Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Building Customer Relations Through Experiential Marketing

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As against traditional forms of marketing that are focused on benefits and features of products or services, experiential marketing attempts to form a connection between brands and consumers in ways that are more memorable and relevant personally for the consumer.

It seeks to establish a stronger relationship through one-on-one interaction between a consumer and a brand and, so, has to be based on personal interaction. It, therefore, tends to have a bias towards the brain's right side, as it is based more on feelings than rational thought.

This is in contrast with traditional forms of marketing that seek to promote a brand, against the competition, employing factors based on rational thought. This, however, is against the findings of contemporary research, according to which feelings and emotions tend to influence decisions to a larger extent than was previously known about. So, it should be fair to conclude that marketing of the traditional type was biased more towards the left side of the brain i.e. thoughts derived from a rational basis.

Therefore, the strategies for experiential marketing have a lot to do with the sampling of products, combined with event marketing, as well as management based on factual information. These are, then, blended with experiential data gathered from reactions obtained from prospective customers or clients. The planning and execution of events has to be carried out, after data integration, so as to ensure that the interaction with customers turns out to be quite sophisticated.

A very significant part is played in companies' experiential marketing strategies by event marketing, even as it is blended with database and one-to-one marketing principles. Sampling of products by potential consumers, obviously, also forms an integral part of it.

For instance, if a new product is to be introduced, samples of the product could be sent to journalists who have a considerable amount of influence in the space of which the product category in question is a part, in accordance with a product sampling strategy. On the other hand, an event for the launch of the product could be held with invitations being sent to members of the press and some of those who form part of groups of users that are key for the product. The invitees could not only try the new product out, but also meet up with executives of the company.

Product introduction is taken to a whole new level by experiential marketing.

The following could form part of an effective strategy:

1. Gathering data about potential customers:

The company could search its databases to come up with the details of those who could be the most likely ones to purchase the new product. For instance, by determining how often its existing customers are likely to replace its products, the company can find out about those who are likely make a purchase in the near future. Also, it could identify its leading markets, through analysis of reports of retail purchases. Subsequently, the company can invite prospective purchasers from these markets, to sample the new product.

2. Event planning and organization:

This is meant to provide as much relevant information as possible, besides showcasing the brand and allowing the potential consumer to experience the product first-hand. Those who are business customers, especially, could be set up to meet with an expert from the industry, so that they could gain some information about trends that are likely to impact their businesses. They could also be provided demonstrations on a private basis. An event for launching the product could be held in each of the leading markets.

3. Optimizing the list of invitees:

A sufficient number of customers have to be invited, so that not only do they experience the new product, but qualified leads are also generated for the company, while keeping the event as intimate as it should be. For this purpose, business associates or friends of the invitees that are existing customers, who are likely to be actively interested in the new product, could be encouraged to come along. Also, partner companies could have lists of those among their own customers, who are likely to be prospects for the new product, and they could also be invited.

4. Collecting feedback from attendees:

Those who attend the event should be asked to provide feedback on the event as well as the product, besides information on the likeliness of a purchase.

5. Follow up:

After the databases have been updated, following the event, the list of prospects should be passed on to the company's sales team.

Web 2.0 As A Marketing Tool

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Web 2.0 can be used effectively to raise the levels of customer engagement, which, in turn, is known to help increase loyalty. There are sufficient statistics available to prove that retaining customer loyalty is imperative for any brand.

The following should help to illustrate this further:

1. An increase of customer loyalty of 1 percent is equivalent to a 10 percent cost reduction (source: Bain & Co.)

2. The probability of selling to a new prospect is only 5 percent to 20 percent while the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 percent to 70 percent (source: Marketing Metrics)

3. Customer loyalty accounts for 38 percent of margin, 40 percent of revenue growth and 38 percent of shareholder value (source: Accenture Research).

Employing Web 2.0 to gain greater loyalty from customers:

Increasing the degree of engagement with the customer can lead to an increase in customer loyalty. Among the ways and means that are available in this day and age, for engaging successfully with the customer, Web 2.0 is among the most effective ones. So, the marketers who build their strategies around it, along with other marketing tools, are likely to reap substantial benefits in terms of customer loyalty. These technologies are moving fast towards the mainstream and those who do not incorporate these into their arsenal are likely to have to rely mainly on price-competition in order to increase sales.

The Web 2.0 technologies enable marketers to reach out to potential customers or clients in ways that are more interactive and through which they can contact a larger number of people than methods that are more traditional in nature, besides being able to analyze the results effectively.

This has made it easier for businesses that are midsized or small to compete with larger ones, more than ever before. Online videos, wikis, blogs and other such applications allow them to interact with existing and prospective clients or customers, in more ways than before and more economically, as well, as these are less expensive than methods used traditionally. Some of the ways in which marketing can be done through Web 2.0, while making the best use of the funds allocated for the purpose, are as follows:

Sites for social networking:

As the average Internet user tends to use social networks more and more often, it has become possible for companies to benefit from the creation of user-groups centered around their services and products and try and have existing as well as prospective clients or customers join these. Through such networks or groups, not only can the users ask questions from company representatives or from each other, but also invite those known to them to join. Information regarding new service or product offerings can also be posted there, in addition to making announcements in real time.

In addition to that, a younger target group that often does not take sufficient notice of services and products that are advertised traditionally can be reached out to through sites like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, etc. However, even as it is fairly simple to create content on any of these sites, it is essential to refresh the concept periodically, in order to retain interest.

Blogging:

Blogs not only help customers differentiate a company's products and services from the alternatives available, but also to do so at a negligible cost for the company. This enhances their appeal as tools for a company's marketing effort to reach out to prospective clients or customers and to begin to establish relationships with them.

Therefore, blogs have the potential to provide an advantage to those businesses that make use of the medium of communication that these provide, over those that do not.

Here, too, fresh content has to be provided regularly, in order to retain interest.

Press releases:

Press releases have become a marketing tool for communicating directly with consumers, as news websites, among which Google news and Yahoo news are quite prominent, have caused the syndication of news to become much simpler and more prevalent. These sites carry huge amounts of content in terms of press releases. Since substantial results are unlikely to be attained through news that is boring, even if it is optimized quite well, it is important to announce something that is newsworthy. Also, the message might get diluted if the keywords being focused upon are too many and the information being provided is too much.

Accounting Outsourcing Can be your Business’s Pillar of Strength

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It takes a lot to run a business successfully and as an owner, you have to ensure that all departments of your firm are in perfect working condition. Each department, be it marketing, human resource or finance, have their own contribution towards the profitability of the company. In this context, one of the major aspects of any business is its accounting division. Each income or expenditure that the business incurs can make a major impact on the financial standing of the business. An efficient accounting division should maintain all the records in journals, profit and loss statements and balance sheets to reflect an accurate status of the business. However at times, it becomes difficult for a company to sustain a full-fledged accounts division to maintain its records on a daily basis and this is where accounting outsourcing can make a difference.

Many companies are opting for the convenient and safe option of getting accounting outsourcing done for their business from a third party vendor. The vendor in turn hires efficient accounting personnel who competently maintain the financial records of the clients. Accounting outsourcing ensures that the client has instant access to his financial records as and when the need arises. The regularly updated accounts provided by the outsourced vendor benefit the company by presenting accurate image of the company standing to the shareholders, investors, creditors and the public in general. This increases the credit worthiness and credibility of the organization in the market. Another advantage of having accurately maintained accounts is that the dealings of the company remain above board at all times and no embezzling of funds can take place.

Accounting outsourcing services of a reputable vendor ensures that the financial records of the business are available at a short notice hence there is no mad scrambling to adjust accounts once the tax season approaches. Payment of taxes is an important duty of every business and the scrutiny of tax officials is very detailed. In such a scenario, having accurately maintained accounts of every business transaction creates a positive impression of the company on the tax officials. In addition, the instant accessibility of the records enables the company's senior officials to take decisions regarding the future growth of the business. Any expansion or diversification can be planned only when you know you actual standing in the market and the accounts are the only source for such information.

However, when you are trying to hire a vendor to handle all your accounting outsourcing work, it is advisable to do a little background research on the vendors before you finalize such a deal. The financial records of any company are highly confidential and the security provided by the vendor should be your utmost priority. Also, ensure that the accounting professionals working for the vendor, who will be handling your accounts, are well acquainted with the latest accounting softwares available in the market. A past reference from other companies is also helpful in selecting the right vendor. Once you have handed over your accounting work to the right vendor you can then rest easy regarding the maintenance of company records.

The Advantage of Offshore Financial Outsourcing

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The trend for outsourcing lower level IT functions, requiring generic and easily acquired (and replaced) skills, has been sustained and popular with financial companies. Offshore destinations such as India offer scalability because their working population is significantly larger than the domestic market. They also provide a pool of skilled graduates, as well as impressive language capabilities, and a compatible culture.

Initially big business took the plunge and directed IT functions offshore, but today even smaller companies with a turnover of less than £5 million and/or less than 100 employees are happy to outsource. This reflects the growing trend for a wide range of companies to outsource all manner of business to offshore destinations. Even the smallest start-up will look east if they have a suitable project in hand and an eye turned to the best deal.

India is the most mature offshore destination, closely followed by Sri Lanka. The Far East and South East Asia are alternative destinations, although not as popular. Another emerging trend is for IT functions to be outsourced to nearshore destinations like Russia, the Czech Republic and Poland, where security might be tighter and management-time can be more effectively utilised.

However, the market trend for finance companies to outsource relatively simple IT functions to Sub Continental Asia is being superseded by a growing desire for suppliers to build systems and applications that supersede anything that they could build in-house. From wanting 'yes men' companies are now keen to engage with suppliers who will bring their own skills sets and help improve the quality of the project.

According to a 2006 National Outsourcing Association research report, 73.3% of respondents outsourced application development. The second most popular function was application re-engineering and migration at 36.7% . The study attracted seventy-six responses from outsourcing decision makers within financial organisations throughout the UK.

This trend for outsourcing increasingly complex projects perhaps isn't so surprising. Most finance companies that outsource IT functions prioritise fluid communication, domain and technology expertise and security, with cost perhaps fourth on the list – important, but of no real use without the other three. Without expertise or good communication skills, a supplier could take up valuable management time. At worst, miscommunication can be disastrous.

Businesses should carefully consider the full advantages (as well as potential disadvantages) of offshore financial outsourcing, before committing to a supplier. India has experienced wage inflation because of competition in the market – the ITO skills pool is finite. So if labour costs rise, it makes sense to outsource higher end projects, if that is both possible and desirable.

Whether a project can be outsourced still depends on its complexity and size, as well on management time, security and adherence to regulation, but there seems to be an increased belief that offshore suppliers can enhance the value of a project, rather than simply completing a given project in an unimaginative fashion.

Legal Accounts Software

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We live in a fast-paced world. Everything seems to be happening against the clock, and keeping up with innovations is essential in many aspects of our lives. Computers and the Internet have already shaped our life style, and we have gotten so accustomed to making the most of them that we could hardly imagine a world without PCs or software. Computers and cutting-edge software have also had a tremendous impact on the way businesses are being conducted. Every day, a new piece of software is being launched on the market, and businesses of all kinds are already reaping the benefits of employing all kinds of software that improve their overall performance to a great extent. Computers and software have left no industry dull, and the legal practice is no exception. The diverse and complicated activities taking place within the legal practices are definitely easier to perform with the help of legal technology solutions. The number of practices employing legal software is constantly growing, as a direct result of the numerous benefits that legal technology solutions bring.

The legal technology solutions include legal billing software, e-conveyancing, digital dictation software, legal accounts software, online case tracking, and so forth.

Meeting the specific needs of each legal office, while benefiting from the ultimate management solution is now possible due to the legal accounts software. This solution is integrated and comprehensive, and if implemented properly, it meets all the required rules and standards, such as Legal Aid Franchising Quality Assurance Standards, Law Society rules and Lexel standards.

Holding all the information regarding clients and matters in a single database generates a significant maintenance time reduction, as well as cost savings. The legal accounts software allows for the information inside a legal office to be held in such a single data source, which is constantly and centrally used and updated. Furthermore, the full integration of the legal accounts software with other legal technology solutions ensures the simultaneous updating of the accounts information, which delivers great control.

Both the common management reports and the accounting reports, which are normally provided by sophisticated packages, are included in the legal accounts software. Any piece of information, from Client Matter Balances to Profit, Loss and Balance Sheet reports can be analysed with the help of this software. Moreover, the analysis can be performed either by department or by branch, and standard reports can be modified as they are running, due to their pre-installed parameters.

The other functions of good legal accounts software include Cheque Printing, Ledger Card, Time Recording and Automatic Bank Reconciliation. The Cheque Printing function allows the printing of customisable cheques, either for the firm or for clients, from any bank account. The Ledger Card function displays essential information, such as client, office, bill, disbursements, and deposit balances, related to the client's matter. Choosing the most appropriate way to record your time is possible with the Time Recording function of the legal accounts software. The accuracy of the information inside the systems is increased and the time spent on duplicating work is substantially reduced. The Bank Reconciliation facility allows the analysis and cross-reference of batch payments and receipts, and displays the changing reconciled balance.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Publishing Web Content on Money-making Affiliate Content Sites

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Publishing web content related to the affiliate products you're promoting, and having a website to post them to, are vital for affiliate marketing success. Sure, you can promote affiliate products without having a website. However, if you want to maximize your affiliate earnings and establish a solid affiliate business, you simply must have a website (or a blog) that contains web content worth publishing on any respectable site.

The question now would be: where do you find or how do you get the web content needed for your site? Here are some great ideas.

Web Site Content Generation Idea # 1 - Write them yourself.

This is ideal if you are on a tight budget. All you need to do is invest some time to research and come up with helpful free web site content related to the affiliate product you're endorsing. And if you're already familiar with the topic, writing is a breeze.

Web Site Content Generation Idea # 2 - Outsource to freelance writers.

If you have the funds, want to save time, or simply hate writing, this is the ideal option. It frees up most of your time unless you need to edit the content; that's why if you've found a reliable freelance writer, treat him like gold.

To search for suitable writers, simply go to elance.com or guru.com and post a writing project for writers to bid on. Once your desired content is written, you should own exclusive rights to it to do whatever you please.

Web Site Content Generation Idea # 3 – Buy products with private label rights (more popularly known as PLR) .

This approach also saves you valuable time, and doesn't cost as much as having freelancers write exclusive content for you.

You may extract portions from the PLR products and post them as articles on your affiliate content site, or you may give away PLR reports (or mini-ebooks) with your affiliate links within. If you've bought PLR articles, you may organize and combine them to create a PLR report. Read the terms carefully to ensure that you're given the right to alter, add or remove any content from the PLR product.

One good suggestion is to rewrite some of the content if you want it to be somewhat different from those who have also bought the PLR products. However, this shouldn't be a cause for worry since many of the buyers of those PLR products are not going to use them anyway.

Web Site Content Generation Idea # 4 – Use public domain materials.

This saves you both time and money in your search for free web site content. Public domain resources are copyright-free, so you may do anything you want with them.

You can find a list of public domain sources here:
http://www.booksforabuck.com/general/pubsources.html

One sound advice if you're going to use public domain is to modify some, or most, of the content so it can be unique and you can treat it as your own work.

Web Site Content Generation Idea # 5 – Affiliate Tools

Use the articles or other pre-sellers provided by the merchant and put your affiliate link in the appropriate place (i.e. resource box). You may also post the affiliate product's benefits or features.

Hope these 5 web site content generation ideas will help you in publishing web content most suitable for your affiliate content sites. Good luck and may you have an abundance of affiliate commissions.

Making Money the Easy Way Online

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If you have always wanted that extra bit out of your internet experience and wanted to get riches quicker – this one's for you. Now you can easily start making money online within just a few days. Here are some tried and tested opportunities ahead for you.

Franchising

Franchising is a high impact business opportunity that allows you to start making money online very easily – without much of a hassle. The way it works is that the franchisor engages you (the franchisee) to sell and promote their products. They will provide you with all the training, support and marketing material needed. The more you sell the more your income potential is. Franchising is great because it gives you the same heady feeling of having your own business. Just that in this case you never need to run around looking for publicity and advertising resources. Nor do you need to search for a network of suppliers. The franchisor provides all this for you. Thus franchising provides a quick and safe way of making money on the Internet.

Writing

If writing is your passion then you'll love this one. There are plenty of opportunities for making money online as far as the writing profession is concerned. You can contribute to blogs, forums and even to websites. There are many top companies who look for freelance content writers who are willing to work on a contract basis. For every project completed you get to command a good price. In fact some writers earn a major portion of their income just from a single assignment! Thus freelance writing represents a fantastic way of making money online.

Shopping

If you love shopping and the 'feel-good' factor it provides, then online shopping can be a great way of making money online easily. You can shop on behalf of other people online. Most people don't have the time these days to go shopping and hence are always looking for personal shoppers who would do the job for them. By being a personal shopper you are essentially getting paid to do something that you absolutely love! What could be better than that? Before you start engaging with clients, you need to have a fair idea of the personal preferences and color choices. Once you know their interests, it becomes easier to shop for them online. Thus personal shopping is one of the best ways of making money online easily on the Internet.

Taking surveys

Most companies who are serious about their online marketing campaigns are dead serious about surveys conducted online. They are ready to spend big money to get honest, opinionated views of their products. Thus if you wish to take surveys this can be a very good way of making money online quickly. Besides you can even earn big chunks of money from a single survey!

Online Shopping Carts - Preventing Customer Frustration Online

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There are millions of retail websites on the Internet that use online shopping carts to enable customers to order products or services online. If you've ever shopped online, however, you know that all online shopping carts are not created equal. Some are confusing to use, don't allow you to make changes as you progress through the ordering process or are limited in terms of payment options and other features.

Having a shopping cart system that doesn't work well or is limited in functionality is often a mistake new websites make. They lavish lots of time and money on making the site appealing, showing off their products or services in the best possible light and even adding cool flash add-ons and other extras, but cut corners on the shopping cart because they see it as a mundane, boring feature that is strictly utilitarian. The problem that arises from that attitude is that shoppers can quickly lose their enthusiasm for purchasing a product or products if they become frustrated when going through the online checkout.

Online shopping carts should be customer friendly. People make mistakes; it's a fact of life. If your website's online shopping cart system is well-designed, it will allow for errors by having links on each page for going back and making corrections or enabling the shopper to change his mind on one item without losing his entire order in the process.

Internet shopping is only as convenient as the payment options for most people. If a retail website offers wonderful gifts, clothing or furniture but doesn't accept credit cards, it will lose a hefty proportion of its customers. Conversely, if a variety of options such as major credit cards, PayPal and e-checks are available; shoppers will be more inclined to make purchases.

Shopping carts must also have back end flexibility. Of course, offering lots of different options and services through your online shopping cart system is great for your customers, but if it isn't easy to use and adapt to your own company's needs from the back end as well, it won't help. If you have a flexible, intuitive back end design, however, you'll find that a more complex shopping cart system can actually make your work easier.

There are many companies today who offer custom designed online shopping carts as well as companies that offer several different software packages that you can tailor to fit your specific needs at a reasonable cost. Using these specialists to help you implement an online shopping cart experience for your website can improve everything from your customer service to your bookkeeping, since you can use these systems for not only placing orders, but for tracking inventory and assessing sales trends.

When researching online shopping cart options for your website, ask some serious questions about what the provider can offer you. Considerations on whether the software package will include the source code so that you can customize your online shopping cart as your needs change should be an option. Find out if there is technical support available if and when you need it. Research what types of payment options can be set up with the shopping cart program. And learn if the system is a dynamic one that can evolve and change, as shopper's needs change.

Be sure when you're looking for the right online shopping cart service or package that you really know what you'll need. Whether you offer customized gifts or require drop-down menus for color, size and style choices, your decision will be based on your needs. Also, find out what the return policies are for the particular product you are interested in. Knowing as much as possible about what you want will ensure that you don't fall short when you invest in your website's online shopping cart system.

Why Keywords Are Vital To An Seo Campaign?

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SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the optimization of a web page in order that it ranks higher in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) for specific keywords or keyword phrases. The pages that rank higher typically gain the greater amount of search engine traffic compared to pages ranked lower for the same keyword.

The majority of web users click on one of the top 5 results on the first page when they complete a search. As such, the ultimate goal of any SEO (Search Engine Optimizer) is to gain one of these coveted top spots, with the number one ranking being the primary objective.

Targeting Keywords

However, a top position for any keyword won't suffice. In order to increase your ROI, it is vital to ensure that you target the most appropriate keywords for your pages, and for your business. While generic, or very general topic keywords, may have the highest number of searches conducted in a month they are also the most competitive and typically least productive.

Competitive Keywords

The more competitive a keyword the more pages that you need to compete with in order to benefit from an SEO campaign. Many of the pages that appear at the top of the list will also be well optimized and have a powerful link profile, making it difficult to rank highly.

Improved Conversions With Targeted Keywords

General topic based keywords have also proven to have lower conversion rates compared to more specific keywords. Targeted keywords generate targeted visitors, and targeted visitors are much more likely to be active while on the pages of your website.

How Keyword Research Helps

Keyword research helps you to identify keywords that are relevant, targeted, and preferably less competitive. By finding the right blend of these factors you can minimize the time it takes to rank well, actually increase the number of visitors, and improve your conversion rates. Targeted keyword research leads to better profit opportunities and improved ROI.

Tailoring Your Keyword Research To Your Needs

Every page of a website needs to be treated as an individual project, especially in terms of marketing. Each page will usually attract different visitors in different stages of the purchasing process. Deep product pages will often catch visitors while they are at their most profitable - when they're ready to buy. General pages and even product category pages can be used to attract more general terms, but they should still be properly researched and targeted very precisely to your target market.

Niche Keywords

Niche keywords are often talked about as being the ideal variety of keywords for a page. A niche keyword is a highly targeted, very specific keyword. It is geared towards a corner of the market in which you operate and typically has very few competing pages. Niche keywords don't usually create much in the way of traffic but the traffic that they do create is highly targeted and very active. It attracts excellent conversion rates ensuring that you get a good return on your marketing investment.

Long Tail Keywords

Many web pages will gain visitors from natural keywords within the text. These long tail search terms again produce highly targeted visitors and while each individual term will not produce more than one or possibly two visitors over the space of the month, they do all add up. It is virtually impossible to research long tail keywords because of their infrequency, but by using popular keywords you heighten the chances of seeing more on your website.

Why Keyword Research Is Important

Keyword research is an important aspect of SEO because it helps to identify the terms that surfers use to access sites similar to yours. This, in turn, enables you to optimize the pages of your site and your link profile in order to attract those visitors. By doing so, you may also improve the number of long tail searches that lead to your site, and these product highly targeted visitors for little optimization effort.

Simplifying your Affiliate Program With Tracking Software

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Many business owners are realizing the potentials of increasing sales through affiliate programs. Affiliate programs are a great way to expand your business and reach new prospective clients, but there are a lot of things that go into a successful affiliate program and it is important to understand some of these factors before you get started. The biggest concern is typically the cost involved in beginning and maintaining an affiliate program. These programs generally pay for themselves fairly quickly with substantial increases in sales, but you will still want to be aware of how much you are investing in the program.

Most of the costs involved in operating your affiliate program will consist of the income you pay out to each affiliate. An affiliate is a person or company that joins your efforts in promoting and selling your products and services, generally through their own website and with their own marketing efforts. Affiliates who generate new leads and sales are rewarded with a percentage of the sale or a standard rate for each instance. You should decide on a fair compensation package that will make your affiliates glad to be a part of your success.

If you have several affiliates selling and promoting your business, it may become difficult to keep track of who is responsible for each lead. Affiliate tracking software is generally used to easily automate this task. These programs assign each affiliate an individual tracking code. The codes are placed inside the graphic and text links that your affiliate uses to promote your business and the software records various information about the affiliate's activity and performance, including sales, the amounts of sales, and some affiliate tracking software programs will even report how much income the affiliate has earned.

The right affiliate tracking software is crucial to managing a successful affiliate campaign. There are many different types of tracking programs available from a number of different developers so before you begin any type of affiliate program, you should explore your options and get a general idea of what may be right for your needs. The most convenient way to research the many different software programs available is to search online. Simply type in the phrase 'affiliate tracking software' in your favorite search engine and browse the variety of results. You will more than likely find several of the leading programs used by successful affiliate programs around the world.

You will also want to compare the various prices of each affiliate tracking software program. Not only do the costs of these programs vary from very inexpensive to rather costly, the fees are collected in many different ways. Some software developers offer their affiliate tracking programs for a one time charge while others provide their software on a subscription basis, collecting a fee once a year or each month. In the long run, it is usually more cost efficient to select a tracking program that can be purchased once or that is available for an annual charge. Monthly subscriptions will add up quickly if you continue to use the software.

The total amount you spend on an effective affiliate tracking software program will depend on your needs and the software you decide to purchase. You can find simple programs for less than one hundred dollars, while more sophisticated software may cost several thousand dollars. If you are just introducing affiliate marketing into your advertising strategies, you may want to choose a basic tracking software program that isn't too costly and invest in a better program when you are comfortable with the progress of your affiliate program.

If you are interested in an exact price of a specific affiliate tracking software program, it is best to visit the developer's website. Most company websites will tell you more about their individual products, usually including the price. If the information is not available online, contact the company directly and speak with a sales representative.

Monday, November 19, 2007

The Steady Rise Of Ecommerce

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Gone are those traditional methods of business. Now it is the websites that rules the roost. ECommerce is taking its lead these days. ECommerce is more to do with increased sales, profits and a one place all to shop for products or services. ECommerce offers a good boost to any kind of business. By opting for Ecommerce one can expand the market margins and expand it to the global market place. Even a small time business that offers quality and reliable services can easily find themselves equivalent to their competitors by using Ecommerce.

Ecommerce is the art of selling products and services over the internet. Some people explain it in a narrow way as to do financial transactions online but to make it more broader it is to it is to sell things over the net.

Ecommerce evolved with the concept of providers send mails to introduce products and services to the buyer. This concept was roughly the idea behind ecommerce. When companies like Amazon, Yahoo and Netscape came up this idea was more broadly framed to be designed and implemented. This was the birth of internet marketing. The business started to rise up considerably high and people started investing in online marketing. This drew a lot of users to the website. This led to a lot of company investing in online business and reaping lots of money. So more and more companies came up and it was a huge arena of internet companies.

In the early stages the marketing functioned well but after a huge rush of companies online, there were a lot of money transfer among hands. There were money transfer problems, communication problems with their suppliers.

People forgot that online business was like a normal business and did not concentrate on branding strategies and a business plan. Things are becoming different nowadays. More companies try rising up but then there is a whole lot of competition in the industry.

Here are some tips to be followed before you start an online business:
1. Work on advertisement. Linking with other websites is a good idea.
2. Creating Meta Tags is extremely good as search engines can pull out your website if you give the right description of your website.
3. Link yourself with the search engines. By linking with the most popular search engine like Google or yahoo also helps.
4. Naming all the sub links with care and detail is very important. The page you read should be helpful to you to know which location you are at.
5. Location details in your website will help your users to contact you immediately.
6. Newsletters, SMS alerts, updates through email are different marketing tools to your website.
7. Branding is another important thing which would chiefly help your website to gain popularity. By having a good logo design, color and a good page design will make your website stand out from others.
8. By advertising in different websites will also lead many users to your website. This is for brand new companies that are very new to the internet world.
9. Email the queries now and then. Prompt replies will bring you good name.
10. Be elaborate. Make your content crisp and to the point. Do not overdo your content and spoil the look and feel of your website.

Ecommerce is ruling the internet marketing space these days. A careful analysis of the points before starting a company online is very important.

Mailing List For Affiliate Marketers, Anyone?

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If you are an affiliate marketer who wants to make a comfortable living from referring your prospects to other people's product or service for decent commissions, then you must consider building your own mailing list.

Building your mailing list of hungry prospects can be one of the best investments you will ever make, as it is time and effort worth spending on. When you strike on a Joint Venture and have a new product or service to endorse, you can look no further than your own mailing list.

Granted, that most affiliates, as in more than 90 percent of them, are not making money from affiliate programs, but this often results from the same amount of effort focused on least effective methods.

While having your own mailing list is, by a long mile, not the only effective affiliate marketing method, you can make affiliate sales very quickly even in the next few hours after sending a sales message, provided that your mailing list is huge and responsive.

This is often true, because owning your own mailing list for you to endorse products and services to is one of the fastest-producing results, beating other affiliate marketing methods imaginable.

In a nutshell, the affiliate marketer who gets ahead of the pack is the one who owns a huge and responsive mailing list of prospects.

If you would ask this question, "Which one is more important? The mailing list or the product?" Any savvy marketer would answer you, "The mailing list".

Principally, any wise business person puts the importance of hungry demand (and not just any demand) in front of the product. In other words, there is no product if there is no demand! And a mailing list represents the demand or your business if you would like to call it.

If you frequent the Joint Venture forums and membership sites of any kind, you will find that product and service owners need mailing list owners more than the other way round. This is because the mailing list owners have the prospects that the other type of partner is looking for to sell to.

And if you are a mailing list owner, you do not have to necessarily make money from selling your own product. You can sell advertising space or craft a Joint Venture with product owners in return of commissions, recurring or not.

Most of the biggest success web businesses on the Internet today often establish the mailing list (or subscribers) first before the product. One fine example is Friendster.com .

Friendster.com, in the nutshell, is a website that connects friends and potential friends from around the world through a free membership access.

While Friendster.com does not make money from the number of members who join the site, the business makes money from selling advertising space and partnering with other big time merchants and businesses, owing to the established number of members Friendster.com has recruited.

This business is perfect example that demonstrates why every business should establish a need or demand before the product itself, and why you should do the same, whether you run a friends site or not.

How to Get The Most Link Juice for Your Articles

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Distributing articles for the purpose of building links to a site or for that site's SEO can be a great way to link build and build your site's authority status. But a good amount of SEO writers tend to take the easy way out of distributing their content, using only article distribution sites for doing so. These article warehouses will get your name out into the Internet, and you may end up with a few good links in the process (and maybe some traffic from EzineAricles.com because they get great Google longtail rankings).

The downside to mass article distribution is, however, the content on article distribution sites gets duplicated all over the net on sites you have no control over. This can lead to a lot of worthless links from trash sites and spam blogs that are just trying to increase their rankings or value in an undereducated manner. Likewise, policing that these trash sites are actually linking back to you, or not selling other links in your content, is nearly impossible and can really cut into your profit margin.

newsstand

Instead of throwing your content out there for everyone and their family dog to duplicate, I suggest taking a smarter approach to marketing your articles for SEO purposes. While some of these tips may take longer to implement, they can be of great value. Here are some ways to market SEO articles without using article distribution sites. These will lead to good, solid links that will help improve your site's rankings and draw in new customers.

Print on Your Own Site

Your own website can be a great way to promote your articles. Start a news section and post articles you write on your website so that readers can use, positioning your site or internal blog as a resource.

Remember, good SEO articles will be keyword rich, attracting your target market directly to your website. Better yet, the bookmarks (here's a list of bookmarking services you should submit to ) and links pointing to the article will build value to your site, not someone else's (like if you gave them the article for free).

Blogs Attract Customers

Launch a separate blog to establish yourself as an expert in your niche (or buy someone else's blog). Combine your articles into that blog that address problems that your target audience experiences. You can then offer them solutions to these problems in the form of products and services that you offer, or just link to your services or 'sponsor' the blog with your business.

Posting articles on your blog and updating them regularly will help you gain an audience. Search engines also love blogs because of their freshness, so your blog will show up higher when someone searches your keywords, and that traffic will ultimately find your site.

Print Your Work.

Even in this electronic age, the printed word holds value. For some readers, just being able to hold a piece of paper makes the information seem more valuable. Print up your best articles on nice paper, including a photo and contact information, and pass them out to your existing and potential clients or contribute them to a local newspaper or business association flyers. You'd be surprised how many business sections of the paper are looking for content and isn't having niche expert advice on business much better than reading press releases or AP wires?

How To Maximize Your Exposure In Google

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It's been a while since I've looked at Google's page titled How to submit your content to Google . On first glance, it would be easy to assume this page represents all your options for submission and link seeking. The page includes the sections:
  • Add your URL to Google's index The basic and best known submission option for your web site's pages
  • Google Base Submit everything from a recipe database to a job offer to collection of photographs
  • Google Books Partner Program For book publishers of any size, the Google Books Partner Program and help users discover your books on Google.
  • Google Video Uploader Program If you create video content either professionally or as a hobby, Google Video provides a free platform for people to search, preview, and play your video. Your video will be linked to in search results.

Given that this page is designed to explain how to submit content to Google, it's easy to see why most folks assume this must be all there is that can be submitted, however, take a look at the bottom right of the above page, where you'll see another lonely link that looks like this:

About Google

Click that link, then click the link you see that says:

Google Services & Tools

Here's the real mother lode. The Google Services & Tools page lists many other obvious and not so obvious ways you can obtain even more links from Google properties to your content. Note the second link down in the left column. It reads:

Blog Search

I'll go out on a limb and assume you have a blog. If so, then go to About Google Blog Search, and then click FAQ item #5, How do I get my blog listed? How easy was that? Remember that original How to submit your content to Google page? It never mentioned blog content at all. You'd only find that if you took some time and clicked around the Google site.

This one exercise should have you curious, and asking what other types of submissions and links are out there waiting for you at Google. And whether you are a new or seasoned link builder, remember that link opportunities can only be maximized if you know they exist in the first place. Here are several other Google link opportunities you may be able to pursue.

Finance. See all that excellent finance related news? The publishers of those news stories have some really sweet links within the Google Finance pages. I wonder what other publishers ought to be here but haven't noticed?

Images. Your site has images, so why not make sure that can be found via a Google image search. Look how it helps me.

Maps. Add or edit your business, and Google will link to it. Here's mine.

News. - Search thousands of news stories. If you produce news, get it included.

Product Search. Formerly known as Froogle. Still free, and still links right to your products . Christmas is six weeks away, so what are you waiting for?

Scholar. Publish scholarly information or journals? Your links await.

University Search. Several hundred university specific databases. This is just one of many specialty searches Google offers. If you have content that is appropriate, there are links to be had, so click and see if a Google specialty database fits your content.

There are several other linking opportunities throughout the many Google properties, and while some people know about some of them, my guess is most people don't know a thing about any more than one or two of them, and few if any people know about all of them. I do my best to keep up with the variety of linking opportunities Google offers, and as I learn of others I'll share them. If you know of others, do the same over at Sphinn.


AOL Offers Video Ticker Ads

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AOL is introducing a new video advertising format: ticker ads. It's the latest video site to move away from pre-roll, which the Online Publishers Association suggests is a good model but otherwise is roundly rejected by users as delivering a bad experience.

According to the AOL press release, the new ads were developed in conjunction with Gannett-owned PointRoll. Here's how they work:

Rather than overlaying an ad and obstructing the view of a video, AOL's video ticker ad appears at the bottom of the video player 10 seconds into the video stream. When clicked by a user, the ad expands while the video pauses. If the user does not interact with the ad, it will dissolve after 15 seconds leaving the branded text link. Clicking on the branded text link, located at the top of the video player, will relaunch the ticker.

Below is a screenshot:

ScreenHunter_945.jpg


The new AOL ads are similar to those recently integrated by YouTube on the site. However, none of the video is obscured in the AOL ads, as the release excerpt says above. Yet the approach is similar to the YouTube (and Brightcover and VideoEgg) approaches. It suggests a new standard may be emerging for online video advertising, which avoids pre-roll entirely.


Sunday, November 18, 2007

Free Advertising Techniques for your Online Business

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Advertising is a method of letting people know about the particular product or service that you offer. In order to sell a product, you need to advertise. If no one knows that your product exists, you will not have any buyers.

Most people who are new to Internet marketing do not know where to start. There are thousands of places (and ways) to advertise on the Internet. And they range in price everywhere from very expensive to free. If you are just starting out with your first product on the Internet, you are best served by using free advertising methods.

When you are running any sort of advertisement, it is important for you to track your results. Many good counters will track where your visitors are coming from. Using this information, you can determine whether or not the ads are working for you. Regardless of whether you are using paid ads or free ones, tracking your results is of critical importance.

One free method of advertising involves the use of online classified ads. Advertising with classified ads can be quite effective. If you are interested in using this method, you will want to learn how to make the most out of your ad. It is essential to develop a compelling headline. Your headline is what will attract readers to view your ad. Without an interesting headline, few people will see your ad.

In most cases, you can place classified ads for free. However, some charge a fee to run ads. If you are interested in finding a free classified ad site, perform a search and you will get a number of results.

If you enjoy writing, you can use articles to advertise. Each article should be in the area of 300 – 500 words. At the bottom of your article, add a small paragraph, advertising your product or service. This is called the authors resource box. Your information in your resource box will look very much like a classified ad. Again, make sure the title of your article is compelling or few people will read it. Each article can be submitted to a number of article directory sites. To be effective, you should submit articles on a daily basis.

Online auctions can also be an effective place to advertise (and sell) your product, particularly if it is lower priced item. Higher priced downloads do not seem to work as well. Millions of people visit online auction sites and you can register and sell you products there for free.

One other thing I should mention, if you are new to the Internet, you might not have a product to sell. If this is the case, you might consider products with master resell rights. These are products that you can download and then sell to others. For a large number of free products with master resell rights, visit my website.

Make your Website the Number One Choice With Link Building Service

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In the ever-changing arena of internet, every business needs to find out the best opportunities to make its presence noticeable. For this, businesses get a very short time period and sometimes they get only one chance to attract visitors as a visitor will never visit such website which does not contain useful information. Due to tough competition among online businesses and service providers every online business owner need to be more cautious and coherent as missing single chance can cause a big loss. For making a noticeable presence on World Wide Web, online businesses must remember that promotion is the key to popularity and once a site gets desired popularity among internet users nothing can stop that site from making renowned place in online market. Usually, online businesses adapt various techniques to make their site popular; link building is one of those popular techniques that bring more and more traffic to a website. For effective link building, businesses often hire firms that are involved in providing link building services.

Since link building is essential for every website, it should never be overlooked; online businesses that ignore link building do not get desired traffic despite of putting their hardest endeavors in popularizing their website. Link building services providers help a website in improving its position on search engine ranking through a unique process of building that website's links on various host sites. Advantages of link building services are supreme as your site gets extra users with the help of host site; whenever a visitor visits host site he or she finds you link with reference. Definitely, it is an excellent way to attract more and more visitors as with it your site gets huge popularity and identity.
Link building service providers use every latest technique so that your site may get noticed by all major search engines. Since most of major search engines decide on rank of any website through its link popularity, it is must to make your URL a well known link for getting highest rank on search engines. If you own a website and striving to get good traffic then go for link building service provider to attract more internet users; these service providers not only popularize your link but also work on page ranking, traffic and deep indexing so that your website may get all that stuff which is necessary for effective online presence.

In link building service, a thorough study of your website and selection of perfect host is made; the host that is selected for putting your link will be according to search engine criteria. With a good link building service provider you will never have to worry about host site and strategies as these all things will be discussed and decided by the hired service provider. As success of your online business entirely depends on the proper placement, publicity and link building therefore, do not wait anymore and hire an efficient link building firm to make your website the most preferred choice of every internet user.

Which Techniques are Covered in SEO Services?

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Well, there is short cut for SEO services and there is no magic to push your site to the top of search engine rankings. As the basic attributes of SEO still include the blogs, websites, forums etc and basic steps for search engine optimization still remains the same. Unless and until your web promotion basics are right you can not hope to achieve search engine rankings. So we can have a look at these basic techniques.

Title tag – Title tag us very important. This is the first thing that spiders will crawl for on your web page. This is written on the top of Html code.

Internal Navigation- You must define the proper navigation structures in the website. This is considered beneficial both from user as well as search engine point of view.

Content – Always make your site unique by introducing fresh content in it. Content is still considered as the king and search engines love the fresh content and there should not be any duplicate content in the website.

Clean Coding- The coding in the website should be clean and precise. Search engine spiders do not crawl the code which is junk in nature. Apart form this it is unclean coding is not beneficial to a user if someone want to see the coding of a particular section in website. It will just send the visitors as well as spiders away from the website.

No immediate changes - Do not make fast changes in the website. For example changing the meta tags, content, and navigation structure at the same time may affect the promotion aspect and it may drop the rankings and you will not be able derive what was the main point to the problem. Try one change at a time giving time to search engines to review.

Meta tags- The description and title tag carries the main tags. No doubt meta tags does not have the same influence as it was in the past still you can not ignore it and it is a good idea to make keyword rich tags in order to show up in the search engine rankings.

Links- Increase the amount of inbound links to your website. It's not only the quality of links but also the quality that counts. You can have thousands of links pointing to your website but they can be from link farms and that will not benefit your site. Try to go for the natural one way linking.

Competition- Always keep track of your competition for keywords and take analysis on what they are doing. See who is linking to them and make your strategy according to that.

Analysis and statistics - Always make analysis of the visitor reports, the unique visitors, the returning visitors and the page loads. This information can be got from certain websites giving track of visitor's status like Google analytics and Statcounters. Make your strategy to increase the visitors on the basis of the analytics and information provided by it.

Domain history-Search engines look at the domain history according to the ranking algorithm. So the domain should be a stable one. Get a dedicated ip address and keep it stable for longer period of time. The more stable domain is always considered as a trusted site.

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