Post Election Opportunities for Web Marketing

Wow that was some media blitz for this years Presidential election! Hundreds of millions spent just getting the names out and getting out the vote. Much of this happened right on the Web using the very Web Marketing methods we talk about.

It does not matter who you were for or against, Obama/Biden(578 Million$ spent) or McCain/Palin(293 Million$ spent.)* At over a billion dollars raised for advertising, much of it on the internet. The impact of Web influence is staggering.

You too can wield your own ad copy and influence people the world over to take a position or buy a product. People will pay you to do that. Capitalism at its best.

When employing these methods you must make sure the outcome is really what you want. the power is in the message (or ad copy.)

* see - http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/index.php

Internet Marketing and the Recession of 2008

What to do when the economy bites the dust…

We all know that the world economy has had a series of seizures lately, and if it continues to decline, there will be a deep recession. People are losing their jobs; they may not have a source of income for some time, and because of this they will not be able to make ends meet.

As the economy crashes, what are you going to do? Do you have a game plan that you can resort to when things get bad? Give it some thought and make a mitigation plan. The risk is real for each of us.

It’s a trick question. We all should have a plan to guide us as we go through with our life, at all times. This way we can be ready for anything that gets thrown at us. Think of football. Does either team just rush out there without having some sort of strategy? Of course not, when you play football, you have a strategy for just about anything that could happen on the playing field. That is how our lives should be.

We should be prepared for anything in life, and have a strategy for whatever could happen.
Always be open for opportunity. In times like a recession, opportunity is everywhere. Just the margins are smaller.

That brings me back to the topic of web marketing. One major difference between 1929 and now is the Web. Looking at 1929 there were those who suffered and those who learned and came back stronger. One of those was a company called General Motors. Like the newly standardized automobile that had finally shown promise to really replace the horse and buggy the Web has now achieved a standard and popularity worldwide. If you master marketing on the Web this recession presents a huge opportunity instead of a barrier to you. Again the choice is yours.

With Web Marketing you can add value anywhere there is a market opportunity. People will pay for that value, even in a down market. Where else can you open a new store while keeping your other product lines going? Keep in mind the budget will be tight, but the job is still there. Think about starting small and working to independence from a paid job. You will work for yourself and set you own goals.

In this downturn can you afford to wait until it’s too late? Keep in mind, while you have a job you can leverage your current income into a future that you have control over. If cars stop selling maybe horses and buggies will make a comeback. Become an affiliate-marketer for the Pony Express!

Newsletters and Autoresponders in Web Marketing

One of the most useful tools to work with in building a web marketing campaign is an "Auto responder." This is an automated email handler that will take a person's email signup and process it for a series of relevant marketing email messages you may send. An example of this is found at AWeber Communications .

The handler will also keep you legal with respect to anti-spam laws for example, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. You are required to allow a person to opt-in and opt-out or un subscribe as they wish. Having all this automated is crucial to your marketing effort for two reasons. First, you don't waste time sending and tracking all the individual information and second, equally important you respond immediately to your customers wishes.

Once the auto-responder is set up you can now begin a newsletter campaign to inform them of new information about your site, the market topic or any special sale offers you may have including links (if they are allowed by your TOS with the marketer being linked to.)

Newsletters are best if they really are news related to what the person first signed up for. Stick to the relevant topics and your customer will appreciate you. Send a link to a useful free e-book or diagram and they will appreciate you even more. Later you can offer the full set for a special discount!

You get the idea. Your emails should have very catchy and interesting subject lines so they don't get caught up in the spam filter. This is your pitch line. Keep it short and drive their interest.

A good subject line must Grab Their Attention, for example;

• "Simpleton Web-Marketer Strikes Gold, Read!"
• "Newbie Web Marketer Strikes It Rich, Virtual Gold Mine Found."
• "Click Farmers Cause Massive Cave In, Virtual Gold Mine Found."
• "Batter Up! (tm) Cook-e-Books Now Has New Holiday Recipes!"

You should always evaluate different A-B test variations of these for best performance marketing. Track results and repeat to get even more sales or traffic or whatever...

In the body of the email, remember to put relevant content and related links or product references. This is where you build return traffic.

Remember, thank your customer, and they will come back!

Selling with Free E-Books

Here's a trick that works to drive traffic and generate better profits.

Simply create or obtain the rights to an e-book that you can give away. Make sure you have the right to give it away. Then embed links to your website on which you have more related items, either e-books or sales offers. Note: it is important to have related sales offers as you are working on converting an intersted reader to buy the related product. This is called an up sell or cross sale depending if it is the same type of product or something related to the original e-book content.

Now you may want to give a couple of e-books just in case they are interested in reading your material but not sure about your products yet. After a few of these helpful books they will be much more trusting and willing to consider your other offers. Respect their interest and they will return.

Let's look at a simple example;

Let's say you supply an E-Book on introductory to digital photography. In it you give the basics about what photography is about. Information on; lighting, tricks to frame pictures, stop action vs. blur action, etc. Now your free market offering is about ready. Set up a good web site with affiliate offers for cameras and books on photography (Especially gorgeous coffee table books.)

Now you set another related article or two in short e-book form on the site and viola! The site should have some unique quality camera work of you own or get someone to supply you with it. That adds a unique touch and shows that you (or someone you are working with) know your stuff. Now let the email marketing and web links to free info on photography begin!

Now the E-book may extoll the virtues of some piece of camera gear or a camera you like and you have a built in pitch. Not too much sales pitch though, try to supply more help than pressure. Think of how you would like to be treated. A good book or series of articles are worth the time spent. If I learn valuable insight I will come back for more.

Learn from Experience

As you practice new marketing methods you must track traffic and sales performance so you can learn what works and what doesn't. As you gain an undersanding of the market and your customer you will get much better conversion rates. The market demographics may change with time and you will need to change tactics to match.

For example through use of daily traffic & sales data you can track small differences made in your A-B test cases that yeild the best conversion rate. This best conversion rate will yeild the highest quality buying traffic and most satisfied customers too. That brings 'em back for more and gets you points with the search engines.

Another benefit of tracking data analysis is your understanding of just what is attracting the customer to buy in the first place. That can lead to many new sales options, if you just think about what the data is telling about the customer's buying habits. Are there other products or better matched products that you could offer? Are there similar products that may appeal to a broader audience? Or can you make your new customers buy more often?

By the way the best converting advertising will often be using different ad copy than the ad with the best CTR. Think about an ad that says you can look here for more "Information on a new Laptop" vs Look here for a "Sale on the Latest Laptop." There are likely far more lookers interested in the more general "Laptop info" hence higher CTR than those whose interest is to buy a real "Laptop on Sale."

This is why it is so important to always end your ad copy with a simple pitch or offer. What do you want them to do? You really want to attract people who are thinking about a purchase. Of course there's always the cross or up-sell, but that's another topic...

Remember your traffic costs you money, time and effort. You want the best customers your ad can buy so plan your copy accordingly. Your profits are the difference between ad costs and sales income. More profit is better, so watch that traffic data closely.

Why You Should Build an Email List

One of the most effective ways to generate highly targeted traffic is through the use of an Email list. This "opt in" list allows your visitors to invite you to send them appropriate updates offers and links that they may find attractive. When using the email list if you establish and build their respect they will reward you with return visits and referrals. Under the right strategy you can get more and more referrals. When this happens you have gone viral.

You must make sure to build respect. The value of your list is based on how you treat both your visitors and affiliates.

This is a list of topics I will be expanding on over the next few blog posts, stay tuned:

1. The Email list as an asset
   
• Opt in Form
  
• Contacts
  
• Value of contacts
  
• More sales
  
• Email Targeting of visitors
  
• Establish connection to others
  
2. Auto-responder for Email list management
   
• No spam
  
• Opt in & Opt out
  
• Signup page
  
3. Develop trust
   
• Respect your customer
  
• High value
  
• Free offers
  
• Quality products
  
• Free articles
  
4. Demographics
   
• Who are your customers?
  
• What are they interested in?
  
• How do they buy?
  
• How do I best target them?
  
5. Offers
   
• Free
  
• Special deal
  
• Bundled
  
• Chance & Game Give Away
  
6. Links
   
• Links to affiliate products
  
• Links to your websites
  
• Links to your products
  
• Links and TOS limitations (check)
  
7. Viral marketing
   
• Echo resonance, a friend of a friend sent me…
  
• Repeat traffic
  
• Exponential growth, what is it?
  

How to Promote Affiliate Links Using Web Articles....

Project of the Month:
Yes, it is possible to use one simple web published article to make 'free' money with affiliate links.

All you need is:

• A word processing tool such as MS Word (for a good, free tool use "Open Office").
• Basic writing skills
• Access to an affiliate program & product links.
• An approved TOS for that affiliate program that allow links embedded in articles for free distribution on the web.

The Steps:

1. Find a good affiliate program and join it.
2. Join 'Ezine articles' and/or other similar article directories. These directories will be the basis for traffic generation in this project.
3. Write an informative article about the niche your affiliate program is based in. I strongly suggest you have first hand knowledge of the product's features. (Note: The article does NOT need to be very long, just useful). If you are promoting a "Viral Marketing" e-book, your article could have a few good tips that explain the subject. Then conclude the article with 'Your' affiliate link to the e-book sales page and some text explaining what the e-book is about, and how it relates to the article.
4. Insert your affiliate links into your article. Do NOT spam, abuse or overuse affiliate links. You want users to take your QUALITY article with good information and use it on their site. Now you not only have your affiliate links on 'Ezine articles', but other websites will post them as well. Think Viral Marketing!
5. Submit your new article to the article directories and watch the traffic grow!

The goal is for other people to use your high quality articles on their site. Now your affiliate links are spread around at no cost to you! You don't even need to pay for AdWords, Web hosting or a Domain Name! How much better can this get?

Choosing an Effective Domain Name

My friend and I were talking a few days ago and the conversation got into web sites/Internet marketing stuff, so I am posting snippets of our conversation here. I am posting this to show some things to think about when starting a website. (I changed the domain names and other personal information we were talking about.)

Friend:
Search Google for "xyzzy.com" and tell me if there is already a place being used with that domain
So I know if it's copyrighted or something...
Me:
Yeah it's taken
Just checked
Friend:
So I need to think of new name?
Me:
You can't use the domain "xyzzy.com" but you can use a similar domain, as long as you don't violate any trademarks or copyrights
Friend:
OK
I want something unique
Me:
When thinking of a domain name, try to base it off of your theme or purpose in the venture, or what you are trying to do, or what you have to offer....
What category are you targeting
Friend:
Got any ideas?
Me:
I would start in a small category that you like rather than try to do to much at once. so instead of targeting "Cell Phones" , you could target "hard rock ring tones".
It gets really hard to try to do too much at once
Friend:
OK. I'm gonna base it on the keyword "xyzzy" for now then
Me:
Once you get well known and get better skilled in that area you can expand to into other areas of that market
Friend:
Sounds good to me
Me:
When you do expand, you don't have to use the same website
Friend:
And when should I start putting ad's on the side of my website to make money?
Me:
Once you get the main content into the web pages
What kind of content are you looking at doing?
Friend:
Do you have to pay for the ads?
And what do you mean by content?
Me:
If you are advertising for your site / company it costs money. If you are showing ads on your site for someone else, you get paid.

Content is:

• text
• audio
• images
• video

Friend.
Yeah ads on site, so I get paid....
Me:
Correct!
Friend:
I'm trying to think of a generic name for the future, so when I do change topics, I don't have to change the domain name
Me:
Having a generic name can be a good idea, but for your first site try doing just 1 topic, because it would be easier to manage and more targetted to you traffic. Then, register another domain name for any other topics you get into.

Common Definitions and Acronyms for Web Marketing

Here is a list of common acronyms and definitions found throughout web marketing sources. I will expand on these in the future. For now, here is the short version:

• SEO - Search Engine Optimization, Methods used to improve search results.
• SEM - Search Engine Marketing
• Content Network - Google's network of ads displayed on pages around the web.
• EPC - Earnings Per Click, How much you are paid when a visitor clicks your ad.
• TOS - Terms of Service, What you agree to when you check the box in the corner of the form.
• CTR - Click Thru Rate, The rate that visitors click on a link, ad, or any other Click Thruable thing.
• CPC - Cost Per Click, The amount it cost to click on an ad or whatever else you clicked on.
• Impressions - The number of times a page, ad, link, etc. is viewed.
• CPM - Cost Per Thousand Impressions
• ECPM - Estimated Cost Per Thousand Impressions
• PPC - Pay Per Click, How much is paid per click, usually relating to an ad.
• PPV - Pay Per View, How much is paid each time an ad is viewed.
• Conversion
• Page Rank - The ranking system Google uses to rank web pages based on links. Higher quality links are valued more.
• Unique Visits - Visitors that are at the web site for their first time.
• Traffic - The number of people visiting your website.
• Page Views - The number of times a page has been viewed.
• Impr. - Impressions
• Cost/Conv. - How much it costs to get one conversion.
• Quality score - Google uses the quality score
• E-book - Electronic Book, typically a ".PDF" formatted document. This book may be for sale or be part of a traffic enhancing giveaway, etc.
• Above the fold - The area that shows up first on the browser when it shows a new search landing page.
• Header - The portion of text that marks a topical break for the reader (and the Search Engine Optimizer.) Make sure you include useful keywords here!
• SERP - Search Engine Results Pages
• Organic Search - The non paid search results below the sponsored results. This comes from the web crawlers analysis of your site's content and keyword match.
• Targeted - The degree to which a keyword matches user questions in the following order, 1. Customer or Visitor's Idea of what they want -> 2. Search Keyword -> 3. Meta Tags and Header Keywords -> 4. Actual text content words. The better this sequence matches the original users Idea, the more Targeted a Search Keyword is. Think like your the one looking and answer the question with the ad copy and product match.
• Campaign - A grouping of advertisements based on a particular target product or conversion goal. This is very useful when you track the performance of you ads or types of ad projects.
• Ad group - A particular subset of ads, typically grouped around a keyword set. Again this allows a more targeted advertising test program.
• Ezine - A simple article or collection of articles in an electronic format. These are often simple html or text files for re-distribution via web or email.
• Auto responder - A vital tool for maintaining email web communications. This allows a subscriber to "opt-in" to an interesting relevant email list. This is used to keep them informed on topics and products they want. If they "opt-out", the Auto responder removes them from the email list.
• Opt in/out list - A database or list maintained by the auto-responder tool set so that no laws are broken and users welcome your regular information and offerings.
• Subscription - A users log of contact data that allows you the web marketer to contact them with useful information, including Ezine's, Ebooks, Products and Services. Many of the best projects have a subscription as the hub of the customer contact. Remember this is something they subscribe to and therefore they want to get. Honor that role and your success will grow.
• Hit tail - The portion of statistically less significant keyword traffic. Typically they are 30% of the traffic volume that happens on the top 10% of the keywords. the remaining 70% is on less frequently used more targeted keyword phrases. These less frequent keywords will bring much cheaper traffic and often for free if the matching landing page content attracts organic search queries.
  
• Hit - A visit to a web page.
• Landing page - A Web page designed to receieve a visit from a search engine.
• Keyword - A word or phrase used by a search engine to match phrases compiled into a database from visits to landing pages found over the web. The other end of this is the user and advertiser's setting of keywords for matching landing pages to keywords.
• Site map - The collection of pages found on a web site, includes visit importance weights and relationships between pages. They are usually XML. Make sure this is clean or the indexing bot will not understand what your site is about.
• URL - Uniform Resource Locator
• Cookie - A script device that is used to track traffic and account for customer transactions and affiliate priorities. For example who got the customer first.

E-Books or Info Products

An e-book or info product is a great tool that can be utilized in many different ways. Here are a few things you can do with e-books:

• Attract traffic
• Sell as e-products
• Marketing teasers
• Generate subscriptions
• Build links
• Promotionals and giveaways
• Build your email lists and newsletters
• Inform the public
• Use your imagination!

An e-book typically contains the same content as a regular paper book, just in electronic format. Usually, e-books are in ".PDF" format. It can have pictures, text, diagrams, graphs, equations, anything you might find in a book. Like any good book, the more relevant to the target customer's desire, the better!

Best Ad Placement Strategies and Improved CTR's

Better ad placement on your web page means better CTR. Usually the best performing spots are above the fold. "Above the fold" is the section of the landing page that is first visible without scrolling down the page. Also, in general the higher your ads are on the page, the higher your earnings will be.

Google has the following diagrams that give us a good idea of where to place ads for:

• Web sites
• Blogs
• Forums

As stated before, correctly placing ads is essential to having a good CTR. People read left to right and top to bottom, so putting your ads on the right would make them read toward it without becoming a distraction. If you place your ad on the Left side of the page, viewers tend to ignore the ad while looking for the start of that pages text. It is just a natural thing to look right past the ad to the content on the page.

These subtle differences can mean 90% or more in the difference in CTR for the exact same ad unit. Try it and measure it yourself sometime. Rarely does an ad work better while violating these rules.

It may be possible to violate the rules by the use of special graphics or text tables which are used to draw attention toward the ad. Images can draw attention toward an ad, but avoid flash and banner type ads because the mind learns to filter out these as ads as distractions and again the reader will reflexively avoid the ad contents without being aware of it.

Landing Pages and Ad Conversions

A landing page is a web page where you first send traffic that is relevant to your products or services. The better your keyword matches the first thing they see on the landing page the more likely you will sell that product.

Another cashflow benefit is the cost your CPC will go down because the search engine detects the quality of the user's experience. Better quality ads to better landing pages get much better CPC's. They look at the quality of things like the time on site, bounce rates, etc. to determine what discounts are applied to your CPCs after your bid price is met. For example, I might bid $50 to get to position 1 and after the quality factors are applied, I only pay $0.50. This is a huge discount!

Directing People to what they want makes them much more likely to buy your product or service than simply throwing random products at random customers. When was the last time you peeked into a store only to tell the clerk "Just looking." On the web those "peeks" cost money.

High quality landing pages have good conversion rates, low quality landing pages don't make any sales. Things high quality landing pages have in common are:

• Relevance of the page contents to both the product and the keyword.
• Clean and uncluttered. Customers need to quickly see what they are looking for.
• Page should have a "call to action" that compliments the call to action in the ad copy.
• Navigating to make a purchase should not be more than 1 click from the landing page.

Affiliate Marketing -- The Merchant-Affiliate Relationship

What is a Merchant-Affiliate Relationship? It is more than an agreement between the affiliate marketer and the merchant. It is about trust and teamwork. The affiliate's role is to steer relevant prospects or potential customers to the merchant's products or services. These may be on the web (eg. a website landing page.) They can also be a physical store or a telephone order desk.

The important thing about this relationship is maintaining trust. Things to consider regarding building and maintaining this trust are:

• Knowing your Merchant (Their integrity, honesty, product quality and a good reputation in the marketplace.)
• Knowing the TOS (Terms of Service). This is the Business Contract that you have agreed to follow.
• Know how to contact each other, preferably using more than just email.
• Communication is vital! Share ideas and vision for the benefit of both.
• Be willing to negotiate and compromise. Both parties have different risks and benefits in their part of the affiliate marketing business model.

Making Money with Google Adsense

Want to make money with AdSense? EPC, CTR and Impressions are the main things you want to focus on. Change the ad colors around and experiment with different ad units to improve your CTR. Always do A-B split testing. This is when you change only one variable at a time and test both variations evenly. Take the one that performs best, change another variable, and repeat.

Finding higher paying keywords will increase your EPC. Higher paying keywords generally have less traffic than low to medium paying keywords, so it pays to have a good mix. Besides, what good are high paying AdSense keywords if no one is there to click on them?

• CTR x Impressions = AdSense Clicks.
• AdSense Clicks x EPC = Dollars.
  

The best ad colors are almost always the ones blended with the web site's colors. Flashy, Blinky, ads annoy and scare off customers.

The best performing ad units are the 336 x 280, 160 x 600 and the 728 x 90. Then again, It depends on your website. Each website is unique, and you must test different ad units and colors to see which work best for you.

Web Advertising & Publishing

There are multiple sides of Internet Advertising; the Advertisers, Publishers, and the Customers. Advertisers pay the Publishers display ads, and Customers click the ads to buy products. If you want relevant, good quality traffic, and make some money with your website, the top 3 players in the web advertising industry are Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Ad Center.

• Google Adwords - Google charges you $$ to show your ad on Google
• Google Adsense - Google pays you to put ads on your web pages
  
• Yahoo Search Marketing - You pay $$ to display your ads on Yahoo
• Yahoo Publisher Network - Yahoo pays you to put ads on your website

The are others out there, but Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are the top 3.

The Future of this Blog

I have listed the topics I will be blogging about over the next few months below:

• Web Advertising
• Affiliate Marketing
• Websites & Web Design
• Landing Pages
• Conversion Tracking - Its about Cashflow!
• Blogging for Dollars
• Contacts, Contracts & Joint Ventures
• Keywords & SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• E-Books
• Subscriptions
• Newsletters & Autoresponders
• DropShipping & E-Malls
• Web 2.0
• To Incorporate or not to Incorporate, that IS the question
• Youtube, Social Networking (eg. FaceBook) & Photo Sharing Sites
• PhotoShop for Marketing Materials

It is quite probable I will not be able to cover everything on this list very soon. I am sure I will Blog about other web marketing topics as well. I will work to keep focused on the listed topics and to add more as time goes on.

Building Backlinks

Building links to a web site or blog is an important part of getting to the top of Google and other search engines. Try these easy link building strategies to rank higher:

• Post comments on blogs. Find relevant blogs and post a comment with a link in it. Make sure to say something useful/intelligent and relevant to your niche along with your link.
• Have links in your forum signature. Some forums have a place to put a web site address. Put your link in your profile and in your signature. When you have a link in your signature you get a back link every time you post! Use care when posting links, some forums consider any links spam.
• Trade links with other webmasters. Contact other webmasters and propose link exchanges.
• Submit your content to article directories. Take content you wrote or own and submit it to article directories. Each article should include links to your relevant landing pages.
• submit your web site to link directories. Look for link directories that are relevant to your niche and add your web site to them. The more relevant the better.

These are not the only ways to build back links, look around and find other link building strategies. Relevant, quality back links are better for ranking higher in organic search, so focus on building relevant links.

SEO Basics

To place high in search engines you need to know what the search engines like. The search engine likes to satisfy your customers. If your web campaigns are satisfactory and relevant to your customers, the search engines will reward your effort. Here are a few ways to optimize your web site to rank higher.

Keywords. There are several places on your web site you should put keywords.

• The Website Domain Name.
• Page Title.
• The Meta Tags.
• Body Text, make it relate to your site so people find what they want.
• Image Alt Text.
  

Meta Tags. put meta tags on your website to get ranked higher in the search engines. for those Keywords. Don't keyword spam (e.g. too many repetitions without matching content and value added.)

Image Alt Text.
Label your images! Search engines look at the keywords in the alt text, and adds the images to their image search. Image search can also bring you more traffic!

Relevance.
The more relevant your website is, the more you will be liked. You shouldn't put the keyword "Cars" on a real estate company's website, but you should have targetted keywords like "Chevrolet Corvette", "Ford Cobra" and "Dodge Viper" on a website about fast muscle cars. The point is to keep things as closely related as possible, and build on each relevant keyword in your list.

How to Succeed at Internet Marketing

E-Web Marketing - Tips, Tricks and Strategies for Internet Marketing Want to succeed at internet marketing? Some things to start with are:

• Have a Business Plan. Stick to it, and you will know when you get off course.
• Adjust your plans as necessary, be flexible. The web changes rapidly!
• Cashflow, Cashflow, Cashflow. It's about money; It can make you or break you!
• Set Goals. If you don't, can you really track how much you have accomplished?
• Accomplish those Goals. Once you do that, set improved goals and repeat the process!
• Learn from Everyone. If you make a mistake, learn from it. If you don't learn from it, you will repeat it!

If you jump into things without having a business plan and no goals or tracking of accomplishments, you will fail. Keep focused on the important, don't get distracted, achieve your goals and you will succeed!

- Josh Wilkinson