There is, however, a very boring aspect in email marketing: preparing your emails for your autoresponder software.

Formatting your emails is a 3-step process:

1. Re-format your source text so that the lines are no longer than 50 to 60 characters per line. Doing this, you get better readability and thus more people will actually read it till the end.
2. Next you must create 2 different versions of your message, 1 being plain text, and the other one being in HTML format.
3. Finally you have to search for each URL in your source text and turn it into an HTML hyperlink for your HTML email.

Now, keep reading, as you’ll certainly like what you are about to read!

For me, this is probably the most boring task in my daily work. That is of course the reason why I’m outsourcing it now.

It’s also the reason why I asked my programmer to create a tool for me and my assistant that helps making email formatting fast and easy.

Knowing that you are likely to have to do the same boring tasks, I’m giving the email formatting tool to the public, so that you and your staff can use it too.

Whenever you have a series of messages to format for your autoresponder, just click to my free email formatting tool, and it will help you do the job.

These are the features:

1. Formatting short lines for easy reading.
2. Creating 2 versions for text and HTML email.
3. Creating the correct source code for your HMTL hyperlinks automatically.

If you’re an affiliate marketer, you will be happy to see that it keeps your affiliate links intact.

Here’s how to use it, it’s so easy, your dog could do it in 3 simple steps:

1. At the top, you will find a box where you paste your original text.
2. Then you click the button ”Click Here to Format Your Email’.
3. Like magic and at the blink of an eye, your email is now formatted and ready to paste into your autoresponder without requiring any tedious work from you! Two text fields are now filled with your nicely formatted text and HTML email.

Check it out for yourself at http://www.InternetBusinessMastermind.com/email-formatting.

http://EzineMarketingCenter.com/book/twr/launch.htm

Words can bring joy, hope, and love to others. And in this case, words can bring you money too. Today I want to introduce to you… “THINK, WRITE & RETIRE : How To Turn Words Into Wealth – Easily!”, a marvelous book written by Dr. Mani, a heart surgeon and an infopreneur at the same time.

This book has all ready gathered support and stalwart testimonies from known businessmen like Chris Garett, Teri Dean, Carrie Wilkerson, Mark Joyner, Yaro Starak, and Joel Comn.

Even better, this book aims to give charity—definitely all of the sales generated from this book will serve as funds for a child’s heart operation!

Just think about what you’ll be getting and giving.

Purchase a copy of “THINK, WRITE & RETIRE : How To Turn Words Into Wealth – Easily!” on August 25, 2009 (launch date) and you will be given an ultimate guide to becoming an infopreneur… and save a child’s life!

Not only that! To make this offer a real catch not worth missing, Dr. Mani is giving away bonuses and free gifts amounting to $500 when you purchase the book on its launch date.

The main goal here is to propel the book to Amazon.com’s HOT 100 list—acquire more and better visibility and, in turn, produce more money for charity.

Don’t miss this opportunity! YOU can take part in this noble cause. Order your copy at Amazon.com and claim your gifts at http://EzineMarketingCenter.com/book/twr/launch.htm

Probably 95% of all internet businesses are ’1 man shows’, but very few people realize that a one-person internet business on its own isn’t going to make  you a  fortune.

To achieve the number of subscribers and customers that will finance your freedom, you need to build a network of peers and you need to get the help of people who already are on higher levels of success.

Now, obviously every marketer would like to get the support of the big guys – but how do you pull it off?

After all, a highly successful online entrepreneur will rarely have the time to pay attention to any individual on his list of hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

The good news is: you have to work on it a bit, but it isn’t really hard to make contact to the super successful people in your industry.

As with all laws of success, the underlying principle is pretty simple and easy to understand:

===> You need to build a relationship, a friendship at best.

This article shares a range of action-tips you can implement today to get noticed by the top guys.

Who should you target for networking?

1. Target marketers you like.

Chose those that are successful and a match to you in regards of how they conduct their business. If you target someone who uses questionable strategies just because he’s successful, you will not be happy with the ‘friendship’ in the long run. And, following that guru’s advice, you’re very likely to steer your business in the wrong direction.

2. Target marketers whose business model is close to what you want to do.

That’s pretty self-explanatory, isn’t it? If you want to make money in the  ‘make money online’ niche, you’re not really going to need good relations to the top dogs in the porn industry.

3. Target marketers on different scales of success.

You may not get the fastest results only targeting those on the top of the food chain. Start building relationships on many levels at the same time.

4. Join small scale communities and target the OWNER.

It’s easier to get noticed in a small community.

Here are 3 examples from the internet marketing niche:

• The warrior forum, owned by Allen Says, has 133,000 members.
• Turbocommunity, owned by John Delavera, has 3,000 members.
• TheInternetMarketingInnerCircle , owned by Willie Crawford, has 450 members.

Who’s attention is easier to get?

Allen Says’s, who has a six figure member base?

Or Wilie Crawford’s, and John Delavera’s, who have smaller, intimate communities?

Are all of them super successful entrepreneurs?

You bet!

Check them out and participate in their communities:

• Warrior forum
• Turbocommunity
• TheInternetMarketingInnerCircle

How To Build The Relationship?

1. Seven ways to put yourself on the guru’s radar.

Your first goal is to get noticed. Your name needs to show up where these people are naturally looking for new, valuable contacts.

(1) Become a subscriber.
(2) Become a customer.
(3) Become a guest at his Blog.
(4) Become a forum member.
(5) Become a participant at seminars.
(6) Become a member of mastermind groups.
(7) Become a paying mentoree.

2. Be active, contribute to the marketers efforts.

Everyone who helps him to make his own projects more successful will get his attention.

(a)Send testimonials.

If the marketer has forms for submission of testimonials this is only the second best choice because they may be managed by assistants. Try to find a way to get your testimonial directly to the right person, email preferably.

(b)Post useful Blog comments.

If a marketer has his own Blog he’s usually happy about everyone posting meaningful comments. In many cases the marketer will publicly answer your comment on the Blog to get the discussion going.

(c) Participate in forum discussions.

Typical forum problems:
- Too little activity from members.
- Not enough ‘active’ moderators.
Any forum owner appreciates people who help to keep momentum in the forum. Answer to a lot of posts and start your own threads. A forum might be the place where you get the first ‘personal, 1:1 contact’ to the owner through PMs.

3. Be proactive and offer help

(a) Be alert if any help is needed. The marketer might ask for help in a specific area through the forum, through Blog posts or through emails that go to his list.
(b) Offer to moderate in the forum.
(c) Try to find aspects in his business where you can offer help actively. Offer what you’re good at.

How To Be Worthy Of Getting Professional Feedback?

Remember that any successful entrepreneur has a lot of things to take care of, be respectful of their time.

1. Be a doer, clearly act on the feedback.

Nothing puts successful entrepreneurs more off than a newbie who demands lots of help, lots of time, and lots of attention without ever putting anything to use. Unfortunately these passive, time stealers are the majority of people entering the internet marketing industry.

Be different. You’ll quickly earn the respect of any professional if you walk your talk.

2. Don’t ask questions that you can easily research yourself.

It’s true that there are no dumb questions. It’s also true that there are beginner’s questions you can easily figure out yourself without stressing other people’s time.

Act on that list and you’ll find yourself in the inner circle of successful marketers within a few weeks.

So what’s next?

Be a doer.

Start participating right now … post your comments, questions and ideas below.

The first update we integrated is a sales video for new visitors. It’s actually the very first marketing video I’ve ever published on my own sites, despite the fact that I have been creating marketing  vids for clients since 2001.

[flv:http://web-templates-online.com/web-templates.flv 502 411]

What do you think?

So why did my friends warn me?

Because in April the Thai people celebrate the New Year. They call it “Songkran” and funnily it’s not celebrated on the same day in the whole country, but the party moves through the country over the course of several days.

The ‘problem’ with Songkran is that people party several days with THROWING WATER at people. Seriously, you can’t get out of your apartment for 10 minutes without getting soaking wet…

Here are the pictures:

This is Pattaya’s Walking Street at April 18, 2009, a few hours before the official beginning of Songkran. The water is not from rain, but from people partying.

No matter whether you’re pedestrian, riding a motorbike or driving a car, you’ll always get wet.
Ready – Fire – Aim…

Waiting for the next victim…

Well, let’s cool her down a bit…

No mercy. With dedication she pours approximately 1.5 litres right into the poor guy’s face.

Open window in your car?
Bad idea…

Party-time.

Back in my room late at night. The white stuff is something people put in your face wishing you a ‘happy new year’.

Next day, April 19, the party continues on beach road with thousands of people partying.

A closer look at beach road. No cars allowed today.

What? Even the monks throw water…

Woah, Bad Ass Warrior….

One of my German friends and 3 strange strangers under ATTACK!!!

Look closely – the air is filled with water.

We arrived at a save spot.

Making pictures wasn’t easy at Songkran, because I had to watch out for water coming at me (and the camera) all the time.

I’ll be back in Thailand in late June, July and August; I’m sure to post new pictures then.

The moral of this post: if you want to travel or work from the nicest places on earth, make sure to build an internet business. It’ll give you all the freedom you long for.

Well, Jeremy (Jezhunt) suggested I should go for green. It would probably look like this:

Fortunately it’s just a quick Photoshop work.

My hair stylist went for a less dramatic approach and used two colors, one slightly lighter and one slightly darker than my natural color:

This is me sitting in one of the nicer cafés in my hometown Kaiserslautern in Germany.

Last night I was working on the German translation for a customer service text.

I got sidetracked – because for about a week now I’ve also been studying the rhetorical techniques of Barack Obama.

And sometimes, when two unrelated things come together, something new is created.

So a few hours ago the ‘Customer Instructions, Barack Obama Style’ came into existence.

The Original Customer Instructions.

This is sent to the customer after a purchase. It’s an instruction on how to obtain the ordered product.

If you’re in internet marketing, I’m sure you’ve had customers yourself that didn’t read the instructions and then panicked…

“A verification email has been sent to the email address you provided. Since Servers do not make exceptions please wait a bit and be sure to check your Spam folder too.

When you see the verification message, click on the link you will find inside. Once done you will receive a new message with the information to access your purchase. Please follow the instructions and everything will go fine.

If you think Servers made an exception for you, please first wait to see if you get the email message – servers are slow some times; and then recheck your spam folder.

Only if you’re certain that something must be wrong with your subscription then submit a ticket to our helpdesk and be sure to include your full name and a copy of the original receipt.

Thank you for helping us to serve you better, faster and more efficiently.”

Next the rewritten version.

Let’s save our customers from the trouble of not getting the confirmation email.

It’s best to read it slowly while imagining Barack Obama’s powerful voice, brimming with certainty and reassurance.

Customer Instructions, Barack Obama Style – Delivered After Purchase.

My Friend,

I stand on the shoulders of our forbears when I say to you:

You will be served.

I am humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed.

That we are in the midst of a purchase is now well understood.

We, the Internet Marketers, have remained faithful to our ideals, and true to our founding documents, the terms of service.

1. One places an order, one receives a confirmation mail.
2. One opens his mail, one finds a link.
3. One clicks his link, he gets his goods.

So it has been.

So it must be.

• Your Faith may be shaken; our Server stands tall.
• Your patience may be lost; our Server loses no one.
• Your mailbox may be empty; our Server delivers.

Orders may be placed by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled …

… our Server makes no exception.

You will be served!

Our confirmation emails have been sent during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the purchase is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms.

In that case you should heed the call from ancient scripture:

“My spam folder runneth over.”

The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to demonstrate patience in the wait for our email, to re-evaluate our spam folders.

Then for those, who waited without gain …

For those, who searched without reward …

Know this…

You will be served!

• Do not hesitate to call in the duty of your community.
• Do not hesitate to submit a support ticket.

Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year.

• We will harness the deepest depths of our databases.
• We will conquer the vastness of hyperspace.
• We will restore your email to its rightful place.

All this we can do. All this we will do.

You will be served!

(APPLAUSE)

Disclaimer And Resources.

1. I have the utmost respect for President Obama and for his ability to deliver speeches that move millions. My seemingly disrespectful text above is in no way intended to diminish this. It is instead intended to give you a chuckle, no more no less.
2. I’m fully aware of the severeness of the problems that the original inaugural speech addressed. That I’m using similar words in a ridiculously unimportant context is not denying the hardship that people all over the world feel right now. Switching context is just a technique of humorous writing, used by many writers.
3. I do not intend to hurt anybody by re-wording a few words from the bible.

In the opening sentences I said, there’s nothing to learn here.

Well, ’twas a lie.

Actually there is something to learn.

What if you just learned, that any boring topic can be delivered on your web site using the very same rhethorical techniques that master influencers use? That peple who move millions use?

If that sounds interesting to you, stay tuned. I promise I’ll provide further insights on influential writing VERY soon.

For those that can’t wait, here’s a great starting point. These are the original Barack Obama speech transcripts I used to write the parody above.

Barack Obama’s victory speech on election night.

http://www.barackobama.com/2008/11/04/remarks_of_presidentelect_bara.php

Barack Obama’s inaugural address.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/us/politics/20text-obama.html

Barack Obama Photo by Pete Souza /The White House

Melodies derived from Stock Charts, arranged with Songsmith, the Microsoft Composition Tool.

2 Days ago, on Friday January 29 2009, another important figure of public life embraced web 2.0.

Pope Pope Benedict XVI commented on benefits and dangers of social media and announced the new vatican channel on youtube.

Here’s an excerpt of his remarks:

… the new technologies which have made the internet a resource of utmost importance, especially for the so-called “digital generation”.

Undoubtedly, wise use of communications technology enables communities to be formed in ways that promote the search for the true, the good and the beautiful, transcending geographical boundaries and ethnic divisions.

To this end, the Vatican has launched a new initiative which will make information and news from the Holy See more readily accessible on the world wide web.

It is my hope that this initiative will enrich a wide range of people including those who have yet to find a response to their spiritual yearning through the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ whose message of Good News the Church bears to the ends of the earth.

Vatican’s youtube channel.
http://www.youtube.com/vaticanit

The source for the Pope’s quote is here: http://www.vatican.va/news_services/or/or_eng/text.html#3

Also interesting: The Media: At the Crossroads between Self-Promotion and Service. Searching for the Truth in order to Share it with Others.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/communications/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20080124_42nd-world-communications-day_en.html

The Pope On Youtube? Why Is It Important?

I’m amazed how fast the internet changes the world.

When I was in school. …

• The internet wasn’t even there.
• There was no iPod, nor an iPhone to watch youtube videos. Even Sony’s Walkman (the rightful predecessor of any ‘carry with you’ device)  wasn’t invented.
• And of course there was no such thing as a ‘Personal Computer’ to be found in any household.

Then the internet came and people had no idea how fast it would grow into our everyday lives.

Roundabout 5 years ago we internet geeks started to embrace the idea of web 2.0 as we published our first blogs. They were ugly and for geeks only.

• Who would have thought 5 years ago a presidential election would be decided by social media sites?
• Who would have thought 2 years ago the Pope would deliver his gospel through youtube?

Social media is no longer for geeks only.

The people and the leaders of the world embrace it and we can’t even begin to imagine the consequences this will bring.

Through social media we will see dramatic changes in:

1. How people educate themselves.
2. How they create relationships and mastermind groups, evolving much faster than ever possible offline.
3. How they build their opinion on political, economical and ethical topics.
4. How leaders will use the internet to influence (manipulate?) the masses.
5. How campaigns and propaganda sweep the planet across boarders – not only when delivered by leaders, but by any individual who puts his mind to it.

The geek in me is happy. I’m an early adopter and I love to find the  new stuff before it hits the mainstream.

There’s tons and tons of opportunities waiting for us internet marketers, and through new technology and new ideas our ‘universe’ is expanding each day.

I’m excited about it.

How about you?

At Twitter ‘going viral‘ usually means that your Tweet gets re-tweeted by others. The more ‘generations’ of re-tweeting a post of yours gets, the more people will see your message.

The author, Dan Zarella, unveils his detailed research about:

1. What phrases work best as ‘call to action’ to make your Tweets go viral?
2. What is the best time to post your viral Tweets?
3. What’s the most important thing your post needs for best chances to go viral?
4. How to increase your rate of ‘virability’?
5. What types of content make the Twits fall in love with you and get them to re-tweet?

It’s really a great article, very focused and with clear instructions how to make your marketing messages on Twitter successful.

Read it here:
http://www.copyblogger.com/go-viral-on-twitter

I recommend that you read it word by word.

In case you don’t know yet: http://www.seobook.com is one of the premier sources on Search Engine Optimization.

In today’s post Peter has confronted the world’s leading SEO experts to answer this question:

What qualities are common in Aaron Wall, DaveN, Bob Massa, Jason Duke, SugarRae, et al, that new SEOs can adopt, to come closer to people like these in expertise. Where do most new SEOs go wrong when they set learning priorities?

• If SEO makes you feel overwhelmed, check out this SEO article.
• If you don’t know where to start and what to focus on, check out this SEO article.
• If you want to find out what the pros focus on with SEO, … you know what to do.

Here’s the link:

http://www.seobook.com/where-do-new-seos-go-wrong-when-they-set-learning-priorities

As I mentioned in the previous part of this series, the resource box is the conclusion of the article.

More importantly, it is also the place where the backlink is contained, and for this reason, some people often describe it as the most important part of the article.

Since the one and only goal of the article resource box is getting people to actually click the backlink, it is essentially a call to action.

After the reader has been guided through the bulk of the article, and presold to as much an extent as is possible regarding what your backlink has to offer, he should find a clear course of action in the resource box.

Commonly, a resource box might contain something like: “If you want more information, just visit http://homeofinternetmarketing.com.”

Although that is a call to action, it isn’t a very good one.

Imagine how much better it would be if your resource box was more like: “If you want to learn more, there is this great eBook that’ll make you practically an expert, and it is up for grabs FREE at http://homeofinternetmarketing.com.”

By adding the incentive, the call to action will appeal to the reader all the more. Of course, it doesn’t have to be a free eBook, any incentive would work fine. It could just as easily be discounts, special offers, or even just content that is of interest.

At the end of the day, the important part is that the reader be given some reason, any reason, to click your backlink. The resource box should be the conclusion to your article; it should be the logical next step to continuing through to the backlink.

Following these few pointers should get you both, an article body and an article resource box, that is much more effective than the regular variety your competitors put out there.

Primarily, there are two parts of content in an article.

These are both the article body, and the resource box, and each has their own set of rules.

Knowing how to craft an article properly could let you get audiences interested in the article body, and then spur them on to action in the resource box.

Article Body

The primary point of article marketing is to steer the reader through the article so that they get to the backlink. To do this here are a number of things that the article body must accomplish.

First and foremost, of course, it must create and maintain interest throughout, so that the reader doesn’t stop reading. Apart from that, a good article body can also act as a ‘pre-sell’ of the backlink. In other words, it could make the reader more open to the suggestions that you might make.

It could also add as ‘pre-sell’ to the affiliate product you’ll be promoting on your site (the site the article resource box will lead to).

Bearing all that in mind, here are a few points that you should consider about your article body:

1. Relevancy Of Your Article Content

Seeing as your target traffic is mostly coming from search engines, when they type in a keyword, they probably have something specific in mind.

For long keywords, it is simple to know what they want, such as someone searching for ‘best place in Europe to fish’ is probably looking for just that.

On the other hand, someone typing in ‘Europe fishing’ could be looking for places to fish, information about the fishing industry in Europe, or… well, anything at all. If your niche is something to do with fishing as a hobby rather than the fishing industry, then of course, you’re going to want your article to be about the former.

While it is tough to get your article to be relevant for all the individual keywords that you’re targeting, you should definitely try to give your potential audience exactly what they want.

2. Creating Interest

Of course, if your article is exactly what someone was searching for, then your problem is solved. However, if it isn’t, then it is going to have to create the sort of interest that is going to keep a reader reading from start to finish.

Truth is, there are no hard and fast rules about creating interest, but basically, if you give a reader content that is appealing to them, they’re probably going to stick around.

In short, the article body should provide something of value, whether in terms of advice, general information, or even ‘secrets’. Otherwise, it should at least hint at any other benefits that will be obtained by reading the article.

Taking care of both these aspects as far as the article body is concerned will put you off to a great start. Still, there is one very important rule to the article body…

Important Note: Never conclude the article in its body.

This is the number one mistake article marketers make with their article body. They put a clear end to the article, and as a result of that the resource box stands separated. It goes unnoticed, it goes un-clicked. End of affiliate success dream!But it mustn’t be this way.

You’ll outplay 99% of the article marketers if you take this by heart:

The article proper is only actually done after the resource box, so do not attempt to put in any type of conclusion before that.

We’ll reveal our resource box tips in the next installment.

Welcome back to the affiliate article marketing series. Part 3 is dedicated to making your article successful from the start.

When someone searches for your article and sees it in the listing, the very first thing that they’re going to see is the title of the article, or in other words: The Article Headline.

For this reason, your article headlines are of the utmost importance. Essentially, they’re going to ‘make or break’ your article as far as it getting views is concerned. Unfortunately, once you’ve submitted an article you don’t get to edit or tweak the headline, so you’re going to have to get it as right as possible on the very first try.

Certainly, trying to sum up the entire eBooks that are dedicated to the subject of headlines, and how to write them well, in this small space, would be close to impossible. But, at least you can be pointed in the right direction.

Since the whole purpose of the headline is to attract attention, think of what has grabbed your attention in the past. Certain words may tend to perform better than others, but since you can’t be sure without testing… it probably isn’t the right place to experiment.

Here are some types of article headlines, with examples:

Lists, such as, “Top 5 Ways to Groom a Dog for Competitions”.

Questions, such as, “Do You Want To Learn How To Groom a Dog?”

Commands, such as, “Start to Learn to Groom a Dog, Now!”

Abstract, such as, “Coming Soon: Fluffed Tails and Trimmed Coats”

Remember, all that you need to do is attract attention in your article headline.

It is up to the rest of your article to build interest, and make clicking the backlink more likely.

How to do this will be discussed in the upcoming 2 issues.

See you there…

Here’s our second article on affiliate article marketing.

This one and the following 4 installments will explain in detail the 5 step process to promote affiliate products with articles.

1. Position your articles where they can be found

2. Write headlines that gain attention

3. Evoke interest in the article body

4. Call to action in the resource box

5. Get more visitors to visit your article

Using Keywords to Position Your Articles

In a nutshell, keywords are just words or phrases that people use to search for anything and everything online. Seeing as we’re getting the nomenclature out of the way, ‘keyword density’ is the amount of a certain keyword per 100 words.

Keywords are important – that can’t be stressed enough. Considering that search engines are still the primary way in which people look for anything on the internet, it means that people who are looking for things in whatever niche you’re in, are going to be doing so on search engines.

Thus, when talking about positioning your articles, it essentially means positioning them in the relevant searches, so that they’re more likely to be found by the right people.

What happens if this isn’t done? Well, say you had an article about blogging for money, but it didn’t contain any keywords that are being searched for a decent amount of times per month. In this sort of case, there would be no way that anyone would find your article, and so it would go pretty much unread and unattended.

Admittedly, for long articles there inadvertently ends up being a keyword used here or there, but for reliable results, you’re going to want at least a 1% keyword density (but not more than 3%).

First though, you’re going to have to find the keywords that you intend to use.

Keyword Research

Basic keyword research is really pretty easy, and there isn’t too much about it that even a beginner can’t come to grips with. To start off with, the keyword research tool of choice is Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

Seeing as Google is the most popular search engine around, getting data from it seems to be a logical place to begin.

When conducting keyword research, there are three considerations in particular that play an important role:

1. Number of Searches for a specific keyword

Quite literally, this is just the number of searches per month. If a term has a high number of searches, it means lots of people are looking for it, which definitely makes it a better choice.

2. Competition for a specific keyword

Once you have a keyword that has a decent amount of searches, plug it into Google and search for it. When you get the results, take note of how many there are. For instance, if there are 11,800,000 results, then that means a lot of people are competing for that keyword.

On the other hand, if you end up with something like 1,800 results, then there are very few competing websites.

Needless to say, with less competition, you stand a much better chance of appearing on the first page of the search results, which is really what you should be aiming for. Once you’re there, you will no doubt see a dramatic increase in your views.

3. Profitability of your keyword

Not all traffic is as profitable, and sometimes, for certain keywords, the traffic that is obtained just refuses to be converted. While there are a lot of factors that can affect this, it isn’t too relevant as far as keyword research is concerned.

Instead, it is better to know just one simple test of the ‘profitability’ of a keyword.

When you perform a search for the keyword to scope out the competition, take notice as to whether or not any adverts appear. If they do, then that means someone out there feels that it is worth spending money on that keyword.

Admittedly, this isn’t a 100% accurate test, but it should suffice to give you a general idea.

By looking at these three areas of keyword research, you should end up with a list of keywords which you can use to position your articles well. Remember: The idea is to get profitable keywords that have a decent number of searches per month, and low competition.

Keyword Enriched Articles

With the keywords that you’ve acquired, you need to enrich your articles with them. Mind you, there is a difference between enriching and stuffing, and search engines are smart enough to recognize when someone is trying to fool them.

Insert keywords in such a way that they flow smoothly through the article, and follow the 1% to 3% keyword density rule closely. For each article, it is generally advisable to have one ‘short’ keyword of about 2 to 3 words, and two ‘long’ keywords of 4 or more words.

If you do all of this, your articles should be showing up for the keywords that you’re targeting, and so, all that remains is to consider the other aspects of article marketing.

In the next installment of the series we’ll talk about how to make people actually read your article.

Admittedly, affiliate article marketing may sound like something complicated, but on a very basic level, it really isn’t.

It’s pretty simple:

1. You want to make money promting other people’s products. For each purchase that happens through your recommendation, you’ll earn a commission.

2. You build a web site that promotes that affiliate product.

3. You distribute articles that bring visitors to your promotional web site.

The one and only aim of that form of article marketing is to get visitors to visit your website through the backlink of a submitted article and then get them to buy an affiliate product you promote.

That’s why I call it ‘affiliate article marketing’.

Of course, in order to successfully do that, it isn’t enough to just submit tons and tons of articles and then hope that people click the backlink.

True, if you went by the quantity over quality approach then you’d probably end up getting a couple of visitors here and there, but it would be more time consuming, and less effective, than going about it the smart way.

Really, the only reason that people tend to flop at affiliate article marketing is simply because they don’t think it through from the get go.

So, in order to avoid going through the same tedious rigmarole, we’re going to look at article marketing from the ground up; from the theory right down to the practice. By doing so, you should end this eBook with a firm grasp of what you need to go out there and do, and how you can do it.

Basic Theory of Affiliate Article Marketing

“What do you think is involved in affiliate article marketing?” If you were to pose that question to a group of beginners who are just starting out, 9 out of 10 will probably say that it just involves submitting articles to article directories.

While that isn’t wrong, it is only part true.

Submitting an article to an article directory would get it on the internet. That part is what’s correct. But, it won’t mean that the article will actually get viewed, and it also won’t mean that people will click the backlink.

Basically, you could end up with 1,000 articles that each get 1 view a day since no one can find the article, and getting a total of maybe only 10 click-throughs.

Which is why, the basic ‘dummies’ theory of affiliate article marketing is this:

1. Position your articles where they can be found

2. Write headlines that gain attention

3. Evoke interest in the article body

4. Call to action in the resource box

5. Get more visitors to visit your article

Chances are, unless you’ve done article marketing before, you probably didn’t understand any of that.

In this 7 part series on affiliate article marketing we’ll a look at them one by one. The next installment will show you how to position your affiliate marketing articles where they can be found not only by random people – but by potential buyers.

The ‘long-tail’ is a term given to a keyword phrase that is longer than the normal keyword phrase that you may have in the past been targeting to gain organic traffic from the search engines.

Let me explain.

In the past it was common place to target highly trafficable keywords that were very popular in your niche in the hope that you would be able to gain a share of this huge amount of traffic.

For example, if you had built a site about internet marketing and search engine optimization you would have done your keyword research and discovered that the term “search engine optimization” was searched for over 450,000 times per month. So naturally you would have optimized your pages for this keyword phrase to try to get a listing on the first page of the search engines (SERPs) to capitalize on this traffic.

Then you would have focused on optimizing a webpage for the next highest keyword phrase – and then the next – and then the next. And so on.

Basically most people only ever focus their efforts on the top 20 search terms and forget about the rest as there just doesn’t seem to be enough reward in optimizing a webpage on a long-tail keyword phrase that only gets a handful of visitors each day.

For instance, a long-tail keyword phrase for your internet marketing site may be “search engine optimization keywords”, but as this term only gets about 390 searches a month you decide to forget about it. It’s just not worth the effort, particularly when you can get 450,000 visitors by optimizing for a more popular keyword like “search engine optimization”.

But let’s face it.

There are only 10 spots on the first page of any search engine, so the odds of you being able to gain a top spot for competitive keywords such as “search engine optimization” is remote at best. However this doesn’t deter most people as the lure of a share of 450,000 visitors is just too compelling.

The end result is that for most people this just doesn’t happen and as a result they never achieve the traffic they hope for. So they give up trying and never reach the heights that they expected.

But here’s the real twist…

Some of the marketers who do get lucky and get a high listing for one of their main keywords still don’t see the long-term rewards they had thought they would achieve with a top search engine listing for a popular keyword. And it’s all due to not focusing on the “long-tail”.

Let me give you an example to explain what I mean.

For one moment let’s assume you have built an internet marketing website and after a lot of effort and hard work you finally achieve the #1 spot for your top keyword. In fact, your top 20 keywords are sending you 15,000 visitors a day to your website from the search engines and you’re making a good income from monetizing this traffic.

You’re getting heaps of free traffic and the money is rolling in. What more could you ask for. Life is great!

The trouble is that in your excitement to optimize your site for the top keyword phrases in your niche, you forget about the long-tail keyword phrases. But hey, who cares. Your top keywords bring in 95% of your traffic, so you don’t need to worry about the smaller stuff. It’s just not worth the effort.

Then you wake up one morning and check your web stats.

Disaster!

Your traffic has dropped from 15,000 to a mere 500 overnight. You hurriedly check the position of your keywords and discover that Google has had a dreaded update and you’re no longer on the front page for your main keywords. In fact, you’ve gone from the first page to the 7th page.

All of a sudden instead of earning $10k per month, you’re looking at maybe $500 if you’re lucky. Basically your entire business has been destroyed overnight. And if you think this is an isolated case, think again. This scenario is repeated every time the search engines update their algorithms.

Now imagine that rather than just focusing entirely on the popular keywords, you decided to focus on the long-tail keyword phrases to drive traffic to your site. But rather than focus on just a few long-tail keywords, you focus on 200 such keywords. Combined these keywords can drive more traffic to your site than what your most competitive keywords can.

Yes it’s a lot more work – but remember, you want to build a long-term sustainable internet business, so it’s not going to be easy. The rewards will be worth it.

And here’s the real exciting part – you are getting traffic from a wider range of keywords. So if one of your top rankings keywords bites the dust, it won’t have a huge affect on your business as you don’t have all your eggs in one basket.

People who search using long-tail keywords are highly targeted potential customers. They have already done their preliminary searches and are now totally focused on exactly what they want and therefore they are more likely to convert to customers than someone who does a broader keyword search.

So while you may not get as many visitors to your site if you focus your efforts on long-tail keyword phrases, your visitors are more likely to convert into customers at a much higher rate – plus you have created a LONG-TERM business in that you are not at the mercy of the search engines and it is unlikely that you would be wiped out overnight.

So the next time you built a niche site, don’t forget to go long for the long term keyword phrase!

What if we could compile a list of really great Blog posts?

If you run an Internet Marketing Blog you’re invited to post a link to the post that you consider your best writing ever on your blog.

Chose a post that you really think is worth sharing, a post that you’re proud of.

Please do not post more than 1 entry.

You can either just post a link, or you can take the chance to present yourself and tell us why your post and your blog are worth reading.

Use the comment feature below to post your entry.

The first step in the process is to develop a newsletter or other email communication with them. It does not matter what you call it. Rather, it matters what is in it. Here are some examples of quality content to provide to your readers.

• Provide Informational Articles.

Your clients want to read something helpful to them. They want to read something that teaches them something. For example, let’s say you are selling an informational product on acne. In your email message to your readers, you write about the causes of acne. This provides them with some type of information.

• Make your subject line effective.

A common problem that many people have when using any form of email marketing is that they just do not get their readers to open up the email. How can you do well if the reader is not even reading what you have to offer? Use your subject line as a tool. In the above example, the subject line could be, “what causes acne and what you can do about it now.”

• Make your email personal.

If you have ever opened up an email and read it knowing that they were just selling something, chances are good the information with was a simple made up, canned response. That’s boring and actually worthless. Use the reader’s names. Be sure to write to them, not to academics. Be personal, yet professional at the same time.

• Don’t overdo it with graphics.

Another problem with email marketing like this is that people go overboard with graphics. You have seconds to impress your reader and get them to actually read the email you have sent. If you have so many graphics within it that it takes forever to load, they will close the email and move on long before actually seeing what you were going to talk about.

• Tell them what to do.

Perhaps the most important aspect of any email used like this is that it has to provide your readers with a way of reacting to what you have sent. Tell them what to do or what they can do to learn more. Give them the link to follow that takes them to the answers to their questions. For example, in the above example, after detailing all of the causes of acne, follow up with a link that takes the individual to your acne cure website. The link may read, “Finally, there is help for any of these acne causes.”

That’s all it takes to get the email going. An effective campaign does get people back to your website. In fact, internet marketing can work in many ways to gain you resources including higher sales potential. Take the time to put internet marketing in place and you will see traffic to your website come in from a variety of sources. You are likely to see your sales go up as long as you have provided your readers with the helpful tools and resources they need to make wise decisions.

If you are not sure if it can work for you, consider traditional sales mechanisms. You could pay a heavily trafficked website for an ad in the thousands of dollars range and hope to get enough readers back to your website. Or, you can invest your time, not your money, in getting quality traffic that is already interested in you!

Now that you have gone through all of this work in step 1 and 2, you still do not have a profit in hand.

Why not?

Because the step that will generate the actual sales and profit is the third and final step in your internet marketing plan.

You’ve arrived at the most important step in our strategy – you’re finally going to send out your email marketing message.

Here’s your internet marketing strategy in a nutshell:

1. Potential customers find you, your products or services on the web.
2. They allow you to contact them and send them emails.
3. You provide them with information they can use and benefit from, through email, and keep your business in front of them all the time. (Today’s topic.)

Now, you will take the information and resources that you have worked so hard to develop and make them into something that’s going to turn a profit for you.

Keep in mind that while this process may seem like it is long and has a lot of work to it,

• you are going to automate much of it,
• and secondly, you are going to do all three things at one time.

This way, you are likely to start making money from internet marketing right from the beginning of starting the process.

Your Email Marketing Plan

As part of the process of using the permissions given to you by those who have visited your website, you will need an email marketing plan.

The plan is quite specific. You need to send emails to those who are on your list that allow them to gain something and learn something.

You’re plan should lay out a series of emails covering interesting topics for your readers. For example you could plan to send out 1 email per week and write down several topics to cover a few weeks in advance.

In this form of internet marketing, you are attracting people to your website by

1. Telling them something important. They think, “Hey, this is great. This is just what I need.”
2. They then head over to your website from the link posted in the email.
3. They can then make a purchase from you or do what you wish for them to do.

To make sure this happens, you need to send emails are well received and that have the best information they can offer to the reader. This way, they are most likely to visit your website.

Still unsure of what you can do with your emails? Here are a few ideas to work with.

What To Send In Your Marketing Emails

• Share information on the topic related to your website, your products and services.
• Share a good book, informational product or other item that in some way relates to your business indirectly.
• Share live event information. Perhaps you are doing an educational seminar or a web cast, and want to invite your readers to come to your website to attend.
• Perhaps you are running a sale and you wish to provide your readers with information regarding it.
• Perhaps you are providing some recorded trainings and want to share the details with your list.
• Encourage them to send you feedback and questions.
• Answer questions you receive in future emails to your list.

Internet marketing is only as successful as you make it.

Therefore, if you invest a little time in it, especially in writing these emails, chances are good you will get good profits from it. Take your time to produce a quality, highly effective email that is sent to your readers.

That’s it for today’s article. Tomorrow you’ll discover the 5 most critical guidelines for successful emails.

Let’s recap the 3 step strategy we outlined in the last article:

• Potential customers find you, your products or services on the web.

• They allow you to contact them. (Today’s topic.)

• You provide them with information they can use and benefit from, through email, and keep your business in front of them all the time.

Your web site visitors and potential customers allow you to contact them and to market to them.

The next step in our internet marketing strategy is to get people to let you talk to them. With the advent of laws regarding spam and other inappropriate means of communication, it has become very important for any Business owner to be sure to stay on the good side of the law.

As a Business owner, you need to have the permission of a consumer, client or website visitors to send them any form of communication.

Why you should do this, you may be asking. As part of the process of developing a successful Internet marketing business, you need to get your product or service in front of the client.

As you will see in Part 3 of the internet marketing strategy, this is the key to your success in selling.

There are many ways that this can be done. The bottom line is that it has to be done.

You want those that find you on the web to come to your website and a lead capture page. This way, you are able to get their permission to send them more information.

There are many lead capture tools available to help you to accomplish this. You can also create your own, and not something that is difficult to do on your own, even if you are not a techie.

What happens is simple:

• Individuals find your information on the web.

• They follow it to your website’s lead capture page.

• They sign up when they arrive there.

• You have a lead to sell to, market to or otherwise use.

Now, you can advertise to them. Mission accomplished!

Tomorrow we’re getting to the meat of the series: What information to send to them and how to turn them into customers.

Any Business owner can apply the lessons learned to their own Internet business. There are three main parts to developing a successful internet marketing campaign, but the good news is that none of them are difficult, costly or overly time consuming.

Here, we’ll explore these three parts and find out how you can put them to use no matter what type of Internet marketing business you have.

Here’s Your 3-Step-Internet-Marketing-Strategy

Step 1: Potential customers find you, your products or services on the web.

Step 2: They allow you to contact them.

Step 3: You provide them with information they can use and benefit from, through email, and keep your business in front of them all the time.

To better understand how to do this, keep reading.

Part 1: Potential Customers Find You

The first step in the process is to get people to find you online. Remember, with internet marketing, they are coming to you. You are not going out searching for them and advertising directly. So, how do you get more people to find you online?

Your Own Business Web Site First

There are several ways to accomplish this.

First, the ultimate first step is to have a useful website and/or blog where you can present your offer and where they will be able to buy in the end. While your main info may be on a static site, I recommend adding a Blog: you can talk with, work with and interact with your visitors.

You will need to ensure it is information based rather than a sales gimmick.

Online, self-focused ‘business brochure’ type blah blah is less likely to work than other methods of marketing, especially in internet marketing. Make sure your website tells visitors that you are providing a service to them, information to them.

Do not use the typical ad style used by companies to build brand or just to hype a product.

Lay Out Your Net – Other Places Where They Can Find You

Next, you will need to get your information out there. You’ll create many entry points all over the web where they can stumble upon your information.

Once your own business web site is online, there are many other ways to build that successful internet marketing. You can easily find dozens of ways to do this.

3 very profitable and free methods of promoting your business.

Social Networking Websites

We talked about that a lot in the second part of the ‘Internet Marketing Strategy’ Series. Remember Barack Obamas huge list of profiles on social networking web sites.

One of the most attractive, enjoyable ways to get your business out there is, in fact, to talk about it! Social networking is what it sounds like. It is a method of communicating with others about anything you want to, really.

Most social networking websites were not started to help businesses to grow, but most of them can be used this way. Going back to our example, Mr. Obama used many of them to get to his people.

This is what you are looking for, too. You are looking for a way to give people information. Once they have that information, they can then come to you to get what they need. This works in any type of Internet niche, too.

There are many, many websites that can be used like this. The key is to really use those where you think the best results can be found, but also where you find yourself enjoying it.

To find more of these social networking websites, visit this Wikipedia pages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

There is no way that you can go to all of these websites, but the key is not to invest all of your time in them, either. You should find one, two, or three to really dive into and to work with.

In the internet marketing niche the most popular are Twitter.com and Facebook.com.

Article Directories

This is an excellent way to gain popularity. You should develop articles and detailed outlines related to your business or product and then get it out into the mainstream. You can post them on various article directories.

I’ll cover article marketing in more detail in an upcoming ‘Article Marketing’ series starting within a week. Keep your eyes open or subscribe to the rss news feed to receive the upcoming articles.

Press Releases

Submitting a press release to press release web sites is fast, no cost or low cost, and it has benefits no other form of internet marketing provides.

One major benefit of using a press release is that you are utilizing a good medium to place your website and business in front of many readers.

Another benefit is that it gives your business or website a legitimate and professional look. You can be known as a credible expert on the topic.

If the press release works correctly, readers will not just think of you as someone who created an advertisement, but someone who may be very knowledgeable on the topic at hand, especially if you are interviewed by the media.

There are many web sites where you can submit a press release about your company.

That wraps up today instalment of the ‘Internet Marketing Strategy’ Series. Thanks for being here, feel free to leave your comments and questions.

Does internet marketing work? The short answer to this question is yes, but there are plenty of fantastic examples of how it works.

A good one is to consider the election of Mr. Obama.

Regardless of whether you are from the U.S. or not, and no matter what side of the ticket you were rooting for, one thing has to be said. Mr. Obama’s ability to use Internet marketing, including internet marketing methods, helped him win this election, according to many professionals.

Mr. Obama’s campaign is the most successful internet marketing campaign ever conducted.

The e-strategy blog called his campaign “The Perfect Political Storm”.

They wrote:

His brilliant use of the Internet and his get-out-the-vote efforts will be studied as a textbook example not so much of a multichannel marketing campaign as an every channel campaign. The campaign will be studied within the political world for bucking history and actually getting young voters to cast their vote.

Obama used the many, many tools in Internet marketing to help him to win his election because he and his campaign moreover knew the importance and success it could bring.

The world goes to the web to learn what it needs to, in today’s culture. More so, the Internet provides an easy, affordable way to reach millions of people every single day. No other medium offers this.

How did Obama use internet marketing to win the Presidential Election of the United States?

Using internet marketing tools, websites, and even things like GoogleAds helped him to make it happen.

First of all he had his own website.

http://www.barackobama.com

Besides giving information about his campaign the very purpose of this site was (and still is) to get people to subscribe to his email newsletter.

Once you do this you’ll get regular promotional emails. And most often you will be asked to support him with donations.

Before you enter his web site you are forced to see the name squeeze page. (If the president elect can do it, then you can do it too to build a list of prospects.) The design and content of the squeeze page changes often, but the purpose is to get visitors to part with their email address.

Social Networking For The Campaing

Next he (or rather his campaign) created a Barack Obama profile on ALL major networking web sites. That includes the 2 most used web 2.0 sites that we people from the so called ‘Internet Marketing Niche’ are using and promoting: Twitter and Facebook.

Barack Obama on Twitter

In fact, http://twitter.com, a useful tool that allows individuals to put out a 140 character message about what they are doing right now was used by Mr. Obama as one of the many methods of internet marketing.

By gaining a huge following and communicating through them in short clips, he could converse with everyday people, put his message out and do it all without spending a penny for it.

http://twitter.com/barackobama

At the time of writing this, January 5 2009, Barack Obama has a following of 154,537 people on Twitter.

I’m working on it too, hehe. I ‘collected’ my first follower on Dec 27 2008 and today, 9 days later, I’m at 946 followers.
http://twitter.com/ralfskirr

Barack Obama on Facebook

Another example of this is Facebook. Everyone on the web knows that Facebook.com is a haven for younger generation individuals who like to find each other and chat. The trend has grown. In fact, businesses, politicians, and even employers are using it as a tool to connect with others. Mr. Obama’s Facebook page was yet another form of internet marketing that helped him to get his message out.

http://presby.facebook.com/barackobama?q=barackobama&ref=ts

You wouldn’t believe it, he’s already set his eye on the significant year 2012.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/BarackObama2012/40275089374

And here’s me again. http://www.facebook.com/people/Ralf-Skirr/1019486454?

There’s A Marketing Lesson To Be Learned…

I’m not throwing my own accounts in for promotional purpose only. I’m throwing it in to bring your attention to a very important fact:

You and I are nowhere near the multi million dollar budgets Barack Obama’s campaign had, right?

Yet the very cool thing is – we can use the very same web sites that powered his campaign and it doesn’t cost a dime.

I have my own Twitter and Facebook account just like the President elect has, and you can do it too. It’s on a smaller scale, but that’s a good thing because your personal or business goals are on a smaller scale too.

We’ll come back to that in the next part of the IM Strategy series.

Barack Obama’s Personal Blog

Just like many small business internet marketers he’s keeping a blog too:

http://www.barackobama-2012.blogspot.com/

As you can see, there are excellent ways that internet marketing works. For most of the general public, you aren’t trying to win the presidential election. Nevertheless, these tools can still be used to help virtually anyone to gain success in getting traffic to their website.

Here’s just a few of the profiles Obamas internet campaign has created. You could – as part of your own internet marketing strategy – make use of the same networks.

Barack Obama on Facebook
http://presby.facebook.com/barackobama?q=barackobama&ref=ts

Barack Obama on MySpace
http://www.myspace.com/barackobama

Barack Obama on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/barackobama

Barack Obama on Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/barackobamadotcom

Barack Obama on Digg
http://digg.com/users/ObamaforAmerica

Barack Obama on Twitter
http://twitter.com/barackobama

Barack Obama on Eventful
http://eventful.com/performers/barack-obama-/P0-001-000000162-8

Barack Obama on Linkedin
http://www.linkedin.com/in/barackobama

Barack Obama on Eons
http://www.eons.com/members/profile/barackobama

Here’s an excellent visual representation that illustrates Obama’s campaign.

It’s worth checking out, you could easily create a similar map for your own campaigns. Pay special attention to the social networking illustration on the right.

See it in full size as PDF.

That’s it for today, tomorrow we’ll finally reveal the 3-step-internet-marketing-strategy. We’ll explore these three parts and find out how you can put them to use no matter what type of Internet marketing business you have.

As usual: Your Comments Are Welcome…

Internet marketing may be the buzz word that is out there commonly heard by most Business owners. Yet, what does it mean?

As a Business owner, you do need to know what this type of marketing is as it will likely be one of the most important, profitable strategies you have in low cost marketing – and it is highly effective.

First, understand what it is and then learn how to implement an internet marketing strategy within your own business. Most business owners can find success using this method to help them to develop their internet business. It works in any sector, industry or niche.

It works whether you want to promote a brick and mortar business or whether you want to do internet business.

When applied effectively, it is a low cost, long term success strategy no marketer should go without.

What Is Internet Marketing?

The short definition of what internet marketing is may seem too simple. It is simply a term that means that the business owner uses the Internet to help attract people to the business they are in.

To take this to another level, internet marketing can be defined as bringing people to you rather than going after them. The best way to see this is to take a look at the opposite method, the way that most print or “non online” advertising is done.

In traditional advertising, countless dollars are spent to find the consumer most likely to invest in the product or service. Billboards are placed along freeways for radio stations, for example, since people listen to the radio most often in the car. Advertisements go to the most likely consumer rather than the consumer coming to the product directly for a need.

In internet marketing, ideally the consumer comes to you and your product or service because they have heard that it is something that can benefit them, in some way.

The Key To Internet Marketing Success

One of the keys to building a successful internet marketing strategy is not to be overly sales like. Everything and anything that you do should be done based on subtle sales information. You are providing information to the client. You are not hard selling what you have to offer to them. The consumer is attracted to you because you are giving them valuable information and tools to use.

Don’t fail on that point: informational is key, not sales ads.

Internet marketing is not often about catchy slogans and flashy ads. Rather, it is a method of bringing people in to information, products and services because they are already interested. Ultimately, this allows for the business to do well since the advertisements are being presented in a pleasant manner.

There’s a specific way to deliver that ‘sales producing’ information. That will be covered in the upcoming installments of this series.

Mastering this will help your business to grow quickly.

The ‘Internet Marketing Strategy Series ‘ offers a simple 3 step strategy to implement internet marketing for your own business.

In the next part of the series you’ll see a real life example. You’ll discover the most successful internet marketing strategy ever conducted.

If you’re a Twit, you can follow me here: http://twitter.com/ralfskirr

Today’s article is about ‘What Content to Post to Your Twitter Updates.’

Before you begin posting Twitter updates, you need to be clear about your main goals for using Twitter. If you’re focused before you get started, you’ll write much better posts and get targeted traffic to your blog.

Always remember that 100 targeted visitors are worth more than 10,000 un-targeted visitors.

There are many different ways you can use Twitter, and everyone uses it a little bit different.

Before using Twitter consider these goals:

• Driving traffic to your web site or blog.
• Positioning yourself as authority in your specific niche.
• Building your brand.
• To make your web site a networking experience by adding Twitter.
• To draw people’s attention to a specific campaign.
• To get subscribers for your email marketing.
• To maximize the number of Twitter followers.

You can use Twitter for all of this, or you can choose just one of these goals and run with that.

You could even create different Twitter accounts for different purposes.

What Content Should You Post To Your Twitter Updates?

I’m assuming you’re not tweeting only for personal reasons, but to enhance your business!

The Twitter site has one question and one question only – What are you doing?
How you answer this is totally up to you.

Try to come up with answers that…

• are interesting to read.
• make them pay attention for what you post.
• make them visit your sites.
• make them reply and comment on your updates.

Be a person, not a faceless marketer.

To start out with, you’ll want to post a few things that are related to you personally and not your Blog, site or products directly. Remember, first and foremost Twitter is a social networking utility. People have a low tolerance for blatant advertising.

A lot of people simply post about what they are doing in their daily routine. You’ll see a lot of posts like “Eating dinner.” or “Starting this new project.”

If you’re having trouble answering the question “what are you doing” try thinking of it in terms of “what are you interested in” or “what has you attention.”

But only a small part of your posts should focus on your private life. After all you not only want to entertain but also give value to your readers.

Promoting your Blog.

The most basic way of using Twitter to build traffic to your Blog is to post updates on Twitter whenever you make a Blog post. It is even possible to automate the process of adding new Blog posts to Twitter or vice versa adding your newest Twitter updates to your Blog.

If you do submit a back link to your own Blog, be sure to add more to your Twitter update than just the link. Tell them what the specific Blog post is about. You don’t want to be seen as someone spamming his link all over Twitter.

But there’s so much more to Twitter than that.

Ideas for non-Blog post related Twitter posts:

1. Share valuable information and useful tips. You can post URLs related to your niche, or just interesting articles and sites you find while browsing the Internet.
2. Write replies to other people’s Twitter updates.
3. Ask them questions. Ask people what they think of the latest news story, their opinion on a given topic, or what they ate for lunch. By asking them questions you can build your relationship with your followers.
4. Add to the value of your twitter feed by sharing some personal tips that aren’t on your Blog. 140 characters offer enough space to share a short, helpful tip. Ideally of course post tips related to your industry.
5. Share links to other people’s sites and explain your view.
6. Share your own opinion on popular topics. You can submit links to current news, preferably those related to your niche, and offer your comment.

These are just a few ideas to get you started. Do you have a few ideas on your own? Please post them below. I appreciate any addition that makes this page more helpful for everybody.

And as always at the end of these Twitter articles I’d like to point you to my own Twitter page: http://twitter.com/ralfskirr

And when you go there remember that old Genesis song…

Here you go…

It needs some editing, then I will post it here in a day or two.

Ralf

If you want to, you can follow me at http://twitter.com/ralfskirr.

1. Getting Traffic to Your Blog Posts or Your Web Sites.

Did you know you can add links to your Twitter posts? Thus with a simple 140 character message to Twitter, you can have lots of readers come to your sites.

When you use Twitter, you’ll be able to tap into parts of your existing market that you weren’t aware of before. Plus, you can not only find tons of new readers on Twitter, but you’ll also remind current readers to re-visit your site.

Be prepared though that if you’re going to use it just to post links to your Blog, you’re going to be a bit disappointed.

Since Twitter is a social networking tool, people will quickly unsubscribe from your updates. On Twitter, people want to know more about you and see a more personal side of you.

This is why it’s such a powerful way to drive traffic to your Blog.

2. Connecting With Your Readership.

When you blog in a traditional sense, you’re speaking to your readership from a distance. You write your post, edit it and then post it. During all of these activities, you’re removed from your audience; they may read it even months after you created it.

But when you use Twitter to communicate, it becomes a conversation. You can show more of your personality to your followers and truly communicate with them on a different level.

A Twitter update shows up on your and other people’s sites instantly.

This can get them more interested in you and your Blog, which will build more traffic over time.

While you connect with your (new) readers, you also want to position yourself in your reader’s mind. That’s what the third Twitter benefit is about. Read on…

3. Building Your Brand.

In order to stand out amidst the large amount of Blogs and Twitter accounts online, you need to develop a persona for people to connect to and identify with.

You can accomplish this through your Blog, but you can further your branding by using a Twitter account.

You need to figure out what makes you unique in your niche and then extend these differences between you and others in your Twitter posts. Decide what your persona is, and then make sure your Twitter posts reflect that.

Before I finish this article, here’s an important Twitter benefit that’s largely overlooked by many marketers. Twitter is one of the fastest and cheapest ways for

4. Researching Your Niche.

With Twitter, your target market can be at your fingertips. You can spy on their interests, ask them about their needs and automatically get ideas for your Blog posts or for profitable products.

Interact with other people, answer their questions and ask them questions back. This way you can become part of the community.

If you add a lot of people to your follow list who are in your niche, pay attention to their problems, their questions and the type of things that they share.

This can all be part of your niche research and you can incorporate what you find there in your Blog or in the form of a new product. You’ll find that your Twitter account can be a treasure trove for Blog post ideas.

You can use the information that you find on Twitter to create Blog posts that meet the needs of your readership. You can also address specific questions or concerns.

You’ll be surprised at what a great brainstorming tool your Twitter account can be. You’ll read someone’s update and then it will get the wheels turning for a Blog post, or even a series of Blog posts.

That’s it for now, 4 ways to enhance your business with Twitter. Thanks for reading. Follow me at http://twitter.com/ralfskirr and as always: feel free to add your input below…

Twitter has totally changed the way that people communicate online and it should be an indispensable part of your overall marketing plan for your web sites and blogs.

If you’re brand new to Twitter, or even if you’ve been around on the site for some time, you’ll find out in this Twitter article series how you can use it to create a whirlwind of traffic to your blog and open the doors to brand new subscribers.

So What Exactly is That  ’Twitter’ Thingy?

First of all: Twitter is a free service available at http://www.twitter.com/. If you haven’t been there before just follow the link to the main page and check it out.

Or see it in action on my personal account at: http://twitter.com/ralfskirr

But I still haven’t told you what it is or what it does…

Twitter has two main components. It is a combination of a blogging tool and a social networking site.

1. The Blogging Aspect of Twitter.

When creating an account you’ll get your own page at Twitter.

Here’s mine for example:

http://twitter.com/ralfskirr

You can post messages to your twitter page just like you can post articles to a blog. Your messages are limited just to 140 characters, which is why some people call it a “microblogging” tool. You have to keep your messages brief and too the point.

Sometimes it’s a challenge to get the point across in the allotted space, but it also leaves room for a lot of creativity! Coming up with ways to say what you have to say in that small space is part of the fun of Twitter.

You’ll find out what to post to your Twitter page and how it helps your business in the upcoming articles in this Twitter series.

2. The Social Networking Aspect of Twitter.

Just like social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook, you can add “followers” (called ‘friends’ at the other sites) and follow other people as well.

They’ll receive your updates and you’ll receive theirs.

That’s why Twitter is a fantastic way to get more traffic to your blog and build a relationship with your readership. It can spread your message virally all over the web.

Let’s Look at How Twitter Gets Your Message Around.

There are a three different ways of posting on Twitter that you need to know about.

1) First, there’s a regular post.

When you type in a message to Twitter and hit “update” it will be viewable by all the people who are following you.

2) The next type of post is a reply.

When you type in a regular message, people may reply to your post.

You’ll see your user name with the symbol @ before it when someone replies to your message. You can respond to other people the same way. You simply type @ and then their user name directly after that.

Replies are viewable by everyone who is following you or the other person you are replying to.

Read that again: Replies are viewable by everyone who is following you or the other person you are replying to.

Can you see how powerful this is? You’re not only getting your message to your own subscribers (=followers), but to your subscriber’s subscribers as well.

3) Finally, there’ a direct message to individuals.

If you want to send a private message to someone that no one else can see, you can send a direct message. To do so, simply type the letters dm with the person’s user name.

You’ll receive messages from others on a special page of Twitter and be notified via e-mail when someone direct messages you.

The direct message is something that you won’t be using much for marketing; focus on posts and replies instead.

To summarize: Twitter let’s you post very short messages to your own Twitter micro-blog page and that message will be shown on your follower’s pages – and in case of replies on your follower’s followers pages as well.

It’s an easy and fast way to get your message in front of thousands of people.

Feel free to post your comments and questions below.

In the next part of the Twitter series I’ll talk about ’4 Ways That Twitter Can Jumpstart Your Business’.

1. Massive Viral Traffic
Viral marketing is one of the many good sources of immense, recurring traffic. The very purpose of viral marketing is to reach out to as many website visitors as possible. Examples:

• The simple tell-a-friend script you use on your website is a form of viral marketing. A visitor sends a recommendation to a few friends. Then some of these friends pass it to their group of peers. Ideally that cycle goes on and on.
• When you submit articles to article directories for publishing, you are also taking advantage of the principles of viral marketing. It’s not only about having that article show up in the article directory – that wouldn’t be viral. It’s about others picking up your article and publishing it on their web sites and sending it to their lists.

These are just 2 examples. Both will spread your message around and send fresh traffic to your site for years to come.

2. Higher Sales and Profits
If you have enormous traffic, your chance of striking a sale is high. The more people browsing your products, the more sales you will have. Plus, a lot of people these days buy only from websites that are directly referred to them by families and friends. So if your website happens to be mentioned in a tightly knit community, all of the people who belong there are much more likely to buy from you than from your competition.

3. Increased Popularity and Authority
Viral marketing can virtually make you or your website popular overnight. Just imagine ten people talking about your website, product, or service to ten of their friends. Now those ten people would talk to another ten of their friends. Your client base would be increasing by the exponents of 10 and you can’t help it.

4. Cost Effective, Almost Free
With viral marketing, you really don’t have to worry about advertising costs. Your advertisers are the best in the world – and they are working for you for free at that. A person who directly suggests your product to a friend is the best form of advertising you can have. That beats the biggest banner on the most popular website in the world. A person is more likely to trust his friend rather than the ad he saw flickering on his computer screen.

The viral marketing definition

Wouldn’t you like that?

By definition, with viral marketing you ‘infect’ a few people with something that’s worthwhile sharing. Then they spread it around (for you) when they meet their pears.

The important phrase here is ‘worthwhile sharing’.People must have a reason to spread your message.

When you define your viral campaign you must pay the utmost attention to creating something people are excited about. That is: something of high value or something that’s highly entertaining.

If they like it they start sending it around. Or maybe you created it so that they have a benefit from passing it to their friends.

It’s best when they are so excited that they pass it around even if they have no benefit at all. But here are a few example benefits of sharing your viral content. It’s called ‘Bribery’

• they get money,
• or reward points,
• or free products,
• or whatever.

Their friends then virally forward it to more and more of their friends.

You can imagine it like circles around circles that get larger and larger.

1. You are in the center. You start sending your viral message to the smallest inner circle of people that you have direct contact to.
2. Then they pass it to people in an outer circle, the second circle, you don’t even know.
3. Then it’s passed to the third circle of people and so on.

At amazing speed the number of people who see your viral marketing message gets larger and larger.

Of course there are much more technical viral marketing definitions, but the important thing is not the technical Mumbo Jumbo. The important thing is: once you send it out, it distributes fast and wide without you lifting a finger. In the shortest time you reach tons and tons of people.

In the end it’s your pleasure to turn your viral traffic into sales and cash.

The Mastermind Section is for those who live and breathe the internet. Those who start up their computer even before they go to the bathroom in the morning.

You need to have your priorities straight, right?

What can you expect from this section?

1. Mastermind Group Announcements. I will update you about my mastermind groups. You’ll have the chance to mastermind with me and build Joint Ventures. To participate in these groups naturally you need to .

2. My favorite business tools. I’ll reveal to you what tools I’m using to run my business and why I’m using them. Knowing the best tools  will save you months of trial and error and probably a few hundred or thousand bucks of buying useless products.

3. The most important books for entrepreneurs. You’ll get free reviews of my favorite books. I’m not talking about the general IM stuff that every internet marketer and his dog sends to you and his list. I’m talking about information that will put you years ahead of the crowd. Stay alert for these top recommendations!

4. Profiting from Mega Trends. Finally we’ll keep track of the upcoming mega trends in internet marketing and in the online world in general.

To get notified of all masterminding opportunities make sure to .

I enocourage you to participate in the mastermind section. Feel free to post your ideas and discuss our topics. Please use the comment feature below to do this.

The section Internet – Business – Tips however is about running an internet based business and using nothing but the internet to make money online.

Here are just a few of the topics we’ll talk about:

• What profitable business models are there to make money online?
• What business models you shouldn’t even touch with a 10-foot pole?
• How To Manage The Internet Life Style?

More to come soon. Tune in often and subscribe to the newsfeed on the right hand side to get profit producing information delivered to your inbox instantly.

We’ve seen shooting stars like youtube and myspace rake in billions.

Newcomers like Facebook, Twitter and the like are the big hope for marketers and business owners to profit from networking.

All the internet traffic is attracted to the web 2.0 properties like being sucked in a black hole.

If you’re ignoring the trend, you’re bound to lose your business.

How can you secure your share of traffic?

There are 4 main questions about leveraging web 2.0 for your business:

1. Can established web 2.0 sites like Facebook be tricked into sending loads of traffic to your site?
2. Can you make personal contacts to leaders and important people in your industry?
3. Is it possible to gain #1 search engine rankings for your own home pages using the web 2.0 sites?
4. And finally: What about creating your very own web 2.0 site tailored to your business niche? Is it worth the investment in time and money?

The web 2.0 category of Internet-Business-Mastermind is here to answer these questions and inform you about the most profitable web 2.0 strategies.

Make sure to sign up for the newsfeed on the right hand side to get notified about these profit producing articles.

Reality check: Since July 25 2008 it’s official; there are more than 1 Trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) web pages competing against each other and competing with your tiny internet presence.

What does that do to your hopes of being #1? Still alive and kicking? Great!

Here’s some good news: Unlike what most people think it actually isn’t that hard to get a good search engine position. There are 3 simple things every web site owner can do to increase his visibility on the net…
to be continued, sign up for the news feed on the right hand side.

What I learned from talks with fellow entrepreneurs is that many business people who’ve had a business web site for years still have no clue on how to make it successful.

They don’t have much visitors; and the few who come to their web site don’t turn into customers. A visitor shows up, clicks, leaves, and is never seen again.

This is not what you want, right?

Successfully promoting your web site is neither hard to do nor is it a hidden secret nor is it expensive.

In the upcoming months I will show you dozens of strategies you can use to get targeted traffic to your business web site.

• What makes the difference between a successful web site promotion and a failure?
• What if you had a simple plan, a guiding principle, to promote your web site from zero to hero?

Having A Successful Website Does Not Happen By Accident.

Instead it is something that you can plan and then achieve easily step by step.

You’re guaranteed to turn your site into an internet marketing success if you commit to the 5 Pillars Of Web Site Promotion and do a few simple steps on a daily basis.

How To Build A Solid Foundation For Your Marketing Plan.

Just like building a house, building a successful web site requires a strong and solid foundation. Your success cannot be built on something ethereal, you want to build a house to last.

So before taking any promotional action you need to be clear about the overall goal or your web site.

Read again: do not take any action unless your 100% clear about your site’s goal and your targeted visitors.

Don’t take this lightly. It sounds so obvious and simple that most people rush over it and never really think about it.

But you should.

I’ve had dozens of consultations with business owners who ignored that advice. These are the people that say internet marketing doesn’t work.

And they are right.

If you put up random web sites without a goal and a plan you set yourself up for failure. But that’s true in any area in life, isn’t it? Taking action without a plan and a goal just doesn’t yield much.

Here’s your chance to get it right. Print this article out and then write down the answer to these questions:

1. Who exactly is your ideal visitor? Where do you find these people online? At first you might find it hard to be precise about that. You may be afraid to leave people out and reduce your chance. Actually your chances of success will increase if you narrow your target.
2. What do you want your visitors to do once they come to your site? What is the primary goal of your web site? Sure, you do not want to leave them for good. But what do you want? And how do you make them do what you want them to do?

The answers to that will be your guiding principle whenever you’re not sure what to do next and what to focus on.

It sounds more complicated than it is.

But you’ll never figure it out unless you write down your goals and start taking the appropriate actions.

Once you know your goals and your ideal visitor you can implement a step by step internet marketing plan.

The 5 pillars of web site promotion represent 5 topics you should use on a daily basis to make your site successful.

Taking little steps each day will be much more profitable than doing a huge and expensive marketing blast in one week and then do nothing for the next 12 months.

Continuity builds success.

That’s why you rather do 15 minutes a day. The little actions you take will build up like compounded interest in your bank account.

So What Are The ’5 Pillars Of Web Site Promotion’?

At first glance it might seem a lot – but if you take it one step at a time all will come easy and natural to you. Here you go:

The first pillar of web site promotion: Getting back links to your site. That’s really important. The more back links you can get to your site, the better. Ideally try to get links from sites that match your site in topic. So if you have an internet marketing site, you don’t want too have all your links coming from sites about golf or dog grooming.

Why?

1. Visitors from a related site are more likely to click through to you.
2. Search engines like Google will give more weight to that link if the site’s topic matches yours.

What else do we have for your ‘promotional consideration’?

The second pillar of web site promotion: Email Marketing. I hate to break it to you, but let’s face an ugly truth here: Unless you capture their email address 99 from 100 visitors leave your site for good.

They did not buy, and they will never come back.

The way to turn this around is email marketing. Get your visitors email and permission to email them with marketing messages.

Here are a few benefits of capturing your visitor’s email:

• You can send out promotions for your own products and services to increase sales.
• You can send out promotions for affiliate programs and earn commissions.
• You can point your your readers back to your site and thus create repeat visits.

Now if you manage to drive new visitors to your site for free, you’d have a killer marketing strategy funneling your free traffic into your email promotions. Getting free web site visitor’s is what the next pillar is about.

The third pillar of web site promotion: Search Engine Optimization. 85% of all visitors arrive at your site through a search engine. So they did a search, for example with Google. Your site came up at the search engine results page (SERP) and the visitor clicked through.

The more often your site is at the top of search engine results pages, the more free traffic you get.

That’s why you should optimize your site for the search engines. The process is called ‘search engine optimization’. In short it means that you optimize your site in a way that makes it relevant for specific search terms people might use. Let’s say your site is about ‘the 5 pillars of web site promotion’. When someone enters that term in a search, then you would want to see your site at the top of the search engine results.

About the 5pillars … ah, well, it’s not something people are likely to search for … I know that.

You can learn more about search engine optimization in this blog’s category ‘search marketing’. Now let’s see how to make humans and search engine robots fall in love with your site, it’s pillar #4:

The fourth pillar of web site promotion: The amount and attractiveness of content on your web site. Search engines as well as visitors love regularly updated and content rich web sites.

After all: why would someone come to your site twice if there’s noting new to discover. On the internet we’ve become information junkies.

• People browsing the net are looking for information.
• They are looking for sites that provide value.
• They are craving new content all the time.

That’s why it’s easy to put your competition to dust.

Most of them treat their web site like a business brochure that is rarely updated. Take advantage and post fresh and useful content. Your visitors and the search engines will love it, come back often and refer your site.

The fifth pillar of web site promotion: Promoting your web site with paid advertising. This is the fastest way to get targeted visitors to your site: placing ads on other web sites and offline in print magazines and news papers.

The crucial point of course is that it costs money to place an ad. Unless you already have a marketing budget you should start to set one up. Or- if you’re dead broke – your paid marketing will have to wait till you made some money. It is however an area not to be neglected.

There’s no other means of online marketing where you have that much control about who gets exposed to your promotion.

But since it’s costly: better make sure your web site converts visitors to buyers before running a campaign. When running an ad campaign keep track of cost and be sure to stop it if it generates a loss.

So those are the 5 pillars.

Remember our building analogy?

There’s a final piece missing to build your house – the roof of your successful web site promo.

Let’s Top Your Success – With A Roof

The final piece of your marketing plan is ‘Measure Your Success’!

You do not want to waste your time and effort and money on any activity that doesn’t pay off. So measure what works and what doesn’t. Then expand what works and discontinue what doesn’t.

How do you do it?

Well, first of all get yourself a software to track what visitors are doing on your site. The easiest way to go is Google analytics.

Technically it’s a tiny piece of text that will be incorporated in all your pages. Then the analytics software will track what happens on your site.

A site analytics tool will show you useful information like:

• how many visitors come to your site
• what pages do they look at
• how long do they stay
• where do they leave
• etc. etc.

So there you have it, the foundation, the 5 pillars and the roof.

That Finishes Our Picture…

Here You Have It, The Step By Step Plan For Successful Web Site Promotion.

1. Before you start promoting decide who should come to your site and what action you want your visitor to take.

2. Work on improving all 5 pillars for your site. You could for example invest 15 to 30 minutes each day on 1 of the pillars. If you follow through from Monday to Friday you’ll be amazed. You’ll see your traffic grow and people coming back to your site again and again. Example:

1. Monday: 30 minutes link building.
2. Tuesday: 30 minutes to improve your email marketing.
3. Wednesday: 30 minutes to SEO one page on one of your sites.
4. Thursday: 30 minutes to add fresh content to one of your sites.
5. Friday: 30 minutes to place an ad through PPC, E-zines, or print advertising.

3. While building your traffic and working on the 5 pillars, monitor what’s happening on your site. Put more time, energy and money in promotions that produce results. Stop promotions that do not produce results.

Remember: Continuity Builds Success! Follow through with such an easy plan on a day by day basis and you simply can’t fail.

You’re guaranteed to see your traffic jump through the roof.

As of today, October 1, 2008, there are 1,463,632,361 people with internet access. That’s 21.9% of the global population.

Meaning: 1.5 billion potential customers for you and me.

[ UPDATE: On June 30, 2010 the number is grown to 1,966,514,816.. That's close to 2 Billion. ]

Heck – we’d have to screw up badly not get enough customers for our business out of 1.5 billion people, right?

But maybe you haven’t embraced the idea yet that the internet can generate new customers for almost any business you can think of. And it might generate a healthy influx of new customers for your business as well.

Globally you’re looking at

• 578,538,257 now 825,094,396 customers online in Asia
• 384,633,765 now 475,069,448 customers online in Europe

• 248,241,969 now 266,224,500 customers online in North America

• 139,009,209 now 204,689,836 customers online in Latin America

• 51,065,630 now 110,931,700 customers online in Africa
• 20,204,331 now 21,263,990 customers online in Australia

If you’re a business person you’re probably worrying about how to get the customers you need to pay the bills and finance your life style.

Now think about it: having access to 21.8% of the word population makes it easy to get all the customers you’ll ever need for your business. That’s not only true for any internet business, but also if you’re running a local brick and mortar store.

So how can you use a web site to get more customers for YOUR specific business?

How to use the internet for your local business.

Most brick and mortar businesses, shops, restaurants, offices, and practices need local customers. Using a company web site you can expand your client base and your profits in a 3 step process.

Step 1) Use a company web site to attract local customers.

Your company web site is your internet business card and if used correctly it can bring in new business faster than you think. For years the internet has been focused on general non-local information. This is changing right now. In fact in 5 to 8 years the internet will be the #1 source for local information.

I know that you probably believe the local news paper or yellow pages still do the job – but that’s changing quickly. 5 years from now – whether people want to know the local movie schedule, find a home delivery restaurant or an exterminator – they will get all the local information from the internet. In many places around the world this trend has already manifested.

The upshot is that you need to take advantage of local internet search and it will come quickly.

Be smart about this: most of your competition will still be missing this new opportunity. Just as 20 years ago EVERYBODY UNDERESTIMATED the explosive growth of the internet and commerce, today large numbers of your competitors underestimate the importance of LOCAL INTERNET SEARCHES. The first thing you need to do is to get a company web site that focuses on your local customers.

Once this is done …

Step 2) Expand your business beyond the local area

If you’re selling products

Physical products can easily be sold nationally or even internationally with an online store on your web site. Consider expanding your business that way if you sell any shippable product, as books, movies, cosmetics, apparel, computers, PC games, office supplies, electronics, furniture, toys, jewellery, fitness equipment, pet supplies, etc. etc.

If you’re new to the internet you may feel an online store is too complicated. In that case consider accepting orders via email or online contact form instead. Also – bear in mind that finding local consultants is not nearly as difficult as it used to be. They can set you up with a shopping cart usually for far less money than you might anticipate.

If you’re selling services

1) Many services are not bound to your geographic location.

My own business for example is available to customers worldwide. I sell internet marketing services and consulting on web sites in German and English language. Thus my services are accessible for roundabout one billion people – that’s 1,000,000.000 instead of just the 100,000 in my home town.

2) Some services have to be performed locally.

Could you still use the internet to expand your profits? Let’s see how…

• Sell Related Products. First of all you can start selling related products through your web site. Imagine a hair stylist. Of course the main business can only be performed when the client is ‘at hand’. But the hair stylist -having a web site- could start selling hair care products online and thus create additional revenue.
• Monetize Your Expertise. Second, any business person could and should monetize their Know-how and experience, see step 3 below to learn more.

Here’s a table of service categories and how to get new customers using a web site.

Step 3: Monetize your know-how

The first thing to do is to position yourself as recognized expert in your industry. You do this by publishing articles on your web site. It’s exactly what you can see in action on this very internet business blog – I’m publishing articles to position myself in the area of internet marketing. You can do the same in your industry.

Don’t worry whether you “deserve” to be called an ‘expert’. Generally speaking, 99% of the population will know less about your business than you do. It is these people that you want to attract. After all, you’re looking for customers, not to impress your competition.

Monetizing your expertise can even go one step further:

Create information products (for example, reports, booklets, video instruction) about what you know and sell them through your web site. Many of those can be sold digitally. People will download the information product and you don’t even have to take care of shipping goods.

To get you started, here’s a list of common information products.
You could create

• an e-book
• a teleseminar
• an audio book
• an online course
• a web site with a protected member only area
• a real seminar, maybe held in your local store

You set up an automated system once, and it’s working for you 24/7.

Selling information online is a multi billion dollar business.

If you know more about your product or service than your average customer, then you’re perfectly ready to sell your knowledge.

Summary – 3 Steps To More Customers:

No matter whether you’re a freelancer or run a local brick and mortar business, there are 3 ways to grow your business with a web site:

1. Create a business web site to attract local customers.

2. Sell related products and services through your web site.

3. Monetize your expertise: Publish articles to position yourself as authority and sell information products to make money.

Final words. Thanks for reading my article, I hope it has given you a few ideas about how you can generate more money for your business using the internet. I encourage you to post your thoughts and questions below. I read each and every comment and will be happy to answer your questions.

… whether you run a brick-and-mortar business with no web site yet,
… or whether you’re already online with an internet based business,
… or whether you’re not in business at all and want to become an online entrepreneur.

The internet offers amazing opportunities. Did you realize how fast the internet has grown in less than 20 years? Today already 1.5 billion people have internet access. That’s 21.9% of the global population.

All of those 1.5 billion internet users could be seeing your web site (or soon to be web site) as well.

Come back here often and I will reveal to you all the information you need to explode your business.

The easiest way to get this profit-producing-information is to subscribe to the news feed.

Fill in your email on the right hand side where it says ‘Get RSS Newsfeed Via E-mail:’. Then click ‘GO’ and you’ll get instant alerts of new blog posts that keep you ahead of the game.

Below, you can also subscribe to ‘The Internet Business Mastermind’. That’s my ‘closed doors’ mastermind community. The benefits if you join are too many to list here. Sign up below right now, or

To Your Internet Business Success,
Ralf Skirr