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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
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.
]]>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…
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The New Construction Cause The Problem
The house we bought have a roof that is flat. Nothing strange with that. The flat roof have a small rake so the water can flow from the roof. The problem now is that there is a new construction made were the lowest point on the roof is and the water cannot flow away from the roof. This is the problem. And for understanding this you dont need to be an inspector. Already as a very young child you learn that if you jump from a chair you will fall down to the floor. Photo: The yellow cosntruction is new. The water should flow down there.
Ignorance Is The Worst Thing
Anyway I shouldn’t need to be angry. But it’s hard not being angry. Anyway I sent a letter to the seller and the inspection agency that we as buyers and the seller and agency should share the extra cost to fix the roof problem. The seller declined. And the inspection agency totally ignored us. I have also called them twice. This ignorance makes me real mad. What a customer support. Crazy. We payed a lot of money for an useless inspection. (This is one of the biggest inspection agencies in Sweden, but maybe not anymore:-))
It makes me sad that these kind of things happens. Whole soceity loose. We as us buyers will be very angry and send out our negative energy to an already negative soceity.
Feel Good Even If Bad Things Are Happening
I should cool down because it is quite clear that justice will win. But you never know. My fear creates my anger. Positive with this matter is that I’m learning how to feel good even if bad things are happening.
Internet Marketing As A Backup Plan
My backup plan is to use internet marketing and the strategies involved for justice. I will make an online blacklist for companies that don’t care about their customers. I will with that site earn money and the blacklisted companies will loose customers. One very good thing is that I’m very motivated to do this, almost aggressive like Alex Jeffreys Coaching.
Costumers Have The Power
Don’t forget that costumers have the power. The costumers are the life blood of all markets. The recession is not created by the costumers. It’s created by the financial system and some big companies. And a company is nothing, the employees are the company.
Alex Jeffrey is no one special, or maybe more right is to say that we all are special. Anyway we all have the same opportunity and everyone can succeed with the right mindset. Take Alex journey for example. He got the same coaching as the all other students. No special skills. He only took action and used the proven system.
And maybe you wonder what is happening on my blog? I have run out of energy for my blog these last weeks due to sick family. All energy have been used for my offline office job and my sick family. We have never been this sick before (it is a long lasting flu, we are all coughing like crazy).
At last for this blog post I have to say that everyone from the beginner to the top internet marketer have something of value that will make the business successful. But the beginner have to learn the system before becoming successful. When the foundation is built success will be easy.
Business is simple, people make it difficult. But at the very beginning it will be confusing before finding and understanding how to follow the system.
And everyone will always have the opportunity becoming the “guru” people want to follow or it is enough being a top internet marketer. See what happend with Alex Jeffreys. Rich Schefren is learning from Alex marketing strategies. This will happen again for students that take action.
(Rich Schefren will be on one bonus session with Alex Jeffreys coaching)
]]>And whole family is sick. Our two daughters are coughing badly right now while they’re sleeping. Think it will be no office work tomorrow. The flu has caught us.
Short notes from Alex Jeffreys webinar
Alex Jeffreys webinar was about how to create good business as an affliate. He showed how he created a campaign for an affiliate product. How to plan and work with your web site/blog content + eBook and then email marketing.
Alex steps how to work with your email list:
1. Value for your traffic
2. Squeeze traffic to your list
3. Build relationship with your list
4. Sell to your list
Use autoresponders, follow up emails for building your relationship with your list. Send out broadcast emails for special announcements.
Aweber have the service needed for email marketing. You can make unlimited follow up emails, send broadcast messages to all your leads. Aweber have also statistics if the receiver opens the email and click the link in the email. This will help you improve your messages and also help you divide your receivers into different groups. You will then have the opportunity writing more individually to each group.
Listen to your list what they want.
The eBook is your fastest way to build your list.
Alex talked again about the importance of planning and business strategies.
Writing a diary of your journey is important. It is hard for yourself to see your own progress.
YouTube video
I missed Alex video competition. But I have anyway made a short video as a test. It is non informative, it is only some shots from my sorroundings. More like a nature movie. I think my computer also got a slice of the flu, because it had to work hard to save this small video. Therefore I only made one first unclean version.
Alex Jeffreys hunted by Google