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The downfall of many would-be successful internet marketers is that they just can’t get the revenue to expense ratio right. High on the list of culprits is paying too much to drive traffic to their websites. One way to fix this is to concentrate on free traffic and can the advertising altogether, as these 7 Tips will help you do.

Tip #1: Organic Search Engine Rankings. There are only three search engines you need to worry about and those are Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Conquering top search engine rankings in the big three starts with good keyword research. When you know what search terms you want to target, it’s then a matter of tailoring your site to match what these search engines are looking for.

With Google you need lots of original content (that is, large websites) and natural-looking incoming links. With Yahoo it’s pretty much the same except that you can use reprinted articles, otherwise known as duplicate content, in building your subpages. With MSN you can attain top spots with small mini-sites that simply use the search terms in the domain.

You need incoming links, known as backlinks, to move up in the rankings. Some popular ways to get these include using social bookmarking sites, posting comments and trackbacks on blogs (and other sites) that don’t use “no follow” meta tags, submitting articles to article directories, posting your URL on directory sites, and exchanging links with other sites.

Tip #2: Social Networks such as Myspace. This usually involves making multiple profiles and getting very social on the social network with other users. Automation software is often utilized to make mundane tasks such as sending friend requests, comments, and messages to other users much faster. Myspace allows their database to be sorted by a nice range of demographics, which is very helpful if you need a target list of prospects to promote your product or service to. You can also access members of groups who all have a shared interest in a certain subject.

Tip #3: Free Classified Ad Sites. This is getting to be a very effective free traffic method, but you do need to go about it with some tact and creativity. Craig’s List is the king of free online classifieds, and a properly tailored campaign can harvest hundreds of targeted prospects per day. Software is very handy for managing larger campaigns.

Tip #4: Video Hosting Sites. Anyone can harvest sales leads from video hosting sites these days. You can make a video using a digital camera or free screen recording software on your computer, or a combination of both. This is where the creative types will soar above the crowd.

You Tube is the undisputed king of online video hosting, and a smart marketer  can reap thousands of views for his or her video per day from inside You Tube itself. All you need to do is drive people to your page, which can be done by commenting on other videos or other peoples pages, and sending friend requests. Software makes this process much more efficient.

Tip #5: Question and Answer Sites. These are becoming incredibly popular, with Yahoo Answers being the clear leader for the moment. Anyone can ask questions, anyone can answer questions, and as long as you don’t come across as a blatant spammer, dropping your links into both questions and answers is pretty easy. It’s certainly worth your time to market any niche through Yahoo Answers.

Tip #6: Forums. Message board forums exist on the internet for just about every topic imaginable. An advanced Google search using “message board forum” and your topic of interest will probably turn up several places where people discuss your subject. Join these forums, become active and helpful to others, then do subtle marketing through your signature (or even your user name).

Tip #7 Give-aways on auction sites. Auction sites such as ebay are a great opportunity to find customers for your niche. Write a 10-page report that has a few good tips and a great sales pitch for your product, and then give it away for free (or charge something like $1 for it). Hype it up with some good sales jargon so it moves well. Capture the emails of those downloading the book and add them to an autoresponder service so you can keep mailing them offers.

These tips are only the beginning of free traffic opportunities on the web. Plenty of marketers make a nice income without spending a dime on advertising. Will you become one of them?

Getting listed in search engines is very important for internet marketers. A high search engine ranking for your website is critical if you want to generatel your own leads that will convert into signups and sales. This article discusses the keys to getting listed in search engines.

The higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website. That’s what search engine optimization is about.

1. To increase search engine rankings, the words on your home page’s title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your business name.

2. Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keyword. It is usually best to keep them to six words or less.

3. Your website content also plays a crucial role in getting listed in search engines. Search engines generally list sites that contain quality content The text on your site must contain the most important keywords, the words that potential customers will be typing into search engines to find your site.

4. Each page on your site should contain around 250 words, but if this is not desirable due to your design, shoot for at least 100 carefully chosen words. This text is essential to achieve a high page ranking.

5. To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you can to do this, the text is HTML.

6. Next are what is called meta tags. These are just simple code. They only have a small effect in getting listed in search engines.

7. Finally, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is very important in terms of search engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page.

If you type in “free link popularity check” in a popular search engine, the search engine will then show you what sites are linked to your site.

Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.

Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can’t boost your rankings yourself. Don’t ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing.

To check your link popularity, an easy and free tool to try is http://www.linkpopularity.com/

Getting listed in search engines is not all that difficult when you follow a few simple methods and use a system that creates quality links.

You don’t need to be a professional copywriter or have a huge vocabulary in order to write a good sales letter. If it’s your first time to write one, all you need to exert is a bit of time and effort and you’ll sure to produce a good sales letter in no time.

7 Things that Distinguish a Good Sales Letter from the Rest

A Good Sales Letter is Easy on the Eye.
Whether it’s an email or an actual letter, reading it must not be difficult for anyone with relatively good eyesight. Firstly, the font size must be at least 11 but no greater than 13 because anything more would take up too much space. Use special fonts only for emphasizing certain points but the main body of your content must still be written in easily understandable font like Times New Roman or Arial. Choice of colors is also important. Use dark ink for light backgrounds and vice versa. This may seem like common sense stuff, but you’d be surprised to know just how many people have continuously violated this rule!

A Good Sales Letter is of Appropriate Length.
There are unwritten rules regarding the appropriate length for sales letters, and they depend on factors like the number of times you’ve already corresponded with your recipient, the objectives of your sales letter, and so forth.

In most cases, nothing more than a one-pager is a must if it’s your first time to contact a prospective customer. You could definitely write more if your reader has indicated an interest in receiving more news and updates from you in the future, but just how much will again depend on what you’re talking about and how well you know your target readers.

A Good Sales Letter Does Not Beat around the Bush.
It will always have a few lines dedicated to showing courtesy and appreciation towards the reader, but it will afterwards mince no words in saying what it has to say. If it has a buy-one-take-two offer in mind, the sales letter must state this directly. Time is a precious commodity, and a reader will appreciate it if you show your understanding of this concept by writing only what you have to write.

A Good Sales Letter Has a Personalized Touch.
Readers often like it better when the letter is directly addressed to them and most especially when they are old or existing customers already. Addressing the letter directly in their names make them feel special and appreciated. And you can validate this feeling by signing the letter at the end with your own name or the highest official in your company.

A Good Sales Letter Acknowledges the Competition and Defends its Position
Good sales letters are not written by people who prefer to bury their heads in the sand. These people are aware that whatever they’re offering, rival companies surely have something to counter with as well, and they don’t hesitate to acknowledge this. Rather than pretend that their readers would not be aware or interested in the counter offers of other companies, these writers address these issues directly and defend their products and services to the best of their ability.

Simply put, a good sales letter shows why you still have to choose the products and services it’s offering over others!

A Good Sales Letter is Not All Talk!
Good sales letters are not all talk. If you’ve got claims to make, you better make sure you can support them with solid facts and figures that are certified by valid and reliable authorities. A good sales letter gives readers a reason to believe in them!

A Good Sales Letter Gives You the Chance to Opt Out
And lastly, a good sales letter always offers you the chance to NOT receive other similar updates in the future. This may seem a disadvantage at the start, but it actually proves you’re confident your reader won’t opt out. It’s reverse psychology in a way!

No matter how good a sales letter you have, remember that writing it will do you no good if in the end, it doesn’t fit the needs of your target market. A good sales letter will always need the things listed in here, but it has to be somewhat customized according to your target market’s preferences. What those are will, of course, depend if you’ve already correctly identified who your best customers are in the first place!

Want to develop a direct communication line with your web site visitors without spamming? Develop an opt-in list with a large subscribers’ base. You will be able to send personalized emails to your subscribers who have expressed their willingness to receive informative as well as commercial offerings from you. However, you have to tread a fine line between annoying your visitors and making them volunteer the information you need. Knowing the right strategy and implementing it correctly will decide whether your offerings end up in spamboxes or inboxes. These seven steps will guide you in the right direction.

1. Decide what information you need to collect. Names and email addresses are the minimum. Do you need their home address, their gender, or their age group? Don’t collect information that you don’t have any plan to use. Don’t collect information for any anticipated future use. You may get plenty of chances to collect those information from a revised list of prospects. Keep the information collection to the absolute minimum.

2. Publish a privacy policy and provide a link at the point in the web page where you collect users’ information. Mention in bold letters that you don’t sell their emails to others and practice the same. Your opt-in list is very valuable and don’t sell it to others for a few bucks. Don’t violate the trust of your visitors and ruin your reputation.

3. Provide instant incentives for subscribing to your offerings. Free e-books, report, software, video tutorials, etc. that interest to your target audience are very effective incentives. If you have a paid member’s only area, you can provide time limited access to that section of your web site in exchange for their subscriptions.

4. Publish your past offerings in your website. Each offering should be in the form of a newsletter with quality contents that improve your readers’ quality of life. Conclude your contents with your commercials that explain the benefits of products or services you are selling.

5. Set up a discussion board (forum) at your site and make it available to registered members only. The discussion board should focus on your target market. By scanning the posts and their threads, you will be able to identify problems your visitors are trying to solve. Do your research and find solutions to those problems, organize them and publish those solutions your newsletter.

6. Use Co-registration. This will build your list rapidly in a short amount of time. What is co-registration? It refers to the practice of referring subscriptions or leads for memberships with another registration process. There are several ways of doing this.

When a visitor signs up for a free subscription or other service, give them the chance on the thank-you page to opt-in to another offer. Another way is give the visitors to a website the opportunity to sign up for another opt-in list. These do not need to be your thank-you pages or websites. You need to partner up with another web marketer.

The goal here is to find other website owners who you can joint venture with you to offer your newsletter along with theirs. Do a search via your favorite search engine and directories for similar offers and contact the people to set up your joint venture.

Two additional secrets to this co-registration process. First, make sure you offer more value than the other party involved in your joint venture. Second, offer your leads you get from this process more value than you usually offer by giving them a huge giveaway only available to them.

7. Use Squidoo, a social media website, to create lenses. A lens is a web page on any idea. Provide a RSS feed of your website on your lens. Embellish your lens with YouTube videos and Flickr photos related to your target market. Squidoo splits its revenue with lens creators (or lensmasters). Sign up to donate all your revenue from Squidoo lenses to a non-religious charity. Call for action by announcing that subscribers are helping a charity by joining your list.

Have you ever thought about starting an internet business? It could really be as simple as opening a Yahoo Store, or on the other end of the scale, as complicated as building your own, professional, dynamic, e-commerce website. Regardless of your approach to internet business, to ensure the success of your business, you need to know of, and apply the following 7 key points.

1) Demand–

Lets say for instance, that you have a really amazing product, and a website that looks like a million dollars–but what if you have no demand for your product? In saying that, you aren’t going to be left with a sword in a gun fight. In the online world, there are many ways to advertise and generate demand for your product. There are the choices and possibilities of advertising in Ezines, joint ventures, affiliate programs, referrals, and even as simple as encouraging word of mouth. Remember, without demand, what do you have? No sales. Where does a business without sales end up?

2) Order–

Its all well and good to have visitors to your website, but they don’t do anything for us unless they become a customer. However, its not as easy as it first appears. Now, once your visitor has turned into a customer, you need to ensure that them becoming an actual customer, is as easy as possible. A straightforward and simple ordering process will do wonders for your business. Less clicks and less time it takes for a customer to complete his or her order, the better it is.

3) Payment–

If there was any part of your business that you would not want to get wrong, it would be this–how payment is actually being transferred between you and your customers. Generally, when taking into account online businesses, the most popular method is credit card transactions. Not only are they an easier and quicker method than most other forms of payment, but it also goes to a psychological level. Credit Cards exude a “buy-now, think-later” attitude. Taking this into account, as a business, you’d be making more profit and sales if you accepted credit cards. However, in saying that, it would also be a wise decision to use alternative methods of payment. After all, the easier it is for your customer to find ways to pay you for your product, you’ll see a more efficient increase both in sales and customer numbers.

4) Fulfillment–

Now payment has been received from your customer, the path isn’t clear just yet. This is a mistake often made by new businesses. Your products need to be delivered, remember! Generally, if you sell digital products, the industry standard is for the product to be delivered instantly; generally through a download link. Your customer expects this, so ensure this is in place. Physical products require more attention to detail; namely physical delivery. Ensure that your customer is informed every step of the way. Communication is essential. If at all possible, send your customer a means of tracking the product through the course of its delivery. Feeling insecure is something your customer should never have to experience.

5) Service and Support–

A good and trusted business will always endevour to provide and utilise excellent customer service support. To a decent extent, your online business customer support will determine whether or not you get repeat purchases, or if your customer requests a refund. The support abilities of your internet business should be efficient as possible; after all, this is the industry standard. At the least, a well-structured and timely e-mail support service should be available to the customer. The more professional your online business becomes, so should your support methods. More advanced methods such as utilising online helpdesks, FAQs, live chats, a ticket system, a knowledge base, will help greatly; these are just examples, there are more support methods out there which you can use.

6) Security–

The internet business world is filled with people who are honest, trustworthy, and are willing to do everything to help the customer. But, on the other hand, the opposite is also very true. And as such, the internet community at large are getting more aware of ways to protect themselves from the internets less desirable people and activities. Namely, E-commerce frauds.

Because of this, it is upto you and your business to ensure that your visitors are protected, and to prove to them that they can trust you. Simple things, such as using a secured server to process your payments, can help more than is seen on the surface. A digital certificate can also help your business, so purchase one if you can. Physical mailing addresses, and even a phone number where your customers can contact you. Whatever you can do to provide your customers with some piece of mind.

7) Community–

Your online business has begun to flourish, and you have now received more than just a few sales–by now you should be thinking about starting a community. A community in any sense is about belonging to something; in this case its no different. Use your customers as a community development team for your product. Use their suggestions and comments to develop and change your product(s). Not only is this an excellent way to increase product ideas for your business, but with every new product release or update, you’ll see an increase in sales ratios, and you will also have built a loyal customer base.

Well there you have it! Utilising and practising these 7 keys will not only help your online business grow and flourish, but will also ensure your customers are happy, too!