Friday, October 19, 2007

How to Bring Your Home Business Online and Marketing It Effectively

If you're thinking of bringing your existing home business online, you must have already heard of the numerous benefits which come with it. For starters, let us take a look at your current "traditional" home business.
You market your business through word of mouth, flyers or perhaps even advertisements on your local newspaper. Some might even put in that extra effort to come up with a mailing list, making frequent trips to the post office and spending a small fortune on postage. "Office" hours are likely to be about 14 to 16 hours a day.
Now lets take a quick glance at an online home business. Your market is limited to the entire World. You spend nothing sending out emails to a 1000 times more people (not to mention saving the daily trip to the post office.) Your business remains open 24/7/365 and accessible to anyone anywhere.
Everything seems to favor of bringing your home business online. But there's just one problem, where do you begin? This very question is the reason hundreds of thousands home business owners never brought their businesses online. And for those who did, they probably got stuck not knowing how to market it.
Let's begin with doing your homework. Before you dive in you might want to take sometime off thinking about who your potential customers or clients maybe. If your selling some products, shipping shouldn't be much of a problem how ever if your providing services such as photography or moving homes, there's no point marketing your side to someone halfway round the world, unless of course there's a substantial amount of profit to be made.
Having done that the next step is to check out your competitors. A famous strategist by the name of Sun Tze once said "Know yourself and know your enemy and in a hundred battles, you will be victorious." And this is exactly what you will be doing in time to come.
Here are a couple of points to look out for when your checking out your competitors. Namely the services provided, price of goods/services, marketing strategy and finally design and functionality of their website. To go about doing this you could do a search with popular search engines such "Google, MSN or Yahoo". If you don't find anything, don't be disheartened because that's a very good sign. It means currently there's no one to compete with you! However, if you get thousands of return result, just carry on with your home work.
The next step would be to register a domain name. When registering a domain name, think of alternative names in case your first choice is taken. Here's another tip when your registering a domain name. Use keywords related to your business and always keep it simple and short, something easy to remember.
In every business, you will be needing some methods of payments. To date, there are numerous ways this can be achieved, some simple ways of receiving online Credit Card payments would be through a ClickBank or PayPal account which is ideal for small businesses. It saves you a tremendous amount of work and provides your clients with secure transactions.
Having set up your website, the next important step would be to market your website. Earlier I mentioned doing a search on Google for your competitors. The trick to get ahead of your competitors is simple. You must get your site on the first page of the search result but before that, you obviously have to make a submission to the various search engines telling them of your existence.
Since an entire topic could be written on this alone, here are 2 main points to remember. When a potential customer does a search say "Buy Dog Shampoo Online" The more times the 4 words appear on your site, The more relevant it is to the search therefore the higher up your site will be. The other factor is the number of other sites with dynamic links to yours. 1 way of doing that is to actively participate in forums and add the URL of your site to your signature.
Another effective method of getting your site noticed is to advertise it with Google Adwords. This is a must do if you want instant presence on the internet. But before you do, do your research before hand or you'll end up burning a hole in your pocket and not getting a single sale.
Marketing effectively on the internet is a vast topic which you will have to spend time and effort and there is only so much I can touch on in an article. But with the knowledge you've just gained, it should point you in the correct direction to head in brining your home business online.

How To Get Multiple One Way Links To Your Blog Fast

There are probably many methods to get links to a blog. A blog hosted on blogger or any other blog platform still needs to be optimized for search engines.

It means you have to add meta tags and other onpage optimization factors. Do not put too much importance however. Your objective is to get many links. Start by adding meta tags to your blog.Then put nofollow tags on links that point to other sites. Disclaimer, terms and conditions, contact us and similar links can be added with the nofollow tag. Blogs hosted on Google platform, Blogger tend to get high rankings in Google very fast.Each post you create can get on page one of Google once your blog homepage has gained some pagerank by obtaining links. To get your posts ranked on page one of Google fast research keywords that has less than a million competitors.

Then put nofollow tags on links that point to other sites. Disclaimer, terms and conditions, contact us and similar links can be added with the nofollow tag. Blogs hosted on Google platform, Blogger tend to get high rankings in Google very fast.

Each post you create can get on page one of Google once your blog homepage has gained some pagerank by obtaining links. To get your posts ranked on page one of Google fast research keywords that has less than a million competitors. Then put the keyword in the title of the blog, at the beginning and at the end of the post. Make it bold as well. Do not write the post too short but put at least 250 words.

Ping your blog using one of the several pinging services. Within days your post will rank page one of Google. If you use blogger turn automatically pinging off.

You can exchange blog posts or articles with other bloggers by contacting them. Tell them you have a similar blog and mention some benefits so they get interested. Some forums have a section where you can make such deals much easier. You can do link exchange with other blogs, by adding links on your homepage of the blog and in return they add yours on their homepage.

Make sure that links only appear on the homepage and not on all blog post pages. To obtain one way links you can transform your blog posts into articles and submit them to article directories.

Use a software to do that so it becomes easy for you. Every blog has an rss field that your blog visitors can use so they get notified when you add new blog posts on your blog. You can submit the rss field to rss directories and that gives you more one way links. There are software to help you do that fast as well.

It is recommended that you write blog posts in your blog and not articles. You talk with your readers in your blog. Articles can become very boring to your visitors. Put a social bookmarking tool that appears at the end of each blog post. This will allow your visitors to bookmark your blog post and that gives you one way links. When you have a good blog post submit it to sites like Digg that allow you to submit your stories. Does not have to be a story, but a useful and good post.

There are many sites like Digg, the more you submit more one way links you get. Every week submit your best blog post to blog carnivals. They list a description of your article and link to it. This gives you more one way links. Blog carnivals are sites that group together the best posts about a specific topic or subject. There are blog carnivals for almost every niche.

The more methods you use the more backlinks you get. Pagerank will increase and rankings will improve. Outsource tasks that take time so you do more profitable work. These will help your business grow by getting more traffic when your rankings increase. You can outsource almost everything like submitting articles, creating articles, submitting rss fields, doing link exchanges and even creating blog posts.

Make Money Online With Affiliate Programs in Forum

This is the best option for those who do not have any start up money and for those who only want to earn a few hundred bucks a month by working online. Don’t expect to earn much from this method but I can guarantee you, sales will come in! Take this as a stepping stone, earn a few hundred bucks and roll the money!

A forum is an online discussion group where participants with common interests can exchange open messages.

Promoting affiliate programs in forum is extremely easy and profitable. Go to any of your favorite search engines and look for “forum+stay at home moms” or whatever your site or affiliate programs is all about. The you will be automatically be in touch with people who are specifically related to you site or affiliate programs. This is a technique I discovered to make money online very quickly without spending a dime.

You can do this by including a signature block at the end of which of your posts containing a link to you affiliate programs. So forums do not allow direct affiliate links in their post but there are plenty that do. The same applies for you when you are writing articles online and would like to contain your affiliate link within the text. There is an easy solution to this but how? Purchase a domain name and redirect your domain name to your affiliate link!

Domain name can be purchase with price ranging from $8 to $20 per year. It’s a small investment which can provide you with huge rewards. Choose a different domain name for each affiliate programs you wish to promote. For example, if you wish to promote an affiliate program called “Golf For Beginners”, then you can buy a domain name related to this affiliate programs. You may need to check the availability of the domain name that you wish to purchase. I bought mine from GoDaddy.com. Once you purchase the domain name, go to the homepage of the company that you purchase it from and do the following steps:
  1. go to your account setting
  2. manage domain
  3. domain forwarding
  4. insert URL or website address which you would like your domain name to be forwarded to (your affiliate link)
  5. save the settings

That’s it! It may take up to 48 hours to process the results but from then on, whenever someone type your domain, the site will be immediately redirected to the affiliate website which you have signed up with. You can then use the domain name of website address in your signature block in forum posts, on blogs or in articles and you will be driving traffic to the merchant site.


If you join a forum, I recommend that you participate for a few days before you start introducing your affiliate program to others. Read the rules of the forum that you participate before you do any post to prevent your post being deleted. Different forum have different rules, so read up the rules before you post.


If your site is related to “Work at Home Moms”, then you can go to WAHM or other similar forum sites.


I am regular in these forums nowadays related to internet marketing, which is hugely popular:
Warrior Forum
Conquer Your Niche
I put a link on the forum post I submitted, the link was my affiliate link and when the person clicked on it and decided to purchase the product, that would be an automatic $28 in my account. The first day within an hour I have made a sale and another sale came in an hour later.
I didn’t post any more messages, but there was a sale the next day. Things have slowed down a bit but it doesn’t matter, because my post will stay there indefinitely. The search engines will also grab the content when someone looks for information about the products, my post may appear and that give me more sales.


Even if you are not constantly raving about your specific products, you could go in and chat. That is also very profitable because you can customize your signature block. Underneath your signature text, make sure you put a link to your affiliate programs. That way, everytime you post, other will see your signature, and they click on it and decided to make a purchase, you would make money.

Make Money Online With Google Adsense

You have probably heard a lot about Google Adsense but you may not know what it is. Well, one thing for sure, it’s one of the hottest way to make money online if you own a website. You can add Google Adsense to your blog.

Google Adsense is a fast and absolutely easy way for people with websites of all types and sizes to put up and display relevant ads on the content pages of their sites and make money online.
Because Google Adsense ads relates to what your visitors came to your site to read about, or because the ads match up to the interest and the characteristics to the kind of people your content attracts, you now have a way to improve your content pages and make money online off them.

Sign up with Google Adsense once you have enough content on your website to get it up and running.

So what type of ads do you have to put? That’s the good part, you don’t have to decide. Google does it for you. Adsense always delivers relevant ads that are precisely targeted, on a page by page basis to the content that people find on your site. For example, if you have a page that tells the story of your pet fish, Google will send you ads for that site that are for pet stores, fish food, fish bowls, aquariums … you get the picture.

If you decide you want to add a Google search box to your site, then Adsense will deliver relevant ads targeted to the Google search results that your visitors’ search request generated.
What can Google Adsense do for you? In three words, make money online. More relevant pages on your ads translate into more clicks and make more money online for you. Because when users click on an ad, Google pay you.

It is important that you create ads that really integrate into the design of you website seamlessly. Take off borders and create the background color the same as the background color of the particular webpage. If you are really serious about Google Adsense, and want to create a multiple income stream and make money online with high click throughs , then I highly recommend Mike Cheney’s Adsense Video. I went from making about $4 per day from Google Adsense to about $80 per day from a same site. Just a few tricks and tips from Mike’s video increase my income by quite a lot.

Make Money Online With Articles

You can create articles and get you sales for whatever products or services that you are selling. Writing articles and submits these articles to article directories can generate free traffic to your website.

These articles can send traffic to websites you are promoting as an affiliate or your own products. If you have websites that generates you income from Google Adsense, articles is a good way to generate free and targeted traffic to your site, depending on your niche.
You can even create your own ebooks and sell them on their own mini sites or even resell rights to these ebooks.

The truth is, there are many ways to make money by writing articles. You don\'t have to write a 400 pages ebooks and provide every bit of information on a topic to make money online, you will make more money by keeping everything short and to the point. People want to learn something and they want to learn it fast.

Writing a profit pulling article is very important. You must write an article with useful information that the readers can benefits from it. Your articles are not your sales page. When readers read an article, they expect to gain something from it. If you want to write an article to promote a product, write a short article that the reader can benefits from it. Then you provide a link within your article to point to the website you are promoting.

Another important factor to consider when writing an article is to write an attention grabbing resource box. It’s a good way to have a one way link to your website to improve your search engines ranking.

Make money online with articles is not hard. Once you start writing, you can’t stop. That’s how I got hooked. Writing and submitting articles to article directories is my number one traffic generating method.

Affiliate Internet Business Start-Up Tips For Beginners

If you have actually decided on the affiliate internet business that you would like to join the first step is to sign-up as an affiliate. The information requested from you on the affiliate business program sign-up forms differ from program to program. You may have already noticed that some programs request an awful lot of information whilst others request minimal information.

The affiliate internet business sign-up form will request you to give your name and email address. You will also be asked to choose a username and password. The username is a name that you would like to be known as while being an affiliate of the program and it may also be used by you to login to your affiliate panel and sometimes used in your affiliate url. So choose a name that is easy to type and remember and usually it must be a minimum of 5 characters long.

When it comes to entering your password, do not get confused and insert the password that you use to access your email account of the email address you have just provided. Choose a totally new password and type it all in small letters.

It is really important that you enter your email address correctly because more often than not the first thing that will happen is they will send an email to you requesting you to confirm that your email address is correct and that you did in fact request to be signed-up and agree to receive information from them.

Sometimes on the sign-up form you may be asked to confirm your email address. This simply means that you must type the same email address again in the box provided.
You may also have seen a note on the affiliate internet business program page asking you to white list their email address. This is to ensure that you do in fact receive the email they are going to send you. So you need to add their email address to your address book so that it will not be blocked by spam filters or end up in your spam folder.


The first email you receive from the affiliate program may request you to click on a confirmation link. Once you click on the confirmation link then you should receive an introductory email containing your affiliate information, such as username, password, link to access the affiliate program, your affiliate url etc., etc.

Click on the link to access the affiliate section of your affiliate internet business, once it is open in your browser Bookmark it in your Favorites so that you have easy access to it in the future. So as to keep your Favorites well organized, you could prior to doing this create a folder in your Favorites called Affiliate Programs and then bookmark your first program in that folder.

If you are not sure how to create a new folder, click on Favorites on your horizontal menu above your browser window, click on Organize Favorites, click on New Folder and type in the name of your new folder, press Enter and then click on Close. Now open your Favorites sidebar (in Windows XP a star icon on the left of your screen or press Alt+C) and you will see your new folder.

The first time you access your affiliate back office it is a good idea to go to your Profile or Personal Information page just to check that the information you inserted on the sign-up page is correct and you will probably be requested to enter further information.

It is really important to ensure that you provide the correct information they require in order to pay you. If they are paying by cheque be sure that your postal address is 100% correct. If they are using a payment processor such as for example PayPay or AlertPay you will notice that they request an email address. This is how these two payment processors work, your email address is your account number. So you would then have to open an account at PayPay or AlertPay (or whatever processor they are using) and then return to this page and enter the email address that you used to open the account.

Other payment processors do give you an actual account number, but you will normally be prompted on your profile page to enter an email address or account number so it is not easy to make a mistake.

As you will receive regular emails from the affiliate internet business programs that you join, it is a good idea to open a folder in your email account with the name of the affiliate program and file them away which helps keep you organized so that you can easily locate them. Be sure to save the email you receive with your sign up information.

Once the sign-up process is over you are now officially an affiliate and you have your own affiliate internet business. Congratulations! It is now time to get to work!
Spend time exploring your back office, go through all the links so that you get a good understanding of the program and go through the training program that they provide. Study the marketing materials such as the web page for you to market, internet marketing methods they recommend, banners, text links, splash pages, examples of solo adverts, email ads and classified ads etc.


Many of the affiliate internet business programs will provide you with the name and contact details of your sponsor so don’t be afraid to contact them if you need assistance. Also you may well find that the affiliate program has a forum, if so, I highly recommend you spend time there as they are not only usually a gold mine of information but where you can ask questions and seek advice from other affiliate internet business owners.

Perhaps you are considering joining a number of affiliate internet business programs in order to earn multiple streams of income, if so it would be a good idea to get your own domain and market all the programs together on your own website. I wish you every success with your affiliate internet business.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Getting Started with eCommerce Internal SEO

eCommerce platforms are perfect for search engine optimization. Popular search engines love large websites with common content themes, and eCommerce stores naturally fit this bill. A few beginner search engine optimization techniques can start you down the road of gradual success.

Keep in mind that most search engines have a period of time where they will hold your rankings low for popular search terms. This is typically called the sandbox. Don’t let this discourage you, and if you can be patient and wait out this sandbox period you will be greatly rewarded.

First of all we have to assume that you have a product that is of value, consumers are searching for your products on popular search engines and that you can compete on price and quality with other high ranking eCommerce stores offering similar products. If this is true of your products, then you can be profitable optimizing an eCommerce store.

Picking a Domain Name

If you don’t already have a domain name that’s been up and running for awhile, you should take the time to pick a winner. Over time I have found that search engines seem to prefer short domain names that contain at least one of your major keywords. Long domain names seem to cause delay in high search engine rankings.

Title and Meta Tags

Your title tag should contain the most popular two and three word phrases that your potential customers are searching for. Take time to make sure that several word combinations can be derived from words in your title. It also helps if your most popular phrase is the first part of your title. Your title content must directly relate to content and images found on the page your listing links to. Unrelated titles can lead to high ‘bounce rates’. I will discuss this in future articles, take my word for it. If you have the dedication, unique titles should be made for every category, sub-category and product in your store.

The meta description should contain your company name and/or your brand names for the the products you’re selling as well as popular search phrases for your products or services. If you’re selling off-brand products, or you manufacture your own products you should develop a catchy company name or brand name for brand recognition. The meta description should be well written. Many searchers will read descriptions before deciding to click on a search result, so a call to action or clever wording might help to entice a searcher to click on your listing. Do not mislead searchers in your description or title, as this may increase your ‘bounce rate’. I will discuss bounce rates in future articles, again just take my word for it. If you have the dedication, unique descriptions should be made for every category, sub-category and product in your store.

Keyword meta tags are generally ignored by most search engines, but it is still good practice to include keyword tags. Add as many popular two, three, or four word phrases to this tag as can be found on the immediate page. The first keywords listed should relate to your title and description tags. I have not realized a limit in keywords to affect search engine rankings, but I advise that you don’t add keywords that don’t relate or can not be found in your page content. If you have the dedication, unique keyword tags should be made for every category, sub-category and product in your store.

Get more stucture tips in Basic Page Title, Meta Description & Meta Keywords Structuring Rules.

Product Image File Names and Alt Tags

Product image file names should include product numbers and keywords that relate to the product. Use dashes to separate words, not underscores. For example a file name for Adidas running shoes would be as follows… adidas-running-shoes-A10.jpeg

Alt tags should contain the same keywords and product numbers for consistency.

Text Content Development

Writing content can be like pulling teeth for some people. Don’t get too caught up with the ‘SEO’ tricks and think that they will substitute quality content development. You must take the time to write detailed, well written product descriptions, main page introductions, sub-category descriptions and about us information. Don’t copy this information from a supplier or a competitors website. Popular search engines will recognize the duplicate content. Paraphrase any information that you must take from another website.
If you follow these suggestions then you will be headed down the path of eCommerce success. Look for future articles from me to discuss topics such as…


1. Bounce rate reduction strategies
2. Link Building (it’s critical to do this correctly, so don’t rush into it)
3. Search Engine friendly urls (there are a few ways of doing this, so stay tuned for my tested theories)
4. Keyword research
5. Dynamic content
6. Internal link structures
7. Many, many more to come…