Now just what does a virus have to do with marketing? The terminology viral marketing basically describes any type of marketing strategy that encourages consumers to pass on a marketing message. Through this word of mouth style of advertising there is a huge potential for the marketing message to gain massive exposure and influence. So just like a virus, viral marketing takes full advantage of rapid multiplication in order to get a message out to huge numbers of people.
You are told every flu season to pay extra attention to personal hygiene: things like wash your hands often, do not rub your eyes and try and stay away from others who may be sick. A virus will only spread if it is easy to transmit. This is why viral email marketing can be so effective because communicating by email is super easy and inexpensive. If you keep your marketing message short and to the point you will find that your email marketing campaign will be a big success. This is because a short attention grabbing message is going to stick in the minds of consumers more then a longer more boring message.
A truly savvy viral email marketing plan will take full advantage of the most common of human motivations. For instance most all consumers are driven by the need to feel like part of the in crowd and the need to have the latest and greatest products is another common motivator. The motivation to need to communicate with others and get almost instant responses is a huge motivating factor in why billions of email messages are sent each and every day.
Most everyone is the world is a semi-social person. Scientific experts in studying social behaviors report that each individual has a social network of between eight to twelve people. When people communicate on the internet they begin to develop relationships just the same as you would do offline. Email addresses are collected and favorite websites are saved to favorites. Affiliate programs are masters at exploiting online social networks as are opt in email lists. If you learn to cleverly put your marketing message in all of the communicating that you do online you will quickly see how fast your message will be heard.
A viral email marketing campaign can work wonders for your business if you are able to capitalize on common human behavior to speed along its transmission.
Of the many ways to make money online, one of the easiest by far can actually be done without spending anything but time. Affiliate marketing is the term used to describe a middleman (which is you) selling products or services on behalf of the company that actually provides them.
This sort of marketing is a definite win/win situation for both parties and can mean big money for you as the affiliate, if you know how to work it right. Affiliate marketing is only going to make you money if you devote some serious time and effort to it, and that means more than just posting a couple of banner ads on your blog.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
When you sign up for an affiliate program, you are then given several options from which to choose. These could range from simple banner ads to text links and individual product links. The type of link you choose should fit comfortably with the overall look and feel of your site so that the ad does not stand out too much and neither does it get in the way of the content the reader is there for.
Once you have correctly inserted a link onto your page, it will appear every time the page is viewed. You might be paid based on the number of click thrus that come from your site or you might earn a percentage of any sales that result from visitors who follow those links. As you can imagine, the more page views you get, the greater your chances of earning. So how do you increase your traffic?
Content is King
Before you choose a company or product to sell from your website, you need to do a bit of brainstorming to decide how you can best sell a particular product. One of the least expensive and most beneficial ways to promote a product is to have content that relates to it in a positive way.
Product reviews and testimonials can go a long way toward boosting sales, and so can informative articles on topics that are relevant to the product itself, or relate to a problem for which the product provides a valid solution. When you chose a product, you need to consider these points so that you are better able to provide information and content that will make the customer want to buy the product from you.
Signing up for affiliate programs should never cost you anything; after all it is you who are helping them to make sales, so why should you have to pay them to sell their product? Be sure to take note of the payment or commission structure so that you will have a better idea of how much you stand to make – this will help you decide if a particular program is worth the time and effort or not.
In order to make finding the right affiliate program a little easier, here is a list of some of the more popular websites that are targeted specifically at affiliate marketers:
• Amazon, www.amazon.com
• Clickbank, www.clickbank.com
• Commission Junction: www.cj.com
• LinkShare: www.linkshare.com
• Netshops, www.netshops.com
• Share A Sale, www.shareasale.com
When it comes to the Internet, one of the first names nearly anyone will think of is Google. They have had tremendous success in everything from their search engine to Gmail (www.gmail.com), so why would you think that they would do any less when it comes to advertising?
Google’s AdSense program, https://www.google.com/adsense/ , allows website owners to beef up their sites by adding advertising content that is relevant to the content already on the page. The genius of the Google technology also allows the user to choose from text, image and even video ads, as well as adjust their appearance and location on the website.
Making it Work
Google has made signing up for AdSense a breeze – a free breeze. Once signed up you are just a few easy clicks away from bringing ad revenue to your own site. When you set up an AdSense ad you choose one of several options: content-based text ads, a search box that earns, referrals, video ads, and now they even offer content specifically geared toward mobile web users.
AdSense for Content
This is the most commonly used type of AdSense ads. A small box appears on your page with text ads that are chosen dynamically based on the content of the page itself.
AdSense for Search
In addition to dynamic text ads, AdSense for Search allows you to add a familiar search feature to your website that also searches the pages of your has the added flexibility of searching not only the entire Google search engine but also searching for content on your own website.
AdSense Video
A fairly new addition to the AdSense arsenal, this feature combines text ads with popular and relevant videos from YouTube (www.youtube.com). While the videos themselves are not ads and will not pay you anything, you can view this as yet another way to add content to your website.
AdSense for Mobile Content
Nowadays thousands of people are surfing the web from the cell phones. As a result, more and more websites are offering mobile friendly versions of their pages. The AdSense response was AdSense for Mobile Content, which allows you to take the money making power of AdSense ads mobile, and make it available to cell phone users everywhere.
When you have chosen the type you want to create (you can great as many as you like) and you have finished setting up your new AdSense ad, it is a simple matter of inserting a small piece of coding called JavaScript into your web page so that it displays where you want it. Once it is in place, your ads will display dynamically on your page every time a visitor shows up.
Your account will be credited based on either the number of click thrus or the amount of traffic that is generated through your ad links. Either way, you get paid. As you can imagine, these click thrus don’t pay much, so I don’t recommend quitting your day job just yet.
Still, with a little bit of effort and a good steady traffic stream to your website or blog, those pennies can add up fast.
When Google came on to the Internet scene, they were the undisputed underdog of online search engines. A few years later they dominated the scene, all because of one simple word – relevance. When they started their Adwords program they carried the same principal into the world of online marketing and today thousands of advertisers are reaping the rewards.
The Google Adwords program offers the opportunity for anyone, anywhere to market their website, product or service to a uniquely targeted audience by selecting keywords that are relevant to whatever they are marketing. When someone visits the Google search engine and types in that keyword, a small text ad is prominently displayed on the search results page.
How does it Work?
Potential advertisers buy time on Google by outbidding other advertisers who are interested in the same keywords. When you bid you choose from either cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM) depending on the type of traffic you are looking for. The site also has the flexibility of allowing you to set a daily budget as well as selecting the days and times you want your ad to be run.
Choosing the Right Keywords
The most crucial thing to remember when you are selecting keywords is that they should be absolutely relevant to the website, product or service you are pitching. As mentioned earlier, the Adwords program prides itself on having the most relevant content available quickly for their users, and as such you will reap higher rewards if you stick to keywords that honestly represent what you are marketing.
Google will weed out ads that are not relevant to the keywords chosen in order to maintain their high standards of search quality. Consistently choosing irrelevant keywords will not only result in a lower click through ratio (less traffic) but it could also mean that your ads will be removed entirely.
The most popular keywords are going to cost considerably more than others, because major companies (like the Wall Street Journal) have caught on to the phenomenal success that can be had with this program. Small time marketers can’t compete with their sizeable advertising budgets, but by being creative they can come up with other keywords that will bring plenty of targeted traffic their way.
How do I get Started?
After signing up on the Adwords website (see the link at the end of this article) and paying the one-time set up fee of U.S. $5.00, you pay only for the ads you win the bid on, starting as low as $.01 per click. You select the keywords you want to bid on, construct your ad text and submit your bid. In minutes, your ad will be available to be displayed.
There is virtually no end to the possibilities that Google’s Adwords program can open up for your online marketing options. With careful and creative attention to relevant keywords, you can experience a huge boost in traffic and sales for very little money.
Just don’t forget to set that daily budget !
For more information on the Adwords program, check out these links:
Google Adwords Website
http://www.adwords.com
Adwords Account Fees and Payment Options
https://adwords.google.com/select/AfpoFinder?currency=EUR&country=CN
Five Days to Success with Google Adwords
http://www.perrymarshall.com/google/index.htm
Adwords Forum at WebmasterWorld.com
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adwords/
Looking For An Online Marketing Business Opportunity - Try Affiliate Marketing!
13 Mar
Posted by admin as Affiliate Marketing
Do you stay at home to take care of the kids? Do you just want to make some extra cash on the side?
Affiliate marketing might be for you!
Affiliate marketing is a great business venture to get into. Probably one of the best things about it is that it does not require a huge amount of money that is needed to be invested. For example, if you are starting up a normal company, you will be required to first develop your product. This alone can take thousands of dollars. Second, you are required to support it. With affiliate marketing, you simply rely on the company you are working with to provide those types of services.
Also, there are lots of great tools out there to help you pick which company to become an affiliate partner of Clickbank openly shows statistics for the companies they work for. You can take a look around to find new ones, older proven ones, or find companies that are in a niche that is less competitive.
You also can not overlook the time that is involved. Outside of the marketing itself and typically a small website you can dive right into bringing in traffic to your affiliate company. Otherwise, you have to take the time to do all the other necessary things, such as mentioned above. The time involved in general development of the products and organization can often take months, sometimes years.
With all this said, you should still make sure to do the proper research. Not spending enough time in the research of affiliate marketing can be the difference between spending too much and making money online. It is always recommended to try and find hot niche’s that are relatively untapped. This is where the money is always at. More competitive places can be difficult to make any money in because you have a lot of websites already out there fighting for a small piece of the pie.
You should also be willing to invest a little bit into marketing. Granted, there are ways to market websites without any form of funding. However, more times than not a small marketing budget can be the difference between a website with traffic and one sitting there waiting for an occasional visitor. A small marketing budget can be as little as $20.00.
Do your research before investing on where to advertise.
In a nutshell, a small amount of work could have big rewards!
Take a look at some of the larger affiliate networks –
1. Keywords should be chosen with care
You want to make sure that the keywords you use are keywords that people are actually searching for. You also want to make sure that the keywords aren’t too broad. Long tail keywords, keyword phrases at least three to four words long, will help you drive more targeted traffic to your lens.
Test your keywords to see which ones are getting you traffic. Look for more keywords that may be related to your lens and add those.
You should always ensure that keywords are targeting are ones that are being searched for. What is the use of having a keyword that no one is interested in? While sometimes you can find lesser competitive keywords that can be diamonds in the rough, but too targeted of keywords can sometimes simply be key phrases that are unused.
Look for tools online that will help you with this.
2. Lenses should be bookmarked
Social Bookmarking is always a good way to get traffic. You should always make sure to use the same great services, for example, Digg to bring in additional traffic to your lenses. Not only is this going to benefit directly with traffic, but also indirectly by hopefully having the Search Engines index your site more quickly.
3. Link to other Lenses!
This is a social place. In social places you always want to be popular among the crowd and you will not be able to do it by avoiding everyone. Go out there and find other peoples lenses to link to. Do not be afraid to ask for the same in return.
4. People are your friends
The concept is to get more traffic, right? Well, as mentioned above you can not do that by living under a rock. You have to take the initiative to make your friends online most of the time. Do not be afraid to visit other people’s lenses and leave comments. They will appreciate it and many will return the favor.
5. Join those that have an interest in your niche.
With several thousand groups across Squidoo, it should not be too difficult too find one within your niche. You should take some time to join them. It is a good way to find new friends and hopefully encourage others to visit your Lens, so that in return you can gain them as clients or they will refer others to you when they come across the need to do so.
6. Provide something interesting
Obvious yes, but often overlooked, make sure that the content on your lens is useful and accurate. Provide useful tips, insider knowledge, gossip, latest information, but make it interesting.
If you are constantly releasing new information, then people will eventually come in to take a look.
1. Choose your list topic carefully.
You must have a topic for your list. And if you want to make money
you need a topic that will be profitable. Your TOPIC is crucial to the
success of your list venture.
Perhaps your topic is a given, as it would be if you already have a sales
web site in place, or an online store.
But if you are starting from scratch, picking a profitable niche topic
is of the utmost importance to your success.
Consider these quick shortcuts to picking a profitable niche topic:
A. More than $20 per hundred clicks at Commission Junction.
B. High gravity and popularity at ClickBank.
C. High Adwords bids. Use the tool at iotaweb.
D. eBay Pulse
E. Google trends direction up.
F. Searched for topic. Use the free Wordtracker tool.
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
This is perhaps the most important part of topic selection:
* Is your topic something you already know about?
* Is it a subject you are passionate about?
* Will it be easy for you to spend a lot of time on the topic?
* Can you imagine yourself becoming an expert in the topic?
* Are you an expert already?
If the answer to any of the above questions is yes, you’re lucky,
because your work on the topic will seem like play.
And I don’t care about all the “get rich quick miracle claims” you read, there is W-O-R-K
involved in the list building process.
2. Your Mission Statement
Start with a mission statement for your list, and put your Mission
Statement in writing. Write down at least 3 key bullet points which
tie into your list Mission Statement. Use those bullets to differentiate
your list in the marketplace.
Then list your subscribers’ benefits for each of those bullet points.
You can think of the bullet points as the “reasons why” a potential
subscriber would want to be on your list.
You can think of your benefits as the answer to the “what’s in
it for me” train of thought that is going through the mind of
every potential subscriber.
Don’t skip this important step. It is crucial to have a mission so
that you don’t stray from what got you subscribers in the first
place. Always stay true to your Mission Statement to keep your
efforts on track.
3. Use a subscriber bonus (ethical bribe.)
Unless the general public is clamoring to be on your list, you are
generally going to need an incentive, over and above the benefits
for joining your list that you developed in the previous step.
This will be additional motivation for potential subscribers to join.
Possibilities for your subscriber bonus include:
* Subscriber-only discount or coupon,
* Subscriber-only buying club or exclusive membership site.
* Mini course or “white paper,” delivered by email or pdf.
* Downloadables such as a reports or eBooks, audio MP3s,
Videos, or software products.
Use your creativity for a unique bonus item targeted to your List
Mission and benefits. Do I have to say it must be on your topic?
Here is the thing many miss: your subscriber bonus must be something
that anyone remotely interested in your list topic would like to have.
It should be something that they would be glad to pay good money for.
The ideal subscriber bonus is something they can only get from you,
by joining your list. You should be able to put a real dollar amount on
the value of the item, not an inflated value, but what it or something
just like it sells for in the real or virtual world.
We’re talking really over-delivering on the bonus.
4. Use a professionally hosted Autoresponder service.
This is crucial to your success with list marketing.
Such a service takes the big workload off you for email delivery issues,
SPAM complaints, server glitches etc.
Your Autoresponder service should allow you to send pre-loaded,
Scheduled sequential autoreponder messages, as well as one time
broadcasts. It should also allow you to schedule your broadcasts.
Here the current “big three” hosted Autoresponder companies.
My favorite is Aweber. I’ve noticed that many marketers have switched
their lists from self hosted or “swiss army knife” ecommerce solutions to
Aweber. There’s a reason for this. Switching providers is a pain, and you
will lose subscribers in the process. So start out right.
Don’t even think about using a free service….
5. Use a forced opt in page to increase subscribers
AND profits..
You’ve experienced an opt in page, also called a squeeze page, if you
ever went to a web page that asked for your name and email address
before you could access the information you were looking for. Even
the New York Times does this.
In its purest form, an opt in page is a mini sales letter with only one
function - get the viewer to fill in the form and join the list. There
should be no other purpose or way off the page. Prospects have to
either fill in the information or leave.
The essentials of an opt in page are:
· headline,
· bullet points,
· ethical bribe,
· call to action,
· subscribe form,
· “no spam” disclaimer.
You’ll often find audio or video on optin pages, but my advice is to start
with the basics above and then add the audio or video while tracking your
subscribe conversion rate.
Your bullet points can be your list benefits from Tip 2. Your subscribe
bonus can be included on the optin page with just a simple cover graphic
or product shot and a sales pitch for it in the bullets.
Then, add the call to action, the subscribe form, and voila - opt in page!
Your autoresponder host will provide a form designer for your optin
pages. I use mine just for the code for the signup box and then design
the rest of the page in Nvu or Dreamweaver etc, adding the subscribe box into
a table on the html opt in page I designed.
Your autoresponder host may have the ability for you to generate the
entire opt in page, and you can do it that way if it works for you.
Aweber’s form designer will output the proper code to include in your
optin form or page in either html or javascript. I make all of my sign up
forms in the Aweber control panel.
I’ve run across several programs for making optin pages. But it’s a
simple page to make, and the free NVu html editor makes designing
one a snap.
A big hint here, think about having multiple opt in pages targeted to
your different traffic sources.
6. After they opt in, tell them what to do.
You need to explain to your new subscriber exactly what your list
signup process is, so they know exactly what they need to do to
complete the list signup process.
This is usually done on the page they are redirected to after they click
the “submit” button on your list signup form, often called a “thank you”
page.
You should give them instructions on who and where your emails will
come from, ask them to whitelist your email address, to check their bulk
or spam folder for your confirmation email.
Tell them to click on that email to actually join your list and get their bonus….basically whatever
you can think of to explain to make your signup process clear.
You’ll get more CONFIRMED optins by doing this.
Adsense is the popular and effective online advertising program hosted by Google.
Recently, Google has launched AdSense video for beta program. This program brings graphical and text overlay ads to online publishers of video content which is quite similar to Google AdSense.
Today, AdSense is not only for ads but a place where you can find a video content for your website. AdSense video beta is an extension of the In-Stream Video Ads of Google.
There are various ad formats that are being made available today;
- Graphical overlay ads just like the company offers with YouTube Videos.
These ads run for about 20% of the video time and its price will be based on cost-per-click. These text overlay ads appear as see-through layers or sometimes as a logo on the video.
- Earn extra income while using AdSense video beta on your website.
The launching of video units enriches your site with premium and relevant video content played on customizable player. All you have to do is insert or embed a code and get a pertinent YouTube partner content that can be streamed to your site.
You can choose from the different categories available from individual YouTube partners and target it to your site.
You can also choose and customize the color of the YouTube player to match your website. In addition to this, the customizable player also comes in three different sizes.
If you want to extend the amount of demand for your website, embed YouTube partner videos that are attractive and of high quality. While doing so, you may be able to earn extra income too.
If you want to try it now just sign up with AdSense or sign in to your account and click the AdSense setup tab and choose the video units link. For now, this feature is only open to publishers from the United States with websites in English language.
The availability of this program will be obtainable in other areas in near the future. So far, this program is different from other video advertising that Google have introduced in the past year. Getting targeted Ads will be great for affiliates because video is definitely becoming the future of content.
For a website owner, AdSense video beta could be a great way to attract more visitors and could be an addition to the possible income of your website.
So, Hexatrack recently released an interesting tool set for affiliate marketers. The pair of tools offered consists of an “ad tracker” and a “campaign conversion tracker.”
The ad tracker is rather powerful for discovery of keywords (it does an excellent job of combining PPC data), and may actually be the more potent of the two offerings, but this post will focus on the conversion tracker.
The conversion tracker basically provides analytics for affiliate marketing. The most compelling offerings here, functionality-wise, lie in the tool’s ability to:
- Track basic source/entrance information (referring page, landing page, traffic sources)
- Track the key-terms entered
- Track multiple product offerings to the same landing page
This is all vital information for the conversion optimization process. For my money, the most intriguing utility lies in the combination of the second and third features listed above.
If you’re running an organic SEO affiliate campaign, there’s a pretty good chance you’re marketing multiple products and sending them to the same page.
Being able to track these terms side-by-side, while analyzing the long-tail key-terms that are converting the best for each (then tweaking accordingly), is extremely useful.
At the moment, Hexatrack only offers this campaign conversion tracking for a handful of larger affiliate networks. Hexatrack offers a free and pro version of both of their tools.
The pro version seems to expand the amount of data you can mine and the time period you’ll have access to it (your log archive goes from 60 days to 6 months in pro versus free).
Also, there are intimations in some of the Hexatrack marketing literature that they’ll be adding to the pro offering in the near future.
Getting access to this sort of data aggregation and sorting is definitely valuable: Hexatrack’s a really useful tool.
Check it out for yourself here – www.hexatrack.com
2007 was another prosperous year for the Internet in the United Kingdom. Would you believe that 60 % of the UK’s population used the Internet in an average month?
Wow, that is almost 37 million people accessing the Internet.
The expected number of people who will be using the Internet this year will more likely to gain a little more over than 60%. The increasing number of Internet users is expected to grow by year 2012 to 70% of the population. Karin von Abrams, Senior Analyst of eMarketer said that Britain is considered to have an enthusiastic and experienced online population.
She also said that the assurance in commerce is soaring. Ms. von Abrams is also the author the new report, UK Internet: Users and Usage. eMarketer has labeled a person “an online user” if he uses the internet at least once a month from any location, be it work or home, school or any wireless internet locations.
eMarketer expects the UK to account 40% the least of online sales in Western Europe in 2008.This percentage will slightly decline as e-commerce’s set up will greatly improve in other parts of the region. However, the United Kingdom will still bear the biggest single share of the European market in the year 2011.
Ms. von Abrams added that mail-order shopping has highly contributed to the practice of buying online in the UK. She also disclosed that online prices are competitive especially that of books, items being sold at auction sites and travel tickets. Online merchants on the other hand are doing their best to carefully establish superior security for online transactions. They also offer the best delivery and courier services to their customers online.
In the report the estimated money spent online by a single buyer amounts to £3,180 per month. The average purchase per buyer has been steadily rising and eMarketer estimates that the amount of money spent a month will reach a hefty £3,800 in the year 2008.
Most online users in UK patronize the similar sites that US and other European buyers favor. Sites like Amazon.com an Amazon UK are in the top 10 list of most visited shopping sites. Some of the leading sites are Argos, Tesco.com, Play.com, Thomson Holidays, Expedia.co.uk, easyjet.com, Apple Computer, and lastminute.com.
The Internet usage in the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe will continue to grow and flourish in the coming years.
Checkout emarketer.com
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Recent Entries
- How Viral Email Marketing Can Work For You
- The Nuts & Bolts Of Affiliate Marketing
- Making Sense of Google's Adsense
- How To Use Google Adwords To Boost Traffic
- Looking For An Online Marketing Business Opportunity - Try Affiliate Marketing!
- 6 Tips For Marketing On Squidoo
- The Top 5 List Building Tips
- Add Extra Income To Your Website With Adsense Video Beta
- A Convert to Hexatrack's Conversion Tracker?
- The Internet Dominates UK In 2007
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