Search Engine Submissions Made Easy!

Search Engine Submissions Made Easy!

by: Robin Nobles

One area of search engine marketing that has changed dramatically over the years is submissions. Submitting to the search engines used to be so complicated, with having to choose between manual versus software submissions; only being able to submit so many pages a day; having to be careful about oversubmitting; and the list goes on.

Submissions used to be the worst part of the search engine optimization process, at least for me.

Now, I can literally write this whole article in two words:

Pay Inclusion

Yep, there you have it. If you want to take the headache out of submissions and if you want to make things much easier for YOU, use pay inclusion!

It’s hard for someone like me to admit how powerful pay inclusion programs are, because I’ve been in this ขgameข long enough to remember when everything was free. So, moving into the pay realm has been a difficult thing to do.

However, the benefits of pay inclusion far outweigh the cost.

Benefits of Pay Inclusion

Your pages are indexed much faster than submitting through free add URL or waiting for the spiders to find the pages on their own.

By using pay inclusion, your pages are getting outside of the 95%+ spam that the engines say come through free add URL submissions.

With pay inclusion, your pages are respidered on a very regular basis, depending on the engine. For example, Inktomi and Fast respider their pay inclusion pages every 48 hours.

With pay inclusion, you never have to submit your pages again! As long as you continue to use pay inclusion, your pages will continue to get respidered based on each engine’s schedule.

Because your pages are respidered on a regular basis without your doing one single thing to initiate this action, you can make changes to your pages today and begin to see the results of those changes within a week. If you didn’t use pay inclusion, you may not see the results of the changes for a month or two.

If you use pay inclusion, you’re forming a ขpartnershipข with the search engines, which I personally feel is important and very beneficial. You’re now outside of the realm of the millions of spammers, and that’s exactly where you want to be.

Most of the pay inclusion programs offer some sort of submission reports.

Pay inclusion programs are ideal for dynamically generated sites.

Now that we’ve looked at the benefits of pay inclusion, letกs create an example to see how inexpensive it really is. Let’s say we have a brand new Web site, and we have three main pages that we want to submit through pay inclusion.

Pay Inclusion Programs

Inktomi (Provides secondary search results to engines such as MSN and HotBot) http://www.positiontech.com/directSubmit.htm

Benefits:

Upon submission, your pages will make it into the Inktomi index within 72 hours, as a general rule.

Your pages are respidered every 48 hours.

The term of the pay inclusion program is 12 months.

Reporting services are included, such as verification of page acceptance; refresh reports; URL validation; and account management.

Here’s the audience reach of some of the engines that use Inktomi’s secondary results, according to Nielsen NetRatings in October 2002: MSN: 28.1%; Overture: 5.4%; LookSmart: 3.0%; (also provides results to the ขnewข HotBot) (http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html)

Cost? $39 for the first URL, and $25 each for additional URL’s up to 1000. So, the total cost for our three pages would be $89. (See Special Note at the bottom of this article on how you can save 20% off the price of Inktomi and Fast pay inclusion – for a limited time only.)

Fast (Provides search results to AlltheWeb, Lycos, and HotBot) http://www.positiontech.com/directSubmit.htm

You can use Position Tech to submit your Fast pages too, so be sure to enroll in both pay inclusion programs at the same time.

Benefits:

Upon submission, your pages will make it into the Fast index within 48 hours, as a general rule.

Your pages are respidered every 48 hours.

The term of the pay inclusion program is 12 months.

Reporting services are included, such as verification of page acceptance; refresh reports; URL validation; and account management.

With Fast, you can choose between several different programs, including some that include a free onsite search engine, bulk inclusion, etc.

The audience reach of Fast, according to Nielsen NetRatings in October 2002, was: Lycos: 4.4%; (also provides results to the ขnewข HotBot) (http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html)

Cost? $34 for the first URL, and $16 each for additional URL’s up to 1000. So, the total cost for our three pages would be $66. (See Special Note at the bottom of this article on how you can save 20% off the price of Inktomi and Fast pay inclusion – for a limited time only.)

Teoma and Ask Jeeves (Provides results to Teoma, Ask Jeeves, and HotBot) http://ask.ineedhits.com/

The only way to get in the Teoma index is through pay inclusion. This is one engine that doesn’t have a free add URL page.

Benefits:

Upon submission, your pages will make it into the Teoma and Ask Jeeves indices within 7 days.

Your pages are respidered every 7 days.

The term of the pay inclusion program is 12 months.

Reporting services are included, such as clickthrough reporting.

The audience reach of Teoma/Ask Jeeves, according to Nielsen NetRatings in October 2002, was: Ask Jeeves: 10.3% (also provides results to the ขnewข HotBot) (http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html)

Cost? $30 for the first URL, and $18 each for additional URL’s up to 1000. So, the total cost for our three pages would be $66.

AltaVista (Provides results to AltaVista) http://addurl.altavista.com/

Benefits:

Upon submission, your pages will make it into the AltaVista index within 2 business days.

Your pages are respidered every 24 hours.

The term of the pay inclusion program is 6 months.

Reporting services are included, such as tracking submissions and transactions through their online Account Management Center.

The audience reach of AltaVista, according to Nielsen NetRatings in October 2002, was: AltaVista: 4.4% (http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html)

Cost? $39 for the first URL, and $29 each for 210 URL’s, then $19 each for 11 to 500 URLs. So, the total cost for our three pages for **six months** would be $97. The cost per year would be $194.

Downside:

AltaVista’s pay inclusion is more expensive than the others, and AV doesn’t have the coverage that some of the other engines have. Plus, their pay inclusion program is only for six months, as compared to a full year with the other programs.

So, you’ll have to decide whether you feel it’s worth the cost.

AltaVista is the one engine where you can still use their free add URL without being placed into the same category as the huge group of ขfree add URL spammers,ข because AltaVista’s free add URL process doesn’t allow mass submissions. Instead, their unique ขpuzzle submissionข process requires you to enter a submission code into the submission box, and you can only submit five URLs at no cost. So, if you want to use free add URL for one of the engines, AltaVista’s is the one to use. http://addurl.altavista.com/addurl/new

Total Costs so Far

With our example, considering that this is a brand new Web site with zero visibility, we’ll figure out the cost for our three pages based on using AltaVista’s pay inclusion program and on not using their program.

Subtotal of Yearly Pay Inclusion Costs Without AltaVista: $221 (for 3 pages) (Includes the Inktomi engines, the Fast engines, Teoma, and Ask Jeeves. This does NOT include AltaVista.)

Subtotal of Yearly Pay Inclusion Costs With AltaVista: $415 (for 3 pages) (Includes the Inktomi engines, the Fast engines, Teoma, Ask Jeeves, and AltaVista.)

Yahoo! http://www.yahoo.com

You might be wondering why I haven’t listed the Yahoo! directory in this listing of pay inclusion programs. With the way that Yahoo! now displays results, which are almost a duplication of Google results, the importance of submitting to the Yahoo! directory at a yearly cost of $299 has diminished. Depending on where things go from here, with Yahoo! having purchased the Inktomi engine, this is subject to immediate change. But, at this point in time, paying to be included in the Yahoo! directory isn’t anywhere near as important as it once was. If you have good visibility in Google, you should have good visibility in Yahoo!.

But, our site is brand new, and the advantage to Yahoo!’s pay inclusion program is that your site will be reviewed for possible inclusion within 7 working days. So, depending on our finances, we may want to add Yahoo!’s pay inclusion costs, just so we can get fast visibility for our new site.

(According to Nielson NetRankings in October 2002, the audience reach of Yahoo! was 28.5%. http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html)

Total of Yearly Pay Inclusion Costs Including Yahoo!, but not AltaVista: $520 (Includes the Inktomi engines, the Fast engines, Teoma, Ask Jeeves, and Yahoo!. This does NOT include AltaVista.)

Total of Yearly Pay Inclusion Costs Including both Yahoo! and AltaVista: $714 (Includes the Inktomi engines, the Fast engines, Teoma, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo!, and AltaVista.)

What about Google?

Google http://www.google.com/addurl.html

Google is the only major engine that doesn’t have a pay inclusion program. So, the only way to get your pages into the index is to let the spider find the pages on its own through links on other pages or to submit through Google’s free add URL.

Personally, I always let the spider find the pages on its own and never submit to Google manually. By going this route, while your site is busy being spidered by the other engines and you’re busy building link popularity, by the time that Google ขfindsข your pages, you should have had time to build some link popularity, which we all know is so important with Google.

According to Nielson NetRankings in October 2002, the audience reach of Google alone was 29.2%. Add to that AOL at 19.7%, Yahoo! at 28.5%, and Netscape at 5.5%, and it’s quite easy to see the power behind Google. (http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html)

In Conclusion

Rather than worrying with submitting your pages manually to each of the major engines, take advantage of the tremendous benefits of using pay inclusion.

Then, let Google find your pages on its own, and hold off submitting to the Yahoo! directory for a while.

Based on our example here, if we were submitting three pages, our total yearly cost would be either $221 and $415, depending on whether or not we chose to use AltaVista’s pay inclusion program.

So, as you can see, the benefits far outweigh the costs. Repeating what I said earlier in this article, the ขkeyข to successful submissions these days can be summed up in two words: pay inclusion.

Special Note:

After writing this article, I found that Lycos is offering a discount on both Fast and Inktomi pay inclusion programs for a limited time. If you submit to both engines, you can receive a 20% discount! I don’t know how long this will last, but here’s the URL:

http://insite.lycos.com/searchservices/select/select_overview.asp?co=undefined

About The Author

Robin Nobles, Director of Training, Academy of Web Specialists, (http://www.academywebspecialists.com) has trained several thousand people in her online search engine marketing courses (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com) and is the content provider for GRSeo software (http://www.seoptimizer.com). She also teaches 2, 3, and 5day handson search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe with Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com).

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 09, 2003

by Robin Nobles

Is the Price Right? Pricing Strategies for Interne

Is the Price Right? Pricing Strategies for Internet Businesses

by: Simit Patel

You may have the greatest product/service in the world, but you won’t get anywhere if it isn’t priced properly. In this article, weกll explore various pricing strategies so that you can find the one that is best for your business.

Generally speaking, there are three primary pricing strategies Internet firms employ: POPS, CAPS, and VAPS. Each strategy is explored below. If properly implemented, these strategies can help firms under price their competitors while being just as profitable.

Physical Object Pricing Strategy (POPS). This pricing model works well if you are selling a physical good that needs to be shipped to your customer. For instance, merchants like Amazon.com and WalMart fall into this category.

In order for such firms to determine their prices, they need to start with a base level of what it costs them to produce and deliver one additional unit (this number is known as the marginal cost). For instance, WalMart sells microwave ovens. What does it cost them to produce an additional microwave oven? What does it cost them to buy it from their supplier, put it in their store, get the customer to come to the store, and execute a transaction with their customer?

To determine their final price, firms should add a percentage increase to the marginal cost. This percentage increase is known as the operating profit margin. To find out what percent they should use, they should look for similar firms, and try to price accordingly. Amazon, for instance, has an operating profit margin of 6% at the time of this writing. Competing retailers should look to have a similar operating profit margin preferably lower if they are able to.

KEY IDEA: Firms that can develop the most efficient business processes will be able to minimize their cost, which in turn will allow them to keep prices low while still retaining attractive margins. This will allow them to offer lower prices but still enjoy the same level of profitability.

Cost of Acquisition Pricing Strategy (CAPS). POPS works very well if your primary cost is the cost of the actual good that you are delivering. But firms that are selling a product/service where the primary cost is marketingbased meaning the costs associated with getting visitors to your site may benefit from utilizing CAPS to determine their final price. CAPS involves firms answering two key questions:

1. What will cost it to get people to my site?

2. What percentage of my site visitors will make a purchase?

The answer to question #1, divided by the answer to question #2, tells the firm its cost per acquisition. The operating profit margin can then be added to determine the final price.

Example: A retailer may find that on average it costs $0.10 to get a visitor to the site, and the percentage of site visitors that make a purchase is 1%. From there, we simply do the math: .10 / .01 = $10. With a cost per acquisition of $10 and assuming competitors have an operating profit margin of 20%, the final price should be set to $12.

KEY IDEA: The key here is obviously to minimize the cost per acquisition. To do this, firms need to place a high priority on increasing the percentage of visitors that make a purchase. The siteกs conversion rate is the most important metric.

Value Added Pricing Strategy (VAPS). For businesses in which the marginal cost is zero for instance, the sale of digital products like ebooks and online courses or businesses in which there is not much of an established precedent, VAPS can be an excellent pricing strategy. This is simply a more ad hoc strategy in which the good is priced based on how much value it offers to the consumer. There is no real formula to this strategy, which can be comforting or disturbing, depending on your preference.

KEY IDEA: VAPS works best when you can create a business model that allows you to charge a different price to different clients. For instance, if you are selling consultation services or customized products, you can offer your client a quote based on how much the product is worth to them.

About The Author

This Article was written by Simit Patel, the Managing Director of The ActoNetwork, a company devoted to helping small businesses succeed on the web. The ActoNetwork publishes a free 102 page Internet Marketing eBook and has a free Internet Marketing Workshop for online entrepreneurs available at http://www.actonetwork.com.

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 1

by Simit Patel

กInternet Marketing Simplified! 2 Pillars For Achi

กInternet Marketing Simplified! 2 Pillars For Achieving Massive Resultsก

by: Jeff Smith

Are you confused by the flood of information on how to improve your internet marketing results?

Mastering the search engines, payperclick advertising, affiliate marketing, website design, writing articles, and on it goes.

Doesn’t it seem more and more complicated to focus in on what really works and what doesn’t?

After working to build many businesses from the ground up over the last 10 years, itกs more clear than ever that there are 2 main principles that will largely dictate your success in any business. All of the other techniques build on these first two principles.

Think of these two main principles as the cement pillars that hold up a bridge without them, no matter how well you construct the bridge, it will still fall down.

Focus your energies, time and resources around meeting these two key principles you will immediately see a big difference in your results.

PRINCIPLE #1

You must have a well positioned product, fulfilling a hot desire within a clearly identifiable and accessible target market.

Letกs break this down.

Making a profit in business is really quite a simple concept, you have to earn more revenue than your cost. Revenue minus cost is your profit.

So where does that cost come from?

The two big sources of costs are: costs associated with creating or finding your product to sell and cost of reaching your market to sell your product

It only makes sense then that identifying a hot desire within a market you know how to reach will mean much lower costs for your businss. Ultimately, this means more profit for you.

Have you ever run against the wind? Tried to swim upstream in a river? Walk one way in a crowd when everyone else was walking the other way?

Itกs a very tough lesson to learn.

Iกve been brought it to consult with companies that have burned through millions of dollars before learning this lesson.

You cannot FORCE a lowdemand product on a market no matter how much money you spend on marketing.

You cannot hope to reach enough buyers in the entire marketplace even with a very highdemand product in one segment.

In fact, Iกve seen situations where unknown entrepreneurs enter a market, quickly identify a hot desire, address it with a less than perfect product and in a very short time have created wealth 100X higher than anyone else in that market.

An old mentor of mine used to tell me all the time, กfocus on the low lying fruit thereกs far more than enough to go aroundก

PRINCIPLE #2

You must reach your market with a clear, empathetic message that instantly catches your readers attention, interest, desire and moves them to see your product as THE answer to their deepest desires.

If you were reading closely, youกll recognize Principle #2 as the same principles that underly great copywriting.

How do you become a great copywriter and master Principle #2?

1. Research, research and research. I make sure I have a pulse on my target marketกs desires, needs, emotional triggers. Focus in on WHY they want a solution to a particular problem. Research takes many forms…

speak with them

survey them

read what they read

talk to others who do business with your market

test using articles and special reports to guage the response

do what they do

By doing this you should have content for 2030 (at least) different benefits for your product.

Then….

2. Polish your benefit statements. This is where you can use books of action verbs, swap files (samples of great ads, letters and webpages), the services of a copywriter. This is the technical aspect of copywriting which can be learned by reading other great material.

Far too many people go right to #2, as a result their benefit statements seem bland, miss the mark or seem the same as everyone else.

Next time you get distracted by the latest and greatest tip, technique or strategy know that focusing on these 2 fundamental principles: Indemand product ideas and effective copywriting, will make the most difference to your pocketbook in both today and in the future.

About The Author

Discover how to create your own bestselling eBooks, Special reports or books to sell online …AND keep 100% of the profits. Limited time complimentary access to 7Part Minicourse will get you started quickly and easily. Visit: http://www.highertrustmarketing.com/

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 17, 2004

by Jeff Smith

Intranet The Benefits Realisation Plan

Intranet The Benefits Realisation Plan

by: David Viney

The Millennium Experience

A successful project is one that delivers onspec (‘quality’), time and cost. Right? Well consider these two projects…

The Millennium Dome was delivered on time for the 31 December 1999 and safely within a budget (fixed in 1998) of £289 million. The Project was also delivered to quality, albeit against a Specification that had been adjusted several times during the project to simplify the scope of work required (and ensure that time and cost deadlines could still be met). However, visitor number targets were greatly overestimated, the business a total flop and the whole endeavour deemed a failure by many.

The Millennium Wheel (or ขLondon Eyeข) opened one month late on a dreary February morning in 2000 (following problems raising the wheel and then safety & quality issues with one of the 32 pods). It was also over budget, with building costs of £70m (against the £25m British Airways had originally planned to spend). However, an average of about 10,000 people a day now ride the wheel, making the London Eye the UK’s biggest tourist attraction (and generating £15 million of trading profit a year) a healthy return on investment for the shareholders.

A New Mindset for Change Projects

Traditional methodologies for change / project management (of which PRINCE is an example) tend to focus primarily on time, cost and quality. Benefits are all too often only implicitly recognised and the accountability for realising them is assumed to lie outside the project.

However, the pace of change within our society, industry and business grows ever faster. Somewhat paradoxically, there is an evergreater need to ensure that changes ‘stick’ (delivering sustainable benefit and competitive advantage to the organisations making them). Most businesses have already achieved greater efficiency and effectiveness within single functions or processes; The challenge of the 21st Century is increasingly how to realise endtoend change across a boundaryless business.

Rarely (these days) will a single customer sponsor a single project, delivering a single system into a single department.

The leadership challenge is thus how to engage multiple sponsors and change agents across the whole business to deliver excellence in change and the ruthless pursuit of business benefits and true return on investment (ROI).

The Case for a focus on Benefits Management

Recent research from the Cranfield University School of Management finds that 78% of ITenabled change projects (in large UK companies) fail to deliver business benefits. 47% believed assessment of business benefits in business cases was poor or worse and 79% said that all the available benefits were not captured during that assessment. 45% believed benefits were overstated in their organisation to get investment approval.

Arguably, this will only change when project managers and their people become accountable for – and obsessed by delivering business benefits and value through Change, rather than simply projects to time and cost.

Benefits Defined

Soft Benefits (sometime called ขnonquantifiableข benefits) are those intangible improvements to be obtained from a change, including improved employee satisfaction, better customer satisfaction, increased knowledge sharing and reuse of intellectual capital. Whilst it is often accepted that such benefits do lead to financial gain, it is deemed impossible to demonstrate a proven causal link that would enable one to place a financial value on the benefit.

Direct Benefits are those which lead to a measurable impact on the bottomline of the organisation, including increased revenue, reduced costs of sale / improved margin, operating cost reduction (e.g. through reduced headcount) and improvements in working capital (e.g. through a faster debt collection cycle). An individual or team can be held directly to account for achieving them and providing evidence of their realisation.

Indirect Benefits are those which facilitate or enable bottomline impact, without leading directly to realisable items for which can individual or team had be held accountable. Such benefits include cost avoidance (i.e. costs not currently budgeted that might otherwise become payable) and capacity creation (where efficiency savings free up people to undertake highvalue adding tasks but do lot lead directly to the release of FTEs or other costs).

The Benefit Realisation Toolset

In the Benefits Realisation & Tracking chapter of my (free to access) Intranet Portal Guide, I outline a number of tools that can be used to better manage benefits on the typical portal project.

1) An enhanced Business Case

Many business cases simply do not sufficiently reference Benefits. Make sure that you dedicate at least as many columninches to benefits as you do to costs. Split benefits between soft, direct and indirect. Ensure that direct benefits are included in the ROI, NPV or IRR calculations and that the people who will be accountable for their realisation have signed them off.

2) The Benefits Blueprint

Create a document that shows how your benefits link to actual business process changes, projects or deliverables and changes to systems. Suitable tools can be found in Cranfield’s Benefits Network approach, the Six Sigma toolset and as addons to PRINCE. Position the overall result in the context of your vision and strategy. This will help you capture all the benefits and to sharpen what you need to do to achieve them.

3) The Benefits Realisation Plan

The key control document, a good Realisation Plan includes, for each benefit, (a) a description of what the benefit is, (b) how much it is worth, (c) who will be accountable for it’s realisation, (d) when it will be realised and (e) where it will impact. If there are risks or dependencies to the benefit realisation, these should be noted and managed in the plan. Finally, it should be clear in the plan how the benefit realisation will be objectively measured and evidenced (e.g. through the monitoring of key performance indicators).

4) Benefit Evidence

In my guide, I suggest the use of Benefit Signoff sheets, whereby the benefit owner identified at the Business Case and Planning stage is expect to signoff once she is satisfied that the benefit has been realised. Evidence supporting the signoff should also be attached to the signoff sheet. This is a good discipline, to keep everyone honest.

Conclusions

The 21st Century Project Manager needs to be obsessed with delivering business benefits and value through change, rather than simply projects to time, cost and quality. There are tools that can help, including in particular the Benefits Realisation Plan. Good luck and don’t forget to check back with my guide for further help and templates you can download.

About The Author

David Viney ([email protected]) is the author of the Intranet Portal Guide; 31 pages of advice, tools and downloads covering the period before, during and after an Intranet Portal implementation.

Read the guide at http://www.viney.com/DFV/intranet_portal_guide or the Intranet Watch Blog at http://www.viney.com/intranet_watch.

This article was posted on January 27

by David Viney

Top 10 Reasons to Become an Affiliate Marketer

Top 10 Reasons to Become an Affiliate Marketer

by: Rosalind Gardner

Back when my online business consisted ONLY of affiliate sites, I had no need for a personal assistant.

The sites were all in place, and my affiliated merchants handled everything related to orders.

Last week, one of my clients mentioned that he was moving AWAY from selling his own products to promoting more affiliate programs just for the simplicity and freedom.

Yup, he definitely กgetsก it.

Although there are many, many benefits to promoting affiliate programs with your own homebased Internet business, here are my top 10 reasons to become an affiliate marketer.

No Product Development Costs The cost to develop and produce a new product is expensive! But you needn’t worry about that as an affiliate.

Low Cost Setup Got a desk, Internetconnected computer and wordprocessing software? You’re in business!

No Fees or Geographic Limits on Distribution Affiliate programs are usually free to join, and market reach is limited only by the affiliateกs ability to promote his or her web site.

Choose From Thousands of Products and Services What isn’t sold online? With affiliate networks like Commission Junction, Be Free and Linkshare, itกs easy to find products related to your current or planned web site.

No Merchant Account Required Forget the problems associated with collecting and storing names, addresses, credit card numbers, etc. The merchant handles all payment processing, so you never have to lose sleep over chargebacks, fraud or losing your merchant account.

No Inventory to Carry Even if you live in a small onebedroom apartment, you can sell large items without storage concerns.

No Shipping Costs Don’t worry about buying packing supplies or postal rates. The cost and hassle to prepare and ship products to customers worldwide belongs to the merchant.

No Customer Concerns Do you hate the prospect of dealing with nasty people? Don’t worry about it! The merchant handles the snivelers.

Make Money While You Sleep What other business allows you as a sole proprietor to keep your doors open and keep making money even when you take breaks or after you go home for the night?

High Income Potential With your own affiliate business your income potential is limited only by your desire, effort and imagination not your boss.

Relatively low outlay of resources with huge potential returns truly makes affiliate marketing on the Internet an outstanding business opportunity.

About The Author

Article by Rosalind Gardner, author of the bestselling กSuper Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other Peopleกs Stuff Onlineก. To learn how you too can suceed in Internet and affiliate marketing, go to: http://NetProfitsToday.com.

This article was posted on March 30

by Rosalind Gardner

How to Start a Business on a Shoestring

How to Start a Business on a Shoestring

by: Julie Martin

You don’t need to invest thousands of dollars to have a successful Internet business. In fact, chances are that you can do it for less than $100 by following our simple plan. Our ebusiness will be selling an informational ebook that we will be purchasing sales rights for.

Step #1 – Cheap Domains

Don’t get fooled by domain registrars that overcharge for a domain. You can register your new domain for as little as $6.95 a month if you comparisonshop. If your current registrar is charging an arm a leg for a renewal, consider transferring to a new registrar. Most of them offer a free year’s extension on your domain if you transfer over to their service.

Domain Registration fee $6.95

Cost so far $6.95

Step #2 – A Cheap but Reliable Webhost

This is where things can get tricky. If you need a lot of features for your website, then a bargain basement provider will probably not be able to help you. However, the webhosting business is highly competitive and you can find a decent ecommerce hosting package for as little as 15.95 a month. You’ll need to comparison shop to make sure you find the best deal. Make sure you find a host that doesn’t charge a setup fee, to defray your start up expenses.

Webhost cost $15.95 first month

Cost so far $22.95

Step #3 – Getting Your Content or Products Ready

If you plan to sell an ebook, you will need to make sure that you have the rights to distribute and sell this information. Of course, if you wrote the ebook, you won’t have to worry about this. If you plan to sell physical products, you can set up a relationship with a drop shipper so that you have no initial out of pocket expenses.

We’ll be purchasing distribution and sales rights for our ebook for $40.00

Distribution Rights $40.00

Cost so far $62.95

Step #4 – Designing Your Website

If you have a flair for this, it won’t cost you anything but your time. However, if you are completely clueless, you can purchase a website template, where the design is completely done for you and you just input your content. If you look hard enough, you can even find these templates for free.

Since we want an original look for our website, we are going to go with a cheap, but professional business template.

Template Cost $10.00

Cost so Far $72.95

Step #5 – Advertising Your New Site

Once you have your site up and running, you are ready to start doing some actual business. You would be surprised at how easy it can be to find cheap or no cost advertising. First, you will need to list your site with the most popular search engines. The good ones don’t charge, but it may take a few weeks for your link to be active. While you are waiting, start joining ezines and message boards that are compatible with your product. Since our ebook contains information on how to raise and grow indoor gardens, we’ll want to find all of the gardening ezines we can and join them. We’ll start by posting actual questions on gardening to message boards and adding a signature file to our posts. This is an honest way to get a lot of free exposure for your site.

Next, we’ll be placing our ads in ezines, which will normally charge anywhere from $1.00 to $25.00 per ad. Since we are on a shoestring, we will start by placing 5 ads for $1.00 a piece in 5 ezines.

Advertising costs $5.00

Final Cost $77.95

See, you actually have money left over! It is even possible to do this for even less money, but this example should give you an idea of how easy it is to start your own business for a very small initial investment.

© Julie Martin

About The Author

Julie Martin is the publisher of ขThe Iscaweb eZineข a weekly eZine dedicated to increasing your online profits, no matter what you are selling. Julie also uses the ขPlugInProfitข system to GREAT effect!

To subscribe to the eZine, or to learn more about the PlugInProfit system visit: http://www.iscaweb.com

This article was posted on August 16

by Julie Martin

Testing PayPerClick To Build A Subscriber List F

Testing PayPerClick To Build A Subscriber List Fast

by: Tom Beal

Every successful salesperson knows the value of owning a list of targeted potential customers. Itกs a strategy I used to break sales records and also taught in my sale training sessions.

Coming from ‘realก world selling into virtual world selling presented some unique challenges.

How does one build a list online?

Research revealed many successful marketers recommend using PayPerClick (PPC) search engines to quickly and effectively build your list.

Selecting targeted keyword to reach your ideal potential customer give PPC a distinct advantage over other list building methods.

I decided to put PPC list building method to the test. I choose to set up a advertising campaign at Google Adwords and the lesser known http://www.mpstrategiesfirm.com. The two companies can have your campaign up an running in a short time.

They display the ads differently. Google Adwords displays the ad on search engine results and mpstrategiesfirm.com uses contextual advertising showing the ads on keyword topic based pages within their network.

Every test needs an objective outcome to gauge the results. The objective of this test? Visitors sign up to receive a free health report from a new affiliate program I choose to promote.

The Test Results

Google Adwords

number of clicks 700

cost per click .23

total cost 161.00

MPStrategiesfirm.com

number of clicks 800

cost per click .20

total cost 160.00

Even though they used different methods to display the ad, both produced excellent traffic results for the investment.

Sending traffic was only one factor of the objective. Remember the ultimate goal is to gain subscribers to build the list.

Here is where PPC marketing provided a valuable lesson in online marketing.

1,500 people clicked for the free report, but only 89 put in their name and email address. I receive 53 subscribers from mpstrategiesfirm.com and 36 from Google. Surprisingly

About The Author

Tom Beal assist his clients at positioning themselves as the experts in their field and creating the law of attraction in their business. He is also the President and Founder of numerous successful companies and websites including the recently formed membership site for top performers at: http://www.nobossclub.com Contact Tom at [email protected] or 5857485818

This article was posted on September 08

by Tom Beal

Working With Your People By Long Distance

Working With Your People By Long Distance

by: Ken Leonard Jr

As you build a team for your network marketing opportunity, you will learn how big this world really is. Soon you will find out that working with people from far off lands can get expensive. At normal international long distance rates, a one hour telephone call can cost as much as $200 US. Today you will learn how to save up to 93% of your normal long distance phone bill.

You can get better rates from your long distance provider when you enroll in an international calling plan of some sort. But the potential savings are nothing compared to the most efficient way to communicate personally over long distances.

Please let me introduce you to the future of long distance communications, กVoIPก. Voice over IP allows your voice to reach other countries using the internet. The result is clear, reliable connections with people in other countries around the world at a rate that is literally pennies per minute. Using VoIP can help you to keep costs down when you are just starting out. You will be able to work with your people by long distance often, without going broke.

To illustrate the real savings you can expect by using VoIP services for your international business phone calls, here are the details of a call I recently made to Germany from the US:

From: West Palm Beach, Florida USA

To : near Berlin, Germany

Call Length: 90 minutes

Quality : Excellent

Cost : $7US

Using the international calling plan on my long distance service, this prime time (1pm local time) would have cost $120US. Using a VoIP service, the same call actually cost only $7US, a savings of 93%! This savings would be reflected on all long distance charges for every month of the year. This is a substantial savings for someone just starting out.

There are many options for VoIP service and you will see more as time goes on. The popular instant messaging service ICQ has an option built in to make VoIP phone calls using a third party company, Net2Phone. Without using ICQ, the website Skype.com allows you to use VoIP at very low rates. As a Skype.com user, you can talk to other skype users at no charge using a PC to PC connection. This is a great tool for keeping in contact with your people, that will fit into a tight budget.

For VoIP to work with high quality and reliability, it is best used with a broadband internet connection. With a DSL or cable/satellite connection you can expect phone company quality at only 7% of the cost.

Frequent phone contact with your people will help keep turnover down and production up. Work with your people and teach them how to work with their people. It sure helps when you don’t have to worry about how much the next international call will cost you, right? You bet.

About The Author

Get Free Personal Coaching and Promotion Resources like this article when you join Ken Leonard Jr. and Willie Crawford. Promote an established BBB company helping people to become completely debt free in under 10 years and to live better lives. Find out why this could be the last opportunity you will ever join right now…

http://EliteTeamFreedom.com

This article was posted on January 13

by Ken Leonard Jr

Five Ways to Profit from Using Video Online

Five Ways to Profit from Using Video Online

by: Liz Micik

The newest media wave to hit the online shore is video. Individual emails abound with links to ‘the funniest video ever,ก or blurry clips of new babies or birthday parties.

Businesses, on the other hand, have largely been left standing on the shore, scratching their heads and wondering if thereกs any real value to be earned from diving into making their own live video broadcasts, video emails or video on demand infommercials. Here are just five of the many ways video adds to the bottom line of any company.

1. People remember more of your message

While people generally remember 10% of what they read and 20% of what they hear. But, theyกll remember as much as 50% of what they see and hear together. Before anyone can act on your message, they need to process and remember it.

2. Increase responses by up to 30%

A call to action is much easier to follow if it is actively delivered. Sound and motion are powerful action drivers, especially when they are delivered by your sincere enthusiasm and passion for your topic. Companies who have made the switch to video email and on demand broadcasts have reported response rates jump as much as 30% following a broadcast.

3. Build your credibility

People do business with people they know, like and trust. When you cut through the technological barriers of the Internet and put yourself online, you put กyour self on the lineก as far as viewers are concerned. The time it would normally take you to build a relationship with a potential customer can be dramatically shortened as a result.

4. The cost savings are obvious

Anytime you can avoid the high costs of sending someone on the road to meet with clients or attend a meeting, the bottom line savings are immediate and obvious. In addition to any costs associated with attending a meeting, you need to factor in travel costs covering airfares to taxis and tolls, hotel costs, meal expenses, and even your internal costs to process the expense paperwork.

5. Soft cost savings multiply returns

Spare yourself the productivity drain and the physical and mental tolls travel takes on your companyกs road warriors and you could enjoy กsoftก cost savings that dwarf your hard dollar travel costs. Want an example? Look at your own calendar for the past month and count up just the hours you spent traveling to and from meetings. Multiply that by your hourly wage, and then by the number of employees in your firm.

If reasons like these don’t help you convince the reluctant decision makers in your company to add video to your communications mix, please be patient with them. Historically they are in good company. There were many who claimed the smeary images on hard to handle rolls of paper called กfaxesก could never function in place of an original document. And who, they asked, would ever want to spend more time typing an email message when they could so easily pick up a telephone and place a call?

Copyright 2005 Liz Micik

About The Author

Liz Micik turns your video learning curve into a fast and easy profit curve in her newest book, ขCue the Director: 10 Simple Steps to Online Video Success.ข Visit www.powerpresenters.com to have free weekly video tips emailed to you.

This article was posted on March 11

by Liz Micik

Wise Man Marketing

Wise Man Marketing

by: Martin Day

It’s a sunny morning and you’re sitting in your office. With a cup of hot coffee by your side and memories of your last holiday still fresh in your mind, even if you say so yourself, today at least, life is sweet.

You take a sip of new blend coffee and then feel a rush of cool air and a movement catches the corner of your eye. As if from nowhere there is now an impeccably dressed stranger sitting in the chair opposite. Sure you’re surprised; you didn’t hear anyone knock and just as you are about to say something he begins in a calm and measured voice.

‘Hereกs the deal’

‘I am going to advertise your product on a billboard at the busiest junctions in every city of the world.ก

‘I will tell you how many people see this advertisement and I will tell you their age, nationality and gender.ก

‘I will tell you what they think of your product and in many cases I will give you their contact details. While they are reading the billboard I will make it possible for them to view your website and, if they feel the urge, make a purchase.ก

‘I will have all this ready in two days and it will cost you less than a small advertisement in your typical trade journal.’

He pauses. ‘Interested?’

Now you might think that such an offer was too good to be true, you might think that you are going to wake up soon or maybe that it really is time to get a lock on that office door.

But letกs just take a minute. If you are still reading this I am that man who has come from nowhere and offered you a deal.

The advertising site is on the Internet and the billboard Iกm offering is the humble online survey.

Stop for one moment and start to associate an online survey not with กmarket researchก but with กmarketingก. Not any type of marketing but กMarketingก with a capital กMก and in flashing neon lights. Marketing that is quick, direct, effective and low cost.

Publish an online survey and advertise it on a website, or via email, and like a billboard by the side of a major road junction, your message will appear in front of people. But unlike a billboard where the number of people that see an advert has to be estimated (based on an arbitrary percentage of total volume of traffic), the online survey records the number of times a survey is started.

Surveys can ask demographic questions such as gender, age and nationality and in doing so you are obtaining metrics about the effectiveness of your promotion and are interacting with the respondent on a oneonone level.

Unlike billboards where the message is often subliminal, or maybe just trying to achieve brand awareness, with online surveys you have the opportunity to connect with the public to find out what they really think about your product, how it relates to them, how it is perceived.

Using a website like http://www.surveygalaxy.com it takes only minutes and hours to create a survey and using the power of the Internet an online survey can reach hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis.

Throw in a prize as an incentive for people to complete the survey, maybe some Pay Per Click advertising to capture an even wider, or more focused audience and you are still talking low cost effective marketing.

กSo tell me. Do we have a deal?ก

About The Author

Martin Day is a Director of Survey Galaxy Ltd a web site that allows anyone to create, design and publish online surveys. For more information please visit http://www.surveygalaxy.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 09

by Martin Day

Multiple Sources of Income

Multiple Sources of Income

by: Liron Rose

It is a common say today that there is now job security whatsoever that is true fact worldwide US, Europe (see what is happening in Germany), Australia or any other developed country.

What basically happens is that globalization causes our jobs to be relocated to countries which have cheaper labor. For example, many programmer jobs are being moved to India, Russia, Estonia etc… where labor might cost only ten percent of its cost in a developed country.

So its time to forget the golden watch and the dream of easy sweet retirement at 65. And as far as that is concerned things are getting even more complicated since we tend to live longer years but have less children who is going to pay for our pensions?

Governments are already in the process of changing the laws and we could reasonably expect the official retirement age to be raised to 67 and perhaps 70 in the next few years. Also the social benefits system of some countries is in dire straits with too many claims by the impoverished and a too small contribution of the middle working class.

Robert Kayosaki in his book Rich Dad Poor Dad has pointed out that we live in an age where we must ensure that we have Multiple Sources of Income. He correctly identified four ways of earning money:

Employment (i.e. a normal tradional กjobก)

Self Employment (working for yourself)

Business (having a กsystemก that makes money)

Investment (earning money of accumulated capital)

Kayosaki argues that an individual seeking financial freedom should try to position himself in both nos. (3) and (4), which is exactly what the rich do they either own a business (its management can be outsourced at a cost to a professional manager) , or invest surplus capital in other peopleกs business and both these do not require an individual to work (i.e. trade time for money).

The point is basically to be free from being wholly dependent of an employer.

A wise man does not work for money, but lets money work for him.

About The Author

Liron Rose (MBA) has been in the Internet Marketing scene since 1999. He served as the Business Development Manager of Suntrader Interactive, a full service interactive agency based in Canada, and as the Online Marketing Manager for Zootec Innovations, a startup company in the gaming arena. http://www.rainbowmaster.com

This article was posted on February 26, 2004

by Liron Rose

7 Ways To Profit From Other Peoples Products

7 Ways To Profit From Other Peoples Products

by: Stuart Reid

If you don’t possess the time, money or inclination to create your own hot selling product there is plenty of scope for profit by using other peopleกs.

In this quick article Iกll detail the best ways to take a thirdparty product and use it to fill your own bank account.

1. Resell Rights

Resell Rights let you sell a product and keep all of the money. Itกs an ideal way to start. Usually youกll need your own payment system to accept the money and your own webspace to sell it but thatกs very cheap to do these days.

Resell Rights can be free, or cost anywhere up to $1000 and beyond. The free Resell Rights are usually not worth bothering with. You want to sell items that have LIMITED distribution quite simply because youกll have less competition!

2. Master Resell Rights

Unfortunately these are bad news. With the Master Rights you can pass on Resell Rights yourself. This means one thing thousands of competitors in a very short time.

3. Reprint Rights

These are sometimes confused with Resell Rights but they are usually used to describe hardcopy material. For example, printed books, tape sets, CDกs or Videos.

You usually have to handle the duplication yourself but sometimes the company will provide copies, and even ship them for you, for a small fee.

These products usually cost more to acquire the rights but can be very profitable. As the old saying goes, itกs easier to sell 10 copies at $1000 each than it is to sell 1000 at $10.

4. Affiliate Programs

When you enter into an affiliate agreement you are sharing the cost and effort of promoting a product. You will take a percentage of the sales in exchange, so you want at least 50% for it to be worth your while.

With an affiliate program you can usually join at no cost, but will make less money and have more competitors!

One other advantage, the company provides the site and the collection of payments. All you do is promote and cash your check.

5. Drop Shipping

This makes the traditional form of selling easier for the information age. Profit = Cost Selling Price , and with a Drop Shipper you merely take the money from your customer and tell the shipper to send them the product. You then pay the shipper their price. For example, you can buy a Widescreen TV for $1299 but you are selling it for $1499. You make $200 per sale but never get involved in the distribution at all.

This method is used extensively on eBay and in online shopping malls.

6. Joint Ventures

These blur the line between the other processors. Basically, you connect those who make products with those who sell and promote them. You can acquire resell rights, or create your own product, or be part of an affiliate network. You then contact possible sellers, for example Ezine Owners, who may be interested in selling the product for a cut of the profit.

This way you can connect BIG sellers with BIG products and slice of some of the profit for yourself!

7. Branding Rights

These can be combined with Resell Rights but sometimes are offered as an extra. With Branding Rights you can make some or all of the links within a product possible moneyspinners for yourself.

For example, you can take a book on copywriting and give it away, or sell it. But within this book are other links to further services, all that could make extra backend sales for you.

As you can see there are plenty of ways to make money WITHOUT the expense of time of building your own product!

by Stuart Reid

http://www.netpreneurnow.com

About The Author

Stuart Reid is an ezine publisher and webmaster. Try the new กAny Branderก Software and brand ANY product, old or new, with your own link even if you didn’t create it!

http://v3k.net/anybrander

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 11, 2004

by Stuart Reid