What Your Click Tracking Script Should Tell You?

What Your Click Tracking Script Should Tell You?

by: Radhika Venkata

You run an ad spending $100.00. How could you possibly know how many people bought your product? If you don’t know your ROI on that particular campaign, how will you spend another $100.00 on it?

Simple is You have to track your advertising campaign. This is done by

By keeping specific URL in that specific campaign

Ex: http://www.yourdomain.com/ezinead.html

By giving ก?source=campaign1ก tag to your URL

Ex: http://www.yourdomain.com/product.html?source=ezinead

By using a Click tracking script

http://www.scripts4webmasters.com/clicktracking/index.shtml

Click tracking script is a cgi script that gives you information about a click. The click may be on your website, emails, ezines, banners or anything.

If the click tracking script tells you the number of clicks it is not going to be useful to you. Because you can’t differentiate the people buying through your campaign links or your regular links.

So what a Click tracking script should tell you?

1. Tell the number of clicks to tell the click thru ratio:

By this you can optimize your ads. If a specified ad get low click thrus you can change the optimize it.

2. Tell the ip address of the visitor:

By this you can know which ad bringing you the sales. If a particular ip clicking on a specific link buys your product you can know that ad campaignกs ROI.

3. Tells the geographical distribution of the clicks:

This is useful when you want to know how many clicks coming from different countries. Like if you see กjpก with ip address, you can know the visitor from Japan. But this is not possible in all cases.

4. Tell the date and time of clicks:

Some online enterpreneurs are more interested in sending promotional emails in the weekends. But I guess it is subject to their personal experiences. If you know that particular campaign gets lot of clicks in certain days, you can concentrate showing ads at that particular time.

5. Referers:

You can know that which link exchange program or banner ad on web sites bring you the most clicks.

6. Clicks by time and date:

You are able to get the results by time and date. Like your click tracking script must provide daily stats seperately. This is useful to see which day you sales page gets most clicks.

About The Author

Radhika Venkata

Subscribe to กiNet Marketing Ezineก which is completely focused on Internet Marketing. Receive FREE Ebooks with Resale rights!

http://www.webmasterscentral.com/subscribe.shtml

FREE Ecourse :: 30 days Solid work out to increase your online profits!

http://www.ebooksworld.com/ecourse/index.shtml

This article was posted on March 04, 2004

by Radhika Venkata

Searches and Summaries

Searches and Summaries

by: Ron Tower

The Web is constantly growing and changing. The key issue for users of the Web is to know what is there that might help them, or inform them, or entertain them, and to find out in a timely fashion without spending all their time looking. There are two main ways to do this, searches and summaries.

The most common way that users today find the information they want on the Web is by doing a search using one of the many search engines such a Google (www.google.com). You enter keywords and the search engine sorts through all the pages that it has indexed and tries to give you the most relevant results. Even with this a search often returns thousands of hits. Also, since new pages are being added every day and many pages are constantly changing to reflect the current news or information, the search results may change over time. And slight changes in the keywords can also result in very different search results. Even with these limitations though, searches often provide the quickest and easiest way to find what you want.

If you think of the Web as one huge, constantly changing book, search is like looking up words in an index and then going to the pages indicated to see if they contain what you are looking for. Another way we find what we want in books is the table of contents. This provides a summary outline of what is in the book. It is hard to imagine a table of contents for the whole Web though. For one thing, the Web is different than a book in that the pages are not intended to be read in sequence. You enter and leave pages on the Web following links.

But there is something like a table of contents for the Web in that it organizes the Webกs contents into a high level summary view, and that is a Web directory. Yahoo provides one of the oldest of these (http://dir.yahoo.com) and there is a public domain Web directory that is available many places including the Google Directory (http://www.google.com/dirhp). A directory is a hierarchy of knowledge categories or subjects with links and descriptions provided under the categories. The general directories are huge themselves, so in turn it is useful to search them.

A variation on this is a personal Web directory or knowledge base. This has the same structure as these large public directories but is more focused on the particular interests of a person or group. Whole subtrees of the personal Web directory can be shared with others. A rather limited version of this is the bookmarks or favorites that we keep in our Web browsers, but the personal Web directory allows for better visualization of the information and adding more related information.

Another type of summary that is becoming very widely used is RSS feeds. These are a list of headlines with summary descriptions. The user can then click on a link to see the details. This is especially useful for sites such as news sites or Web logs where information is changing frequently. But they are by no means limited to that. Individual users can read just the feeds they are interested in using an RSS reader (http://blogspace.com/rss/readers). Web site owners provide these useful summaries in hopes that people will want to see the details and click through to their site.

Another variation on this theme of providing useful summary content in hope that users will click through is the proliferation of free content that can be added to Web sites. For example, a weather site might provide a weather sticker that shows a summary of the weather in a town. This is useful in itself. The users then may be more likely to click through to see details. Much of this is intended for Web site developers (for example, see http://freesticky.com), but it could also be used by individual users with the appropriate tool.

Another useful form of summary is a personal portal such as My Yahoo (http://my.yahoo.com) or My Way (http://my.myway.com). These allow the user to select from a collection of information modules and arrange them in different ways on a page that they can view to get a summary view. These portals are typically restricted to the specific content modules that they provide and are oriented toward a generic audience.

One more form of summary is an alert or vital sign. These provide timely notifications, perhaps using an icon that changes colors, of an important event. This approach has been used for years for network and operations management and is now starting to come into use for individuals.

These examples of summaries all fall within a category of tools called information aggregators. Information aggregators provide a summary view of what information is available and allow the user to go to the information source for the details. At this point these different types of summary tools are not usually well integrated.

The next generation of information aggregators will support much greater integration, a wider variety of information modules, and narrowcasting to more specific information communities. For example, see Personal Watchkeeper (http://www.sugarloafsw.com).

So the two most important tools for getting the most out of the Web are search engines and information aggregators. These provide searches and summaries, which are really the way we have always tried to make the best use of large collections of information. Search engines are well developed and widely used. Information aggregators are coming on fast.

About The Author

Ron Tower is the President of Sugarloaf Software and is the developer of Personal Watchkeeper, an information aggregator supporting a variety of ways to summarize the Web.

http://www.sugarloafsw.com

This article was posted on December 02, 2004

by Ron Tower

Promote and Sell With Writing

Promote and Sell With Writing

by: Edvard Halupa

Whether you have your own products or you are part of affiliate program, there must be some area of expertise you are good in. A niche. Something you feel good to speak about and express your opinions. If you can write it down, it might benefit your business more than you could imagine. Most people looking on Internet for solutions to their problems are not searching for concrete products, rather for the description of the problem followed by the cure. Rather than writing sales letters describing good sides of your service/product you could focus on writing useful content on topics you know. It could be solutions of type ขhow toข (deal with, change, fix, create, build, etc.)

Even if the writing is not your profession like for many people writing articles on internet is not, you can still create very useful piece of writing that will people with enthusiasm read and all just by following simple guidelines.

Mention a problem/situation

Go more in details

Mention a solution

Mention alternatives

Provide additional resources

As long as there is useful information that can make someone’s life easier it is a good content. but if there is more information about how your product/service solves this kind of problem, congrats, you wrote a good sales letter, and people reading it, will assume it’s an advertisement more than true content supposed to help.

It is OK to tell about your product but only at a right place, at a right time. Not to push reader into sale of your product. If he found the information useful, he’ll ask for more and will gain an confidence into what you got to say and sell.

Writing doesn’t automatically lead into sales, but it is a great method of PR or free promotion. Your writing can be published on your website or your newsletter. You would be surprised how many people want to read what you have to say. Here I specially mean on short articles for free distribution. There is a great number of online directories that accept articles from freelance writers. Most articles consist of this: Definition of the problem, deeper description of the problem, solution, and alternatives to the problem, your signature and resource box. Resource box should contain more information about the author and his work. Here could be placed a link to the other articles or to the website. Statistics show that more people will click on this link and ask for more information than on link for what they know it’s a paid advertisement. This is because they see you differently: not as seller but rather as someone who helped them with a certain problem and as someone they gained confidence to.

Example of a resource box:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alexandria K. Brown, ขThe Ezine Queen,ข is author of the awardwinning manual, ขBoost Business With Your Own Ezine.ข To learn more about her book and sign up for more FREE tips like these, visit her site at http://www.ezinequeen.com.

What Alexandria also wrote below her article on her website:

NOTE: You’re welcome to ขreprintข this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the ขabout the authorข info at the end), and you send a copy of your reprint to [email protected].

Advertising thru writing articles is a part of ขviral marketingข. After submitting to article directories you’ll be surprised on how many other places your article will show up. (newsletters, websites, collecting and publishing articles)

About The Author

Edvard Halupa is editor of the http://www.AffiliateBusinessGuide.info, Complete Guide to Internet Affiliate Marketing business with online articles, tips and resources.

This article was posted on December 22, 2004

by Edvard Halupa

If you need More Targeted Visitors to Your Site th

If you need More Targeted Visitors to Your Site this Will get the Free Traffic Flowing

by: David Parton

If you don’t know by now one the best ways to attract free traffic to your site is with articles. You find them in your email. You find them on any website that provides useful content. Take a look and you will see they are all formatted the same way.

Attentiongetting headline

Body of article ( usually offers tips or how to information)

Resource box That is at the end and involves a blurb to plug your site or product and your link(s)

Iกm sure if you think about it you can come up with some ideas of your own for great articles. A good place to start:

What is it that you would really like to know? Find the answer online with Google or go to your local library and write away!

Aside from creating helpful content your purpose is to promote yourself. Thus, the resource box. Do not include affiliate links, leave your selling for when the reader clicks through to your site.

Okay, youกve written an article what now?

Submit your article to the article banks. Article banks are depositories for articles. Like a real bank you can make a deposit or a withdrawal. There are several articles on my site that I did not write. I made several กwithdrawalsก from some of the banks. Itกs a great way to get free content for your site.

When you are republishing another authorกs article you must remember one very important thing: Never ever cutoff the resource box! They worked hard to create something useful for you. Repay their generosity by keeping the links intact.

And guess what? if you take your article and make a กdepositก itกs free for others to download and post on their site or newsletter! You could find it scattered all over the net in no time.

Why is that good? Because of your link in the resource box. That link is going to bring you curious visitors which means more traffic for you!

I know from personal experience when I find some useful info in an article I want to find more useful stuff from the same author so I follow the link.

And because you wrote so well about your topic I will get the impression you are an expert. We both know that may not be the case, but if people see you as an authority in some area they will seek you out for tips, advice and product recommendations. That means more traffic and ultimately more money in your pocket.

There are dozens of article banks you can submit your writing to for free. Just do a search on the net. And submit, submit, submit! If you write it the traffic will come.

David Parton

Copyright 2005

About The Author

David Parton

Now You can Expand your Opportunities & Increase your Cash Flow with FREE Tips & Resources about Affiliate Marketing, Making Money from Home, Running your Own Website, Ezine and List building & Selfimprovement for Both Sides of Your Brain!

Discover… http://ExpandingMind.com

NOTE: Feel free to “reprint” this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including my ‘resource boxก at the end). Please send me a copy of your reprint to [email protected]

This article was posted on January 13

by David Parton

My Favorite Traffic Generation Technique

My Favorite Traffic Generation Technique

by: Jeremy Gossman

Articles get exposure for me and my website. If you want to bring a continuous stream of highly targeted traffic to your website,then you should write articles related to your business. Write about topics you have learned about and are learning more about. Make it useful and informative. Don’t write a sales letter, but instead give good content so that readers will want to check out your website. You will want to include a resource box or signature at the end.

The search engines find the articles that are posted online. This helps the page rank of the website I have with the resource box on my article.

Search engines put high value on the amount of links you have to your web page. It’s even better if the web page that links to you has a ton of high ranking pages linking into it.

Something that I believe is a useful tool and resource is the Google Toolbar. The http://toolbar.google.com will allow you to perform searches on Googleกs index, look at a particular page’s Page Rank (PR) and, look at Backward Links, links that are coming into a particular page. It also has other features that you may find useful as well.

Ezine publishers find my articles and ask for permission to publish them to their list of subscribers.

Where To Submit Articles

Below are some of the places I have found that will accept articles and help get you exposure. Make sure you follow each website or announcement groupกs guidelines for submission.

http://goarticles.com/

http://ezinearticles.com/add_url.html

http://amazines.com

http://www.articlecity.com/

http://bpubs.com/

http://businessknowhow.com/

http://www.certificate.net/wwio/ideas.shtml

http://www.promotionworld.com/

http://promotenewz.com/

Yahoo Announcement Groups

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ArticlePublisher/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Free_eContent/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreeReprintArticles/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreeWrites/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freEzinecontent/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/netwritepublishannounce/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/publisher_network/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ReprintArticlesParadise/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheWriteArticles

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aainet/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreeContent/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aabusiness/

(c) 2004 www.UltimateWealthCreation.com. All rights reserved.

About The Author

Jeremy Gossman is an internet marketing coach and consultant that has several ventures online. You can obtain Jeremyกs Free ebook ‘the Top 10 Ways to Generate Free Highly Targeted Traffic For Your Websiteก at http://www.ultimatewealthcreation.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on January 20, 2004

by Jeremy Gossman

The Art Of Link Exchange

The Art Of Link Exchange

by: Oleg Lazarenko

Before you start reading this article I must warn you everything that was written here is my own experience in link exchange. This article should not be referred to as official advice or proven techniques. I only want to share the experience of the helpful methods I used.

When you started your website you probably knew that two major factors play the biggest role in search engine placement: links and content.

1. The first recommended way to get links is to develop useful, unique and original content. Webmasters who visit your website will see that content is good and will link to your website to provide their visitors with some useful websites(info maybe?). If you searched Internet for some information, then you know how hard it can be to find a useful website.

2. Link exchange with other websites. There are two ways you can exchange links:

a) One page links – you place a link on one page and the other website places a link to your website

b) Site wide links – you place a link on all pages of your website

Both variants have pluses and minuses. For example, I believe that a link on all pages counts by Google as a link from one website; but if a website has thousands and thousands pages, the repeated link title on each page may effect you position in search engine results for that specific keyword.

If you are doing one page link exchange, I would recommend you to create special pages where links to other sites will be stored.

Thousands webmasters every day search for other websites to exchange links. When selecting a link partner, pay attention to the number of links on the page where he offers to place your link. The more links on that page, the lower benefit you will get exchanging links with this website. Also, try to keep numbers of links lower then 40 in all your link pages.

If you want to exchange site wide links, try to exchange nondirect links. Nondirect means that you must follow the pattern:

Website กAก gives a link to website กBก, กBก website gives a link to website กCก. This way the benefit from site wide link exchange may be increased significantly.

3. Write articles or tutorials. Make them free of change to republish if a link back to your website is provided with the article.

4. If your website is close to web development area you may want to create online software (such as guestbook, online calendar, etc.) with the open source and permission to use if a link back is included on pages. As an example of popularity gained that way you may see website of phpbb – free online message board.

Now you know where to start and the direction to go. If you found this article useful, please include the link to http://www.metamorphozis.com on one of your website pages;)

This article may be reprinted and distributed with no charge until the credit line (links) below remains without changes.

Thanks for reading.

Article source: http://www.metamorphozis.com/tutorials/the_art_of_link_exchange.shtml

About The Author

Oleg Lazarenko

Production Manager of Metamorphosis Web Design Studio –

Flash templates and Web Templates

http://www.metamorphozis.com

This article was posted on August 17

by Oleg Lazarenko

Post Your Way to Success

Post Your Way to Success

by: Trent Brownrigg

Did you know that posting in Discussion Forums is a wonderful way to make a name for yourself and increase the chances of your success? Well, if you didn’t know, you do now!

It’s true! If you productively spend some time in online business forums each week you may find it quite profitable. When I say ขproductivelyข I mean NOT aimlessly posting to any topic you can find just for the sake of typing. You should actually offer useful advice and information for people as well as answering questions that others have. You will also learn a lot of useful tips to help your business from other people’s posts.

Here is a small list of some of the great reasons to post in forums:

1) Exposure to your website or productIn most forums you can put a small information box such as an advertisement below each of your posts. This is a great way to tell people about yourself and your business. You will also gain a link back to your website to help with your ranking in search engines.

2) Making a name for yourselfIf you consistently offer useful advice and answers to questions people will begin to notice it. Soon enough you be seen as an ขexpertข in your field. Needless to say, this is very good for your business.

3) LearningA lot of people frequently post in discussion forums. Many of them have been in online business for a long time and know quite a bit about it. You can gain vast amounts of knowledge by reading other peoples posts. Or you can simply ask a question and you are sure to get it answered many times over.

4) Meeting other peopleHaving a home based internet business can get lonely at times. The people in discussion forums can be a bit like your ขcoworkersข at a traditional job. You might even make some great lifelong friends.

5) EntertainmentOften there are quite interesting topics and replies for you to read. Every now and then someone stirs things up in a forum and it can be pretty exciting to read the responses.

Well, that is just a taste of why it is great to post in forums. Of course, there are more reasons and you may even have some personal reasons of your own.

Now lets look at some ways to get more out of them so you aren’t wasting your precious time:

1) It is best to post to forums that get a lot of traffic. There are many forums out there but quite a few of them hardly get any visitors. You can get a general idea of how much traffic they get just by looking at how many posts they get each day. If it seems to be getting a lot of posts everyday then it probably gets quite a bit of traffic all the time.

2) Stay away from forums that aren’t moderated or that let you post just about anything you want. These types of forums are generally full of blatant advertising and spam. Don’t waste your time with them! You won’t really get anything useful from these forums. Also, DO NOT blatantly advertise or spam posts. It will ruin your reputation and could get you banned from forums.

3) Restrict your time in forums by setting up some sort of schedule or time limit for visiting them. You can sometime lose track of time reading and responding to topics. Obviously you need some time for other business tasks so you don’t want to use it all up in forums. Trust me they can get very addicting so this is an important step.

4) Do not post just for your own benefit. It is important to offer useful advice and information to others. By offering valuable comments you will get people to notice you more thus increasing the chances that they will do business with you.

5) Take full advantage of the signature paragraph that most forums let you setup. This is where you do get to do a little advertising. Tell about yourself and/or your business. Provide a link to your website or product so people can get to it easily. Your link will also help with your search engine popularity and ranking.

6) Be respectful and polite to others on the discussion forums. Even if you don’t totally agree with someone it is best not to attack them. People will notice if you are rude and obnoxious. It is better for you to just keep your unnecessary comments to yourself.

I regularly visit quite a few discussion forums. I have found that they are fun to read and post in and can be very rewarding. Some are better than others but all can be beneficial when used properly. You just need to find the forums that fit what you are looking for. Become a ขregularข there and you will be rewarded.

Here are some of the best business forums that I visit frequently, in no particular order:

Open Forums (don’t require registration):

http://www.ablake.net/forum/

http://www.howtocorp.com/forum/

http://www.network54.com/Hide/Forum/184615

http://www.homebusinesswebsites.com/cgibin/index.cgi

http://www.ozemedia.com/cgibin/webbbs/webbbs_config.pl

http://www.network54.com/Hide/Forum/11488

http://www.williecrawford.com/cgibin/index.cgi

http://www.friendsinbusiness.com/board1/index.cgi

These websites have forums that require you to register before you post but it only takes a couple minutes and doesn’t cost anything:

http://www.wilsonweb.com/

http://www.infoprofitstalk.com/

http://www.siteownersforums.com/

http://www.associateprograms.com/

http://www.webproworld.com/

http://www.workathomenetwork.com/discussionboards.htm

http://www.mom101.com

I am sure that is good enough to get you started! The above list consists of many of the most wellknown business forums as well some lesser known ones. Pretty much all of them get good traffic and none of them allow spam or blatant advertising.

Now it is time for you to go and Post Your Way to Success!

Copyright © Trent Brownrigg

www.workathomejobsiowa.com

You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included and the article is not changed(grammatical corrections accepted). A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated.

About The Author

Trent Brownrigg is a successful home business entrepreneur, webmaster, and author of work at home articles. Secure Your Financial Future at: http://www.workathomejobsiowa.com. Find great products & services for your home, business, and family here: http://quickinfo247.com/8198358

This article was posted on March 04, 2004

by Trent Brownrigg

Website Survival Guide

Website Survival Guide

by: Niall Roche

In the big, wide online world there are millions of websites and billions of webpages. In the increasing sprawl of this virtual jungle there must be an evolution. Some of these webpages must grow stronger and thrive whilst others will weaken and die.

There are 3 types of websites in this jungle. Itกs important that you ask yourself which category your website fits into. Your website survival may count on it.

The Poster Site

A stunning work of art with intricate graphics that both amaze and dazzle the visitor. Poster sites are created by graphic designers for large companies or for use by the graphic design firms themselves. They’re built to look good. Usability is not normally a factor nor are good search engine rankings. Looking good takes second place to being useful.

The poster site has its place in the virtual jungle for those companies who need to put a pretty กshop frontก on the Internet e.g. grapic designers. Unfortunately many companies who hire someone to design their website normally winds up with a graphic artist who recently learned how to use Dreamweaver and is now a กwebsite consultantก. The end result is a stunning piece of artwork that is of little or no use to the visitors or potential customers.

Poster sites are the supermodels of the online world they look great but aren’t useful for anything other than looking great.

Pros

Looks great

A definite WOW factor for visitors

Cons

Normally difficult to navigate

Lousy rankings in search engines

The Content Site

A site littered with valuable, useful information that visitors and search engines love. Content sites are normally run by hobbyists who have an allconsuming passion for a specific topic or subject. They write, collect and publish online massive amounts of information on one specific topic.

Content sites are also used by intelligent online marketers who have realized the true value of providing useful content to visitors. This has lead to not all content sites being created equal with some lazy online marketers using spammy tools to create กdudก content.

Content sites tend to be quite plain looking on the outside but are stuffed full of useful information on the inside. Web surfers love content sites. Why? Because they find exactly what they’re looking for or a link to it. The whole idea of the Internet in the first place was to fulfill this need for useful information.

Pros

Valuable information for visitors

Visitors likely to return again

Search engines love them

Cons

Normally not as กprettyก as poster sites

Spammy techniques being used to create กdudก content

Don’t Have A Clue Site

These are interesting. A DHAC site is an anomaly. They’re designed by people who decide they want a website but have no clue how to go about it. They contact their ISP for information on how to do this. 45 minutes later their first creation is online.

The DHAC site has the following features:

Graphics that take 10 minutes to load

50% of the graphics don’t load at all

Flashing banner

Animated graphical menu

Flashing body text

75% of the links don’t work

Graphics randomly scattered about the page

Blue text on green background

Use frames and nested frames extensively

Incomplete HTML tags spread around the site

H1 tags used for all the body text i.e. huge text

Itกs not fair to generalize like this I know but weกve all seen these sites. They’re there and they give us a direct path that we should not follow.

Pros

Good to poke fun at

Great examples of how not to design a website

Cons

They’re awful

Some websites will thrive and survive in 2004 and beyond.

Other websites will weaken and die.

Which category does your website fall under?

About The Author

Niall Roche is the content author & owner of http://www.affiliateadvocate.com which reviews and tests web marketing ebooks and software.

This article was posted on April 06, 2004

by Niall Roche

I Want to Do an Ezine! Part 3

I Want to Do an Ezine! Part 3

by: Terri Seymour

When you publish an ezine, you most definitely want to provide useful, and original content as well as promoting your business. Some things you might want to include:

* Original Articles/Guest Articles If you are not writing your own articles, please try it. Although guest articles can be very effective, it is always a good idea to have some original content as well.

There are lots of places to get articles:

Article Announcement Lists:

mailto:[email protected];

mailto:[email protected];

mailto:[email protected];

mailto:[email protected];

mailto:[email protected];

mailto:[email protected];

mailto:[email protected];

mailto:[email protected];

mailto:[email protected];

mailto:[email protected];

mailto:[email protected];

mailto:[email protected];

Article Directories:

http://OpportunityUpdate.com/articles/ http://amazines.com/

http://ezinearticles.com/add_url.html

http://marketingoftraining.com/motoarticles.htm

http://www.womansnet.com/submit.php

http://www.MakingProfit.com

http://www.articlecentral.com/suggest.asp

http://www.articlecity.com/article_submission.shtml

http://www.bestparentingresources.com/Article.html

http://www.boconline.com/subart.htm

http://www.businesstoolchest.com/articles/submit.shtml

http://www.connectionteam.com/art.html

You could also ask for article submissions in your ezine and on your website. Provide a special email to receive the articles such as:

mailto:[email protected]?subject=articles

* Freebies downloads, tools, ebooks, and any other useful Freebie you can find. Freebies can be found all over as well. Do a search for Free Downloads, Freebies, Free resources or whatever type of freebie you are looking for. There are also freebie ezines and email lists you can subscribe to.

* A Forum for Your Readers A place where readers can vent, question, complain, interact, whatever comments or feedback they might want to send in. This also helps in starting that all important connection between reader and publisher.

* Human Interest Items Inspirational stories or poems, people helping people, survival stories, whatever you think your readers might enjoy reading about.

* A Little Fun/Humor We all need to laugh, so why not have a little fun with your readers!

Note: I would put the last two items together in one section because you do not want to get too far off the subject matter.

* Editorial/Personality This is where you can let your readers get to know you so they can begin to trust you. Talk about interesting news items, things you have learned or experienced, relate to your readers. You need to make a connection with your readers. Make sure your personality shines through in your ezine. Make your ezine warm, friendly, and inviting while being informative and helpful.

* Ad Swaps/Ezine Ads You want to make sure and have a section for ad swaps. Ad swapping is a great way to get free advertising as well as making new contacts and friends! I have a Free Ezine section which I use for my ad swaps.

To start swapping:

http://www.freezineweb.com/adswaps1.html

http://www.ezinelocater.com/

http://www.internetmarketingsuccess.com/adswaps.htm

http://www.topica.com/lists/EzineAdSwaps

* Thank You Section for Your Readers Take a small section for your readers to get some free exposure as a ‘thank Youก for subscribing. Appreciate them as they will appreciate you!

* Resources Of course you want to provide lots of good and helpful resources. There are lots of places to find resources.

Do a search at your favorite search engine. Mine is http://www.google.com

Join discussion lists I get numerous resources from email lists. I just save them all in an email resource folder.

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Spam Yes, spam. I have found lots of resources from spam that I have received. Sometimes the sender has some useful information to check out. ( Some spam is just plain junk) You can soon learn to tell the junk spam from the กmight be usefulก spam! 😉

Announcement Lists Also a good source for resources.

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

* Tips & Tricks Provide shortcuts, helpful hints and ideas to save your readers time and money! Ask your subscribers to submit their tips and tricks and use your own as well.

There are so many things you can have in your ezine! You will learn to keep your eyes open for useful items for your ezine. They can pop up anywhere at anytime! Make it a habit to save useful things you come across in folders in your email or on your desktop. Keep them organized so whenever you need them, you can get to them right away.

Ezine publishing is not hard, but you need to be able to organize and provide a quality ezine for your readers to stick with you. Be available to help and support your readers if/when they need you. This will go a long way in strengthening the reader/publisher bond!

You will find publishing a quality ezine to be very rewarding, not only financially, but personally and emotionally. Good luck with Your Own Ezine! 😉

In the next part of the series we will cover ezine promotion. See you next week!

About The Author

Terri Seymour owns and operates MyOwnEzine.com

Learn to publish and promote your own ezine. mailto:[email protected]

For a complete list of my articles available for reprint please email: mailto:[email protected]

ATTN: Ezine Publishers, save hours of your valuable time! http://wetrack.it/eza/af.cgi?710

[email protected]

This article was posted on November 1, 2002

by Terri Seymour

Tips On Improving Your Website

Tips On Improving Your Website

by: Jacob Schlottke

I have added some links in the past, some stuff I found useful, and things that I thought would help newbies. Forgive me if the article doesn’t outline everything, but I am going to give you new guys a little head start I wish I would have had.
Starting out, the two biggest keys to success in the search engines (Yahoo, Google, MSN, etc.) are content and incoming links. People argue about which plays the largest role, but I just suggest doing your best at both.
Content
You should focus on having articles, tips, and other suggestions about your products.
Ask your customers for testimonials (a quick, easy way to get testimonials is to offer a discount on their next order from your company… This may seem unprofessional, however, someone who doesn’t like your company won’t write a testimonial, no matter what you offer them)
Indepthly describe your products using keywords that will help maximize your page rank. (Digitalpoint has some excellent tools, one includes a search term finder: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
You should try to create a couple other related websites that offer information on your products. (If you are selling baseball equipment, create a site that talks about proper baseball techniques; batting, pitching, youth baseball, etc. and create another site that discusses how to choose your gear, what prices are right.
Bring your competition into some articles. Discuss why your price is better, why you offer better service than them, and how you plan on creating a better buying experience for them.
Linking
Now you have content, your site looks great… But…Where is the traffic? I suggest holding off on submitting your site to the search engines until you have atleast 45 really good incoming links. Sites that have a pagerank http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords (click the backlinks tab once youกve signed up for a free account) This will show you the sites that are currently linking, your sites page rank, and other useful things.
Add your URL to signature files in; your emails, your forum posts, anything else you use a signature file for!
Go to google.com and yahoo.com and run a search for related words to you product. (i.e. กbaseball equipmentก + กadd urlก) this will find websites that allow you to submit your link to them.. They are generally free submission directories that can help increase your PR.
Don’t join linking farms… Youกll find they are more harm than good.
If you can give a percentage of your profit to an affiliate, I suggest running a program. You create incoming links that can increase your PR significantly as google is finetuning its PR algorithm to allow for ref= codes to be incorperated into the PR of an index.php
Create a sitemap, make all of your main pages interlink. This allows spiders to search with greater ease.
Visit SEOGuy.comกs website to use their tool for finding the page rank of websites for search terms. http://www.seoguy.com/seotools/googlepr.php
For example a search for baseball equipment yeilded the following first page results:
Pos Url Rank

http://www.epinions.com/sprtBaseball 5
http://www.anacondasports.com/CategoryDisp…10201/49301.htm 6
http://www.tgoemall.com/mallbaseball.htm 5
http://www.awesomesports.com/ 6
http://www.baseballnews.com/equipme…ipmentlinks.htm 6
http://www.wasupply.com/ 5
http://www.weplay.com/baseball/equipment/ 4
http://www.freestuffgreatdeals.com/baseball.html 4
http://www.newsearching.com/baseball2/baseball2.html 4

These results make it easier for you to pick websites you will want to exchange likes with. Iกve found them more than reliable.
Useful SEO Tools:

http://www.seoguy.com/seotools/
http://www.digitalpoint.com/

Useful Article Forums:

http://www.warriorforum.com/
http://www.webpronews.com/

Useful SEO Websites:

http://www.freemoneyservices.com/
http://www.seoguy.com/
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/

About The Author

Jacob Schlottke webmaster of several well ranked ecommerce websites.

This article was posted on May 17, 2004

by Jacob Schlottke

Information Aggregators for Online Researchers

Information Aggregators for Online Researchers

by: Ron Tower

One way of looking at online research is as a project that starts with searches and ends with summaries. The online researcher searches for information to meet the needs of their client and produces a summary report for the client. Information aggregators help in the production and display of summary views and are therefore a natural tool for the online researcher. What kinds of information aggregator features would be most helpful for online researchers?

First, it would be useful to have help in collecting the information for the research project. Tools to capture links and selections from Web pages and to add notes would be useful. This information needs to be organized into a structure. Information aggregators can do this by providing a personal knowledge base or Web directory. The project is added as a new category in the knowledge base and the information collected can be organized into categories within the project. It would be useful to have a browser extension to help capture this information while browsing.

For example, the researcher does a search and is going through the results. Some of the links prove useful and can be captured into the knowledge base. On some pages, a particular selection from the page proves useful. This also can be captured. This captured information can be annotated and organized into categories. As the project progresses more information is captured, annotated and categorized. It would also be useful to be able to enter text and tabular information directly into the project within the same knowledge entries in the knowledge base. This is all part of the process of building up a summary view from the vast amount of information on the Web.

Of course, an online researcher may do similar projects for different clients, so it would be useful for them to be able to build up their own knowledge base of commonly used resources over time. They can go to these resources again and again on different projects. Notes can be included to remind them on the ways to use the resources. It would be useful to be able to copy information from these common areas into a particular project to reuse the work.

Since these sites change over time, it would be good to be able to get summaries of what is happening on the sites and be able to click through to see the details. Information aggregators can help here by providing personal pages containing a variety of modules that provide automatically updated information on what is new on a site.

Many sites provide summary headlines of what is new on their site as RSS feeds. An obvious use is for news headlines, but this is also used for more specialized information. An information aggregator should come with many builtin feed definitions and allow the researcher to easily add others that are specific to their research interests.

Many Web sites provide กfree contentก as an HTML fragment that can be added to a page. These serve a similar function as RSS feeds, providing an automatically updated summary view of new information available on the site. An information aggregator should include a number of these and allow the researcher to add new ones.

Another useful feature would be to allow the researcher to provide keywords that the information aggregator will use to periodically do a search on their behalf. The top search results can be shown on their page, and they can click through to see the complete results. This would allow them to monitor new sites of interest for keywords they often search on. It should be possible to set this up to only show the new results.

It would also be useful to be able to monitor commonly used sites to see if new content has been added to the site.

Finally, information aggregators should provide help in packaging the results of the project for the client. Export tools should be provided to allow the contents of the knowledge base to be edited in a word processor, for example. It should be as easy as possible to get the information out of the information aggregator into a form that the client would like to see it.

This area of packaging also presents an opportunity. Professional online researchers are always looking for ways to add extra value in the package they give to their clients. One idea is to provide the clients with กactiveก reports, that is, reports that automatically will provide updated information after they are delivered. Static reports produced with a word processor are a snapshot of the information at a particular point in time. An active report provides this same snapshot view but also has elements that can change over time from feeds.

These active reports will require the client to have their own tool to read the reports and to access the updated information. Some clients will have their own information aggregators. The researcher can then export parts of their knowledge base and the client can import it. Some information could be exported in a standard format like RSS so that the client can use any RSS reader they like. For more extensive active reports, the client will need some kind of package reader. This reader should be free, similar to how the Adobe Reader allows the reading of PDF files.

So the researcher could create an active report or information package using their information aggregator. They would deliver this to their client with a free information package reader that would allow them to receive the updated information. The information package could contain the knowledge base generated for the project along with pages that automatically update. The online researcher in this case becomes an กinformation package developerก.

For clients who do not want to commit to a particular package reader, some of the active content can be exported as HTML pages that could be read by their Web browser and some as RSS feeds that could be read by any RSS reader. But to get the most active versions they would need to use a particular reader.

Many clients will prefer to continue to get their static reports. The information aggregator will still be there to help the information professionals produce these static reports as well as the active reports.

This article presents a target view of features for information aggregators that could be useful to online researchers. Some of these features are available in current products. Others will evolve over time. The bottom line is that information aggregators can be a great tool for online researchers.

About The Author

Ron Tower is the President of Sugarloaf Software and is the developer of Personal Watchkeeper, an information aggregator supporting a variety of ways to summarize the Web.

http://www.sugarloafsw.com

This article was posted on January 28

by Ron Tower