can search on "professional women discussion list" or "work at home dads discussion list." Some websites feature lists of discussion groups, often arranged by topic. Searching through listings takes time but, with patience, can produce some good results.

Tips:

Once you join a forum or discussion lists, it's a good idea to "lurk" for awhile. Get a sense of the group's mood and style. Introduce yourself. Evaluate your responses. If you sense a lack of interest (and occasionally even hostility), consider withdrawing from the group.

The challenge is to draw a fine line between contributing proactively and becoming a nuisance. Success depends on finding just the right blend of asking questions and providing expertise.

Example 2: Write reviews for online bookstores.

As an avid and eclectic reader, I began writing reviews for one of the online bookstores. Originally, I was just having fun and actually felt guilty for taking time from my "real" work. I wrote about everything: mysteries, business books, nonfiction.

To my surprise, these book reviews began to attract subscribers, clients and invitations to be interviewed by professional reporters and writers. Recently one of my reviews was quoted in a blog, giving me valuable (and totally unexpected) publicity.

When these readers came, they were highly motivated. Unlike readers of ezines, they were prepared to pay or resources. After all, bookstores don't give away books! I suspect many hold a credit card in one hand as they surf with the other.

Tips:

Choose best-selling books related to your topic -but not exclusively.

Write carefully, using correct grammar and style. I've found that I get the most response by being edgy but thoughtful, and not too long or too short.

Follow the guidelines concerning what you can disclose about your business. Your review can be edited or removed entirely if you appear to be selling or if you use inappropriate words.

Bottom Line: Often we find our most successful back-door strategies by accident. But applying those strategies callsapplyin for planning, flexibility and responsiveness to change.

About the Author:

FREE 7 Best-Kept Secrets of Websites That Really Attract Clients: My Special Report gives you insider tips to convert tire-kickers to buyers and earn money while you sleep. From Cathy Goodwin, The Content Strategist, at Website Marketing Strategies.

Search Engine Optimization - Google

A short video that discusses some of the more important factors determining your placement within Google search.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR

The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directlyis a recent release that discusses in detail new marketing and PR strategies today. From the review:

Though it may not yet have affected the value of 30 seconds of Super Bowl advertising, PR insider Scott argues that understanding the growing irrelevance of marketing's "old rules" is vital to thriving in the new media jungle. Already apparent in newspapers and magazines (with sharp downturns in circulation and ads), radio (on the losing end of the iPod revolution) and direct mail (digitally replaced by spam), the imminent fall of traditional mass media marketing means new opportunities for legions of smaller companies and independent professionals who need to reach niche markets cheaply and effectively. The way Scott sees it, this is also good news for consumers: the online culture of integrity and information tends to produce quality content for less, as opposed to the vapid, one-sided and pricey advertising of print media and television. Scott provides the technical novice a thoughtful and accessible guide to cutting-edge media arenas and formats such as RSS, vodcasts and viral marketing, without neglecting the fact that technological wizardry can't substitute for a well-thought out marketing program. Besides emphasizing fundamentals like defining one's audience, Scott also drills home the ethos and etiquette of the web, encouraging content that's both useful and unobtrusive. This excellent look at the basics of new-millennial marketing should find use in the hands of any serious PR professional making the transition.

Picking the Right Niche Market

Much has been written about niche marketing and the many advantages that this can provide for a successful online venture. If you do decide to go this path, it is important that you pick the right niche market for your business. Read on for more.

In business, you only want to play in a niche market you can dominate. To find that niche, you must first look within yourself.

What are your passions? Hobbies? Strengths?

What do you love to do? In what areas do you excel?

Picking something you are passionate about is vital. Passion provides purpose, instills courage and inspires perseverance. You can't become great at something you don't care about, are scared of or will quit when things get tough.

And business is tough. You're going to experience difficulties no matter what area you choose. So choose an area that makes pushing through the problems worth the effort. Otherwise the problems will overcome you rather than you overcoming the problems.

If you're not sure what you're passionate about, think back to your childhood. What did you dream of doing? Who did you dream of being? Chances are those dreams are still alive inside you; they've just become buried over time. Resurrect them and make them happen.

If you're not sure what you're strengths are, ask your friends and family. They've been around you enough to know what you're good at. You probably don't even realize your strengths are strengths because it comes so naturally to you!

Once you figure out what you love and are good at, you need to narrow your focus. Where in your niche can you be the best in the world?

By claiming a niche within your niche, you are seen as a leader and thus have a competitive advantage over anyone who tries to encroach upon your territory. When you're the leader, everyone else is perceived as a copycat.

Pursuing something you love is only half the equation. The other half involves marketplace research:

-Does your niche provide enough revenue for you to be profitable?
-Can you reach your target audience?
-Can you sell and resell your customers?
-Do your customers have enough money to afford your expertise?
-Are other people selling similar products?

If you can't find any competition via sites such as Google or Clickbank, it's probably because the market for your product does not exist.

If that is the case, you need to dig deeper within yourself. What else are you passionate about? What else are you good at?

Keep searching until you find an area where you can both leverage your strengths and make money. Then take immediate action!

Glen Hopkins specializes in teaching struggling entrepreneurs how to turn their small Online businesses into thriving money machines all while working less and earning more. To get more information, including Free Reports, Videos and CDs, visit: www.GlenHopkins.name

Online Business Mistakes- A Short Video

Take a look at this short video that highlights some of the mistakes that are made by many online sellers.

Making Money From Blogs

This is a more in-depth look at the many ways to make money from your blog written by Malia Wofford, an Internet Marketing Specialist.

A weblog (or simply blog) is a website that 'publishes' or features articles (which are called 'blog posts', 'posts', or 'entries'), written by an individual or a group that make use of any or a combination of the following:

Straight texts
Photographs or images (photoblog)
Video (videoblog)
Audio files (audioblog)
Hyperlinks

Usually presented and arranged in reverse chronological order, blogs are essentially used for the following purposes:

Online journal or a web diary
Content managament system
Online publishing platform

The typical blog has the following components:

Post date -the date and time of the blog entry

Category - the category that the blog belongs to

Title - the title of the blog

Main body - the main content of the blog

RSS and trackback - links the blog back from other sites

Comments - commentaries that are added by readers
Permalinks - the URL of the full article

Other optional items - calendar, archives, blogrolls, and add-ons or plug-ins

A blog can also have a footer, usually found at the bottom of the blog, that shows the post date, the author, the category, and the 'stats' (the nubmer of comments or trackbacks).

There are numerous types of blogs. Some of them are the following:

1. Political blog - on news, politics, activism, and other issue based blogs (such as campaigning).

2. Personal blog - also known as online diary that may include an individual's day-to-day experience, complaints, poems, and illicit thoughts, and communications between friends.

3. Topical blog - with focus either on a particular niche (function or position) that is usually technical in nature or a local information.

4. Health blog - on specific health issues. Medical blog is a major category of health blog that features medical news from health care professionals and/or actual patient cases.

5. Literary blog - also known as litblog.

6. Travel blog - with focus on a traveler's stories on a particular journey.

7. Research blog - on academic issues such as research notes.

8. Legal blog - on law (technical areas) and legal affairs; also known as 'blawgs'.

9. Media blog - focus on falsehoods or inconsistencies in mass media; usually exclusive for a newspaper or a television network.

10. Religious blog - on religious topics

11. Educational blog - on educational applications, usually written by students and teachers.

12. Collaborative or collective blog - a specific topic written by a group of people.

13. Directory blog - contains a collection of numerous web sites.

14. Business blog - used by entrepreneurs and corporate employees to promote their businesses or talk about their work.

15. Personification blog - focus on non-human being or objects (such as dogs).

16. Spam blogs - used for promoting affiliated websites; also known as 'splogs'.

Blogging is typically done on a regular (almost daily) basis. The term "blogging" refers to the act of authoring, maintaining, or adding an article to an existing blog, while the term "blogger" refers to a person or a group who keeps a blog.

Today, more than 3 million blogs can be found in the Internet. This figure is continuously growing, as the availability of various blog software, tools, and other applications make it easier for just about anyone to update or maintain the blog (even those with little or no technical background). Because of this trend, bloggers can now be categorized into 4 main types:
Personal bloggers - people who focus on a diary or on any topic that an individual feels strongly about.

Business bloggers - people who focus on promoting products and services.

Organizational bloggers - people who focus on internal or external communication in an organization or a community.

Professional bloggers - people who are hired or paid to do blogging.

Problogging (professional blogging) refers to blogging for a profit. Probloggers (professional bloggers) are people who make money from blogging (as an individual blog publisher or a hired blogger).

Below are just some of the many money-making opportunities for probloggers:

Advertising programs
RSS advertising
Sponsorship
Affiliate Programs
Digital assets
Blog network writing gigs
Business blog writing gigs
Non blogging writing gigs
Donations
Flipping blogs
Merchandising
Consulting and speaking

The following are a few things that you need to consider if you want to be successful in problogging:

1. Be patient. Problogging requires a lot of time and effort, not to mention a long-term vision.

2. Know your audience. Targeting a specific audience or group is a key to building a readership.

3. Be an 'expert'. Focus on a specific niche topic and strive to be the "go-to" blogger on that topic.

4. Diversify. Experiment with various add and affiliate programs that enable you to make money online (aside from blogging).

5. Do not bore your readers. Focus on the layout. White spaces, line spacings, and bigger fonts make a blog welcoming to read.

Certainly, it is possible to earn money from blogs. One just needs to take risks, the passion, and the right attitude in order to be a successful problogger.

Malia Wofford is an up and coming internet marketing guru. Malia is the owner of alia-internetmarketing.blogspot.com/ a website that gives you free up to date, decoded internet marketing secrets to launch or explode your business.

Money For Content and Your Clicks For Free: Turning Web Sites, Blogs, and Podcasts Into Cash

Anyone currently earning money online using blogs, podcasts or web sites knows that it is much more than simply sticking some ads up and hoping that you can sit back and reel in the dough.

JD Frazer has written a book, Money For Content and Your Clicks For Free: Turning Web Sites, Blogs, and Podcasts Into Cashwhich expoless the many ways that you can earn money online. As per the review:

If you're a blogger or podcaster, an artist or musician, or someone who creates any other type of online content and dream of earning income from your creative efforts, you have endless options on the Internet. But to seize them, you must become part businessperson—a creative entrepreneur. If that thought intimidates you, you're not alone.

JD Frazer has been there, and he shares with you everything you must know about syndication, advertising, branding, merchandising, copyright protection, ethical considerations, how to attract consumers, and more. If you want to earn a living from what you create, here's what you need to do:

• Make wise decisions that protect your intellectual property and your interests

• Approach the subject of paying for content without alienating your audience

• Understand the realities of self-syndication

• Weigh the advantages and disadvantages of membership features on your Web site

• Learn how branding and merchandising apply to your art

• Be prepared for fame as well as anonymity, and the hazards of both

• Recognize the ethical balance that exists between creator and consumer

• Explore online resources that assist the creative entrepreneur

The author, JD Frazer, is a cartoonist and writer who enjoys a readership in excess of 1.5 million fans internationally. His site, Userfriendly.org, is the first stop on the Web in the morning for a vast number of Information Technology professionals.

4 Tips to Maximize Your Blogging Profits

Money for blogging? You bet! The ways to monetize your blog are as limited as your own imagination. Regardless of the path you take, there are some constants involved. Sarah McAllister has a great post dealing with this.

It is very surprising to see that now too many people know that there is a lot of money to be made with blogging. Most people will tend to set up the prettiest blogs out there, but they will never be seen by anyone on the internet. Why is that? Well, because most people do not know how to market effectively.

Without ever trying to drive traffic to your blog, you will never be able to make money online. Today, I am going to share with you a few tips on how I get my blogs noticed and how to make money from them. These tips are very easy to follow and do not require a lot of your time to do.

Here are your tips to blogging success:

1. Update

Updating your blog everyday is essential in order to get traffic to your blog. You dont have to update the blog everyday but, it is better if you do. The more you update your blog the higher you will be placed in the search engines. I usually update my blogs on a regular basis by adding new pictures; new posts and sometimes I will add a few YouTube videos.

2. Ping

Pinging your blog is a very good thing to get into your daily habits. Every time you make an update to your blog, you should always ping it. The two sites that I tend to use for pinging are pingoat and pingomatic. Sometimes one of the ping sites can go down for the day that is why I use two sites for pinging my blog. These two sites rarely go down though and are a very reliable source to ping your blogs at.

3. Promotion

You need to promote your blog in order for it to get recognized on the internet. Remember that this is the most important step to create blogging success. If you dont have any money that is fine because there are many free ways to promote your blog for free. The best way to promote your blog is by writing articles and submitting them to many different directories to get 100's of back links to your site. this way should really get you ranked well in the search engines.

4. Blog post

You can also post in other peoples blogs to get back links as well. Just go and find relevant blogs like yours and post a question or suggestion about there blog and leave a link back to yours. It is the easiest and quickest way to get a back link to your site.

So, there are 4 simple tips to have blogging success.

Sarah McAllister is a writer, online entrepreneur, and a success addict! She has experienced many curves in the road which led her into the success she has today with her online business. Here is one of the products she reviews and recommends to use here: Blogging to the bank

Pricing as a Marketing Tool

Pricing as a marketing strategy is something anyone selling online needs to be familiar with. Read on to get a better understanding of how this works.

Products that provide the same kind of utility to the consumer, but are branded differently, have different prices, more often than not. The price is a part of the marketing strategy and has to be decided upon, after careful consideration.

As in the case of any other business, it is essential to have a pricing strategy, for a business that is based online. This depends on a number of different factors.

The foremost among these are the profiles and preferences of the website’s visitors. It is important to find out whether they make purchases on the basis of the prestige value of various services and products or are looking for bargains. Besides, the cost of producing or purchasing and, then, marketing has to be determined.

Objectives

Pricing strategies are generally aimed at either of the following:

Earning profits in the short term:

This implies trying to earn as much money as possible, out of the sale of each unit, even as the number of customers or clients may not be large. This could imply charging a huge premium on the prices.

Increasing market share:

This can be done by pricing the service or product lower than comparable ones. Although earnings may initially be low, but one can expect to sell related products and services later, as the customer or subscriber base is enlarged.

However, the pricing may also try to achieve any of the following objectives:

Survival:

When short-term survival is the main aim, companies lower prices, so that sufficient revenues can be generated. This is not sustainable in the long term, however, as the losses continue to mount with each unit sold.

Altruism:

Prices of essential services or products may be lowered for the benefit of those consumers who would otherwise not have the means to be able to purchase these. Economical versions of standard services or products may be provided, after imposing some limits regarding the benefits or features.

Demand:

The prices and availability of other products, the income of consumers and their tastes, among others, are the drivers of consumer demand. For instance, demand is likely to go down, if a competitor sells a comparable service or product at a lower price.

Demand and supply tend to strongly affect services or products that are more or less the same as many others. So, the prices change quite often. Exclusivity can, therefore, make a lot of difference. This could be in the form of a unique product or service, or exclusive rights to market it. Appropriate pricing and advertising can, then, help to increase demand.

Revenue estimates:

After consumer demand has been established, revenue estimates have to be arrived at, in order to determine appropriate pricing levels.

Some graphing and mathematical analysis is usually required to determine the sales level, where the total costs i.e. the sum of fixed and variable costs can be covered and, so, a break-even can be achieved. Profits start being earned beyond that point. For optimal pricing, finding out that profit point is essential.

Pricing methods:

1. Some methods of pricing that are oriented towards demand are as follows:

2. A high price can be charged for products that are innovative, since those who purchase such products initially are not likely to be very sensitive towards pricing. After some time, the prices can be lowered, to facilitate purchases by those who are more price-sensitive. Ultimately, as similar products begin being offered by competitors at lower prices and with the maturity of the product, prices will have to come down.

3. When some market segments tend to be sensitive to the prices, these can initially be set low. A lot of competition can, thus, be kept from entering the market. This can lead to a decrease in the cost for marketing, when the customers gained in this way make repeat purchases, in case they are satisfied with their experience of purchasing the service or product for the first time.

4. Some buyers believe that a product is of high quality, only if it is priced higher than those in the same category. So, the prices have to be at a premium, in order to attract such buyers.

5. Pricing can also be determined by first finding out from the consumers as to what amount of money they would readily pay for the service or product. The marketers can then work backwards, to arrive at the price.

Pricing, obviously, also has to take into account any relevant governmental regulations, allow for geographic adjustments, as appropriate, and to make adjustments with respect to any discounts or rebates that may have to be provided, from time to time.

About the Author

When looking for more information and resources related to marketing Private Label and Master Resell Rights Products, viral marketing, e-book marketing, internet marketing resources and ecommerce, visit www.moneytreecentral.com for complete details.

Using Promotional Products in a Marketing Campaign

Using promotional items in any marketing campaign is a great way to get your brand out and build customer loyalty. The following presents a good overview of just how this is done.

Corporate gift marketing is one of the best marketing strategies that you seriously need to consider be included as part of your overall marketing plan for your business. By giving away corporate gifts, you will be able to build up your brand awareness, as well as to promote feelings of goodwill between your business and gift receivers.

One very important thing to note when it comes to using corporate gifts as your marketing strategy is that quality of the gifts count a lot. Your gifts should appear perfect, in appearance as well as the purpose it serves. You should not take any chances here. Go to your most trusted suppliers. If it is your first time, then look for a company which is reputable so as to minimize your chance of getting low quality gifts.

Now, let us get into the reasons why corporate gift marketing is essential to your business:

1. Corporate gifts allow personalization. To have a successful brand marketing campaign, your brand must be personal enough for consumers to identify and build a more personal relationship with. By matching corporate gifts to the type of company personality that requires promoting, you will able to hit the right chord with the consumers.

2. Corporate gifts maintain the positive interaction and goodwill between your business and consumers. Usually after a brand marketing campaign, consumers will only be able to associate and interact with a company through its advertising message, which is intangible. But with corporate gifts, you are giving them a physical representation of your company. In this case, they will be able to touch and feel the representation of a company. This will deeply leave your marketing message in their minds and result in a better overall marketing campaign in the long run.

3. Build your company brand. Branding is very important for businesses as it allows the consumers to associate your services or products of your company. A corporate gift is a great way to build brand awareness as branding is all about making associations. For example, if you think of Nike, you may think of football jerseys with the TICK on them.

Before you use corporate gifts to market your products, do make sure that you set your budget first. With the right budget, you will be able to produce a successful campaign.

About the Author

Cheow Yu Yuan is a freelance article writer and specializes in article marketing on the Internet. This article is written for one of his clients in the corporate gifts industry, you can visit the website from the link below... Click Here: Corporate Gift Ideas - Cool Style Gifts

Growing Your Business With Google

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Growing Your Business with Googleis a great read for anyone involved in online commerce. Google, the online search giant, can be a very valuable partner in your marketing and promotion plans.

Using the Internet to increase the visibility of a small business today is no easy task. It can take a lot of time, energy, and money—especially if you’re not a computer expert. Here, readers can get a valuable overview of how search engines, web sites, ad services, and web logs can all work together to build a business, as well as practical hands-on tips, tricks, and planning tools to help readers create and execute a plan that utilizes the Internet to its fullest.

Sections include:

• Part 1 - The Business Case for Google: Increasing Your Business Visibility; The Benefits of Increasing Your Visibility with Google; What Is Google Anyway?; Learning About Google Search; Disassembling the Google Search Engine

• Part 2 - Building Your Google Plan: What's Your Core Business?; Living in an Online World; Your Business Website; Assessing Your Competitors; Keeping Track of Customers

• Part 3 - Improving Your Online Business Site: The Basics of Building a Good Business Site; Developing Online and Offline Content; Stretching Your Marketing Dollars; Secrets of the Online Marketing Masters

• Part 4 - Promoting and Growing Your Online Business: Content, Content, Content!; Becoming a More Popular Site; Becoming an Online Expert; Advertising Your Business with Google AdWords; Making Money with Google AdSense; The Advantages of Affiliate Programs; Avoiding Dumb Online Promotional Mistakes

• Part 5 - What's Next on Your To-Do List?: Growing and Expanding Your Content; The Future of Findability

Whether you are just starting out or are actively marketing and selling online, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Growing Your Business with Google is a must have book for your business library.

eCommerce Design- Increase Your Sales

A great article regarding web design and the relation to online sales.

The Two Most Important Factors In eCommerce Design
By: Philip Bennett

OK, so the title isn't strictly true there is one important factor in ecommerce shopping cart design and two things you have to do achieve it. The goal is to make people purchase your product. The two things you have to do to make them buy is to help and persuade.

When you design a site you need to pay serious attention to it's usability and it's persuasive abilities. The aim of a good eCommerce solutions is to gently (or not so gently) persuade the sites user to purchase the product they want to make sure that they find this as easy as possible you need to make sure that your website is as usable as possible. There are thousands of usability and persuasive design methodologies and we don't intend to cover them all in this article. We have identified a couple of the most important factors in both areas and given you some tips and guidance to help you tailor your shopping cart software to increase sales.

Usability Design

When a customer lands on your internet store they will only have a certain amount of patience, once this all runs out they will give up and leave your site for one of your competitors. The easier your site is to use and the less they have to think about how it works the longer they will stay on your site, and the more likely they will be to purchase from you.

With the increase in the use of CSS and the increasing accessibility of graphic manipulation packages people are able to completely customise the way the 'things you click' on their web-site look, the limit it pretty much their own imagination. Unfortunately this can lead to some confusion for users who have to think about what is clickable and what isn't, this will cause them to get frustrated.

With text links it's best to follow HTML tradition, keeping links in a contrasting colours and keep them underlined. Users also like to know where they have been, so keeping links that have been visited in another colour is good practice.

The best course of actions with buttons is to .. well .. make them look like buttons. I know it seems patronising but a lot of people forget this when they have spent a lot of time making sure the buttons on their site fit in with the design. Raised looking buttons are difficult to make look nice and clean without them looking a little '2001' but it's really worth spending a little time thinking about your buttons.

One of the easiest way to lose customers is to actually lose them. If you customers can't find their way around your store, or can't find their way to wherever they want to be they're not going to buy from you.

What's the best way to achieve this? Well it's probably by using tabs. they give a good idea of where the user is, and how they can get to where they want to be.

Tag Lines are frequently dismissed from modern website design in order to make at design look less cluttered, and certainly there are situation where removing a tag line will do no harm but generally there are useful. It is important that a customer know as quickly as possible if your site will sell the product they are looking for. A good example of this is Amazon when they first launched they used a tag-line similar to 'Online Bookstore' because when customer landed on their page they would have had to think a little to work out that a company called Amazon was in fact an online book store. However as Amazon are now so well known they have removed it as it's no longer needed.

Persuasive Design

Once you've addressed the Usability of your store and your visitors can find their way around your site easily and find their way to where they want to be, you must then consider the second important part of the design. You need to make then go to where YOU want them too, the order confirmation page. Below are 3 tips for making this happen.

Once the user has put some items into their cart and clicked on the checkout button there is a good chance that they really want to buy something. So whatever you do make it as easy as possible for them to put their credit card details in and click the order confirm button.

A design practice that we implement is removing all unnecessary links from the order process. For example all links to the home and search boxes are removed. If the user goes searching for other products then it's possible that they'll get side tracked and forget that they were going to buy your products. But make sure that the user still has access to the information about the product that they're buying, we try to implement this by including all the information on the shopping cart page, or by linking to pop-up with the info in, we do not link back to the original product page as this could lead to further distractions.

Long checkout processes with multiple pages is also something that should be avoided. Only ask the customer for information that you really need.

One of the main ways that people will look for products on your site is by using the search box. Rigging (or Mapping) your searches will allows you to map products to keyword, so when a customer searches for a word related to a product that does not include the keywords in the title or the product text you can make sure the products show up. This is just like a customer asking a shop assistance for a product when they know what they want the product to do, but are just not sure of the name of the product.

You need to make your product descriptions and products images as descriptive as possible, do not ever assume that your customers are as well versed on your products as you are. If there is something they want to know and you haven't covered they will do one of three things:

- Ask you, which happens a lot less than you would imagine.
- Go and look on a competitors web-site, if they have the information then it's likely you've lost a customer.
- Give Up.

Also the more information that you include the more 'spider food' there is got the search engines, writing the product descriptions is a good time to focus on Search Engine Optimisation.

Following a couple of these simple guidelines you should see a marked increase in the conversion rate for your store. There are also many other usability and persuasive design models that you can apply and we defiantly recommend searching for some more to apply to your shopping cart.


Ecommerce Shopping Cart Software is a one stop shop for all the information you need about shopping cart software and ecommerce solutions. This site is brought to you by Bennett Enable eCommerce Solutions

Affilaite Marketing- What Is It?

Here is a great 5 minute video which explains the basics of affiliate marketing. In it you will see an excellent example of a site using niche affiliate marketing.

Internet Marketing - Tips, Tools, Tactics and Techniques

I cannot stress the importance of setting up an effective marketing campaign in regards to any online business venture. Whether you are an affiliate-based seller or run a large scale web retail site, marketing your business is essential and could determine whether or not you succeed in your online venture.

Street Smart Internet Marketing - Tips, Tools, Tactics & Techniques to Market Your Product, Service, Business or Ideas Onlineis a great book that shows some of the more successful strategies that internet marketers use today. From the review:

In his new book, Justin Michie reveals a rare compilation of the powerful strategies and techniques used by many of the top internet marketers to make a fortune on the internet.

If you have a product, service or idea that you want to turn into a cash generating system, the internet is full of effective, affordable, low-risk online marketing techniques for small business owners. In a simplified, user friendly format this how-to book will clearly guide you through the complete development of your own unique online marketing strategy.

It's full of practical ideas on reaching new customers and increasing sales, including fascinating strategies to drive qualified traffic to virtually any website. Learn from the real-world examples and recommendations what works and what doesn't, so you can avoid the common errors and pitfalls that many people make on the internet.

Learn how to:

• Drive tons of targeted traffic to your website for free

• Search engine optimize your website

• Build an email list in days, not months or years

• Create a high quality information product in your spare time

• Use the secrets of eBay to generate sales, leads and traffic

• Sell your product, service or idea online, successfully

If you are serious about generating online income, marketing should be one of your top concerns.

Online Trends That Will Impact Your Business

The world of eCommerce is growing and it is essential that anyone selling online or planning to do so keep up with the latest trends in online business. The following is a good summary of where we are today.

If you've listened to your customers - or attended a retail industry conference - over the past five years, then you know that cross-channel retailing continues to be a hot topic. Not only are more and more Americans going online, but a growing percent of them use the Internet to research and purchase products. Retailers can no longer fudge their online experience; customer expectations for online customer service levels are also rising.

All businesses should take note. Although the impact of cross-channel buying behaviors is most prevalent in the retail industry, it is a trend that will increasingly impact all businesses in nearly every industry.

1. More Consumers Are Going Online

In the late 1990's, the era of irrational exuberance was in full form. Internet companies of all kinds promised to change the world with their latest e-product, e-exchange, or e-service. You may recall that stock prices for just about any e-Business climbed to unprecedented (and apparently unfounded) heights. It all came crashing down as the now infamous dot-com bubble burst.

Although many investors turned their backs on dot-com companies as a result, consumers did not; the number of people surfing and shopping online has continued to climb. Today, an impressive 73% of adult Americans use the Internet, according to the Pew Internet Project. Not only is the total number of on-line surfers steady and growing, but the amount of time they spend online is also increasing. Those numbers will only continue to increase as today's well-connected teenagers grow into tomorrow's prospective customers. Today's teenagers age 12-17 are even more connected than their adult counterparts, with 87% of teenagers going online according to the Pew Internet Project.

The importance of the Internet in everyday life also continues to climb. From product research to social networking or from news & entertainment to health care research, today's consumers are increasingly looking to the online channel. It's becoming hard to avoid it. In 2007, 47% of adult Americans have a broadband Internet connection at home, according to the Pew Internet Project. Most working adults have a computer on their desk that can access the Internet, and many mobile telephones now have web access on their tiny screens. Furthermore, Wi-Fi connections are becoming as common as your local Starbuck's store and cable operators continue to look for ways to integrate Internet access with traditional television service.

Any business that turned their back on the Internet as a result of the dot-com collapse in 2001 has in effect, turned their back on their customers. Although many early dot-com businesses collapsed, some in spectacular fashion, it has not dissuaded the lure of the online experience. As more potential customers are going online, businesses should take note. Without a viable Internet presence, your business is missing out.

Key Trend: If you think you can afford to ignore the Internet channel; think again. 73% of adult Americans, and 87% of teenagers, are online today.

2. More Are Using The Internet to Research and Shop

As more and more adults are going online, a growing percent of them use the Internet to research and purchase products. Over 70% of all online consumers use the Internet to research products, according to Forrester Research. That translates into $400 Billion of store sales - or 16% of total retail sales - that are directly influenced by the web as consumers research online and buy offline; a trend that is forecast to grow at a compounded annual rate of 17% through 2012 according to Forrester Research.

The influence of the Internet on retail transactions could have an even bigger impact. By 2009, 41% of all U.S. retail transactions will be influenced by online experiences, according to Jupiter Research.

The Fortune 500(tm) rankings are further proof that the Internet should be a strategic channel for any retailer. Pure Internet companies Amazon and eBay have passed some well known traditional retailers in the rankings. According to Fortune's 2007 rankings, Amazon has passed notables Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Limited in total revenues. eBay has passed other well-known brands including Bed Bath & Beyond, Molson Coors, and Ross Stores.

Regardless of how you slice it, the impact of the Internet on retail transactions will make up a sizeable component of how consumers research and buy products.

Key Trend: Consumers are increasingly using the Internet channel to research and purchase products. Over 70% of all online consumers use the Internet to research products. By 2009, 41% of all U.S. retail transactions will be influenced by online experiences.

3. Expectations are Rising

As adults become more comfortable with the Internet, their expectations for their online experience are increasing. In fact, 85% of adults expect their online service levels to be the same as offline, an increase of 3% from the prior year, according to a survey conducted by Tealeaf. If those service level expectations aren't met, 40% of online consumers will abandon their transactions entirely or turn to a competitor according to the Tealeaf survey.

The online world has also become a key influencer in purchasing decisions. An impressive 43% of American adults identified online information as the most powerful influencer of their purchase decisions according to a report published by Accenture.

The large majority of adults now expect to be able to choose from a multiple shopping channels. In fact, 80% of consumers feel that it is important to have a choice of shopping in multiple channels when choosing a retailer, according to a Sterling Commerce survey. The survey also found that 90% said it was important to be able to return an item purchased online in a physical store; underlying the importance of cross-channel integration to the consumer.

While the retail industry seems to have embraced the Internet with online catalogs, promotions, and interactive product selectors, other industries should take note. The impact of the Internet on buying decisions is here to stay. Cross-channel integration is becoming an increasingly important requirement for meeting buyer expectations in nearly every industry. The highly fragmented health care industry - for example - will likely see an increasing demand for integrated online and offline services including scheduling, diagnosis, insurance claims, and the holy grail of health care: medical records.

Key Trend: Customers' expectations for shopping across multiple channels is increasing.

* 85% of adults expect their online service levels to be the same as offline.
* 43% identified online information as the most powerful influencer of their purchase decision.
* 80% feel it is important to have a choice of shopping across multiple channels when choosing a retailer.
* 90% said it was important to be able to return an item purchased online in a physical store.

Recommendations

The Internet is not just for retailers anymore. As adults become increasingly comfortable with the Internet, they grow more reliant it for their purchasing decisions. Any business that does not have a viable Internet presence needs to catch up. Simply putting up a web page is not enough. Businesses should seek to create an online experience that mirrors - or exceeds - offline service levels.

Integration is key. Online and offline channels should not be treated as independent and disconnected offerings. Creating a seamless experience between online and offline channels is very important. Customers overwhelmingly expect a seamless customer experience between online and offline channels. Start by making your business web site functional rather than simply informational. Offer a way for customers to initiate or complete a transaction online and coordinate that experience with corresponding offline services.

Although the dot-com era as we know it may have died in 2001, the Internet has continued to grow into a business channel that businesses can no longer ignore or neglect.

About the Author

Robert Howard is the Founder and Chief Executive of ClearBrick LLC, an innovative business services company that provides do-it-yourself business solutions and advice. For more on customer experience, check out ClearBrick's innovative Customer Experience Solution Kit.

Know Your Target Audience

It is vital for anyone marketing a product or service to know exactly who they intend to market to. Read on for some great tips about knowing your target audience.

Do you know who your target audience is? If you don’t know, you are not maximizing your advertising and/or marketing efforts.

A marketing strategy blends the elements of the marketing mix, also known as the four P’s (product, price, placement, promotion). The promotion element involves communication, and one type of communication is advertising. The advertising strategy combines the elements of a creative mix. This mix includes the target audience, product concept, communications media, and the advertising message.

In order to create an effective advertising message, it is important to know who your target audience is. The target audience includes the end-user, the person who makes the purchase, and the one who influences the purchasing decision. For instance, McDonald’s target audience is made up of children and their parents. The children influences their parent’s purchasing decision. Therefore, McDonald’s advertising message is directed toward the children, as well as their parents.

The process of determining who your target audience is begins with segmenting the consumer market; finding the right niche. This process begins with identifying groups of people with certain shared characteristics within a broad market. The categories of characteristics are geographic, demographic, behavioristic, and psychographic. Then combine these groups into larger market segments according to their mutual interest in the product’s utility or benefit. From these segments, choose your target market. Your target audience includes your target market. The target market in the previous McDonald’s example is the person(s) who makes the purchase. Target audience is larger than the target market.

Segmenting the business market is just as complex as segmenting the consumer market. Business markets are identified by using many of the same variables used to identify consumer markets. Additional variables used are business purchasing procedures, SIC Code, or by market concentration.

The product/service market consists of all types of consumers; however, groups of consumers have similar needs and wants. Begin with market research; identify your groups with shared characteristics; combine these groups into larger markets; and select your target audience which includes your target market. Before you create an effective advertising message, it is important to know who you are talking to. Do you know who your target audience is?

About the Author

Rita J. Cartwright is a Virtual Assistant and owner of RJ’s Word Processing Services. She received a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Marketing from Arizona State University. More information about Rita and her company can be found at http://www.rjswordprocessing.com

eBay Tips and Tricks

In a follow up to the eBay book review below, I thought that I would share with you this article on eBay tips and tricks. Although these tips were specifically written in regards to eBay, some of them can be quite useful when marketing any product online.

Top Ebay Tips and Tactics
by: Aidan JAmes


The number of fulltime ebay merchants is still growing. The range of products for sale is mind-blowing, just about everything can and has been sold on ebay. Pretty much everything is of value to someone and the best sellers are those who know how to spot a bargain because they know that others are willing to pay more. Where they sometimes need a little help is in the sales department itself. From my own and friends experience here are my top ebay tips and tactics:

It is a lot easier to manage a small number of high value items than it is to manage lots of little ones so try to concentrate on higher value items, particularly specialty or collectible type items, which can generate more competition between buyers.

Listing fees can mount up with additional photos, gallery listings and the like. It is hard to profit from lower margin items when fees make up a substantial portion of the selling price. It is better to sell higher value items for this reason also.

Begin your auctions with a low starting price, this tends to attract early buyer interest and ultimately the best final bids. For high value items make use of the reserve feature to protect against too low a final price.

Avoid selling items easily found in everyday shops and malls. Buyers will generally favour the mall where they can see and touch the item before parting with their cash, so again, try to offer uncommon or special interest items wherever possible.

Good descriptions with photos are vital. Use several photos if necessary to ensure attractive or unusual details are highlighted. Make sure that colors, exact measurements, unusual features, general condition of the item etc are all well covered in your description. Use a good photo for a gallery listing to attract more potential buyers.

You simply must answer queries and send out your goods promptly. Also, make sure you give the buyer feedback as soon as he has paid. This not only makes the buyer feel more secure but also leads to great feedback for you as the seller, so that other potential buyers get the feel good factor about you too.

If you are serious about ebay then open an ebay store. This not only gives you a more professional image but also allows you to cross promote your other items easily. Stores also get more traffic which equals more buyer competition for your goods.

Try to offer a range of payment options. Credit cards, paypal, money orders and bank transfers etc. The buy it now option is great for hooking impulsive buyers. The more payment options the greater likelihood of a successful sale.

Offer your goods to the international market where it is suitable to do so. The greater the competition the greater the selling price. This won't always be practical e.g. where international shipping costs may be prohibitive on bulky items or where there is seasonal market for the item concerned.

Try to offer a written guarantee or refund policy. Buyers are more likely to buy from you when you have a visible guarantee or return policy for your goods.

Finally, use a little hype factor where it may be appropriate, phrases like 'this season's must have' and 'limited stock' can increase sales especially in combination with the buy it now option, which tends to grab those impulse buyers.

If you've not already tried ebay you're missing out on a fun and profitable hobby or even home business. Register today if you have not done so already or find out more below.

Aidan James is a long time self employed marketer and sales professional. He writes for http://WorkAtHomeFiles.com, a site helping others get a start in home business and for various other sites. For your free downloads and info you are invited to visit http://WorkAtHomeFiles.com at any time.