FFA/Reversed Marketing

FFA/Reversed Marketing

by: Thomas Grodem

Have you ever submitted your ad to an FFA page? most likely you have. Did you get any results from it or did you just get a ton of emails in your inbox?

FFA pages are gaining popularity popping like bombs everywhere!

What is an FFA page? It is a free for all page.

How it works is quite simple: you place a line of text on the FFA site for free…like thousands of other advertisers each day.

The problem with FFA pages is that everybody is submitting their ad to it. So each time a new ad is submitted, all the other ads roll down one rank and the oldest ad is dropped of. What originally gave an exposure of days per submission, today only gives you about 30 minutes. This means you have to submit at least 3 times a day. You can do this automatically by using an auto submitter, which claims to submit your ad to a zillion websites. You must understand that this is not regular websites, but search engines, Directories and FFA pages.Still it is a lot of ads, and someone might see it.

The lack of results from these ads is because:

your ad is mixed in with hundreds of other ads

Have you ever visited an FFA page and looked at the ads? Today most people use automated submission tools, so they never visits the site.

If someone does visit the page, your ad could be gone within a few hours or less.

Fore those of you that has submitted your ads to FFA pages, you must have noticed all the emails you receive back.

How would you like to be the one sending out those emails?

What i am saying is that you shouldn’t POST to FFA pages… You should HOST your own FFA page!

There is several ways to approach hosting your own FFA page.

You could create it yourself if you know how. Or, there is someone willing to help you for free. Go to http://ratesaver.com.au/lp.htm

The next step you have to do is notifying URL submission services.

The manual way: use search engines like google to find URL submission services and notify them of your links page

The automatic way: go to http://ratesaver.com.au/tsalintro.htm

Enter your links page title and address. Press submit and you will notify over 140 URL submission services about your page.

This service costs us$19.95.

Now you are the one sending out all those emails with your info in them. It’s called ‘reversed advertisingก. And it’s the most effective way to market yourself on the internet today!

About The Author

Thomas Grodem publishes Home Business Tips, a fresh and informative newsletter dedicated to supporting people like YOU! If you’re looking for the best rated home business opportunities, the latest time saving tools and helpful support from an honest friend in the business come by and grab a FREE subscription today at: http://prosperconnection.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on September 06, 2003

by Thomas Grodem

Submitting Your Site To The Open Web Directory: So

Submitting Your Site To The Open Web Directory: Some Dos And Don’ts

by: Donald Nelson

One of the most important steps in any site’s publicity campaign is the submission to the Open Web Directory (http://www.dmoz.org) as this directory provides search results for many of the most important search engines and online portals. This directory is not a robot driven spider, but a human edited directory and you must observe a few important points if your submission is to be successful.

http://resourcezone.com/ubbthreads.php .There you can ask about the status of your submission, but you must give them the date and category to which you submitted your site. You can ask questions about the procedures etc, but one more thing, don’t argue with the editors. Find out how the editors of the directory work and do your best to meet their conditions and you will be successful.

About The Author

Donald Nelson is a web developer, editor and social worker. He has been working on the Internet since 1995 and is currently the director of A1Optimization (www.a1optimization.com) a firm providing affordable search engine optimization and other website promotion services. You can get his monthly newsletter “A1Web Promotion Tips” by sending an email to [email protected]

[email protected]

This article was posted on May 21, 2003

by Donald Nelson

Review of EzineAnnouncer

Review of EzineAnnouncer

by: Bonnie Jo Davis

The most critical piece of software in my article submission arsenal is EzineAnnouncer. Iกve been using EzineAnnouncer, developed by Jason Potash, for ten months with a great deal of success and just a little aggravation.

EzineAnnouncer automates ezine submission to directories and announcement lists, registration of articles in directories, submission of articles to ezines and article announcement lists and posting and tracking of free ezine ads. Article and ezine submission projects that used to take me a dozen hours each are now reduced by more than half which greatly improves my efficiency and profit margin.

EzineAnnouncer is easy to install and comes with five tutorial videos that are a must view for new users. Without viewing the videos even the most seasoned computer professional can have problems getting started with EzineAnnouncer. Even after viewing the videos I had some questions which were answered by Jason in a timely manner.

Included with EzineAnnouncer is a database of article directories and announcement lists, ezine directories, free ad ezines, ezine announcement lists and numerous ezines that accept article submissions. Unfortunately, the current database is sadly outofdate which is not a problem if, like me, you have your own database which can easily be added to the software. Jason has assured me that a newly updated database will be available in January with all current owners receiving a free copy.

The real value of EzineAnnouncer, in my opinion, is the automation of submissions. Many of the included resources require the use of submission forms and each form is different. The database has each form prefilled using macros and the information you provide when setting up your ezine or article. Email submissions are made using premade email templates that are easily customized for each submission project.

EzineAnnouncer keeps track of submissions and projects by providing an onscreen report so that you can start and stop submissions without losing your place.

Technical support for EzineAnnouncer is said to be available by email but in ten months of use I have yet to receive a response to my requests for technical support. Fortunately my issues were minor and I was able to fix the problems myself by backing up the database and reinstalling the software.

EzineAnnouncer has allowed me to make hundreds of dollars and saved me countless hours while handling submission projects for clients. This is a necessary tool for anyone promoting ezines or articles if you can handle the minor issues that accompany the use of most software programs. EzineAnnouncer comes with a six month guarantee so risk of purchasing is minimal.

Visit http://tinyurl.com/yd5c for more information about EzineAnnouncer and Jason Potash.

(c) 2003, Davis Virtual Assistance. All rights in all media reserved.

The author grants reprint permission to all venues so long as the article is not used in spam and the copyright and byline are included intact.

About The Author

Bonnie Jo Davis is webmaster of the Articles That Sell Center. Visit http://www.ArticlesThatSell.com to learn everything you need to know about marketing with articles and signup for the free monthly newsletter.

This article was posted on December 17, 2003

by Bonnie Jo Davis

RSS Directory Submission: The Key to Blog Promotio

RSS Directory Submission: The Key to Blog Promotion

by: Josiah Mackenzie

According to Technorati, there are over 15 million blogs as of July 2005. And during July, an average of 80,000 new blogs were created each day. If you own a blog, how are you going to promote it in order to stay ahead of the competition?

Fortunately, there is a simple, yet very effective method: RSS directory submission. Submitting your RSS newsfeed to specialized news directories benefits your site in several ways.

RSS directory submission increases your readership. When a person is looking for newsfeeds to add to their RSS reader, it is highly likely they will visit an RSS directory to find newsfeeds on their subject of interest. I recently visited a directory looking for personal business blogs. I subscribed to several, and now read them via RSS on a regular basis. Someone else may have an excellent business blog, but since they weren’t listed in the directory, I was unable to discover their site.

RSS directory submission enables your content to be duplicated and linked to from other sites. One of the key benefits of syndicating content through RSS is that it increases your reach. You can publish an article, then have excerpts of that article placed on hundreds of other websites – with links back to the original on your site. Many webmasters want to have fresh content for their visitors, and embedding an RSS newsfeed is the easiest way to do that. You’ll want to make sure that you are listed in RSS directories when a webmaster visits looking for website content – or your competitors may get the free promotion!

RSS directory submission provides immediate link popularity. RSS directories are similar to other web directories – you get a free, oneway link back to your site when you are listed. Think about this. Most RSS directories carry a pagerank (PR) of 5 or higher. When you multiply that over 50 RSS directories, that is a lot of links back to your site – meaning increased search engine rank and more visitors.

There are several ways you can submit your RSS newsfeed to directories. The first, obviously, is by hand. You can get a list of the directories (http://www.rsssoftware.net/rssdirectories.php), then go to each website and add your feed manually. Since there are many RSS directories, this can take quite a while. To save the webmaster time, two ways of automated directory submission exist.

The first one is RSS Submit (http://www.dummysoftware.com/rsssubmit.html), a program that automates the directory submission process. All you have to do is open the software, enter the URL for your feed, and RSS Submit will instantly send the feed information to approximately 40 directories. You can also manually submit your site to another 25 directories using RSS Submit’s autofill function.

The second method is appropriately named: RSS Directory Submission Service (http://www.rssdirectorysubmission.com). This service is similar to RSS Submit – you give them your feed URL, and they submit it to over 50 directories. The difference between the two is price: while RSS Submit costs $44.95 for a personal, noncommercial license. RSS Directory Submission Service charges $8.95 per feed submission. And since sites usually only have one feed, the RSS Directory Submission Service is more economical for most RSS publishers.

Regardless of the RSS directory submission method you choose, make sure to do it! You will find the effort small compared to the benefits you receive.

About The Author

Josiah Mackenzie is a entrepreneur who shares business tips and advice through his website: http://www.josiahmackenzie.com.

His latest project is an RSS/Blog Directory: http://www.rssblogdirectory.com

This article was posted on August 27

by Josiah Mackenzie

All Time Most Effective Way to get Backlinks to yo

All Time Most Effective Way to get Backlinks to your Website

by: Tyler Johnson

There have been so much fuss about how to get the best links back to your site. A lot suggested that reciprocal linking is the way to go and yet you get this reminders that not necessarily all backlinks are credited by search engine specially Google to a particular site if such link source is not related to your site.

Another is the submission to website directories which is a really over rated form of pr improvement, the benefits of submitting to these directories is not equal to the effort you put into it.

Directory Submission is a very tiring process where you must first find which directories are free submission sites because as a personal experience most of the website directories on the web are paid services. Some would even cloak product marketing by using a commonly formatted paid directory submission software just to improve the homepage visibility and pr rank.

And the most discouraging about website directory submission is that in the process of adding your site to the directory many of the free directory submission site would require you to immediately put up a reciprocal link to their site even before your site is approved. The result would be they do not approve your site and their site already has a backlink from your site.

Now, you would think that how can that be a problem?

Why dont you just erase their site if your site doesnt get approved. EASIER SAID THAN DONE! imagine compiling around 300 to 500 directory sites and submitting your site to all these site. Would you think you will have the energy to check site number 20 or 35 or 58 if they have approved your site if you are busy submitting your site to directory site number 90 or say site number 134? I dont think so.

For me and for the majority of the wise internet marketers the number 1 most effective way of improving backlinks and in the process promoting your product or site with a personal touch is …. ARTICLE SUBMISSION

Here are a few advantages of Article Submission:

1. Your get the much coveted backlink needed for the improvement of PR ranking of your site

2. You get the personal touch of promoting your site or product to the reader of the article.

3. Unlike reciprocal linking and website directory submissions…. Article Submission is a viral process.

Articles is a much coveted content source for ezine publishers and website owners. Imagine submitting your well written article to a highly popular Article Bank Site such as ArticleAvenue.com or Goarticles.com which

are a source of articles for hundreds or even thousands of hungry content webmasters and then finding your article in 100 or more ezine and content sites in just a matter of weeks.

In my own experience after submitting my article to the big boys such as Article Avenue and Article City etc. in just a months time i already have hundreds of backlinks hitting my site not mentioning that my article is in the top 10 of its major keyword in major search engines.

Now, wouldnt that be a hell lot of a lighter job to accomplish!

Here is the Process of ARTICLE SUBMISSION:

Start making your article now and put a lot of thinking into it because one well written article is all you need to get your site to the top.

After creating your article submit it immediately to the big movers of articles which are:

1. ArticleAvenue.com (http://www.articleavenue.com) Highly Recommended this site has a superb seo strategy that will help boost your article in the search ranking and also rotates all articles in the database in the its homepage making your articles ageless. Source of hundreds of content and ezine sites. No Popups.

2. Goarticles.com (http://goarticles.com)Recommended Has a wide range of categories for your article and also a major source of articles by content sites. No Popups.

3. Articlecity.com has a large following of web authors and also a major source of articles by content site. With Popups.

After submitting to a few other more article directories, just sit and wait for the fruits of your not so hard but effective labor.

Goodluck and See you at the top.

Note: Reproduction of this article is only permitted if all links are intact and active specially the authorกs resource box and no alterations are done to the whole article otherwise such reproduction would be considered illegal and a violation of the authors rights. Please respect the work of the Author.

About The Author

Tyler Jared Johnson [email protected]

First Quadrant is one of the top multilevel marketing companies in the country and is one of the top distributors in the leather products industry.

[email protected]

This article was posted on September 11

by Tyler Johnson

Submitting Your Site to Search Directories

Submitting Your Site to Search Directories

by: Julia Hyde

Getting your site listed in the search engines directories can be a timeconsuming and complicated process. But, with a little effort, research and patience it can be done.

This guide will take you through the steps that will ensure your site gets listed.

What are directories?

Unlike search engines that use spiders to crawl the Web looking for content and links, (Google, Inktomi, Alta Vista) directories are powered by people.

Many charge a fee to get listed (paid inclusion or payperclick). They include Yahoo!, LookSmart and The Open Directory. It is possible to list your site for free but paying for listings will speed up the process and generate more search engine related traffic for your site.

Before submitting to directories you’ll want to sit down and prepare a 25 word or less description of your site making use of two or three key terms or phrases that describe your site. When deciding on your phrases think about what words people will use to search for your product or service. For example, if your site sells window coverings you may want to write your description like this:

ขPurchase custom draperies, blinds, shades, wood shutters, sheer curtains, and other window coverings plus browse our drapery fabricsข

Don’t be tempted to use ขmarketing speakข in your description. Use the facts and include as many relevant keywords as you can.

If you’re planning on using the paid inclusion services you’ll want to establish a submission budget beforehand. Currently, I’d estimate around $800 or so, although prices have a habit of increasing so you may need more.

Submitting your site to…

Yahoo!

Yahoo! has two submission options:

1.Standard submission (noncommercial) Free

2 Express Submission – $300 annual fee

For a free standard submission click on the ขsuggest a siteข link and fill out the submission form.

For paid submission go to http://add.yahoo.com/fast/add?+business

LookSmart

Before MSN announced it was switching to Inktomi, LookSmart was the power horse behind their popular search engine. In fact, MSN accounted for half of LookSmart’s revenue. But don’t let MSN’s departure stop you from submitting to LookSmart – it still distributes to other search engines so it’s important to get your site listed.

Like Yahoo! LookSmart has a free submit (noncommercial) option and a paid submit for commercial ones.

To submit for free go to www.zeal.com and sign up as a member. Once you’ve completed the form and passed the test you can submit your site using the ขmanageข option and the ขAdd a siteข link.

To submit for paid inclusion go to www.listings.looksmart.com and fill out the online form. LookSmart’s paid listings are priced on a costperclick (CPC)basis. Meaning you only pay when a user clicks on your listing and visits your web site. A $0.15 CPC is given for the first 5,000 clicks when you pay with a credit card online. Any clicks after 5,000 are billed at your business category rate, which ranges from $0.23 to $0.75 per click.

The Open Directory

Although the Open Directory is volunteer built it is essential to Web site owners. Submission is free but the turnaround time for a yes or no answer to your submission may take a long time.

To submit your site visit www.dmoz.org, identify your category then use the ขadd URLข form. Fill out the form and you’re done.

There are other smaller and directories you may also want to consider. They include: GoGuides, Gimpsy, JoeAnt and WebBeacon.

About The Author

Julia is an independent copywriter and consultant specializing in search engine marketing and copywriting for websites, brochures, press releases and other materials businesses need to increase sales. If you need help promoting your business, visit Juliaกs website at www.juliahyde.com or send an email to [email protected]. Sheกll get back to you right away.

This article was posted on April 19, 2004

by Julia Hyde

Why DotComs Fail a Webmasterกs Perspective

Why DotComs Fail a Webmasterกs Perspective

by: Daniel Bazac

Everyday we hear that another company goes out of business.

When and why does a dotcom become a dotbomb?

After checking few dozen defunct companies, I think the main reasons for dotcoms failure are:

Poor business plan. In the last years, a lot of investment capital was spent on poorly planned companies that clearly couldn’t reach profitability.

Poor company promotion. This applies both offline and online. Two newspaper ads and word of mouth are not enough.

Poor financial management. Fancy offices, free food, does it ring a bell?

Poor Human Resources management. With lots of cash in their hands, many startup companies hired too many people or, even worse, hired unqualified staff. The hiring of friends and relatives often returned no value on investments.

Errors in the companyกs Web site. Sometimes hundreds of errors could be found in one Web page. Yes, those Web site builders should go back to school if they ever went to school for HTML at all.

Iกll focus my comments on the last reason:

How Errors in the Web Site Can Affect the Companyกs Health

Itกs clear that you can make money on the Web if you have customers. You have customers if you have viewers ‘trafficก in the geekกs language. And you get traffic if your site is easy to find near the top in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Thatกs not so easy to achieve.

First of all your site has to be indexed by the search tools: Search Engines and Web Directories.

Although some Search Engines will eventually find your site by themselves, most of the time this only happens if somebody links to your site. In the case of a NEW site, having existing links is almost impossible. Rather than wait for links to be made, start a submission campaign.

A big nono is submitting a Web site using submission software. Using software of this type may be quick and easy, but some Web Directories and Search Engines do NOT accept automated submissions.

Itกs true that manual submission is a time consuming process youกll have to read AND follow each Search Enginesก submission guidelines, to effectively perform the submission – but itกs a necessary step.

Most of the defunct sites Iกve checked had only a modest presence and visibility in the Search Engines.

Letกs say that you submitted your site correctly, you waited a reasonable amount of time usually few weeks – for the Search Engines to process your submission, but your site does not appear near the top in the Search Engine Results Pages.

You’re wondering why, right? Well, one or more of the following reasons might apply:

1) Your submission was not accepted by the Search Engines. If you used spamming techniques, such as:

Repeating keywords in the keyword meta tag or using text in the same color as the background, some Search Engines might refuse to index your site.

Page redirection including cloaking or building artificial links farms can sometimes be seen as spam by some Search Engines. These links farms involve building Web pages for the sole purpose of creating links to the targeted site. For more about spam please read my article:

กSearch Engine Spamming Sucks!ก [ http://www.webdesigninnewyork.com/articles.html ]

Some Search Engines also have difficulty in indexing pages that use frames or Flash.

2) Your submission was accepted, but your site is not listed in the Top 1030. Because very few people check pages after the first 30 results, you want to be in the Top 1030. There are many reasons why a site is not listed high.

The most common reasons are:

The lack of your main keywords in the content of the page, in the Title tag and in the Description and Keyword meta tags. Ultimately it all depends of the Search Engines’ algorithm the criteria used by the Search Engines to rank pages.

HTML errors. Examples include unclosed tags, unquoted attributes, improperly nested tags, missing the ALT attribute on images. Any of these will affect your siteกs accessibility, reducing your potential client pool.

A Web site with HTML errors can look fine in Explorer, strange in Netscape or Opera and totally unreadable in a text browser. Although Explorer has the largest market share, an important percentage of net surfers use other browsers. Don’t forget the more than 50 million people in the USA with disabilities. Many of the latter use text/voice browsers.

Other Types of Errors in Web Sites

Proper HTML coding is very important but the structure and the layout of the pages are equally important. I saw sites without ANY way to contact the company: no email address, no กcontact pageก. I saw sites so crowded that it was almost impossible to find my way around. I saw sites with ugly color schemes. I saw a site so กheavyก that it took nearly three minutes to download the Home Page.

According to statistics, users have very limited patience when it comes to loading a page. If after eight seconds they cannot see the page, they leave. And we all know what that means or the success of a Web site.

I not only saw all those errors in sites that are now gone but I also found them in sites that are still alive, including, incredibly, some Fortune 500 companiesก Web sites.

So Do We DotCom or Not?

The answer is a resounding YES! But with one condition, learn from your predecessors.

How can a dotcom become profitable? I don’t pretend to know ALL the answers. If I did, I would be millionaire by now.

Advice for Forming and Managing Your Company:

Develop a sound business plan, with clear, credible ways to get to profitability. Venture capitalists are much more cautious than a few years ago. They invest less and are more selective in this risky business. They want value returned for their money. After all, statistics show that 9 out of 10 startups fail.

Handle your money wisely. Enough said.

Hire only the people you REALLY need and be sure ALL of them are professionals.

Advice Regarding the Web Site that Supports Your Company:

Do the right thing when you prepare the Web site. Hire reputable professionals to build and promote your cyber adventure. If you already have a Web site, remember that a Web site can easily be redesigned and properly resubmitted to search tools.

Have your site designed according to W3C Recommendations the Official HTML coding rules. Yes, this takes time and itกs much easier to use an HTML editor, but the results are much better when properly coded by hand. Watch your siteกs accessibility and usability. Don’t forget to test and validate the code. Talking about testing, do yourself a favor: check the spelling on your pages.

Do not use spamming techniques. You might not be caught today, but one day the Search Engines OR your competitors will find you. Search Engines sometimes will use this reason to ban your site FOR LIFE.

For more about spam please read my article:

กSearch Engine Spamming Sucks!ก [ http://www.webdesigninnewyork.com/articles.html ]

Avoid gizmos: JavaScripts, Flash or frames. Bells and whistles will NEVER help your pageก ranking. In fact, it will hurt your siteกs indexing or ranking in the Search Engines and will annoy most of your viewers. So, just don’t do it!

Have interesting content in your pages, content that grabs your viewerกs attention. No matter how beautiful your site is, no matter how much professional promotion you made, if the site doesn’t grab viewerกs interest, he will leave – you guessed it to your competitorsก sites.

Also, use the Title tag, the Keyword and Description meta tags in your HTML coding to list targeted keywords from the contents of your pages. This helps the Search Engines rank your site higher.

Promote the site thoroughly. Submit the site properly to Search Engines and Web Directories and pay special attention to the link popularity issue contact Webmasters of related sites to ask them to include a link to your site. Yes, it takes time, but itกs worth it.

So, letกs see: do we dotcom or not? You bet we do! There are tremendous opportunities on the Internet. Find your niche, follow the rules, work hard and youกll make it.

It will not be easy but if you believe in your dream and set realistic expectations, youกll be successful.

Good luck!

About The Author

Daniel Bazac is the Web Marketer for Web Design in New York, ( http://www.webdesigninnewyork.com ), a site design, Search Engine Optimization and promotion company. Heกs been online from 1995 and heกs also a seasoned Internet Information Researcher. He can be reached at mailto:[email protected]

This article was posted on April 19, 2002

by Daniel Bazac

Search Engine Submission Don’t be a cheapskate!

Search Engine Submission Don’t be a cheapskate!

by: Derek Arnold

Submitting your website to the main search engines should be handled with care. Do it right, and the rewards can be great.

Webmaster Beware Submitting your website to the major search engines too often can get your website banned completely from those all important major search engines, like Google, MSN, Yahoo and Alta Vista.

Let’s face it, everyone wants the coveted top position in their respective category on all the major search engines. Getting there requires a lot of tweaking of your meta tags, reciprocal linking to sites with high page ranks, and of course submitting your site to the search engines, either manually or utilizing a service to do it for you.

Submitting your site manually is a long a tedious operation, often requiring more time than you had planned on spending just to submit to 30 or less search engines. Submitting your site manually is not recommended.

Using a free service to submit your site is the next option you have for getting your site to the internet. The only problem with this method is that you get listed on only a few engines and, you sacrifice your email address to spam gods and become a part of the millions of poor souls who can never get any rest from the nasty spam vermin that will prey on you for the rest of your natural born life. In addition, it becomes very hard to track how often you have submitted your site to the search engines in the first place.

Using a qualified submission service is the most obvious choice here. There are a lot of services out there with offers like ขSubmit your site to 500,000 search engines and directories for only $39.95ข, the real problem with this is there are not even remotely close 500,000 qualified search engines out there, so that means that 99% of your submissions are going to what is know as FFA (FreeforAll) directories. These are NOT where you want to be, besides the fact that you are now in the dreaded worldwide spammers database, your site is listed on directories that get little or no respectable traffic and you have been taken for $39.95. These types of submission services are a dime a dozen on the internet and you should steer clear of any such ridiculous offers or claims.

The reputable companies will give you a clear and concise description of their services. They will break it down for you with information like as follows:

Which engines they specifically submit to.

A written guarantee not to share your personal information.

Make no outrageous claims to submission to hundreds of thousands of engines.

They will disclose all of they’re contact information so that you may contact them by phone or other means.

They will provide you with a detailed report via email on your submission results, including who your site was submitted to and the disposition of your submission.

If you want a proper submission for your website, you are going to have to pay for it. There are too many quality submission services to list in this article but we have a good list you can review on our website at http://www.bullmarketer.com. Look under the ขWeblinksข directory, under search engine submission. We have a high Google page rank, quality traffic, and lots of link back to our site and I can promise you it all started with the use of a quality submission service.

Good luck with your life, love, health, and of course, your website submission.

Derek Arnold

About The Author

Derek Arnold is the President of BullMarketer.com, a webmaster resource site offering many tools for webmasters, marketers, and designers. Also has over 18 years of experience in the marketing and advertising fields. Homepage: http://www.bullmarketer.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 06, 2004

by Derek Arnold

Advertising DOs and DONTs

Advertising DOs and DONTs

by: Mal Keenan

From early on in my online career I realised that the fastest way to internet riches was to find a marketing concept that brought me profits and plough as much as I could into that resource, thus building my business and capital as I went.

For those just beginning in home business marketing it would be prudent to start off with a very small investment (I started with around $30) and try to build from there. It would like to report that I was very wise after the first investment but the truth is that the illusion of easily gotten riches lured me into a spree of buying virtually every item of software/marketing resource that I happened to feast my eyes upon.

Needless to say this is not the best way to go about building a successful online career but the experience and benefits I got from this initial burst of enthusiasm, in how not to go about targeted advertising, far outweighed the financial losses. I have spent money on most of what the web has to offer in terms of marketing and can now enlighten you on what to buy and what not to touch with a 12 ft barge pole.

FFAs or Free For All link pages were once a useful free resource and could have provided at least a few hits per day given the right ad. Today using the free version of these pages is all but useless and in my humble opinion a total waste of time. The vast majority of people submitting to these sites today are using automated submission software so human eyes WILL never see your ad and as far as I know Automatons (Robots to some people) DO NOT buy products;)

Paid or free safelists from my experience are just not worth the effort involved. The very fact that everyone posting to a safelist is not interested in the subject matter but in selling their own products gives us some idea on the ineffectiveness of this method. Couple this with the time spent sorting through emails mostly for deletion you really could spend your time in more worthwhile marketing ventures.

Moving up the ladder of effectiveness we have banner advertising. From my experience the best banner I was able to design brought me in a maximum of 2.8% click through rate and from what I hear this is a GREAT %. Most banners will only pull a 1% CTR. If you can find a company selling banner advertising cheap enough to bring you into the profit zone then certainly give it a bash. Please remember though to track all your banner ads otherwise you will not know whether you are getting massive click throughs or none at all.

If you are going to post to classified sites then opt for the free version. There is some good classified submission software out there and may be worth the investment. Again ALWAYS TRACK YOUR ADS. For free classifieds visit:

http://www.workathomebiz.info/adlandpro.html

Renting an email list is a good option and can bring you many hits to your product or affiliate site. Make sure that the list is optin only, meaning the people have requested to see your ad. There are many good reputable companies out there and if you are willing to pay sometimes high fees to rent a list, this can be a profitable venture.

Search engine submission is definitely a worthwhile project and considering a good listing will bring you daily and continuing free traffic I suggest you spend a bit of time perfecting this method. I use Web Position Gold software to automate my submissions and prepare my pages for submission. This cuts down in hours of work and I would certainly recommend any budding business owners to get a copy. To learn more about Webposition Gold visit this link:

http://www.webpositiongolddownloads.com

I have also paid for a listing to Yahooกs directory. At $299 per year this may sound very expensive to some but the traffic I have gotten from this listing paid for the submission within a short period of time.

Pay per click advertising is another good advertising resource to drive TARGETED traffic to your site. First figure out how much you can afford to pay per visitor to your site. For instance if you make a sale every 100 visitors and your product costs $20 then if you paid 20 cents per visitor you would break even. The reality is of course that you can get visitors for much less than 20 cents and I have many keyword phrases that will send visitors to my site for 1 cent each. If you can find a few good keyword phrases at a profitable price then you will do well. Two good PPCSEs to start with and that I use are Overture.com and Findwhat.com.

Ezine advertising is by far the best form of advertising and more importantly is reasonably priced. From my own experience a solo or top spot ad are the most effective and will return more visitors for the price. For a good list of ezines visit:

http://www.directoryofezines.com/

A word of WARNING before closing this article: If you want to keep your business and your reputation intact then NEVER EVER use bulk email advertising. It just isn’t worth the risk. The hassle that you will get from sending out unsolicited email to 1000s of untargeted prospects will bring your business down in the long run. There are enough forms of advertising listed here to keep you going for a long time. Don’t waste your time on unproductive and senseless SPAMMING.

I wish you all the best in your efforts:)

Copyright 2004 Mal Keenan

About The Author

Mal Keenan is editor and publisher of Home Business Tips Newsletter: http://www.homebusinesstipsnewsletter.com/

For a comprehensive leads package and followup system in one visit here:

http://www.homebusinessnetworking.com

For A Home Business You Can Believe In:

http://www.eliteteamireland.com/

This article was posted on September 29, 2004

by Mal Keenan

Promoting your Affiliate Programs with Articles

Promoting your Affiliate Programs with Articles

by: Vickie J Scanlon

If you are not creating articles for your website and your affiliate programs, you should. Why? Even though it may seem like a lot of work, and it may take you time to build articles add a valuable commodity to your site content. And my friend, the search engines and people alike are always on the lookout for good content.

If you are creating articles, you are always looking to find ways to get your article out to the masses – and the more exposure your article has the greater the opportunity that people will read your article and want to visit your website. Should you submit your articles manually or should you use an article marketer submission service that will choose for you where your article goes? Is an article submission service a good option for you when submitting articles? I hope to show you both the pros and cons of this service and let you be the judge.

Pro to Article Submission Service

Article Submission Service can be a great help when your time is limited and you want to get your articles to all the article sites and groups. However, when the service is tiered, based on what you pay and don’t pay – you have to be aware of what you are getting..

All services give you a sampling with a free service – and I did find the free service to be on the, well, expected side. After submitting to the free service of an article submission service I received the following:

1. I received several emails that stated my article had been received by a site and would be looked at. This is usual, and a good sign.

2. I received emails from the yahoo groups, which is a good sign but I didn’t partake because I knew that I would be receiving articles from other authors on a regular basis and did not want to overwhelm my private email address. Thus, be aware, use a yahoo email address and keep your private email address separate.

The article submission to the article sites such as Ezine Articles (Which, by the way, is one of my favorite sites) and Go Articles will require a small outlay of money for each article on a monthly basis. Thus, I would use a submission service if:

1. I had a separate email address to catch the other authors’ articles that I would be receiving from the yahoo groups.

2. I wanted to part with my money to take advantage of the service.

3. Needed more time.

4. I have a desire for a wider exposure of my articles and thus, more traffic to my site.

Cons of Using an Article Admission Service

When looking at anything new, you must determine when it is to your advantage to use a service or to do it yourself. These are some of the issues I would have to overcome:

1. If I do the submission myself, I know that the article or articles have reached it expected destination or destinations – but the exposure my article gets will be limited by the sites that I know.

2. If I’m restricted by General Titles will the article sites kick my article out because of not possibly abiding by the rules.

3. If I do it myself, I can target my article to the specific, intended audience.

For me, I will use the paid submission service when I am low on time and I have the money in hand. However, I will not waste my time on the free service because the return is very limited and from what I have seen offers little benefit to my site.

To conclude, you need to try different methods of getting your articles out to the masses. And the success of these different methods is dependent on your own satisfaction or lack there of, of the results rendered by such services. My advise, experiment and determine for yourself what services will help your business, who knows, that one service may be the punch in the arm your business needs to grow. And if you want to try an article submission service or would like additional information, you can go to my site at http://www.myaffiliateplace.biz/Affiliate_Free_Tools.htm and take a look at the Article Submission Service and what it has to offer for yourself.

To your success.

About The Author

Vickie J Scanlon has a BBA degree in Administrative Management and Marketing. Visit her site at: http://www.myaffiliateplace.biz for free tools, articles, ebooks, how to info, affiliate opportunities, services and products – to meet your budget and needs

This article was posted on September 09

by Vickie J Scanlon