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