Getting Started to Get Started

Getting Started to Get Started

by: Alan Huff

So you want to make it BIG online? You want to start an internet business. You register your domain, sign up with a hosting company, design or pay to have a website designed, go live online, and bingo, the money will soon start rolling in, right? Wrong (unless you have a ‘lucky’ horseshoe  ).
That’s basically how I started my own internet business but, I soon realized that much more is involved if you want to stand a chance at succeeding online. There are no ‘secret’ formulas to success. If you know of one which really works, please send it to me .
You must know how to do business online., and in order to that, you need to learn how. I know you don’t have time to learn, however, if really want to do it right, you’ll take the time.
Do yourself a favor. Before you start an internet business, read articles, ezines, ebooks, etc., written by those who have already made it. Write a marketing plan (sound familiar?), plan your website design and layout and content.
Bottom line; before you start an internet business, learn how to. You don’t have to do it the ‘hard’ way.
Focus on getting started to get started.
Alan

http://momony.com

About The Author

Alan Huff is the founder and president of MoMony.com.

You can contact Alan at [email protected]

This article was posted on July 03, 2004

by Alan Huff

SEO Success: Step One is Good Web Design

SEO Success: Step One is Good Web Design

by: Chesa Keane

Creating a welldesigned website is the first step in your internet marketing strategy. Once the website has been created and optimized, there are further techniques to employ that will drive traffic to your website for successful, longterm results. You wouldn’t consider opening a retail store in a major shopping mall without signage and you shouldn’t consider having a nice looking website designed without expanding your web presence in order to be found on the internet. But unless the website is designed correctly to begin with, followon SEO efforts will have limited results at best. The following strategy overview is designed to bring about productive SEO results:

Create an attractive website that is complementary to your company image and provides your targeted audience with information about you, your company and your products and/or services.

Design a website that has a calltoaction in the form of a purchase or providing you a contact, subscription or other commitment from your visitor.

Create a successful marketing arm for your overall business promotion and marketing campaign to promote your business, products and/or services with the many followon strategies that drive traffic to your website.

Become competitive in your industry and marketplace by meeting or exceeding the industry marketing standards and attracting a qualified audience for your products and/or services based on a strong reputation.

Generate and maintain or grow internet traffic to your website resulting in a conversion of traffic into sales of your products and/or services by evolving as your market demands.

This search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is composed of several processes in three stages: 1) Good web design, 2) Attracting attention from search engines and directories, and 3) Creating longterm popularity on the internet. However, it all starts with good web design. Website design is the foundation and beginning of a successful internet marketing strategy. It is true that there are websites on the internet that are unattractive but somehow seem to work. If there are aspects of these websites that work, imagine how well they could do if they simply followed basic design implementation tactics that resulted in a good image as well as simply pushed information out to the viewer.

These basics are essential for Tier 1 success:

Good web design will complement and enhance the company image and offline marketing campaign products creating a corporate branding if done well.

Easy, logical navigation that leads the viewer deeper and deeper into the web of information provided by the website will keep the visitor on your site longer and give you more time to sell your products or services.

Attractive but quickloading graphics that are pleasing to the eye and meaningful to the website will guide the viewer along the route you decide is important for explaining what you offer.

Keyword usage that is search enginefriendly depends on how the keywords are utilized, the placement of the keywords, the frequency of the most important keywords and their relevance to the website.

Website coding that is lean, clean and without errors will keep the search engines happy and your viewer seeing exactly what you intended to offer.

Relevance of content to the theme of the site is essential. Be concise, to the point and focus on your goals. If you have multiple themes and offerings, consider multiple websites to address the different markets, then tie each website back to the others by linking.

Changing content that changes frequently and stays fresh keeps your viewer returning and prevents the search engines from treating your website as if it were stale news. A stale site will be ranked lower by the search engines.

Content is king itกs all about content, content, content. But how that content is presented is what makes the difference.

(c)2005 TAO Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved.

About The Author

Chesa Keane of TAO Consultants has been involved with the internet for 10 years through internet consulting, web development and search engine optimization. Go to www.computergoddess.com for a free Search Engine Optimization Checklist.

This article was posted on September 14

by Chesa Keane

One Home Business with Everything You Need To Succ

One Home Business with Everything You Need To Succeed With You’re Online Business

by: Michel Richer

Are you getting more and more frustrated with the Internet marketing scene…If you’re like most Internet users…your email inbox is bombarded with getrichquick schemes., but nothingกs working …and now you’re wondering if anyone out there will ever really help you, or if they’re all just trying to take money from you!

Letกs face it, we would all like more hours in the day… more time to enjoy with the kids, more time on the golf course… even more time with the spouse!

But at the moment your Internet business seems to be taking up more and more time, without the fabulous rewards you keep hearing about, right?

I know you’re trying to hang in there because people are obviously making fortunes… but you’re getting near the end of your patience, right?

Let me ask you a question…

Which situation makes more sense…

Buying more and more ebooks youกll never read, helping to line the pockets of various Internet marketers without making any money for yourself…

or…

Concentrating on one website where everything is made available to help you go from nowhere to success, and where the owner of the site has a real interest in seeing you do well?

So now you know why you spend more and more money without actually finding out how to MAKE MONEY!

Letกs put an end to this madness right now!

You only need ! One website. One Home Business with everything you need to succeed on the internet. Simple, eh?

Here is a partial list of what you will get…

You can sign up FREE, get a FREE Website, and test drive the program for as long as you want at absolutely no cost or obligation EVER.

A lucrative compensation plan. Tens of thousands of SFIกs members are already receiving monthly commission checks, totaling over $3 MILLION dollars since July 1st.

SFI understands the Internet. SFI itself is totally databasedriven which means that almost everything happens in realtime. From SFIกs powerful central Admin site, thereกs online, realtime genealogies, plus numerous other tools to manage your business such as instant group messages via email.

Perfect for the กlittle guy.ก There are no group volume requirements. In fact, the toughest thing you ever have to do with SFI is give away free stuff.

Refer just three new members to SFI and you can automatically start earning a portion of EVERY sale…EVERY month…made by SFIกs OVER 3.5 MILLION affiliates and members worldwide.

FREE 24Hour Professional Consultation. Each SFI affiliate is assigned three leaders to provide free consultation and support.

The Internet is exploding worldwide. USA TODAY recently reported that over 170,000 new people are getting online every 24 hours. Many smart business people are becoming millionaires on the Internet. And this is just the beginning! With SFI you can grab your share.

Thanks to the Internet and SFIกs smartlydesigned infrastructure, your business expenses are minimal. You can contact thousands on the Internet via email, search engines, directories, free ads, etc. All free! No door to door sales. No postage. No printing. No brochures. No tapes. No videos. No long distance calls. Instant communication worldwide.

Don’t know anything about marketing on the Internet? Included FREE when you sign up with SFI is an ongoing course in making money on the Internet. Itกs emailed to you FREE 12 times per month, plus thereกs also a Website of all the past lessons. EVEN IF YOU END UP DOING NOTHING WITH SFI, GET SIGNED UP AND GET THIS INVALUABLE COURSE!!!

FREE Coop. SFI has provided over 700,000 of its affiliates with free leads. Join SFI now (for FREE) and you may start receiving free leads (leads that can add to your monthly commission check) within hours.

That just a small SAMPLING of the benefits the SFI program delivers. The best way to learn all about SFI is to sign up as an affiliate. Thereกs no cost or obligation.

http://Ezinfocenter.com/297607.7/FREE

Copyright © Michel Richer

PERMISSIONS TO REPUBLISH: This article may be republished in its entirety free of charge, electronically or in print, provided it appears with the included copyright and author’s resource box with live website link.

http://hombyz.com

About The Author

Michel Richer is the Business Manager and Webmaster of http://Hombyz.com. He is dedicated to helping you succeed on the Internet. With over 10 years experience in internet business and a solid reputation in the industry. You can take a look at his website at: http://hombyz.com for Your Home Business Success !!!

This article was posted on April 29, 2004

by Michel Richer

Three Steps To Building A 50K Email List In Less T

Three Steps To Building A 50K Email List In Less Than 90 Days

by: Melvin Perry

One major asset that every internet or affiliate marketer needs is a big email list. There is a saying in the marketing world that states that ขthe money is in the listข. This is very true because the bigger the list, the greater the potential income. But a common concern amongst many people marketing online is:

ขHow can I grow a huge gurutype email list and how long will it take?ข

What many of us know in the internet marketing world is that it can take a very long time to build a list of 10,000 subscribers. And building a list to this size is a lot more complicated than sending hundreds of visitors to your website. I currently have a website that averages over 500 visitors a day. Out of those 500 visits, I will be lucky to get at least 15 subscribers per day to my list. With these statistics it will take me about 2 years to build an email list to 10,000 subscribers.

So what can you do in order to get 10,000 subscribers very quickly?

Well, the focus of this article is to show you how to easily build a 50,000 subscriber opt in list in less than 90 days. What I am about to show you really works, and if you follow these steps precisely, you will see tremendous results.

Step 1: Get a Virus To Build Your List

In order for you to build a 50k opt in email list in 90 days, you need to spread your marketing message over the internet like a wild fire. The method that is best capable of doing this is known as viral marketing. Viral marketing, in its simplest meaning, is getting others to market your product or service for you and spreading it to others so that they can do the same also. I also call this wild fire marketing because as soon as your marketing message starts, it will be very difficult to stop it and to keep it from spreading across the internet like a wild forest fire. This is the type of response you want when you begin to grow your email list. And the only way for you to generate this type of response is to partner up with hundreds of other marketers that will help you promote your email list in return for something. This is known as joint venturing and it is one of the better strategies for building a huge email list. Located below is a free service that will help you combine the viral marketing component with the joint venture marketing component in order to rapidly grow your email opt in list.

=> http://www.workingonyourown.com/traffictool3.html

Step 2: Start Promoting Your Viral List Building Machine

The next step is to promote your viral list builder so that you generate a minimum of 50 partners and fellow subscribers. There are multiple ways of promoting your viral list tool, but the easiest way to do this is through ezine solo ads. I know from experience that sending solo ads is a sure way to jumpstart any internet business. Just one solo ad mailing to a good newsletter or ezine can easily generate up to 85 partners and fellow subscribers that will help you promote your email list. Listed below is a series of ezines that provide excellent results every time I use them.

http://www.probiztips.com/advertising.html

http://directprofit.net

http://ultimatetrafficsystem.com/advertise.php

http://www.superpromo.com/optadorder.html

http://www.theaffiliatereview.com/advertising.php

http://www.christiantimesnesletter.com/advertising/

http://www.hitoverload.com/advertising.html

As soon as you receive your 50 partners that will help promote your email list for you, you will slowly begin to see your list virally grow on its own. But the growth that will be taking place is not rapid enough to generate the 50k subscribers in 90 days. You need to create tremendous momentum in the beginning in order to see rapid, exponential growth of your email list. This is where step 3 comes in.

Step 3: The KEY To It All

The last and final step for creating a large email list in a short amount of time is the most important step out of all the 3 steps. In this step, it is crucial that you motivate and train your partners/subscribers to do the very same things you are doing to build your email list. Out of all the people marketing on the internet, less than 3% of them know how to market properly and build a nice subscriber base. The key to getting around this problem is to show them the exact steps you took to promote your very own list. This is known as duplication. This concept is so powerful that it is the key for experiencing exponential growth with any online business. The reason why most online businesses fail is because they do not know how to train their partners to market effectively online. If you do this, you will gain the trust of your partners and you will grow your list exponentially.

Conclusion:

Building a 50,000 subscriber opt in email list can take a very long time if you do not know what you are doing. As revealed, you can actually generate a 50k email list in less than 90 days by following steps 1 3. Step 1 explains how you must build your list virally by allowing hundreds of other marketers to help you build your list. Step 2 shows you a very easy way to get your first 50 partners/subscribers to help you build your email list for you. This is done through solo email ads. The final and most critical step is to motivate and train your partners to actively do the very same steps you are doing to build your email list. If you follow these steps precisely, you will build a 50k subscriber email list in less than 3 months. So you should really start on this as soon as possible. Here is a free resource that will help you get started:

=> http://www.workingonyourown.com/traffictool3.html

About The Author

Melvin Perry is an internet entrepreneur whose been marketing online since mid 2002. During his marketing journey online, he has created various ways of sending tons of targeted traffic to websites. To find out more about his traffic generation methods, visit http://www.workingonyourown.com/real.html

This article was posted on October 13, 2004

by Melvin Perry

Is There an Affiliate กFree Lunchก Program?

Is There an Affiliate กFree Lunchก Program?

by: Glenn Beach

กEverything worthwhile has a cost… Whenever you think you are getting something for nothing, look again—someone, somewhere, somehow is paying for it. Behind every free lunch there is a hidden cost to be accounted for.ก Edwin G. Dolan

If you, or any of your business prospects, believe that time is money, then yes, the ‘there Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunchก principle DOES apply to your internet business. What you can’t invest in money, you will have to invest in time. You will have to be able to put the axe to the grind for more hours per day or week, and you will have to wait for more weeks and months before your ship comes in. Those are the facts.

If you are able to think outside the box (and few internet entrepreneurs CAN’t!) then the principle can be stretched a little. Are you balking at spending a few pennies a day to boost your sales? Do some research comparing what your marketing program offers and what the same services cost on the open market. Compare what information your program offers and what you can learn elsewhere. For example:

find some online business forums and search these topics: free advertising, phone followup techniques, sample followup letters, sample phone scripts.

investigate your and other affiliate marketing programs for all the above plus services and tools such as: prospect notification, contact manager, online forum, billing and revenue collection, gateway website, company resource center, free sales and marketing tools, affiliate training courses, successful team support, commission or compensation schedule. In other words, look at EVERYTHING that the program will give you for free.

research what you would have to pay for any or all of the above tools, hints, and services.

How does your affiliate program measure up? What do you get for free and therefore, what do you save? How much can you afford to invest based on these savings?

If you absolutely HAVE NO MONEY to invest, thatกs one thing. If you have a kneejerk reaction to investing in something that กsays itกs freeก, think again. What other business in the WORLD besides one on the internet can you begin for NOTHING? How many pennies a day can you AFFORD to invest in your business, maybe not now but as soon as possible?

If you have nothing, you can start and run a business. You will have to pay for it, however, with time. Free ads need to be worked every day. Free ads drop out of sight as new ads follow. You need to study your product till you know it inside and out, so all prospective affiliates can be led, encouraged, taught how they too can succeed. Since the name of the game is visibility amongst the billions of offers on the internet, you can’t afford to waste a single hardwon prospect.

Without any money to invest in advertising, this will be a long slow process. You will have to determine how YOU can best achieve sales and attract affiliates, because each personกs skills, style and dislikes are different.

You need to be internet savvy because all the information you require to succeed is out there, you just have to know how to find it. Study, seek your own answers, and know where and how to ask questions. You will win the game with patience and persistence.

About The Author

Glenn Beach is a proud member of Work at Home Team.

He is a selfemployed subcontractor and home entrepreneur at:

http://www.workathomebusinessopportunitycanada.com

email: [email protected]

This article was posted on March 06, 2004

by Glenn Beach

Maps of Cyberspace

Maps of Cyberspace

by: Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.

กCyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts…A graphical representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkablecomplexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…ก (WilliamGibson, กNeuromancerก, 1984, page 51)

http://www.ebookmap.net/maps.htm

http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/atlas.html

At first sight, it appears to be a static, cluttered diagram with multicoloured, overlapping squares. Really, it is an extremely powerfulway of presenting the dynamics of the emerging epublishing industry. R2 Consulting has constructed these eBook Industry Maps to ‘reflect the evolving business models among publishers, conversion houses, digital distribution companies, eBook vendors, online retailers, libraries, library vendors, authors, and many others. These maps are 3dimensionaloffering viewers both a highlevel orientation to the eBook landscape and an indepth look at multiple eBook models and the partnerships thathave formed within each one.ก Pass your mouse over any of the squaresand a virtual floodgate opens a universe of interconnected and hyperlinked names, a detailed atlas of who does what to whom.

eBookMap.net is one example of a relatively novel approach to databases and web indexing. The metaphor of cyberspace comes alive in spatial, two and three dimensional maplike representations of the world of knowledge in Cybergeographyกs online กAtlasก. Instead of endless, static and bichromatic lists of links Cybergeography catalogues visual,recombinant vistas with a stunning palette, internal dynamics and an intuitively conveyed sense of interrelatedness. Hyperlinks are incorporated in the topography and topology of these almostneural maps.

‘these maps of Cyberspaces cybermaps help us visualise and comprehend the new digital landscapes beyond our computer screen, in the wires of the global communications networks and vast online information resources. The cybermaps, like maps of the realworld, help us navigate the new information landscapes, as well being objects of aesthetic interest. They have been created by กcyberexplorersก of many different disciplines, and from all corners of the world. Some of the maps … in the Atlas of Cyberspaces … appear familiar, using the cartographicconventions of realworld maps, however, many of the maps are much more abstract representations of electronic spaces, using new metrics and grids.ก

Navigating these maps is like navigating an inner, familiar, territory.

They come in all shapes and modes: flow charts, quasigeographical maps, 3d simulatorlike terrains and many others. The กweb Stalkerก is an experimental web browser which is equipped with mapping functions. The range of applicability is mind boggling.

A (very) partial list:

The Internet Genome Project กopensource map of the major conceptual components of the Internet and how they relate to each otherก

Anatomy of a Linux System Aimed to ก…give viewers a concise and comprehensive look at the Linux universeก and at the heart of the poster is a gravity well graphic showing the core software components,surrounded by explanatory textก

NewMedia 500 The financial, strategic, and other interrelationshipsand interactions between the leading 500 new (web) media firms

Internet Industry Map Ownership and alliances determine status, control, and access in the Internet industry. A revealing organizational chart.

The Internet Weather Report measures Internet performance, latency periods and downtime based on a sample of 4000 domains.

Real Time Geographic Visualization of WWW Traffic a stunning, 3d representation of web usage and traffic statistics the world over.

WebBrain and Map.net provide a graphic rendition of the Open Directory Project. The thematic structure of the ODP is instantly discernible.

The WebMap is a visual, multicategory directory which contains 2,000,000 web sites. The user can zoom in and out of subcategories and กunlockก their contents.

Maps help write fiction, trace a userกs clickpath (replete with clickable web sites), capture Usenet and chat interactions (threads), plot search results (though Alta Vista discontinued its mapping service and Yahoo!3D is no more), bookmark web destinations, and navigate through complex sites.

Different metaphors are used as interface. Web sites are represented as plots of land, stars (whose brightness corresponds to the web siteกs popularity ranking), aminoacids in DNAlike constellations,topographical maps of the ocean depths, buildings in an urban landscape, or other objects in a pastoral setting. Virtual Reality (VR) maps allow information to be simultaneously browsed by teams of collaborators, sometimes represented as avatars in a fully immersive environment. In many applications, the user is expected to fly amongst the data items invirtual landscapes. With the advent of sophisticated GUIกs (Graphic UserInterfaces) and VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language) these maps may well show us the way to a more colourful and userfriendly future.

About The Author

Sam Vaknin is the author of กMalignant Self Love Narcissism Revisitedก and กAfter the Rain How the West Lost the Eastก. He is a columnist in กCentral Europe Reviewก, United Press International (UPI) and ebookweb.org and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com. Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

His web site: http://samvak.tripod.com

This article was posted on February 2, 2002

by Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.

They Didn’t Think I Could Earn A FullTime Income

They Didn’t Think I Could Earn A FullTime Income Online, But I Proved Them Wrong!

by: Al Martinovic

When I first attempted to make money online I was so naive just like any newbie. But I learned from the school of hard knocks. I learned by trial and error and by just doing.

In the beginning I submitted my site to every search engine under the sun. I tried traffic exchanges, banner exchanges, FFAกs, safelists, online classified ads etc. and not surprisingly I got zero results. If anything… I was very good at getting spammed.

I wasted weeks and even months of my time with stuff that didn’t work. But little by little I started to head in the right direction. I dropped all the stuff that didn’t work and looked for other ways to bring traffic to my site.

I subscribed to a whole bunch of ezines and started posting free ads. The results weren’t great but at least this time I was getting some results. My confidence started to build and I knew I was heading in the right direction.

Then I started to spend a little money on my business and used pay per click search engines and things really started to take off for me and my confidence grew more.

Then I started writing articles and press releases and and in the middle of all this I would spend time learning how to optimize my site for the major search engines to get a high ranking.

The sales started coming in regularly. But I didn’t sit back. I wanted to convert more of my visitors into customers.

I added an optin form on my site to capture email addresses and set up an autoresponder to automatically follow up with my prospects. Eventually I added an alert box to capture email addresses which really exploded my mail list.

I started learning more about copywriting and experimented with different copy and headlines etc. on my site to get maximum results until eventually I had a consistent sales machine over at http://www.ineedsmokes.com

And when I had a sales machine that was on autopilot I then started pursuing other projects to make additional money.

But you know, it took alot of work to get to this point. It is a constant learning process and I still try to learn as much as I can because you never กknow it all.ก

If you think you กknow it allก you are finished because the internet changes so rapidly youกll quickly get left behind.

If you’re new to online marketing… it won’t happen for you overnight. It will take work, dedication and even sacrifice.

You need to keep working your business, be consistent and learn as much as you can about this internet marketing game and most importantly apply what you have learned.

Some techniques and tactics will work great in one business… but not in another. You won’t know unless you try. Find the things that work for you and build upon it.

And eventually… youกll get there too.

About The Author

Al Martinovic publishes the Millenium Marketers Newsletter featuring powerful internet marketing concepts, killer strategies, useful tips, and no bull business advice. Subscribe Free Today: http://www.milleniummarketers.com

This article was posted on November 18, 2003

by Al Martinovic

1,001 Deals and Steals: A Guide To Online Classifi

1,001 Deals and Steals: A Guide To Online Classifieds

by: Donald Lee

Some naysayers way back in the 1990s predicted that online shopping wouldn’t last. Sure, and they said television was a passing fad, too! As we all know, just the opposite has occurred. There’s a television in every household, and more than likely, the homeowner bought their television online—along with his books, music CDs, clothes, and maybe even his home.

Internet shopping is bigger than ever. You can find anything and everything for sale online. Many times, you can find it cheaper online than anywhere else. Internet shopping offers so much more than a discounted price tag, though.

Imagine a shopping mall where there are no lines, where there are no jammed parking garages, and no pushy sales clerks. This is no land of make believe. It is the Internet, where you can discover unprecedented selection, convenience, and opportunities. Online shopping gives you the luxury of browsing hundreds of stores from your living room, while saving on time and frustration. It provides you the chance to compare prices to your heart’s delight on a near limitless selection of brands and models.

For even more benefits, try your hand at classifieds and auction Web sites. These sites are like yard sales and flea markets rolled into one. Unlike retail shopping sites, they offer:

Access to super secondary markets. Take your pick of secondhand or brandnew wholesale goods at steeply discounted prices. The vendors at classifieds sites can get away with it because they aren’t paying high rent for a storefront or a warehouse. And in many cases, you’re not paying taxes.

Tools to locate unique and rare collectibles. Imagine a classifieds site to be like a sunken pirate boat, laden with cultural artifacts, hardtofind heirlooms, and priceless antiques. The Internet is your deepsea vessel, sonar, and oxygen tank all in one.

Reach beyond your neighborhood. Search through the inventory of a vendor from your home town, or if you don’t find what you’re looking for there, try that fellow in California, Texas or Canada for that matter.

Close relationships with vendors. You deal with real people—not big, impersonal corporations—when you buy on classifieds sites. They can provide more details about the product, which you can then use to bargain for a reasonable price.

Despite this bounty of benefits, you might still be hesitant to dive into Internet shopping. Don’t be embarrassed. You have good reason to take your time and weigh your choices. According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Internet fraud tops the list of the thousands of fraud cases that happen every year. In some ways, WWW could stand for the Wild West Web, in that anything goes. Vendors can be villains in disguise, and there aren’t any online Wyatt Earps to protect you from these bad guys. You’re on your own.

But give yourself some credit. You have the common sense it takes to survive the WWW. It is the same commonsense that helps you make the most of your money on your standard shopping trips. Become familiar and comfortable with an online vendor before jumping into a purchase. Ask questions and do a bit of research.

After doing your research, you’ll feel more confident in searching for your online booty. To refine your findings and whittle your list to only the exceptional sites, look for these additional qualities:

A focus on local shopping, so you can feel more confident buying from neighbors.

Free education and advice on safe purchasing.

Nocost and easy browsing through available merchandise.

Search tools that let you prioritize items by category, location, and distance.

A straightforward pricing system that avoids the haggling and risk of auction bidding.

Quick price comparisons among different vendors.

Unbelievably, a few trustworthy, practical, and exciting Web sites exist that have all of these features. To find these websites, simply browse through Yahoo’s directory under the classifieds category. The best of the online classified sites offer these services free to buyers such as you. Some of these sites can link you at no charge to your neighbor selling the antique lamp that you’ve been hunting for or that retiree looking to unload an incredible piece of real estate—or the cowboy looking to sell his bigscreen television.

Copyright 2004 Donald Lee

About The Author

Donald Lee is a public relations manager at BSCCOM Inc. BSCCOM Inc. provides free online advertisement services for Canadian and U.S. regions. For more information please visit: http://www.buysellcommunity.com.

This article was posted on November 25, 2004

by Donald Lee

Top Things You Must Realize When Searching

Top Things You Must Realize When Searching

by: Andrew Malek

For the uninitiated, searching for web pages can seem a slow, obscure process. Unless you have a highspeed Internet connection, web pages may seem to take days to load. And the searching itself – you have to admit it looks weird typing in bunches of plus signs, asterisks, parenthesis, and other funny symbols and operators to find what you want.

To help you in this process and show that you are not, I’ve compiled a top five list of things you must realize when searching the web for information. No pencils will fly, no drums will roll, but you just might learn something.

5. Search Engines Have to Make Money

Before you grumble over the growing number of advertisements and sponsored links that appear in search engine results page, remember that most search engines are free. You’re not paying anything for a very costly service. Thus, these sites have to earn income somehow to stay afloat (computing power and bandwidth isn’t cheap!) So, to put it bluntly… live with it.

(Yes, I know some types of advertising are much more obtrusive than others. Popup ads, dancing animations, and other larger advertisements may make it harder to use some search engines that support these types of ads. If you don’t like it, vote with your mouse clicks and move to another search engine).

4. Sites Go Down

Worse yet, you’ve entered in your perfect search query, looked at the results page, and the first site you see no longer exists!

The Internet changes all the time. Unfortunately, search engines and directories are not able to constantly query every site on the Internet to see if they are still online. Occasionally (in other words, probably frequently) you will find links to web sites that no longer exist. It is just a part of life. Especially with the dotcom bust, many web site owners can no longer afford to host free resources. If they could not convert their traffic to paying customers, they just took their sites down

So when you find a link that is dead, don’t pump your fist in anger … just go back to the results page and move along. Or, better yet, if you’re using a search engine that caches pages, such as Google, just look at the cached version of the now defunct pages and find the information contained therein. It’s like stepping through a time machine!

3. Your Web Browser Will Crash

On a related note, not only do web sites go down – but so may your web browser. Sometimes it will be due to visiting a multimediaintensive web site. Sometimes it will seem to happen for no reason. But it will happen, and when it does, don’t go blaming yourself saying that you did something wrong.

Web browsers, like just about any other type of computer software program available on the market, are not infallible. They can and usually do contain bugs. These may predictably rear their ugly heads when visiting sites containing a lot of multimedia and advanced interactive elements, or they may appear completely at random.

If your web browser crashes, do what I do. Just restart it. Don’t say you did something wrong. Don’t think that you must be so bad with computers that you crashed the Internet. Just restart your browser, and if you have to restart your computer to do so, then do it as well. Most likely the crash is not your fault.

2. The Internet Can Be Slow

No matter how fast your onramp to the Internet may be, there will be times where it seems to take forever to load a web page. This is just the nature of the beast.

As the Internet is a loosely connected network, if certain connections go down, computers may not always be able to route information via other networks. Thus access speed will suffer and your web browser will start to crawl. If this seems to be happening often, step away from the computer, go outside and take a nice, long walk (unless it’s 30 degrees below). You can run your search another time when the speed is back to normal.

And the #1 thing you must realize when searching…

1. The Best Result Just May Be On Page 10

Most people only look through the first page of search engine or directory results, usually the top ten listings. Others may visit the second page, but relatively very few people venture to the higher numbered pages.

This is a shame – sometimes the best results to a search engine query are not in the first ten listings as they may only contain links to commercially driven sites or sites run by web owners who know how to manipulate listings. In some cases web sites containing perfectly good information may not be listed in the top 10, 20, 50, or even top 100 results.

Obviously searching through the many pages and pages of resulting sites will take extra time, especially if you do not have a highspeed connection to the Internet. But, this time spent may well be worth it if you find some gems in the rough! So if you have the time, speed, and patience, browse through the deeper results pages. You never know what you may find!

And that’s it – my top five list of things you must realize when searching. This covers slow access time, results not on page 1, browser bugs, web sites popping up and down and changing management, and the need for sites to make money, causing advertisements to become more obtrusive. Gosh, that just makes you want to go out and search right now, doesn’t it? .

About The Author

This article was written by Andrew Malek, Internet Search Guru and author of Find Stuff On the Net, an ebook that can show even beginning computer users how to navigate the Internet without fear. Gain confidence using your web browser. Master search engines. And more! For further information and free snippets of the book, visit http://www.findstuffonthenet.com/

[email protected]

This article was posted on May 1, 2002

by Andrew Malek

Free Article Use on Your Web Site

Free Article Use on Your Web Site

by: C Brackney

If you are trying to drive traffic to your web site and have researched your options, you have probably reached one conclusion. Content is essential.

They say content is king and that mantra is oftrepeated for a reason. It’s true.

Content is a key component in driving topnotch search engine placement. Content attracts visitors and keeps them longer. Content can help to reinforce your sales message. For those involved in affiliate marketing, content can fill space and increase the perceived legitimacy of a site.

You want traffic and you need content. You have three means of acquiring it. You can author it yourself, purchase it from someone else, or cull and use free articles widely available on the internet.

Selfauthorship offers some appeal. After all, who knows your business the way you do? However, the significant amount of time and energy required to develop the written content you need may very well be disproportionate to its benefit—especially when you remind yourself that you are an entrepreneur, not a writer.

Odds are that you would prefer to leave the monotonous process of authoring articles to someone else while you made better use of your time finetuning the other aspects of your business.

You would prefer to have content authored by a genuine writer—someone who knows how to use the written word to maximum effectiveness.

The decision between purchasing materials and using free content may seem relatively simple. Free articles have many benefits.

They don’t increase your overhead. They are easy to find. They cover topics related to your site and products. There is no delay—you can access them immediately. Free content has some immediately visible advantages.

However, free articles have a significant and oftenoverlooked downside.

Initially, the competitive arena of the internet is populated by thousands like you who are looking for a content edge. Those who may be in direct competition for your traffic are thinking about content and may be reaching for free content, too.

The result? The same free content appears over and over again at site after site.

The reason content is so important is because it gives you an opportunity to attract surfers and keep them at your site. They are attracted to content that provides them with information they cannot readily find elsewhere and materials that are engaging and unique. A chief component of content’s power is diluted by its repetitive use in hundreds of locations.

Additionally, free content is generally advertising in disguise. Unfortunately, it’s not your advertising. Authors of free content are not writing out of love—they are writing for their own profit.

Take for instance, this free article. I am seeking to provide you with information about free materials and their weaknesses. However, I am not performing this function out of a sense of civic duty. I write custom content for web sites. My URL will appear at the bottom of this article. I am seeking to persuade readers to consider purchasing unique content and, of course, to consider using me as their supplier.

All free articles are advertising copy, in a sense. Do you really want to use someone else’s advertising on your site? If your visitors read the content, and the content is wellwritten, it should spur them to at least consider leaving your site to find out more about the author, the ideas the author mentions, or the products and services to which the author alludes.

Content should serve to make your site sticky—keeping surfers on your site. Free content may perform the opposite function by drawing them to other venues.

Third, free articles are not written with you in mind. Free articles may have been written with particular keywords or concepts in mind, but they were not constructed for your site with your specific needs under consideration. Their tone and content are unlikely to be a perfect fit for your needs, further decreasing their effectiveness.

Using a custom content provider allows you to receive all of the benefits of great content while avoiding the pitfalls associated with free materials.

You can hire a professional writer to produce entertaining and informative content that is completely unique to your web site. The result is better search engine placement and a reason for visitors to come back again and again—and to stay longer when they do.

Custom articles also promise a complete commitment to your site and your needs. The author can produce exactly what you need and do so in a way that reinforces your message and your objectives. It can blend seamlessly with your site and help presell your product or service in ways free articles never could.

There are costs, of course. You will need to pay your writer and you will have some period of brief delay before your content is ready. However, if you work with an effective content provider who understands the nature of internet business, costs should be reasonable and turnaround quick.

Free articles seem like a wonderful solution to the content gap from which so many sites suffer. Unfortunately, free articles fail to deliver the full advantage of great content and may actually reduce the effectiveness of your site. The alternative, a professional internet content provider, is the best way to insure your content will do what you need it to do.

About The Author

C. Brackney is an internet content provider. Content One provides unique custom content of all types for web sites.

http://content1.bravehost.com

[email protected]

Copyright 2005 C. Brackney/Content One. All rights reserved.

This article was posted on February 05

by C Brackney

A Person Of Value

A Person Of Value

by: Sidney Zegna

One of the กsecretsก in Internet Marketing is knowing that you need to be patient enough to develop the kind of business building savvy that people want. It takes time.

Many newcomers put more emphasis on the word Internet and not enough on the word Marketing. The two are going hand in hand and a proper Marketing plan is vital to achieve success. If you do not have a comprehensive Marketing plan with advertising budget, leads, promotions, customers care, after sale service etc, the other word, Internet, is meaningless.

Internet Marketing is not only about having a website, a few products, a couple of ads with you sitting idle in front of your PC with the false hope that now your mail box will be overflowed with order.

Many newcomers chose Internet Marketing to avoid the interaction with other people. They falsely assume that with the Net there is no need to be a ขpeople’s personข; nothing is more far from reality!

If you want to be successful in ANY business you have to master the art of mentoring and leadership. I call it value. Are you valuable enough to be around? Do you have the time and energy to support your downline, do3way calling, and answer questions for your downline partners and their prospects? Are you prepared to spend hours in front of your PC to improve your knowledge of Internet Marketing?

If you don’t, you will suffer the indignity of being a netpreneur creampuff. The more you know, the more your business will grow. Put another way, the more you LEARN, the more you will EARN.

Its a simple formula knowledge = success.

AND…massive action = massive results, MA=MR.

So if you’re new to this business, UNDERSTAND that it takes TIME to develop your skills as a netpreneur. Forget about making big money in your first year with ANY company.

Concentrate on becoming the KIND OF PERSON that others want to be around.

Copyright 2004 Sidney Zegna

After several years in the fashion and textile industry, Sid Zegna has now established a profitable online business. His aim is, primarily, to assist newcomers to start and promote their HomeBased business. http://www.sidzegna.com/

About The Author

After several years in the fashion and textile industry, Sid Zegna has now established a profitable online business. His aim is, primarily, to assist newcomers to start and promote their HomeBased business.

http://www.bboomerswellbeing.com

This article was posted on March 10, 2004

by Sidney Zegna

Learn How To Use These Six Explosive Marketing Tec

Learn How To Use These Six Explosive Marketing Techniques To Explode Your Website With Traffic

by: Reginald Turner

Learn How To Use These Six Explosive Marketing Techniques To Explode Your Website With Traffic

You could have the best opportunity, product, or service on the internet, but if you are not getting any traffic to your website, what does it matter? Getting massive traffic to your website is just the beginning of being successful over the internet. Nevertheless, itกs not the end.

Although getting traffic to your website should be your main focus, there is just more to it than just getting traffic to your website. In the next following section, we will talk about the six explosive marketing techniques that you would have to apply to your internet marketing efforts in order to become a successful internet marketer.

1.Testing When you are marketing over the internet, you are going to have to know what works and what doesn’t. Thatกs why you are going to have to experiment with different types of advertising to find that out. If you are experimenting with different types of advertising, how are you going to know what type of advertising is working? This what leads me to the next following marketing technique, Adtracking services.

2. Adtracking Services Ad tracking services are a great way to test which form of advertising is working and which is not. Some of these services are capable of keeping track of your hits, sales, etc. To find an ad tracking service, just go to a major search engine and type in กAd tracking servicesก and plenty ad tracking services will come up. After this happens, do some investigating and choose the one that is best for you.

3. Website Design You want to make sure that you have a decent looking website to promote your product or service. Don’t get to caught up in all the fancy graphics when it comes to designing a website. These fancy graphics that you see on other websites could cause your website to load real slow. You must remember when people are browsing on the internet, they like to get on a website to find what they are looking for and get right off. If your website takes a long time to load, you could loose a lot of sales. When you design your website, make sure you use gif or jpeg graphics because they load really quick. Remember, the amount of time it takes your website to load, could determine how many sales you are going to make, or lose.

4. Good Content Itกs very important to have good content on your website. The product or service that you are promoting should strongly state the benefits. You should talk about how the benefit of your product or service could improve the quality of their lives. Remember, people are not concerned about the features of your product or service, but they want to know what it can do for them.

5. Website Traffic If your internet business is going to survive over the internet, you are going to need a lot of traffic, but just not any kind of traffic. When you are marketing over the internet, you are going to need to get ‘targeted traffic.ก What do I mean by targeted traffic? For example, if you are promoting a service that deals with selling envelopes, you are not going to promote it to people interested in health care are you? Absolutely not. You want to make sure you market to an audience that is interested in your product, service, or business opportunity. For example, if you are promoting a service selling marketing software, make sure you find an audience of กinterested buyersก who are interested in marketing software. If you don’t target your audience, your career as an internet marketer will be short lived.

6. Time Management Again, going back to the adtracking service. If you use an adtracking service to track your marketing campaigns, you could use the statistics from the ad tracking service to tell where you should spend your time marketing. For example, lets say you use two different methods of marketing such as ezines, and submission software. Now you go to your ad tracking service to check the results of the two marketing methods that were just mentioned. You find out that your marketing in ezines bought you 1,000 hits, and your marketing using the submission software bought you 100 hits. I would not tell you to stop using the submission software because obviously itกs bringing you hits. It will make more since to spend most of your time marketing in ezines because it brought you more hits. Iกm definitely not saying what was mentioned in the above example will happen, but it just gives you an indication where you should spend most of your time marketing.

This article was not written to critique internet marketers in any way. It was written to help internet marketers become more efficient and smarter when it comes to marketing over the internet. Some internet marketers only focus on getting traffic, but some neglect things such as web design, testing, and good content which could make a big difference. Remember, getting traffic to your website is just half the battle won, but converting it into sales is a complete victory.

For more info about website marketing techniques, please visit: http://www.adalyzer.com/727/traffic_attack

About The Author

My name is Reginald Turner and my purpose in writing articles is not only to help internet marketers become more efficient and smarter when it comes to marketing over the internet, but to teach them how to quickly find out what type of marketing works and how to make more money over the internet in less time while exploding traffic to their website. If you would like more info about website marketing techniques, you could eithr visit: http://www.adalyzer.com/727/traffic_attack or just send a blank email to [email protected].

This article was posted on November 23, 2004

by Reginald Turner