Category: Affiliate Marketing
Need web hosting?
If you're starting a web site, then you're going to need web hosting. HostGator has an awesome deal going right now that basically gives you the first month free. Here's what to do:
1. Go to the HostGator website.
2. Order the "Baby Croc" shared web hosting package. It MUST be the Baby Croc.
3. At checkout, use coupon code HGCOUPONBLOG and you'll get the first month for a penny, but they won't actually charge it until month 2.
I received an email today from a reader asking about how to get started inexpensively in his own business. What I sent him is the following, which is a summary of the sum of the resources we have available to you on this web site.
If you're looking to get into work from home stuff, I have a completely separate list that I maintain. It has a ton of info you could spend days reading, about how to do various types of online business, all geared somehow towards making money from affiliate programs. It's labeled as just "work from home" but there is a lot of business stuff in there. I don't really update it anymore, but everything is still up. It's also free:
http://howtoearnhq.com/work/
I'm also giving away as MP3 downloads a 28 CD course that we used to sell for $300 on places like Amazon and eBay. It's a LOT of material to listen to, but if you have the time on your hands, i think it provides a great intro to setting up your own Internet business (I'm biased in that opinion, of course). You can register for that at:
http://howtoearnhq.com/affiliate-marketing-course/
To get started in an Internet business can be done for less than $100. The nice thing is that, depending on what you do, the first one consumes most of the money, while the second is almost free, except for your time. That's why I love affiliate marketing in particular.
Hopefully this will be of help to the rest of you out there.
I'm willing to help a small handful of people start up their own affiliate marketing business. It will require WORK on your part, but should never consume more than about 30-45 minutes per day. Here's how it's going to work:
1. You will come up with the general concept for an INFORMATIONAL web site.
2. You will go to the Google External Keyword Tool and research potential keywords for the site. Under the "choose columns to display" drop down list, you will need to select "Show Estimated Avg. CPC", then click on that column header twice once it shows up in order to sort the column from highest cost keyword to lowest. You *want* to select the most expensive keywords for this exercise, and they need to be ABOVE $1.50 in order for this to work.
3. Email me with the concept and the highest value keyword that you found.
4. I will then:
verify your keyword research
tell you whether I think it will be profitable or not
register a domain name
create a basic web site
- set up an email list
5. I will set up marketing campaigns on Google Adwords, social networking sites, video sites, and other places that will account for about 70 percent of the traffic to the web site.
This is the original audio CD that started this entire web site. This CD presents a very specific method that just about anybody can use to to assemble a profitable web site inside of an afternoon, even if you have zero "Internet marketing" experience. The skills required are basic computer and Internet skills, and previous experience with major online shopping sites eBay and Amazon. Basically, if you can navigate your way around eBay well enough to buy stuff regularly, then you can MAKE money on eBay, also. Oh, and this method doesn't require you to actually list, sell, and ship items on eBay or Amazon. Rather, you're going to get paid to help other people sell THEIR listings.
Click the link below to receive this free, no strings attached download.
How To Earn Extra Money Online
To your success,
Jassen Bowman
I've decided to release the entire "How To Earn Extra Money Online" audio course to readers as a free download series. We're going to release one per week for the next 6 months, as it is a 30-CD course all told. This course used to sell on major online retailers such as Amazon and Google Base for $298.
The first CD is an overview of the process for setting up an online business. To download it, just click the link below:
Online Business Setup Step-By-Step Free Download (15.3 megabytes)
You will need some sort of unZIP utility to decompress the archive, as well as a program that can play MP3 files to listen to it.
I hope that you find the information in this CD useful. I welcome your comments, thoughts, and suggestions about the ideas presented in this CD - just leave a comment below.
To your success,
Jassen Bowman
This is a follow up to my previous post concerning keyword research and niche selection. In that post, I discussed how to do keyword research and find market opportunities on the Internet. It is well known that once you have selected a niche, built a web site, optimized it for the search engines, and added some content, that you cannot just sit back and relax. The importance of keeping live, fresh, and up to date content on your site on an ongoing basis is talked about ad nauseum in various Internet marketing circles. I wanted to provide a real life case study about this situation.
As of this writing, I own the #7 spot on Google for the keyword phrase "rachael flatt". Rachael Flatt is the reigning U.S. ladies national silver medalist and reigning World Junior Champion in the sport of figure skating. Until this morning, I didn't even that I owned that coveted #7 spot because, quite frankly, I had never checked. Several weeks ago I put up a very, very basic fan site for her after meeting her in person at a figure skating competition. Her silver medal performance at the 2008 U.S. Nationals was a significant inspiration for me finally getting off my duff and starting to skate myself.
So, what made me check? Apparently, her agent did a Google search to see what was out there about her, and found my bare-bones fan site. She then contacted me about the possibility of creating a more expansive site to help promote Rachael in the figure skating sphere.
This led me to one of the very initial steps involved with any sort of online enterprise: keyword research. When it comes to Internet marketing, keyword research is a major component of several tasks that go by different names, such as "market research", "niche selection", and "search engine optimization." Keyword research is a very important aspect of each of these business building tasks, and is often the first place to start whenever a new idea emerges.
Why would I want to do keyword research for a FAN site? Quite honestly, it has to do with niche selection. There is an entire universe of athletes out there, and converting a basic fan site into a full blown project requires the knowledge ahead of time about whether that athlete has enough search traffic to warrant the effort. In addition, it's wise to know what other keywords relevant to the project need to be targeted for optimization.
Where does one start with keyword research? Personally, I use a very methodical approach, which has evolved over time as tools and technologies change. Here's my current keyword research checklist, verbatim out of my own playbook:
This is more of a poll than anything else right now...consider it an idea I'm kicking around. I'd like to get some measure of how many people would be not only interested in having me help them set up their own Internet profit stream, but would also be willing to commit to doing their part for no less than three months to make it happen.
What I'm envisioning is something like this:
In my quest to bring my own costs down and also find "new" things to share with with my readers and "earn extra money" list subscribers, I recently revisited the wonderful world of finding free web traffic.
There are some great free things you can do out there, and many of them that I've been learning about myself lately center around the concept of blog promotion. While I've converted most of my own web sites to blog publishing platforms of one type or another, I've never really gotten into the learning about RSS feeds, content promotion through blog rings, pinging, and that sort of thing. Now that I've started to implement it, I'm really fascinated by the possibilities, and have added some blog feed based marketing methods to my list of things to always do. Speaking of which, if you don't have a marketing playbook or checklist of things you do regularly, then I encourage you to adopt one.
Content is, and always has been, the king the any media source. This includes television, newspaper, magazine, radio, Internet, and any other medium. The only reason that people tune in to a medium is for the content. With that in mind, you'll notice that most of my basic, free marketing methods in my playbook revolve around providing content, and using that content to build my lists (the money is in the list!).
Without further ado, here is my marketing matrix of free methods:
1. Ads on free classified ads sites, such as Backpages, Craigslist, and Kijiji.
2. Posting articles on article directory sites, such as EzineArticles.
(a) Corrolary: All articles are blog posts, and most blog posts are articles!
3. Creating educational YouTube videos and putting URL in the video and link in the description text.
4. Posting content to industry hubs and networking sites. For example, ActiveRain is a very popular blogging and online networking community for real estate brokers, in much the same way that Facebook is for college students. Networking with other people expands your sphere, also.
5. Discussion board participation. Pick forums related to your industry and site, and put links in your signature line so it appears in all your posts. These can be stand-alone sites, or "groups" on sites like MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
6. Comment on related blogs, leaving a link behind.
7. Automatically submit your content to aggregators. The easiest way to do this is to burn your feed to FeedBurner and enable the feature to distribute your feed to blog aggregators.
8. Place links in your blog posts to allow readers to submit them to Digg, Delicious, Stumble Upon, Fark, and other such "best of blogging" sites.
And last, but definitely MOST important, the number one web traffic generator of all time...
9. Build your list! Get people to subscribe to your email list or blog feed to receive announcements of blog updates, product promotions, tips, tricks, secrets, and anything else your readers might want to know about.
I recently became a huge fan of Feedburner.com, a Google product. It allows you to automate several functions listed above, as well as BUILD A LIST for FREE! You can add a "Get email updates" subscription form on your blog and they will be automatically notified whenever you put up a new post. While lacking the significant power of a sequential autoresponder, it's a great way to build a list without subscribing to a service. Feedburner will even let you export your subscriber list in Excel format, so you can take it with you if you move beyond it's capabilities.
These 9 free marketing methods should get you thousands of unique visitors per month to your site, which is sufficient to generate a small but significant Adsense or affiliate revenue stream.
To your success,
Jassen Bowman
Working from in an Internet business is the ultimate way for everyday people to achieve their dreams of leisure time and financial freedom. We live in a truly exciting moment in history where nearly anyone with determination and good sense can make money online.
Sadly, many people never realize this because they associate Internet business with the kinds of companies they saw during the first 'Internet boom': big companies with generous investors, lots of fancy technology, and heavy advertising campaigns.
This vision of what it means to own an Internet business is far from the truth for most people, however. It is easier than ever now to go into business online, and I'd like to share with you the top three easiest ways of doing so.
Method #1: Affiliate Business
An affiliate marketing business is the easiest type of Internet business to start. As an affiliate, you promote other people's products and earn money (in the form of 'commissions') when you generate a sale.
The reason this type of business is so easy is that you don't have to own or create the products yourself. You can find products to promote in just about every market niche out there, too, so you aren't limited in terms of what you promote or how much you can earn.
Method #2: Digital Product Business
A digital product business is the second easiest type of business to start. In this type of business, you create your own products in the form e-books, software or other types of content that can be downloaded directly onto the customer's hard drive after the sale.
This type of business is good if you are prolific at generating product ideas, enjoy the 'status' of authoring your own products and don't mind handling customer service requests.
Method #3: Auction Business
An auction business is the third easiest online business model. You can sell both digital and physical products at sites like Ebay, Yahoo! Auctions, Ubid, Amazon, and others.
The drawback with this type of business is that much more work is involved, trust me. You've got to manage multiple auctions per day to make real money, and then you also have to handle product packaging, shipping, inventory, customer service, refunds, etc.
If any of these methods interest you, I recommend reading up on each of them in the appropriate work sections here on the site for more information. They are all very legitimate, income-producing techniques, and one of them is sure to be the right one for you!
Take care!
~Jassen Bowman~
Many people dream of working from home. To some, 'working from home' means telecommuting to a regular job. To others, it means nothing less than being their own boss in a home-based business.
Home-based businesses come in many shapes and sizes. The Internet has made it easier than ever for the average person to start their own business right from their home computers. Some entrepreneurs set up businesses around selling goods on Ebay or their own online store. Others go into business selling other people's products by becoming affiliate marketers.
In all cases, though, whole empires are created with a computer and an Internet connection. So, how do you get started doing the same for yourself?
The first step is to brainstorm some 'market ideas'. You'll want to sit down and write out as many potential money-making, online niche markets as you can. Then, go online and look at what people are buying and selling in those markets. This will give you a big picture idea of what's important (and worth spending money on) in that market.
Next, ask yourself the following questions:
1. Do I have the ability or desire to create competing products for any of those markets?
2. If the answer is 'No', is there a chance I could make money selling the existing products in the marketplace if they were my own?
If the answer to question 2 is “Yes”, then you've just found the basis for your first Internet business. The solution lies in what's known as “affiliate marketing.” Affiliate marketing is an online business model that lets you earn commissions by promoting other people's products.
All you need to go into business as an affiliate is your own domain name, website and follow up autoresponder. You can get each of these components on a shoestring budget, and the set up process is not too difficult. if you are already computer literate.
What you end up with is an instant home business that you can grow on your time, as quickly or as slowly as necessary. It is also a business you can duplicate over and over again in order to create multiple streams of income.
So, if you want to work from home using your computer, I highly suggest starting your own Internet business centered around affiliate marketing. The methods are easy to learn, easy to implement and offer you a truly legitimate way of making good money online.
Sincerely,
Jassen Bowman
Why Internet Businesses Are Simple
Anyone looking for a simple work from home opportunity should consider starting their own Internet-based home business. Don't believe it? Think the Internet is too complicated? Keep reading and you just might change your mind!
Why Internet Businesses Are Simple:
1.Low overhead/low start up costs.
It doesn't cost a lot to start an Internet business, nor does it cost much more to maintain one. You can get set up for under $200 in most cases. Also, as with any business, you can use the principle of leverage for growth by investing your profits.
2. Plenty of market opportunity.
Almost every conceivable market has a home online these days. You can reach potential customers all across the world, any time of the day or night.
Plus, there is a range of options when it comes to what you sell and how you sell it. You can sell physical goods to people, or you can sell 'digital' products that customers download to their hard drives.
You don't have to own these products, either. Instead, you can earn money promoting other people's products via affiliate programs for the most hands-free type of business possible.
3. Ability to automate most business functions.
The Internet allows you to automate just about everything, including: lead generation, payment processing, product delivery, follow ups and more. This means more time for you to spend doing the things you really enjoy, as your business (once properly set up) will virtually run itself and make the sales for you.
4. Proven money-making methods already in place.
Tactics such as affiliate marketing represent proven money-making methods that rely on the fundamentals of real marketing. There's no question about what works, how it works or why it works. Once you understand how to target profitable markets and get your offer in front of those markets, you practically have a license to print money.
The only way an Internet-based home business could be any simpler is if you could just pay someone to do all the work for you, then send you the checks. But, seriously, I think that doing it yourself really is half the fun.
To your success,
Jassen Bowman
New Affiliate Marketing Section
First of all, thank you to everybody that sent in their responses to my request for what you wanted to see on the site. I regret that I can't personally reply to everybody, the number of responses was just incredible. I'm still going through and tallying them up, and I'll be posting the top requests soon.
Also, I just got done posting the pre-publication version of the affiliate marketing guide. It's still a rough draft, but then again, it seems like half the stuff I put up on this site is forever in rough draft phase. 
If you have any interest in making money online without inventory, shipping, packaging, etc., then affiliate marketing might be your thing. In fact, you can "do" affiliate marketing without even having your own web site. Here's the link to the site:
Your comments on it are appreciated, and hopefully I'll have the time to update it sometime in the next few weeks. I also need to actually put some stuff up on the field inspecting section, and I plan to do that this week.
Take care!
-Jassen
What's the difference between a real, home-based Internet business and a get-rich-quick fantasy? The answer can be found in the basic principles of marketing and economics.
Real businesses serve real markets with real needs. Get-rich-quick schemes serve the interests of the people selling the schemes.
Real businesses follow a proven model and make use of step-by-step plans to achieve objectives. Get-rich-quick schemes are over-simplified and 'fuzzy', and don't seem to follow anything other than their own internal logic.
Real home-based Internet businesses grow and adapt along with market conditions. Get-rich-quick schemes are limited to a “just do this one thing” approach, often taking advantage of fads or loopholes in the system.
Real businesses rely on targeting, lead generation, follow up and repeat customers. Get-rich-quick schemes tell you that all you have to do is buy the system, press a button or two, then sit back on your couch and wait for the money to roll in.
I'm sure you're getting the idea by now. If you want a real home-based Internet business, you need a proven model to work with - a model that works because it utilizes common sense marketing techniques as its fuel.
The scams and fads out there today aren't based on common sense. They're based on taking advantage of the very human desire to get something for nothing. Having everything come to you 'easy' and 'fast' might seem like an ideal situation, but nothing worth having really comes without effort.
You can definitely earn a great income online, but only if you're wiling to put aside the false dream of 'making millions overnight' for little to no work. Make sure all of your efforts are focused on delivering truly quality products to real people with a focus on building trust-based relationships, and you can't go wrong.
Take care,
Jassen Bowman
Do you dream of owning your own home-based business? Have you tried other opportunities before and just can't seem to make them work? If this describes you, then I'd like you to consider the idea of starting a particular type of Internet-based home business.
There's nothing wrong with “offline” home businesses. It's just that, for many people, they require far too much time and money to get going. Worse yet, some of them are scams. The purpose of owning your own business is to earn more money and have more free time, right? So, the last thing you need is a business that feels just like another j-o-b!
The Internet, however, is full of legitimate money-making opportunities that don't require a lot of money to be invested up front, nor do they require you to put in 10 hours a day to make them work.
“But I don't have anything to sell,” I hear you say, “and how do I compete with all the big retailers out there?”
The answer: you don't have to! Not only can you make money without owning your own products, you also don't have to compete with the big names. In fact, you can work with those retailers - large and small - and get them to pay you.
How?
By going into business for yourself as an 'affiliate marketer'. Affiliate marketers earn money simply by promoting other people's products to generate sales.
For example, let's say you became an affiliate of a retailer who sells high-definition televisions online, and their affiliate program pays out 45% on every purchase.
That means that for every person you refer to them who buys a T.V., you get a commission of 45% of the purchase price. So, if someone purchases a T.V. for, say, $1,500, you would earn $675. Not bad, right?
Affiliate marketing is not limited just to 'physical' items like electronics. You can also promote 'digital' goods, which are downloadable, like e-books or software. Many successful affiliates will tell you that this is where it's at - in the 'information' market - because there are lot more affiliates competing online to sell the 'hard goods.'
Truly, though, both forms of affiliate marketing are viable options if you have the knowledge and resources needed to market effectively: and, they are both proven work from home opportunities that you can get started on today.
Sincerely,
Jassen Bowman
If you are thinking of starting an Internet home business, the tips discussed here will help you make smart choices and get started on the right foot.
There's almost nothing more rewarding than working from home, and no easier way to do it than on the Internet. However, there still some pitfalls you'll want to avoid because they can make or break your business.
The following tips will help you avoid these pitfalls and secure the long-term success of your business:
1. Start with a 'model' and a 'plan'
Two 'must have' items for any Internet home business include: A) a proven business model, and 
a plan of action.
Even though Internet businesses are often easier to set up and profit from than traditional businesses, they still require you to have a vision and marketing plan in place.
You don't want to 'fly blind.' Make sure you've identified a profitable target market, have a system in place for plucking customers from that market.
2. Leverage your profits
One mistake made by new business owners is in spending the money generated by their business on everything except their business!
There's nothing wrong with setting aside some of the profits for yourself, after all, that's one reason you went into business. However, you must set aside and reinvest enough of your profits each month so that your operating budget will grow.
For example, if you spent $20 on traffic generation this month, and earned $150, why not put $40 or $60 towards traffic generation next month? Better yet, try putting in $80 to $100. If you know that more traffic will mean more leads and more sales, it's a no-brainer because your profits next month stand to double or even triple.
3. Learn to delegate
Even the most successful internet home business owners dislike (or simply aren't good at) certain tasks associated with running their business. What do you absolutely hate? What's one area where you feel your skills need a lot of improvement?
These areas of 'weakness' can suck a way a lot of valuable time that you could better spend doing what you're really good at. If you have the means, consider hiring someone to do those jobs or commit to finding a way to do it faster on your own.
4. Take Daily Action
Think about what you can do each day to grow your business, even if you think you've got all the pieces in place. You can always benefit from more traffic and more leads, right?
Stay up to date on market research and add new keywords to your pay-per-click campaigns, or take a spare hour to write that article you've been putting off. Compose a message to your opt-in list, and offer them a new 'freebie' to build good will and keep your open rates up.
Last, but not least, don't forget to take a break and just enjoy the freedom of being your own boss. Go for a walk or run a few errands. It's important to get out and interact with people, especially if you work alone at home!
To your success!
~Jassen Bowman~
Generating serious income from a home-based Internet business requires more than 'good ideas' or hard work. It requires a step-by-step system that is proven to convert prospects into customers, all while letting you work 'smarter', not harder.
An effective system, no matter what it is you're selling, should revolve around the following process: Target Your Market -> Target Your Offer -> Drive Targeted Traffic To Offer -> Follow Up.
Let's talk about each component now in a little more detail.
*Target Your Market
This is always the first step when starting an Internet business. If you're already in business and not making much money, I would recommend going back to review your market research. Improper targeting can bring your whole business to its knees no matter what else you do.
*Target Your Offer
Once you find a hot market, you must find an appropriate offer for that market. This means bringing unique products/services to that market that truly address the market's needs, problems or concerns.
Pay close attention to the difference between targeting and relevance. What's 'relevant' is not always targeted.
For example, a warm coat would be relevant to someone living in Alaska because it's cold there; but, as a product, it wouldn't be very targeted unless the coat had some special feature that people there would use. This is a subtle distinction, but an important one.
*Drive Targeted Traffic
Targeted traffic is market-specific traffic. In other words, you want to draw visitors to your offer from market you're targeting. This is not just about using the right keywords, but also about advertising on market-related websites using text links, banner ads, signature files, classifieds and anything else at your disposal.
*Follow Up
You should try to capture as much of the traffic to your site as possible onto an opt-in email list. This list will allow you to keep your offer in front of your prospects until they convert into customers. It will also allow you to generate repeat business from existing customers.
If you follow these four steps, you're on the way to having a winning system that can generate significant profits for you now and in the future. The steps are based on solid marketing principles and will work for you in any niche market, which means you can put the system in place in as many Internet business as you like (which, by the way, you should).
To your success,
Jassen Bowman
In my quest to bring my own costs down and also find "new" things to share with with my readers, I recently revisited the wonderful world of finding free web traffic.
There are some great free things you can do out there, and many of them that I've been learning about myself lately center around the concept of blog promotion. While I've converted most of my own web sites to blog publishing platforms of one type or another, I've never really gotten into the learning about RSS feeds, content promotion through blog rings, pinging, and that sort of thing. Now that I've started to implement it, I'm really fascinated by the possibilities, and have added some blog feed based marketing methods to my list of things to always do. Speaking of which, if you don't have a marketing playbook or checklist of things you do regularly, then I encourage you to adopt one.
Content is, and always has been, the king the any media source. This includes television, newspaper, magazine, radio, Internet, and any other medium. The only reason that people tune in to a medium is for the content. With that in mind, you'll notice that most of my basic, free marketing methods in my playbook revolve around providing content, and using that content to build my lists (the money is in the list!).
Without further ado, here is my marketing matrix of free methods:
1. Ads on free classified ads sites, such as Backpages, Craigslist, and Kijiji.
2. Posting articles on article directory sites, such as EzineArticles.
(a) Corrolary: All articles are blog posts, and most blog posts are articles!
3. Creating educational YouTube videos and putting URL in the video and link in the description text.
4. Posting content to industry hubs and networking sites. For example, ActiveRain is a very popular blogging and online networking community for real estate brokers, in much the same way that Facebook is for college students. Networking with other people expands your sphere, also.
5. Discussion board participation. Pick forums related to your industry and site, and put links in your signature line so it appears in all your posts. These can be stand-alone sites, or "groups" on sites like MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
6. Comment on related blogs, leaving a link behind.
7. Automatically submit your content to aggregators. The easiest way to do this is to burn your feed to FeedBurner and enable the feature to distribute your feed to blog aggregators.
8. Place links in your blog posts to allow readers to submit them to Digg, Delicious, Stumble Upon, Fark, and other such "best of blogging" sites.
And last, but definitely MOST important, the number one web traffic generator of all time...
9. Build your list! Get people to subscribe to your email list or blog feed to receive announcements of blog updates, product promotions, tips, tricks, secrets, and anything else your readers might want to know about.
I recently became a huge fan of Feedburner.com, a Google product. It allows you to automate several functions listed above, as well as BUILD A LIST for FREE! You can add a "Get email updates" subscription form on your blog and they will be automatically notified whenever you put up a new post. While lacking the significant power of a sequential autoresponder, it's a great way to build a list without subscribing to a service. Feedburner will even let you export your subscriber list in Excel format, so you can take it with you if you move beyond it's capabilities.
These 9 free marketing methods should get you thousands of unique visitors per month to your site, which is sufficient to generate a small but significant Adsense or affiliate revenue stream.
To your success,
Jassen Bowman
New Mystery Shopping Scam
There's a new mystery shopping scam going around that I wanted to alert people to. It seems to be most common in the southeastern United States right now, but like all such frauds, is likely to spread.
Here's how the scam works. People put classified ads in local newspaper or on classified ad sites like Craigslist and Backpage for mystery shopping jobs. Then, once you register they get you to do an "assignment" where you take a check, usually a cashier's check, to conduct an evaluation of a bank, cash advance or check cashing company, or someplace like the Wal-Mart customer service desk, which will cash checks for you.
Then, they have you cash the check, keep part of it as your shopper fee, and then send the rest back. The problem is that the cashier's check is fraudulent, and they just got real money in exchange for you helping them launder fake checks.
Never forget: If it souds too good to be true, it probably is!
A legitimate mystery shopping assignment will NEVER, I repeat, NEVER, send you a check in advance of the shop. You will ALWAYS have to front the purchase yourself and then include receipts with your report to receive a reimbursement.
So, be careful, and always be skeptical out there.
Peace,
-Jassen
A Brief Introduction To SEO
First, some definitions are in order.
- Internet Marketing
- The commercial functions involved in transferring goods from producer to consumer via the Internet; particularly the processes implemented by sellers to attract buyers.
- Search Engine Marketing
- The process of attracting buyers to a web site via listings on search engines for the purpose of transacting business.
- Search Engine Optimization
- A general term used to describe specific techniques that can be used on websites to rank high in search engines for specific keywords, resulting in increased visitor traffic to a web site.
For many small businesses that have invested large sums of money into an attractive, user friendly web site, there is a belief that once they have a web presence, visitors will flock to their site. Much to their dismay, they discover that this simply isn’t the case. Just as a retail storefront is absolutely worthless without customers walking in the door, a web site is useless without visitors.
Having a compelling, effective web site on the Internet is the first step in building the online presence for your business. However, a web site is virtually useless without visitors. Attracting visitors to your web site and developing a legion of regular users of your web site content takes time to build and should be a focused part of your overall marketing plan.
Attracting Visitors is the Core of Internet Marketing
To begin attracting traffic to your web site, ensure that your URL (web site address) is listed on items that your existing customers routinely receive, such as business cards, invoices, advertisements, and flyers. Your existing customer base is an excellent initial source of web traffic. If you operate a bricks and mortar location, in store displays announcing the birth of your web site are also helpful.
To begin attracting visitors from the Internet at large, it is important to understand just exactly how most people find web sites. Consider your own Internet habits as an example. If your web site and your products and services serve a specialized market, then it may be safe to assume that your audience will display similar traits and web surfing habits as yourself. Participating in online discussion forums (with your URL included in the signature line of your messages), banner advertising on other popular web sites that are information resources for your industry, and advertising in e-mail newsletters particular to your audience are good marketing options to explore.
If you are like most Internet users, when you are looking for something specific on the World Wide Web, you probably use some sort of search engine or directory, such as Google, Yahoo!, AltaVista, Lycos, etc. In fact, according to a GVU Users Survey, 84.8% of Internet users use search engines to find the content they are looking for.
How Search Engine Marketing Increases Web Traffic
Search engine placement is considered to be the most effective, and definitely most cost effective, method of Internet marketing. In a study released by ActivMedia Research in September 1999, Search Engine Positioning was ranked as the #1 website promotional method used by eCommerce sites. Even though this study is slightly dated by technology standards, the result is still accurate.
For a better look at how people find web sites, let’s look at data from a survey conducted in April 2000 by IMT Strategies (www.imtstrategies.com):
"Top Ways Websites are Discovered"
Banner ads: 1%
Targeted email: 1.2%
TV spots: 1.4%
“By accident”: 2.1%
Magazine ads: 4.4%
Word-of-mouth: 20%
Random Surfing: 20%
Search Engines: 46%
As you can see, search engines account for almost half of the traffic generated by web site users. Focusing on word of mouth marketing and search engine placement are, therefore, critical to the success of your web site.
In order to generate a lot of web site traffic from search engines, your web site must appear within the first two or three pages of search engine results.
Search engines typically rely upon software programs called spiders or crawlers to surf the Internet and index content. As such, there are a number of tasks that must be completed in order make a web site search engine ready. The term "search engine optimization" is commonly used to describe the tasks associated with making a web site readable by search engines in such a manner as to give the web site the best odds of receiving a high relevancy ranking when a user performs a search containing certain keywords.
The Process of Search Engine Optimization
In fact, keyword selection is the first, and probably most important, step towards obtaining high search engine rankings. Remember, search engine users are after specific information, so it is our job to make sure that we define those keywords that most appropriately describe the information contained on a web site.
After defining keywords, an existing web site must be analyzed to ensure it meets certain parameters that will increase search engine ranking. If this analysis turns up any problems with the page that may impact search engine positioning, then these pages must be optimized. Once optimized, it is important to then submit the newly optimized site to search engines, monitor positioning of the web site, and work on increasing the number of reputable web sites that link to your own, as this is a factor that some search engines use in their ranking schemes.
Any business owner that has had experience with marketing and advertising understands the value of attracting qualified buyers. On the Internet, this is done through a variety of means, and by far the most important is to ensure that your web site ranks high in all the major search engines for the keywords which people will actually use to find your particular product or service. What better prospect is their than somebody that is actively searching for your product or service?
As with traditional marketing, there are many things that one can do for themselves to attract business. However, most businesses recognize the value of seeking professional assistance with their marketing. It is no secret that hiring marketing professionals and placing print, radio, and television advertisements can be expensive, especially to the small business owner or a startup company with limited operating capital. Typically, Internet marketing cost figures are no different.
If you are interested in learning more about search engine optimization, we have several resources to assist you. This blog contains numerous articles and tools to assist you in your SEO efforts.
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