Current Articles:

Getting Rich From Affiliate Programs.

The Host.

Advertising in News Letters.

A Few Avoidable Errors When Promoting Your Affiliate Program.

How To Create Effective Ads.

How To Choose a Domain Name

Creating An Effective Newsletter

Blogs.

Top Search Engines.

Monitoring and Tracking

Making your web site 

Attractive,interesting,enguaging and interactive.

Banners

Train Your Pet To Be Part Of The Family!

Getting Rich from Affiliate Programs

Some times it pays to work with others.  In this article we will discuss how to make money with affiliate programs.

Affiliate programs (also called Referral Programs or Partnership Programs) are essentially commission-based sales schemes. You recommend a site to your users and pick up a percentage of any sales those users generate. You benefit from the commission and the site benefits from sales it wouldn’t otherwise have made. If you’ve ever gone to a website and seen links to Amazon, those were affiliate links.

You can run an affiliate program from a site you’ve already set up, or create a site specially to promote a product or service. As long as it brings in more cash than you spend on building it and buying traffic, you’re laughing.

Affiliate ads work two ways: you can join them to make money, or you can run one to attract users.

Joining An Affiliate Program

As with any marketing venture, you need to be careful in the selection of an affiliate program. The benefit of an affiliate program is that it gives you another way to make money from your users. Instead of selling them a product yourself, you send them to a partner and take a cut.

On the downside though, your affiliate ads will take the place of a different ad that you could have put in that same spot. You have to make sure that each advertising position on your site is bringing in the maximum revenue possible. If you’re not getting the most from your site, you’re tossing money away.

The key to success is to choose the right program, right from the beginning.

Now, a lot of commercial sites run affiliate programs. That’s because they know that they only have to pay a commission if a sale is actually made; it’s a proven way to generate revenue without risk. What that means for you is that when it comes to choosing an affiliate program, you’re going to have a huge range to choose from. What it all boils down to though is product and price.

While it might be tempting to go for the program that pays the highest commissions, the program won’t pay you a penny if your users won’t go there or won’t buy once they get there. You have to be certain that the service you’re promoting is of genuine interest to the kind of users you buy, whether you’re buying them from search engines or anywhere else.

Sure, you can work backwards: You find a high-paying affiliate program and create a small site to send users to it, but do you know where to buy users for a program like that? You’re going to have to research the field, check out the most popular sites, and negotiate banner campaigns and link exchanges.

That’s fine if you want to invest the time and the effort. But it’s much easier to find an affiliate program operating in a field you’re familiar with, and use that program to earn extra cash.

For example, suppose you had set up a dating site. You might make bit of money selling subscriptions, but you might make even more by joining Match.com’s affiliate program and selling them your users. Unless you’re planning to be the Internet’s biggest dating site, you’re not going to be able to compete directly and beat them, but you can join them—and earn money.

Or rather than sell your users directly to a ‘competitor’, you can look for services that complement your own. Visitors to your dating site, for example, might be interested in buying flowers, books on relationships or tickets on singles cruises. Instead of selling just one product—membership subscriptions—you’d be selling a whole range of different goods to the same people, and increasing the sources of your income.

Here are some tips to selecting an affiliate program that is lucrative and right for you:

• Don’t accept less than 25% commission. You can find affiliate programs with great payment structures and high percentages of the purchase price in just about every field.

• Look for comprehensive statistics pages that list the number of click-throughs, sales and earnings so you can see how you’re doing. The information should be broken down by month.

•  Look for programs that offer a wide variety of promotional tools to put on your Web page, including text links, banners and graphics.

• Find out how often you will be paid and make sure that the payment schedule meets your expectations. Some programs pay monthly, others quarterly; which is best for you?

• Look for examples of marketing methods that successful affiliates are using to get the best results.

• Make sure that top level support is given. If they can’t answer your questions promptly and intelligently, you don’t want to work with them.

Affiliate programs offer a viable solution to competing against larger competitors and still make money.  As the saying goes, if you can’t beat them, joint them! 

Until next time,

Warmly,

Ranjit

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The Host

This installment will deal with finding the right host for your site; from the free to the very expensive, we will discuss what your options are so that you can find your “perfect host”.

A host is a server which provides a home for your website on the World Wide Web. Just as your computer contains all your files, so a host contains all the files needed to run your website. Why can’t you just keep all those files on your own computer? Because that would mean users would have to connect directly to your computer to see your website. Not a good idea—it wouldn’t be secure and it would make your machine run like a tired snail. With a host, you can simply upload everything you need to the server and your users can then connect there to see your site. It lets the site run faster and allows it to have all the security and extras it needs.

Selecting a host is the first important step towards building your Internet business. 

Hosting services and companies vary from totally free, shared servers to large-scale dedicated machines. You’ll have to decide which is right for you and your business. To help you make that decision, study the following tables:

Free Servers

Advantages	Disadvantages
No Cost.	Search engines view free hosting services as inferior and sometimes do not include them in their index.
You manage the server software and network.	Some free hosting services do not allow you to use a custom domain name.
	The bandwidth is restricted and may cause difficulty for visitors attempting to access your site.
	Because the service is free, some providers do not strive for 100% uptime which could result in your site being frequently inaccessible.
	Software availability is limited, and free hosts do not generally provide database options.
	Disk space is sometimes limited; ensure that you are getting all the room you need.
	Poor response time for support.
	Very limited support.

Cheap Web Hosting

Advantages	Disadvantages
Server, software and network is managed and supported for you.	Bandwidth restrictions.
You can select a custom domain name.	Shared processing power.
Search engines don’t view you as second class if you have your own domain name.	Limited software.
Improved response time for support.	Potentially limited disk space.
Uptime is improved.
Technical support is provided, generally 24 hours a day.

Mid-Priced Web Hosting—Shared Servers

Advantages	Disadvantages
Server, software and network is managed and supported for you.	Shared processing power.
You can select a custom domain name.
Search engines don’t view you as second class if you have your own domain name.
Improved response time for support.
Uptime is improved and generally guaranteed
Technical support is provided, generally 24 hours a day.
Generally offer a wide range of software options and configurable bundles.
Improved bandwidth.

Expensive, Dedicated Servers

Advantages	Disadvantages
Server, software and network is managed and supported for you.	The cost is higher than any other options.
You can select a custom domain name.
Search engines don’t view you as second class.
Improved response time for support.
Uptime is improved and generally guaranteed.
Technical support is provided, generally 24 hours a day.
Generally offer a wide range of software options and configurable bundles.
Improved bandwidth.
Processing power is not shared.

Your choice of server will depend on how much money you have available at the beginning and how much you plan to grow in the future. In my opinion, for commercial sites, free hosting is a waste of time. Your users are going to get blasted with annoying pop-ups every time they surf to your page, it’s going to be impossible to get a decent position in a search engine, and you don’t even get a real business URL. No one’s going to remember your Web address if they have to type www.freehosting.com/my_site.  But it is possible to choose a cheap host at the beginning and move up as your business begins to bring in money.

Warmly,

RW

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Advertising in newsletters

We discussed earlier the advantages of having advertising space in your newsletters. In this article we will discuss advertising in other companies’ newsletters and how it can be as equally beneficial.

By advertising in other newsletters, you can reach an audience which is highly targeted and cost effective. Moreover, you can never be accused of spamming as all the recipients have subscribed to the newsletter. There are so many newsletters out there covering so many different topics that it's easy to find highly targeted ones to advertise in. So if you've matched the newsletter to the product you're selling, you've reached your target audience to a tee.

Almost all newsletters are archived, thousands of people read these archives, and your ad will be seen by these people at no extra cost. This can bring in exposure and extra sales on a long term basis. Besides, newsletter publishers may have already developed a trust between themselves and their readers. Just by placing your ad in the newsletter, it's more likely to be read because it appears in a publication they like and trust.

Newsletter advertising is not only effective, it's cheap as well. A 5 line ad in a newsletter that goes to 3000 people will cost you between $5 and $25 per issue. With so little risk involved, this is definitely worth it.

Buying Ads in Other Newsletters

Just as you can sell advertising, you can also buy advertising in newsletters. You can use those ads to promote your business or to invite people who read newsletters to read your own.

Again, you have to pick your partners carefully. There’s no point just picking a newsletter with the cheapest rates; you want to make sure you choose an outlet that appeals to the same buyers as you. You also need to think about where your ad is going to be placed. In general, the higher the position the better.  And the more the merrier too. Don’t expect a huge response from a single ad. It’s always best to think of advertising in terms of a campaign. You’ll get a better deal—and better results—if you reserve an advertising slot for four or five issues than if you buy them one at a time.

That’s it for this week.  I hope you found this article useful.  Until next time…take care of yourself.

Warmly,

RW.

A few avoidable errors when promoting your affiliate program

In this article, I have listed a quick and easy bulleted list of does and do not’s when trying to promote your affiliate program.

• Many affiliate marketers make a huge mistake of posting their ads on forums. Forums can be used to promote your affiliate programs and your website but in a proper manner. Posting banners is very similar to spamming and may easily upset forum administrators.

• Always do your research before promoting your affiliate program to a potential customer. Do not offer affiliate programs to visitors who are not at all interested in the products associated with the program. This is a futile endeavor.

• If you promote affiliate programs offered by other merchants, ensure that you develop your own advertising copy. Many websites commit a common mistake of using the same advertising copy as used by the merchant themselves.

• Avoid Copyright infringement in all cases. Always use original content or ask permission to use graphic images or text found on other websites.

• Do not submit your programs to free websites. These may be free but your programs would hardly ever be noticed, especially by Search Engines. Moreover, your own ranking would get lowered if you submit your affiliate programs to such websites.

• Avoid using caps on your web page or email ad. Using caps is symbolic to shouting, which never goes well with potential customers. A few words may be written in capital text to give them additional emphasis. However, such practice should be limited.

• Always respond to all queries sent by visitors as soon as possible. A slight delay in your response could easily result in loss of a potential client.

• Do not use pop-up ads along with your webpage. Most surfers are likely to close their browser if they come across pop-ups.

• Do not host your website on a free server or use free email accounts. This gives a negative impression to visitors. Using free hosts and email accounts looks cheesy and loses sales.

• Many websites do not have an opt-in list. Create an opt-in and opt-out list for your visitors. Without these, there is no way of tracking potential customers. Visitors should be allowed to opt-in at any time as well as opt-out at any time.

• Most sites have a poor tracking mechanism. It is essential that you track all business activities. Accurate record keeping is crucial. There are many software tools, discussed earlier in this chapter, than can automate your record keeping process with minimal error.

• A 'mall' site is best used as a central hub to send visitors to your other domains. As a main or only site, unfocused mall sites don't get traffic from the engines, and they don't convert well to sales. Highly focused theme sites attract traffic and sales.

• Offline advertising may not be effective. A lot of money and effort should not be wasted on offline advertising. Most people rarely check websites that are advertised in local magazines or newspapers.

• Avoid focus on animated banner ads. These simply use up bandwidth, thus making web pages load slower.

• While advertising do not degrade other competitors. It is recommended that you highlight your products’ uniqueness and superiority but never mortify other products.

• Banners or text links that expire are guaranteed to eventually send your visitor to a broken link or show a broken graphic on your page. Time sensitive advertising is best used only in email advertising campaigns.

• Never put affiliate links on your homepage. This is similar to asking your visitors to leave immediately. Give them a chance to browse, sign up for your newsletter and decide that they'd like to come back to your place before introducing them to your affiliates.

• Technology changes with amazing speed. To keep up with this rapidly evolving industry, you must invest time and money in research. The investment is a tax write-off, and will pay you back many times over in additional revenue.

Hopefully this list has proven helpful to you and has shown you some red flags to avoid when it comes time to promote your own affiliate site.  Good luck and take care.

How To Create effective Ads

Today’s article deals with a subject that we all need to read, study and understand…how to create an EFFECTIVE advertising.

Online advertising on the Internet leaves a lot to be desired. We have ads that emulate Windows-warning boxes. We have pop-ups and pop-unders. All of these are developed with the intent to make people notice them. However, most of them only end up irritating them. Advertisers, especially those with small budgets, can't afford to waste money on ineffective buys. In order to optimize your advertising buys, you need to concentrate on improving your creative.

Here are some tips that might help:

Step 1: Define clear goals of your advertising campaign

The most important aspect of any advertising campaign is to have a clear objective in mind. You may be targeting a specific group of people, your initial aim may be to target at least 1000 internet surfers and so on and so forth. Have a well defined, clear purpose.

Step 2: Identify the most effective sites for achieving your goals

Sites that are most relevant to your product or service will, more than likely, be your best bet; but also consider larger sites or networks that can target the audience you're trying to reach. They can be very cost-effective. If you have multiple products or services that appeal to various target markets, you'll have to consider sites that reach all those various segments.

Step 3: Craft your message to fit the needs of the audience you're targeting

This comes down to understanding the audience of the sites you're advertising on. The message you use on a technology site to appeal to technologically savvy customers won't have the same appeal for visitors on a small-business site. Focus your campaign.

Step 4: Content of your Ad

Pay particular attention to the content of the Ad. The content should be such that it clearly distinguishes your product or service from your competitors’. Have a catchy headline. The headline is probably the most important part of the Ad – It is the customer puller.

Step 5: Formulate the specific promotional messages that correspond to your goals

The promotional messages should concentrate on the major selling points of your product or service and have a strong call-to-action.

Step 6:Make the desired action clearly visible

This certainly doesn't mean the desired action should necessarily blink, bounce or do flips, but it should be visible within an accepted format for the media you're using. In the case of the Internet, underlined text links, "click here" text entry boxes, and pull-down menus are all ways you can make the desired action clearly visible.

Step 7: Design the ad so it looks like it belongs on the sites where you're advertising

For instance, you may want to use the site's font faces in your text, color schemes in your background, font color choices overall, and emulate images where appropriate. Try to conform to the environment so potential customers visiting the site don't gasp in shock when they see your ad.

Step 8: Produce multiple versions of each ad

Create three or four versions of each ad, changing the promotional message, call-to-action, font faces and color schemes. This is especially important if you're doing price testing or gauging reaction to specific promotions. By splitting your advertising buy among the various versions of your creative, you can then start to optimize your buy based on the message that works best.

With these tips, you will not only be able to create an ad, but you will be able to create an effective ad that does what it is supposed to do – sell your products and services. 

Talk to you soon!

Warmly

Ranjit

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How To Choose a Domain Name

In this article you will learn how to chose an effective and memorable domain name and learn how you can actually increase traffic by using an old, expired domain name.

Times wasting so lets get started…

In the physical world, you can distinguish a business because of its structure, window displays, or signs. You can tell that a bank is a bank, or a clothing store is indeed a clothing store.

In the Internet, however, it is an entirely different story altogether. Your domain name is the only clue to your online business. You do not have visual clues: no location, no look, and no store design. Instead, users have to type in a word or a set of words to reach your site. Your prospective visitor has no way of knowing what your site is all about until he/she finds it and reads its contents. Who can ever tell that Amazon.com sells books? Or that Excite is a search engine?

Your domain name can spell your success on the Internet. A good domain name is the best asset you can ever have. It can make your business stand out in the crowd, or just float aimlessly in space.

The need to provide immediate clues to an online business led to the prevalence of generic domain names. Generic names instantly provide the user with an idea of what a business is all about, what to expect and look for in a site. For instance, Etoys.com is a toy store.

The temptation of the generic name has been so powerful; that some companies even paid ridiculously high prices to get the name they want. The domains Loans.com and Wines.com were both bought for $3 million each. Telephone.com was acquired for $1.75 million, while Bingo.com sold for $1.1 million.

However, generic names do not necessarily create the “buzz” that you’d like surrounding your website. Branding has always been about proper names: McDonald's did not name their store Hamburger. Hertz is not called Car Rental. FedEx is not Mail Carrier. Kodak is not Photographs. Microsoft is not Computer Software.

For better branding results, your domain name should be memorable and easy to remember. Remember the following tips when creating a domain name.

• The domain name should be short
• The domain name should be simple
• It should be suggestive of your business category
• It should be unique
• It should be easy to interpret and pronounce
• It should be personalized
• It should not be difficult to spell
• It should not be difficult to remember

Domain names can be registered through many different companies (known as "registrars") - a listing of these companies is available at ICANN: http://www.icann.org. You can register for 1 to 10 years - prices can vary anywhere from $10 to $20 per year. Most web hosting companies, as explained later, will handle the registration process for you, but make sure that you are properly listed as the owner of the domain when it is registered. If you have registered a domain name for a specific period, make sure you renew it in time. You can be surprised at the number of cases, where site owners have let a domain name slip by if they have not renewed in time.

Using expired domains to skyrocket your traffic

At some point while you’re building your website, you’re going to have to buy a domain name. This is the address that users type into their browsers to reach your site. That takes about five seconds, and depending on the name you want and whether anyone else owns it, it won’t cost you more than a few bucks.

But domain names are also a golden opportunity to make some easy money.

I’m not talking about Internet real estate, where you buy up good names and sell them on for a profit—if you haven’t got into that now, forget it. The bottom’s fallen out of the market and the best domains are long gone.

I’m talking about expiring domains.

Thousands of webmasters invest time, effort and money to promote their site and build up traffic. Many of them then lose interest and move on, leaving their site active. That means that although they still own the domain, they’re not actively promoting it. But they don’t need to. All the automatic marketing systems they’ve put in place are still bringing in traffic. The site runs itself.

Now, at some point the ownership of those domains is going to expire. If you snap up those domains once they come back onto the market, you’ve got a pre-built stream of customers. You can either rebuild the site, or redirect the traffic to your domain. You could set up an affiliate program get paid for users someone else paid for.

It’s that easy.

There are tons of options, and lots of easy ways to make lots of money with very little effort. Opportunities like these are everywhere.

Websites such as www.expiredtraffic.com or www.deleteddomains.com actually do all the legwork and let you reap all the rewards. Expired Traffic even has an affiliate program and  www.snapnames.com allows you to back-order a specific domain name. 

Do be careful when using other sites though. There are some swindlers out there that will sell you subscriptions, provide you with outdated lists, take your money and keep the good domains for themselves.  It happens, and there’s little point in taking a risk when www.deleteddomains.com does such a great job.

Warmly

Ranjit

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Creating an effective newsletter

Creating a successful newsletter can be extremely rewarding. Subscribers and customers respond with glowing feedback, online sales jump and your customer relationships and brand loyalty deepens. Here are some useful tips that might help in creating a successful newsletter.

Define Success

Ask yourself “What is the purpose of your newsletter?” A newsletter is a substantial investment of company resources in terms of time and energy, and you need to define in as tangible terms as possible the purpose of your Newsletter.

 
Voice and Personality

Establish a voice or editorial personality – whether newsy, serious, gossipy or funny – that is synergistic with the image you want to portray and connects with your audience. Remember that email newsletters aren't email promotions designed to stimulate immediate action. Sales and promotional copy don't suit e-newsletters. Nor does the traditional tone of broadcast corporate communications.

Think of your newsletter as a one-on-one conversation. Just imagine sitting in a coffee shop talking informally with a customer. That's the starting point for your approach--a more personable and appropriate "human" voice will come naturally. Drop the jargon, drop the sales pitch, be as honest as you can, and talk like a human being.

You can have as much or as little personality as is appropriate. Consider adding a brief editorial, a comment or two, an editor's note, a couple of lines of commentary, a touch of opinion; adding a little human element here and there. Sign editorials, give authors a byline, or list some names down in the administrative section of each issue to which your readers can relate to.

From Line

Whether a person’s name, name of the newsletter or company name – determine what will resonate best with your readers and stay with it.

 
Subject Line

 “Vol. 1, Issue #8” or “Company News” are not enticing subject lines. They are certainly consistent and simple, but they don’t tell your readers anything that will motivate them to open your email. Your subject line is your calling card - entice your readers with the most interesting or intriguing information in your Newsletter..

Style/Format

Establish a format and layout of your Newsletter that is clean and simple, with elements of the Newsletter (table of contents; “Tips”, subscription information, etc. located in the same spot each issue).

 
Content

Figure out what your readers want and give it to them. Seek continuous improvement by obtaining reader feedback and monitoring click-through rates to determine what types of articles are most popular.

Another dilemma that we all confront is too much information and too little time. The newsletter’s job is to keep readers on top of trends and the latest developments in the industry. Aim for articles and feature stories to meet one of the following criteria by including either: major industry occurrences, forward thinking industry ideas, education on issues or new techniques, or business opportunities.

Whether your customers work out of a corporate or home office, employees need answers to questions and tips for improving business activities. E-newsletters provide you with an opportunity to point out work inefficiencies, and share relevant best practice. When you create a newsletter, try changing your focus from selling products and services to solving your customers’ problems. Think about what they need and give options they don’t know exist

Frequency

Determine how frequently your readers want to hear from you/receive your Newsletter – and what you can commit to. As a thumb rule, a weekly newsletter is ideal. However, don’t launch a weekly newsletter if you are not absolutely certain that you can distribute a quality Newsletter every week. A fortnightly newsletter is a good option too.

 
Timing

Test and pick a day and time that works best ...and stick to it. Readers should almost be able to set their watches by the receipt time of your Newsletter.

 
Make it Viral

Provide information readers can act on or that stimulates reaction – forwarding it to friends and peers, stimulating purchases or requests for additional information. Make it easy for readers to forward articles and information to peers and friends. Provide a “Forward to a Friend” link that enables readers to forward the Newsletter with a personalized note.

Search

Make it easy to find articles of interest and back issues. Provide a table of contents and links to articles within the newsletter and to resources and past Articles on your site.

 
Printing

Consider providing “printer-friendly formats” on your Web site.

Personalize

At minimum address the reader by name. The most successful newsletters have a human being associated with them...and a personality. If possible, your Newsletter should be “written by a person” at your company...not the company.

Write in layman terms with simple vocabulary

Not everyone has the vocabulary that you and editors do. Use words that are easy-to-understand, and if you do use technical terms, provide a definition that people can relate to. There is nothing more frustrating then a definition that makes less sense than the word itself.

Test

Test the Newsletter on few email addresses to check for errors and other issues – before sending to the entire distribution list.

If you lack experience in print media, seek out assistance if you know someone in the field. If not, don't worry – the above mentioned basic principles apply. Plan to research your material thoroughly and avoid factual or editing errors, as they will make you seem less credible.

Add hyperlinks and include updates on old material should new information surface. The typical form of newsletter is a one-way communication where you provide information to customers, such as product updates and announcements. You have the option of formatting your e-mail by including colorized text and a variety of fonts, but not all e-mail software supports HTML mail. Consider writing your newsletter in plain text or offer two mailing lists- one for plain text mailings and the other for HTML e-mail.

Make sure you Include:

• Table of Contents
• Hyperlinks for customers who want more information for a featured topic
• Exciting secrets or tips related to your product or service
• Contact information

E-newsletters can take up a good amount of time if not managed correctly. The use of a list server (a piece of software that runs on your Internet provider's computer or on your own web server) is a good option. It will automatically manage a list of e-mail addresses. Once you send your newsletter to the list server, it distributes the letter to the stored addresses. For more information on list servers, contact your Internet service provider. If you opt to use another method, make sure you have a plan for handling incoming and outgoing mail when your customer base increases.

In conclusion, your newsletter can serve as an extension of your business that will reach out to your customers.  It will allow you to maintain regular contact with them and serve as an effective and rewarding addition to your marketing arsenal. These tips should help you put it all together and help you create an exceptional newsletter.   

Ranjit

Blogs 

In this article we will discuss a relatively new intertnet tool – the Blog.

Blog (also known as Weblog) is traditionally a webpage where pre-surfer or a blogger

“logs” all pages he/she finds interesting. In other words, it is a Web page that contains

brief, chronologically arranged items of information. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author.

Weblogs provide a series of annotated links to items such as news stories, and often

include personal rants. They are maintained by one person, most commonly someone

who is involved in Web design or some other tech-related field.

A blog is often a mixture of what is happening on a particular website 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. Blogs can be used to introduce products to potential customers.

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.

Blog as a marketing/ Revenue Generating tool

Blogs offer huge marketing potential. They are highly strategic tools that can strengthen relationships, share knowledge, increase collaboration, and improve branding. Besides, blogs can represent the real voice of the website. 

It can also be used as a revenue generating web page. You can even sign up for a

revenue generating blog totally automated by the folks at Auto-Blog Money Miracle.

A weblog can take the form of a diary, a news service (or summaries of and links to

current news items on a topic), a collection of links to other Web sites, a series of book reviews or products, reports of activity on a project, the journal of an expedition, and

much more. Businesses can use this tool to effectively advertise their products or

services. 

One of the most interesting ways to use a weblog is by allowing it to function as a

discussion forum for customers of your products or services. In this case, the

webmaster can give posting rights to other people – visitors and customers, and their

posts may or may not be reviewed before they are published to the Web page.

Customers, in such a way can post favorable comments about the websites offerings.

Some weblogs are set up in such a way that only the owner or the owner and certain

other people have posting rights, but anyone else can add comments to the posts.

Weblogs when used with newsletters present immense marketing opportunities:

§ Articles within newsletters can be linked to a blog, extending life and creating a

massive conversation.

§ You can offer a bidirectional forum to customers to get true, personal opinions on

your products and services.

§ Company experts can start a blog and become industry experts, helping your

company edge out competition and, through this interactive forum, draw customers

into another exchange of information and thoughts.

§ The beauty of this interplay is you can layer your blog with editorial controls.

How to create a Weblog?

The majority of weblogs are now created using software or services designed

specifically

for this purpose. Some of the software is free - and some of the organizations that

provide weblog software will also provide free server space to house a weblog so that

it is publicly accessible on the Internet. There are also commercial versions of some

of the free software; these commercial versions often provide more features. Some

weblog software is available only as commercial software. Alternatively, bloggers

can create and maintain their weblog using free software or a free weblog service,

but use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to load the resulting weblog to their own Website.

There are many blogging softwares available easily on the Internet. One of the most

popular weblogger is “Blogger” which can be downloaded for free at

http://www.blogger.com. Most webloggers simplify the process of Website creation. However, they do require basic knowledge of FTP, Website structures and a few

technical terms. Besides, creating an advanced weblog requires knowledge of HTML.

So get out there and start your own Blog…it’s free, easy and can work seamlessly

with the rest of your website or newsletter. Until next time. 

Warmly, 

Ranjit

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Top Search Engines 

 Ok, so you may know how the search engines work and you may know that you need to be listed by them, but do you know which engines get you more bang for the buck? In this week’s installment, we will review the top search engines on the Internet today.

Google

Google has increased in popularity tenfold the past several years. They have

gone from beta testing, to becoming the Internet's largest index of web pages

in a very short time. Their spider, affectionately named "Googlebot", crawls the

web and provides updates to Google's index about once a month.

Google.com began as an academic search engine. Google, by far, has a very

good algorithm of ranking pages returned from a result, probably one of the main reasons it has become so popular over the years. Google has several methods which determine page rank in returned searches.

Yahoo

Yahoo! is one of the oldest web directories and portals on the Internet today,

and the site went live in August of 1994. Yahoo! is a 100% human edited

directory, and provides secondary search results using Google.

Yahoo! is also one of the largest traffic generators around, as far as web

directories and search engines go. Unfortunately, however, it is also one

of the most difficult to get listed in, unless of course you pay to submit your

site. Even if you pay it doesn't guarantee you will get listed.

Either way, if you suggest a URL, it is "reviewed" by a Yahoo! editor, and if approved will appear in the next index update.

AltaVista

Many who have access to web logs may have seen a spider named 'scooter' accessing their pages. Scooter used to be AltaVista's robot. However, since

the Feb 2001 site update, a newer form of Scooter is now crawling the web. Whichever spider AltaVista uses, it is one of the largest search engines on the

net today, next to Google.

It will usually take several months for AltaVista to index your entire site, although

the past few months scooter hasn't been deep crawling too well. Unlike Google, AltaVista will only crawl and index 1 link deep, so it takes a good amount of time

to index your site depending on how large your site is.

AltaVista gets most of its results from its own index, however they do pull the

top 5 results of each search from Overture (formerly Goto).

Inktomi

Inktomi's popularity grew several years ago as they powered the secondary

search database that had driven Yahoo. Since then, Yahoo as switched to

using Google as their secondary search and backend database, however

Inktomi is just as popular now, as they were several years ago, if not more so.

Their spiders are named "Slurp", and different versions of Slurp crawls the

web many different times throughout the month, as Inktomi powers many sites search results. There isn't much more to Inktomi then that. Slurp puts heavy

weight on Title and description tags, and will rarely deep crawl a site. Slurp

usually only spider’s pages that are submitted to its index.

Inktomi provides results to a number of sites. Some of these are America Online, MSN, Hotbot, Looksmart, About, Goto, CNet, Geocities, NBCi, ICQ and many

more.

Lycos

Lycos is one of the oldest search engines on the Internet today, next to Altavista and Yahoo. Their spider, named "T-Rex", crawls the web and provides updates to the Lycos index from time to time. The FAST crawler provides results for Lycos in addition to its own database.

The Lycos crawler does not weigh META tags to heavily, instead it relies on its

own ranking algorithm to rank pages returned in results. The URL, META title,

text headings, and word frequency are just a few of the methods Lycos uses to

rank pages. Lycos does support pages with Frame content. However, any page

that isn't at least 75 words in content is not indexed.

Excite

 Excite has been around the web for many years now. Much more of a portal than just simply a search engine, Excite used to be a fairly popular search engine, until companies such as Google seemed to have dominated the search engine market. As of recently, Excite no longer accepts submissions of URL's, and appears to no longer spider. To get into the Excite search results, you need to be either listed

with Overture or Inktomi.

Looksmart

 Getting  listed with Looksmart could mean getting a good amount of traffic to your site. Looksmart's results appear in many search engines, including AltaVista,

MSN, CNN, and many others. Looksmart has two options to submit your site. If

your site is generally non-business related, you can submit your site to Zeal

(Looksmart's

sister site ), or if you are a business, you can pay a fee to have your site listed. Either method will get you listed in Looksmart and its partner sites if you are approved. Once you have submitted your site, and it is approved for listing it will take up to about 7 days for your site to be listed on Looksmart and its partner

sites.

 AOL Search

 America Online signed a multiyear pact with Google for Web search results and accompanying ad-sponsored links, ending relationships with pay-for-performance service Overture Services and Inktomi, its algorithmic search provider of nearly three years Take some time to register with these search engines as soon as possible and watch the traffic grow.

 Warmly,

 Ranjit

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 Making your website attractive, interesting, engaging and interactive

 In this article you will learn the importance designing your website around your customers and their needs. A websites form and content is what will determine

if a visitor will stay just a visitor or turn into your next customer. Today we will discuss how to accomplish the later.

To succeed at your online business (whether you are selling your own product/service or are selling for other merchants as an affiliate), you need a

Web site created just for that - a simple, focused site. One that is easy to build, maintenance-free, low cost, credible, and a powerful traffic-builder and

customer-converter.

Having the right tool and the right product alone doesn’t insure the success of

your website. There are many factors to be considered while designing a site. Unfortunately, most of these are easily ignored by Internet business owners. 

Build It for Speed - It's a fact of modern life - people are in a hurry. This means

that you have between 10 and 30 seconds to capture your potential customer's attention. To minimize your load time, keep graphics small. Compress them

where possible. Use flashy technology (JavaScript, Flash, Streaming

Audio/Video, animation) sparingly and only if it is important to your presentation. 

Target your Market - Know who your market is and make certain that your site caters to their needs. It is critical that your site reflect the values of your

potential customers. Is your market mostly business professionals? If so, the site must be clean and professional. Is your product aimed mostly a teenagers and young adults? Then your site could be more informal and relaxed. The key

here is to know your market and build the site to their preferences.

Focus the Site - Make certain your web site is focused on the goal, selling your product or service. A site offering many unrelated products is not necessarily unfocused, but this is often the case. If your business does offer many products, dedicate a unique page for each instead of trying to sell them all from one page. 

Credibility Is Crucial - The most professionally designed site won't sell if your customers don't believe in you. A clear privacy statement is one way to build

your credibility. Provide a prominent link to your privacy statement from every

page on the site as well as from any location that you are asking your visitors for personal information. Provide legitimate contact information on line. 

Navigation should be simple - Make site navigation easy and intuitive. Simple

and smooth navigation adds to the convenience of the visitors. Add powerful

search and catalog features. Many times a lot of visitors do not have the

patience to navigate through the whole website to find what they are looking for. 

Consistency is the key - Make sure the site is consistent in look, feel and design. Nothing is more jarring and disturbing to a customer than feeling as if they have

just gone to another site. Keep colors and themes constant throughout the site.

Make your site interactive and personalized – Make your website interactive. Add feedback forms as well as email forms that allow your prospective customers to

ask you any questions they might have pertaining to a product. Personalization

of your website is another key element that can lead to customer delight and can increase your sales. Personalization technology provides you the analytic tools

to facilitate cross-selling and up-selling when the customer is buying online. It

would give you an idea of what products to cross-sell and up-sell. For example, when a person buys a CD player, a disc cleaner can also be offered.

Content is King - Good content sells a product. Ask yourself the following

questions. Does your copy convey the message you wish to get across to your visitors? Is it compelling? Does it lead your visitor through the sales process?

Have others review, critique and edit your copy to insure it is delivering the

intended message. Always double check your spelling and grammar.

These eight, simple rules will go a long way toward the improvement of your

website and most importantly, turn visitors into customers.

Warmly, 

Ranjit

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Monitoring and Tracking

In this edition we will discuss the importance web site tracking and explain to you why it is so important to pay attention to your current web traffic.

Understanding what your visitors do on your site is crucial information, not to mention interesting. If your visitors proceed to purchase a product but then a

large majority leave the site when they get to a specific page in the order process then you need to know about it. It could be that this page is confusing or hard to use. Fixing it could increase your sales by 200%. This is just an example; there

are many reasons why you want a detailed analysis of your site visitors.

Most website hosting services offer a stats package that you can study. If you're

not sure where this is, call up your hosting service and ask them. Statistics are a vital part of tracking your marketing progress. If you don't have access to website statistics get a package that can help you in this area. Do not get a counter that

just shows how many visitors you've had. You'll be missing out on vital information that can help strengthen weaknesses in your site.

A good website hosting service would offer traffic logs that provide an invaluable insight into the traffic being referred to a web site from various sources such as search engines, directories and other links.

Unfortunately traffic tracking provided by web hosting services is often in the f

orm of raw traffic log files or other difficult to understand cryptic formats. These

log files are basically text files that describe actions on the site. It is literally impossible to use the raw log files to understand what your visitors are doing.

If you do not have the patience to go through these huge traffic logs, opting

for a traffic-logging package would be a good idea. 

Basically two options are available to you and these are: using a log analysis package or subscribing to a remotely hosted traffic logging service. A remotely hosted traffic logging service may be easy to use and is generally the cheaper option of the two. Web Trends Live and HitsLink are two good, remotely hosted, traffic-monitoring services worth considering. However, WebTrends Live is a

more complicated system and is suitable for larger ecommerce websites. “SuperStats” is another recommended traffic logging service. You might also

want to check out Tom Traffic system.

These services do not use your log files. Typically a small section of code is

placed on any page you want to track. When the page is viewed, information is stored on the remote server and available in real time to view in charts and tables form.

 Log analysis packages are typically expensive to buy and complex to set up.

Apart from commercial packages there are also some free log analysis packages available, such as Analog. 

 A good traffic logging service would provide statistics pertaining to the following:

• · How many people visit your site?
• · Where are they from? 
• · How are visitors finding your site? 
• · What traffic is coming from search engines, links from other sites, and          other  sources? 
• · What keyword search phrases are they using to find your site? 
• · What pages are frequented the most - what information are visitors most interested in? 
• · How do visitors navigate within your web site?
•  

 Knowing the answers to these and other fundamental questions is essential for making informed decisions that maximize the return on investment (ROI) of your

web site investment.

The most important aspect of tracking visitors to your website is analyzing all the statistics you get from your tracking software. The three main statistics that will

show your overall progress are hits, visitors and page views. Hits are tracked

when any picture or page loads from your server on to a visitor’s browser. Hits, however, can be very misleading. It is quite an irrelevant statistic for your website.

The statistic that is probably the most important for a website is Page

Views/Visitors. This gives you a good indication of two things. First, how many people are coming to your site, and secondly how long are they staying on your site. If you have 250 visitors and 300 page views you can figure that most visitors view one page on your site and then leave. Generally, if you're not getting 2 page views per visitor then you should consider upgrading your site's content so your visitors will stay around longer.

If you see the number of visitors you have increasing as well as the number of

page views per visitor increasing then keep up the good work! Always look

for this stat as an overall barometer of how your site design is going and if your marketing campaigns are taking hold.

 Also, a good stat to look for is unique visitors. Once a person visits your site they will not be added to the unique visitors’ category if they visit again. This is a good way to track new visitors to your website.

Page views are a good indication of how "sticky" your website is. A good statistic

to keep is Page Views divided by the number of Visitors you have. This statistic

will give you a good idea if your content is interesting and if your visitors are

staying.

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Banners

In this article we will discuss the ins and outs of banner ads.  Are they worth your advertising dollars or are they a thing of the past?

When the Web first started, banners were all the rage. Today, they’re pretty much passé. They’re no longer a novelty and unless they’re super-clever, users pretty much ignore them. Conversion rates have dropped through the floor and many advertisers have found other ways to push their products.

And yet, every website still contains a whopping great banner ad splashed along the top or running up the side. In part, that’s because they’ve become more sophisticated with better targeting and improved graphics. But in practice, banner ads tend to be used for one of two reasons: as a method of gaining/ giving users through an affiliate program; or as a way of generating revenue—or traffic—through paid advertising.

Both these methods work to some extent, but the key is always to make sure the economics make sense. We’ll look closely at the math in this chapter, but before we go on to talk about the math of banner ads—and how to tell whether your banner campaign is worthwhile—let’s just take a look at the terms involved. You’re going to see these words whenever you join an affiliate program or take part in any other kind of online marketing scheme. You should definitely be familiar with them.

Banner Glossary

·        Banner Ad — A graphic ad linked to an advertiser’s website. These usually run across the top of the page but can also run up the page (“skyscrapers”). Banners are usually limited by size.

·        Banner Views —The number of times a banner is seen by users. This is usually the same as "page views," but counts the number of times the banner is actually downloaded rather than the number of times the page is downloaded. Some users click away before the banner finishes loading.

·        Clicks/ Click Throughs — Banners are operated by clicking the cursor over them. Not too surprisingly these responses are called “clicks” or “click throughs.”

·        Click Through Rate (CTR) — The percentage of users who see the banner and click on it.

·        Conversion Rate —The percentage of people who visit your site and actually give you money. The higher the better!

·        Cookies — Small files placed on a user’s computer. They’re used for all sorts of reasons and by all sorts of sites. Banner ads use them to make sure the user hasn’t seen the banner recently, which banner brought them to the advertiser’s site, and even which adverts they’ve seen recently.

·        CPM — "Cost Per Mille." The amount you pay for every thousand times a banner is shown—the usual way of charging for banners.

·        Hits — The number of times a server receives a request for a Web page or an image. Not a great way to measure interest. One page can have lots of images and get lots of hits, even if it’s only seen once. Often, people will say "hits" when they really mean "page views" or "impressions."

·        Page Impressions or Page Views —The number of times a Web page has been requested by the server. Much more accurate than hits: each view is a potential customer looking at a page of your site. But not necessarily a different customer...

·        Unique Users —  The people who download a Web page, counted by IP address. You want to bring lots of users to your site so that you can create a broad customer base. The same user clicking on a banner a dozen times could cost you money without increasing your sales. Most reputable sites will check the IP address of the person clicking on a link and only count it once in a 24-hour period. If a site doesn’t do this, don’t advertise with them.

Banner Economics

Business online, like business offline, always boils down to math: the difference between cost and revenue. If your banner campaign is costing more than it’s earning, you won’t be in business for very long. To figure out how your campaign is doing, you’re going to need to know your Cost Per Mille, your Click Through Rate and your Conversion Rate. These are your basic tools. If you don’t know them, find out!

Let’s say your CPM is $20, your CTR is 1%, and your Conversion Rate is 4%. (So you’re paying $20 every 1,000 times your banner is shown, it brings you 10 new users, and you make one sale for every 25 users the ad brings). The question you need to ask yourself is how much are you wasting on the 24 users who don’t buy.

Cost per visitor = $20 / 10 = $2 So each visitor costs you $2, but you need 25 visitors to make one sale, so...

Cost per sale = $2 * 25 = $50...if your product is worth less than $50, you’re making a loss.

That’s pretty simple, and as you can see, there’s not a lot of room to maneuver here. Margins are tight on banner advertising and that applies to both the site selling the advertising space and the webmaster buying it.

Of course, hard cash isn’t the only way to measure the success of a banner ad, and one reason they’re still popular is that they’re a pretty effective branding tool. After all, advertisers spend millions on billboards without expecting motorists to drive straight through them and make a purchase! On the Web, those advertisers can even be reasonably sure that the people who see their ads will be interested in them. But branding costs money—lots of it—with no guarantee of results. It’s usually best left to the big boys.

The banner ads on my sites usually send users to my affiliate partners, and the banner ads I place on other people’s sites usually come from my affiliate programs. They don’t cost me anything and as long I’m making the sales to pay my affiliate partners, everybody’s happy.

If you do decide to purchase banner advertisements though, and if you have a very specific market in mind, make sure they are strategically placed—on sites where the traffic will most definitely be interested in your product or service. Find a site that suits exactly your specific product and you’re going to be appealing directly to your target market.

That’s it for this week.  As you can see, banner ads are not the guaranteed money making tools that they once were but they can still be used effectively if targeted properly.  Is banner advertising for you?  Only you can determine that.

Ranjit