RSS is Not Only for Blogs

RSS is Not Only for Blogs

by: Rok Hrastnik

Contrary to popular opinion, RSS is not only good for delivering content from your blog, although blogs are what made RSS so popular.

In fact, RSS can be used to deliver a great variety of content and content types. If you can break down your content in to individual stories or individual pieces, you can deliver it via RSS.

Just to give you an impression of the power of RSS, here are some examples of content you can publish using it …

MarketingVOX is using RSS to deliver internet marketing news to their readers as it becomes available. Instead of having to wait to receive all the news in a single email newsletter, RSS users get them as soon as they are ready.

Amazon.com is using RSS to announce their bestsellers and to help their users keep track of releases they are most interested in.

Some affiliate managers already communicate with their affiliates using RSS. You can of course use it to communicate with any other target audience as well, such as your employees or teammembers, and even your company owners.

FindSavings.com uses RSS to deliver savings coupons and related information.

Lockergnome uses RSS to provide visitors with the latest downloads and relevant software. Yet again other companies are using RSS to deliver product updates and patches directly to their customers, just as they become available.

A few hundred content publishers are using RSS to deliver audio content, such as .mp3 interviews and even ขradioข shows.

Textamerica.com allows people to post pictures, videos & text from their mobile phones and then make this content available via RSS feeds.

Other companies are using RSS to deliver whitepapers and other educational content.

One company uses RSS as a consulting billing awareness tool. The consultants create activity reports and the RSS feeds from the activity channels carry the billable information to the accounting staff for invoice preparation.

Many internet publishers are using RSS to deliver their newsletters, as a supplement to their email delivery. Since many people no longer want to give their email address away to publishers, this is a great way to keep your ezine readership growing.

Publish living digital catalogues of your products and provide your customers with your latest product releases, broken down by the categories they’re interested in, and make it easy for them to order.

Provide your affiliates and marketing partners with RSS feeds they can promote to their visitors to better promote your products and still make a commission. Amazon.com is already doing it. When are you starting?

Create RSS autoresponders with scheduled messages, to keep in constant ขmarketingข contact with your prospects and slowly get them to the point of purchase.

Provide limitedaccess content to your customers, employees, team members and even investors, without fearing other unwanted eyes. Use RSS for internal communications, teamworking and other needs.

Provide your customers with easy access to software updates, delivered to them exactly as they become available, without the fuss of having to visit your web site or deal with huge email attachments, which would get blocked by spam filters anyway.

Newsreporters are constantly bombarded with email, so why not instead deliver your press releases via RSS? Or even better yet, why not deliver some of your releases as video comments, interviews or statements from your company managers or owners?

Help your visitors keep up with what’s going on in your web forum, by publishing your latest forum posts or whole threads via RSS.

And yet these are still only a few examples of what you can do with RSS today, since something new comes up almost every day.

Are you as well already among those taking advantage of the marketing & publishing power of RSS?

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

About The Author

Rok Hrastnik is the author of »Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS«, acclaimed as the best and most comprehensive guide to RSS for marketers by leading RSS experts. The complete guide on RSS for marketers: http://rss.marketingstudies.net/index.html?src=sa3

This article was posted on April 04

by Rok Hrastnik

The Disintermediation of Content

The Disintermediation of Content

by: Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.

Are content brokers publishers, distributors, and record companies a thing of the past?

In one word: disintermediation.

The gradual removal of layers of content brokering and intermediation mainly in manufacturing marketing is the continuation of a long term trend. Consider music for instance. Streaming audio on the internet (กsoft radioก), or downloadable MP3 files may render the CD obsolete but they were preceded by radio music broadcasts. But the novelty is that the Internet provides a venue for the marketing of niche products and reduces the barriers to entry previously imposed by the need to invest in costly กbrandingก campaigns and manufacturing and distribution activities.

This trend is also likely to restore the balance between artists and the commercial exploiters of their products. The very definition of กartistก will expand to encompass all creative people. One will seek to distinguish oneself, to กbrandก oneself and to auction oneกs services, ideas, products, designs, experience, physique, or biography, etc. directly to endusers and consumers. This is a return to preindustrial times when artisans ruled the economic scene. Work stability will suffer and work mobility will increase in a landscape of shifting allegiances, head hunting, remote collaboration, and similar labour market trends.

But distributors, publishers, and record companies are not going to vanish. They are going to metamorphose. This is because they fulfil a few functions and provide a few services whose importance is only enhanced by the กfree for allก Internet culture.

Content intermediaries grade content and separate the qualitative from the ephemeral and the atrocious. The deluge of selfpublished and vanity published ebooks, music tracks and art works has generated few masterpieces and a lot of trash. The absence of judicious filtering has unjustly given a bad name to whole segments of the industry (e.g., small, or webbased publishers). Consumers inundated, disappointed and exhausted will pay a premium for content rating services. Though driven by crass commercial considerations, most publishers and record companies do apply certain quality standards routinely and thus are positioned to provide these rating services reliably.

Content brokers are relationship managers. Consider distributors: they provide instant access to centralized, continuously updated, กaddressbooksก of clients (stores, consumers, media, etc.). This reduces the time to market and increases efficiency. It alters revenue models very substantially. Content creators can thus concentrate on what they do best: content creation, and reduce their overhead by outsourcing the functions of distribution and relationships management. The existence of central ‘relationship ledgersก yields synergies which can be applied to all the clients of the distributor. The distributor provides a single address that content resellers converge on and feed off. Distributors, publishers and record companies also provide logistical support: warehousing, consolidated sales reporting and transaction auditing, and a single, periodic payment.

Yet, having said all that, content intermediaries still overcharge their clients (the content creators) for their services. This is especially true in an age of justintime inventory and digital distribution. Network effects mean that content brokers have to invest much less in marketing, branding and advertising once a productกs first mover advantage is established. Economic laws of increasing, rather than diminishing, returns mean that every additional unit sold yields a HIGHER profit rather than a declining one. The pie is getting bigger.

Hence, the meteoric increase in royalties publishers pay authors from sales of the electronic versions of their work (anywhere from Random Houseกs 35% to 50% paid by smaller publishers). As this tectonic shift reverberates through the whole distribution chain, retail outlets are beginning to transact directly with content creators. The borders between the types of intermediaries are blurred. Barnes and Noble (the American bookstores chain) has, in effect, become a publisher. Many publishers have virtual storefronts. Many authors sell directly to their readers, acting as publishers. The introduction of กbook ATMsก POD (Print On Demand) machines, which will print every conceivable title in minutes, on the spot, in กbook kiosksก will give rise to a host of new intermediaries. Intermediation is not gone. It is here to stay because it is sorely needed. But it is in a state of flux. Old maxims break down. New modes of operation emerge. Functions are amalgamated, outsourced, dispensed with, or created from scratch. It is an exciting scene, full with opportunities.

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.

5 illustrious strategies to explode your web site

5 illustrious strategies to explode your web site traffic

by: Benjamin Scott

Are you spending hundreds of dollars on advertising campaigns, only to find out that you have earned a very small profit or none at all? Here are 5 illustrious strategies that will help you explode and create viral traffic to your web site.

1.Reciprocal Links – Think of reciprocal linking as a mini joint venture. Go to any major search engine and search for sites that are related or similar to yours. The majority of web masters that exchange links with other web sites have a links page. Look for the links page and see if they provide instructions on how you should link to their web site. Contact the web master and inform him/her that you have linked to their web site and request that they link to your web site in return. Remember to provide the web master with the page that you have placed their link on. Always make sure that you provide the web master with your web site url,title and description so that he/she can link to your web site in return.

If you keep contacting other web sites on a consistent basis,at least 10% of the web masters that you contact will exchange links with you. You will receive traffic from your link partners and also from the search engines. Link popularity is a major part of the search engines algorithm. Remember to only contact web masters with related web sites that have a links page. Contacting unrelated web sites can result in spam complaints.

2.Writing Articles – This strategy creates viral traffic from all different angles. The key here is to provide a resource box at the end of your article with a link to your web site. Once you write your article you will need to submit it to the many different announcement lists on the internet. There are companies that will charge you a small fee to submit your articles for you, or you can submit them on your own for free. Once you submit your articles the potential for hundreds of visitors begins. Ezine publishers can send your article to thousands of readers and other publishers will place your article on their web sites.

If you have a good resource biography at the end of your article hundreds of people may visit your web site. Your rankings will start to rise on the search engines due to high link popularity, creating another source of traffic.

3.Affiliate Programs – This is probably the most rewarding strategy to create viral traffic to your web site. The idea here is to recruit an unlimited number of affiliates that are willing to sell your products for a commission. You never lose money with this strategy because you only pay your affiliates when they make a sale. This strategy will also increase your link popularity since many of the affiliates will send traffic to your web site by linking directly to it. If you do your research you will find companies that can setup an affiliate program for you. Another option is to purchase software that allows you to setup your affiliate program.

4.Free Services – Providing free services is a strategy that yahoo and microsoft have been using for years. The idea here is to provide a free version of a service and a paid version. If someone upgrades to the paid version of your service they should be able to benefit from extra features. This strategy can easily explode the traffic to your web site if you provide a useful service. Visitors will refer others to visit your web site creating a never ending flow of traffic.

5.Manual traffic exchanges – A traffic exchange allows you to visit other web sites in exchange for visitors to your own web site. Many traffic exchanges have a referral system in place. If you refer someone to join the traffic exchange, you receive a percentage of visits to your web site any time your referrals surf the exchange. The key here is to do your research and look for a traffic exchange that has a good anticheating system. A good anticheating system will ensure that only real visitors are looking at your web site.

These are 5 illustrious strategies that can explode your web site traffic. Implement some or all of these strategies into your marketing plan and you will create a never ending source of viral traffic to your web site.

Copyright 2004 Benjamin Scott

About The Author

Benjamin Scottกs passion consist of affiliate marketing. He enjoys reading and writing articles that are internet related. His main focus consist of searching the world wide web to find genuine and quality programs that teach individuals how to conduct business online. An example of these quality programs can be found at http://eazyincome.net.

This article was posted on November 17, 2004

by Benjamin Scott

The Value of Forums

The Value of Forums

by: S. Housley

There are literally thousands of online forums that cover a wide range of topics. Forums provide individuals, who share a common interest, with a meeting place for open discussion, and a great gathering spot for กwater coolerก talk. When used properly forums can be an excellent business tool and resource. By providing well thought out, helpful responses posters can develop a reputation as an industry expert. Establishing a reputation within forums will eventually lead to solid business contacts and relationships.
Forums, online discussion groups, can be found on many websites. Companies, individuals or groups often have their own webbased forums, which are a good source of technical information or just general discussions. They can be closed for private use only or open to anyone to post messages, which are usually sorted within different categories, or topics. Posting to forums is obviously effective when an immediate answer is not required. Forum can be found by searching for topic or subject with the word กforumก or กforumsก. Forums are a great way to participate in a community that is discussing a particular topic, or communicate with a group of people interested in the same topic.
Rules & Regulations
Before you post to a forum its important that you read the Charter or description of the forum and determine what is appropriate. It is probably not a bad idea to monitor a newsgroup for a few days prior to posting. Understanding what is accepted or not accepted in each newsgroup will go a long way in befriending the participants.
Forum Etiquette
Spam is generally frowned upon, if you require information on general forum etiquette Iกd encourage you to read the article at: http://www.smallbusinesssoftware.net/etiquette.htm . Rules and etiquette can vary from one group to another, so don’t assume what is acceptable in one, is acceptable in another.
Some forums require that you register and provide contact information in order to post a message or respond to messages. The registration is typically simple and requires that you submit general information. An email confirmation is required in order to confirm the information; once the confirmation is responded to posting privileges are granted. Some forums do not require registration and you can post anonymously.
What to Look for In a Forum
Because time is valuable it is best to frequent forums that have a lot of traffic, this will ensure that any posts receive maximum exposure for little effort. The most recent posts should be have current dates and it should be clear that there is regular activity on the board.
Moderated Forums
Some forums are moderated, which means posts are approved prior to being made public. This means that if you post to a moderated forum, there will likely be a delay between the submission and the posts appearance in the forum. Moderated forums tend to have a lower กnoiseก ratio and have less offtopic posts. The downside to moderated forums is that like moderated newsgroups they are usually less popular because of the lag time between posts.
Signature Line
Most newsgroups allow for posters to include a signature on any posts. This is your opportunity to mention your products and services. Use this as an opportunity to tell other forum visitors what you want them to know. Be sure to provide an url to your website, as the link will not only refer potential clients but it will help search engine ranking.
Finding Forums
Forums can contain generic information or be very topic specific. Try the following resources to find forums that meet your needs.
Forum Directory http://www.smallbusinesssoftware.net/forumdirectory.htm
Forum Directory http://www.forumdirectory.com
Forum Search http://www.forumsearch.tk

About The Author

Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc. http://www.notepage.net a company specializing in alphanumeric paging, SMS and wireless messaging software solutions. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com , and http://www.smallbusinesssoftware.net

This article was posted on May 20, 2004

by S. Housley

A Blog Isn’t Just For Christmas

A Blog Isn’t Just For Christmas

by: John Taylor

I was watching the news on TV last night and there was a warning about buying puppies as Christmas presents. Thereกs nothing worse than visiting the kennels in the new year and seeing all those unwanted dogs that were chosen as presents because they were so cute at the time. It reminded me of people who start a blog in the hope of making some money online only to give up after a few days or weeks when things don’t work out.

The average blogger makes around $20 to $50 per month. So, if that is the average, it stands to reason that some people make less than that and some people make more. The amount of potential income that can be generated by blogging depends entirely upon your ability to build a loyal audience of people who have money to spend.

There is no point in creating a blog and then looking for an audience. Your first task is to identify a hungry market and provide it with high quality information. Once you have established your blog and created some interesting content, your next task is to attract your hungry audience to your blog. There are many ways of attracting traffic to a blog site including banner adverts, ezine advertising, pay per click traffic, links fro other web sites and submitting your site to the specialist blog search engines.

There are literally hundreds of blog sites that lay desolate and abandoned like an old frontier town with tumbleweeds blowing through on the breeze. Their owners failed to identify a hungry market, they failed to attract visitors or they simply gave up posting fresh new content to their blogs.

Blogs are dynamic web sites, they require time and attention. Search engines love them because they are frequently updated with fresh new content. People love them because they regularly provide new and interesting information. But you have to persist, just like any other business, online or offline, you have to work at building up your content, building up an audience of loyal readers and creating a portfolio of products and services that will appeal to your readers and generate some income.

There are many ways of generating income from your blog. Several people have created successful niche sites that offer product reviews including books, software, videos, DVDs and other popular products. Other bloggers earn their income from the sale of advertising space and yet others generate income through pay per click systems such as Googleกs Adsense programme.

There is now another way of building a profitable blog. A brand new hosted blog service http://www.Blog4Cash.com has married a fully featured blogging service with a two tier affiliate programme thus allowing you to build up a residual income from everyone who signs up through your referral. This provides a great opportunity to build up a regular income to supplement your regular blog profit.

So remember, to become a truly successful blogger you must take a long term view and seek to provide interesting content for a hungry market with money to spend. Don’t expect to achieve profit overnight and plan to build a portfolio of income streams some of which have a residual element that will provide you will a recurring income.

About The Author

John Taylor is a prolific writer, he is the author of several Internet Marketing related eBooks, for example… http://TestandTrack.com.

[email protected]

This article was posted on April 03

by John Taylor

Web Hosting Tips For Your Website

Web Hosting Tips For Your Website

by: Jeff Anderson

We generally do not endorese free hosting services. You don’t want the site to be covered with those annoying banner and popup ads that the free services burden your site with.

You want something which gives you everything you need for a low fixed cost and offers an efficient control panel.

Unfortunately, a lot of people with web sites are not satisfied with their current hosting service, and are often seeking replacement hosts. It is conceivable that at any given time 20 million or more people are looking for a new web hosting service. In the future, we will have articles on our website that provide reviews and recommendations of hosting services.

Hosting Service must be reliable. One of the biggest problems with webhosts are outages and downtimes in their service. Questions you need to ask: What kind of uptime guarantee do they provide you with? How long have they been in business?

Other questions to ask on choosing a host include What level of support does the company offer you? When you need help, you may have to wait days to get service.

Ecommerce web hosting

Do you plan to sell online? If so, does the web host have shopping carts available? Are they included for free or are they extra? Get the names of the ecommerce shopping carts they provide, and research their capabilities to be able to determine which one is best for you.

Be sure to ask the hosting provider for a list of websites that are hosted on their servers. Enter a few of them into your browser and pay attention to how fast they come up.

How much bandwidth does the web hosting service provide you with every month? If you expect to need more, make sure you can live with the extra charges the hosting provider will levy. If you website traffic explodes, you may be on the hook for large bandwidth overage charges.

About The Author

Jeff Anderson knows his web hosting. He knows what to look for and what pitfalls to avoid. Let him guide you to finding out more about web hosting. Contact him at [email protected] or visit the blog at his site www.webhostnext.com.

This article was posted on April 19

by Jeff Anderson

Seminar Marketing: Boost Your Business by Running

Seminar Marketing: Boost Your Business by Running Seminars

by: Stuart Lockley

All professional practices have the perennial problem of how to attract new clients. The comfortable days that some of us once knew have long since gone and competition is now the order of the day. Professionals who have not been trained in marketing must feel their way towards a solution which will bring them new clients.

Many professionals opt for seminars as a way of obtaining new business. The traditional method is to organise a number of short breakfast or after work seminars. The seminar is advertised locally and a nominal price charged because we have all learnt that people who do not pay, often do not attend. A few staff will talk on topics we believe potential clients will find interesting then there will be food and a chance to network. We all tell ourselves that this system must work otherwise our competitors would not keep doing it.

The problem with this model of course is that we are not fooling anyone, with the possible exception of ourselves. Everyone knows the reason for the seminar and only attends because they happen to be interested in that specific topic. The other problem is that not one firm in a hundred has an effective system for following up on the people who attend the seminar.

It is time to rethink the model. Seminars can be a very valuable marketing tool if they are used correctly. The seminar should be used both to provide existing clients with something of value and to attract potential new clients in a low cost way. This can be achieved with the following approach:

First begin by understanding that your most important clients are the ones that you already have, not the ones that you hope to acquire next week.

Secondly understand that your best source of new clients is existing clients. I am assuming of course that you are providing your existing clients with a good service.

Thirdly realise that it is a lot easier to prevent existing clients leaving your firm than it is to attract new clients to try your service.

Begin by listing all of your clients in descending order of importance, probably ranked by fees or turnover. Now divide your clients into four categories, Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze. When you look at your own list of clients it will probably be obvious where to draw the dividing lines.

Once you have carried out this exercise the first thing you will realise is that to lose a Platinum or Gold client would be a blow to any firm regardless of their size. These clients would be both difficult and expensive to replace.

In order to keep your best clients with you it is a good idea to provide them with something over and above your normal service that has a low cost to you and a high perceived value to them. This is where the seminar comes in, but structured and sold differently.

Organise a bimonthly seminar that you will call the ‘Platinum Club’ or some such name to provide an element of exclusivity. This can be organised for breakfast or after work event although breakfast is usually cheaper to provide. The format will be one speaker, food and the opportunity for all of your Gold and Platinum clients to network. Ensure that your clients realise this opportunity is exclusive and that they will have the opportunity to network with people similar to themselves.

The speaker should not be one of your staff but should be an outside speaker with something of interest to say to your clients. You should not have much difficulty finding people willing to give up a few hours to speak to your Platinum and Gold clients, hence there should be very little cost.

Your clients ‘pay’ for their admission by bringing with them a guest of similar standing to themselves who would like to hear the speaker and network with people similar to themselves. Of course during the networking period you and your staff are busy meeting and greeting both your existing clients and their guests.

If twenty clients each bring a guest then you have twenty potential new prospects. It is important to obtain name, address and email address for all of the guests and then put in place a systematic process for keeping in touch with them until you make a sale.

The benefit of this seminar model is of course that you provide your key clients with something of value that has cost very little and you now have a number of prospects in your system that you can follow up. If you run the ‘club’ every few months on a regular programme you will obtain a regular supply of new prospects.

You should have little difficulty arranging for someone to talk at the meeting if they have the opportunity to obtain contact details from the audience.

Good luck.

About The Author

Stuart Lockley is a Business Growth Consultant who specialises in assisting owner managed businesses to grow and develop. Stuart can be contacted at www.stuartlockley.com.

[email protected]

This article was posted on December 22, 2004

by Stuart Lockley

Writing Helpful Help – A Minimalism Checklist

Writing Helpful Help – A Minimalism Checklist

by: Glenn Murray

User documentation is all too often written by programmers for programmers. It tends to focus on the product’s features, rather than the user’s tasks. Generally, programmers aren’t in the ideal position to be writing user documentation. They’re too close to the bits and bytes, and they’re too far from the user. To them, what the product can do tends to be far more important than what the user can do with the product.
It’s a subtle – but vital – distinction. Research shows that the key to effective user documentation is writing task oriented help. Even better, write your help according to the minimalist theory. In the documentation world, ขminimalismข is a fancy word for a commonsense practice. In basic terms, it means write to your reader and keep it simple.
The theory itself has a lot of twists and turns. If you want to read a great – but slightly wordy – book on the subject, check out the book ขMinimalism Beyond the Nurnberg Funnelข, 1998, edited by John Carroll.
In the meantime, if you can tick every item in the following checklist, you’ll be well on your way to usable online help that both your readers and your managers will thank you for.
Helpful Help Checklist
1. Base the help on real tasks (or realistic examples)
2. Structure the help based on task sequence – Chapter headings should be goals and topics should be tasks
3. Respect the readerกs activity – this is generally more about what you don’t do than what you do. Don’t waste the reader’s time by diving off into tangents
4. Exploit prior knowledge and experience – Draw the reader’s attention to previous tasks, experiences, successes, and failures
5. Prevent mistakes กEnsure you do x before doing yก
6. Detect and identify mistakes กIf this fails, you may have entered the path incorrectlyก
7. Fix mistakes ‘reenter the pathก
8. Provide error info at end of tasks where necessary (rule of thumb, one error info note per three tasks is a good average)
9. Don’t break up instructions with notes, cautions, warnings, and exceptional cases Put these things at the end of the instruction, wherever possible
10. Be brief, don’t spell everything out, especially things that can be taken for granted
11. Omit conceptual and note information where possible, or link to it. Perhaps provide expansion information at the end of the topic, plus maybe a note that there are other ways to perform the task/goal, but this is the easiest
12. Sections should look short and read short
13. Provide closure for sections (e.g., back to original screen/goal)
14. Provide an immediate opportunity to act and encourage exploration and innovation (use active invitations to act, such as, กSee for yourself…ก or ‘try this…ก rather than passive invitations such as, กYou can…ก)
15. Get users started quickly
16. Allow for reading in any order make each section modular, especially goals, but perhaps tasks (definitely if they can be performed in different order)
17. Highlight things that are not typical
18. Use active voice rather than passive voice
19. Try to account for the userกs environment in your writing
20. Before writing anything, ask yourself ขWill this help my reader?ข
By building these practices into your documentation process, you’ll find that your online help becomes easier to write, shorter, and far more usable for your reader. What’s more, your boss will love you!

About The Author

Glenn Murray heads advertising copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at [email protected]. Visit http://www.divinewrite.com for further details or more FREE articles.

This article was posted on May 26, 2004

by Glenn Murray

10 Profit Boosting Tips To Increase The Success Of

10 Profit Boosting Tips To Increase The Success Of Your Affiliate Program

by: Ken Hill

1. Develop credible, benefit rich ad copy, along with a well designed site to increase your sign ups, and also your affiliatesก conversion rates.

2. Submit your affiliate program to directories that list affiliate programs.

These directories attract lots of people interested in joining affiliate programs, and will increase your sign ups by giving you good ongoing promotion of your affiliate program.

3. Pay your affiliates well for promoting your products.

Offering your affiliates a high commission rate for their referrals of your products will increase the number of affiliates that join your affiliate program and also help you to better compete with other businesses for affiliates.

To make your affiliate program even more appealing to your visitors, pay residual commissions if you sell a product or service that your customers pay for on an ongoing basis such as webhosting or access to your private members only site.

In addition, you can increase your sign ups by making your affiliate program twotier, where your affiliates earn commissions on their own referrals and also on the referrals of affiliates theyกve personally referred to your affiliate program.

4. Track the sales you get from your affiliates fairly and accurately.

Track phone orders and mail in orders. Only offer payment options to your customers that your affiliates will get paid a commission on if they refer that customer to you.

In addition, pay your affiliates promptly for the sales they refer to you. Don’t make your affiliates wait months to receive their checks from you or set minimum payment requirements that are too high for the majority of your affiliates to meet.

5. Provide your affiliates with resources that they can use to get more sales of your products such as ads, banners, button ads, and sample recommendations.

Also include promotional items such as marketing courses that your affiliates can use to promote your products or ebooks that they can rebrand with their affiliate URL.

If you write articles allow your affiliates to run these in their ezines or post them on their sites with their affiliate URLs in your resource box.

6. Answer any questions you get about your affiliate program from your visitors or affiliates as quickly as you can.

Remember that nothing will turn your visitors or affiliates off of your affiliate program faster than an unanswered email. Strive to answer all your emails quickly and in a professional and friendly manner.

7. Provide ways for your affiliates to network with each other.

You could provide a message board or chat room where your affiliates can interact with one another, and learn more about how to successfully promote your products.

Your message boards or chat rooms will also provide you with an excellent chance to show your support for your affiliates and to help them to get started marketing your products with your own tips and advice.

8. Give special recognition to your top earning affiliates by giving them bonuses for the sales they bring you or by paying them a special higher commission based on their performance.

9. Publish an affiliates only newsletter.

Your newsletter will help you to successfully provide your affiliates with tips and techniques that they can use to get more sales of your products.

Publishing your newsletter will also help you to keep your affiliates up to date on any new products youกve added that your affiliates can promote, and can help you to increase your profits by notifying your affiliates when you’re running a special sale or promotion.

10.Show your appreciation of your top affiliates by mentioning them, their sites, and strategies they use to promote your products in your newsletter.

This will provide you with an effective way to increase their loyalty to your program while providing your other affiliates with excellent tips and strategies for them to use to successfully promote your products.

About The Author

Article by writer, Ken Hill. Start Your Own Profit Creating Affiliate Program! Amazing allinone solution includes affiliate program software, newbie friendly shopping cart, unlimited autoresponders, easy newsletter management and much more to increase your sales! Get your no cost 30 day trial now at: http://www.scstats.com/r.cfm?i=5029

This article was posted on April 03, 2004

by Ken Hill

Thereกs Gold in Your Websiteกs Server Log

Thereกs Gold in Your Websiteกs Server Log

by: Stephen Bucaro

Many Webmasters have never bothered to view their websiteกs server log. Ignoring your server log is like flying with a blind pilot. You may still be cruising along, but you have no idea where you are or where you’re headed. If your website is on a free host, you probably don’t have access to the server log. However, if you pay for your web host, or if you own the server, you almost always have some access to the server log.

In this article, youกll learn what kind of information a typical server log provides, how to analyze that information, and how to use that information to steer your website in a direction for growth and success.

The actual data in the server log is just that, data. Data is of little use without an application to compile, categorize, analyze, and turn it into useful information. The power of server log analysis software varies depending upon the web host, and itกs not related to how much you pay for hosting service. I have seen some very low budget web hosts with powerful server log analysis software, and some expensive web hosts that provide only a limited utility.

The importance of the server log analysis software is second only to uptime reliabilty when it comes to web hosts. A web server log can tell you who is visiting your web site, where they’re coming from, what operating system and web browser they’re using, what pages of your website they are viewing, and much more. A smart webmaster performs a regular monthly analysis of the valuable information contained in the server log.

Hits

Some webmasters brag about the number of กhitsก their website receives, but hits themselves are not important. For example, when a search engine spiders your website, it generates a hit for every page it visits. There are ways to generate millions of hits on a website without anyone ever actually viewing a single page.

The important statistics are กpage view hitsก and กunique visitorsก. Server log analysis software should tell you how many times each page was viewed. Anaylyzing the popularity of individual pages tells you where to place your most important advertisements, and what kind of new content you should add to your website.

The king of all statistics is the number of unique visitors your web site receives. When it comes to selling advertising or joining the most exclusive affiliate programs, a high number of unique visitors each month is the statistic that gets respect.

Good analysis software will tell you how many pages each visitor viewed and how long they stayed on your website. The goal is to develop content that gets your visitors to stay longer, a quality sometimes referred to as กstickinessก.

A statistic related to hits is กbandwidthก. This is a complicated statistic because you want more visitors and that causes bandwidth to go up. On the other hand, high bandwidth consumption makes your website repond slower (and most web hosts charge extra for bandwidth beyond a certain limit). What you want is to design your web pages so they use bandwidth efficiently, and you want to be on the lookout for people who are stealing your bandwidth (usually by linking to images on your web site).

Referrers

Good server log analysis software will provide you with the URLs of the webpages that people clicked on to get to your website. This is extremely valuable information. If you are receiving a high volume of traffic from another website, you can almost consider that website to be your business partner. It would be to your advantage to find ways to make your website more useful to the referring website. For example, learn what the topic of the referring website is and place more related content on your website.

One common method of aiding referrers is to place a reciprocal link on your website. However, don’t bother placing the reciprocal link on a กlinksก page with hundreds of other links (a link farm). If you can’t provide an honest reciprocal link, itกs better to do nothing. An honest reciprocal link might be a page containing a review of the referrerกs website, and that page should contain only a few other links.

Search Strings

Good server log analysis software will provide you with the keywords and search strings people entered at a search site to find your website. One way to get more traffic to your website is to provide more content related to the top keywords. If getting more traffic is your single goal, there are websites that will provide you with a list of the current most popular keywords entered into search engines. Then you can provide more content related to those keywords. This gets involved with the subject of กSearch Engine Optimizationก (SEO).

SEO is a science in itself, covered in other articles, but I will reveal a secret trick as an example of SEO tactics. Starting with a top keyword, generate every possible misspelling of that keyword and place those at the top of your webpage with the text color the same as the webpage background. (Note: I don’t use that trick or any other SEO tricks myself because if you get caught the search engines will penalize your website.)

Platform and User Agent Good server log analysis software will tell you which operating systems and which browser brands and versions people are using to access your website. At the time of this writing, the most common operating system is Windows XP and the most common browser is Internet Explorer version 6. However, you will find a wide range of operating systems and browsers accessing you website. Unfortunately, they are not all compatible.

The fact is, you can’t design your website to be 100 percent compatible with every operating system and web browser in use today. That would require either using only plain html (version 3) or using browser detection code and creating a dozen variations of each webpage. Use your server logกs platform and user agent data to decide which browser your web pages should to be designed to be compatible with. Your statistics will probably show that 90 percent of your websiteกs visitors are using the latest or the previous version of Internet Explorer.

Country Information

Good server log analysis software will tell you which countries your website visitors are located in. Analysis of the bucarotechlp.com server logs shows that visitors are located in every country, village, and hamlet on the planet. This leads to the question, should you create multiple variations of each webpage to accomodate visitors from other nations? It depends upon your business and your resources. The fact is that the language of business and commerce across the planet is English, and I receive frequent email, in English, from all over the planet.

Important Ways to Use Server Log Information

Website Design

Remember when the typical website had a gray background and a single image in the middle of the page? Today, that would be below the standard for a kids website on AOL. Does your server log กplatformก and กuser agentก statistics tell you that most of the visitors to your website are using Windows XP with Internet Explorer Version 6, while your website is designed for Windows 95 and Internet Explorer Version 4? Can you afford to be presenting a website that looks outdated?

I think itกs a mistake to design a website that requires your visitors to have the latest bleedingedge technology. On the other hand, if the rest of the web is using ASP (Active Server Pages) to generate custom webpages onthefly that use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to create webpages that resemble slick magazine pages and DHTML (Dynamic HTML) to provide interactivity, it might be time for you to investigate those technologies.

If your website is a business site or Ecommerce site, the visual style and technical level of your website reflects the quality of your business or service. To determine the proper visual style and technology level of your website requires you to monitor three things.

1. Your competitors. You want to look as instyle as they do, but avoid following them down the road to bloated plugins (Macromedia Flash). 2. The portion of your audience using broad band Internet Access. Less than half of U.S. Make sure your webpages load within 20 seconds over a 56kbps modem connection. 2. Your server log platform and user agent statistics. Your web pages need to be designed to be compatible with the current most popular operating system and web browser version.

Webhost Performance

Web hosts provide two basic kinds of service, shared hosting and dedicated hosting. If your website is on a shared host, there may be hundreds of other websites sharing the same computer as your website. This limits the performance of your website. Many web host providers use กbandwidth throttlingก to prevent one website from hogging all the available bandwidth.

As your website grows and attracts increasing traffic, it will need more of the host computers processor time and more bandwidth. Monitor your server log hits, and bandwidth statistics. At some point, your website may hit a performance wall and you may need to move to a higher grade of hosting, or a different web host company to continue growth.

When moving to a different web host company, don’t trust the specifications they provide. Check several different web host directories that let visitors rate web hosts. If several different web host directories have many users that give a web host company a high rating, thatกs the company you want to trust with your website.

Website Topic

As you analyze certain website server statistics (for example, กpage view hitsก, and ‘top search engine keywordsก) and make adjustments, you may find the content of your website drifting away from your original intent. At some point, you may have to decide, Am I going to chase traffic and change the topic of my website, or am I more interested in focusing on the topic of my choice?

If the original objective of your website was to make money above all else, then let your visitors steer your websiteกs content. Thereกs nothing wrong with that. Everybodyกs got to make a living. But, if the original objective of your website was to be a resource on a subject that you are passionate about, then you may need to reassess the content of your website.

I would reccommend having the best of both worlds. Stick to content related to the subject of your website, but delineate a wide enough scope of the topic so that when your server statistics point out an opportunity to increase traffic, you have rules to guide you.

In this article you learned some of the types of information you can mine from your web server log and some powerful ways to use that information to steer your website in a direction for growth and success. If you are one of those webmasters who has never bothered to view their websiteกs server log, you now know that you have been overlooking some gold nuggets.

Permission is granted for the below article to forward, reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website, offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as long as no changes are made and the byline, copyright, and the resource box below is included.

Copyright(C) Bucaro TecHelp.

About The Author

Stephen Bucaro

Copyright(C) Bucaro TecHelp.

To learn how to maintain your computer and use it more effectively to design a Web site and make money on the Web visit bucarotechelp.com. To subscribe to Bucaro TecHelp Newsletter visit http://bucarotechelp.com/search/000800.asp

This article was posted on September 21, 2004

by Stephen Bucaro

10 Winning Ezine Publishing Tips

10 Winning Ezine Publishing Tips

by: Ken Hill

1. Share your personality with your subscribers. Your subscribers are more likely to want to buy from someone they feel like they know.
2. Involve your subscribers in your ezine by asking them to send in their profiles, tips and advice, or by asking them to send in their articles for publication in your ezine.
3. Include testimonials or endorsements for your business within your ezine.
Ask for feedback within your ezine and on your site to gather more of these for your products or services.
4. Periodically run surveys or polls that give you direction on where to take your ezine.
Keep your polls or surveys short and to the point. Only ask questions you need to know at the time.
Also provide a bonus or freebie for taking your polls or surveys to increase the number of your readers that participate in them.
5. Write articles. Your articles will give you an effective way to share your tips and expertise with your subscribers.
Your articles can also be used as a powerful promotional tool that boosts your subscriptions.
6. Run an กAsk The Editorก section.
This section will not only provide answers or solutions to your subscribersก questions but is also an excellent way to increase your status as an expert in your field.
7. Provide a bonus or freebie for subscribing to your ezine. You could provide ebooks, email courses, or access to your membership site as a bonus for subscribing.
8. Provide your subscribers with special sales on advertising in your ezine.
Your subscriber only specials will help you to get more of your subscribers to purchase ads for the first time and will also help you to get more of your subscribers to advertise in your ezine on a consistent basis.
9. Promote affiliate programs to your subscribers by recommending their products.
If youกve already gained the trust of your subscribers, writing recommendations will be very effective in increasing your commissions. Only recommend products that you know deliver.
10. Swap recommendations with other ezine publishers.
You could recommend another publisherกs ezine in your own words in exchange for that publisher doing the same for you.
You could also set up a recommended ezine section where you and several other ezine publishers promote each otherกs ezines.
In addition, you could successfully increase your subscriptions by swapping recommendations in your welcome message or on your ‘thank youก page that your new subscribers are taken to after subscribing to your ezine.

About The Author

Article by writer, Ken Hill. Learn tips and techniques to help you successfully start your own ezine. Visit Kenกs site today at http://www.netpromarketer.com for more articles and a great tutorial on ezine publishing.

This article was posted on June 22, 2004

by Ken Hill

The Doกs of Banner Designing

The Doกs of Banner Designing

by: Grannyกs Mettle

Banners are effective media materials that can make or break a companyกs ad campaign. For web sites, along with the corporate logo, the banner speaks of your message and what you want to achieve for your corporate image and identity.

To help you with your banner design, we have compiled the following tips and suggestions that have made other web sites effective in terms of the amount of visitors and sales.

The Doกs of Designing Your Banner

DO use animation. Especially animation that is quick to download. Animations do attract the attention of your target audience, but it should not take much time to download or else your visitors would just click on to another site.

But remember to provide animation in the minimum. Too much would not attract but irritate your visitors. It will also overwhelm your page.

Grantastic Designs have provided the following general guidelines for animated banners:

The animation should be subtle enough to attract attention but should not be so ostentatious as to interfere or clash with the design of the web page you are advertising on.

An animation that loops endlessly tends to irritate visitors. Have the animation loop 710 times, leaving the main message on the last animation frame.

Conversely, some visitors will stop a web page from loading before the banner animation has loaded, leaving only the first frame. Thus, it might be a good idea to have your message come across in your first frame if you know that the web page you are advertising on has a long download time.

DO provide features that call for some action. Images that ask visitors to กclickก or กsubmitก on your banner can improve significantly the rate of visitors clicking on your web page. Visitors are attracted to click on icons especially if you offer them something in return.

DO provide กFREEก in your banner. Human nature provides for attraction of anything that is offered กFREEก. Depending on what is being offered, the word กFREEก can increase the rate of visitors clicking on your web site. Web sites usually offer free demonstrations of new software. This often gets good response from the target audience. Offering free money though produces suspicion among the browsers since people tend to question what the catch is.

DO use bright colors. Statistics show that the colors yellow, green, and blue in banners produce a higher rate of visitors, compared to those in blackandwhite. Also, red should also be used sparingly, as it suggests aggressiveness that seems to repel many of the browsers.

DO provide a benefit for clicking on your banner. When you have questions in your banner, be sure to provide the answer on your web site. Make sure that the benefit you provide is found in your web site. Or else, your visitors will never go to your web site the second time. Itกs so hard to make a good impression; but it takes only seconds to have a wrong perception of your company.

DO keep your message short and concise. Simple banners get more attention than wordy and unfocused ones. Thereกs no need to give a lengthy description of your web site. Any information that your visitors would want to know they will be able to get from the pages of your web site.

DO link your banner to a particular page. Visitors should be able to go directly to the appropriate page for the information they want. When they click on your banner, make sure that they don’t have to go to your home page and hunt for the information. You will lose visitors as fast as you can say banner.

We hope that we have helped you make your banners more effective and efficient in providing you with a tool to achieve success.

About The Author

Grannyกs Mettle is a 30something, professional web content writer. She has created various web content on a diverse range of topics, which includes digital printing topics, medical news, as well as legal issues. Her articles are composed of reviews, suggestions, tips and more for the printing and designing industry.

Her thoughts on writing: กWriting gives me pleasure… pleasure and excitement that you have created something to share with others. And with the wide world of the Internet, it gives me great satisfaction that my articles reach more people in the quickest time you could imagine.ก

On her spare time, she loves to stay at home, reading books on just about any topic she fancies, cooking a great meal, and taking care of her husband and kids.

For comments and inquiries about the article visit http://www.ucreative.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 03

by Grannyกs Mettle