How To Find Your Target Market Of Hungry Buyers

You can have the worlds greatest product, but if you can't locate your crowd of hungry buyers it won't mean a thing, and you won't make a cent. Finding your market is crucial. Having found them, you need to find out exactly what they want and just give it to them. Sounds easy, right? And it is if you know how. Get this right and online marketing almost becomes an exact science.

Here's a few tips to help you do this.

First, go to Google Groups and type in your niche keywords. Or type in "Niche keywords/forums or discussion groups." Forums are great places to find hungry buyers and enthusiasts in whatever your niche is. Use a bit of common sense and patience here. If you suddenly turn up from nowhere and start trying to sell to all and sundry, you will come unstuck - people aren't that stupid, and you'll just annoy them. Spend a week or two reading the forum posts. You'll find a few people asking questions, and if you happen to know the answers this is where you step in. (If your business is based around a hobby this will be easy.) You could of course always research the answers on line, but remember there is a lot of rubbish on the internet, so check your sources before you commit yourself!

This achieves two things;

1. You become part of that online community and

2. You begin to establish yourself as a subject matter expert - very important! This gives you credibility.

Meanwhile, you create an online survey. Use either surveymonkey.com or askdatabase.com. People don't want to complete a 20 question survey that takes hours to fill in. Accepted wisdom is to ask just one question - when you have enough answers collate them, and arrange from most popular to least popular. These will form the outline of your e-book!

A few tips re the survey - give people a reason to complete it. Go to the forums and post something like..."Hi, I'm just about to create an exciting new e-book about Guinea Pig care (or whatever). Please go to my online survey at (clickable link is best here) it won't take more than 5 minutes and I'll send a free copy of the completed e-book to everyone who completes the survey." Ask for answers to be in the format of "open ended essay". You will get all sorts of useful feedback here. Worst case, if you get no answers this tells you that you shouldn't go ahead and create that product, because there isn't demand for it, But you've found this out at no cost, which is far, far better than getting the thing built and then finding out nobody's interested.

I don't totally go along with just asking one question in the survey - here's why.

Say your most asked question about Guinea Pig care is "How long does a Guinea Pig live?". Can you create an e-book around that? I doubt it. I suggest two questions;

1. What is your most important question about Guinea Pig care and

2. How difficult have you found it to get information on that question? (You could even ask them to rate difficulty from 1-10)

This technique is used by Glenn Livingstone, one of the top marketers in the USA. If your customers have a really difficult question they want answering (or better yet, several questions) and you can answer those questions, this greatly increases the perceived value of your product. It should also make those filling in your survey think more carefully about their answers, which will help you.
By Ged Mccabe

Why Internet Marketing Means Nothing. An upside down view.

Internet marketing is very popular term and it sounds very pompous: 'I am an Internet marketing expert'. Yeah, all rise!

Actually it means nothing concrete and that's why it is so easy (and so useless) to write about it.

There is no such business called internet marketing. People are making money from adsense, from affiliate programs, from email advertising, from e-stores, auctions, surveys, dropshipping and more in countless forms using countless mix of marketing techniques and all these online activities can be described with this one term internet marketing.

When someone is selling, or recommending, or advertising or just writing about any kind of product or service on the internet, depending on the marketing channel or the technique applied, this marketer is practicing only a single part of All available internet marketing strategies and methods.

So, what practical meaning has all mentioned above?

Don't waste your time with internet marketing tips, tools, experts, articles, directories and so on. Find your specific talents and improve on what attracts you the most: if you are a math guy - try SEO, if you are communicative type - jump on blogging, email and writing, if you are type of a techy guy - development and scripts might be your online area, if painting is your passion - welcome to web design and so on.
Don't build a website using internet marketing in the title - you can build such an authority website only to collect inbound links and then pass on Google Page Rank upon family of connected sub sites, but this strategy is a bit complicated, so better avoid it in the beginning of your online activity.
Don't use the term internet marketing in your paid advertising - it's too broad and you'll get highly untargeted traffic and close to zero sales. You know it, but I will just repeat it: the money is in the small niches.
Don't be jealous if you are not mentioned as an 'internet marketing expert' on some meaningless list or an article. Make yourself known as a seo-expert, master-copywriter or top-class programmer because such niche guys have the fattest bank accounts while most of the self proclaimed 'experts' are just talking about money.

Find your passion and learn how to make a substantial web business out of it. Develop your own unique style in what you are doing and success will not pass you by.

10 Effective Online Sales Techniques To Increase Your Income Today

No matter what type of online business you have, here are 10 great online sale techniques to effectively increase your sales and your income.

Number one:

Make sure you follow-up with your customers. Effectively following-up with your customers by doing something as simple as sending an email will build a relationship of trust, which will pay off for you down the road temporarily and spiritually.

Number two:

Offer bonuses or additional related offers to what your customers are already buying. Just before they reach checkout you can give them a related offer and a certain percentage will think the extra offer is a good value and buy.

Number three:

Reward your customers for referring others to your business. You could reward them with a gift certificate or discounts for future purchases if they refer a certain number of people.

Number four:

Give your customers the option of joining an affiliate program. People like to sell other peoples products if they are of value and will efficiently produce another stream of income.

Number five:

Sell the resale rights. Selling the resale rights to your products is a method commonly practiced online today. People will be willing to pay more if the overall value of the product increases.

Number six:

Cross promote your products in a packaged deal. Instead of just selling one single item, include it with others in a special packaged deal. You want to make the deal full of so much value your customer would basically be insane not to buy it.

Number seven:

Provide coupons to your customers after purchase on other related products. Your customers will continue to come back and buy from you if you provide saving incentives for future payments.

Number eight:

Provide a catalog of accessories or add-ons related to the product already being purchased.

Number nine:

Gift certificates and gift cards are getting more popular each year. So it is a good idea to have gift certificates available for purchase as well.

Number ten:

Give free gifts to your customers. Just make sure you also state the value of the freebie in terms of money value or service value. Because if you fail to describe the value, your customer will think it is probably a piece of junk and it won’t really motivate buyers to purchase.

These 10 great ideas will increase your online sales, so use some of them and make more money.
By Timothy McGaffin II

Google Dazzles Street With 46 Percent Profit Jump

Google is still golden. The Internet giant delivered heady third-quarter results, including a profit of 46 percent on revenue growth of 57 percent. Investors cheered, boosting the company's share price to $648 in early trading Friday. What's next? Google expects to keep rocketing on its startup-type growth trajectory as it brings its ad model to videos and mobile devices.

One quarter after delivering a rare earnings miss, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) promptly returned to form Thursday, trouncing analyst expectations with strong revenue and earnings growth for its third quarter.

Google said profit rose 46 percent to US$1.07 billion on a 57 percent rise in sales to $4.23 billion. It was the 13th consecutive quarter since going public in August of 2004 that Google posted revenue growth of more than 50 percent.

The results seemed to justify the optimism that has pushed Google shares to dizzying heights in recent weeks. Google stock is up nearly 20 percent in the past month and soared past the $600 level three weeks ago.

In early trading Friday, Google shares rose another $9, or 1.4 percent, to $648.53.

"Looking back at the quarter, it's obvious our model continues to work very well," CEO Eric Schmidt said during a conference call. "It's all very exciting from the Google perspective."

Google continues to grow like a startup in other ways. The company disclosed that it added some 2,130 employees to its headcount in the quarter, a record hiring pace for the search giant. About 300 came with its buy of e-mail firm Postini, and 1,000 of the new hires were recent college graduates. Google ended the third quarter with a workforce numbering 15,916.

In the past, such declarations have unnerved some investors, raising fears that Google would grow too fast, or that it would be forced to spend its profits in order to keep up with its worldwide growth.

Leader of the Pack

Unlike past quarters, when Google often posted strong results while rivals struggled, the Internet sector as a whole has pleased investors this time around, with a slew of positive earnings reports. eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) said its results would have beat the street if not for a write-down on Skype , and perennial whipping boy Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) managed to impress analysts with a strong quarter as well.

Still, Google's results stand out -- in part, because the search company has managed to post strong growth rates even in the face of more difficult comparisons. It continues to gain on its rivals as well. Google Web searches rose 40 percent year-over-year, with the company handling about 54 percent of all search queries in the U.S., according to data from Nielsen//NetRatings.

AdSense revenue was up 8 percent over the second quarter and 40 percent over the third quarter of 2006, noted Chief Financial Officer George Reyes, who recently announced his intention to retire from Google.

International growth was also robust, with overseas sales rising 60 percent to $2 billion -- or 48 percent of total revenue. Google also made progress on reducing traffic acquisition costs, the fees paid to partners who drive traffic to Google. At $1.2 billion for the quarter, they amounted to 29 percent of total advertising revenue -- down from 30 percent in the second quarter.

However, Reyes said Google "may see pressure" on acquisition costs going forward.

Google executives highlighted numerous new initatives -- from running video ads on YouTube to becoming a key part of the mobile movement -- and those efforts will be key to sustaining its early growth over the long term, said Gartner (NYSE: IT) analyst David Smith.

"Yahoo has stabilized, and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is laying the groundwork to become more of a player in online advertising," Smith told the E-Commerce Times. "Microsoft sees Internet advertising as a way to replace software licensing revenue, and Google sees the mobile platform and video ads replacing its current core business."
No News Good News?

Executives did not shed much new light on efforts to convince European and U.S. regulators to approve Google's DoubleClick (Nasdaq: DCLK) acquisition.

"We are following all of the appropriate steps that are needed to get worldwide approval, and we are certainly optimistic," Schmidt said, though he stopped short of laying out a timeline. "We believe it will ultimately result in a very good outcome for us."

The company did predict the deal could close early in 2008. Fortunately for Google, even additional delays will likely not impact its earnings or its ability to continue growing its revenue rapidly, Sterling Market Intelligence Principal Analyst Greg Sterling told the E-Commerce Times.

"The deal is obviously getting a very close look in both the U.S. and Europe, but given that the Microsoft and Yahoo purchases in the same space were approved very quickly, it would be surprising if the deal were blocked or if onerous conditions were placed on it," he said.

In the meantime, Google has launched so many new endeavors that even if only some of them were successful at extending Google's advertising brand to new platforms -- television, newspapers, radio and mobile devices -- the company could have years of robust growth ahead.

"Google has credibility with major advertisers that will translate beyond the Internet," Sterling commented.

Google executives declined to directly address questions about the possible launch of a Google mobile phone, or Gphone, as rumors have it. However, the company announced Thursday that it will hold an analyst day on Oct. 24, instantly sparking speculation of a mobile device debut.

A Wealthy Marketer Shows How To Get Results Online

Many people dream of making big money online. They want a successful business, but lack the knowledge it takes to pull it off. Many try, but most fizzle within just a few months of continual struggle. The good news is that the opportunity is still there for those who are willing to consult a mentor who actually knows what he is doing

There is a simple formula that anyone can use to become successful online. This includes ALL home based businesses. Most online businesses are not scams, people just justify them that way to cover up their own lack of success.

So, what does it really take to have a profitable online business?

For starters, you need a real product or service that satisfies the demands of a large market. There are countless products out there that can be marketed successfully and produce a great profit. One benefit of starting a home based business is that you don't need the additional overhead of a commercial office space. Another plus is that you can work outside of 9-5 hours and achieve great results. This is because the internet is open 24 hours a day and can reach the entire globe.

Let's say you have a good product and a large market to satisfy it with. You are now halfway there. All that's left are 2 things. You need a really well designed website (text and graphics) and you need to drive traffic to your website from the appropriate market. This is where 95% of the people fall off the ship and never succeed.

It is really simple math. Let's say your product makes a gross profit of $100. The question is, how much does it cost to drive a single visitor to your site, and how many visitors does it take to make a sale? if it costs you $2 for every visitor and it take 100 visitors to make a sale, you're up the creek. This is the main reason that 95% of ALL internet businesses fail. Most people give up at this point and fail to realize that if they would just make one or two (maybe both) changes, they would become profitable and eventually successful.

if your busines spends $2 to make a $1 you aren't as bad off as it sounds providing you are willing and able to make a few adjustments. Here's why. Your website either needs a serious overhaul to convert a higher percentage of visitors into buyers, or you just aren't reaching a targeted enough audience. In this example, it's most likely a little of both. There are so many wrong ways to build a website, that there isn't enough time to give it full detail. All the website should do is one thing. It should make the reader want your product. It shouldn't confuse or turn off the reader in any way. It shouldn't be a mystery as to what you are selling, how much it costs, and how to contact the website owner for more details. There are some pretty bad websites out there.

Keep in mind that you can find a proven home business and it will save you time from identifying a product and market. In fact, there are at least 20 home businesses out there that truly work. A wealthy marketer can sign up for any of those businesses and make it profitable. A wealthy marketer will weigh the pros and cons of each home business and pick one to market accordingly. He does only four things when he starts an internet business. He makes sure the product is real and has a large market.

He then focuses on building a great website and driving traffic. These home businesses usually give you a website to get started with, BUT it will probably NOT work that well. A wealthy marketer will fully revamp and rewrite that website. This is done for two reasons. The website cannot have duplicated text content, or it will never do well in the search engines. 80% of all websites are found from people using the search engines and you really want your business to be listed for the best chances of success. Next, a wealthy marketer will refine the website and find ways to improve it. He will make it more concise and spell out anything that may seem confusing to the reader. A wealthy marketer knows that the quality of his success in life is directly related to the quality of his communication. In this case, it is his website that communicates. It must be perfect or pretty close to it. No exceptions. Every slight mistake on a website lowers the conversion rate. A perfect website might convert every 20 visitors to a sale. If you profit is $100 per sale and you only spend $40 for 20 visitors, you will do well. Each mistake however, will lower the conversion rate and will make the difference between success and suffering.

Once your website is close to perfect, there is one last thing.

How are you getting your visitors?

Are you even getting visitors?

So many people that make it to this level start looking for advertising companies to help drive traffic to their website. They spend a few hundred here and a few hundred there, and before they know it, they still have no sales but are broke. The irony is that some of the best advertising you could ever do on the internet is FREE. It might be a combination of laziness and lack of knowledge, but most people that resort to buying website traffic end up holding the bag. There are plenty of paid methods that work, but you need someone to point you in the right direction. Why let the blind lead the vision. With the right mentor, you can shave thousands of dollars off of the advertising equation.

That's where a wealthy marketer comes in handy. Someone who can show you the ropes, and who won't lead you astray is vital in business. Mentors exist and with the right plan and leverage, they can be called to duty for help.

Most online businesses can be made successful. Most online business opportunities can work because they have a product that satisfies a market. Most people that start a home business will NOT succeed because they don't know how to create a website that converts, and they don't know how to reach their target market audience. The good news is that there are wealthy marketers out there who can help you. If it's the right program they will be compensated to help you, which can create synergy not competition. If you don't know what you are doing find someone at all cost who does, if you want to become a wealthy marketer.
By Robert Shiloh

Make sure you've read:

7 Secrets a Wealthy Marketer Lives and Dies by

Is E-Wealth Really Possible For You?

How To Find Your Online Niche - Part 2

In part 1 of this series of articles, we looked at researching potential profitable markets.

Part 2 - Can you Make An Information Product In This Niche To Sell?

First, why info products?

Here's a few reasons ;

Information Products can be delivered online - so no delivery costs. This means instant gratification for your customer - as soon as they've paid you, they can access the product - no need to wait a week for the postal system.

Information Products have just about the highest mark up value around. Imagine this; I offer to sell you a sheet of paper for $1,000 - I'm pretty sure I can guess your response. But what if that piece of paper has the winning roll-over jackpot numbers for next Saturday's lottery. Would you pay $1,000 for that? I'm sure you get the idea. Another reason that info products have a high mark up is that their true worth is hard to assess. You most likely wouldn't spend $20 on a china mug, but if you were a keen gardener you might spend $30 on a 70 page e-book telling you how to rid the lawn of weeds.....

Information products are versatile - no need to stop at e-books. If you sell an e-book and it flies, you could make a hard copy transcript, an MP3 recording and a CD version. A physical product has even higher perceived value - so for say a $29.97 e-book you might also have a $49.97 CD version. A CD plus hard copy transcript could sell for $97 - and these can all be done really cheaply now. There are transcription services all over the internet.

There's so much information on the internet you don't even need to be an expert in that field to turn out a valuable e-book that the right people will buy in their droves. So why would people pay to get information that can be had for free? The reason is that people are lazy - nowadays we get so many e-mails I wonder how many of us truly read them all. By getting this info together and selling it you are acting as a filter (there is a lot of dross out there as well as good stuff) plus you are providing a valuable service for your customers.

It's actually better if you don't create the product yourself, even if you are an expert - here's why. It will most likely take you a month minimum to create a full length e-book from scratch, fitting it around the 9-5, editing etc. But you can get it ghost written in say 2 weeks for not very much money. Check out Rent-a-Coder.com or E-lance.com for professional writers who will do this for you. Use that time to prepare your sales letter. I'll expand on this in a coming article.

So think in terms of e-books like "How to stop your Dog barking", "How to free your lawn of weeds", "How to cure your arthritis" and so on. Think in terms of providing solutions to problems. If you concentrate on this rather than "how much money can I make" you won't go far wrong. Get into the mindset of a problem solver, an information publisher and a project manager. If you have this mindset this business can become very hands off and very lucrative at the same time.
Next - how will you reach your market?

By Ged Mccabe

How To Find Your Online Niche - Part 1

The the top online marketers advice is make sure your first internet venture is in a niche that's close to your heart. If you're trying to start an internet business and run it around a 9-5 job, you're less likely to let things slide if your internet venture is also your passion. Sad but true that most of us trying to get going online just "play at it" rather than treat it with the seriousness it deserves. Please don't fall into this trap - remember that this could be the passport to real freedom in your life! So build your first venture around a hobby/passion.

So is that it?

Well maybe - but you need to do a bit of research first. Here's what you need to bear in mind;

1/ Is there a big enough market for you to profit in - on the flip side, is the market already saturated?

2/ Can you make an information product in this niche you can sell?

3/ Can your market be easily reached?

4/ Can you give the market EXACTLY what it wants?

5/ Is there scope to grow your business - and how will you do this?

In this series of articles we'll look at these issues in more detail;

1/ Is there a big enough market for you to profit in - on the flip side, is the market already saturated? If anyone tells you that absolutely no competition is good, ignore them. No competition may well be no market. Bear in mind that you don't have to compete with anyone - you could create complimentary products, and then Joint Venture with other marketers - more on this later.

You need to look at supply and demand here - start in Google (where else?). Type your niche keywords into a Google Search - if your hobby was Cat Health, type this in - how many hits are there? This gives you a rough idea of the supply.

The results on the left hand side are Organic Search Engine Results - ie sites recognized by Google as leading authorities on the topic. Results on the right are pay-per-click results, or Google Adwords to you and me. These people bid on those keywords, and the highest bid gets top spot. Google adwords are a useful guide, because it proves those people are making money, which means people are spending money in that area - good news! If you see no Google Adwords (unlikely) alarm bells should ring - no one is making money in that niche under those keywords.

Don't just give up hope here - go to Free keywords/Wordtracker.com and type in the same keyword phrase - this will give you the daily search volume on that phrase - there will also be a list of other similar searches - go back to Google and try these. The trick here is think like a buyer - if you were looking for that info, what would you type in as a search? People don't always think logically here.

Wordtracker is a terrific free tool which tells you the demand on a keyword phrase - ideally you want at least 500 searches a day to have a big enough market to sell to. To sum up, the Google search tells you the number of web pages on that topic (ie supply) and Wordtracker tells you how many daily searches there are (ie demand).

Important - don't try and start by selling to the "Make money on-line niche" for the following reasons:

1/ This is a hugely competitive market - you'll be competing with very experienced marketers who have huge budgets and probably a massive customer list.

2/ At least to begin with, your copywriting skills just won't compete with the copywriters who operate in this niche.

3/ The make money on line market will be well aware of things like autoresponders, copywriting tricks, (although tricks is not really the word I want here) and so forth, so it will be really hard to get into profit here.

Even more important - please, please don't be put off by the last paragraph - there is huge potential in niches outside the make money on-line niche.

Next, we'll look at information products.

By Ged Mccabe

Don't forget to read: How To Find Your Online Niche - Part 2

7 Secrets a Wealthy Marketer Lives and Dies by

Do you want to have a successful internet business? There are plenty of proven products and services out there to offer. The key is choosing one that makes your life easy. The greatest thing about the internet, is that it has the ability to automate almost everything. Computer software and downloadable E-books offer the most promising results. There is no shipping, no inventory, and virtually no cost to duplicate software. This means 100% profit when it comes to your product.

Another important factor is that software can be downloaded instantly. In todays society of instant gratification, many solutions are possible for getting what you want, when you want it. Nothing is easier than clicking a button and receiving an instant download. A large percentage of the most successful internet marketers have made their fortunes selling software. Let's identify and expand on the 7 secrets of becoming a wealthy marketer using the internet.

1. You need to market real products. When you also have a product that provides real value, it can create referrals like wildfire. You want your product in the spotlight. They say bad publicity is better than no publicity, but why not have a positive light shed on your product? If you are going to take the time to set up a business, you might as well do a little research finding and choosing a good product to offer the marketplace.

2. You need the ability to get paid immediately on all of your sales. It is always best when you are in control of the money. If you have to wait around to get paid by some middleman company, it can put you out of business overnight. Imagine if you rack up a ton of sales and the middleman suddenly goes out of business. There goes all of your profits, and you might be up the creek. It's happened to myself twice. Steady cash flow is vital to any successful business. It's not only vital to keep your bills current, but expansion capital can be the difference between survival and success.

3. You need a way to effectively advertise, that also doesn't break your bank in the process. Advertising is the key to any successful business. Some people put all of their eggs into one basket. They buy a years worth of advertising from some company before they even test it. This is crazy. Advertising should always be tested on the smallest possible scale to see if it proves profitable. The best advertising is FREE advertising. And there are many effective ways to advertise on the internet for free. Cost or no cost, the bottom line is how much do you spend and how much do you make. If you spend $100 to make $50 you will be out of business quickly. Every penny counts. Don't let yourself get nickled and dimed.

4. You need the right tools to automate your marketing process, to increase your daily sales consistently. The internet offers many tools to automate any business. Look at auto responders. They are essential. Imagine if you had 1,000 new customers a week. Can you imagine the manpower and time it would take to contact each one of them individually? Utilizing FAQ (frequently asked question) pages and offering an informative website are two things you can do to keep your phone from ringing off the hook.

5. You need a way to leverage yourself, so those you sign up become a sales team for you... to create more revenue for yourself... and have a system in place so your sales team never slows down. Creating an affiliate program or duplicating your marketing system for others is the key to big money. You can help put someone in business, and help them do the same thing you do. You are on your way to big bucks if you can build in a small profit percentage.

6. You need training and support from real-life mentors who are already successful. Mentors who are making multiple six-figure incomes now. It is so much easier to succeed at something when you have a proven model. When someone else has succeeded before you, you truly know it's possible. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel. We live in a world with almost 7 billion people. If every person in the world gave you just one cent, you would have almost $70 million dollars.

7. You should consider working from home. Starting a home based business is a lot easier these days due to the power of the internet. Working your business from home triples your chances of success. You can avoid the additional overhead of a retail store, phone lines, furniture, etc by working directly from home.

There are home businesses and programs that really work. there are some businesses that are fully automated. It takes work to start and succeed with any business, so don't be fooled by companies who claim to do all of the work for you. Do your research. Seek and you shall find. The only shortcut in life is to know that there are NO shortcuts. Put everything into what you do, and you too can become a wealthy marketer.
By Robert Shiloh

make sure you've read:

10 Steps to Achieve Internet Success ( What do internet super stars do)

10 Steps to Achieve Internet Success ( What do internet super stars do)

Earning money on the Internet is a lot more challenging today than it was a few years ago. The most efficient method of generating sales has always been to develop a large list of clients/subscribers and sell to the list. Make it worth their while to join your list, contact them often, take care of them, and offer them quality products that meet their needs when appropriate. If you started your Internet business five years ago, you probably built up a large list of subscribers rather quickly. Today it takes considerably longer to develop a list of any size.

There are a number of reasons for this. Number one among them is competition. There are over 2 billion websites in existence now and a large percentage of them are trying to sell the same products that you are selling. With so many sellers crowding the marketplace, the pie is a bit smaller for each of us.

I hear many experts recommending that you should sell the product with the highest commission. I disagree. You should sell the product that does the best job for your subscribers, regardless of the commission. By offering the highest quality products, your subscribers will know that you recommend only the finest products and will remain on your list for a very long time. In general, the longer they remain with you, the more they will buy. If you repeatedly offer them high priced crap, they will quickly unsubscribe. My attitude has always been, I’ll take care of my subscribers and the commissions will take care of themselves.

The price of the item you are selling is also a factor. If you sell a ten-dollar item, you might generate fifty sales for each one thousand people that view your product. If you are selling a five hundred dollar item you might generate just one or two sales per one thousand page views. This is also something you should consider if you are deciding on which affiliate products to sell.

In any business, there are a few individuals that excel to super star levels and make millions upon millions of dollars. And likewise, there are some who struggle for years and make little if any money at all. The rest of us are somewhere in the middle ground between the two. Regardless of what business you are in, you should try to emulate the super stars. Try to do what they do. I’m not saying that you will immediately vault up to super star status, but your results will almost certainly improve.

Some of the characteristics of the Internet super stars are as follows:

1) They keep meticulous records. They track all results and do more of the stuff that is working and eliminate the stuff that isn’t. It’s important to know what you are doing right.

2) They are not afraid to spend money and reinvest a portion of their profits back into their business. They have no problem buying advertising, domain names, good hosting, software, and information. You’ve got to spend money in order to make it.

3) They are diversified and participate in more than one niche. If an opportunity presents itself, they can swiftly change gears and exploit an additional area.

4) They pay talented people to take care of the details on their numerous websites. They pay others to take care of the more mundane day-to-day issues. This frees up their time to work on items that they believe to be more important, like developing new products.

5) They stay in constant touch with the people on their list. They act as a trusted adviser who wouldn’t steer subscribers wrong. They do not pitch every new product that comes down the pike.

6) They nurture their list; it is their most valuable asset. They work daily on activities to continually expand it.

7) They develop and sell their own products. When appropriate, they allow others to sell them on an affiliate basis.

8) They take advantage of every possible method in monetizing the Internet and their websites. They use all types of advertising and any other sources available.

9) They continually work to build traffic to their websites. Expanding traffic today equals a growing income tomorrow.

10) They work (or did work) long hard hours to get their websites and income to the current levels.

By working daily toward these goals, you too have an opportunity to grow your Internet business. For the most part, those who have achieved the most success have done it by working the hardest. So imitate the superstars and someday, people new in the business may try to imitate you.

There is, however, one over-riding theme among all Internet experts. The best way to achieve success on the Internet is to develop your own product. Most of the Internet Gurus make their Internet millions in this manner. When deciding on products to sell, copy the techniques of those who are most successful. Develop your own product. That way, no one is selling it but you and your affiliates, so you control the amount of competition. You make 100% of the profit on your sales along with a nice percentage on your affiliates’ sales. And, you can determine your own selling price. All in all, it is a very compelling proposition to develop your own product.

By Jo Mark

Make sure you've read :
Is E-Wealth Really Possible For You?

The Golden Keys of E-Commerce

Viral Marketing Techniques - 5 Top Tips

Hopefully these tips are slightly different from the usual list of ideas, and are ones which will help you to dramatically increase your website traffic and sales. Each of them are powerful stand alone ideas, but when combined give you a phenomenal increase in potential.

1 - Distribute a brandable e-book or report
This type of product is one which a list or website owner can alter using a rebranding tool to include references or links to their sales page. Although it still remains the copyright of the publisher, it is a very powerful tool, and enables the distributer to show where the book was downloaded from and will include their affiliate link and/or website url. By encouraging others to distribute your e-book you will receive a steady stream of traffic. A wonderful tool for creating rebrandable pdf. e-books is Viral PDF.

2 - Ask all your visitors to 'Tell a Friend'
If you are interested in certain things it's quite likely that your friends will be too - it really is a truism that 'birds of a feather stick together'. Employ this to your advantage by asking your visitors to recommend your site to friends or colleagues via a 'Tell a Friend' feature. This is simply a small script which is inserted into your website which allows your visitors to enter the details of people they think would be interested in visiting your site. When completed they simply press the button, sending the recipients an automatically generated email containing your site url etc. This is as close to word of mouth as you can get on the Internet and is a highly effective means of attracting targeted traffic.

Generally simply asking for a referral is all that's needed, but if you want to get even more 'friends' told, offer people a bonus like a free e-book (see above for the best kind to hand out) when they use your form to refer their friends. There a a number of free 'tell a friend' scripts available. Just Google for them.

3 - Include a means for visitors to recommend specific pages
This is simply a variation of the 'Tell a Friend' theme and enables your visitors to recommend a particular page on your site to other potential visitors. These pages could be articles, reports, newsletter sign up pages or even your special offers. To find out more about this feature look out for CJ Send Page.

4 - Distribute your free e-book or report to directories
You will find, with the minimum of searching that there are countless sites which compile lists of free products, mainly information products. You may submit your free e-books and reports to these sites. This will bring you extra exposure and subsequent traffic to your site. You must make certain that the product you're submitting is top quality and that people will feel that they have received a worthwhile product, even though it was free. If they are unimpressed with your free product it's not very likely that they will want to visit your site and actually pay for something which could be of the same poor quality. If you cobble something together in your lunch break it will look exactly like you did that. Always be aware that you have to provide quality at all times.

5 - Find out and adapt other peoples viral marketing techniques.
A lot of the most successful Internet viral marketing techniques are ones which were first hugely successful in a different industry. They were then adapted to suit the Internet. You can find out about these techniques from Lycos Viral Chart or ViralBank.

If you apply these tips to your Internet business you should soon see an increase in your hits and subsequent income. Please don't forget though that you do need to work at implementing all these techniques; they don't work overnight, but they do work.

A further 5 more ' obscure' viral marketing techniques are offered in another article:- ''Viral Marketing Techniques - 5 Further Top Tips'. I spent hours working on that title.
By Paul Schaverien

Also Read Viral Marketing Techniques - 5 Further Top Tips

Viral Marketing Techniques - 5 Further Top Tips

Hopefully these tips are slightly different from the usual rehashed list of ideas, and are ones which will help you to dramatically increase your website traffic and sales. Each of them are powerful stand alone ideas, but when combined give you a phenomenal increase in potential.

1 - Give your product away to the movers and shakers
All markets have a group of people who will heavily influence that market. They are the people who always seem to be first to the new products and services, and who will, when they find a good product, push it to the hilt. You will need to identify these people in your market (very easy) and introduce your product to them. Give them early versions of your product and encourage them to 'spread the word' to as many people as they can - perhaps offer them a bonus for this or get them to join your affiliate scheme. If you can get your product promoted on several large mailouts for free this helps to spread the word.

2 - Offer a multi-level affiliate program
An affiliate program is a very good way of attracting highly targeted traffic. If you get good affiliates they will be able to spread the word about you and your products far, far quicker than you could possibly do on your own. If you offer two or more levels of compensation this will encourage your affiliates to not only sell your product, but also recruit more affiliates under them. Believe me, a good affiliate is literally worth his or her weight in gold. Find your golden affiliate through Clickbank. When you have a good affiliate program in place your traffic and sales growth can (and should) be exponential.

3 - Put a unique 'Advergame' on your site
An 'Advergame' is a small online game designed to drive traffic to your site based on their value as entertainment. Their sole purpose is to advertise your site and product in a fun way. If your 'advergame' becomes popular (and if you are careful in your choice, there is no reason why it won't) it will create a vast amount of traffic. If you ensure that people encounter a squeeze page, forcing them to give you their name and email address before they can continue to the advergame, you will be creating a marvellous list to follow up at a later date. Don't forget, if your advergame is popular, people will spread the word to everyone they know. How good is that for viral marketing?

4 - Create a free software application
Try to think of something useful you really would like to have - an application of some sort, or what your target market needs. If you can't create programs yourself, hire a programmer to do it for you. Once it's ready you will have a powerful lead generator; allow other list owners to offer it to their subscribers, offer it in JV projects, post it on forums, give it away on your site or get it listed by the search engines. To obtain the services of a reasonably priced programmer post your requirements onto sites which specialize in this type of project, such as RentACoder, Elance or Scriptlance. Other sites can be found by a search on leading search engines. You can see if this is a viable project by getting quotes from programmers before paying out any money.

5 - Insert scripts into your webpage
Traffic generating programs are available which give visitors a reason to return to your pages time and time again. Tools like message boards, classified ads., free link pages and bookmarks can all help generate names to your list for no cost. Most scripts are simple to install, and should be well within the capabilities of all website owners.

Apply these tips to your Internet business and you should soon see an increase in hits and therefore your income. Don't forget that you do need to work at implementing all these techniques; they don't work overnight, but they do work.
By Paul Schaverien

Google to Announce Q3 2007 Results on October 18

Google is going to announce its third quarter 2007 financial results on Thursday, October 18, 2007 at 1:30 p.m. Pacific Time / 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

Google will hold its quarterly conference call to discuss second quarter 2007 financial results on the same day.

A live webcast of Google's earnings conference will be available at http://investor.google.com/webcast.

The Golden Keys of E-Commerce

Domain management strategies have in fact become ultra-sophisticated. Domain names are no longer small issues to be handled by the logo-centric, slogan-happy agencies or Web-tech teams. They now demand powerful strategic, boardroom-level discussions and a commanding knowledge of global domain registration laws and search engine visibility rules.

Today, in order to have a commanding e-commerce presence with universal access, domain names must be treated like very special golden keys. Without an effective domain name, the entire exercise of Internet-centric commerce becomes almost useless.

Super success in cyber-branding lies in the sophisticated creation, development and ownership of these powerful and magical keys, so that they may open the door to an undiscovered universe of billions of unknown customers around the world. Without this power and access, what's the point of being in the race for leadership and image positioning?

It only takes a minute to establish if one is holding that magical key or just toying with a rusty screwdriver.

Domain Names Matter

Domain management strategies have in fact become ultra-sophisticated, and they are among the most valuable components of any ambitious corporation's strategy for building digital branding assets and intellectual property.

Domain names are no longer small issues to be handled by the logo-centric, slogan-happy agencies or Web-tech teams. They now demand powerful strategic, boardroom-level discussions and a commanding knowledge of global domain registration laws and search engine visibility rules.

But in order to be golden keys and not rusty screwdrivers, they also must serve the company's branding objectives.

During the dot-com boom, there must have been a million domain names registered each day. Even the most unusual, silly and dysfunctional names were sought-after icons of get-rich-quick dreamers, and 99 percent of them failed.

Dot-Com Graveyard

Exhausted or expired, these names have now disappeared, and along with them, the hundreds of millions of dollars on short-lived Web site campaigns.

Today, however, there are some very powerful, universal domain names that have carved powerful, highly lucrative positions. Their superior and exclusive fluidity on the net demonstrates the global power of e-commerce.

Smart businesses around the world are aggressively in search of such golden keys.

The best approach to universal domain naming starts with a serious audit to professionally measure the strengths or weaknesses of the proposed names. This process is best served by highly objective views.

The primary goal is to achieve power and access for maximum impact. Today, only the very best names will dominate the global marketplace. Weak, confusingly similar, or nearly identical names do not have a chance of surviving the power and ubiquity of e-commerce.
Be Original

The duplication factor alone will bury most names in complex global listings.

The most expensive Web sites are useless and the best campaigns will remain stuck unless there is a deeper understanding of this subject.

Then there are alpha-structures, which can kill great Web sites and become a liability to business itself. One must have the knowledge to determine the message, personality and length of the name, plus the choice of alpha characters, as each emits its own unique signals.

General branding exercises cannot be mistaken for these complex naming analyses. The strictest application of the Five Star Standard of Naming guards against such expensive busts.

The Google Test

The hyper-visibility of a universal cyber-name is the main issue. A quick search on Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is an instant test of any name's visibility. To appear on the top or on the first page is the most sought-after position, but only an extremely small percentage can achieve this as most names are poorly structured and remain buried by massive duplication.

With the high cost of promotion and intense global competition, it's a brand-new frontier. A lot of money can be wasted in creating an artificial bounce in traffic to an expensive Web site, but in reality it's only those uniquely designed domains that quickly rise to the top with little effort.

Only an in-depth, highly customized analysis will point to the deep problems and illuminate the latest methods to fix them.

Today, it's about global domainization, as multiple domain names create multiple problems in multiple markets. There are highly sophisticated rules to be followed. Be aware that there are too many fancy services offering sketchy global registration and translation services.

The World Is Your Domain

Domains are for the international audience and global customer base, and companies should avoid serious language issues, such as translations or foreign connotations that may be embarrassing to the company or confusing to customers. Cyber branding is an extremely global phenomenon.

Mind share is more important than market share. Customers need to allow a name brand to settle in their minds before they give out their cash. As such, market positioning is more critical than profit maximization.

The human mind gravitates toward good names; those that are user-friendly and trustworthy. When trying to process millions of silly and randomly structured names, the mind quickly becomes exhausted.

In conclusion, logo-driven branding has fallen into a deep sleep on these complex matters, and there's no need to wake it up. Currently, with 95 percent of the domain names stuck in traffic jams, a frank and very candid CEO-level discussion is required. Denials and refusal to face up to reality will simply keep a company's e-commerce presence mired in oblivion -- guaranteed.

Today, one needs a very special golden key to open the gates of e-commerce. Now, can we throw away that rusty screwdriver?

By Naseem Javed

What Makes A Killer Marketing System - Here Are 7 Prime Components

When it comes to marketing enterprise software and other complex technology products or services, your efforts must do more than simply generate leads. You’ve got to move prospective customers from curiosity to action often using alternative and largely automated methods.

For that you need a marketing system – a group of integrated processes that work together to identify your best new business prospects, reach and develop those prospects into qualified leads and hand them over to the sales team consistently and profitably.

Here’s a look at 7 prime components of a solid marketing system.

Prospect Pool. At the front end of the marketing system, you need a well-defined source of potential new business leads. If you’re selling a complex, high ticket, business-to-business product or service, the world is not your market. The people in your prospect pool should, at minimum, be in the right positions at the right companies to have a need for and means of buying your product.

You can find good prospects in rented or purchased mailing lists, among trade publication subscribers and association members and often even in your own database.

Demand Generation. Once you have a good source of potential prospects, you need to get their attention and interest. How you do this depends on where they are in the buying process.

You can use pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization to reach people who are already searching for a solution. You’ll want to use tactics such as direct mail, tele-prospecting, email and direct response advertising to reach people who aren’t actively looking for you yet.

Lead Nurturing. Some of the prospects who find you through search engines may be ready to speak with a sales person right away, but in my experience 75% to 80% or more of your prospects won’t be ready to buy when you first engage with them. The lead nurturing (or lead development) process in your marketing system helps these prospects become more familiar with you and your solutions, and moves them forward toward the sale.

Events, presentations, reminders, and the occasional phone call are all good lead nurturing tactics.

Stay in Touch. Some prospects are further from actually needing or wanting your solution than others. These prospects simply cannot be moved forward in the pipeline right now. But if they are people who could very well need your solution in the future, your marketing system should provide you with a method of gently reminding them of your existence without being an unwanted sales attempt.

Monthly electronic newsletters or email messages are good ways to do this.

Sales Hand-Off Process. At some point, all of your marketing efforts will pay off and you’ll have leads that are ready to be given to the sales team. Unfortunately, many companies don’t see this hand-off as a critical part of the marketing system and, as a result, when marketing feels a lead is ready, they simply throw it over the wall to sales.

A good marketing system should include procedures for qualifying the leads, confirming the hand-off to sales, and accepting the lead back into the marketing process if it is later found to not be sales ready.

Metrics and Measurements. No marketing system should be considered complete until it includes quantifiable goals and methods of measuring progress at each step of the way. Like any other business process, you must measure and adjust constantly in order to deliver maximum results.

Your system should measure response to various marketing tactics (such as email campaigns and direct response advertising), how well you are feeding the pipeline, and how fast your prospects are moving through each of the stages.

Automation. A good marketing system delivers results through consistent and on-going communication with your prospect pool. It also allows you to communicate with your prospects based on actions – either the things your prospect does or the things the prospect doesn’t do.

By Susan Tatum

Restaurant Marketing Online - 3 Ways to Get More Customers.

"Restaurant" is one of the most searched for terms on the internet ever. This term or something similar is how your customers try to find dinner before they leave home. If most people search this way, are you benefiting?

I will show you three effective and simple ways to make hungry people find your restaurant when they search this way.

Number 3 – List and edit your restaurant in the online databases

Your restaurant already appears in many places when people search for restaurants that you probably don’t even know about. Do a simple search for “restaurant reviews” or “dining” or other similar terms on a search engine like Google. You will be surprised at what you'll find!

Here are two of the big ones where you should appear:

· Restaurant

· Citysearch

Find everywhere where information about your restaurant exists and give every detail you can - even prices. As owner you are the only person that can sometimes add these details. Therefore some places will have no details or your restaurant may not even exist yet. Restaurants without information, reviews, ratings, menu, or other details are less likely to be selected because they look dead - and people want to go where everyone else is going - to the happening joint.

Work fast to change problems and present the right image. Just one of these sites with bad information or a negative review is costing you lost business everyday.

Number 2 – Use social networking

Visit places like myspace, facebook, and second life where people go to network and meet others with similar interests. Create a profile for your restaurant on myspace at the very least.

Successful profiles possess these traits:

· Simple to navigate and read

· Easy to find lots of information that people care about

· Not overdone with colors, images, songs, and flashy stuff

Your goal once you have a nice profile for the restaurant is to make friends, create a positive image of your business, and spread the word about it.

Number 1 – Build a free website

Unlike the databases listed above, sites like WIKI-EATIA are paving the way because they let anybody create or contribute to a restaurant webpage.

Here restaurant owners can add detailed information about their restaurant located anywhere on the planet for free and people using a search engine will find the page. Restaurant webpages benefit from the collaborative efforts of everybody just like Wikipedia does and better pages bring more customers.

Example:

http://www.iwantnypizza.com/

When some friends told native New Yorker Ed Powers that the first stop on their visit to New York City would be a pizzeria, his idea for IWantNYPizza.com was born. Powers, 46, knew he had many friends and family who had recently left New York and missed authentic New York-style pizza. Teaming up with his two brothers-in-law who run Italian restaurants, Powers developed a website where people could order fresh New York pizza--shipped on ice by UPS nationwide.

IWantNYPizza.com ships from six satellite pizzerias, each of which is a "stretch by hand, roll by hand, throw the dough up in the air" type of place, says Powers, who points out that his customers are buying not just the product, but also the experience of eating New York pizza. He feels an obligation to his customers, especially native New Yorkers who now live elsewhere. "That's why we have to do it right," he says. In 2006, the business expanded its menu to include bagels, and Powers expects sales to reach $500,000 in 2007.

The 7 Pitfalls of Online Marketing

Marketing online is a great opportunity if undertaken with common sense. Many who venture into marketing online get taken down by the many pitfalls of online marketing.

What are the pitfalls of marketing online?

1. Jumping into a home based online business before you have checked things out thoroughly. Many who come to the internet fall victim to all the hoopla about getting rich overnight. don't you believe it. Business on the internet is like business anywhere, and if you want to make a good enduring income it takes time and work.

2. Spending money on programs because they seem like the magic bullet. No program in itself is the secret to success, it is what you do with it.

3. Jumping from one program, or one business plan to another without allowing enough time to actually work a system and see success.

4. Dawdling. Yes, many dawdle when they should be working. Too much surfing, too much time spent with email, too much time spent on details that aren't that important.

5. Not enough initial research into the market that you intend to do business in. Know who your market is, what they want, and where you can get it in order to deliver what the market wants. Don't assume you know what they want. Don't make the mistake of trying to decide for them. Find a need and fill it. Don't try to sell something nobody wants, even if they need it.

6. Selecting a product to market that doesn't have enough margin of profit. You will have some expenses, even online. You need to market something that can pay the bills, and compensate you for your time with a little left over.

7. Giving up too soon. This is the big one. People expect miracles when they think of marketing online, yet the same folks would give several years of their life getting an offline business into profit. Plan on spending a year minimum getting your business going online. If it happen sooner so much the better.

By Illa Maden

Internet Marketing Tips - Flying A Kite With No Wind

If this sounds like an odd title for an article on Internet marketing, it is. But it's also more true than you can possibly imagine. So many marketers do just that, fly their kite with no wind in site. They'd have a better chance of getting that thing off the ground if they were under water. But they just don't get it. Okay, you have no idea what I'm talking about. Well, hang in there because this may be the most informative article you've read in a long time.

Okay, what do I mean by flying a kite with no wind? Well, we all understand that phrase literally. If you have a kite and try to fly it on a day where there is just no wind at all, it's not going to get very high up in the air, if at all. You'd have a much better shot at getting that kite to fly if it was a nice breezy day. Well, it's the same thing with Internet marketing. When you're out there promoting whatever product it is that you're promoting, it would certainly be a good idea to make sure that before you put it out there that there's some wind to catch hold of it. The wind I am talking about is called a market. You know, that little piece of demand that determines whether or not your kite's going to fly or not.

A friend of mine called me and told me he had this really great idea that was going to make him a fortune. He described his product to me and I had to admit, it sounded great. Well, he had it created and then went out on the Internet to sell it. He didn't sell one copy. Why? Because there was no wind out there. Nobody cared about this great product of his. There was no demand. When there is no demand, it doesn't matter how great your product is. You can give it away and nobody will take it.

Before you make your kite and before you take it out into the backyard, make sure you do some research first. Go to forums related to the niche you're targeting and ask people what they think of your idea and if they would pay money for it. Get some feedback. Put a poll out on your web site. Maybe have a form that visitors can fill out with their feedback. Get as much of it as you can. Also, see if there is something like your product out there already. If there is, there's a good chance that your product will sell. If not, it's quite possible that there is simply no demand for what you have, or no wind.

Just because you think you have a great idea doesn't mean everybody else will.

In other words, don't fly a kite in a clear, calm day.

By Steven Wagenheim

Are Marketing strategies similar to Halloween?

We all love Halloween. It’s a bit more than a month left. We are going to hold Halloween parties, often with bonfires, with the celebrants passing between them. Masking, costuming.. Freaky? Yeah!

And what about web marketing strategies? Why do I say that it is similar to Halloween?

Well, imagine all those masks and costumes on the holiday. Everybody is trying to stand out against a background. To be more freaky than others. And for the most part each web marketing strategy is trying to make you prominent. But the goal is to be a magician among the children not among other magicians. And your clients like children would be running up to you.

Do you advertise? I’m sure you do. But don’t you think that your ads are the same as an invitation fly-sheet. If you’re going to hold a Halloween party you try to invite many people. But you’re not the one. Many people organize parties. And all distribute invitations.

I’m trying say that you must be outstanding. Be freaky. But not among other’s similar to you.

Company Pays Surfers Twenty Five Bucks To Come Up With Unusual Domain Names

http://www.pickydomains.com

Did cybersquatters take all the good names? Or perhaps webmasters lost their creativity? Whatever the answer is, it’s all good for PickyDomains.Com. The idea for the service is brainlessly simple to say the least.

Can’t come up with a catchy domain name? Put a fifty dollar deposit and let others look for available names for you. When you see a name you like, you simply register it and your $50 is split between a person who came up with the name and the service. If you don’t see any good names, you get your money back.

Guessing from the list of already completed orders, domain contributors are very good at picking both abstract domains and descriptive ones, not to mention ubiquitous web 2.0 names. I can easily picture naming agencies charge hundreds, if not thousands for Pictoma.Com, Deprice.Com or Smartopreneur.Com

PickyDomains.Com lets anyone give it a stab at becoming a contributor (you have to register first). However, all nub suggestions have to pass moderator first. Besides the greed factor (hey, getting $25 deposited to your PayPal account for coming up with a creative domain is pretty cool), I love browsing through orders just to see what kind of websites and web services people are coming up with.

Here is a good one – Site That Lists All Happy Hours In NY City. I can see it becoming popular. Here is another unusual one – Name For Heat-Resistant Paint. Or how about Community Site Where People Come To Get Smarter? Hey I have a great idea for that one. Better submit it, before you think of something better.