Article Marketing Advice

My Super-Effective Article Writing Formula

2009-11-02T21:15:00.001-08:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Willie Crawford

Here's the formula that I use to quickly write informative articles that get results. For many of the articles that I write my goal is to get visitors to a website where they take some action related to the topic of the article. Often the action that they take is to buy some product that I recommend.

Here is the formula that I use to write articles almost in an assembly line fashion. The reason that I write so many articles is that in some niches you need dozens, even hundreds of articles, to break through the clutter.

I begin with keyword research. You want to know what keyword phrases your ideal customers are using when searching online. They come online searching for solutions to their problems, and when they come across your articles offering a solution, they become raving fans.

To do keyword research, I often use the "Google External Keyword Tool." You can find it by googling that term. This tool shows you how many searches are made on a given term in a month, plus how many webpages there are out there already targeting that phrase. The tool also suggests related terms that you might want to target. You can use this tool to compile a list of suitable keywords and then download your research results in an Excel spreadsheet.

In looking at keywords, what you're trying to identify, in addition to search volume, is "What problems are these searchers try to solve." People come online looking for solutions to their problems. You identify those problems and then let them know (via your articles) that you have the perfect solution.

In crafting my article titles, I use my keywords but also work in a promised benefit. My titles promise to show them the solution to a nagging problem. When they see that title listed in the search engines, this is what entices them to click through to your target site.

In crafting the body of my articles, I use the "problem, agitate, solution" formula. I describe the problem to let the reader know that I understand their problems. I then go into excruciating details explaining the problem, and how it's not going to get any better unless they do something about it. Finally, I point out the obvious solution, which is my recommended product.

Sometimes I only point them to a website to read more about the problem. On that website, they'll also find my recommended solution. This is a less-threatening, soft-sell approach.

When I do my keyword research, I sometimes identify hundreds of related keywords that are being searched on a lot. At the same time, I identify several different painful problems (or variations of the same problem). This is what allows me to write articles in almost an assembly line fashion.

After the articles are written, I use an automated submission service to submit them to the top article directories. I use automated submissions because otherwise I'd spend countless hours submitting each article (not a very good use of our time).

In the resource box of these articles, I point readers to a target site. Where permitted I use anchor text in the links in these resource boxes. That anchor text is generally the keyword that I'm targeting (the same keyword that I used in my title).

I also post these articles to my blogs or maybe to a static page on one of my sites.

Since I like to leverage my time, I also turn many of my articles into videos, and podcasts. I generally create the videos by putting the main points of the articles on PowerPoint slides. Then I read the article as I go through the slides - recording then using Camtasia (screen capture software).

Alternatively, I sometimes simply turn the text of an article into a PDF. Then I scroll down my computer screen reading the article, and again, recording it using Camtasia.

To create the podcast you can use recording software probably already on your computer, or you can download one many free pieces of software such as Audacity. Simply read the article as you record it. I generally save it as an MP3.

Submit the videos to video sharing sites, and submit the audio to podcast sites. I use an automated submission service for this, submitting to numerous sites!

Here's one final tactic that I use to get my articles to rank higher for a target keyword and get noticed more readily in the search engines. I look for ways to create external links pointing to my article in one location - generally my main blog. I do this by bookmarking the blog post that contains the article. This is perhaps the easiest way to give the article a search engine boost.

There you have it, my super-effective article writing formula. It generates a steady stream of high quality website traffic for me, and a steady stream of orders too. Feel free to use it.

About the Author:
Willie Crawford has been marketing online for 13 years, and used article marketing most of that time (writing over 1500 articles). His favorite tools for automatically distributing his articles, videos, podcasts, and press releases is the automated submission site: http://EasyPushButtonTraffic.com/

Follow Willie Crawford on Twitter.

How A Blog Can Seriously Help Your Business

2009-10-29T18:15:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Jason OConnor

If your business website doesn't have a blog, get one. A blog, if done right, can act as a direct and indirect mechanism that brings large amounts of qualified visitors to your site, many of whom may become customers.

This is mostly related to the way blogs interact with search engines and the traffic I am speaking of will come from search engines, mostly Google.

Before I explain how you can do this to help your website, let me first give some background on how search engines work, Google in particular.

When it comes to optimizing your website (or blog for that matter) for search engines you must always keep in mind two things: on-page optimization and off-page optimization.

On-page optimization is the elements of a Web page that better optimizes it to be found and ranked well in the search engines. These elements can include on-page content such as the actual sentences and paragraphs on the page, the headlines (or headers or Hx tags), the links, the links' text, the title tag and much more.

Off-page optimization means the things that are done on sites besides your own, namely link-building. Off-page optimization is the process of creating links (or causing others to create links) on other websites that point to your site. Inbound links as these are often called have a major impact on how well you rank in search engines. Generally speaking, the more inbound links, the better. But the quality of the sites with these inbound links, or the way the search engines perceive the sites, is even more important.

To rank on the first couple of pages on the search engines requires work on both on-page and off-page optimization.

Two additional and important pieces of information that you'll need to understand are related to site content and internal links.

Search engines also very much love new, original and quality content, and they like to see your website regularly adding this kind of new content. You don't need to add pages every day, just add pages at the same rate over time. So if you add a page a week to your site, keep it at around that same pace, or increase or decrease gradually.

A website can be considered a living entity in a sense. It certainly shouldn't be static. It should grow over time. And the fantastic thing about content is that the more of it there is on your site, the more chances you have getting found in the search engines.

The idea that inbound links help your search engine rankings that I explained above can be extended to your own internal pages as well. In other words, the more links to a particular page coming from other pages within the same site will boost that page's rank as well.

Think of it this way. If you had a ten-page site, including a product page and every page on the site contained a link to your product page. If all other things were equal, your product page would rank higher than the rest of your site's pages (besides the home page which is given a little extra weight).

Now let's consider what would happen if there were only you and your competitor in your industry (only if that could be true!) and your site still had those ten pages while your competitor's site contained one hundred pages. Furthermore, your competitor set it up the same way as you where he added a link to every page on his site that pointed to his product page. If all other things were equal his product page would outrank your product page every time. Why? Because he had 100 internal links pointing to his product page and you only had 10.

If you put all these pieces together now, on-page optimization, off-page optimization or link building, content creation and internal linking, can you begin to see why a blog may be a good thing? A blog helps with all of these.

A blog that is regularly updated is providing a mechanism for adding fresh content on a regular basis. Plus, it's so easy to use a blog that anyone can use them, so even if you or your employees don't know a thing about Web pages and HTML, you'll still be able to add new content to your site.

Consider this. If you add fresh, quality content to your blog on a regular basis by writing posts, something the search engines love, and within each post you link to an important page within your site, let's say your product page for instance, you're now building links to help your rankings using your blog. With this additional link your product page gets that much more boost in the search engines.

Remember how I explained that links from within your own site help your rankings? Adding links within your blog posts pointing back to your other important pages of yours that you want to rank well is a great way to help your rankings.

And every time you publish a new post, you're giving the search engines one more entry point into your site. Your site will quickly get bigger, and with each new page your site gets more visible.

Keep in mind that the links you make within your blog posts should be relevant. Only link to your product page from a post that has to do with your products. And also, blog posts ought to be useful to your site visitors. The less you talk about your products and instead offer useful, free information that people can use, the more traffic and repeat visitors you'll get.

Remember that people really don't care about you, your website or your products, they only care about how you can help them. If you sell furniture, a blog post about how to find the best deals on furniture would be far better than a post about how your chairs are the best in the world.

One important thing to remember is that if you plan on creating a new blog for your business as a way to augment your website be sure you put the blog on your actual domain. This means that you would not use a remote service like Blogger.com. Instead, you must have the blog on your business website's address (or domain). For example, if your website address is http://www.yoursite.com/ then your blog should be located at http://www.yoursite.com/blog or http://blog.yoursite.com/

By adding a blog to your business website you are creating a way to get more traffic. You'll get direct traffic from your posts, which get indexed by the search engines and drive traffic to your site from searches. And you'll get indirect traffic from your other site's pages ranking well in the search engines because they have links pointing to them from your blog posts.

You'll be regularly adding fresh content to your site, which search engines love, thereby creating more ways to be found in the search engines at the same time. And each post provides a new opportunity to create a link or two to other pages and blog posts on your site, thereby boosting those pages' rankings.

Like I suggested at the beginning, if your business website doesn't have a blog, go get one.

Copyright 2009 TheNetGazette.net

About the Author:
Jason O'Connor is a Web business and marketing professional who produces The Net Gazette, a free online Web business and marketing periodical. The Net Gazette covers topics that range from blogging for business to Twitter. Read the September edition here or here: http://www.thenetgazette.net/

Read more of Jason OConnor's articles.

List Building - 5 Steps To Generate Viral Traffic To Your Website

2009-10-28T13:45:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Alan Cheng

If you can create viral traffic then you've won the battle for traffic generation. Driving traffic is a continuous task, so viral traffic which grows on its own is a dream for all online business owners. But not many online business owners know or even try to implement it. Here are 5 steps to creating viral traffic so that your traffic building efforts produces the most amount of visitors and subscribers.

1. Create A Squeeze Page

Get a landing page which does nothing but offer some free gifts in exchange for the visitor's email. This is where you start to build your list.

Hire a good graphics designer and come up with attractive gifts such as valuable reports and/or free software.

2. Create A Report To Sell

Your next task is to create a report which you're going to sell. Again, make sure the graphics are eye-catching and pay a good graphics designer to create your website.

Your report has to look fantastic and the information needs to be good. Do the required research and put as much information as possible into this report.

With your website, sell the report for $97. This is a steep price for a report but your objective is not to sell many copies of it. Do the necessary promotion and get the word out about your report. And don't forget to put links in the report to your website.

3. Free Gift

When people sign up to your list via your squeeze page, send them to a page where you will offer your $97 report as a gift. To claim the gift, the subscriber needs to refer at least 3 of their friends to your squeeze page.

Now when your subscribers see that your gift is worth $97 and that you are currently selling it for that price, it will drive conversions through the roof.

No one can resist a true free gift that is currently selling for $97. This can help you generate viral traffic. Your subscribers' friends might sign up to your list and repeat the whole process by referring their friends to your squeeze page.

4. Email To List

Now while your squeeze page is building your list virally, you can create a report and continue to send it to your list for free. Of course, they would have to refer 3 or more of their friends to download the free gift.

Using this technique you are training your list to refer their friends in order to get your free reports. You are also testing to see which kind of offers create the best responses.

5. Contest

When you know which type of offers send you the most amount of referrals, you can create a contest and announce it to your list.

For the contest you will need to provide something which is perceived to be a high priced item otherwise it won't work. The best type of offers are video training with personal coaching from you based on the offer with the most responses.

Offer your prize to 3 winners only. Since you are offering personal coaching and video training, you can set a high price for the prize. Pricing it at $1,000 is not unreasonable.

To win the contest, your list needs to send you traffic to your squeeze page. The top 3 who sends the most subscribers will win the $1000 prize. This is very attractive.

Once they spread the news by telling people about your contest, more and more people will join your list and promote the contest.. This is the viral effect you're looking for. You can even issue a press release to inform more people about your contest.

Carrying out these 5 steps will ensure unstoppable viral traffic to your website. It needs planning and setting up the system for it to work and creation of the reports, but you are sure to get an avalanche of traffic. Using this viral traffic to get people subscribed to your list, you can promote your information products to them and push those sales figures through the roof.

About the Author:
For more tips on how to promote your online business and increase sales, visit information product creation. To hire professionals to create your own best selling information products, visit http://www.eliteghostwriters.com/infoproducts.html - Alan Cheng, Elite Ghostwriters.

Read more of Alan Cheng's articles.

Strengthen Your Advertising with SEO Copywriting

2009-10-18T09:15:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Enzo F. Cesario

Advertising should be part of any growing business. Regardless of what your business does, customers have to know about your product or service in order for them to use it. As the Internet becomes a primary source for consumer knowledge and increasingly, purchasing, it's imperative that your company gets its message out through this medium. However, advertising on the Internet works differently than traditional advertising in that the customer must find the business instead of a business coming to the customer.

Copywriting is the creation of text used in advertising, regardless of medium. This covers every aspect of an advertisement: promotional flyers, jingles, slogans, billboards, and web pages. All of these strive to put your product or service in the best light possible and are aimed directly at the consumer; except for web pages. With web pages there is another audience your advertisement must also target: the search engine.

What's a Search Engine, and Why Isn't it Finding Me?

Think of a search engine as being a giant phone book: customers looking for a type of business will often look up that category and start by calling the first listing. Because phone books are indexed alphabetically, almost every category will have a business with a name beginning with "a," or even "aaa." Likewise, Internet users who aren't familiar with the category they're looking at will start with the first link they see when they search for something. However, dozens or even hundreds of factors determine the placement of these pages. This is where SEO comes in.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Like naming your business "AAA" for placement in a phone book, SEO techniques match web pages with the criteria that search engines use so that they are placed as high on a search as possible. Web pages are placed on search engines through the use of a web crawler. This is a program that systematically searches for new web pages and categorizes them. Because the Internet is so massive, these crawlers are designed to weed out useless pages and concentrate on unique ones that will be useful to people who are doing the search. Search engines use dozens of factors in their algorithms to find and place web pages. They are very secretive about the specific factors so that no one can cheat their system by writing a web page just so it will be placed on top. While the specifics are unknown, there are a few things all search engines use to categorize pages: the number of links to a page, its ranking on website traffic sites, and keywords in the page.

Use SEO and Play By the Rules

We all depend on getting accurate, useful results from search engines. Search engine companies actively modify their criteria to keep spam from showing up on their pages and to keep their users happy. Therefore the best way to use SEO to get people to your web page is by playing by the rules; pages that have useful information will stay on top of searches, while those that don't are quickly removed.

So What CAN I Do to Get My Business Noticed?

Many search engines sell ads, but any reliable service will not sell search placement, nor does advertising with them influence your place on their searches. There are three things you should be concerned with to ensure a good ranking:

1. Keyword indexing: HTML pages can use meta tags that tell search engines what topics a page covers. It is important to include as many words related to the subject of a web page in its meta tags. However, placing popular but unrelated words, such as a celebrity's name, or hiding keywords behind backgrounds or images on a page to generate search results will quickly get the page ignored.

2. Good linking: Links are very important to getting your page noticed, but only if they're from reliable sources and are written to emphasize keywords. Links from known link sellers will not improve your page rank, and will cause consumers to distrust your site. Linking within your site to appropriate pages and getting others in a related area to link to you will help your page ranking immensely.

3. Limited web crawling: This may seem counter-intuitive, but there are some pages that you may not want to show up on a search engine, like temporary pages or login screens. Most search engines consider internal search pages to be spam, and allowing them to be crawled will lower your search ranking. This can be prevented using the robots exclusion standard: a text file named "robots.txt" placed in the root directory of a domain will tell crawlers which parts of your web site to skip.

SEO is vital in copywriting for Internet-based advertisements. Properly implemented, it will help keep your page on the top of search lists. By creating good links, using accurate keywords, and limiting web crawling to useful pages, you can ensure customers can find you.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat. Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. Go to http://www.Brandsplat.com/ or visit our blog at: http://www.brandsplatblog.com/

Read more Articles written by Enzo F. Cesario.

Article Marketing -- Building Links to Your Business

2009-10-06T03:15:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Enzo F. Cesario

Online marketing has been a vast and rapidly growing outlet over the past decade. Obviously, there are many approaches to online marketing, but very few that come close to the effectiveness of article marketing. Article Marketing has provided a large portion of the visitors for some of the web's most successful businesses and it has proven to be one of the most cost effective marketing techniques today.

What is Article Marketing and How Does it Work?

Article Marketing is the publication of written content on websites other than your own. Sometimes these websites may have similar content or products as your business. Sound like helping your competition? Here's the catch. Your article includes a backlink - a link that leads to your own website. Simply put, you provide an article on other people's websites that ends with a link back to your own website. The idea is that for those sites using your article, they must include the link back to your site.

The quality of your article's content is a deciding factor in how many people will publish it on their sites. This is why it is very important that your articles be well written, purposeful, and relevant to the subject. If you don't or can't write the articles yourself, you might want to consider paying for someone to write for you. In the long run it will be worth it.

Is Article Marketing Effective

Article Marketing has become extremely popular because of the way search engines do their searching. There was a time when the number of visitors to a site was a critical factor in its listings with search engines such as Google or Yahoo. Today, however, the key determinant is the number of backlinks: pointers from other sites to yours. To understand how the backlinks work in relevancy to your page listing, you must first understand the search engine process.

Your page's popularity, known as the page rank, is judged by two factors: how many backlinks there are to your site; and the popularity of the sites that those backlinks are on. For example, let's say you have two backlinks to your site listed on two different websites. One of those sites, say Microsoft.com, has a very high page rank. The other, BobsDoItYourselfComputerRepair.com, has a pretty low page rank. Your site will receive more notice from the search engines because of the link on the more popular site. So, backlinks on high-profile sites will inevitably raise your page ranking.

Creating and Submitting Articles

When creating your articles, remember that quality is of utmost importance. People are looking for information, and a well-written, relevant article will position you as someone who knows what they are talking about in a reader's mind. If you don't think you can write your own articles, there are many online outlets for finding writers.

Once the article is written, add a link to your site along with your by-line. This is called a resource box and can include a little bit about you and your business as well as the link to your website.

Next, you will need to get your article submitted to other sites. You don't have to do this yourself. There are literally thousands of article marketing source sites on the Internet that can do it for you. However, the more popular ones are those that produce the most effective traffic. Among these are EzineArticles.com, ArticleDashboard.Com, and GoArticles.Com. Each of these will provide excellent sources for backlinks, but be prepared to submit only well-written articles, as they tend to be quite thorough in their screening process.

Check Your Article Marketing Campaign

Once you have submitted your article, give it a few weeks to make its way out onto the World Wide Web. Then, use one of the many backlink-checking tools available on the net. Most are free and can be found by doing a simple web search. Domain-Pop.com and IWebTool.com provide some of the more popular tools. The larger search engines (i.e. Google.com) provide backlink-checking tools also. These programs are usually easy to use and require no download. Simply go to the site, put the web address of your site into the appropriate space, and hit enter. In a few seconds you will be able to see how many backlinks your site has and, in most cases, exactly what sites those backlinks are listed on.

Article Marketing is not only one of the most effective techniques for building your page rank and popularity, but is also one of the most simple and most inexpensive, particularly if you have good writing skills of your own. Remember to keep your article content similar to the content of your site. People surfing for the information in your articles will only click on the link in your resource box if it is relevant to their own personal interests. Also remember that article marketing takes time and effort. It doesn't happen overnight. With every article you put out onto the web, you are putting out another way for potential visitors to find you. Over time, this will increase the traffic to your website and will eventually increase your sales.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat. Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. Go to http://www.Brandsplat.com/ or visit our blog at: http://www.brandsplatblog.com/

Article Marketing - Writing for the Internet

2009-09-22T02:30:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Enzo F. Cesario

Article marketing incorporates writing carefully and concisely for a target audience on the Internet. While all writing begins with good grammar, accurate spelling and compelling content, there are several differences between print writing and online writing in both structure and purpose. Online articles tend to be shorter than printed text, as do the individual sentences that make up the text. Readers usually skim what they see online, so articles are not only shorter, but often broken up into small sections rather than presented as a large block of text.

Writing online articles for the purpose of article marketing involves targeting a specific audience and providing them with relevant content that is usually intended to drive them to another resource by way of a link.

Internet Writing and SEO

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a strategy for increasing traffic to a website using organic search engine results. In terms of article marketing, this means creating an article that is targeted around keywords readers might use to search for your content in the search engines. In order to drive targeted traffic to the content of the article, the article will need to rank high in the search engines. To do this, your desired keywords must be sprinkled generously throughout the text in a natural way that doesn't make the content seem like a sales pitch.

Search engines use programs that scan the content of a website by sending "spiders" to crawl every bit of information on the site. The most widely-used search engines place a great deal of importance on backlinks, or links to a site from other websites. Article marketing helps to get these links because you have inserted them in the author's bio at the end of the article. They point to your site for readers interested in your content as well as spiders crawling the web searching for relevant linked-up websites.

An Emphasis on Quality

Quality content is one of the most important aspects of successful article marketing. Providing your readers with relevant information that delivers what they are searching for will drive not just traffic to your site, but targeted, trusting readers who respect what you have to offer. Furthermore, many article directories have quality control measures that protect against low quality articles. Misinformation or invalid content often will not be listed on these directories, let alone indexed by the search engines.

The Importance of Effective Titles

The title of an online article is essential to the success of the marketing campaign. A title that contains targeted keywords not only helps readers find the content they need, but also boosts the article's search engine rankings. Choosing the title of an online article is a balancing act that involves drawing in potential readers with clever catchiness but also satisfying the search engines' ranking system.

Straightforward and Uncluttered

Online readers tend to scan what they read online and need their text broken up into small logically flowing chunks. As a result, the body of the text may be divided by headlines or broken up into short paragraphs. Using sub-headings, lists, bullet points and bold key phrases are effective ways to create an article that is easy enough to read so that you will not lose your audience. The importance of keyword usage still remains, but splitting up the text into snackable chunks can hook readers and ease them from the first word to the last.

Get Grammar Guidance

Writing effective articles for the Internet takes time, research and practice to become an expert. Here are a few tips:

When writing to your audience, write using the active voice to make your words more direct, clear and concise.

Always use proper grammar and avoid slang.

Always run your text through a spell-checker to avoid simple but glaring errors.

If your text includes any specialized terms, define them for your audience so their read is easy and enjoyable.

Do not, under any circumstances, copy text from another source. This is not only wrong, it will make your article plummet in the search engine rankings due to duplicate content.

If you want to learn more about writing there are many good books available. A great one to start with is William Zinsser's On Writing Well: the Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction.

Outsourcing

If you don't feel that you can produce high-quality articles yourself, one solution is to outsource the work to freelance writers. While this can be an efficient way to get your articles written, you must make sure to find trustworthy writers who can produce content at the level of quality you desire. Outsourcing can work only if you identify a resource or company that provides writers at a cost effective rate with consistent and reliable delivery of high quality content.

Article marketing can be a powerful strategy for generating targeted traffic and backlinks to your site. It can increase both your credibility and your search engine rankings. But to be successful, you need to employ the unique style of writing specific to the Internet. Online writing is different from print writing in structure and content, but successful online writing is guaranteed to help your business's bottom line.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat. Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. Go to http://www.Brandsplat.com/ or visit our blog at: http://www.brandsplatblog.com/

Read more of Enzo F. Cesario's articles.

The Importance Of Creating Resistance In Your Copy

2009-09-21T03:15:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Bill Platt

"Creating Resistance in Your Copy" is an idea that is alien to most online marketers. After all, online marketers want to believe that everyone should buy their products and services, because the more people buying what is being sold, the more money the marketer will inevitably earn.

Alien Marketing Concept

This concept is so alien that most Internet marketers who see this article will react as if they are "deer in the headlights". If you are looking at this article with a blank stare - completely bewildered about my suggestion - then you are likely one of many, who are reacting the same way.

Just the other day, I had this conversation with a small businessperson. The person with whom I was speaking was clearly bewildered at the suggestion, and she asked me, "What exactly do you mean by 'create resistance'?"

I told her that "creating resistance" is the concept of eliminating some of your prospects, before they reach the sales page.

Taking a step back, she said, "What? Why would you want to do that?"

I explained to her what I am ready to explain to you now.

In her case, by the time I finished explaining the idea to her, she realized that she was already doing that - albeit, unconsciously.

Why Would Anyone Want To Create Resistance In Sales Copy?

When you are writing sales copy for a product, there is seldom a need to create resistance in your sales copy. In fact, when selling a product, the need is more often to wipe out, eliminate, diminish or neutralize consumer resistance in your sales copy.

Unless you are creating a product that sells for high dollar and you intend to offer it exclusively to a select number of people, the necessity of creating resistance in product sales copy is almost non-existent.

However, if you are selling a service, the reasons for creating resistance in your sales copy are endless.

For example:

One company we work with is an Internet marketing consulting company. The company provides its services to other businesses based on the billable hour or specific service.

In the case of this company, it does not make sense to talk to customers who cannot spend a minimum of $300 per month with them. As a result, they have created resistance in their sales copy to eliminate the broke, do-it-yourself, home business owner from their list of prospects. As a small consulting firm, it is essential for them to separate the wheat from the chaff quickly.

By requiring an appointment for a free consultation, they direct prospects to a form to be filled out. In that form, they require phone numbers and email addresses, and they request the prospect to be as detailed as possible so that the free consultation will be meaningful.

Another company we work with is a Virtual Assistant Agency. Once again, it is a matter of finding the customers who can actually afford the service. By telling prospects in advance that the minimum billing per month is $1000, the company is able to ensure that the only companies contacting them are those who seriously need virtual assistant(s) to help complete work.

By signing the contract, the customer acknowledges in advance that they should send enough work to the virtual assistant to ensure that the $1000 per month minimum will not go to waste.

Consumers Have A Natural Resistance To Sales Copy

All of the great sales copywriting teachers speak to the notion of "sales resistance" - the natural roadblocks in the mind of the consumer that holds the consumer back from making a purchase.

I actually found it quite interesting in that while researching this article, I could NOT find anyone talking about "creating resistance" in sales copy. The guru's are only talking about how to "eliminate" or "melt away sales resistance".

Now, one might argue that the reason no one is discussing the creation of resistance in sales copy is because one should not do it. But I have had this discussion with a lot of people. Although no one is talking about doing it, service providers who have been in business for a number of years tend to deliberately build "sales resistance" into their sales presentations!

Identifying And Eliminating Time Wasters

Once a service business has been in operation a number of years, the owners / managers of those businesses tend to start seeing patterns that frequently cause financial losses to the company.

When as a business owner / manager, you discover that certain customers cost more money than they generate for your business, you will seek ways to remedy that problem. Often times, it makes far more sense not to sell to certain people - the people who have exhibited certain traits that will lead to nothing but lost productivity for the service provider.

If you operate a service business, you will likely have seen similar patterns yourself. In my case, there are certain behaviors that some prospects exhibit that set off red flags for me. I used to ignore those "red flag" moments, but I always regretted doing so later.

The number one red flag for me in my business is the "carrot on the stick" approach offered by some prospects. It goes something like this: "I am going to try this once, and if it works out, I will send you tons of business."

When I was in college, I used to wait tables in a restaurant. I saw the same behavior even then. People would come in and make grandiose promises at the beginning of the meal, "If you give us great service, we tip really well."

Don't believe it for a moment! It is a lie, usually designed to get something for nothing or to encourage you to discount your services, "just for them".

When I was waiting tables, it did not matter how good of service you gave those guys. You could ignore every other table in the restaurant to give them better service and the tip never exceeded two pennies!

In my business, if you bite the bait, they will take their discount this "one time", and then they are gone... forever... I know their disappearance is not because my service is less than worthy... I have too many customers who have been with me for years; to believe that my service was the reason those people never came back.

I have learned that the "carrot on the stick" approach is designed to take advantage of people - to take advantage of me.

Once a prospect raises this red flag for me, I kill the free advice and the extra attention that I give to their job. I do the job and let the chips fall where they may - my basic service will stand on its own, without any effort to help the customer get more out of it. I will not let this person waste any more of my time, period. Unless this person comes back for additional service, I no longer spend extra time with them.

Eliminating Time Wasters Is Easy If You Create Resistance In Your Copy

As a service provider, you DO want to eliminate "sales resistance" in your basic sales copy. Once you have tweaked your copy to help the majority of your prospects to overcome their natural resistance to your sales message, then it is time to add some resistance back into your copy.

You want as many people to buy your service as possible, but you also want to discourage those that you know will be a waste of your time and resources.

My friend who has the consulting business allows people an initial consultation to help him and the customer to determine if they will be able to work together and if his consulting company will be able to add value to the prospects business. In his sales copy, he points out that after the initial consultation, all hours will be billable hours. Because he makes his prospects jump through hoops to get the free consultation, he is assured that he is only going to have real prospects at the other end of the phone line during a free consultation. And because his prospects understand that all work beyond the initial free consultation is billable work, they don't waste his limited time.

The Virtual Assistant does not need to layer on the resistance at the same level. By clearly explaining what one should expect in terms of the service within the first thirty days of the agreement, it becomes self-evident to the prospect that the service is not for the faint at heart. Investing in a virtual assistant can be a bit expensive, but the payoff can also be quite large. By laying out a map of what one can expect from the service, it clearly defines to the prospect what the cost of such a service could be. And as such, it quickly filters out those people who are not a good fit for the Virtual Assistant's company.

In my case, I don't provide much sales resistance in my sales copy to my prospective customers. In fact, the only sales resistance in my copy is my prices.

The companies that call me a competitor have lower prices than I do - much lower prices. Although they refer to me as one of THEIR competitors, I really don't consider them to be mine. My service is so much different from theirs that I find it very difficult to think of them as "MY competition".

For people who take the time to get educated about my service or to take it for a real spin around the block with a full ten article distributions, my higher prices are often considered a great investment of resources. With the built-in sales resistance in the form of a higher price, my customers ensure that I always serve higher-quality authors - authors who understand that the power of article marketing is in the strength of the content.

I Might Be Going Out On A Limb With This Article...

The fact that I could not find anyone else discussing the value of "adding sales resistance to sales copy" may suggest that I am just a total goof. But I do know for a fact that small business owners in the service industry do deliberately create sales resistance in their copy.

In the conversation that I mentioned in the beginning of this article - the one where I was discussing this idea with a small businessperson, who had her "deer in the headlights" moment - the lady I was speaking with said to me after I explained the concept to her, "Oh, you mean like when I tell my customers that we provide 'quality' over 'quantity'?"

Indeed! Telling your prospects that you provide 'quality' over 'quantity' automatically tells your prospects that your services may be a bit more expensive, but the quality of the work will more than make up for the difference in pricing.

I know that many small business owners do deliberately build sales resistance into their sales copy, and I cannot blame them for doing so.

I also know that my pricing is a disincentive to some people to use my services. But that is okay too. The publishers who receive articles from me know that I distribute a higher quality article. They may not realize that it is because of the pricing resistance on my site, but they do know that we typically distribute some of the best-written articles available online, from some of the biggest names in their industries.

At the end of a ten-article cycle, most of my customers find that their articles have found publication on websites that have a much higher perceived value in the Internet marketplace. In fact, it is not at all uncommon for me to hear from clients who are happy to share that they have generated several thousand dollars in new sales as a result of an article I distributed for them. Now that is music to my ears...

About the Author:
Bill Platt has owned and operated http://thePhantomWriters.com/ since 2001. If you would like to learn more about his article distribution service, visit his website. To read 100's of Bill's Tweet-sized tips for article marketing, SEO, and more, visit: http://thePhantomWriters.com/tips/index.php Bill is also active on Twitter @contentmanager

Follow Bill Platt on Twitter.

What's Your Excuse For Still Not Having A List?

2009-09-20T01:30:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Willie Crawford

One of the excuses we hear most often from struggling online marketers is that they don't make more sales because they don't have a list. We even hear that excuse from marketers who have been online three, or even five years.

My question to them is always, "What are you waiting for?" "Why not start a massive list-building effort today?"

When I look at how I built my database, I used only a few primary methods. Here are the most effective ones that I used:

1) On many of my content websites, in many niches, I simply have an opt-in form in a prominent location on practically every page. That opt-in form is usually in the upper right corner of the page. I typically offer the potential subscribers a gift as an enticement to join my list -- perhaps a PDF special report or an audio recording.

I also assure the potential subscriber that I will protect their data and only send them appropriate email. I also tell them that there is a handy one-click link in every email that I send that makes it super easy for them to remove themselves from my list if they ever get tired of my communications.

This has worked beautifully for me for more than a dozen year, and steadily grows my lists.

2) I have numerous affiliate programs. Many of these affiliate programs sell inexpensive products and pay the affiliates 100% commission on the front end product. The real purpose of those affiliate programs is to build a list of proven buyers interested in a specific topic. The commissions incentivize others to go out and send me traffic AND build my lists.

I most often use a script called Rapid Action Profits, which allows me to pay affiliate instantly, depositing the payments directly into their PayPal accounts. This is so powerful because affiliates often need the funds TODAY, and don't want to wait 30 - 60 days for their commissions. When they can sell one of my inexpensive products, that are almost impulse buys for their customers, and get those funds instantly, they trip over themselves sending me customer... and building my lists.

3) I often participate in quality list-building giveaways. In these events, numerous marketers ban together to drive traffic to a centralize website where gifts from each of the marketers are listed. In order to download a specific gift, the website visitor must typically visit the site of the marketer offering the gift and join his list.

If you offer truly useful gifts, thousands of new subscribers can sometimes be gained from just one of these free giveaways. I usually offer PDF ebooks (transcripts from interviews that I conduct), MP3's or inexpensive but useful software.

I often announce free giveaways that are looking for contributors on my blog, and to my Twitter followers.

4) Software that displays your subscribe box on other's site, and automatically builds your list for you. There is software that allows you to participate in a cooperative effort, where partners display the boxes on each others' webpages. This is a good way to share the wealth since your website visitors are joining others' lists anyway. You may as well send your traffic to someone who is reciprocating.

There is also newer software that allows you to display your subscribe box superimposed on affiliate websites, social networking sites, etc. You still tell your visitors to go to sites such as YouTube, Clickbank, Amazon or Ebay, but the software shows them a subscribe box and asks them to join your list BEFORE doing anything else. This is very powerful, and is largely hands free.

For example, I can mention affiliate sites, or perhaps my profile page on one of the social networking sites, and build a list in the process of just spreading the word.

With so many easy ways to grow your list, there really is no excuse for anyone who's been online for more than a few months not to be aggressively building a list. You do need that list to inexpensively spread the word about your business.

Now that you see how REALLY simple and easy it is, get started building your list today!

About the Author:
Willie Crawford has been teaching online marketers to build their email lists since 1996. Since that time he has built a database of over 800,000. One of his favorite list-building tools allows you to automatically build a list from traffic visiting someone else's domain. Get this amazing software at: http://AutomaticallyBuildYourList.com

Follow Willie Crawford on Twitter.

Increase Your Sales With Blog Marketing

2009-09-18T17:30:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Enzo F. Cesario

A savvy and free way to increase your business sales is through blog marketing. No matter what business you're in, you can increase your business with a focused blog marketing campaign. You may shy away from blog marketing because you feel that you might not be a good writer, or simply don't like to write. This is understandable. But the truth is that many blog marketers nowadays don't even write their own content. They pay someone else to do it.

In fact, you can pay someone else to write dozens of articles to keep your blog going. You can come up with ideas if you want to, but you can just as easily give your writers a broad general topic idea and have them come up with streamlined topics for blog entries. The best course of action is truly up to you, but paying writers to craft your blog entries is not expensive and may save you trouble in the long run.

Once you've determined how your blog will be written, the next thing you must do is focus on the keywords that your blog will include. There is a lot of information out there on keyword research and niche marketing but, in essence, what you want to do is find keywords that are searched highly and don't have a lot of competition. Competition means that there are a lot of other pages that come up when you search under that keyword.

You want to have less than 30,000 pages of competition in the Google search results in order to determine that a keyword is viable. And you want to use a keyword tool like the one on Wordtracker to determine how many searches the term receives per day. Go for keywords that get close to or over 100,000 searches with very little competition. This way, you have a really good chance to get to the top of the search engines with your blog.

The reason blog marketing is so effective is because blog marketing allows you to provide the ultimate content that the search engine spiders are looking for when they crawl webpages. The search engine spiders are looking for pages that provide content which contains a fair number of the keywords that the Internet user is looking for, along with information that the user might find useful.

The search engines know that readers don't just want a blatant sales pitch all the time. They want the reader to get the most accurate information for his or her needs.

Blogs provide information about products and services that customers might enjoy. Some of them contain reviews, opinions or instructions. There are no hard and fast rules for blogging.

Blogs are not ecommerce sites and are, therefore, viewed favorably by many of the search engines. You want to make sure, however, that you don't have too much keyword-density and too little real content filling up your blog. You want to have truly useful articles that people will find interesting.

One of the wonderful things about the Internet is that it can provide people with informative content that makes an interesting read. If you can become an information resource in your field, people will be more likely to buy from you. Why? Because they will trust you. They might not buy from you right away, but they will probably patronize you at some point in time.

The audience you build with your blog can help you in a number of ways. Some people will, of course, purchase from you. Others may help build your business by telling a friend, mentioning you on their website, or promoting your products or services on their blog.

Another important step in blog marketing is determining where you want to host your blog. There are many options and some of them are free. If you like, you can also build your blog within your website, but then you won't be taking advantage of an external link that your blog could provide to your website.

After you set up your blog, make sure your blog meta tags and titles are optimized to the best of your ability, just like your website. You may also want to add media, like videos. This can make your content more diverse and interesting to the search engines, as well.

Submit your blog to social marketing sites every day and submit unique keyword optimized articles to some of the most popular article directories every week. Eventually people will begin to read your blog and if they find the information useful, they will want to know more about your business.

Blog marketing, used in conjunction with many of the other online marketing strategies, is a valuable way to increase the public's view of your brand, and hopefully your sales.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat. Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. Go to http://www.Brandsplat.com/ or visit our blog at: http://www.brandsplatblog.com/

Why You Must Find Out About Product Launches Early!

2009-09-18T05:00:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Willie Crawford

If you are an affiliate marketer, one secret to making more sales is finding out about product launches early. This is true even if you are new to affiliate marketing and have a very tiny list.

The reason that this is true is that when you find out about a product launch early, you can position yourself to take advantage of organic search engine traffic during the product launch. There are dozens of things that you can do so that you will rank near the top of the search engines for very important product-related keywords when you find out about a product launch early.

You can set up pages on dozens of web 2.0 type properties such as Blogger.com, Hubpages, Squidoo, etc., and if you have the right content on these pages you will rank very high for product-related keywords by launch date. The key is to get your pages up early, post often, and then get them noticed by the search engines. Product owners will often provide you with tons of just the right content!

Another reason that you want to find out about affiliate product launches early is that it gives you more time to prepare a bonus to offer purchasers of those product. It's no secret that the people who sell the most of a product during many launches are the ones who offers the most enticing bonuses. Since the basic product is the same no matter who the customer purchases from, that only makes sense. The bonus is what keeps the product that you're marketing from being just a commodity.

Often, there are numerous products being launched at the same time. Since you can only effectively promote one product at a time, knowing what product launches are coming up allows you to focus on the one most appropriate for your customers. It's very disheartening to plan for promoting a specific product, and then to discover on launch day that there is a product more suitable for your customers being launched on the same day.

When you promote any product, you really should plan out a complete promotional campaign. That is, you should flow out how and when you are going to do multiple promotions. Those promotions could include emails, interviews, articles, press releases, and perhaps even videos. You can't flow out these promotions unless you find out about the product launch early enough. Ideally, you plan a protracted campaign - one where you will continue to make sales even after the big launch is over.

Finally, you need to find out about product launches early because you need to allow sufficient time to actually get a review copy of the product, and to go through it with a fine-toothed comb. You absolutely should not promote any product that you haven't actually gone through, and with some of the more substantial products, that could take a week or more.

Those are just a few of the reasons that you really do want to stay informed on what new product launches are coming up in your niche. If you only learn of an impending product launch a few days, or even a week before it happens, you are so behind. Especially for great search engine positioning, there are things that you need to do at least a month in advance.

Decide today that you're going to keep up with all of the product launches in your industry, and market a lot smarter.

About the Author:
Willie Crawford is founder and executive director of The International Association of Joint Venture Brokers. IAJVB maintains a comprehensive database of upcoming product launches, giveaways, and internet marketing events. Get a free Silver IAJVB membership now at: http://IAJVB.ORG

Follow Willie Crawford on Twitter.

4 Keys to a Free Product That Grows Your Mailing List

2009-09-17T08:00:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Judy Murdoch

If you are selling products and services on the Internet you are probably very aware of how valuable a list of subscribers is.

Periodic, relevant information is the main way to build the trust and credibility needed for customers and prospects to take action:

to click the Buy Now button

to pick up the phone to schedule an appointment

to complete an application

etc.

I cannot over-emphasize the importance of creating trust-based relationships in business. This is what periodic emails to your list allow you to do.

If your business is relatively new to online marketing, building a subscription list can feel pretty daunting. I've had many conversations with small business owners who are love the idea of email marketing and inevitably the question, "How do you get all these subscribers anyway?"

And that is the question I'm going to answer in this article.

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Why Building Your List Can Be a Struggle
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I know when I began my ezine, after the initial signups by folks in my immediate circle, adding new subscribers was a painfully slow process.

I received some glowing complements from subscribers and a couple marketing experts whose opinion I valued. And everything I read insisted that content is the most important component to succeeding in the online marketing game.

So I had good content; where was the rush of subscribers?

Simple: I was competing with thousands of other requests to subscribe.

People need a good reason to subscribe to your ezine. Why they should choose your ezine rather than the hundred other on the same topic.

One way to make your ezine the best choice is to give your subscribers something they can immediately use and get value from.

This is why a free product you give people when they subscribe to your ezine is so important.

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Providing Some Relief
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A lesson I learned from my coach, Mark Silver, is the importance of providing prospects some relief from a problem they're struggling with.

After all that's why most people are at your website to begin with yes? They have some sort of question or problem and they're looking for help. Whether they found your website doing a Google search or through a link on someone's blog, they're wanting help and they're hoping you'll provide it.

Free products that they can quickly download from your website are ideal for meeting this need.

In addition, when they use your free product and get some relief there is no better way to build your credibility! People are far more likely to purchase from you when they've already gotten a demonstration of the difference you make.

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What's the Best Free Product to Offer?
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The one question that comes up more than any other around the free give-away is "what should my give-away be?"

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4 Keys to Choosing a Free Product (with Subscription)
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Key #1 Easy to Get Online

Remember whatever it is you offer, you want to make it very easy for your prospect to get online.

Fortunately, it's cheap and simple to create a product that is easy to download. I recommend:

An article, report, or how-to guide people can download as an Adobe Acrobat file (.pdf)

An audio recording they can listen to on the Internet (mp3 is currently the most popular format)

A video they can watch from your website (many computers now have a built-in camera making it easy to create short videos)

Key #2 Solves a Problem Most of Your Ideal Customers Struggle With

When I was trying to decide what free product would be best to offer with my ezine, I initially chose a report on getting more referrals from customers.

How to get referrals is a hugely popular topic among small business owners for very good reasons. But there were a couple drawbacks to this product:

(1.) You need a few satisfied customers who will refer you to others. This can be difficult for many new businesses.

(2.) Referrals are largely an in-person phenomenon. Referral programs work best when you offer local, in-person services. This isn't to say that an online business can't leverage referrals but it takes a lot longer because you don't have the non-verbal cues that naturally come from live contact.

Instead I decided to offer a how-to workbook showing business owners how to create an "audio-logo"--a simple, conversational introduction they could use in situations in which they might be meeting prospective customers.

Most business owners I know struggle with introducing themselves in a way that tells the other person "this is who I help" without sounding like they're reading their "elevator" script.

Voilla, this is how my free workbook came about.

Key #3. Is a first Step (Not the Entire Solution)

It's important to offer a solution that is appropriate to the level of trust and commitment your intended user has with your business. It's meant to be an appetizer; not a meal

One of my clients offers money management services for people working in the arts many of whom find the topic of money boring, painful, and distasteful.

Rather than immediately ask them to get into the numbers, she created a fun, easy to do Money Beliefs Assessment. The assessment is light-hearted and empathetic AND anyone who takes the assessment will learn something important about how their money beliefs may be getting in the way of their success.

Key #4. Easy to Use So People Get Results

The reason you want to offer a first step to solving a common problem is you want to give your client an easy win.

Remember, the purpose of your product is to provide relief. If it doesn't help the person get some relief you hurt your credibility.

A product that gets used and produces results is more valuable than any claim you could make in your advertising.

When they get results what happens? They come back for more. They begin to trust you to help with their more complex problems. They feel safe to invest more time, effort, and money to work with you.

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Bottom Line
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If you are trying to build your email list, offering a free product with the subscription will help you attract subscribers faster than if you were offering the subscription alone.

The best product to give away with your subscription is one that:

is easy to get online

solves a problem that is common to most of your clients

addresses the first step to solving that problem

and is likely to produce a positive result

About the Author:
Judy Murdoch helps small business owners create low-cost, effective marketing campaigns using word-of-mouth referrals, guerrilla marketing activities, and selected strategic alliances. To download a free copy of the workbook, "Where Does it Hurt? Marketing Solutions to the problems that Drive Your Customers Crazy!" go to http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm
You can contact Judy at 303-475-2015 or judy@judymurdoch.com

Follow Judy Murdoch on Twitter.

Launching Your Online Marketing Strategies

2009-08-19T23:30:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Enzo F. Cesario

If you have a business, there are lots of different ways to promote it and make sure you get customers. Having a website is of utmost importance, and by using some of the many online marketing methods available, like blog marketing and article marketing, you can be sure to get a lot of visitors coming to your website. Having the right mix of marketing tactics can eventually lead to increased sales and to the success of your business venture. Here are some of the best online marketing strategies you can use:

Blog Marketing: With blog marketing you can start a blog about anything related to your company. You can market your business by giving people advice and tips. People always want to get more information or learn something new, which is why blog marketing works so well. Once you get people returning to read your blogs on a regular basis, you will have built quite a fan base for yourself. Leaving comments on other people's blogs with a link back to your blog will also get you some links.

Blog Marketing also allows visitors to get to know a real person in a company. This kind of "intelligent brand marketing" gives your company an element of a human-ness on your marketing campaign. People like to interact with people, and having a blog gives you that advantage. Also, having a blog allows you to give your personal opinion on any given subject matter and also allows the author to appear as the expert.

Micro Blogging: Twitter is the biggest. Micro blogs allow you to get short bursts of information out to a loyal following. This is great for promotions and other time related marketing tactics.

Social Networks: Using social networks is another way to attract customers to your website. Your friends have friends that will also be able to see your public page where they might find something interesting. Likewise, friends can invite each other to join groups. You can create a group about your business so that people can see what you do and join to be kept updated.

Directory Submissions: Using business directories and community business web pages are another great way of doing advertising. You might find a few directories that can add your website address to their list of online businesses. In this way, people looking for something specific that you happen to be offering will find you easily.

Banner Advertising: One of the most effective forms of online marketing is banner advertising. These advertisements will be placed on other people's websites. You have to do some research to find the sites where your ad will get the best results. These advertisements can be quite costly, especially if you want to have the best possible presence on the home page of a major website.

Email Campaigns: An email campaign is a perfect way to target specific people for a business or product. You should get help setting up an email marketing campaign because you want to make sure that people read them. You also want to make sure that they do not come through as spam. This is why using a professional sales page or email campaign manager would be a good idea.

Link Exchanges: Another good way to get marketing for your business is to use various link exchanges. This will also help the page ranking for your website on the various search engines. The more websites you are listed on, the more chances there are of customers finding you.

Press Releases: You can submit a formal press release to a press release site that mentions your new blog or website or any new products or services you may have. These press release websites will distribute your release to many other PR sites. Hopefully, you will get links from these press releases. Some PR sites are free and others aren't. Look online and see what's best for your business.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising: Pay per click advertisements usually appear in a colored box on a search results page. With this form of marketing, you buy search engine traffic based on relevant keywords that you buy in an auction. You are paying for every click, so it's important to target your keywords. Over time, PPC can be costly and if not monitored closely, can be more costly than traditional Search Engine Optimization techniques.

Article Marketing: With article marketing, you write interesting articles about various aspects of your business and submit them to article distributions sites. These articles contain an author resource box at the end that usually has a link to your website. When different sites pick up your articles, they must keep the resource box intact so if someone finds the article interesting, they can click through to your website. The more interesting and valuable your articles are to your readers, the more traffic you could get.

Using these various marketing methods to promote your business is a sure way to get inbound links. You can make quite a lot of contacts through many of them and eventually get more customers coming to your business. You can try one method at a time, adding another when you feel comfortable or try them all at once. Any way you do it, using these methods will get potential customers to your website and hopefully, ordering your product or services.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat. Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. Go to http://www.Brandsplat.com/ or visit our blog at: http://www.brandsplatblog.com/

Read more Articles written by Enzo F. Cesario.

Top 5 SEO Copywriting Mistakes That Will Cost You Money

2009-08-08T16:06:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Enzo F. Cesario

Just as there are different ways of writing for novels, for advertising and for films, there is a way to write for the Internet. To find content on the web we use search engines. To make sure the search engines find our content we optimize it. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) copywriting is writing content that the reader wants to read and will be easily found and rank well with search engines.

The object of writing for the Internet is to get the reader to use your content to click through to your website. If they don't get to your website, they can't look at your products or services and you will have lost a potential customer. Here are a few mistakes that you'll want to avoid.

MISTAKE #1 - Have a Boring Or Vague Title

This is a very important mistake not to make. If they don't even look at your article, all your time and effort are wasted. If you provide an attention grabbing title, one that makes them curious enough to open your article, you're halfway there.

Here are just a few ideas to get you thinking: Use titles that describe the content of your article but are short and concise; Use keywords in your title that people might be searching for; People can't resist articles with lists or tips such as, "Top 10 Copywriting Mistakes" or "Top Tips on Getting Your Articles Read"; and "How to" articles are popular as well.

The bottom line here is to put some thought into your title. Think about how to get a reader's attention.

MISTAKE #2 - Create Bland Content

From beginning to end - try to keep it interesting. Make reading your article a pleasurable experience for your reader. Here are a few suggestions.

Make it fun, relevant and grammatically correct. Nothing pulls the reader out of a story more than bad grammar and misspelled words.

Use short sentences and try to limit paragraphs to two or three lines. Concentrate on writing rich and appropriate copy rather than just practical words.

Have a sense of humor. This gives your articles personality. Don't give a sales pitch - use a call to action. The purpose of your article is to get your reader to get to your website. Your writing could include a reason for them to find more information, either from another article that you've written or from your website.

"Content is king". If you keep this in mind, you'll be ahead of the game. Search engines love well-written and useful content. So do readers.

MISTAKE #3 - Make Your Article As Hard To Read As Possible

Every post should be easy to scan. That means your reader should be able to easily scan your article and find headings that will tell them what the section is about. You can use numbered lists and bullets to organize your ideas so they are quickly read. If you italicize, bold or underline a word, the search engine assumes that it's a keyword. You can use this to your advantage. However, if you use these tags a lot or if you use them on non-keywords, you'll confuse the search engines and lose any advantage you would have gained.

The other thing that makes a page easy to scan is short paragraphs. When you look at your copy on the page, you should see a lot of white space. Looking at a page that's completely filled with words is intimidating to a reader. You want to make it as friendly and welcoming and as easy to read as possible.

MISTAKE #4 - Misuse Keywords

Keywords are at the core of writing for the web. You should research and know your keywords. Here are a few suggestions about keywords:

Target a set of keywords in every post but don't use them more than three or four times on a page. If you use the same keywords again and again, search engines can tell that the article isn't very useful.

Use a wide variety of words that pertain to your topic.

Use synonyms of your keywords in addition to the keywords.

Don't stick to a standard keyword density for every article or post. You want your words to flow naturally, and overuse of keywords makes your copy sound forced.

Review your keywords every so often. Sometimes your business changes and you want your articles to change also.

If you provide your reader with content that lets them learn or experience something, you'll have a happy reader. If you provide the search engines with good keywords and a variety of them, you'll have a happy search engine.

MISTAKE #5 - Try To Trick the Search Engines

Practicing questionable tactics like cloaking and using hidden text is a bad idea. The last thing you want is to get your site banned. These kinds of tricks will do it. So can using hidden links, link farms, linking to bad sites, distributing viruses and sending spam. Don't try to trick the search engines and don't work with any companies that use these techniques.

Overcoming these common mistakes can give you head start when creating effective content on the Internet. SEO copywriting requires effort. Putting content on your site and distributing it on the web takes time. If you work at it over time and create lots of valuable content, effectively "brandcasting" your site, you'll be rewarded with more traffic.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat. Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. Go to http://www.Brandsplat.com/ or visit our blog at: http://www.brandsplatblog.com/

Read more Articles written by Enzo F. Cesario.

Create Information Products - Detailed Blueprint To Making A Fortune Selling Information Products

2009-08-06T19:48:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Alan Cheng

Create information products to solve people's problems is one of the most profitable and easiest online business to be in. It's much cheaper than setting up a traditional brick and mortar business, there's no inventory to keep and you make 100% of what you sell. Here's a business plan of how to get into this online business.

1. What Information Products To Sell?

Instead of creating information products to sell in different niches, you need to focus on one niche. Make a decision on what niche you want to build your business on before proceeding further.

For example, in the self-help niche, you can create information products on public speaking, self confidence, anxiety, anger control, build better relationships etc...

2. Getting the Ideas

Read and study your niche every chance you get. Go to forums and understand what problems people are having. Read magazines and newspapers see what topics are related to your niche.

Regularly make a list of ideas and choose the best one to start working on when it's time to create a new information product.

3. Create The Information Product

Buy an ebook from your competitors and see how it's laid out and the topics that are written.

Do some research and start writing your information product. Make it something you're proud to sell. You can hire a ghostwriter to do this task for you later on after you see how the business works.

Alternatively, you can hire a ghostwriter right away if you absolutely hate writing and don't have the time for it.

4. Packaging

This is what makes your information product sell since people buy based on the packaging. This means the design of your website needs to look professional and your sales copy needs to be convincing and mouth-watering.

If you have no experience in writing sales copy and if you're not good at creating graphics, get them outsourced. This is a must!

Some ghostwriters are experienced in creating information products online. Try to find one that will deliver a complete service which includes the sales letter and website design.

5. Getting Traffic

Once your product is ready, it's time to drive traffic to it. Here are 3 ways how you can drive traffic to your website to test the response.

1. Write articles

Write 10 good articles related to your information product. Again, if you don't like writing, you can outsource this to your ghostwriter. Submit these articles to article directories and ezines. Articles are excellent in increasing your exposure and improve your search engine rankings.

2. Blog and Forum Commenting

Make a list of blogs and forums which have good traffic and are related to your niche. Take time to comment on them regularly with a link to your website.

Offer valuable advice and don't advertise your information product with your comments. Just have a link to your website. This will enable you to "steal" some of the traffic from other websites.

3. Pay Per Click

Use pay per click advertising such as Google Adwords, Yahoo and MSN. Create some ads and drive traffic to your website. Monitor how well your information product sells.

Be careful and calculate how much you can afford to spend. If there are not many sales, then tweak your sales copy.

6. Create an Affiliate Program

Create an affiliate program for your information product either by submitting it to Clickbank or use PayDotCom. Let people know they can promote your information product for 50% commission.

7. Collect Your Contacts

Always collect email addresses with everyone who comes in contact with you which includes visitors to your website who signed up for your newsletter, your affiliates and of course your customers.

8. Repeat

Repeat the whole process with a new information product focusing on the same niche, for example "self help".

Once you've created the information product, you can now email your list. The prospects and customers will buy this product from you if the previous one was good. Affiliates will want to promote your new product to earn more commissions.

The more information products you create, the bigger your 3 lists will get. After launching several information products you'll find that you have a list of a few thousand.

Sending an email to your list telling them about your new information product could produce thousands of dollars immediately without doing any promotion of your own.

If you sold an information product for $37 and 1,000 members of your list bought from you, that's $37,000 you'll make instantly. Don't forget that your product will continue to sell as long as your website is online. The crucial success factor is the professional ghostwriter you chose to hire that can deliver quality and on time.

About the Author:
Download the report "Build Your Own Business Using Information Products" at create information products. Alan Cheng is a professional writer at http://www.bestinstantsites.com/ If you want to outsource your information product creation, hire a ghostwriter at Best Instant Sites.

Read more of Alan Cheng's articles.

Free and Easy Link Building Tips

2009-07-28T07:30:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Enzo F. Cesario

Okay, you're the proud mama or papa to your brand new website. Now what? This isn't like the movies - just because you built it doesn't mean they'll come. The Internet is a huge limitless space with ever-growing numbers of websites. You are just one small website among millions. How will anybody ever find you? How do you become visible? Right now, you just exist out in the web, untethered. You need to become visible when someone searches for you and one way to become visible to people is to become visible to search engines. And one way to become visible to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN is for your site to be tethered, or linked to other sites.

If you've spent any time reading Internet marketing blogs you know that link building is a huge part of a marketing campaign. Backlinks - links that point to your website - are a major factor in determining your popularity or ranking with the search engines. And of course, just like in high school, you want to be popular.

You can buy your way into links, but here we're talking about a few free and easy ways. An obvious and natural way to build links is through content. When you start a link-building campaign for your new website, focus on attracting links that will add value for your website visitors and best represent your most important keywords too. It is invaluable to have visitors go to your site and share your content.

Here are a few easy and mostly free ways to build links for your website.

Blog-Based Link Building

One way to get natural links back to your website is by setting up a blog for your company. Make sure you network online with other blogs that complement yours. If you share industry news and have useful and relevant content, you'll attract links. Reference other bloggers in your content and link to other blogs in your industry.

For blogs, content is extremely important. Every time you add words to your blog or website, you are presenting yourself to a potentially huge audience. How does your blog's content reflect your company? This content could be the page that carries your company's name around the Internet world. Cheap content is just that - cheap. Create content that people want to read and that will make them come back again and again.

Reviewing products and services and posting those reviews on other sites is another way to build links. Your honest evaluations and smart opinions can also build your reputation as an expert in your field.

Link Building with Social Media

Another way to build natural links to your website is through social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter. These sites allow you to set up a user profile where you can add information about you and your company including a link to your website.

Some sites, Facebook for example, also have a way to promote your business with a page, ad or group. Just keep in mind that there are good ways and bad ways to promote your business on social sites and you should observe proper etiquette when you do.

Link Building with Organizations and Directories

If your industry has professional organizations or associations that you belong to, check with them and see if they have an online directory with links to member sites. They may or may not charge a fee for this. If they do, it shouldn't be much.

Check with your local Chamber of Commerce or Better Business Bureau. Links from sites like these can be very helpful. Check with other local businesses and organizations that have lists of businesses and request links from them, too.

Online directories are another opportunity to look into. Yahoo! Directory is a good one. If your business is in a specific geographical area, you might also find some local directories to submit to that will boost your local visibility.

Links from Charities or Non-profits

If your company makes charitable donations to organizations and non-profits, see if they have a "donors" list on their website and ask if they will link to your website.

Links from Press Releases

Has your business just started or have you just launched a new product? A press release is a great idea to announce your news. There are quite a few press release distribution services available and some have a free first time offer.

Links from Partners

If your website offers information about other partner websites like business directories, you should make sure to use all your linking potential. You could have a badge that your partner could put on their site linking to you and one for your site that links to theirs.

If you have an RSS feed or a widget on your site that has good value to visitors, those can be taken from your website and displayed on another person's website, linking back to your site.

The Internet is constantly evolving and there are thousands of ways to build links. Look around at other websites and see what they have and how they work. Look at your business, think outside the box and you might come up with other ways to develop links. If it all seems like too much, there are many online consulting companies that can help with link building, SEO optimization and brandcasting.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat, the only online marketing and advertising company employing Brandcasting, the most effective way to brand your company on the web. Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. The approach is simple, highly effective and affordable. Learn more at: http://www.Brandsplat.com/

Read more Articles written by Enzo F. Cesario.

Create Information Products - Step by Step On Using Ghostwriting Services

2009-07-19T21:24:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Alan Cheng

Successful online marketers create information products that are in-demand and sell them online. It's one of the most popular and effective ways to make money on the internet. An information product, or an ebook requires no inventory and the profit margins are huge.

In this article, I'll summarize the crucial steps you need follow to create your own information product by outsourcing to respectable ghostwriting services...

The reasons you would want to outsource your information product creation are:

1. You have a phobia with writing, or you just don't like the task

2. You don't have enough time

3. You don't have the expertise to create information products

If any of the above applies to you, then you can consider using special ghostwriting services to create the information product for you. This is a fast and easy way to create a quality product to sell, while you can fully concentrate on just marketing the product.

Here are 5 steps on how to create information products by hiring a professional writer.

1. Choose Your Niche

To decide the topic for your ebook, you need to do some thorough online research. You should choose a niche which many people have an interest in, and who are willing to buy the information. It will be even better, if the niche is something which you're knowledgeable in.

Go to forums that are related to the niche, and view the posts. See if there is a lot of interest on certain problems which people want to know about.

Next you can search for magazines whether online or offline, and see if there's a magazine for the niche. This is proof that there is demand for the topic. Otherwise, people would not run a magazine on it.

Never, try to create an ebook on a topic which has never been done before. Chances are that it won't sell. Try to look for similar ebooks that are already selling well and create an information product which is better.

2. List Out The Problems

Once you've decided what your information product is about, you need to list out certain problems which the market is interested in. If the subject is about PC repair, then you need to list out the common problems people would want to know about repairing PCs.

Get this information from forums and from search engines. Consolidate the list of problems and choose the best ones which you think your prospects will be interested in.

3. Hire A Ghost Writer

Your next step is to hire a ghost writer, or ghostwriting company to write your information product. There are many professional writers which you can find online, but don't choose one based on the lowest price.

You need to hire a professional writer who has experience in creating information products for their clients. This includes the ebook, website, sales copy to sell the ebook, squeeze page to capture prospects' emails and a thank you page.

Some companies offer these ghostwriting services as a whole package, but there aren't many of them. An example of such a company is 'Best Instant Sites' which offers a complete solution for creating information products.

4. Discuss The Terms

With your chosen ghostwriter, you need to discuss the terms before giving payment. Tell them your idea of the information product you want and list the subjects you want written about, from what you gathered in your research.

Ask the professional writer to research the topic in more detail when writing the ebook. Then ask when the delivery date is. Never push the writer for an earlier deadline. You want the ebook to be written professionally. Rushing a writing project seldom creates quality.

For the design of your website, tell the ghostwriter what kind of look you're looking for and the words you want shown. Give examples of website designs that you like so that the professional writer knows your preference.

5. Following Up With The Progress

A few days before the deadline of your information product, contact the ghostwriter and ask him or her for the progress. He would either tell you everything is as planned or he would tell you that there is a possible delay.

The point of following up is to tell the writer that you care and it gives him a chance to ask you any questions he can think of. You can even ask for a draft of the website design to see if it matches what you want.

Good professional writers will always contact you a few days beforehand if there's a possible delay, but just in case you hired a not-so-professional writer, it will be wise if you followed up a few times before the deadline.

Following these steps, you can create an information product of your own and start making money online like the experts. The key to success is hiring the right professional writer. You need a writer that has experience in creating information products. And of course, you also need good marketing skills to sell your product online. Some ghostwriters offer advice on marketing online. You need to ask.

About the Author:
Download the report "Build Your Own Business Using Information Products" at create information products. Alan Cheng is a professional writer at http://www.bestinstantsites.com/ If you want to outsource your information product creation, visit professional writer at Best Instant Sites.

Read more of Alan Cheng's articles.

When (and When NOT) to Charge for Your Info Products

2009-07-11T20:06:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Judy Murdoch

One of my clients recently asked me whether she should charge for a series of tip sheets she created for families traveling with young children. Great question.

There's quite a bit of confusion around whether you should sell or give away your information products. About half the advice I hear favors giving information away for free. The other half favors charging.

The truth is, sometimes you should give information and resources away and sometimes you should sell them. The real question is WHEN to charge and when not to.

In this article, I'll give you some guidelines around when to charge and when to give information away.

=======================================
Start with What Your Business Needs Now
=======================================

Asking where your business is at and what you need to be successful is a great place to begin.

Every business needs customers, right? So let's look at how strangers become customers. They go through three stages:

~ Stage One: Visibility (V)

To become a customer a person first needs to know your product exists. You become visible by getting your product and marketing message in front of people who fit your ideal customer description.

~ Stage Two: Credibility (C)

Knowing that your product exists is usually not enough to get someone to pay cold hard cash for it. Nope, they're thinking "well, that sounds good but how do I know it will really work?"

During the Credibility stage you need to give them information that demonstrates your product will deliver as promised.

~ Stage Three: Profitability (P)

Once your prospect is convinced that your product will, indeed, deliver the promised value, they will pay you and become a customer.

=======================================
V to C to P = Marketing Funnel
=======================================

Picture a funnel with lots of people coming in the widest part (visibility), a percentage sticking around to learn more (credibility), and a percentage of those who stick around becoming customers (profitability).

At any given time in the life of your business, there are people at different stages of becoming customers. Some are learning about you for the first time, some are checking you out to decide whether they will buy, and some are deciding to buy and paying you.

Ideally, you have a steady stream of people constantly entering and moving through the funnel. If they don't enter or don't continue through, you have a problem and it shows up in your bottom line: You don't have enough paying customers.

=======================================
When to Give Away and When to Charge
=======================================

To decide whether or not to charge for an information product, I suggest you take a look at how many people are at each of the three stages.

Your goal is to use information products as an incentive for prospects and customers to take the next step.

~ When You Need More Visibility

If you're just starting your business or you want to enter a new market, you probably need more visibility. You need people to know your product exists.

When visibility is your goal, I recommend you give something away that provides value and introduces people to your product or service.

Why? The goal for visibility is to answer the following questions:

1. What is it ("it" being your product or service)

2. Does it help someone like me?

You want to give something away that will answer these questions while asking for something minimal from the prospect.

A common example is offering a free Ezine subscription or a free report your prospects can download in exchange for their E-mail address or phone number.

~ When You Need More Credibility

Credibility is an issue when you're getting a lot of first time visitors and inquiries but not enough are coming back.

For most products and services, people need repeated demonstrations of what you can do for them. They need to trust you.

When you are building credibility, I suggest you have two information products: one that is free and one that you sell.

1. A free product that allows you to build a relationship with your prospects. Products like Ezines are great because you get a chance to connect with customers once a month or more.

2. Product you charge for which offers a higher level of customer value.

Ideally, this is a "no brainer" purchase. Something for which the value is so obvious for what you're charging that most people don't need to think too long or hard about whether to buy.

Although you will be making some money, the real purpose is to demonstrate credibility and build trust.

Warning: The biggest complaint I hear is when someone offers a free report or one-hour teleclass that turns out to be little more than a sales pitch.

Again, you are creating value and building trust. Doing both will enable you to convert more prospects to paying customers when the opportunity presents itself.

A sneaky sales pitch will undermine the trust you are trying to build.

~ If You Need More Profitability

If you have a large, loyal base of readers, subscribers, or members who have been hanging out with you for several months and like what they're getting, some of them will want to invest some serious time and money for your focused time and attention.

For example, a consultant I know sends out a free monthly Ezine to her mailing list and sells low cost Tip Sheets, Checklists, and so on.

Each month 3-5 of her subscribers contact her to learn more about her workshops and seminars costing $500+. She usually books 6 to 8 engagements this way each year.

She explained it to me like this, "I try to provide something useful that my readers can apply right away. For example, I sell a $5.00 meeting organizer they can use to have more productive meetings. Sometimes this is all they need."

"But sometimes they're in a situation that goes way beyond the DIY stage. They need someone from outside the company to step in and help them set up a new system or to help them hire a new executive."

Allowing your prospects to upgrade (or escalate) and get a higher level of support is not only profitable, it's how you can really serve your clients.

=======================================
Bottom Line
=======================================

Whether or not to charge for your information products depends on what your business needs in terms of developing customer relationships.

The less known you are to people fitting your ideal customer profile, the more important it is to offer free or low cost information products which provide something of value.

As you build trust and as your prospects learn how you can help them, you can offer more expensive, higher commitment products for those who want (and can afford) them.

About the Author:
Judy Murdoch helps small business owners create low-cost, effective marketing campaigns using word-of-mouth referrals, guerrilla marketing activities, and selected strategic alliances. To download a free copy of the workbook, "Where Does it Hurt? Marketing Solutions to the problems that Drive Your Customers Crazy!" go to http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm
You can contact Judy at 303-475-2015 or judy@judymurdoch.com

Read more Articles written by Judy Murdoch.

Advertisers and Online Advertising Agencies

2009-07-11T13:24:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Karin Gamble, All Rights Reserved

Ten years ago I founded NetMediaReps, Inc., an advertising agency for online companies, specifically online newsletter publishers trying to find advertisers for their publications. My decision to found my own company grew out of my frustration in trying to obtain agency representation for my husband's company.

After calling more than 25 ad agencies, I discovered that most agencies charged exorbitant commissions and were only interested in representing large companies with deep pockets. As a new startup, my husband's company fell under their radar and follow up was minimal to nil.

Back then, the internet was just emerging as the new frontier of business and it was apparent that small and medium-sized businessses needed effective marketing representation to compete in this new marketplace, to receive the broadest possible exposure and to find other companies which could help facilitate their growth.

My thought was that these companies had an even greater need for a marketing platform than larger companies to be competitive in the growing online commercial market. I decided to fill that niche and started by signing contracts with several online publishers who needed assistance in selling their ad inventory. The rest is history - NetMediaReps.com was born.

Knowledge of how to do business, and advertise, on the internet has grown significantly over the years and data tracking of take rates, website conversion rates and ROI have become increasingly sophisticated, helping online businesses to better target their advertising dollars in a successful and productive way.

Despite these advances in knowledge and technique, there are still a surprising number of individuals who display a remarkable naivety regarding advertising and who ask questions that indicate the lack of a well thought out marketing plan or a basic understanding of the advertising mediums available to them online. Below are some examples of not so uncommon questions we receive and our responses to them:

Question: Your publisher mails to a list of 500,000 subscribers so I should get 500,000 responses - right ?

Answer: An online publication using a mailing list is like a newspaper. Recipients don't always feel like reading or looking at the publication on a given day. They may be busy, on vacation, disinterested in the topic, or otherwise indisposed. And, like a newspaper - just because they see your ad doesn't mean they want to buy from you - at least not at that given moment. It is, however, a good idea to advertise in publications that archive past issues or editions providing advertisers with permanent or semi-permanent back links and the opportunity of receiving trickle through clicks and sales at no additional cost.

Other factors that can affect response rate are:

The number of links in a publication. Newsletters typically run 1 to 2 web pages in length and are comprised of several sections all of which contain a few to numerous links. As a result reader interest and click activity is diffused across the newsletter rather than focused on a particular ad or link.

Ad clarity. A concise, definitive statement describing what your company is selling and how it benefits buyers is essential as is an unequivocal call to action.

Ad Uniqueness. An ad that stands out generally performs better.

Spam triggers. Generally, words and phrases that are the most effective in evoking reader response are also the ones that trigger spam filters both at the ISP level and the reader's Inbox. Blatant commercial message subjects and ad copy rarely do well.

Message Subject. Shorter subject lines are usually more effective than longer ones. More imortantly, large web-based mail services like Yahoo! Mail, MSN/Hotmail and AOL truncate message subjects that are greater than 38 - 47 characters.

Question: (After receiving ad specs, including dimensions and file sizes.) Will my 700 x 300 pixel ad be accepted?

Answer: Most publishers will strive to assist you in placing your ads but are restricted by their newsletter templates from accepting ads that don't conform to the specs provided. Submitting an incorrectly sized ad simply delays the start of your ad campaign.

Question: Why should I advertise when we are obviously in a recession? Does that make any sense?

Answer: McGraw-Hill Research analyzed 600 companies and their marketing spending from 1980 to 1985. After 1985, the facts showed that the firms which had kept or increased their advertising budgets during the recession in '81-'82 boasted an average sales growth of 275% over the next five years. The companies who cut their advertising? They experienced paltry sales growth over the next five years of just 19%.

So, when is the right time to market your business? All the time.

Question: I noticed my competitor in your publications - can you tell me how they did, so I can decide if we want to use you?

Sorry. You wouldn't want the details of your campaign provided to your competitors. Our advertisers have an expectation of privacy and confidentiality in regards to performance criteria such as click-through rates, sales and ROI. Ad agencies and publishers have an ethical obligation to keep campaign results confidential.

Even if such information was made available, it would not be that useful. Campaign results can vary significantly depending on the product/service offered, price point, message subject, ad copy and numerous other variables.

Any questions?... e-me ! :)

About the Author:
Karin Gamble is the CEO of NetMediaReps, Inc. (http://www.netmediareps.com), an online advertising agency specializing in ad sales for newsletter publications and web sites targeting a webmaster audience. Karin can be reached by email at info@netmediareps.com or by telephone at (204)254-1750.

Read more Articles written by Karin Gamble.

Private Label Rights (PLR) and Spamming

2009-07-11T00:42:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Glenn Heitkoetter

PLR is material that the author gives rights to change and/or redistribute the product(s). These can be just about any product. The author can be very strict in one extreme, to all the way the other way to letting you change it completely as you want, give yourself the credit and relink any links to your own site(s).

PLR has a bad rap as spammers flood video sites, article sites, blogs, and other sites with this, usually it is going to be duplicate content as someone else has already spammed the site earlier with it. A lot of PLR is watered down filler and/or sales pitches with little or no real information.

The following methods are if the original author(s) allow it according to the documentation.

Find the best PLR with real information.

These are just a few methods that can be used with PLR saving you many hours of time coming up with your own information from scratch. PLR can also give you ideas that may only have been touched on in the material but you can expand on it to make the material original.

Combine products into unique packages that cannot be found anywhere else. Give away part of it and sell another part.

Change the format. There are services that charge to do this so this is a viable service as you can change an article into video slides or video screen capture tutorials using paid or free software. Change audio into articles or the reverse of this. Utilize live video or streaming video services using PLR that has not been done in this fashion before. People benefit from these formats as they may not be able to utilize a product easily or at all in the original format.

Avoid selling products that can be found for free as they are or sending it to sites that want original content.

Give them away as bonuses for free to make an original product more attractive as many people may not have known about this before.

Auction unique packages of PLR. Sell for next to nothing if you want and build your mailing list for your email newsletter.

Find the best PLR and give away in individual packages from your site(s) and build your mailing list.

There are free and paid PLR membership sites that bring in new original content all of the time. Be the first to utilize this content and or give away the memberships using their affiliate programs that these sites offer.

Use PLR to give answers to questions about items in question and answer forums. Run a link to the material. Selling from here is going to probably get you the boot off the forum. Give the first package away free but sell an expanded package. Stay on the exact topic of the forum or the boot is likely to happen. Your sign on signature can have a link to the free content.

Make a free "viraling" Ebook. Many Ebooks are worthless using regurgitated info scraped from help files of sites. People can tell you scraped it as it will be easy obvious information. The better it is the more viral it will go. Give real info that is combined with good PLR. Put it in pdf format using paid or free software with your live links to your site(s).

One of the best uses of PLR is to use part of it for you email newsletters combining it with your own original content to expand a subject.

About the Author:
Written by: Glenn Heitkoetter. For Free membership and 79 Ways To Make Money With PLR Products: http://www.info-soup.com/plr

Read more Articles written by Glenn Heitkoetter.

How To Reverse Engineer My #1 Google Rankings

2009-07-09T21:00:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Willie Crawford

To many online marketers, getting a #1 listing on Google for your target keyword phrases is "heaven." It does lead to many times more traffic than being even #2 or #3. If you're not on the first page of Google, you may as well forget getting any significant traffic in many niches. At least you should plan on generating your traffic via other channels since few searchers look past the first page of search engine results.

Google the terms "joint venture expert" or "land for $100" and you'll see that I rank #1 for both terms and have for a VERY long time.

Yes, people do search on those terms, regardless of what you might think, and they both generate substantial incomes for me, but they are not my most profitable keywords. They are just keywords that I will use to prove to you that I have a clue about how to get top Google listings. You really shouldn't listen to "experts" who can't back up with they teach with proof.

Next, I invite you to try to reverse engineer what I did. Actually, I'll share much of my secret process with you. Not all of what I do is very obvious.

Here are the things that I do:

1) I target specific, long-tail, buying keywords. It's easier to rank for 3-5 word phrases, and people entering those phrases into the search engines are looking for something very specific. This is the traffic that you want to attract.

2) I use article marketing extensively to generate massive backlinks. All things being equal, the one with the most backlinks from relevant quality sites WINS.

3) I use video marketing, submitting to top video sharing sites using titles and descriptions optimized for my keywords.

4) I use pod casting, submitting my audios to numerous podcast directories, as well as offering them from numerous websites. People who hear your audio message, and click through to your site, arrive pre-sold on your and ready to follow your recommendations.

My pod cast submissions are also keyword optimized!

5) I use my keywords in anchor text on my blogs, and in article directories where allowed.

6) I generate a LOT of content, and repurpose that content regularly. I publicize that content on social networking sites, on other resource sites that allow me to publicize my content, and even in press releases.

For example, I post announcements of my updated content often to http://www.IMNewsWatch.com, http://www.TeleseminarNation.com and leading industry forums.

7) I use automation. If I had to hand submit all of my content I would only be able to distribute 1/10th as much. All things being equal, he who submits the most quality content wins.

8) I adhere to the rules and terms of service at the article, video, podcasts, and press release sharing sites. It does no good to get great rankings, only to be banned a few weeks or months later (having all of your content removed, and your work go to waste). I use 100% whitehat tactics.

9) I generate quality content. I does no good to throw garbage at the search engines. You'll only attract non-responsive traffic (wasting bandwidth and giving you useless website traffic conversion statistics), and you'll also eventually experience backlash. Write primarily for humans, but keeping good SEO in mind. The simplest way to do that is to use your primary keywords in your titles and descriptions, when creating and uploading content. Also be sure to use your primary keywords throughout your content.

10) I create external links to some of my content posted on sites OTHER THAN my primary sites. Linking to content that then links to your primary sites increases the relevance of external links from that content pointing to your primary sites. That helps the content on your primary sites rank higher longer. SEO experts call that "adding link juice!" If you don't do this, you'll often rank high for given keywords only for a few days, and then quickly drop in ranking. Adding "link juice" helps the ranking "stick."

There you have it - how I get and maintain #1 Google rankings for tons of keywords that my buying customers search on regularly at Google. Model what I do, and you'll get similar results.

About the Author:
Willie Crawford has been teaching people to build a legitimate online business since 1996. He is one of the world's leading website traffic generation experts. His favorite tool is an automated article, video, podcast and press release submission service that you can use too at: http://EasyPushButtonTraffic.com/ Visit them now.

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Lessons in Business Naming from Newspaper Headlines

2009-07-09T08:12:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin

Two headlines in the "Home" section of my local newspaper caught my eye the other day: "Natural floors can be knotty and nice" and "Serving cheese with ease." Both headlines involve enjoyable wordplay of the sort that could easily figure in business names or tag lines. I can imagine "KnottyandNice.com" as the domain name for a wooden items crafts shop, and "Cheese with ease" as the tag line for a cheese lovers' online community.

So I went looking for some tips on writing news headlines, thinking they might offer valuable insights for naming, too. After all, news editors need to come up with informative, catchy headers numerous times every workday.

Even more challenging, their headers need to fit the available space. They need to be able to condense or stretch an idea's expression, depending on how many columns an article spreads across.

My Google search didn't quickly turn up any such tips, though. Maybe headline writing is an art passed on in secret by grizzled, ink-stained veterans during the midnight shift.

Nevertheless, by pondering a couple of dozen headlines, I was able to observe several key points.

1. Newspaper headline writers collect short, vivid verbs, such as "mines" ("Obama mines small, red states"), "stirs," "pushes," "clings," "set," "edges," "sparks," "tosses," "sees," "OKs" and much more. Not only can headlines with verbs tell a complete story, they convey energy.

Because verbs are frequently overlooked as an element in naming, these punchy little words can help you come up with a trademarkable name or a free domain in a competitive industry.

2. Long, vivid words can also come in handy. In the headline "Super Bowl party can be gastronomical success," the word "gastronomical" rescues the line from dullness. It's a wonderful word that could be tweaked in a zillion creative ways for a company name or tag line.

The lesson: long, vivid words can help you convey a complicated idea concisely, as long as your average customer has an inkling of their meaning.

3. Short, vivid words come in useful, too. Take a look at the word "ire" in the headline "Delay in polar bear decision draws ire of Senate." This is another kind of word that most people understand yet probably wouldn't think to use.

4. Combined cleverly, ordinary words can please inordinately. Besides the rhyme in "cheese with ease" and the homonym in "knotty and nice," I also found "Hoops and hollers" atop a photo of kids cheering at a basketball game, which illustrates alliteration - the repetition of initial letters or sounds.

Another headline, "Bush comes clean with former addicts," used an expression with two meanings that both tie in with the subject matter - George W. Bush talking openly about his former drinking problem.

All in all, your newspaper can serve as a source of instruction and inspiration for naming. Just make sure you screen out bloopers like these, which have actually appeared in newspapers:

Blind Woman Gets New Kidney from Dad she Hasn't Seen in Years

Grandmother of Eight Makes Hole in One

Quarter of a Million Chinese Live on Water

Stolen Painting Found by Tree

Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim

Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges

Iraqi Head Seeks Arms

Kids Make Nutritious Snacks

About the Author:
Marcia Yudkin is Head Stork of Named At Last, a company that brainstorms creative business names, product names and tag lines for clients. For a systematic process of coming up with an appealing and effective name or tag line, download a free copy of "19 Steps to the Perfect Company Name, Product Name or Tag Line" at http://www.namedatlast.com/19steps.htm

Read more Articles written by Marcia Yudkin.

Retirement Is the Perfect Time to Fulfill Your Cherished Dream of Writing

2009-07-08T07:12:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Charles Jacobs

The Gallup Survey Organization says 81% of mature adults long to write a book. You're probably one of them.

In a poll sponsored by the Eons.com web site, 14,000 Seniors and Boomers chose writing as one of their most cherished life dreams.

What's your choice for retirement writing? The novel you've always dreamed of crafting? Perhaps a memoir for loved ones? Maybe you'd prefer to turn out interesting magazine articles on the favorite hobby you've pursued for so many years. Like many others, you may want to maintain contact with your former career by writing articles for trade magazines or possibly a how-to book.

What's holding you back? Are you reluctant because writing seems to be so challenging? Limited to just the chosen few? That's nonsense. Don't let those myths keep you from trying what you've always dreamed of.

Retirement Writing

As a retiree you have great advantages that will help you to fulfill your dream of becoming a published author. You have time...free time at last to pursue the activities you love. You bring years of life experience and professional knowledge to the task.

Can you use those advantages to become a published author? Certainly you can. You'll probably never reach best seller status, although some late starters have accomplished that feat. But with some effort and dedication, you can see your words in print as an article or a book. And they can be distributed over the Internet for millions to see.

It's time to move beyond the starting gate. Set aside those fears of failure. No task can be completed if it isn't begun. No challenge overcome until it is tackled. So it is with writing. Once you start, you'll see your confidence build.

Lawrence Block, a prolific novelist and writing instructor, says, "Writing has this in common with most other skills; we develop it best by practicing it. Whatever writing we do helps us to become better writers."

Before You Face the Computer

The process begins well before you sit down at your computer to write the opening lines of your new gem. A bit of self-searching will put you on track. Think through your answers to several key questions:

Why do I want to write? Is my goal self-fulfillment? Do I have a message I want to deliver to others? Do I want the thrill of seeing my words in print? Am I trying to supplement my income?

What category of writing can best help me attain that goal? What category is most comfortable for me?

Do I want to write just a single piece (a memoir, for example)? Or do I hope to make writing a new career?

How much time am I willing to devote to the task?

Will I be happier writing articles or a book?

Whatever your answers may be, be absolutely certain you are comfortable with them. This is particularly important if you plan to write a full-length book, for you will be married to that task for a substantial length of time.

Making Your Choice

Beginning writers regularly ask, "Where can I find ideas?" The answer, in short, is the world around you. There are no limits to the ideas that astute observers can develop. And writers must be alert spectators.

Ideas abound right in your own home. Coping with a dear one's terminal illness. Issues that caused a divorce. Secrets of a relationship that grows stronger with every year of marriage. An unusual family heritage. Cooking or decorating ideas. Unique holiday celebrations. The list is endless.

Beyond your four walls there is an endless storehouse of ideas. You find them all around you by listening and watching and hearing what friends and relatives talk about. Stories, books and articles are built around events and emotions that people experience.

You can also find them every day in the newspaper. You can choose to follow up a factual report and expand it far beyond what a rushed reporter can do on a tight deadline. Or you can choose to take the idea and fictionalize it, adding your own twists and turns.

A book like Writer's Market, updated annually by Writer's Digest Books is a treasure trove of ideas. It offers hundreds of pages of periodical listings categorized by subject. Freelancers use it as a bible to locate publications that might use their stories. You can use it as a trigger for ideas as you flip through the 50 categories of consumer magazines and 60 categories of trade journals.

Getting Ready

Whether you're about to embark on a novel or nonfiction, an article or a full length book, you're not ready to face that blank computer monitor until you've completed all of your initial homework. That includes evaluating the responses to the question listed above..

Most fiction writers begin by drafting an outline of the plot. As each main character is fully developed-and you as the author must know those key players as well as you know yourself--changes will be necessitated in the outline. You must research the locale(s) and the time period of the book, for nothing can cause a reader to lose interest faster than discovering factual mistakes made by a careless writer.

The essence of nonfiction is fact, and you better know your facts intimately and accurately if you are to achieve success. Whether you are writing an historical piece or a how-to, do your research. Know your subject. Those of you who choose to write on your work specialty better make certain you are up to date on all the latest developments. Always remember that progress didn't end on the day you retired. Change has occurred, and you better be aware of it.

The key word here is research. Getting up to speed. Knowing your subject intimately. Without this, you run the serious risk of suffering from the author's dread disease, Writer's Block. It usually results from facing a stark white computer screen that seems to leer at you, challenging you to make the leap from brain to computer, from thought to the reality of converting those thoughts into words and placing them on the computer. Writers who have done their research well and know their subject will seldom if ever face this problem.

The one last component that you must agree to is discipline. Whether you choose to devote only two or three hours a day to your writing or anticipate making it a full-time job, it cannot be hit-or-miss. You must set a rigid schedule, and follow it. A few hours each morning leaves lots of time for other activities, yet adds a hugely enriching complement to your retirement years.

About the Author:
Do you need a support system to help jump start your writing career? See what's available free on http://www.retirement-writing.com/ - the web site of writing coach and author Charles Jacobs. His latest book "The Writer Within You" is a Best Books of 2007 honoree, a 5-star choice on Amazon, B&N and Borders and a selection of the Writer's Digest Book Club. Find detailed info and order it at a substantial discount by clicking on http://www.retirement-writing.com/the_writer_within_you.aspx

Read more of Charles Jacobs's articles.

Article Marketing: A Great Strategy To Promote Your Business

2009-07-08T06:54:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Enzo F. Cesario

Promotion is an important part of any business; you need to let potential customers know about you and your product. Article marketing is a strategy that will increase your exposure to the people who will want to buy your product or service. Articles written about your industry will help to establish you, the author, as an expert in your field, and can be published in print media and online.

Customers have a preference for doing business with someone they are familiar with, and article marketing is an ideal way of getting your name out there. The content of your articles needs to be useful and relevant to your target market. Articles that are informative, interesting and provide solutions to your readers are tremendously helpful.

If writing is your thing, then do your own articles. If not, there are several sites online where you can connect with writers, eager for work. Choose someone who uses good grammar and spelling skills, and who can write in an informal and conversational style that is easy to read. Your name will appear as the author on these outsourced articles, promoting you as the expert.

These articles are meant to inform and add value to you and your product; they are not blatant sales letters. Online publishing sites wouldn't publish sales letters anyway, and print media would avoid them as well. To establish your credibility, you need to give something to your readers, not blast them with sales talk. Don't ever forget, the reason they are reading your articles is for the information.

Web and ezine writing is very different than writing for other off-line publications. Brief is better. Be concise and write in short paragraphs. Your main purpose is to capture their attention and to get them to visit your website. If your article is long with every piece of information, they won't see the value in clicking the link to your site.

You should always check for spelling and grammatical errors before submitting your articles to directories. These kinds of errors will reflect badly on your reputation and credibility as a quality information provider. Try to avoid technical language, but provide an explanation of terms if they need to be included.

Put the major benefit to the reader in your title. The title will determine whether or not the reader will click to read the article and possibly click to visit your site. If they aren't compelled to read the article, they will never get to see your link, or see your website.

Article directories are the sites where you submit articles for online publication. They check your articles to make sure they comply with their guidelines before they publish them. And though we won't go into it here, print media, like newspapers and magazines, are also always looking for fresh copy, so you can also submit your interesting articles to them for publication.

Make good use of the resource box under the article; this is where you can promote your product and supply contact information. What you include here should encourage readers to click to your website. The best resource box describes your website or yourself in a short sentence and includes at least one link that points back to your website or blog. When the reader clicks on the link to your site, your website visibility will increase.

Remember, a brilliant article with a bad resource box is a waste of time and money. Carefully review the rules for resource box information for each directory you submit to and try to get in as much information about yourself as you can.

If you can, place links to other articles you've written in a new article you're writing. Sometimes, if the advice is helpful, the ezines will let you do this. This cross-referencing will get you more bang for your buck. Before publishing them elsewhere, you should always add your articles to your website or your newsletter. This helps to identify you as the source of the information and is another good way to get your name out there to build relationships with potential customers.

Articles for online publication need to be written with search engines in mind. You need to use the most popular keywords that online users type into their search engine when looking for information about your topic. Use the keywords in your article, but do not saturate it with them. This ruins the readability of the article and will not add to your credibility at all.

Set up a blog to keep in contact with customers and interested contacts. You can upload your articles to your blog to give your readers a continual supply of interesting, informative articles about your area of expertise. Add new content frequently to keep the search engines interested in your articles. Use your blog as another means of promoting your product and yourself as trustworthy and interested in your customers.

Article marketing is probably one of the easiest and most effective ways of driving targeted traffic to your website and boosting your exposure on the Internet. These guidelines will help you get started in article marketing. Use them to promote your product or service and to establish yourself as an expert in your field, then watch your sales increase.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat, the only online marketing and advertising company employing Brandcasting, the most effective way to brand your company on the web. Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. The approach is simple, highly effective and affordable. Learn more at: http://www.Brandsplat.com/

Read more Articles written by Enzo F. Cesario.

Article Marketing Advice: Increasing the Readability of Your Articles

2009-07-05T19:18:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2008-2009 Hunter Waterhouse

When it comes to writing articles to promote your online business, it's important to consider more than just your marketing goals: it's essential that you also focus on writing articles that people will want to read. In other words, you don't just want to use words; and you don't want to market and sell your business directly. Instead, you want to make an effort to be engaging and influential.

The first tip that will help you to increase the readability of your articles is to write with the reader's concerns in mind. If you are unsure of exactly how to do that, you may want to look into article ghostwriters who understand article marketing and who only focus on writing articles for Internet audiences. When you work with article ghostwriters, you can focus more on your business and know that someone else is working hard on your behalf to write articles that will be read.

Getting The Best Results From Your Article Marketing Campaigns

Still, if you want to keep article writing within your company, rather than outsourcing it, here are some tips for getting more out of your article marketing campaigns:

1. Hook your readers from the start. Article writing is a lot more effective for marketing your business when people will actually read the articles. The best thing that you can do is to catch their interest right away. Your article title will determine if people will open your article, and the first paragraph will ensure that people keep reading the article.

2. Avoid the temptation to overwhelm your readers with a lot of information. Article writing is not about telling the reader everything that there is to know; it's about sticking with a central focus and giving your reader an introduction or overview of the information they want and need to solve their problems. In an article that probably won't be much more than one thousand words, you will never be able to tell the reader everything they need to know to solve a problem, but you can help put your reader on solid footing for moving forward towards a workable solution.

3. Break up information into digestible chunks. Writing articles is about expressing some key points. When it comes to writing articles for the internet, what you are going to find is that many readers skim rather than read your articles. Using numbered lists (like this one) will help you to present your information clearly, and let readers find what they are looking for quickly. Similarly, if you use bullet lists or break up your text with subheadings that are in a larger font and bolded, you can be sure that after reading your article, the article's key points will be easily recalled.

4. When it comes to article writing, particularly when you are working to establish yourself as an expert, it's important to show that you know what you're talking about. A great way of doing that - and to break up the text of your article - is to include quotes from more established experts. If you are writing articles and are more established, you too should quote other sources, possible letting the readers know why you disagree with another writer.

5. Focus on spelling and grammar. Just as someone who is hiring article ghostwriters should take the time to find ghost writing services that are well versed in your point of view, it's also important to be sure that you're writing in the native language of your target audience. American English is different from that spoken and written in England and India. Paying attention to your spelling and grammar shows that you care about what you are saying and that you are a professional.

A good example of the difference between the usage rules in British English and American English is the story of Paul Marshall from Dallas, Texas. When Paul was running his mortgage business, he had hired some Indian writers to develop content for his website. When he received the copy from his ghostwriters, the copy used the word "mortgage scheme" in the text eleven times. Paul was pissed, as you might well imagine. In British English, "scheme" does not carry any negative connotation. Yet, as you may well realize, "scheme" in American English is one of the most negative words that can be applied to any business model. It denotes "dishonesty" and "fraud" in American English. His Indian writers could not understand his anger with their choice of words, but you can understand his anger.

Professionalism In The Article Writing Process

Professionalism, unfortunately, is frequently overlooked when it comes to article writing. Great writing flows, not just for the writer whose aim is to get the words and message out, but also for the readers who are consuming the information.

Because of this, one key element of an effective article is not the writing itself: it is the readability of that article. Take the time to look at the articles that grab your attention and jot a few notes about each of them. Specifically, focus on the following:

How did the writer grab your attention (or, if you weren't interested in the first paragraph, what turned you off?

What sort of spacing did the writer use in the article?

What did you come away with after reading the article? In other words, what were the key points of the article?

Writing articles is neither purely science nor purely art at its best; it is a good combination of the two. A great article focuses on a key issue, isn't stuffed with keywords (you do want search engines to find the article, but too many keywords in an article takes away from readability), and is as easy to skim, as it is to read.

When all is said and done, an article that gets read in its entirety will carry the reader to the Author's Bio at the end of the article. Ideally, the reader will read the entire article and feel a desire to visit the author's website to learn more about the writer of the article. It is article marketing at its best, when the reader likes the article enough to click on the link in the Author's Bio and visit the author's website to learn more about what the author is offering.

About the Author:
Hunter Waterhouse has been involved in article ghostwriting and building websites for a number of years. Over the last several years, Hunter has been employed by http://www.thephantomwriters.com/ To learn about the new WordPress plugin, which will enable you to receive targeted articles directly from The Phantom Writers Article Distribution Service, as they become available, please visit: http://www.backlinksmagnet.com/blog/

Read more Articles written by Hunter Waterhouse.

How to Recognize a Bad SEO Company

2009-07-04T10:12:00.001-07:00

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Enzo F. Cesario

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about getting potential customers to visit your website. It is also about building a quality website full of great content. It uses keywords appropriately and gets links "naturally" because people love what you have on your site. SEO companies can provide very useful services including keyword research, site review, providing technical advice on your website development and also management of online business marketing campaigns. They can also help with content development, article marketing and article distribution. Although it's not brain surgery, it is hard to do and usually requires a lot of thought and real work.

Some unethical SEO firms attempt to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways. These practices could get your website ranked lower or even banned. When looking at SEO - either to optimize it on your own or if you are looking to hire a company, here are some things to take into account.

Be Cautious Of SEO Firms That Say They Will Get Thousands Of Links To Your Site.

It' is not the number of sites that make the difference - it's the quality of the sites. When firms promise huge numbers of links, or say that you' will become part of their "network of sites", it usually means a link farm is involved. A link farm is any group of websites that all hyperlink to every other site in the group. Search engines don't like this and it can lead to penalties. Instead, practice reciprocal linking with legitimate and related websites for better search engine ranking.

Be Wary Of SEO Firms That Guarantee A High Ranking On Google.

No one can guarantee a high ranking on Google. Some SEO companies offer a guarantee on their services. This is fine. What's not fine is guaranteeing high ranking in an incredibly short period of time. When these unrealistic results fail to happen, the company will balk at giving a refund, offer you other services instead, start to become unreachable or disappear.

Be Cautious Of SEO Firms That Send "Spammy" Emails.

These emails are unsolicited and usually begin with "We've noticed that you are not listed in some search engines..." You should be searching for a high-ranking SEO company; they will not be searching for you. Spam means scam. You don't buy your medications from spammers so why buy SEO services from them?

Be Wary Of SEO Firms That Are Secretive Or Don't Clearly Explain What They Are Going To Do.

Most reputable SEO firms are upfront with their clients and like to share their knowledge. They are confident that even if their clients understand their process, they won't leave them. If the SEO firm claims it's too complicated for you to understand, or if they say they have trade secrets and proprietary technology, it's a sign that they may not be ethical in dealing with your website.

Be Wary Of SEO Firms That Say They Will Submit Your Site To Thousands Of Top Search Engines And Directories.

Besides the small fact that there aren't that many search engines, consider that the guidelines of the search engines themselves tell you that it doesn't do any good anymore. Search Engines are good at what they do - searching for sites - and you don't need to pay someone to submit your site to a search engine. If they make this claim, they will probably use Free For All (FFA) junk sites that might damage your site's standings.

Be Cautious Of SEO Firms That Say They Can Optimize And Promote Your Site For A Low, Low Monthly Fee.

Not all monthly SEO or SEM (Search Engine Management) service contracts or monthly fees are a scam. There are real reasons to pay a monthly fee to an SEO expert. These would include conditions when you would require SEO management: when you or someone else is constantly generating new content or new features for your site; implementing link-building campaigns; implementing PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns; or starting a brandcasting campaign. Press release distribution, email campaigns and article marketing campaigns could also require a legitimate monthly fee.

Not-so-legitimate fees could include monthly re-submitting of your site to search engines, "tweaking" your code to keep up with changes and regularly submitting your site to hundreds of useless free-for-all directories. The worthwhile companies that charge a monthly fee will usually be able to tell you exactly how much it is per month to generate blog entries or generate and distribute articles or press releases. And it won't be for the low, low price of $79.95.

Choose Your SEO Company And Services Carefully.

Do your research and don't make the decision lightly. If you were hiring a contractor to remodel your kitchen you would want to see other kitchen projects they've done and speak with the owners about the company's business practices. You should do the same thing when hiring an SEO company. Get referrals and really speak with them.

There are many online tips about choosing and hiring SEO firms that you can check out as well. Remember, SEO is a long-term strategy and you should take the time to do your research before buying or you'll probably be buying again.

About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat, the only online marketing and advertising company employing Brandcasting, the most effective way to brand your company on the web. Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. The approach is simple, highly effective and affordable. Learn more at: http://www.Brandsplat.com/

Read more Articles written by Enzo F. Cesario.