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Every business owner knows that the key to success is how well you market your business. Your business is not any different. Success depends on your marketing strategies.

There are many different marketing techniques with many different price tags attached to them. Depending on your type of business, you will need to develop a marketing plan that generates sufficient customers to reach your goals.

Using many different marketing techniques will quickly drain your bank account. Your first goal will be to determine how you can reach the most people for the least amount of money.

Here is one marketing technique that is cost efficient and a little more adventurous for you the "Business Owner."

Become an Expert

What is your business? Look around at your competition. How do they present themselves to the general public? How can you present yourself differently?

Go buy a local newspaper, local magazine, listen to your local radio station; watch your local TV station. Are any of your competitors currently marketing themselves as an expert in your field?

Contact your local media and discuss the various ways that you could work with them. Local newspapers and magazines will have opportunities to write "Advice" articles. Local radio and TV stations may have talk shows that could host you weekly or monthly.

Contact the various local organizations that are looking for speakers for their monthly luncheons. Your Chamber of Commerce is an ideal place to start. Join your Chamber and get an article about you and your business published in their monthly magazine.

Study your customers and choose the type of media that would reach them. Talk to your current customers and ask them to give you their opinion about which area you should market in. Find out what they listen to and what they read, and what organizations they belong to.

What type of personality do you have?

Make sure that your personality matches your marketing strategy. Radio and TV would be a perfect match for you if you enjoy speaking in front of people, have an outgoing personality and a voice that carries well. Newspaper and magazine article writing will be perfect for you if you do not enjoy speaking in front of groups.

Becoming an expert in your area of business will not take years to achieve. Stay on top of the latest news about your business. Subscribe to trade publications to keep informed about new trends. The Internet offers many ways to stay informed on any topic.

The key to becoming an expert is to take the knowledge you have and the new information received and decide how your customers can benefit from this information. Not all news is beneficial to your customers.

Your goal is to cause your customers to look at you as the one to come to when they need what you are selling. You want them to refer their family and friends to you.

Don’t be shy. Go out there and market yourself as the expert that you are. The more exposure that you receive, the more exposure your business will receive.

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Why do some websites sell better than others? Do you need a marketing degree to create a website? Does design have much impact on sales?

You may not realize this but many of the successful internet marketing businesses realize that design, or layout of the website should be as much of a marketing decision as the ad copy. Why is that?

Web designers can do some amazing things with graphics and colors. You will also have a much more professional looking site when an expert applies his handiwork. However, it is very important to understand some of the key elements that smart marketers will make certain to appear (or NOT appear) on their highly profitable sites. If you are aware of these you may be able to select a designer who is knowledgeable in marketing as well as design.

COLOR:

Designs with a dramatic color can make compelling choices for setting a mood. But reading on a computer screen demands as much contrast as possible, otherwise the reader will develop vision fatigue. You do not want to irritate or tire your visitors in any way or they may leave, so be certain that the main body of your website copy is black writing on a white background - or as close to that ideal as possible.

Colors also change appearance on different monitors, so what looks cool and calm on one monitor may be bright and glaring on another. Simple works.

GRAPHICS:

Striking, bold graphics can be a real eye-catcher for visitors. Still, successful internet marketers are pretty much unanimous in stating that you should avoid flash graphics as much as possible. Again, they tend to tire visitors eyes or create a distraction from the written copy. Even if they are initially impressed by the work it may subconsciously annoy them. Simplicity is again the best way to go.

LAYOUT:

The first ‘fold’ of your site is similar to opening a tractional paper letter. If you remove a letter from an envelope that is folded in three, you will obviously view the top ‘fold’ first.

This fold is what individuals will see without scrolling down the page. It is CRUCIAL that important elements like descriptive headlines, your contact number, newsletter subscription form etc. all show in the first fold. Do NOT place banners here unless they are the main element of your business as you will be giving prime space to other websites and your customer (which you fought hard to get in the first place) will be gone just as quickly.

These are just some of the important elements you should be aware of when designing your site.

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Marketing offline is a great way to compliment your online campaigns. It helps target people who otherwise might not spot your online presence. Plus it helps you target people who have Internet access and email when you include your URL or web site address in all of your ads. To help you make the most of your offline marketing, here are a few tips from the pros:

1. INSERTS Ask for media kits from print publications that target your industry readers. Find out their rates for inserts. And have their advertising department help you create a marketing insert for your products and services that targets Internet users and includes your URL and email address. Do include a phone number (toll-free, if possible) for those who have technical difficulties or prefer to call.

2. TEACH - Hold affordable (or free) offline classes at a local community center or other educational facility. Share your knowledge in your area of expertise with attendees. And make sure to distribute handouts with complete contact information, including your website and email address.
Be pro-active and post-active by announcing your classes in a press release to the local media; radio, television, print publications. And follow up by inviting students to enter feedback and referrals in your website form after the class if over. Capture their contact information, enter it into your database, and follow up regularly sending them your ezine and product / service announcements, both via email and regular postal mail.

3. ORGANIZATIONS - Target your offline marketing to groups of people who will actually be interested in your product or service; i.e. local associations and organizations. Check your Yellow Pages for groups near you and find out when their meetings are. Call ahead to make sure guests are welcome. Then go and network at an easy pace, not fast. Slowly work your way into the group and make sure it would be a good fit for you; youll want to give at first, then youll receive later on (maybe after your first year, even).

Gradually distribute your business cards with your website and email address on them. Volunteer to teach about your area of expertise if the chance arises, of course distributing your marketing materials with our website and email address on them, too.

Use caution, before rushing to join during or after the first meeting. Take your time to make sure the group would be a good fit for you and your business operations. Sometimes group operations are lacking or suffer due to board member turnover, the economy, new industry laws, etc. So you might benefit from waiting to join for several months down the road, or trying a different group all together.

So reach out and advertise offline to compliment your online strategy. And remember to include your website and email address on all of your marketing tools.

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Most of you have seen those little buttons on websites labeled RSS or XML. If you are wondering what they are, RSS means Really Simple Syndication. Really simple because when you subscribe to a site that has this feature, you keep up-to-date with new information without having to check the site every day. This is really good news because you can use it to get newsfeeds from major news networks, news on new movies, even your favorite musician’s tour dates or CD releases.

This new twist to the Internet is very valuable to you as a Internet marketer too. Imagine replacing email marketing with RSS marketing. People actually subscribe meaning they want your information updates, similar to opt-in newsletters. With newsletters you have to write them and your site content. With RSS, when you update your content, all subscribers are notified by their newsreaders.

Newsreaders are special software that read RSS feeds. To get started, download a free RSS reader.

If you use a Windows PC, go to http://www.rssreader.com

For Mac users, see http://ranchero.com/netnewswire

Once you are set up, here’s all you or your customers have to do…

Right-click (control-click for Mac users) on any RSS button on a site, blog or news source that interests you. Select Copy Shortcut ("Copy Link to Clipboard" for Mac, "Copy Link Location" for Firefox browsers), and paste that URL into your RSS Reader. And that is it, you are subscribed. Once you get started, your favorite parts of the Web come to you. No need to go out and check for updates all the time. If you do not want to download software, subscribe to your favorite feeds through My Yahoo or My MSN.

So how does any of this make you money?

More traffic means more money. By placing RSS on your website or your blog, anyone can subscribe automatically and know when a new product or service is available. This new breed of Internet shopper is not to be ignored. To take advantage of the traffic you have to make your RSS feed available to website visitors and submit your feed information to RSS, blog and XML type directories.

Here’s how you get RSS for your site!

Go to http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss for the best source of RSS and Blog information. There are several file types for RSS and here you learn which is best and why.

There is no need to become a techie to use RSS and XML. You just need to know enough about this newest technology to use it. Once you do, it comes easy to see how you make money online with RSS. In the same way newsletters and opt-in email are used for successful marketing, RSS is much easier, faster, and a much less intrusive way to communicate with potential or existing clients and customers.

It’s very critical to provide exactly what people want to make money online. How can there be a better way to do that than to allow people to subscribe to their wants and wishes? Start using RSS and XML technologies now to make money online. To add fuel to your marketing fire, use RSS to optimize content and add frequent updates to your web pages.

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Direct marketing’s a tough way to make a living but if you can master certain skills it can be extremely lucrative. It takes on many different forms, some of which are easily translatable to the web.

Although the term may bring to mind door to door salesmen pushing their wares to housewives in robes and curlers, it also has roots in print ads such as classifieds and space ads and direct mail.

The internet has created a massive opportunity for the skilled direct marketer to thrive without doing the customary legwork and engaging in personal contact with their prospects, basically expanding on the concept of direct mail.

So what skills do you need to hone in order to succeed at direct marketing?

The top priority of anyone interested in making money on the internet should be their copywriting skills. This is simply putting your sales message into words.

Since the face to face encounter has been eliminated you need to be able to convey your pitch through the words on the pages that your prospects are reading.

A great way to polish your copywriting skills, even if you’ve never written a single word of ad copy before, is to create a swipe file. This is just a file of already successful ad campaigns.

Swipe files are incredibly useful tools. Every major player in direct marketing keeps a swipe file and for good reason. Everybody gets stuck for words and ideas at some point. When this happens it’s good to have an example of past successes to go to and freshen your creative juices and get the words flowing again.

What should your file consist of?

You should gather any material that has spurred you to action, whether its purpose was to get you to buy something or just leave your name and email address. Copy the good stuff and study it. Realize what was in the ad that made you act on the offer.

Look for layout designs (bulleted lists are a big direct marketing tactic), action words, headlines and sub heads. You’ll notice certain words popping up along with questions and statements that are all fairly alike but are tailored to specific products and services.

That’s the key to a good swipe file. Gather a wide array of different styles and mold the message to your particular target audience. Study the material and write out many different versions of the same ad. Practice your art and perfect it.

A word of caution though. Never copy an ad word for word. That’s plagiarism and it’s illegal. Use your swipe file as an aid only, to sharpen your copywriting skills and make you better at direct marketing.

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Viral Marketing is all about giving away your own free product or service along with your ad copy (contact information, link, email, etc.). In turn, recipients of your free product are allowed to pass it along to their own clients, prospects, visitors and others as a freebie. This is a quick way to multiple your marketing at no extra expense and without extra effort on your part.

Here are some popular viral marketing techniques to follow:

1. Ebooks Share your no cost ebook with your website visitors. Include a nice full-color ad for your most popular product line with links to your website and email. Tell recipients to share copies of the ebook with their own site visitors and other contacts.

2. Software - Share a trial or lite version of your software with your website visitors as a freebie. Dont forget to include that ad for your most popular product line with links to your website and email. And tell recipients to share copies of the software with their own site visitors and other contacts. For help creating software, hire help from online bid sites like Elance.com.

3. Web Host Offer to host small business web sites on your server at no charge. In exchange, place your own banner ad at the top of the site for viral marketing. You can setup a fold for their site and they can choose their own domain name and have it redirected to that folder.

4. Templates Design your own website or other templates, include your own marketing information on them and give them away as free downloads or as an electronic package. Grant permission for recipients to pass them along.

5. Articles Write articles about your industry. Include your website and contact information in the byline and grant permission for others to publish as long as they keep the byline in tact. Then people can use your contact on websites, in ezines, newsletters and other places where once again, viral marketing will speed the spread of information about your business.

6. Discussion Board - Set up a Discussion Board on your website with your banner ad attached at the top. And invite others to link to it and use it for their own sites.

In summary, by using viral marketing strategies, you can reach out all over the Internet with much less effort. See which methods work best for you and repeat them as often as needed.

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Have you had trouble getting started in online marketing? Are your websites profitable yet? Many beginning internet marketers quickly become frustrated and quit because they do not realize instant profits.

Well, here are two little pieces of advice that seem very simple on the outside but can have a large impact on your business. In fact by following them you can increase your productivity and profits. By the way they were both traps that I feel into myself and that is why I am aware of them.

First, let me ask you a question. Do you ever find yourself checking your website statistic more then once a day? Many internet marketers get in the habit of checking two, three, five even ten times a day. It is easy to fool yourself that somehow this is helping! However if you weigh a rock on the scale ten times a day and expect a different result you would be considered crazy. Well, checking your website stats can be much the same. Just because you added a few new links or a new article to your website does not mean your traffic will raise all of a sudden. In fact checking it too many times a day is counter productive. You will not change the traffic at all by checking it constantly. Instead spend the time working on your websites and adding content like articles, or exchange links.

The second trap that to watch out for is bouncing among to many projects. You can probably relate. You get an email newsletter from an internet marketing guru that says this new software is the best thing since sliced bread or it touts some new affiliate program and what do you do? Well, if you are like many other people doing business on the internet you jump on the bandwagon and hope for the quick windfall of profits. The problem is that by jumping from one project to the next means nothing is ever finished and nothing ever becomes profitable. So what should you do? Pick one or two projects and stick with them. Do not change course on a whim but stay with the good projects at least three to six months. If after six months the project has not become profitable then you might want to regroup and change strategies.

These two techniques alone, while very simple, can significantly improve productivity and in turn your profits online. Hope you find them useful!

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Is it possible to make a part time or full time living on the Internet? Can you really make enough money to make your time worthwhile?

According to all the "gurus" you can easily make a LOT of money by buying their program and doing EXACTLY what they tell you to do.

Is all of this hype really true? The answer is yes and no. It really is true that a stay at home Mom or a student in need of extra income or a full time worker needing a part-time income can make money on the Internet. It is also true that a lot of people are making a full-time living and even becoming rich on the Internet.

The question is, "Can you do it too"? Again the answer is maybe yes and maybe no. It all depends on how much time you are willing to invest in studying the techniques and learn the methods you need for Internet Marketing (IM) success.

The fastest way to earn extra money online is to sell on Ebay. You can start right now, today, and in 3 days be paid online for items you sell. There are a lot of "get rich quick" tutorials for sale on how to make it on Ebay, but you don’t need one. You can simply register at the Ebay site, read their tutorial and get started selling items you have around the house.

A lot of people make a few extra dollars to a few hundred extra dollars a month on Ebay. Others make a lot more. Ebay or any business you get into online or in a physical business location has the potential to make money. Lots of people succeed in business and a lot fail. Your success or failure will partially depend on how well you prepare, how much you study and how much energy you put into the project.

The great thing about online businesses compared to brick and mortar stores is it usually costs a lot less to get started. For instance, getting stared selling on Ebay doesn’t cost anything. You only pay fees when you run an Ebay auction ad.

Once you have some money rolling in on Ebay, you can invest in one of the guru courses that you can find in any search engine by doing a search for, "Internet marketing".

Do you have to buy a course? No, you can find free information online to help you get started. The advantage of a course is that it is all in one place. A decent course starts at about $67 and runs up to about $197. There are other cheaper courses and more expensive ones. It is best to start learning with a moderately priced course.

Every course you find will offer you good advice. Some are better than others. It is hard to say which is best. Just like some people love Fords and hate Chevy’s, it is the same with IM guru courses. The secret is to do a little online research, pick one and then follow it.

Internet Marketing can be as easy as creating a simple website and putting other company’s ads on the site. You get paid when someone buys a product or even when someone clicks on an ad. You don’t even need a product to sell; you only have other’s ads on your web pages.

Ebay is a make money today proposition. For most people, Internet Marketing is a get rich slow process. Yes, some people make money within days or weeks of starting on online business. Most take a little longer to get established.

There are no hard and fast rules on how long it will take you to make money online or how much you can make. It all depends on how hard you are willing to work and how much time you are willing to devote to creating a new business.

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Affiliate marketing’s been a staple of the internet marketing scene for many years now. It’s highly touted as a money maker for newbies and experienced marketers alike. But does it really pay to be an affiliate marketer? Let’s take a look to learn more…

Basically affiliate marketing’s an agreement between a web site owner and a merchant. The web site owner’s actually an advertiser for the merchant or product creator. The agreement is a contract between the two parties that stipulates that the site owner can use various methods including the space on his site to promote the merchants goods. The merchant meanwhile agrees to pay a percentage of each sale generated through the affiliates personalized link.

This benefits both sides because the product creator spends nothing to advertise their goods and the affiliate pays nothing to research and develop new products.

This creates a win-win situation.

The product creator wins by saving money on advertising, which is one of the most costly aspects of doing business, by passing this cost on to affiliates. Basically it’s a pay-per-performance deal because the merchant doesn’t accrue any costs until the sale’s made and the merchant pays the specified commission.

The affiliate marketer wins by being able to sell an already developed product, thus saving the time and money on the front end by not having to deal with R&D and product creation. The product is already developed and proven by the merchant, and all you have to do as an affiliate is find as many prospects as you can that will bring in the profit for both the merchant and yourself.

Another benefit to the affiliate is that most programs are free to join and have pre-made sales material so your marketing experience doesn’t have to be that of an expert.

Probably the biggest benefit to being an affiliate marketer on the internet’s the internet itself.

Because of the global reach of the internet it’s very easy to reach tens of thousands of prospects for almost any type of product line. It’s also very easy to intensify your efforts as an affiliate marketer to exploit new and productive strategies such as viral marketing, ebooks, special reports and autoresponders.

Lastly, as an affiliate marketer you get to pick and choose between many different products to promote. You’re not married to a specific product or even a specific product type. Your risks are minimal because there are no long term binding contracts so if one product doesn’t bring in a profit you can quickly and easily replace it with another.

All in all affiliate marketing’s still an excellent way to earn income from the internet. Perform your due diligence, find a hungry market, find a good product and go for it!

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If someone were to ask you what the foundation of your Internet Marketing business endeavors consisted of, would you have an answer? If you find yourself hesitating for even a moment, then it may be time to review this age old concept and analyze how it impacts your online ventures.

From a very early age, we were all taught that a building is only as strong as its foundation. This analogy was usually used when teaching a life lesson - whether to enforce the importance of a strong foundation in matters of family, emotions, friendships, education, or business endeavors. And for brick and mortar businesses, the concept of a solid foundation is usually not lost on most people either.

When it comes to online marketing however, this principle often eludes Internet Marketing Professionals. The apparent reason is the vast amount of options and diversity of revenue streams that are available and the ease of their implementation.

Because it is much easier to institute an online business than a traditional brick and mortar, the importance of creating a solid foundation is often overlooked in the swiftness of the inception of new niche products or marketing efforts.

In Internet Marketing circles, you frequently hear a lot of talk about the importance of focus, and this certainly touches upon the concept of creating a solid foundation; but just being admonished to maintain focus is not going to suddenly manifest a solid foundation for your online pursuits.

The idea behind a foundation is to uphold the entire structure. When Internet Marketers are told to focus, what should really be stated is the importance of focusing on the foundation. Not just focusing on a given product, or a specific project or a dedicated niche. To the contrary, the foundation of your online business is the glue that holds your products, projects and niches together.

You don’t have to look far to see the effects of a lack of foundation. In fact, all you have to do is listen to the panic that ensues every time Google has one of their infamous algorithm changes. This is akin to putting all of one’s eggs in one basket and has caught many a marketing guru in the proverbial cross.

With Internet Marketing, the prospect of laying a proper foundation is a double edge sword. On the one hand, it is not advisable to jump from one project to anther; but on the other hand, it is critical to stay current with trends and technology. While trying to maintain a balance between these two, you walk a fine line in establishing a solid foundation that will be both dynamic as well properly grounded.

Whether you have been marketing online for a while or are just beginning to assess your place in the Internet Marketing world, take stock of the direction you are going and where it may leave you in the months and year to come.

For example, when choosing a niche, by its very definition it is based upon consumer demand. And that demand is largely dependent upon current fads, available technology, market need or some combination of all three. Regardless of whether you choose to serve that niche through email marketing, affiliate programs, blogging, or authority sites, in each instance you will be rising to meet the current trends.

So using the above example, a typical scenario would be to capitalize on a niche topic like MP3, podcasting, or something similar. However, the moment that technology makes these things obsolete and replaces it with the latest and greatest electronic wonder, the profitability of this niche would swiftly decline.

If however, you choose a niche such as consumer electronics or audio video equipment, then your foundation would remain much more solid and have the ability to stand the test of time. Establishing yourself as an authority in the consumer electronics niche — albeit through promotion of iPods, MP3s and podcasting today — gives you the reach for incorporating anything else that may turn to favor tomorrow.

These are the types of things that need to be considered when addressing a proper foundation for your Internet Marketing endeavors. Utilizing this method of reasoning will insure longevity and to do otherwise will insure only short term success at best.

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