Sunday, June 8, 2008

Building Lists - You Can Sell Your Product and Build Your List at the Same Time

If you're an Internet marketing person who is selling an affiliate product, you get an affiliate link that leads to the product's web site or sales page. Lots of people also make the common mistake of thinking that they aren't able to be list building when are set up as an affiliate marketer. Not the case at all.

As long as it's not against the owner's terms of service or affiliate agreement, you can use any means of selling a particular product. Spamming, for instance, irritates everyone so it would be against both of those conditions, in all cases. Any other legitimate way to sell a product is fair game. Be the creative person you know you are, and success with list building and sales will come easily for you. And it seems to make the product owner happy, too.

List building while selling the other person's product is simple. First, set up a squeeze page, then on that page, give people a review of the product. If you sell it, you had better be using it, know that it's a great product, and endorse it honestly. As the promoter or affiliate for whatever products you choose to represent, give them more than a testimony, give them a great review. You can do that in 250 words or less.

Include information in your review about the features that are beneficial to the user. As mentioned earlier, be honest, your review should also give the cons of the product. Nothing is 100% great and people will usually find small things that they would change to tailor any given product to suit them. If your review is too glowing, it won't seem real. Here's what I mean:

Tellman Knudson's MyFirstList is a great product for the beginning marketer. Not only does it tell you how to get your list building page built, but it points you to the services you need to get it up and running. Not only that, but you can complete the course in just 9 hours. That means you can buy it one day, and take action on it the next. In fact, the program is so rapid-fire that you can be list building by that second day, too.

A couple of drawbacks that some might see is that you will need to spend money to get the system working, but you know what they say, "You have to spend money to make money." And when you invest in 'free', you will probably get 'nothing' in return." When you apply the system, yourself, and your investment, you will make money. Push your investment aside, lose your drive, whatever, and no, you will make nothing, and that is the raw truth. Another drawback is that getting set up is quite technical, but you are instructed step-by-step over the technical humps. I am totally technically challenged and the instructions were made clear, even for me!

I do know, and can honestly say, this system truly does work! I haven't just tried it, I'm using it, and I am thankful for the day I was introduced to MyFirstList. I am making money with it already, though I just bought it last week. How wonderful is that? For more information about MyFirstList, just fill in your first name and email address and I'll get it to you right away.

A straight affiliate page is a much better example because an affiliate link for MyFirstList is located there and would lead to another squeeze page. However, people might not be too kosher about opting-in to your list twice before they even see what your product is about, unless your review totally blows them away.

After people opt-in to your list and confirm their membership, the first autoresponder message they receive should be your "thank you" page. Give people a bit more information about the product and the opportunity to buy or join by including your affiliate link. This is very easy to do and you should always be list building, any way you can, as it is the single most important thing you can be doing to begin making money rapidly and seeing your way to real success!

Andrea McClure is the creator of Perpetual Affiliate Profits, where you can find the latest in earning profits as an affiliate marketer and the fastest, easiest ways to get it all rolling. Get instant access to your free Secrets From the Pros report! Hurry, my report is free for a limited time and trust me, you won't want to miss out! Visit: http://perpetualaffiliateprofits.com

Article Marketing Secret It's Not All About the Links

You submit an article to as many article directories as possible with a link to your site in the signature block and you get loads of one-way links Thats what we see everyday right? While that statement is true, it is not the key to article marketing success.

The key to article marketing success is obtained by

1. Creating quality articles that are interesting enough for the viewer to follow-through to your signature block and click on your link.

2. Maintaining a constant flow of articles to the top few article directories and sites in your niche.

You may have heard these two statements in the past and chalked it up as not important. If you did, you made a big mistake.

The fact is, your articles MUST be interesting and valuable. If the viewers are not interested enough in your article they will not go past the description, let alone follow-through to your signature block.

At the same time, even if your articles are of great quality and do convert article viewers to website visitors, if you only have a few out there you will not get a considerable amount of traffic from them.

Sure, its true that on rare occasions an article could go completely viral and generate thousands of site views but it is likely? Even if you do have an article or two that goes extremely viral, the traffic will most likely not last.

If you are creating quality articles, every one that you publish to the Internet will bring in a small trickle of website visitors. The more articles you have out there, the larger that trickle will grow.

If you implement the two very basic tips that I just outlined into your article marketing campaign, along with a good signature block and title, you will see the true benefit to article marketing in a very short amount of time.

Joshua Spaulding is an Author and Webmaster who has been effectively marketing with articles for over 2 years. If you would like to learn effective Article Marketing and begin to see the Free visitors that everyone always seems to talk about but never prove, then take a look at http://www.articlemarketingdomination.com You can also promote Article Marketing Domination and earn 50% on every sell you make by visiting http://www.articlemarketingdomination.com/affiliates.html

Using Article Marketing To Boost Your Business

You probably know by now, especially if you have been advertising on the internet for a while, that articles advertising is one of the best ways to advertise your website or business. The only reason that more people aren't using this method of advertising is that they think they can't write an article. The truth of the matter is, writing more articles will make you better and there are people you can hire to write articles for you.

So, what exactly can submitting an article do for your business?

Well, think about why most people are searching for articles in the first place. They are usually not looking for articles at first, but they have a specific niche or keyword they are looking for information about. When they stumble upon a well written article with useful content, they will want to read it and take what they can.

An article doesn't have to be long, but it does need to be informative and helpful to the reader. For instance, if you are writing an article about network marketing, submit it to sites that are about network marketing, and let them publish it for you. They must then link to your site. This is called backlinking.

The more you do this, the quicker you will generate more traffic to your site.

There are some people who actually use article directories to find information they are looking for, rather than using the search engines. This is why it is important to submit your articles to directories as well.

Writing articles doesn't have to be difficult. Find good informative, relevant content to write about and make it interesting to read. Be entertaining in your writing. If you still feel like you just can't write a good article, or you don't have the time, it is good to outsource this task. Article writers are inexpensive and time saving. You can use the extra time to work on other aspects of your marketing this way.

Jason Pearson is an online marketing expert who wants to share his secrets with the world. To find out more...

Click Here To Discover More About Jason Pearson

List Building - The Power Of Two!

If you could successfully apply the "power of two" to your viral list building, you could potentially grow you list incredibly to in excess of one million subscribers in as little as 20 weeks, the power of two is literally that powerful when applied as a multiplier to your list!

1 million subscribers in as little as 20 weeks ... I guess you're now thinking that I might just be a touch mad. Well you'd be right! But, when you see my example of the "power of two" below, you'll see that by getting just one key ingredient of your viral list building right, your list will explode exponentially in a very short space of time!

To explode your own lists in just a few weeks, you've got to apply viral list building tactics that will stimulate the "power of two". In particular, you've got to provide really compelling reasons for each new subscriber you get to join your list to tell other people about you and your products. Crucially for the power of two work, you need your new subscribers to each tell just "two" other people, that's right just two".

Let's look at the example I promised above of the "power of two" in action:

We're going to assume that you already have a squeeze page published to capture your opt-ins.

Whilst surfing I stumble upon your squeeze page and decide to subscribe to your list. You've now got your first sign up and are therefore a list owner! Once subscribed, you take me to a special offer page, where you show me an incredible free gift that I can have if I tell my friends or my own list of subscribers about your site.

Your gift is just too good to turn down! I instantly tell my friends about your site and during the next week, two of them subscribe to your list. So now, after 2 weeks of list building you have grown your list to 3 subscribers ( know three subscribers in just two weeks doesn't seem too impressive, but it does get better I promise!).

My two friends (your new subscribers), now see the same offer of a free gift in return for finding you further subscribers. Finding your offer irresistible, they in turn tell some of their friends about your you and your products. As a result each of them send you two new subscribers during the following week. At the end of week three you therefore have a list of 7 subscribers!

This sequence of events repeats for the next seven weeks. Every new subscriber finds you just 2 more sign-ups each during the following week. By week 10 your list has now grown to a much more impressive 511 subscribers (getting better, but still not a life changing number).

So ten weeks to get 511 subscribers on to your list. By repeating the sequence for the next 10 weeks, by the end of week 20, your list will have grown to an incredible 1,048,575 subscribers ... that's right, you'll add over a million subscribers in the last 10 weeks! You can see the full worked example in my free ebook List Building Riches (you can get a copy from the link below).

The power of two will grow your list to over one million subscribers in just 20 weeks, if successfully applied. When you see this example, getting to a million subscribers doesn't sound so daunting, after all getting someone to tell just 2 people about your list doesn't isn't an unreasonable task.

The key ingredient is "the compelling reason" you give to your visitors to tell others about your products and pages. When a new subscriber signs up, you need to immediately offer them an incredible free gift they can't say no to.

Make sure your gift has real value and is targeted to a specific need you know they will have. Once you've created an insatiable desire for your gift, only let them have it once they have told their friends about you and your products!

Your list building process can be automated to harness the "power of two", I'll show you how in my free report below. Get it right and your list will flourish and multiply like you never imagined possible.

When you start building your lists, think massive, think Viral! Get yourself a great free gift that will give your subscribers a "hugely compelling reason" to give to market your list for you and watch the "power of two" take affect.

To get yourself the definitive free guide to viral list building and learn how to harness the power of two, download my free List Building Riches ebook today!

Richard Taylor has earned thousands of dollars online over last year, but his real goal is to make a million dollars online by his 40th birthday in 2009! List Building Riches contains his blueprint for getting there using the exact viral marketing tactics the gurus use. The good news is you can get a copy for free when you visit his web site: http://www.essentialseotools.com

LSI and SEPS - Their Impact On Your SEO Efforts

Organic Results

The major search engines are constantly striving to improve their search results. Their aim is to provide surfers with genuinely useful and organic results because, in doing so, they will improve their own popularity with the surfers. The result is that search engine algorithms evolve regularly and new methods are used to determine those sites that do offer real value as well as those that are attempting to dupe the search engine indexes.

What Is Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)?

LSI, or Latent Semantic Indexing, is the indexing of documents based on their keywords but also on semantically related keywords. For example, it would be reasonable to assume that a document that is indexed by the keyword "marketing" could also be indexed by similar keywords such as "advertising" and "promotion".

How Search Engines Employ LSI In Their Algorithms

Search engines have begun to use a form of LSI in their web page indexing. However, they also take this a step further. Rather than looking for a single keyword within a document, search engines bid to find pages that include a list of semantically related keywords (within the content, and also within a link profile) based upon a relevant theme and give those documents preference when compiling their search results.

How LSI Effects Website Owners

At a basic level, this means that rather than cramming a page with the keyword "marketing", you should aim to write content naturally in order that the page includes semantic keywords such as "advertising" and "promotion". It also means that when building links you should use all of these keywords in your anchor text (not in one go obviously).

While the aim of the search engines is to offer searchers a more organic set of results, it can still pay to give the spiders a helping hand in determining the topic and the most relevant set of semantic keywords. Organic writing may include some of the most relevant keywords for your pages, but it doesn't hurt to ensure that you include the keywords that the search engines deem to be the most relevant.

LSI Keyword Research

Keyword research for SEO has obviously also evolved. Rather than attempting to find the single best keyword, or a short list of keywords, for a single page it is necessary to broaden your horizons. Most website owners should already have a good idea of how their visitors, or potential customers, search for their website. This knowledge provides a good basis for developing a strong list of keywords but, again, it doesn't hurt to supplement your organic knowledge with some synthetic assistance.

There is a good amount of keyword research software available and the most advanced, or at least the most modern of these applications provide a means to display relevant keywords as well as specific keywords. These synonyms can provide an even stronger basis for your SEO efforts by grouping them together in terms of relevance and importance.

What Are Search Engine Proven Synonyms (SEPS)?

In order to delve even deeper and find the keywords that the search engines believe are related, we need to rely on SEPS. SEPS is short for Search Engine Proven Synonyms and are those keywords that the search engines believe to be semantically related to another keyword. While there are tools and applications available to provide you with this information, Google itself provides a perfectly good tool towards this very end.

Using Google To Find Your SEPS

On the Google search page, rather than simply typing "marketing" we would type "~marketing". Those words displayed in bold are the semantically related keywords that Google believes are relevant to your search term. Scattering, or at least including these terms and keywords in your text will help Google identify that your page is based around that set of keywords.

For key phrases of more than one word add the ~ before each word in place of the space. So, to find the SEPS for the term "internet marketing" we would in fact search using the string "~internet~marketing". Terms such as "Internet business marketing" and "promotion" are bolded when you use this method - these terms should be included in your keyword list for a page based on the phrase "Internet marketing" in order to help achieve the best results.

Using Your LSI Keywords And SEPS

Website content is by no means the only aspect of SEO, although it is an important one. The keywords you research should be used where appropriate without spamming your pages or any other media. Alt tags, and meta tags that include keywords can include some of your SEPS and related keywords because these are often also used to determine the value of a page.

Improving Your Link Profile

Building a link profile is a huge part of a successful SEO campaign and, again, your broad keyword list needs to come into play. Rather than building or developing hundreds or thousands of links using a single keyword or key phrase as the anchor text, vary the keywords you use. Use SEPS to improve the overall effectiveness of your link profile, and also to help target a greater number of keywords.

Don't Lose Sight Of Your Ultimate Goal

Throughout the whole of this process it is important to remember that your ultimate goal is unlikely to be just the generation of more traffic. Increased sales, improved conversions, and profit levels are much more important to businesses than a greater number of visitors to a website. Fortunately, in the promotion of organic writing, the search engines are helping in this respect too.

Organic content provides the content writer or website owner with a greater potential to write appealing content and appealing content is much more likely to convert visitors into customers than keyword crammed text. Never lose sight of your end goal - less traffic but more conversions is a more appealing outcome than masses of traffic that simply bounces away from your site without taking any action.

About WebWiseWords

WebWiseWords specializes in creating appealing and effective SEO copywriting. By using their web content writing services, it enables business and website owners to concentrate on other core aspects of running a business while ensuring that they get the greatest return on their marketing ROI.

Brainstorming of Keywords

I think we hear this more often than not in the world of Search Engine Optimization or even Internet Marketing. But what are the steps taken to actually find relevant keywords that will help your business?

The basic idea of brainstorming is to figure out what might be a good search term for your related area. The reason I say might is because for obvious reasons, we do not have any data yet. Take in every keyword that possibly have similar themes, concepts, categories, etc. At this point we basically want to gather candidates so that you can narrow down your search later on.

The popular tools out there that aid the process are tools like KeywordDiscovery.com and Wordtracker.com. Below, I am going to outline a couple if differences between them.

Keywords discovery
- They have one of the largest databases of keywords which estimate around 18 million searches.
- Have seasonal data which is really advantages for people who are interested in promoting seasonal products e.g. Christmas gifts
- Keyword spiders: Throw a URL to them and it will spider possible keywords that people actually search for within that page.

Word Tracker
- They have a clean database plus a lot of comprehensive search drilled down to a lot of long tail keywords.
- Automated Pay per Click bid search to make the research easier.
- They have a known market share from Metacrawler and Dogpile which are source search engines.

So when we have gathered a substantial amount of keywords the most important thing to remember is relevancy. The choice of keywords revolves on how relevant it is to your business. As simple as it sounds, we still often get blinded but how relevant a keyword is in actual terms. Some search terms have multiple meanings. There are terms which people search for information and there are terms which people search who are ready to buy.

The logic is if keyword A has 1000 searches a month but its only 10% relevant to your site, in comparison with keyword B which has only 100 searches a month with a 90% relevancy, which do you think will convert more at the end of the day?

My next article will dwell deeper into weighted popularity formula which helps calculate relevancy on your keywords.

A more detailed guide on this can be downloaded for free at http://www.easyseoguide.com

Also receive updates and latest tips and tricks in the SEO world upon receiving the free ebook.

Article Marketing And A Basic Introduction To SEO Link Profiles

There are a lot of ways to promote a business or a website online. Article marketing is one of the more popular, and can prove an extremely fruitful experience under the right circumstances. A well written article submitted to relevant, popular directories can drive traffic directly to your site and improve your search engine ranking. With literally hundreds of article directories and article submission sites, there are more challenges than creating a marketable and linkable article, though.

What Is Article Marketing?

Essentially, article marketing means providing an article that you have written to other websites. They include this article on a page of their own site, and include links that direct to your own pages. These links are usually included in an Author Bio or About The Author paragraph at the end of the text.

What's In It For You?

When surfers visit these other sites and read the article you have provided, they will also read that the article was created by you. They also have the opportunity to click on the link and visit your site. If they enjoyed the article and it was relevant to them then there is a very reasonable chance they will click the link.

High Quality Content

Part of the challenge in article marketing is obviously the writing of the article. Not only should the article appeal to your potential visitors but it must also appeal to the Webmasters and website owners that you are attempting to attract. While the primary reason for the article, from your viewpoint, is to promote your website you must make it appealing for site owners.

Marketable Articles

Webmasters and website owners look for articles that offer value to their visitors. The article you write should not be filled with blatant self promotion. Any self promotional aspects should be left for the appropriate paragraph at the end. However, it is important that the topic is relevant to your site. Otherwise your article will be picked up and used by other sites but it will either attract no clicks or the visitors that do navigate to your site will not be interested in looking around. And, they almost certainly won't be interested in purchasing your service or product.

About The Author

The link itself, or in some cases two links, should be placed in the About The Author paragraph as we've already mentioned. Wherever possible, include properly formatted HTML links with keywords in the anchor text of the link. This will help build a powerful link profile in order to improve your search engine ranking.

Choosing Directories To Submit Your Article

Another important facet of article marketing is picking the right article directories. There are literally hundreds of directories available, some geared towards niche topics, others categorized for any topic. Submitting to this many directories is counter productive in some respects, and selecting the most appropriate directories with the highest levels of traffic is usually the best bet.

Avoiding Automated Submission Software And Services

There are submission services available that will submit your article to a number of directories. If you choose to use this kind of service, first ensure that the submission is not automated. Many directories frown on this activity and may ban your account and refuse to publish your articles if you are discovered.

Link Profile Introduction

We've mentioned link profiles two or three times so far in this article, but what exactly is a link profile? It is literally a profile of the number and quality of links pointing to your site. Search engines use this profile to determine how popular, and by assumption useful, your web pages are. A link, if you like, counts as a vote of confidence towards your page.

Good Links

As with many things, though, not all links are created equal. A link from a page that is itself deemed to be higher quality will have a greater impact on your profile. It will also, therefore, improve your ranking more significantly than a brand new page on a brand new site, that has yet to establish itself as a useful indicator.

The Select Few

Article marketing provides a simple but effective method of driving traffic to your site and building a good link profile. The actual effectiveness of using a single article and submitting to hundreds of directories is somewhat diminished, certainly with Google. They do not take into account all of the pages that include your content instead taking a small sub-section (possibly only one of the pages).

A Staged Link Building Campaign

Initially, though, submitting quality articles to directories can help to build a good basis for a link profile. After time, when your site naturally gains higher rankings, you may wish to submit unique articles to more popular, individual websites. This will help to generate links that are individually more powerful.

Article Marketing And Your Link Profile

Links are a major part of SEO and article marketing provides a good basis for building these links. Writing quality content and submitting to good quality directories can lead to increased traffic and search engine rankings. However, it is best not to get carried away submitting to hundreds of directories and you should always avoid the temptation (and it is a temptation) of using automated submission software.

Matt Jackson is webmaster and copywriter for WebWiseWords, creating compelling website content and provides article writing for distribution as well as other new media content.