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What is Viral Marketing?

June 11th, 2009

If you have been studying up on how to succeed with your online business, website or blog, you have undoubtedly heard the phrase viral marketing repeated over and over again. But people often mention this without spending the time necessary to explain what it really is, how it works and how you can use it to your advantage. Understanding all of the basics of viral marketing is the first step towards utilizing it for increased business performance.

Viral marketing is essentially a low cost way of getting your name spread around through word of mouth, often utilizing large social networks and other popular websites and networks. You can use many different techniques to capture some viral marketing success, such as videos, pictures, newsworthy or entertaining stories and even great deals, discounts and giveaways.

After creating the video or other piece of content, you submit it around to various sites such as YouTube and other social networks such as Digg or StumbleUpon. Then, if you created something great, the word will start spreading and other Internet users will do your marketing work for you, voting for your content and telling their friends. If you’re really lucky, you can create an Internet sensation that reaches millions of people.

Another form of viral marketing that can help establish you as an expert and can help you sell your product or service is the eBook. This is different from other forms of viral marketing, because you aren’t submitting something to a social network for entertainment. Rather you provide a resource to people in a smaller niche in the hopes that when they need to buy something, they’ll come back to you. A great eBook will quickly spread around through email chains and blogs of interested parties.

It’s also important to understand that success at viral marketing isn’t guaranteed, and you shouldn’t feel that as long as you throw some video up somewhere that people will automatically start talking about and sending thousands of new visitors in your direction. This is just not the way that it works.

What you need to do is truly offer something to people that they enjoy or find useful. Your video clip, as an example, could be a funny or ironic comedy sketch. It could also be a quick and simple how to for a previously complex subject. There are plenty of options for what you can do, and the more creative you can get, the better.

The more unique your work is the more the viral it will be.

There are also lots of things that you should avoid doing if you hope to have success at viral marketing. As mentioned, don’t assume people want to watch, read or look at what you provide. You have to make them want to watch by offering them something compelling. You have to be able to appropriately capture your audience’s interest, and to do this you need to have a base understanding of who they are, what they are interested in and what they need.

If you attempt to use viral marketing and create anything sales pitchy, or like an advertisement for yourself, you will fail, guaranteed. Direct people to your website or inform them of your product, or even better, demonstrate how your amazing product or service works. But don’t drone on and on about it because people won’t care. Viral marketing can be an extraordinary way to drum up business if you know how to use it properly.

viral marketing

How to choose an affiliate program

May 6th, 2009

Selecting the right affiliate programs is crucial when it comes to achieving success in your affiliate marketing home business. To find the programs that are best fit for your business, it is necessary to spend hours of time doing research and investigation on the affiliate programs you found on the Internet.

Affiliate programs are one of the best ways to generate a strong revenue stream. There are literally thousands of affiliate programs to choose from. Program features and support vary tremendously.

If you are an affiliate marketer, you have two options. The first option is to choose the product that has a great demand in the market. These items are expected to be sold immediately due to the interest of the people. Some examples of such particular items are dating sites, casino sites and weight loss products. The second option is to choose a product that suits your interests and you, yourself like to promote it.

But, how do you know which are the best?

Looking for a unique product can be key. For example, there are many affiliate programs looking to sell books. Choosing an affiliate program that does and offers the same things as the next won’t do much for you. Look for an affiliate program that either offer a unique product or has a unique way of presenting the same thing. Look for affiliate programs that offer unique products in a ripe market.

Make sure that the program you choose, however, has growth potential. Looking for merchants that are dynamic and constantly expanding their product offerings is important. Customers will keep checking back to see what’s new if the program is growing and this will develop frequent customers as well as expanding revenue.

Take a look at the pay rate that is offered. When you have a higher pay rate, you will need less traffic to meet your revenue goals. If the affiliate program offers only a few dollars, you will have to be constantly active in order to see any meaningful revenue. Because the range of pay rates varies to extremes depending on the affiliate program, you should make sure to look for affiliate programs that will offer you a decent pay rate for the business that you generate and make sure that they will offer a clear pay structure. If the merchant does not spell out exactly what you will be receiving for the business that you generate it is best to avoid them and look elsewhere.

You can Increase your revenue potential with two-tier programs. Being paid for helping grow the business of the merchant seems only fair. Two-tier programs reward you for both referring other affiliates to the merchant as well as end customers. Look for programs that will pay you for your affiliate referrals.

Make sure the program has a good tracking system. Nowadays, it is reasonable to expect that your sales statistics will be readily available to you. If possible, look for programs that offer real time tracking 24 hours 7 days a week and that are accessible from the web. Always confirm the tracking method of any program.

Avoid merchants that will compete with you. If a merchant has an affiliate program, but also has brand recognition, the customer may try to go directly to the merchant. Fortunately, some affiliate programs demand that customers must come through an affiliate site. Look for merchants that will not compete with you.

Choose a program with community support. Again, it is in the merchant’s interest to foster support for their affiliates, yet many affiliate programs offer no community support. Look for programs that believe in providing community support.

The more favorably a program stacks up against the criteria above, the more chances for success you have when you join.

Internet Marketing

Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies

May 6th, 2009

1. Relative Content with Obvious Benefits
Primarily, get your website content right. As many of you have heard Content is King but it is relative content that wins. The content on your website should be relevant and easy to read for both the reader and the search engines. A good way to start is the headlines of your content. This is the first thing that your reader will see and should mean something to the read. Your headline should be a promise. It should make the reader feel like they will receive some kind of reward for reading your content whether it be a product, amusement, a solution or even knowledge. When you determine what product or service, you’re going to offer, make sure that it is advantageous to the customer - not just to yourself. Your customer’s wants and needs come first and your profits come later. Search engines rank websites based on relevancy of the content that is being indexed. So go ahead and optimize your site content.

2. Determine a niche
You’re not going to get anywhere by being everything to everyone. It’s impossible but you can specialize and create a specific audience who will come to you as an authority. Customers are going to appreciate you more if you are knowledgeable and helpful when they need your service. For example, a person who is running a editing site might also want to help people write resumes. However that might not be their forte and isn’t able to write a resume that will be useful for their customers. It won’t matter how good they are at editing papers if they are getting customers are saying they don’t like the service. So specialize and be an authority.

3. Search Engine Optimization
There are several ways to go about this one. Ppc (pay per click) is a fast and easy way to start getting ranked on the search engines. By bidding for keywords that are related to the products or services that you promote and sell on your website. The effects are not permanent however so practicing real SEO is crucial for staying ranked at the top of major search engines.

4. Create a blog
The blogosphere is growing at an amazingly rapid rate. Not only is it the thing to do but it also is a sure fire way to start being noticed by search engines. It allows you to get close and personal with your customers and help them to feel comfortable with you and your service. Blogging also means that you are updating content on a regular basis, which is one thing that search engines are looking for.

5. Time to publicize
Word of mouth is going to be the least expensive and possibly the hardest to control. There are other ways, however, to market your service. Through email lists and viral marketing are among the most popular forms of internet marketing. Twitter has grown from being a fad to being a serious marketing tactic to get traffic through your site. Because that’s what we want right? For people to know who we are.

6. Keep them Coming Back
A good way of getting customers returning is by providing ways for them to know about deals. Email lists and rss feeds are ideal for this. If you had an amazing deal but no one knew about it where is the profit. Alternatively, if you have a pool of loyal customers and you send out notifications on special prices they can get your service for it will not only help you and your profits but also the needs of your customers.

7. Build Quality Backlinks
It is a waste of your time and energy building links on junk sites so make sure when you do link exchanges the link directory is linked to the owner’s main page. Getting your name out there is important but it will not matter if no one sees the links to your site.

8. Learn from the Top Marketers
What are they doing right and how can you implement it into your own website? You can learn copywriting, site design, contextual ad placement, lead generation techniques simply by seeing what the other people are doing. Look at their headlines, the graphics, special offers. It’s good to know your competition and what they are doing. It could be the difference of first and second place and believe me; you want to be in first. If you can afford it consider outsource these tasks to professionals.

9. Consistency is Key
All the Internet marketing avenues you take should have the same focus and look. Your logo or company trademark will become noticed and remembered by customers.The mark of a good marketer does not just know what to change but knows what not to change. If you find an internet marketing strategy and its working for you, use it until it doesn’t work. Remember if it’s not broke then don’t fix it.

10. Work It
Marketing takes patience. Make sure that you are setting yourself realistic goals and striving to accomplish them. Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn this vision of the future into reality. Something as simple as a to-do list of daily tasks will help you reach those goals. Revisiting your goals frequently will keep you on track and motivated.

Internet Marketing

How to Use Email Marketing Software

April 27th, 2009

If you have been delaying using email marketing for your website or business, you have been missing out on a great opportunity.

Email marketing software is very simple to setup and use, and it can result in fantastic benefits for you. You will be able to bring in more prospects, stay in touch with them and convert them into repeat clients and customers.

When deploying your email marketing tactics you can send many different types of messages. You can announce new sales or products, or you can send weekly, monthly or quarterly newsletters. You can also promote various products or services you have to try to directly generate sales.

First steps for email marketing
Before all of this however, there are several steps you need to follow. To begin with you should setup an autoresponder service and display a signup on your website. What this means is that people enter in their contact information to signup for your newsletter or other messages. Once they do, you don’t have to manually begin sending them messages. The email marketing autoresponder system automatically kicks in, adds them to your list and sends them their first message.

This is the beauty of email marketing software, as it makes your life so incredibly easy. Remember to place your signup in a well positioned place on your website, so that people can easily find and access it.


Get people to sign up

Now that you have your autoresponder setup and displayed, you have to get people to signup so you can send them all of those different kinds of messages mentioned above. In order to do this you have to offer them something of value or of interest that they cannot get elsewhere. People won’t signup for your list just because you ask them to, they have to be compelled into doing it.

A great way to do this is by offering a free guide, tutorial or small product of some kind. People will want to get or see this free offering, and will signup. Once they are signed up you can send them more newsletters and convert those interested prospects into paying customers.

If the information or product they received was informative, educational or otherwise useful, these prospects will think highly of you and will be more likely to buy something from you and your company.

Once people are signed up, they are actively interested in your product, company or service, and it’s your job to keep them that way. Send them a thank you confirmation message through the autoresponder as soon as they sign up, along with whatever free offering you are providing. Then be sure to stay in touch regularly. If they don’t hear from you for three months they might forget who you are and delete your message before they even read it. Therefore you want to stay in regular contact. Keep on providing more useful tips, tricks, stories and information to build a relationship with these prospects. You’ll be fresh in their minds and as soon as they are ready to purchase, they will turn to you.

Email marketing software can be a very powerful tool to have at your disposal. There’s no reason to avoid getting yourself started with it, it’s easy to use and will help you earn more money.

Internet Marketing

Viral Marketing. What is it? How do we implement it?

April 14th, 2009

To many, Viral Marketing sounds a bit repulsive and nasty. Who wants to be associated with a virus? A virus’ are evil. Their point of attack it direct, brutal and unforgiving, first by infiltrating the host and then infesting to the point where there is no going back and making it near impossible to wipe out. It is for this reason that we lovingly refer to this process of online marketing as viral marketing.

Off the internet there are varying terms for viral marketing such as buzz marketing, creating a buzz, word of mouth, network marketing, ect. Basically, and as monosyllabically as possible, viral marketing is a rapid multiplication of a message. Viral Marketing is any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a message, much like the game ‘telephone’, and creates potential for a constant rate of growth in the messages’ a constant rate of growth of exposure and authority

A great example of this would be marketing technique used to sell Radiohead’s album In Rainbows. To the shock of just about the entire music industry Radiohead announced early in October that they would be giving their album away free. That’s right free. However, while downloading the album there was an option to donate any sum that the fan felt was appropriate. Within two weeks radio head ‘sold’ over 1.2 million albums for approximately $9.6 million in gross. The genius of this move was probably that this marketing technique cut out any middleman that would have sold their album and had practically no budget.

So, what can we learn from Radiohead about viral marketing?

People love offers for free stuff.

Free is the most powerful word in a marketer’s vocabulary. If you want to draw traffic to your idea, message, product, service or what have you, you need to offer them something that they either can’t get anywhere else, or for free.

Message easily scales from small to large.

While Radiohead accomplished this by stepping out of the mold and using a radical move like selling their product for free. There are many ways to do this but we need to keep in mind that when we are innovative and step out of the mold people will take notice.

Make is simple

All Radiohead fans had to do was download their music. Of course, the easily accessible donate option was there for all to see. Who wouldn’t want to promote music that’s free. Never mind that the average downloader donated about $9, which is about the full price of a CD. Because if this is promoted then more musicians are likely to implement free downloads.

Radiohead not only made a profit through this marketing maneuver but they also gained attention and trust from an old and new fan base from which their alternative income will reflect.

Internet Marketing

A Cohesive Relationship: Marketing and Email; a match made in heaven

April 14th, 2009

In the marketing world, there are so many tips and trick to making a valuable and profitable business, in online marketing especially. Most online marketers who are looking for success implement everything they can to increase traffic in their websites and their revenue. They implement everything from forming blogs to build a community, viral marketing, social marketing, applying SEO, and anything else that can keep them ahead of the curve.

Unfortunately, most people tend to ignore Email. Setting it to the side as if to say “you’re yesterday’s news.” They don’t realize the potential that this seemingly archaic piece of technology has, but as old as e-mail is just about everyone has an email address and it will be around for a long time. So how do you reach emails potential? This is where Email Marketing comes into play.

So how do you implement marketing through emails?

The main point of email marketing is to deliver your message to your public. Websites are all about creating your message and having people come to you. That’s great but its only half of what you can do. Sure, RSS is great but you need subscribers. E-mail is a great tool to send out feeds, related free newsletters, and build yourself a list of addresses that you can use to not only get your message out, but also to sell products, provide services or other things that your business could require.

So what can you do to start using your email more efficiently? Here are a few things that can get you onto the right track.

  • Start an e-mail Newsletter
  • Have an easily available way from your website to subscribe to email updates and encourage subscriptions as much as you can
  • Manage the email list you have and use it efficiently
  • Link back to your website through your emails
  • Send out special offers that can only be obtained through email
  • AVOID SPAM

Don’t add people onto your mailing list unless they request it, don’t send out multiple emails a day, and make it easy for people to unsubscribe. You don’t want people reporting your email as spam.

Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing Coaching Programs

April 9th, 2009

Time flies… I have been busy with my business offline and have been working behind the scenes for a very long time now. It is time to shape up my internet marketing blog.

During my absence I have looked into different internet marketing coaching programs. And what I can see all of them have the same info. The only difference is how it is presented and some details as good tools and sites to use.

It has been good information for me to look into these internet marketing coaching programs and now I know more how to do internet marketing in the most powerful way and also fast.

Internet marketing guide
I will make a small and compact guide about internet marketing that everyone needs. Especially for those who are starting up new websites.

But still it is good attending to internet marketing coaching programs. But there are many to choose from and it is difficult to know which fits best for who…

The internet marketing guide or guides I’m planning to make will be short as possible and straight to the point without any fluff.

The first version of the guide will contain exactly all the steps needed for a website that will generate traffic.

Next version will go more into details how to do basic installation of blogs and websites etc. This information is already found on this blog. A good tip is to learn this before learing internet marketing. I will update and make the information more easy to use and also make the guide (all things collected there).

A test site to generate traffic
I am right now making a test site that generate traffic. And from this work I will make the guide. It will be the best way to show and make it understandable how internet marketing works.

Next step or at the same time when the traffic is coming to the site it is needed to monetize the traffic. This will be presented in the guide also or in the next guide. This is almost the last step for your internet business…

Internet Marketing

Alex Jeffreys Recommends Using A Blog

January 11th, 2009

In Alex Jeffreys coaching he recommends all students to use a blog. In fact this is most important for internet marketing. You need to have an own blog for your business online.

The blog will attract visitors and is a good tool for getting high ranked in the search engines.

I will later today publish a Quick Guide how to setup your own blog. My aim is to have it as short and simple as possible. I will not get into details.

I will personally help my readers setting up their own blog. Setting up the blog is not difficult. Problem is that there are many small settings and plugins that are needed for a professional blog. Read more…

Alex Jeffreys, Blogs ,

Video Marketing With Maria Andros

January 9th, 2009

Last nights webinar with Alex and Maria Andros the video marketing queen was fantastic. Maria made a speed webinar packed with very interesting video marketing tactics.

Maria got online May 2007 with no list, no Google PPC and made $12000 in the first 2 months.. Then she made 6 figures in a year without expensive advertising.

Over 500.000 video views
500.000 have viewed her videos. I can understand that after the webinar with such passion and energy. In almost 2 hours she literally poured out her stories and tactics right from her heart. It is not possible to talk like she did from the mind. Read more…

Internet Marketing

Little Sparrow Made More Traffic Than My Internet Marketing

January 8th, 2009

This cold dark snowy morning I bicycled to work. On my way to work I passed the area where the little sparrow created some chaos among the bird-watchers.

Already in this early morning a car was parked there waiting for the bird to wake up. I wonder what little bird thinks. Earlier days this week there has been maybe 400 people here watching the little sparrows moves.

This little sparrow have got about 400 visits per day. That is more than my internet marketing strategies have made.

What is the birds secrets for creating all this traffic???
Read more…

Internet Marketing