Business Review

The Latest from Google AdSense

2007-02-11T10:54:00.000-08:00

The Latest from Google AdSense - December 2006

* Note From The Editors
* New and Improved AdSense Features
o Wanted: 300x250 medium rectangles for display of video ads
o Multiple channels, maximum tracking
o New optimization tips for Referrals
o AdSense payments, demystified
o EFT expanded to 4 new countries
o New success stories from publishers like you
o Extra! Extra! AdSense tests offline newspaper advertising
* Publisher Education
o Tailor your users' search experience with a Google Custom Search Engine
o Make your site more Google-friendly with our Webmaster Tools
o Understand your audience with Analytics
o Promote & enhance your website using Gadgets
o Embed a searchable Google Map without writing any code
o Collaborate on your site content with Google Docs & Spreadsheets
o Communicate better with others with Google Apps For Your Domain
* AdSense Resources

Note From The Editors

Hi,

As 2006 comes to a close, we wanted to end the year by making sure all of you are updated on the latest developments in the AdSense world. In the past few months we've launched some exciting new features for AdSense, as well as several new Google products that AdSense publishers like you may find useful.

To all of our publishers, we wish you a safe holiday season and a happy new year. See you in 2007!

Christine & Julie, on behalf of the Google AdSense Team

New and Improved AdSense Features

Wanted: 300x250 medium rectangles for display of video ads

Earlier this year, we launched click-to-play video ads, a new form of relevant and engaging advertising. Paid on either a CPC or CPM basis, video ads present an improved revenue opportunity for you because they compete with other text and image ads for placement on sites, making the ad auction more competitive. For best results, we recommend the following:

* Use a 300 x 250 medium rectangle format that's enabled to show video ads
* Position the rectangle in above-the-fold, prime locations on your pages

This implementation is especially popular with advertisers looking for sites to target both their image and video ads. To see examples of good placement, check out these demos created by our friends over in AdWords. If the medium rectangle is not a fit for your pages, video ads are also supported in three other ad formats.

Multiple channels, maximum tracking

For greater flexibility and more granular tracking, we now allow you to add up to five custom channels to any ad unit. This increased tracking freedom will come in handy whenever you want to track one ad unit across a variety of different metrics, such as location or format. For example, you could now track an Open Air leaderboard ad unit at the top of the page using three custom channels: Open Air, Leaderboard, and Top.

New optimization tips for Referrals

Looking to increase your referrals earnings? Check out the new referrals optimization tips page! Here you'll find suggestions on which products may work best for your site and how to determine the optimal placement for your referral buttons.

AdSense payments, demystified

No longer will the arrival of AdSense payments be shrouded in mystery. Introducing the AdSense Payment Schedule demo, here to make it clear when your payments will be processed, sent, and received, whether on your doorstep or in your bank account. Our demo also outlines the process of reissuing earnings that have been credited back to your account.

EFT expanded to 4 new countries

Breaking news for publishers located in the Czech Republic, Finland, Israel, and Slovakia-- we've extended Electronic Funds Transfer payments to these 4 additional countries. Now you can enjoy the benefits of EFT, including faster receipt of payments and fewer bank fees. Haven't yet signed up for EFT? Just follow our easy instructions.

New success stories from publishers like you

* "It's worth the effort to test and experiment. We've found that our optimization efforts on AdSense have had a substantial positive impact on revenues." -Chris Davis, Neopets.com

* "AdSense does the work for us and has allowed us to tap 100 percent of our market, since we can reach both small and large metropolitan areas, versus serving only a few big advertisers. AdSense has made a tremendous difference in our business." -Jeremy Bencken, ApartmentRatings.com

One of the most common requests we get from publishers is more examples of publishers like them who've found success with AdSense. On that note, we're excited to introduce you to 4 publishers all with very diverse sites - Neopets.com, Apartment Ratings, TakeABreak, and Swapalease.com. Read about them here. Also, check out a few of our publisher testimonials from the recent Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose.

Extra! Extra! AdSense tests offline newspaper advertising

We're excited to announce that we're in the early stages of testing AdSense for Newspapers with a select group of newspaper publishers. AdSense for Newspapers gives newspaper publishers a new source of advertising revenue by connecting them with AdWords advertisers who want to place display ads in major papers across the U.S. If you happen to be a newspaper publisher interested in participating in future tests, please check out AdSense for Newspapers and submit your contact information.

Publisher Education

Tailor your users' search experience with Custom Search Engine

Create your own tailored search experience for your users with a Custom Search Engine that reflects your knowledge and expertise. If you're using AdSense for search, you can link your account to your custom search engine and add a new revenue stream from the ads within the custom search engine results. In a few quick steps you can create a search engine that looks and feels like your site. It's easy to use and set up, and you can prioritize search results based on your interests; invite members of your community to participate in growing your search engine content. And just like AdSense for search, you can integrate your custom search engine directly into your site so your users stay on your pages. Keep in mind that while our site is in English only at this time, you can create a custom search engine that searches across content in the following languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Russian.

Make your site more Google-friendly with our Webmaster Tools

Google's Webmaster Tools provide you with a free and easy way to make your site more Google-friendly. They allow you to get Google's view of your website & diagnose potential problems, see what queries drive traffic to your site and how users find you. The tools can also tell Google about your pages, what is important, and how often they change. The more eyeballs you have on your useful content, the better for your AdSense performance.

Understand your audience with Analytics

More and more AdSense Publishers are discovering Google Analytics . It's free and as easy to set up as AdSense, and will give you the data you need to back up your AdSense decisions. For example, if you're wondering where to put your AdSense ads, you can look at Google Analytics reports to find out which pages on your site get the most traffic, and where visitors spend the most time. All you need to do is add a couple of lines of code to each page on your site. Sign up for a free account and see results today.

Promote & enhance your website using Gadgets

You can enhance your own website and promote your website's content, for free, by using Google Gadgets. To enhance your own website, you can add fun or content-rich gadgets by copying and pasting a little HTML you can generate from the directory of gadgets for your webpage. To promote your website's content on the Google homepage and on other sites across the web, you can create and optimize your own Google Gadget.

Embed a searchable Google Map without writing any code

Let your users search for places on a Google Map without leaving your site. The best part is you don't need to write a single line of JavaScript or HTML. The Map Search Wizard will generate code for you, and all you have to do is copy and paste the code into your page just like AdSense. You can also customize how you want the map to look and the center location. It's easy, fast, and free. And if you're interested in doing more with a dynamic Google search box, check out the AJAX Search API

Collaborate on your site content with Docs & Spreadsheets

Google Docs & Spreadsheets is our new web-based word processing and spreadsheet program, perfect for managing your site's content and sharing it with others. You can edit and save in HTML to create mockups of your webpages, access your files from any computer via a web browser, easily send them to collaborators to review & edit, and view all past revisions to any document. Docs & Spreadsheets also provides an easy way to distribute content. Your users won't need to download anything from your site; just create your content in Docs & Spreadsheets or upload an existing file, publish it, and then link directly to the file from your website. Google Docs & Spreadsheets is free, secure and easy to try out. Check out the product tour for an overview, or just sign up here.

Communicate better with others with Google Apps For Your Domain

The more you can focus on your site content, the more successful you can be with AdSense. Now available in 18 different languages, Google Apps for Your Domain allows you to spend less time, energy, and money on one of the biggest distractions for publishers: maintaining IT systems. Now you can offer powerful communication and collaboration tools including Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Talk to everyone with an account on your own domain, people within your organization or members of your community. Best of all, everything is managed on Google's scalable, secure systems, just like AdSense.

AdSense Resources

* Optimization Tips Page - Find out how to improve your AdSense performance with tried and true tips.
* Google Tools for AdSense Publishers - Learn about other Google products you can use to improve and enrich your site.
* Inside AdSense Blog - Keep up with the latest news, tips, success stories, and insights direct from members of the AdSense team. To receive posts directly in your inbox, subscribe to the blog.
* AdSense Help Forum - Become a part of the AdSense community, where you can learn from other publishers and share your own knowledge and experiences.
* AdSense Calendar - Make AdSense dates memorable by subscribing to the AdSense Calendar, which provides our monthly payment schedule, a record of AdSense blog posts, future system maintenance periods, and upcoming events.

Google Adsense

2006-10-29T08:52:00.000-08:00

How much will I earn through this program?

The Google ads you are able to display on your content pages can be either cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-1000-impressions (CPM) ads, while AdSense for search results pages show exclusively CPC ads. This means that advertisers pay either when users click on ads, or when the advertiser's ad is shown on your site. You'll receive a portion of the amount paid for either activity on your website. Although we don't disclose the exact revenue share, our goal is to enable publishers to make as much or more than they could with other advertising networks.

The best way to find out how much you'll earn is to sign up and start showing ads on your web pages. There's no cost, no obligation, and getting started is quick and easy. You can sign up now from the AdSense home page at https://www.google.com/adsense .

Once you're a part of Google AdSense, you can view your earnings at any time by logging in to your account at https://www.google.com/adsense and clicking the Reports tab. You'll be able to see the total number of page and ad unit impressions, ad clicks, clickthrough rate, effective CPM, and your total earnings so you can get an idea of how well the program is performing for you and how much you can expect to earn over time in the program.

You can also find more information about our payment schedule in our Payments Guide.

What languages does AdSense support?

Google AdSense supports publishers in several different languages. Applications for participation in the program can be for sites with content primarily in:

Chinese (simplified)	Japanese
Danish	Korean
Dutch	Norwegian
English	Polish
Finnish	Portuguese
French	Russian
German	Spanish
Hungarian	Swedish
Italian	Turkish

In addition, AdSense for search is available in Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Slovak, and Traditional Chinese. These languages are not supported for AdSense for content pages.

You can select your site's primary language during the application process. If you're approved, AdSense will serve relevant ads to your pages in the appropriate language, even if your site contains multiple supported languages.

Please also be aware that placing the AdSense code on pages with content primarily in an unsupported language is not permitted by the AdSense program policies.

4 Steps to a Successful Website

2006-05-06T09:35:00.000-07:00

Creating a successful website that will make money and receive traffic is simple if you follow the right steps. However, many potential webmasters don't know where to start or how to put all the site building pieces together. In this article we have outlined the four basic steps for getting a website online, listed, and ready to make money- along with recommendations for our favorite web services to help you do so. Anyone can make money with a website and we'll tell you how to get started.

1- Register a Domain Name
The very first step to take is to register a domain name. This name is how your website will be known and listed on the World Wide Web. It will be your URL, or web address. An example of a domain name is www.mysite.com. Dot com is the most common domain extension, but there are many others to choose from. Using hyphens and alternate spellings in a domain name can help if the .com is already taken. We like to register our domains through GoDaddy. They offer the cheapest prices for domain names and are always having a good sale.

Where domain names are concerned cheaper is better. Owning a domain name doesn't mean you have a website, it is just the name. To have a website you also need a web host.

2- Find a Host

Once you have a domain you can find a host for your domain. In order to have your website visible to the world, you pay someone else, a web host, to store your site files on a fast server that makes them available 24/7 to website visitors. There are millions of web hosts to choose from with varied pricing and features. We recommend iPowerWeb as a reliable web host to start with. They are competitively priced ($7.95 per month) and offer all the tools webmasters need to get a website up and running smoothly. iPowerWeb will register a domain name for free when you sign up for hosting.

3- Join Affiliate Networks

Now that you have your website up and running you are ready to sign up for affiliate programs so you can make money with your website. The best place to start is to sign up with an affiliate network, like Commission Junction, that can give you access to many affiliate programs. Commission Junction will track which merchants you are an affiliate for, the traffic you send merchants, the sales you make, and how much you will be paid.

They send out one monthly check for all the revenue you have received from your affiliated merchants. Using an affiliate network is much easier than signing up, tracking sales, and receiving payment from multiple different sources.

4- Increase Your Website Traffic

Unfortunately, your website will never make money or be a success if no one sees it. Once you've registered a domain name, signed up free a web host, and added some affiliates to your website, you need to begin soliciting traffic, or visitors, to your website. Traffic to your website can come in many forms: word of mouth, printed advertisement, email campaigns, other web sites, and search engines are the main sources. Search engines offer the highest possibilities of traffic if your website places well for a desired key word. We suggest reading the Search Engine Bible to help you figure out the complex game of search engine optimization or PayPerClickList.com to learn more about submitting to pay per click engines.

It is no secret that these four steps can take time and a lot of hard work. But if you take advantage of the resources available and proceed in the prescribed order your website can be a success.

To find web providers in your area to help with web design, marketing, hosting, or graphics, visit BestWebProviders.com.

10 Credos of Compassionate Marketing

2006-04-02T10:07:00.000-07:00

Mungkin sebagian anggota TDA ada yang telah mengetahui teori terbaru dari Hermawan Kertajaya yaitu The 10 Credos of Compassionate Marketing yang berisi prinsip2 menjalankan bisnis yang berlandaskan moralitas dan etika. Pebisnis yang sering dijadikan model adalah Aa Gym yang sekaligus merupakan mubaligh, atau mubaligh yang pebisnis.

Credo pertama yg ingin saya bahas adalah Love Your Customers, Respect Your Competitors. Klo ‘cintai pelanggan anda’ mungkin semua udah mahfum karena dari sinilah pundi2 pendapatan bisnis kita secara langsung. Tapi menghargai pesaing ? apa gunanya ? bukan malah merugikan ? toh yang penting kita masih berhasil dalam bisnis kita.

Hermawan menyatakan dalam teorinya bahwa pesaing sebenernya dapat dijadikan mitra untuk berkembang dengan pertimbangan :

1. Pesaing akan memperbesar pasar.
Orang yang menjual martabak di suatu tempat, klo tidak ada orang yang menjual martabak di sebelah-belahnya, maka pasar martabak tidak akan besar. contoh : pedagang martabak di warung buncit, pusat seluler di Roxy atau gabungan pengusaha dukungan pak Haji di Metro Tanah Abang dan ITC Mangga Dua. Pak Haji sudah lama menyadari ini bahkan mempraktekkannya, pengusaha Tionghoa juga sudah lama menyadarinya mangkanya mereka secara bergerombol membentuk komunitas bisnis di suatu tempat.

2. Pesaing bisa menjadi sumber inspirasi untuk memperbaiki diri.
Kita harus rajin melakukan perbandingan dengan pesaing, dalam manajemen mempelajari pasaing tidak salah, malah dianjurkan agar produk dan kinerja kita menjadi atau semakin excelent.

3. Pesaing mendorong kita menjadi kreatif menemukan differensiai produk atau layanan.
Tidak harus meniru suatu strategi pesaing yang belum tentu cocok dengan bisnis kita, tapi mencari kreatifitas pembeda atau bahkan lebih baik.

Sebagai anggota TDA kita bersyukur memiliki pak Haji, pak Roni, pak Bukhin, pak Eddy, mbak Waru, mbak Febby dll yg udah berpengalaman dan memahami suka-duka berbisnis. Kata pak Haji waktu TDM kemaren, bahwa kita diberikan jalan 'shorcut', minimal kita udah tau dimana toko yg jual murah, apa2 aja yg biasanya jadi masalah, kita dikasih tau jalan yg mungkin pernah dilalui pak Haji dengan pengorbanan yang besar, sampe berdarah-darah jika meminjam istilah pak Bukhin. Buat apa beliau memberikan hal itu ? Kembali ke tujuan TDA, menjadi Tangan Di Atas.

Sebagai anggota TDA kita bisa membuka bazaar secara bersama, saling menitipkan produk di toko/kios, bekerjasama membeli suatu produk yg sama di sebuah supplier sehingga mendapat harga kulakan/grosir, memberikan informasi supplier, forwarding dll.
Inilah sebagian yg bisa kita lakukan. Inilah seninya.
Bagaimana kita berlaku sebagai pesaing tapi juga sebagai mitra.
Demikian, semoga bermanfaat dan mohon maaf jika mengganggu.

Letter from Chairman e-gold, Ltd.

2006-03-26T07:55:00.000-08:00

Letter from Dr. Douglas Jackson; Chairman, e-gold, Ltd.

e-gold® has recently been the subject of a slanderous and unfounded article in Business Week. e-gold strongly refutes the allegations and presumptions of this article. The article chose to focus through anecdote and suspicion only on an exception - criminal abuse - and ignores the overwhelming majority of e-gold usage. It also fails to note that all online payment mechanisms including credit cards and intermediaries such as PayPal are targeted by criminals, likely at a much greater magnitude than e-gold, and fails to relate the very proactive steps e-gold takes to eliminate any criminal behavior involving e-gold.

e-gold and its Operator, Gold & Silver Reserve (G&SR®), including G&SR's exchange service OmniPay® in cooperation with the United States Government and pursuant to a lawfully issued written request, did allow an examination of the e-gold and OmniPay computer systems and data. The examination occurred on December 16th after normal business hours so as to avoid disrupting access to the system. The examination utilized the full resources of e-gold's system and prevented customer access. We were told by the government examiners that the outage would be for a few hours, however, due to the volume of data maintained by e-gold for its customers' protection, a surprise to the examiners, the examination occupied e-gold's computing capacity for 36 hours. e-gold apologizes for any inconvenience of the system down time caused by the government's request. No charges have been filed against e-gold, G&SR, OmniPay or any of its principals.

e-gold operates legally and does not condone persons attempting to use e-gold for criminal activity. e-gold has a long history of cooperation with law enforcement agencies in the US and worldwide, providing data and investigative assistance in response to lawful requests.

I'm proud of what we have accomplished so far with e-gold. e-gold, now in its 10th year online, is growing exponentially because of a network effect, a global cascade of Users telling their friends who then tell their friends. For the first time since our launch in 1996, this growth is providing the revenue and resources needed for e-gold to accelerate technical development and other refinements to make it more reliable and even less hospitable to those who would seek to abuse it.

We are processing the same volume of transactions and growing at the same exponential pace that PayPal was in the second quarter of 2000. One difference, though, is that they had to give away $tens of millions of their investors' money to build a critical mass of user balances and were continuing a burn rate of about $10 million per month during this period. Altogether they burned through about $275 million of capital losses before their IPO.

e-gold, in contrast, lacking significant outside investment:

has attained a circulation larger than Canada 's official gold reserves (currently 3.46 metric tonnes of gold, equivalent to about $55 million at current exchange rates).
has web traffic surpassing etrade.com and citi.com and is neck and neck with kitco.com as the most heavily trafficked gold related site on the Web
settles 50 to 60 thousand user-to-user payments per day, a daily value of about $10 million
has active Users in every country, (including more than 150,000 in China ) despite our lack so far of foreign language versions - a high priority on our to-do list

e-gold is the only payment mechanism that is truly global, enabling any merchant to accept payment online even if the payer lives in a third world country, has no credit card, or is perhaps 'unbanked' altogether.

e-gold enables the migrant worker of modest means to send value back to his family in Mexico or Bangladesh at a fraction of the cost of conventional international remittance mechanisms. e-gold alone is free of chargeback risk, yet the fee for receiving payment in e-gold is a tiny fraction of those charged by any other systems.

Thanks to e-gold, for the first time in history, normal people of modest means worldwide have the option of using currency that is designed from the ground up to be immune to debasement, with a governance model that precludes even its management and founders from having the power to subvert it.

Gold & Silver Reserve has been operating for over nine years. Seeking to comply with every applicable law, G&SR has reached out to the Government dozens of times, has repeatedly met with officials from the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI, SEC and a variety of other Federal agencies, and has been told – in no uncertain terms – that we were operating legally and in full compliance with all laws, rules and regulations. Additionally, the Government has requested from us – on more than three hundred occasions – information regarding individuals it believed to be lawbreakers. Gold & Silver Reserve complied with every single request in a professional and timely fashion. Numerous Government officials have gone so far as to commend us in writing for our efforts in complying with their requests and aiding them in their investigations.

Very recently, however, the Government concluded that it was unable to “regulate” our business under any current statutes or regulations. Rather than moving Congress to enact legislation, the Government apparently chose to undertake to regulate us under pre-existing statutes which are totally and utterly inapplicable to our business. To do so, the case the Government brought against Gold & Silver Reserve centered around false statements and fabrications made to a Magistrate Judge in Washington , D.C. A week later, when challenged by that Judge, the Government, fearing it would lose its case filed a second suit against Gold & Silver Reserve. We are now addressing that action and are confident that we will be victorious in a very short time.

Both OmniPay and e-gold have been substantially harmed. Both sites were off-line altogether for 36 hours - an interval during which we were at a loss to know what to announce or even how to announce it. There were other direct interventions as well that I am not yet at liberty to discuss that nearly crippled OmniPay's ability to honor its obligations to and on behalf of users. The worst effect of course is on our reputation. This irresponsible smear piece will surely impair our efforts to build strategic relationships with the host of businesses and individuals that would benefit from an embrace of e-gold.

Let me be very clear. e-gold in no manner condones persons or organizations attempting to use e-gold to support criminal acts. The exact opposite is true. e-gold limits accounts that are suspect of illicit activity and has a long history of cooperation with law enforcement agencies.

There are two elements that make e-gold about the dumbest choice a criminal could make if seeking to obfuscate a money trail or otherwise hide the proceeds of crime.

it is impossible for a general user of e-gold to send/add money (value in any form) into the system... he can only get e-gold by receiving an e-gold Spend from someone who already has some.
there's a permanent record of all transfers, that is, a permanent record of the entire lineage of every particle of value in the e-gold system.

There is nothing "anonymous and untraceable" about e-gold. e-gold Spends settle by book entry - it isn't so-called "digital cash".

e-gold is not about crime. e-gold is not a hospitable environment for criminals. e-gold maintains an efficient and highly capable investigative staff to aid in the identification, apprehension and prosecution of any criminal abusing the system. Our staff has participated in hundreds of investigations supporting the FBI, FTC, IRS, DEA, SEC, USPS, and others. This is the reality of every payment system, the need to aid in rooting out criminal abuse, whether it is child pornographers taking advantage of the multiple layers and indirection of credit card middlemen, or smurfs aggregating cash via international remittance processors or even state lotteries.

e-gold has taken a proactive approach, reaching out to law enforcement agencies and NGO's (Non-Governmental Organization) to foster closer cooperation in combating crime online. For example, e-gold is a charter member of the Financial Coalition to eradicate Child Pornography, organized by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, along with Visa, MasterCard, Microsoft, AOL, PayPal, First Data and some of the major banks.

I hope to have additional and useful facts shortly and will communicate them when appropriate. I can assure you e-gold is up and running, supporting its customers, and continuing to grow.

Dr. Douglas Jackson

Why Search Engine Optimization Is Important To Your Future

2006-03-04T10:36:00.000-08:00

By Ivan Kelly

Building your website with search engine appeal - or search engine optimization - is more art than science but experience has shown that there are some very useful guidelines. The question is, why bother? With effective optimization you'll attract free website traffic that the search engines will send you. Free traffic goes a long way towards not only making your site income-generating but, hopefully, profit-generating as well.

With search engine optimization you might even receive a high traffic volume. Let’s just say you have a conversion to successful sales with 5 to 10 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good number of sales already. If you get only twenty or so hits a day, you only get one or two sales if any at all. Higher traffic, especially if it's free, means potentially higher revenue.

Search engine optimization involves a variety of methods for making your site appealing to the search engines, such as having relevant keywords, title and content. It also helps to have other similar sites linking to yours. The aim is to have your site listed in the search engine results and apearing in, preferably, the first two or three pages. The higher the better. This will ensure that your site is displayed in answer to public inquiries as being possibly relevant. In turn, this increases public awareness and directs more traffic to your site - traffic that could lead to potential sales, revenue and profit.

There are many locations on the internet that can help you improve search engine optimization, including those that help in tracking keyword phrases. For instance, the free Yahoo/Overture Suggestion Tool, as well as many commercial keyword analyzers. There are also some content writers and article directories that can provide suitable keyword-laden content for you.

However, most people performing a search examine only the ten top results, which are on the first page. Those entries further down the list languish, with little attention. So making it to the top three pages is a barometer of a site's success in search engine optimization as you will get more people clicking through to your site when you have a higher ranking on these pages. And, as mentioned, more traffic means more business for you.

As you might have guessed, search engine optimization may require a fair bit of work to be fully realized. For instance, researching the keyword phrases that are popular for your niche or theme.

You may also need to rewrite your site's contents so that you get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too awkward to read. There are useful guidelines that can be followed to assist with this.

Also consider collaborating with other web sites to obtain link exchanges and page transfers. Having inbound links definitely increases search engine appeal. Possibly the best way of gaining these is to write quality articles on the subject of your website and submit them to article directories for others to use. This generates desirable one-way links from those who post your articles on their websites, and they have usually selected your article because of its relevance!

When you need help just search the internet. Tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization are abundant and easily found. There are also many articles freely available that can help you optimize your website. Just posing the question on Google or inquiring at your favorite article directory will quickly locate some of these. The more informed you are the better. But resist the temptation to buy ebooks when so much free information is available.

This all helps in getting those high rankings. It may require a little time and effort but the benefits can be astounding.

E-commerce is a cut throat business. You have to arm yourself with the knowledge and tools needed to make your site a cut above the rest. Each day, more and more sites clamber for higher rankings and, if you get careless, you may just get trampled and be left in cyber dust.

In recent years, and in the foreseeable future, search engines have been the most widely used internet sources of information. Use them well and prosper.

However, even with effective optimization in place, don't just rest on your laurels; it is a continuing process. Check your ranking from time to time and also have a good look at what the top sites for a keyword are doing. Why do they have a higher ranking? What do you have to do to secure the top spot? Each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites or, as Scarlet O'Hara said: "Tomorrow is another day!"

Ivan Kelly managed a Direct Mail business with extensive mailing lists for ten years and has designed and promoted many websites. He also provides a quality f'ree course on Search Engine Marketing. For details go to: List Of Topics

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ivan_Kelly

Do Search Engines Behave Like Human Beings?

2006-03-03T15:20:00.000-08:00

By Matthew Eigbe

"Sociometry is the study and measurement of interpersonal relationships in a group of people." Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary

You may be wondering what sociometry has to do with search engines. Well, I intend to use the idea as a platform for discussing how people behave in a group and offer it as a way to understand how search engines operate.

Now imagine there is a summit. You are invited only if you have certain qualifications. It could be wealth, educational qualification, position held in government or business. Whatever. It may even be gender or age. Think of this attainment or possession that qualifies you for an invitation to this important summit as the theme of your website.

When you decide to honour the invitation, you leave every other engagement and assignment because you think that your attendance will do you some good. This parallels the submission of your website to the search engines.

Arriving for the submit, will you be on the high table, in any other visible position or in an obscure corner of the hall? Only the summit organisers can determine this. It would depend on how important they think you are. And they would measure your importance by their estimate of your knowledge of the subject to be discussed and how much you can contribute to the success of the summit. This approximates keywords (including key phrases) that are relevant with regard to your website.

If you were a reporter covering this submit you would probably notice that some participants enjoy a lot of handshakes at the instance of others and this is not the case for some. You would probably see that when some people extend their hand it is taken with something close to reverence and gratitude by the person to whom it was extended. Not everyone enjoys the same attention and share of conversation. As a reporter, you would be able to form an opinion based on what you observed about who the influential participants are. In search engine terms, this would be linking. What qualified these people for the monopoly of attention? How would you get links to your website?

The above discussion is only by way of an analogy and is not meant to present an exact description of how search engines review, index, rank and throw up your website when a surfer types in their search terms.

Matthew Eigbe has over 25 years experience in consumer marketing and now focuses on network marketing using the internet. He is webmaster at http://www.mattlinks.ws, a site that explains how you can gain Financial Freedom by inviting people to have their own domain name.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Matthew_Eigbe

SEO Content Writer: How To Find One

2006-03-03T15:19:00.000-08:00

By Christopher Kyalo

There are many people who still don't identify SEO with a content writer or content writing for that matter. To them SEO is some complicated technical thing that a content writer can not possibly be able to make head or tail of.

This kind of thinking is extremely expensive because it is currently costing many site owners millions of hits. The truth of the matter is that a very important and key part of SEO is the use of the best non-competitive keyword phrases for the particular site. One keyword phrase can produce millions of hits via leading search engines. Keyword phrases are used on the content and that is why it is so important for a content writer to understand the use of keywords, even if somebody else is researching them for him or her.

Hiring a content writer who understands and uses seo techniques can therefore gain you many million hits over a relatively short time. It will also save you the time and money in researching the best keywords for your site yourself, or hiring a different person to do it for you.

Finding a good SEO content writer is easier than you think. For starters carefully trace your steps backwards to how you found your seo content writer. If they used seo methods to advertise their services, then you will be pretty sure that they are experts and know exactly what they are doing.

How can you possibly believe in a seo content writer who does not use seo content writing techniques to advertise their own services?

Christopher Kyalo Is A leading web content provider who provides all the key traffic generation ingredients in all his work for clients. He is occasionally available to handle new client assignments. Get the details on how you can contact him at his content provider blog. Or learn all the inside secrets of high traffic generating content from his free newsletter. Subscribe now by sending a blank email to articlesrgold-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_Kyalo

postingOrganic SEO Through Content Distribution

2006-03-02T11:41:00.000-08:00

By Gerrick W

Organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) seems to be the buzzword these days. What is organic SEO? In its simplest explanation, organic SEO is publicity through content distribution. All your incoming links originate from content you created for your website or blog. And boy, search engines love this kind of linking structure.

Marketing through articles is organic Search Engine Optimisation. Your article and the link in your author's resource box generate incoming links from other niche websites related to yours.

Good quality original content will generate incoming links and drive targeted web traffic to your website fast. This is the kind of activity search engines love, and would in turn lead to higher web page ranking and increase in web traffic.

Writing Articles

This is an effective way of gaining publicity for yourself and your site. Write about your experiences, expertise, hobbies or passion. As a rule of thumb, keep your articles at about 400 to 700 words in length. The issue is not the length of the article. It is the quality of it. But for a start, it is good to adhere to the rule of thumb.

Tips on effective use of articles

Before you start to write, do a research on keyword phrases related to your topic of interest. There are a few free online webmasters' tools you could utilize (nichebot.com, wordtracker trial). Normally, the top ranked keyword phrases are highly competitively. A top ranked keyword with little or zero competition is a rare find these days. Go for the middle ranked keyword phrase. After all, your goal is to be found on the first page of SERP for your selected keyword phrase.

Include your keyword phrase in your article title and repeat your keyword phrase at least once or twice in the body of your article. You may also want to use sparingly and strategically a variation of your keyword phrase or terms related to it. You may notice in this article I use SEO and Search Engine Optimization, which are interchangeable terms but to the search engines they are variations. I also use search engines and webmasters which are terms related to SEO.

Using a variation of your keyword phrase and terms related to it makes your article more relevant to your topic. With such an arrangement, chances are you may score well at the search engines for more than one keyword phrase.

Post your articles on your site, blog and article directories. Spreading your content all over the web is a fast way to get website visitors. I submit my articles to ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com and articlealley.com. These article directories work well for me. Their high rankings at the search engines give me good publicity.

Other webmasters related to your niche will pick up your high quality articles and link to your web page through your author's resource box. This is an organic way of growing incoming links. Major search engines like Google look favorably on organically grown one-way links, and reward you.

Most webmasters archived articles for 1 or 2 years because this is a quick way to increase content and the size of their websites. So you can be assured of incoming links for at least 1 or 2 years.

It would be worth your time and effort to write or to hire someone to write keyword rich articles and distribute them over the web. The results can be astounding at times.

Gerrick W
mailto:gw@1stinternetmarketingsolution.com
Information and Software Tools You Need to Effectively Promote Your Online Business. Visit: http://www.1stinternetmarketingsolution.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gerrick_W

Executive Pay

2006-03-01T10:22:00.000-08:00

Many CEOs had a terrible year--but were still left with a mountain of wealth. BusinessWeek's 2001 survey gives the best picture yet of how much execs won and lost in the pay sweepstakes

For Lawrence J. Ellison, it was the best of years, it was the worst of years. Really. The Oracle Corp. (ORCL) chief executive earned a special place in the history of executive compensation last year with the $706 million he pocketed from exercising long-held stock options. It was an amount that far exceeds the gross domestic product of Grenada and constitutes the single biggest one-year haul of all time. But looked at another way, Ellison was also history's biggest loser. With Oracle stock off 57% for the year, the value of his option holdings fell by more than $2 billion.

Ellison's $706 million windfall is all the more remarkable considering that it occurred in a year when the nation's corporate elite experienced their first double-digit decline in pay in seven years, ending an extraordinary decade-long inflationary spiral that increased their average take by more than 550%. In a year when a slowing economy killed bonuses and plunged stock options under water at companies across the land, the average CEO's pay declined 16%, to $11 million, according to BusinessWeek's 52nd annual Executive Pay Scoreboard, compiled with Standard & Poor's EXECUCOMP. Take out Ellison's princely haul, and the drop in total pay was nearly 31%, to $9.1 million, a level not seen since 1997. "It was a sobering year, even for those who profited," says Patrick McGurn, director of corporate programs at proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services.

Nobody knows that better than Ellison. How could he record both the biggest gain and the biggest loss in one year? The answer points to a fundamental problem in the way executive pay is tallied. Most watchers, including BusinessWeek, count option gains in the year the exec cashes in, even though that value may have been building for a decade. Others estimate the future value of new options, sometimes miscalculating by hundreds of millions of dollars. Both methods miss an important change in executive compensation. For at least two decades now, compensation has been far more about wealth creation than pay for services rendered over the year. The engine of change has been stock options, which have been handed out so lavishly they now make up 15% of shares outstanding.

To get a better reading on how much Corporate America really pays its CEOs, BusinessWeek is introducing a new measure that we call the change in pay-related wealth. It's based on the annual gain or loss in an executive's stock options, whether exercised or not, along with any salary, bonus, and stock grants for the year. We still rank executives based on how much they took home from options exercises, salary, and bonuses, but we believe that this new measure adds clarity to an increasingly complex and contentious topic.

Both the vast riches and the almost unimaginable losses recorded in the executive suite last year were a function of options, a perk that has come to represent a decade of corporate excess and greed. Compared with 2000, many more executives in the BusinessWeek Scoreboard took home less cash in 2001 and suffered losses in the value of their option holdings, just as shareholders suffered losses. What rankles critics is that many had enjoyed such enormous option gains in recent years that even big one-year losses left them with Everest-size mountains of stock-option wealth.

Some CEOs, of course, were punished for their companies' less-than-stellar results. Disney's (DIS ) Michael D. Eisner, JDS Uniphase's (JDSU ) Jozef Straus, and Texas Instruments' (TXN ) Thomas J. Engibous all lost their bonuses. Straus and Adobe Systems' (ADBE ) former CEO John E. Warnock received dramatically smaller option grants for the year. Others, including Archer Daniels Midland's (ADM ) G. Allen Andreas, were deprived of new grants entirely. Harry M. Jansen Kraemer Jr., CEO of Baxter International (BAX ), voluntarily cut his bonus by 40%, even though his company's stock climbed by 20% in 2001. The reason: Defective Baxter dialysis machines were linked to the deaths of more than 50 people. Kraemer, who earned total cash compensation of $1.6 million plus a grant of 600,000 options, says somebody had to pay the price for the dialysis machine deaths: "Fifty people died. If you have a problem, the buck stops somewhere, and it stops here."

As usual, though, many other CEOs were insulated from their companies' falling stock prices with new option grants or favorable repricings on their existing options. At Eastman Kodak Co. (EK ), where the stock declined 23%, CEO Daniel A. Carp received 410,000 options, up from 100,000 the year before. A company spokesman said the option grant was small compared with other large companies' and intended to compensate Carp for assuming the position of chairman. With Cisco Systems Inc.'s (CSCO ) stock price down 72% in a year, CEO John T. Chambers last April requested that his annual base salary be reduced to $1. Instead, Chambers, who has pocketed $322.8 million over the past seven years as CEO, was awarded six million options.

A similar gargantuan option grant is how Ellison managed his $706 million miracle last year. In June, 1999, with Oracle stock trading at about $6, he agreed to trade four years of his salary and bonus in return for 10 million options, an almost unheard-of stockpile that escalated in value over the next 16 months as the stock hit a high of $46 in September, 2000. Proponents say that options align the chief executive's interests with those of shareholders, but that's not the way it worked at Oracle. By 2001, with the tech bubble bursting, Oracle stock was in a free fall. Rather than sit tight in a show of confidence, Ellison sold 29 million shares in a single week in January, flooding the market when investors already were jittery. He exercised 23 million options the same week for a gain of more than $706 million.

Within a month, Oracle stock had lost a third of its value, and the company was announcing that it would miss third-quarter earnings forecasts. That triggered further price declines and a rash of shareholder lawsuits alleging that Ellison engaged in "what appears to be the largest insider trading in the history of the U.S. financial market," according to one such suit. Ellison's stock sales were a factor in the sell-off that followed, says Henry Asher, president of Northstar Group Inc., which owns 48,000 Oracle shares. "Was that a ringing endorsement for the company's short-term prospects?" asks Asher. "I don't think so." Oracle and Ellison declined to comment.

In a post-Enron world that has little tolerance for corporate financial maneuvers, Ellison's decision to cash out will likely add more fuel to the fiery debate over options, the perk that has sparked as much disdain for its overuse as the three-martini lunch of another era. Once a minor perk, options have come to account for 80% of the executive-compensation pie. Shareholder activists, institutional investors, and governance experts all viewed them as a way to turn managers into owners who would keep one eye trained on the stock price. Throughout the 1990s, boards gave out options with abandon, seeing them as a way not only to appease shareholder activists but also to compete in the increasingly tight market for top-flight talent. And best of all, they were free. Since accounting rules allow companies to grant options without treating them as a compensation expense on their income statements, options--unlike cash--have no impact on earnings. They were, and are, a license to print money.

But the increased use of stock options has created a host of problems. Many critics object to the sheer magnitude of the riches CEOs can now pocket. In 1950, when BusinessWeek first catalogued the pay of the nation's corporate elite, the highest-paid executive was General Motors Corp. (GM ) President Charles E. Wilson, whose $652,156 pay package--$4.4 million in inflation-adjusted dollars--would make modern-day CEOs like Ellison laugh. Worse, the link between pay and performance that options are supposed to provide is often subverted by compensation committees that ladle on more options when the company stock falls or swap the old underwater options for new, more valuable grants. Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN ) and Lucent Technologies (LU ) both repriced or swapped executive stock options. Says Peter Clapman, chief counsel for TIAA-CREF, the world's largest pension system with $275 billion in assets: "It's sort of heads you win, tails let's flip again."

Even worse for shareholders is the dilution problem. Every option granted makes the shares of every other stockholder less valuable. Investors are starting to catch on. This year, dozens of resolutions targeting exorbitant pay--at companies that include Boeing (BA ), Citigroup (C ), and even General Electric (GE )--will be voted on by shareholders, and support for such proposals is on the rise. "We have this kind of stock-option madness," says compensation consultant Alan Johnson. "The system is significantly broken."

Part of the problem is that while options decline in lockstep with stock prices, on the upside they offer far greater leverage. The gains in the fat years can provide a generous cushion during downturns. That's why some executives in our Scoreboard could suffer massive losses but unlike shareholders, still have lots left over. We believe our pay-related wealth measure provides a more complete look at this crucial component of CEO pay.

The results are eye-opening. Looking solely at cash compensation and option exercises, the nation's top executives had a bad year: 315 out of 730 in the BusinessWeek Scoreboard saw their total compensation decrease. But BusinessWeek's new measure of executive wealth reveals much steeper losses. In all, the plummeting value of stock-option holdings reduced pay-related wealth for the average executive by 43%, to $27.5 million. Of the 441 who either broke even or had holdings that increased in value, the average gain was 13%. Of the 216 who saw their wealth decline, the average loss totaled 60%. Indeed, at company after company, top executives with huge option stockpiles saw their wealth depleted by hundreds of millions of dollars. Cisco Systems' Chambers, Sun Microsystems' (SUNW ) Scott G. McNealy, and Walt Disney's Eisner all took major hits to their wealth.

To be sure, not everyone was hurting. Howard Solomon, CEO of Forest Laboratories Inc. (FRX ), saw his salary increase nearly 13%, to $823,765, his bonus double to $400,000, and his take from option exercises top $147 million. In a year when Forest shareholders saw gains of 40%, compensation committee members felt he deserved every penny. Forest has enjoyed spectacular growth over the past five years. Solomon, who has been CEO since 1977, benefited enormously, since that growth sent the value of his options soaring. Says committee member Dan L. Goldwasser: "If a man is delivering substantial increases in shareholder valueit's only appropriate that he be rewarded for it."

Other CEO pay packages were harder to justify. Tyson Foods Inc. (TSN ) had a lousy year. Net income fell to $88 million from $151 million. Shareholder return was essentially flat--at a time when Tyson's peer-group companies doubled in value. And in December, a federal indictment in Tennessee accused the company and six managers of conspiring to smuggle illegal immigrants into the U.S. from Mexico to work in its poultry-processing plants, a charge the company denies. The upshot? CEO John H. Tyson received 200,000 new options and a $2.1 million bonus. The company says Tyson was rewarded for reducing debt by $86 million and negotiating the acquisition of meatpacker IBP. But others didn't see it that way. "I'm surprised the board would be so generous," says Charles M. Elson, director of the University of Delaware's Center for Corporate Governance. "It raises a lot of questions."

At other companies, boards quietly scaled back the tough performance targets executives needed to meet to win millions in rewards. At GM, CEO G. Richard Wagoner Jr. and other top executives who were entitled to a special performance bonus if the company's net-profit margin reached 5% by the end of 2003 will now be held to a less rigorous test. And at Coca-Cola Co. (KO ), the goal line for CEO Douglas N. Daft to receive one million performance-based shares--20% annual earnings growth over five years--last year got a little bit closer. It's now 16%. With shares down 23%, his pay package totaled $55 million, including $5.1 million in salary and bonus and $49.9 million in option exercises.

Overall, though, the anemic economy skewed BusinessWeek's pay-for-performance analysis sharply downward: CEOs with the best and worst shareholder returns relative to pay got less and posted sharply poorer returns than the executives in last year's analysis (table). The CEO who, dollar for dollar, gave the most this year was B. Wayne Hughes of Public Storage Inc. (PSA ) He delivered a 47% gain for stockholders for $254,300 in pay from 1999 through 2001--a pittance compared with last year's winner, David M. Rickey of Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (AMCC ), who was paid $4.5 million for a staggering 4,751% return. At the bottom of the performance heap was Ellison, whose mammoth 2001 payday overshadowed his company's 92% three-year return for shareholders.

Companies that fared poorly in our pay-for-performance analysis took issue with our methodology. Oracle said it unfairly inflates pay by counting exercised options. Cisco said it compares fiscal-year pay with calendar-year performance. In fact, calculating Cisco's return on a fiscal-year basis would result in a three-year return of 20% and move Chambers from the No. 2 slot to No. 3. Tyco (TYC ) said our methodology doesn't account for internal performance measures such as earnings, and IBM (IBM ) said it disregards nearly a decade of exceptional stock performance by Gerstner. Says IBM Vice-President Carol Makovich: "Mr. Gerstner's long-term leadership at IBM has produced outstanding results."

This year's survey of executive pay shows just how significantly CEO compensation has changed since Charles Wilson steered GM in the 1950s. Chief executives, once employees, have become owners. Salaries and bonuses are now afterthoughts compared with the potential wealth that options represent. Put another way, in a lousy year, Ellison took home almost three-quarters of a billion dollars. Imagine what he could make if Oracle shares turned around.

By Louis Lavelle, with Frederick F. Jespersen in New York and Michael Arndt in Chicago

SEO 1,2,3 for Dummies

2006-02-28T13:45:00.000-08:00

By Christopher Jon Luke Dowgin

Seo is Search Engine Optimization. A magician's bag of tricks to get your web page on high SERP (Search Engine Rank Placement ) and High PR (Page Rank). SERP is when you search on Google for a keyword (word you are studying) like cats, you get a page of twenty web sites on cats back out of a hundred or thousand pages. SEO is the art of getting your web page to be listed for as many keywords pertaining to your site on the first page of hundreds. Since people have short attention spans, they tend not to search ten pages of returns to find your page.

That is the short skinny on the subject. If that answered enough quit reading. Still curious? Below is a more in depth but only basic description. It still is a basic description even if it lacks MTV brevity.

To get high SERP you can bid on keywords, through Google and other search engines you can bid on certain keywords. Every time someone clicks on my add in blue at the top and sides of Google pages (These are the auction listings, I will pay anywhere from .5 to $5 every time someone clicks on my site for the keywords I bid on. The one who bids the most gets to be on the first page for cats. The rest of Google is suppose to be based on scholarly research qualifications).

So you need to find a keyword that people actually look for but not too many people are bidding on. You got to niche your keyword. To find appropriate keywords you check your web logs to see what words people used in search engines to bring you to your site. Also their are online tools to use that suggest keywords and give a thesaurus of options along with how many times people searched for that keyword last month.

Then we get Page Rank which is based on how many people link to you. The higher page rank used to me higher SERP. But search engines update and change to keep ahead of SEO people. Google's Jager update screwed me up. The Higher PR the higher you can charge someone to advertise on your page also. 10 is the highest. Now to get links you want people to link to you in the middle of a paragraph near the top of their page with reference to you desired keyword. By the way have you seen the updates to my Life Coaching site (http://www.docspond.org , but since html is outlawed in this article I display it this way without conventional a href tags)? This would be a better link, Natural linking, instead of a directory of 200 people to a page called mile high links. Natural linking is someone considering you more an expert than just linking by subject as in Mile High. Sometimes the first ten can get points from robots to get high SERP on mile highs but these pages in general start out with lower wealth. So sites charge you a premium to be listed on a home page or the top of a directory. But you will never get anyone to click on these links, the only importance you get from them is robots.

Robots are programs that scour the web following all the links on your page to each other and all the ones you list to other sites. They check to see you have good code and list your words for their directory so people can find any phrase you placed on your site. Now links to other sites within three pages of your home page toward the top of each page get better points than any deep in your site or toward the bottom of the page. Also they down score links if their is too many on a page.

To get your site index by robots you go to search engines and go to the bottom of the page and find a link called submit your URL. there you put your address in and hit return. Anywhere from 3 weeks to four months it could take a robot to find you for the first time. Then it will index you once a month unless in your pages code in meta tags you tell it to visit every day if you like. Also it is good to submit URL on search engines every time you change your home page. More times you change your home page the better for points.

Some engines charge you to be listed. But in time they will index you because people on their engine have links to your site that their robots will follow to you. Then you are indexed for free. Yahoo charges to be listed in their business directory some think like $300 a year.

Now to get links is a tedious process of sending out hundreds of emails with a friendly greeting, Your site title with appropriate keyword placement in it, and site description. For their listing you, you give them a reciprocal link with their title and description on your link page. You can get people to link to you as an expert through natural linking. You can do the same for them. But if you get a link without giving one, it equals you higher points. Which in turn give you higher SERP. Other way to get natural links is to create something buzz worthy or give free tools. If you have a cool video of someone winning a Darwin Award, some one might say " Check this Dumb Fuck out!" and link to your site. If it is a popular page you get more points for the link. or if you have a free tool like these; Whois (I can find out your IP address from you computer from my web log and see which state and country you come from and your Internet provider to bitch too), Keyword finder , or Favicon creators (Little icons that appear at the top of the browser to the left of the URL).

Last but not least are RSS, Blogs, Newsletters, and Article submission. RSS is real Simple Syndication. It is a poor mans AP wire service. People have attachments to their browsers called aggregators that read this peculiar code. It can also have placement on your web page. Say you can have a feed from the latest news updated daily by the New York Times which helps keep fresh content on your site to get points. Or you can have people list your articles on their site giving you links back to your site. Then we have Blogs. If you blog you will put a link back to your other page. When this gets higher PR so does your other site. Also it is something else to attract clients to you in another arena. Also every time you comment on a board or blog, make sure you link back to your site in your signature. All post tend to be indexed by robots. If they find your link they come back to your page and give you points. Then newsletters you create will do the same. Links from emails count too. If you click on the links above, you will give points to that web site. But mostly newsletters are marketing to gather sales and inform the public on your product. Then we have article submission. By submitting articles to directories, they get published by other web sites and provide links back to your site.

That is the basic of SEO. Image the expert article. Hmmm....

Christopher Jon Luke Dowgin is propietor of Docspond Life Coach Services providing Individual Counseling, Group facilitation, and key note addresses that speak to the heart of the mission while delivering the bottom line finacial growth. Helping millions find their bliss and return meaning to success! Guaranteed 20% improvement in your quality of life after the first meeting!

Also is the propietor and designer at Norgeforge Illumination Studios that will SEO illuminated design giving Aesthetics to traffic driven sales.So get out of the cold and get Norgeforged!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_Jon_Luke_Dowgin

Has Anyone Seen My Website?

2006-02-26T11:05:00.000-08:00

By Roschelle Nelson

Hooray!! You've done it. Your website is up and running. You've even added one of those neat little site counters to keep up with how much traffic you're receiving.

But unlike 'Field of Dreams', just because you build it...they may not come. If you don't want to slip into cyberspace undetected here are a few things you can do to boost your site traffic and visibility.

First, make sure you provide fresh content on a regular basis. It's not hard to tell when I site has become a forgotten url by it's webmaster. Provide tools that allow your visitors to interact: polls, forums,newsletters, games, even new cartoons or quotes. People love to be entertained. So, the content needs to be really fresh and really exciting.

Secondly, links! links! links!. Need I say more. The more sites you link to especially sites with high page ranks, the better your chances are of getting noticed from the regulars that frequent your link partner sites. Linking can be done via search engines. However this can be very time consuming. I recommend investing in some sort of search engine optimization software. They find the partners, provide you with their page ranks and an auto-complete form. I've utilized an awesome one that has saved me a tremendous amount of time. You also want to know your competition. Visit their sites. Link to some of the same sites they are linking too.

Google adwords is also a great way of getting your site noticed on search engines. However, if you're not careful this can be very costly. I recommend, if you plan to utilize adwords, do so during peak times for internet usage. This increases the likelihood that more users will see your listing.

And finally, BE PATIENT and PERSISTENT. Don't expect overnight success. Don't ever give up. No exceptions! Continue to work as hard on your site as you did when it was under construction.

Here's to seeing you at the top of the charts!

Roschelle Nelson is the founder and publisher of WAH4life.com. She lives and works at her home with her husband and two sons. http://www.wah4life.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Roschelle_Nelson

Increasing Your Search Engine Ranking

2006-02-24T23:54:00.000-08:00

by: Brian Collins

The methods employed to increase your search engine rankings may seem like rocket science to you, so you have probably avoided dealing with this issue. I am here to tell you - the time has come to face your website! A high search engine ranking for your website is so essential that if you have the slightest desire to actually succeed in your business, there is no way you can continue to avoid this issue.

At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. 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.

You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online to figure out how to optimize your web pages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a few simple items on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the title bar on your homepage.

The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the words that appear there when you access your home page. To increase search engine rankings, the words on your homepage's title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your company name.

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 keywords, keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the title bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each other.

The next item to put under your microscope is your website content. Search engines generally list sites that contain quality content rather than scintillating graphics. 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.

Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on search engines, this text is essential. However, the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.

To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you are able to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In this case, ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML format in order to increase your search engine rankings.

Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code. Many people believe that meta tags are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still, it's worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use meta tags in their ranking formula.

To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must access the code. To do this, click the "view" button on the browser menu bar, and select "source." This will pull up a window revealing the underlying code that created the page. If there are meta tags, they usually appear near the top of the window. For example, a meta tag would read: meta name="keywords" content=. If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This may not do much for your search engine rankings, but any little boost helps.

Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a factor that is extremely 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. In the case that there aren't many sites linked up to yours, or that the sites that are linked up have low search engine rankings, consider launching a link popularity campaign. Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and requesting that they exchange links with your site. Of course, this requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want to link up with. 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. Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality customers will be directed your way.

About The Author

Brian Collins

I Supply Info provides articles for publication on websites to help increase your search engine ranking http://www.isupply.info.

How I Use Email Automatic Responders

2006-02-23T13:46:00.000-08:00

by: Jeff Schuman

An email automatic responder or autoresponder is the second most important marketing tool I have to make money online. The first would be my hosting company. Without these 2 tools my internet marketing business is dead in the water.

In the world of internet marketing, millions of sites are fiercely competing with each other to gain new clients. For any ecommerce site to succeed, it must capture the interest and the trust of its visitors. It is not enough that your site is perfectly designed or has the latest in animation of content.

You should focus your efforts not only in attracting visitors but also in leading them to make a purchase. There are dozens of marketing strategies you can use to attract more buyers and pump up your sales. One of them is by establishing an excellent and professional reputation for prompt and efficient response.

As more potential customers visit your site, you should expect a flood of inquiries and requests for information. This is an excellent opportunity for you to capture more clients and lead them to buying from your site. Thus, it is important that you carry out an efficient and prompt response to every email you receive. The fastest and most effective way to do this is by utilizing an email automatic responder.

Autoresponder services use a computer program that automatically return a prewritten message to anyone who sends an email to your site. It is widely used for responding to consumer inquiries and visitor comments and suggestions.

Follow up automatic responders are also used by e-zines in responding to people who subscribe or unsubscribe to their online magazines. Companies, who send out their e-newsletter regularly, also use utoresponders.

How can effective autoresponder services help boost your business? The answer lies in its ability to return a prompt response to any e-mail the site receives. By responding rapidly and efficiently, you create a very good impression on your potential customer. Good email autorespondrs help you get important information back to these customers immediately. An effective autoresponder service helps you communicate your message promptly, creating a sense of professionalism and efficiency that your clients will definitely appreciate.

Another very important advantage of email automatic responders is that it saves time with multiple marketing tasks. Certainly, you do not have enough time to personally make and send all correspondence. Autoresponder services allows you to send thank you letters, newsletters, product information, brochures, orders etc. to hundreds of clients almost immediately and simultaneously. Autoresponder services are also indispensable in any email marketing campaign.

Choosing the right autoresponder is very important. What makes the best automatic responder? First, you should pick an autoresponder that is reliable and can give you 24/7 service. You cannot afford to lose a customer because your autoresponder failed to answer his query or request for information. The ability to respond promptly is the first thing you must look for in any automatic responder.

Another key factor you should consider when choosing Autoresponder servcies is flexibility. Good autoresponders allow you to customize unique responses that will have maximum effect on the customer. You should avoid creating an impression that the customer is communicating with a machine instead of a real human being.

An excellent email automatic responder lets you provide the information that is specifically targeted for what the potential customers are looking for. Because any email from potential customers essentially represent the customer's intent on getting more information about your product, which can ultimately lead to direct sales, all emails are important. Thus, a top Autoresponder servcie must fulfill all these duties to help you boost your business.

For all of our autoresponder needs we prefer Aweber. They are very reasonably priced and have proved to be reliable and easy to use.

About The Author

Jeff Schuman

Team-Schuman.Com contains the best make money online and make money websites available today. If you want to make money check us out here: http://www.team-schuman.com/email-automatic-responder.html

jeff@team-schuman.com

Why Advertising On Blogs Is A Good Idea?

2006-02-21T13:04:00.000-08:00

by: Michelle Utter

Move over ezine advertising..and make room for the new tool in town - Blog Advertising! Haven't heard of blogs? Then you need to get yourself in gear and inform yourself on the next big craze. Blog advertising is a very cheap and very effective way to reach your target audiences. Read my article today to find out why and more...

If you haven't yet heard the word "BLOG" then you have some serious catching up to do because they are the hottest and most talked about item on the web this year.

Advertisers, including Paramount Pictures, The Wall Street Journal, and the Gap, are successfully reaching niche audiences for a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising. As a result, a handful of bloggers are earning six-figure incomes from their blogs. But what exactly is a blog, and how can you take advantage of this widely untapped advertising venue? That's my aim for this article. Let's dig a litte deeper....

A blog is often a mixture of what is happening in a person's life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site, although there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people.

People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but the trend gained momentum with the introduction of automated published systems, most notably Blogger at blogger.com. Thousands of people use services such as Blogger to simplify and accelerate the publishing process.

Blogs are alternatively called web logs or weblogs. However, "blog" seems less likely to cause confusion, as "web log" can also mean a server's log files.

With click-through rates in traditional online advertising dropping, inexpensive blog click-throughs are as high as 5%. Blogs provide advertisers an excellent opportunity to reach a devoted audience niche for as little as $10 a week. Why blogs are good media outlets:

Most blogs have dynamic keywords and are updated daily by either the administrator of the web log or his/her members. This means, a blogger receives more targeted SE visitors and more frequently then webmasters of static html sites.

Another advantage of advertising on blogs as opposed to Web sites is that readers tend to be extremely interested in the topic and very attached to the blogger. You can't ask for a better community of users to be in front of.

Recently, BlogAds conducted a web survey of 17,000 of their readers to find out what type of people are actually surfing blogs. The results? Sixty percent of the Blogads respondents said they are more than 30 years old, and almost 40 percent reported they have a household income of more than $90,000. Perhaps most importantly to advertisers, half of those who took the Blogads survey said that over the last six months they spent more than $50 online for books and more than $500 for plane tickets; 25 percent spent between $100-$500 on electronics via the Web.

Conclusion: Clearly, no company, organization or association can afford to ignore blogs any longer. Early adopters have taken the lead, and blogs are finally entering corporate consciousness.

If you find this article interesting and you'd like to check out some of my blogs, you can visit:

http://sdtadvertising.com (Click on the Advertise on this site link to purchase blog advertising)

http://www.bn4om.sdtadvertising.com (blog advertising available there too)

About The Author

This article is (c) Copyright 2004 by Michelle Utter

Michelle is an innovator and a mainstay in the Internet Marketing Field. You can visit her new website at: http://ebookadvertising.biz

Should My Home Business Have a Blog?

2006-02-20T10:38:00.000-08:00

by: Martin Neumannn

It's fair to say that blogging has taken the Internet by storm over recent years. And it's no surprise that today there are hundreds of thousands of new blogs being launched every day.

But as a home-based business owner, should I have a blog?

To put it bluntly, if you conduct any part of your business over the internet, then Yes, you should have a blog.

So what is a blog?

Wikepedia describe a blog as ..... a weblog (usually shortened to blog) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles (normally in reverse chronological order). Although most early weblogs were manually updated, tools to automate the maintenance of such sites made them accessible to a much larger population, and the use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of "blogging".

You might be thinking that to set up a blog is far too advanced for me, but that is furtherest from the truth. Blogger.com is a Google-owned hosted blogging platform that is 100% free to use and literally takes only minutes to set up and start posting.

Secondly, you might be thinking it's going to cost too much. Wrong! The only cost is your normal web hosting. You don't even have to purchase a new domain for your blog. It can be easily attached as a sub-domain to your current business website eg: http://blog.MyBusiness.com or as a directory: www.MyBusiness.com/blog/.

So why should your home-based business have a blog? Will it benefit me?

The truth is, a blog is just one part of your marketing strategy, although it can quite easily end up being the most valuable and cost-effective way of marketing your business to new and existing clients.

Come to see your blog as a means of getting closer to your intended market.

With a blog, you are giving your home business a personality. You are chatting informally with your market and building that much sought after long-term relationship and trust.

With credibility and trust being what separates successful home business to those that fail, a well-delivered blog can help build a strong rapport with your customers, via you offering insights into your business and your industry. In a low-pressure setting (ie: there should be no hard selling at all), you are networking with your customers in a way that humanizes your business.

So how can a blog work for my home business?

Let's take an example. Your business (which by the way, you run from home) is sells PDA add-ons.

By including a blog as an addition to your e-commerce site you could deliver news, facts, figures, views ... in fact, anything to do with your industry.

You can have your rant and raves on topics close to you. You could offer inside tips on using PDA's. You could provide links to other sites of interest that your customers would appreciate.

Your market will love you for your openness and willingness to chat informally, and in time you become perceived as an expert in your field.

But a word of warning. Don't start up a blog just to push sales, offering little but mere "buy from me now" posts. This is a sure-fire way of actually losing credibility.

If you view a blog as a way of communicating better with your customers (ie: talking 'with them' rather than 'to them') then you are well on your way to blogging success and more importantly ... business success.

About The Author

Martin Neumann is publisher of HomeOfficeVoice.com ... for the internet-savvy home business entrepreneur, HomeOfficeVoice offers news, reviews and commentary in the world of online home business.

Seven Best Practices for Business Blogging

2006-02-19T08:44:00.000-08:00

by: Karoline White

Blogs have become one of the hottest communication tools on the Web. Offering the opportunity for anyone to create their own free Web site, encouraging opinions and interaction, blogs provide forums for individuals to create their own highly personal presentations to the Web audience. They also provide for consortia of all types to experience the sort of online community feeling that was pioneered by early newsgroups and by the phenomenal success of AOL in the 1990s.

Blogs have reached into the corporate and government sectors as well. What started out as an outlet for teenage expression and grassroots journalism has turned into a lucrative communications tool for small and large businesses alike.

Corporate Blogging refers to a company producing or supporting a blog that it uses to accomplish business objectives. As with anything, there are certain “best practices” to be followed to ensure your company reaps the maximum benefits. These seven tips guidelines will help make your blog a success.

1. Fine Print. Blogging can lead to legal issues. Companies should have real concerns about liability, exclusions and limitations, and indemnity. Although there are laws that protect against libel, misappropriations and other injuries suffered as a result of posts on the Web, companies can still be held “vicariously” responsible for statements made by employees that are harmful to others. Since there are so many legal issues surrounding blogs, it is imperative that the site has some sort of disclaimer and limitation of liability.

2. Know What You’re Doing. Senior management should be educated by the corporate communications and legal department about what blogs are and how they might affect business. That way, they can be contributing members of the blog, further improving employee relations. Their support and participation is often what makes a blog more effective.

3. Create blogging policies. In any medium where an employee is sharing information, there is the possibility of leaking trade secrets or financial information. Blogging also has a tendency to become personal. A company should have a list of policies regarding blogging to ensure that trade secrets are kept secret and personal lives do not become public. Policies may include keeping financial information from being posted, as well as severe consequences for anyone using the blog for negative publicity.

4. Avoid the Marketing Blog. Making your blog into a blatant marketing campaign is a bad idea. Customers are looking for real answers and honest opinions. They will pick up on insincerity instantly. Use the blog for what it's for, transparency. This is an opportunity to make a real connection with your customers. Don't ruin it by filling it with empty advertising.

5. Keep It Fresh. Blogs are usually judged by their amount of new content. Easy to add on to, they are designed to be updated constantly. To keep your readers coming back, make your content relevant and timely. Don't forget, content can include anything from product releases to job openings, recent news to thoughts from the CEO. It's practically impossible to run out of material.

6. Reinforce the company’s core values. Use your blog to reflect your company's inner soul: its mission, goals and direction. A blog is just another medium by which you interact with your customers and employees. It's another part of the brand experience. It should be consistent with the impression the company wants to make.

7. Encourage employees to use it. Create an atmosphere where they are comfortable asserting their opinions and concerns. You’ll be surprised how the quietest employees will speak up when given such an opportunity. With all communication, blogging can become negative, so remind employees of the public nature of the blogs and the ramifications for their actions.

About The Author

Karoline White is a Content Developer for Brook Group, a full-service Web development firm near Washington, DC. More articles by this author can be found at http://www.broogkroup.com/resources and http://www.usabilityandbranding.com.
kari@brookgroup.com

Affiliate Marketing For Newbies

2006-02-17T10:45:00.000-08:00

If you're an affiliate marketer and you are directing traffic straight to your affiliate link, then you are doing it all wrong. By making this common mistake you are missing out on a huge income potential. A better way to set up your affiliate marketing campaign is to set up a squeeze page.

What's a squeeze page, you ask? It's a page which has an overview of the specific service which you are marketing including a form requesting the name and email address of the person viewing your page. If the person is interested in hearing more about your product or service, they will fill in the form, click submit, where they will be directed to a thank you page including an exact link to your specific product or service. Notice that said "exact link", this means you don't just direct them to your homepage where they will have to search through all of the products and services you are selling. You direct them to an exact link where they will see more information about the product that got them interested in visiting your site. Nothing turns customers off quicker than directing them to some general website that sells a bunch of stuff.

Something else to keep in mind is, for every product or service you want to promote; you must have a separate squeeze page for each. This is really the key to marketing online successfully. You should start out with only one affiliate program and create your marketing campaign, where you will focus on a couple of products to promote through squeeze pages.

Another way to market your goods is to design your own website and/or blog. You can get a free blog through www.blogger.com and a website through www.freewebs.com.

For those who don't know, a blog is a type of website which contains journal-like posts which are updated frequently. You can create a blog around any topic you choose, and sign-up for affiliate programs which correspond to your topic of interest.

Also, it's a good idea to get your own domain name for your website. You can get a free domain with no ads through www.co.nr. From here you should create posts on you blog and ping it every time you submit a new post. This simply means that you will request other sites to be notified that you have updated your site. This will trigger your site to be crawled by indexing spiders, which will increase you site's popularity (thus increasing your search engine rank).

After setting up you blog, you can create posts which contain a link or two to your website or an affiliate link which is relevant to the topic of your post. The benefits here are two-fold, you are advertising without "selling" (no one likes to be sold) and you are increasing the number of links to your site which will increase your rank on search engines.

Networking - Why, How and Where

2006-02-16T12:06:00.000-08:00

It's hard to be in business today, certainly in the professional services sector, without having heard the term 'networking'. Regarded by many as the Marmite of business, it is said that you either are a networker or you aren't. And if you think you aren't, you shouldn't even try to do it.

Rubbish!
First of all, networking is essential to any business - whether offline or online. The business you get from personal recommendation will be some of the best business you ever do - they have pretty much made up their minds to use you before they even call you, and they are a lot less concerned with price. And it's not just for solicitors and accountants - when your pipes burst, how did you decide on a plumber to come out and fix it? Was it someone you had heard good things about before? Maybe you didn't know anyone, so you called a friend and asked if they knew a good plumber? Joe Bloggs Plumbers just won the business of fixing your pipes through networking.

A good way to look at it is not as 'networking' but as 'word-of-mouth marketing'. Because it is part of your marketing mix - how's your advertising? Local papers? Spot on radio? Good, good. PR? Interview on local news this week? Fantastic. How about promotions? Give aways? Offers? All sorted? Great stuff. Got a website? Optimised for the search engines? Lots of enquiries from it too? Brilliant.

And how about your word of mouth?
Not enough people concentrate on generating referrals and getting people to mention their business to others. Millions of pounds of business is done every year through referral and recommendation. If you're not getting any of it, you need to think long and hard about why not.

So you've got yourself to a networking event, you tell the people there about what you have to offer, and then ask if they want to buy it, right? Wrong! If you do this you have become the person at a networking event that everyone wants to avoid - the one handing out business cards like they're dealing a poker game; the one who asks you nothing and tells you more than you could ever want to know about what they do.

So how do you do it? The best way to network is to build trust, build relationships, to think about what you can do for the other people in the room before you think about what you might get. Be a 'people person', be genuinely interested in the people you meet at events. Great networkers want to help as well as get help - because they like helping others, not just because it might get them some business in the future.

Networking is about building a relationship that eventually leads to business being done, either between you and your new contact, between you and someone they recommend, or between them and someone you recommend. Don't discount that last one - they have to get something out of your relationship as well, otherwise it isn't a relationship. If you help them get more business, they will do the same for you - in fact they'll feel obliged to.

Where can I network?
The short answer is absolutely anywhere! Remember Joe Bloggs Plumbers, the guys who fixed your pipes? You don't find many plumbers at networking events, but they still get referrals. Networking happens when you talk to your colleagues at work, when you go to the pub with your friends, it happens when you overhear a conversation in the bus queue. Networking is about the impression you leave people with, and you make impressions all day, every day.

Of course you will make more effective contacts for referrals at specialised networking events, but remember there are several different kinds of events you can go to. Some of the most established are breakfast meetings, which usually start around 7.00am and finish around 9.00am. Meetings are usually weekly and the format is very focused and regimented. For those who like this format, there is a lot of business to be done, but it is an acquired taste. Try it out, but bear in mind whether or not you can keep up with the regular early mornings and very formal structure. Also, most breakfast meetings are restricted to one person from each business sector, so you are not as likely to meet people you can form alliances and joint ventures with, which is a very important, and often overlooked part of networking.

There are also several different kinds of event organised by groups such as local government organisations, such as race days, golf days and others. These can be a lot of fun, but are very often filled with people who are there for the golf rather than to do business, and you may have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince. Networking events are really a matter of preference and perspective, and you should go to as many events as you can at first, and then stick with the ones that work for you.

In summary, there is a simple and effective way to network that anyone can do:

Get to know people as people, not prospects.
Everything happens after a meeting, not during. Always, always follow up.
Give referrals as well as expect to receive them.
Keep in touch on a regular basis.

Best of luck with your networking!

Work at Home - Stay at Home

2006-02-15T12:20:00.000-08:00

Working at home has been a dream of many that goes back many years. Staying at home and enjoying watching the kids grow up is a goal worth fighting for.

Let's take a look into making a living or part time living from the comfort of your home. You owe it to yourself to gain the freedom a home business can offer.

In the past, there have been multi-level marketing plans to sell everything from vitamins to soap. There have been mail order catalog opportunities. Many tried buying and selling real estate. Each of these opportunities made many people a lot of money, but each of them also cost many people a lot of money.

More people have spent money than have made money in every business venture. The problem is many inexperienced people get into moneymaking schemes after attending a meeting somewhere. The offer may be legitimate, but most people fail in business.

According to the US Small Business Administration, over 50% of small businesses fail in the first year and 95% fail with the first five years. That is a scary statistic.

This means that the average business is doomed to fail from the beginning. It also means that you will lose a lot of money if you start a business. WOW! No wonder you are leery about putting up your hard-earned cash for what is statically a crapshoot, a roll of the dice.

So, what is the answer for the average person who does not want to lose their savings and even their home investing in a business? Start building a "digital business" online. Create a website that generates its income without you needing to invest in inventory or even lease a building to house your business. Then create two or ten more websites generating income for you.

You may not know how to create a website today. It is an easily learned skill. There is software you can buy or download free that will help you. There are tutorials on making a website profitable. You can do this.

Once you have a website online you can put other people’s advertising on your site and be paid when someone buys one of their products. If this was my baby toys webpage and I mentioned a great baby toy with a link to my advertiser’s toy page you might go there and buy the toy. If you did, I would get a commission.

You could also put ads on your pages that only require someone to click on the ad for you to be paid. Again, if you were on my baby toy page and an ad talks about a toy. You click on the ad to go see it and I am paid for you clicking on the ad. The advertiser feels their sales page is compelling enough for them to sell enough of that toy to cover their cost of the clicks that got you there.

Some advertisers do not require you to buy the product when you click on an ad, but I will not be paid unless you fill out their application. This is usually seen on sites like insurance sites or loan application sites. You do not have to get a policy or take out a loan for me to be paid. When you fill out the form, I qualify for my commission for sending you to the advertiser.

These are typically the ways a beginning website entrepreneur starts generating income on the Internet. Once you understand that part of internet marketing, you may move on to selling your own digital products.

A digital product is one that can be downloaded from your website. You can sell your own ebook you wrote yourself or an ebook you purchased and have the rights to sell online.

If you are a programmer, you can sell you own computer program from your site. You could also sell someone else's program that you purchased the rights to sell.

Notice that not all of the above ideas require you to invest in a lot of inventory. Even the products are free if you create them yourself. Not everything you are doing so far requires a large investment of your hard earned money. It does require a large investment of your time.

All of the material you need to create a website can be found free online if you do not want to purchase some popular program. Your only expense SHOULD be a domain of your own, such as yourdomain.com. You can get free hosting from various places but for moneymaking venture, this is not advised.

For a small investment, you too can be PRESIDENT OF YOUR OWN COMPANY. Maybe the statistics are the same for success online as they are in other businesses, but this is a chance to find out without losing the farm doing it.

Labor Market Review

2006-02-14T13:18:00.000-08:00

Labor Market Review
from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) Program

Would you like to receive e-mail notification when new issues of Labor Market Review, Leading Indicators, Civilian Labor Force Estimates and occasional other publications are released?

Please e-mail us at anthoa@odjfs.state.oh.us or call (614) 752-9494 and request to be added to the e-mail notification list.

The monthly Labor Market Review includes current and historical data on employment by industry, hours and earnings for Ohio and twelve metropolitan areas; civilian labor force estimates of employment and unemployment; selected unemployment compensation data; explanatory and analytical articles; and technical notes. Seasonally adjusted employment estimates, by industry, are included for Ohio. Seasonally adjusted labor force estimates are available for Ohio and the United States.

Note: The Labor Market Review and annual average data are available in portable document format (pdf) format. Adobe Reader is used to view portable document format files and is available free at Download Adobe Reader.

Labor Market Review, in pdf format, for Ohio and twelve Metropolitan Statistical Areas , based on the North American Industry Classification System.
- Also see a Cumulative Table, in Excel format, with monthly employment data for the current year, from January through the most recent available month.
Annual Averages with employment, average hourly earnings, average weekly hours and average weekly earnings for Ohio and twelve metropolitan statistical areas.
About the Labor Market Review... provides technical information on Current Employment Statistics.

Annual Averages

Two sets of Annual Averages are available: those based on the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS-Based Annual Averages) beginning 1990 and those based on the former Standard Industrial Classification (SIC-Based Annual Averages) from 1994 to 2001. Please see Changes in CES Data for more information. Data are not seasonally adjusted.

Annual Averages based on the North American Industry Classification System
Ohio & Metropolitan Areas
Year	Nonagricultural Wage & Salary Employment Ohio & Metro Areas	Average Weekly Earnings Ohio Only	Average Weekly Hours Ohio Only	Average Hourly Earnings Ohio Only
2004	\| 2004 Employment \|	\| 2004 Weekly Earning \|	\| 2004 Hours \|	\| 2004 Hourly Earning \|
2003	\| 2003 Employment \|	\| 2003 Weekly Earning \|	\| 2003 Hours \|	\| 2003 Hourly Earning \|
2002	\| 2002 Employment \|	\| 2002 Weekly Earning \|	\| 2002 Hours \|	\| 2002 Hourly Earning \|
2001	\| 2001 Employment \|	\| 2001 Weekly Earning \|	\| 2001 Hours \|	\| 2001 Hourly Earning \|
Nonagricultural Wage & Salary Employment for Ohio & Metropolitan Statistical Areas: 1990 \| 1991 \| 1992 \| 1993 \| 1994 \| 1995 \| 1996 \| 1997 \| 1998 \| 1999 \| 2000

Annual Averages based on Standard Industrial Classification
Ohio & Metropolitan Areas
Year	Nonagricultural Wage & Salary Employment	Average Weekly Earnings	Average Weekly Hours	Average Hourly Earnings
2001	\| 2001 Employment (SIC) \|	\| 2001 Weekly Earnings (SIC) \|	\| 2001 Hours (SIC) \|	\| 2001 Hourly Earnings (SIC) \|
2000	\| 2000 Employment (SIC) \|	\| 2000 Weekly Earnings (SIC) \|	\| 2000 Hours (SIC) \|	\| 2000 Hourly Earnings (SIC) \|
1999	\| 1999 Employment (SIC) \|	\| 1999 Weekly Earnings (SIC) \|	\| 1999 Hours (SIC) \|	\| 1999 Hourly Earnings (SIC) \|
Tables for each of the following years are combined into one file: 1994 (SIC) \| 1995 (SIC) \| 1996 (SIC) \| 1997 (SIC) \| 1998 (SIC)

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About the Labor Market Review...

Data Source

Current Employment Statistics (CES or BLS790) is a federal-state program that collects detailed data on employment, hours and earnings in goods-producing and service-providing industries through a monthly survey of more than 12,000 Ohio employers. Estimates of nonagricultural employment, hours and earnings for Ohio and its twelve metropolitan statistical areas are produced monthly. Civilian labor force estimates are developed by the federal-state Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) program. Unemployment compensation data are compiled from administrative reports. Additional information may be found in the technical notes included in the monthly Ohio Labor Market Review.

Level of Detail

Employment, hours and earnings data are published for all sizeable manufacturing and nonmanufacturing categories for which adequate samples are surveyed and for which disclosure rules permit publication.

Frequency

Monthly; available by end of the month following the reference month.

Time Period Covered

Within the monthly Labor Market Review, eleven years of annual historical and thirteen months of current data are published for employment and the civilian labor force series. Current, previous month and year ago month data are available.

Geographic Areas

The Labor Market Review is produced for Ohio and twelve Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) . Three West Virginia MSAs include Ohio counties: Huntington-Ashland MSA, Parkersburg-Marietta MSA and Wheeling MSA.

Developed by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Metropolitan Statistical Areas are integrated geographic regions comprised of at least one city and adjacent communities. Metropolitan Statistical Areas make it possible for Federal statistical agencies to utilize the same boundaries when publishing statistical data.

Uses

Data may be used:

To track growth and contraction in industry, for economic planning, development of econometric models, trend analysis and forecasting.
To compare employment trends and earnings among states and metropolitan areas.

Limitations

Industry survey participation is voluntary; data for some industries may not be available due to insufficient sample size. Adequate and reliable hours and earnings estimates are not available for most nonmanufacturing industries.

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To view files, get Adobe Reader and Office Viewers.

2006 Market Review & Forecast

2006-02-14T13:11:00.000-08:00

$250 Pre-publication Discount Offer. Order online by January 31 and enter priority code 6AWB.

Tomorrow's Telecommunications Marketplace: Are you positioned for growth?

TIA's 2006 Telecommunications Market Review and Forecast provides the most reliable and up-to-date information on the telecommunications industry. It will help you anticipate market changes, assist you in adjusting your business models, and give you the confidence to explore new business opportunities and provide your customers with new and innovative products, services and solutions. As you develop your business plan and strategy, reference the most comprehensive report in the industry — TIA's 2006 Telecommunications Market Review and Forecast. See historical data back to 2001 and predictions through 2009.

Trends, Analyses and Projections

The worldwide telecommunications market is expected to grow to 10 percent* — how will your company take advantage of this growth and which segments will fuel this expansion? This report helps you gain insight into trends in major industry segments, including:

Applications Software
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Broadband over Power Lines
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Economic, Regulatory and Technology Drivers
EDGE Technologies/Softswitches
Formal/Non-Formal Call Centers
International Markets
Interexchange Market
IP-equipment and Applications
LAN/WAN Internetworking
Landline vs. Wireless Communications Market
Mobile Communications/MCommerce
Network Infrastructure Equipment and Services
Optical Networking
Professional Services
Prepaid Telephony, including wireless and Internet
Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
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Wireless Data Services
Wireless Internet Access including Wi-Fi and WiMAX
And more …

Opportunities abound in the global marketplace

We've expanded our international section to include the burgeoning markets of Africa and the Middle East providing practical information on identifying viable markets overseas. The Americas, Europe and Asia/Pacific markets are also covered.

Quarterly updates throughout the year

As a subscriber to TIA’s 2006 Telecommunications Market Review and Forecast, you’ll receive TechTrends — the Market and Review Forecast’s complimentary e-newsletter that provides timely industry data and analysis four times a year (a $159 value).

*Compound annual growth rate 2005-2009

The CD-ROM version is perfect for my purposes. During long flights to Asia, I read sections of TIA's Market Review and Forecast 'book' on my laptop to glean ideas about the best market segments to emphasize. The research work is excellent and every company should use it...whether print edition or CD. - Greg Jones, General Manager, DSL Products, Texas Instruments

Volume discounts on orders of 3 or more. Email us at marketreview@tiaonline.org or call (703) 907-7074 for details.

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MARKETING STRATEGIES THAT EMPOWER SUCCESS

2006-02-12T02:19:00.000-08:00

LESSON #2

Hello again, I hope you`ve had time to "digest" the ideas presented in Lesson #1. Today`s lesson is going to build on the basics. Here is the second Lesson of the marketing course. (If you change your mind, just go to the end of this email and click the link.) In today`s "Marketing Strategies that EMPOWER Success" lesson, you`re going to learn how the APPEARANCE of your email message affects the way your prospects feel about you and what you have to offer.

It`s an old, old saying, but it`s true: you only have one chance to make a good first impression. And in email, the first impression is always visual -- a consumer LOOKS/SEES before he/she READS. Imagine walking by a grotesquely garish storefront with all kinds of things hanging off the front porch, every floor painted a different color, and odd music playing through loudspeakers. Would you want to walk in the front door? No way! You`d assume that the owner is a kook, at best, or a deranged axe murderer, at worst. Did you ever have an ugly looking email land in your mailbox? You know what I`m talking about: an orange background and yellow borders, multi-colored text in all sizes from gigantic to microscopic, a message that looks like it was created by a crazed six-year-old? If you did, I bet you didn`t feel the urge to read it. You probably just wanted to delete it as quickly as possible.

=> PUT OUT THE WELCOME MAT You want your email message to be friendly and inviting, not bizarre and scary. The suggestions below -- and they`re just suggestions, not hard and fast rules -- will go a long way towards making recipients` eyes say "come on in!" to your message.

=> DO`s and DON`Ts FOR ATTRACTIVE EMAILS -DON`T use COLOR fonts in your message. (Leave that to junior high girls who want to write about Britney and Justin) -DO use BLACK TEXT ON A WHITE BACKGROUND. (When you`re "speaking" in black-and-white, people will give their full attention to your message without being distracted by your color scheme.)
-DON`T use UNCOMMON FONTS. (If someone`s system doesn`t recognize the font you`ve selected, they could see gibberish instead of your brilliant message).
-DO use the email marketers` FAVORITE FONTS: Arial, Times New Roman, and Courier New And please.
-DON`T use flashing buttons or banners in your email! (Your prospects have undoubtedly gotten their fill of "bells and whistles" when they`ve surfed the Internet. They don`t need more from you.)

=> GET HYPER" WITH EMAIL HYPERLINKS An "email hyperlink" is just techno-talk for a link in your email to a website, or email address. Sounds simple enough, and it is -- unless you try to contact a prospect on AOL who may not be able to receive "clickable" links. Don`t worry. There`s a "fix" for this: simply type mailto: in front of your email address (no space in between, and include the : )
For a link to a web page, you need to write your link this way: http://www.getresponse.com/t/1002590/ . (And tell your recipient they can copy and paste this link into their browser if it`s not highlighted.)

=> ALWAYS USE SIGNATURE TAGS Today, it`s common practice on the Internet to tell people about your product or service with a SIGNATURE TAG, which is 3-6 lines of text (usually) that is automatically added to every message you send. If you`d like to add a tag to your messages, simply open your email program. Find the SIGNATURES TAB (located in the TOOLS/OPTIONS menu in Outlook Express). Follow the (simple) instructions for creating a sig file. Easy as pie...and the results will amaze you. That`s it for now, but get your "net" ready. Next lesson we`re going to hunt down and CAPTURE EMAILS.

MARKETING STRATEGIES THAT EMPOWER SUCCESS

2006-02-12T01:53:00.000-08:00

LESSON #1 - Essential Rules for Effective Email Marketing

This is it, and I hope you`re looking forward to uncovering the secrets that it holds. In today`s "Marketing Strategies that EMPOWER Success" lesson, you`re going to learn the BASICS OF EMAIL MARKETING.

Now I know what you`re thinking: Basics don`t sound very exciting or "empowering." But the basics are the foundation upon which everything else is built. Miss these and you may end up spinning your wheels for the next 12 months. (Wouldn`t you rather be spinning stories about how you made your first million?)

So find a comfortable spot, put up your feet and let`s get ready to rumble!

===================================
Essential Rules For Effective Email Marketing
===================================

If you want an email campaign to succeed, you don`t want to offend anyone when sending your messages. Turn off a consumer with your email and you can be sure they`ll tune out your message. Don`t let this happen to you!

A message that earns respect makes sales. That`s why our first topic for discussion is email etiquette. (Later in the course, we`ll talk more about how to write an email sales letter.)

Train yourself to always -- and I mean ALWAYS -- stick to the rules below when crafting your email message.

=> RULE #1 - ALWAYS WRAP YOUR LINES AT 65 CHARACTERS OR LESS

Whenever you write an email, always format the lines so that they`re 65 characters, or less, across. To do this, you may need to do a "hard return" by hitting "Enter" at the end of the line.

Wondering why to limit your lines to just 65 characters? (Good question! It shows you`re thinking.) There are two reasons that "less is more":

- The first thing to remember is that looking at a computer screen for a long time causes EYE FATIGUE for many readers. The shorter span of characters across the screen makes reading easier and more appealing to the recipient of your email message.

- The other reason to go short instead of long is this: some email clients AUTOMATICALLY ENFORCE LINE-WRAPPING at 60-65 characters on received messages. If your email is wrapped at 70, the content will arrive all "chopped up." This makes it unattractive and worse unappealing.

- Tip within a Rule #1: Email clients such as Outlook Express allow you to SET THE LINE-WRAP to any character-width you choose. That means you won`t have to hit Enter each time after typing 65 characters. Makes life easier!

- Tip within a Rule #2 - You can type 65 asterisks or dashes in a Notepad file to create a template. Then paste your email below it to see if any lines extend too far to the right.

=> RULE # 2 - BE CAREFUL USING ALL CAPS

How many times have you changed the TV channel to avoid listening to a screaming car salesperson? No one likes a screaming salesperson...and no one likes a "screaming" email message, either. Odds are, when someone has over-amped the volume of their message by using too many capital letters (not to mention too many exclamation points and other punctuation) - you`re going to be turned off.

On the Internet, email messages written in all caps are considered yelling. It`s okay to write some sentences and some words in all caps, but don`t go overboard. (As you can see in this message, I`ve tried to use capital letters to help break up sections of the content from time to time)

-- Tip within a Rule: Consumers buy from a source they trust. Emails in all caps are perceived as "shady" or uneducated, and have an appearance that damages the credibility of an offer.

=> RULE #3 - WATCH YOUR Ps & Qs (Spelling and Grammar)

Would you be influenced by an email selling you something that had noticeable spelling and grammar mistakes? Sure you would...and the influence would be negative, not positive! When a consumer reads a sales message that`s filled with errors, they think to themselves, "Good grief, this person doesn`t even take the time to get his emails right. His product is probably the same quality as his emails."

When you`re in business, YOUR IMAGE IS YOUR REPUTATION and your reputation is the reason people buy from you or the guy down the block. It`s essential that you create an image of INTEGRITY, CREDIBILITY, and HONESTY in the mind of your prospects. Sending emails filled with errors doesn`t hurt your professional image...it destroys it. (Ouch!)

That`s it for now, but I`ll be back with Lesson #2 faster than you can say, "I want to be EMPOWERED"

Selling A Cause? Better Make It Pop

2006-02-11T17:33:00.000-08:00

With competition fierce, charities are finding that savvy marketing is a must The Empire State Building will glow red for an evening in February. Niagara Falls will run red for a day. And on Feb. 3 newscasters will don red dresses. It's all part of a grassroots campaign to remind women of heart disease risks that has drawn employees at thousands of companies to hand out Red Dress pins plugging the American Heart Assn.'s National Wear Red Day. Backed by marketing hustle worthy of a new car rollout, recognition of the pin could come to rival awareness of the pink ribbon as a symbol for breast cancer research.

With big-name endorsements and flashy events, the "Go Red for Women" effort will use all the tricks of a big ad campaign for a shampoo or an SUV. Increasingly, nonprofits are finding it's a game they must play. Amid an explosion of causes competing for attention, even trusted charities like American Heart have had to rewrite their fund-raising playbooks to cut through the din.A decade ago marketing was a foreign term to most nonprofits. Donors judged a group's success by how much of its budget went to good works vs. fund-raising. The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation changed the landscape, positioning itself as a favorite marketing partner of big companies from General Motors Corp. (GM ) to Whirlpool Corp. (WHR ), driving annual revenues to $180 million in 2005. But many nonprofits have been slow to follow. "The M-word was not considered a good thing," says Tom Peterson, vice-president for marketing at Heifer International, an anti-poverty group that lets you send animals to the needy via catalog. It recently landed an appearance for one of its goats on NBC's The West Wing. Says Peterson: "It was as if we were losing our soul."That view is changing now that there are more than 1.2 million nonprofits, spurring stiff competition for support. Not even the 82-year-old AHA can depend on its name recognition to survive. At American Heart, fund-raising had long been a grassroots activity. Volunteers organized walks, and folks raised money from neighbors. Then, eight years ago, Wall Street veteran M. Cass Wheeler became CEO of the Dallas-based group. Armed with consumer research, he woke the place up to marketing. "People trusted [that] we did what we did well, but they were not sure exactly what we did," recalls Wheeler. Moreover, while women walked and raced and cooked to fight breast cancer, few understood it was heart disease that was more likely to kill them.Wheeler cut the 56 field offices to 12 and built a marketing department. The AHA had previously relied on free public service announcements. But competition for the shrinking pie of free ads has become fierce. So, starting in 2003, Wheeler invested $12 million with ad agency Campbell-Ewald Co., best known for handling Chevy cars and trucks. TV ads, posters, and pamphlets with folks who had lost loved ones to heart disease were wrapped around a new slogan, "Learn and Live," replacing the ossified "Fighting heart disease and stroke." Says Campbell-Ewald President Jeff Scott: "It's more of a call to action."Spending money to advertise has paid off. Public support for American Heart reached $540 million in 2005, up from $326 million in 1998. In two years, some 366,833 people have logged on to the Learn and Live quiz (at americanheart.org), which helps people identify heart attack risks. Meanwhile, Wheeler hired marketing agency Cone Inc. to design the "Go Red" campaign. With about $1.5 million behind it over two years, it has returned $40 million in contributions and drawn activists from more than 9,500 companies.Of course, nonprofits considering big branding initiatives walk a tightrope. While they need to get noticed and show marketing savvy to companies whose support they seek, good causes can't appear too slick. Nonprofit umbrella group Independent Sector found that charities operating too much like businesses turn off potential donors. Ruth A. Wooden, president of nonprofit think tank Public Agenda, says organizations need to adopt what she calls the Pier 1 strategy. "It's got to look modern and hip," she says, "but it can't be too expensive."

Year	Nonagricultural Wage & Salary Employment Ohio & Metro Areas	Average Weekly Earnings Ohio Only	Average Weekly Hours Ohio Only	Average Hourly Earnings Ohio Only
2004	\| 2004 Employment \|	\| 2004 Weekly Earning \|	\| 2004 Hours \|	\| 2004 Hourly Earning \|
2003	\| 2003 Employment \|	\| 2003 Weekly Earning \|	\| 2003 Hours \|	\| 2003 Hourly Earning \|
2002	\| 2002 Employment \|	\| 2002 Weekly Earning \|	\| 2002 Hours \|	\| 2002 Hourly Earning \|
2001	\| 2001 Employment \|	\| 2001 Weekly Earning \|	\| 2001 Hours \|	\| 2001 Hourly Earning \|
Nonagricultural Wage & Salary Employment for Ohio & Metropolitan Statistical Areas: 1990 \| 1991 \| 1992 \| 1993 \| 1994 \| 1995 \| 1996 \| 1997 \| 1998 \| 1999 \| 2000

Year	Nonagricultural Wage & Salary Employment	Average Weekly Earnings	Average Weekly Hours	Average Hourly Earnings
2001	\| 2001 Employment (SIC) \|	\| 2001 Weekly Earnings (SIC) \|	\| 2001 Hours (SIC) \|	\| 2001 Hourly Earnings (SIC) \|
2000	\| 2000 Employment (SIC) \|	\| 2000 Weekly Earnings (SIC) \|	\| 2000 Hours (SIC) \|	\| 2000 Hourly Earnings (SIC) \|
1999	\| 1999 Employment (SIC) \|	\| 1999 Weekly Earnings (SIC) \|	\| 1999 Hours (SIC) \|	\| 1999 Hourly Earnings (SIC) \|
Tables for each of the following years are combined into one file: 1994 (SIC) \| 1995 (SIC) \| 1996 (SIC) \| 1997 (SIC) \| 1998 (SIC)

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2006 Market Review & Forecast

MARKETING STRATEGIES THAT EMPOWER SUCCESS

MARKETING STRATEGIES THAT EMPOWER SUCCESS

Selling A Cause? Better Make It Pop

Labor Market Review
from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) Program