Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Make Money, No Product Required!

Would you like to make money by selling products online?  If so,do you already have a collection of products to sell?  If not,do you have the money needed to obtain them? If you are like many others, who want to make money online, there is a good chance that you do not have the funds needed.  After all, if you did, you likely would not be looking for ways to make money online.  While you might automatically assume that it is impossible for you to make money online, especially if you don’t have any products to sell, it isn’t. There is good news. That good news is that you can make money, a substantial amount of money, even if you don’t actually have a product to sell.

As it was stated above, there are a large number of individuals who want to make money online; however, many think that it is impossible to do because they don’t already have a collection of products or they don’t have the money needed to make the purchases.  Unfortunately, when this occurs, a large number of individuals just give up. You are advised against doing this.  As previously mentioned, it is possible to make money online, even if you don’t have any products to sell. You can do so with affiliate programs.


Affiliate programs are programs that create a partnership with business owners and webmasters.  If you are already a webmaster this is great, but if not you can easily become one.  As you likely already know, a webmaster is an individual who owns and operates their own online website.  Once you have a website and
you find another business, which is running an affiliate program, you can enter into a partnership with them.  This partnership is unique because you can both benefit from it.  Affiliate programs work to help business owners increase their sales, but they also help webmasters generate extra income.

Although affiliate programs sound nice, you may be looking for more information. After all, with internet scams at an all time high, you can never be too cautious.  While some affiliate programs are operated in different ways, they tend to be operated in similar matters.  This matter involves the business owner creating links or banners for webmasters, just like you, to display on their website.  Special tracking software, which
is often referred to as affiliate tracking software, is used. That software will enable a business owner to determine exactly when you helped them generate a sale and how much that sale was. This sale will, in turn, generate additional income for you by way of commissions.  The amount of money that you make will all
depend on the affiliate program that you choose to join, but your commission is often a percentage of your sale. In some instances, can also be a flat rate amount.



When it comes to affiliate programs, one of the questions most commonly asked is “why?”  As previously mentioned, affiliate programs allow you to make money selling a product that isn’t even yours.  This means that you do not have to deal with any inventory. You also don’t have to ship any products to the
buyers.  In fact, you shouldn’t even have to communicate with your customers. Your affiliate partner, the one who is selling the product, will do all of the work for you.  What could be easier than that?

If you are interested in making money online, without having to have your own products to sell, you are urged to further examine affiliate programs, namely the programs that are available for you to join.  You can find these programs by examining large affiliate hosting programs, such as LinkShare.  You can also find affiliate programs to join by examining the online websites of various online retail stores.  Typically towards the bottom of the main homepage, a business will outline whether or not they have an affiliate program that you can apply to.  If you are really looking to make money online, you are urged to find a product, a service, or a company that you can fully stand behind, one hundred percent.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Search Engine or Directory?

Getting your site listed in search engines and directories is an important part of building a successful site. Most people tend to think of search directories and engines as one in the same. However, they are actually both quite different. The only similarity between the two, in fact, is that they both serve the same purpose: to help people find web sites of interest to them. In this newsletter, we will talk about the various search
engines and directories, what their differences are, and why each is essential to delivering traffic to your site.

Search Engines:

By far the most popular search engine around is Google. Other search engines include Inktomi, AltaVista, AlltheWeb, and MSN.

Directories:

Probably the most popular example of a directory is Yahoo. Other directories include Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) and Gimpsy.

The Differences between Search Engines and Directories

Difference #1: Search engines are run by robots; directories are run by human editors

The most notable difference between search engines and directories is that search engines aren’t updated by human editors like directories are. Instead, search engines are updated bi-monthly or monthly by robots—spiders and crawlers. What are spiders and crawlers? They are programs written by programmers at a particular search engine that basically locate a page, browse it, and then report whatever it finds back to the search engine’s database. What is found is then listed on the search engine.

Directories, on the other hand, are completely updated by human editors. What usually happens is that a person submits their site to the directory and then the editor will visit the site and see whether or not it is worthy of being listed in the directory. If it is, it will be grouped with other relevant sites in the directory. If not, it won’t be listed at all. Directories are typically harder to get listed in than search engines are for this reason. Human editors won’t allow in unworthy sites; search engine bots will. Directories are usually
updated very frequently by the editors.

Difference #2: Search engines are free to get listed in; some
directories are not

Many directories charge money for each submission. Search engines never charge a dime because their bots are solely responsible for listing web sites. There are, however, free directories which you can submit your site to.

Difference #3: Search engines are more popular and more used

People want convenience. Search engines offer this. All people have to do is type in a keyword into the search engine and relevant sites come up. Those who use directories have to go through the hassle of going through categories and sub-categories. This takes time and patience, both things that
many busy people just don’t have.

Difference #4: Directories have listings grouped together by
topic; search engines can sometimes be disorganized

When someone visits a directory, all they have to do is choose a category that interests them. Then, all the sites are relevant to that category will come up on the page. While search engines are usually effective, unrelated listings can sometimes come up in a search for a particular thing. There’s nothing worse than
doing a search for cars and having an unrelated listing for cats come up. Unfortunately, this is occasionally the case with search engines because they are updated by robots, not humans.

Why are Search engines and Directories important to your site?

There are a few reasons for why both are important to your site’s traffic. The most obvious reason is that the more you are listed, the more likely it is people will visit your site. If people see your site in both search engines and directories, they are more likely to visit it than if they just saw it in a
search engine.

Even though directories aren’t as popular now, they are still well-used by people because they neatly group together sites in a particular category. So if you run an online web design business and are listed in the web design category of the directory, everyone who looks for web design in that directory
will see your site.

Search engines are also important to your site because they will show your site if a particular keyword(s) is typed into the engine. If your site is listed in both directories and search engines, you will have more traffic than if your site were listed in one or the other.

Be sure to do whatever it takes to ensure that your site gets listed in both and you will reap the benefits.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Delivering Video Via E-mail…

Being able to send attachments together with an email message is very helpful especially when you need to send important documents. The limit on the file size you can attach depends on the limit that your email service provider imposes on your email account as well as the limitation on the email account storage
size that the recipient has. While it is now possible to send several MP3 files as email attachments because of the general increase in email account storage sizes, sending larger sized files like videos and movies may cause you to encounter problems unless you and the recipient have a paid email account which gives you several gigabytes of storage space.

In any event, sending video files through email may force you to compress and split the file into two portions in order for it to be accepted by the recipients email account. Then too, you will probably have to wait for the recipient to remove the first portion from their email account before you can send the next.

This is a problem for people involved in internet marketing as they know that videos are the most effective advertising tool in the world. Never let it be said that they have no creativity though, because, they managed to find a way around the system.

One way to circumvent this problem is to attach a capture image from the video file onto the email message. This capture image will serve as a preview of the video and embedded in the file will be a link to the video itself. Of course, you have to bear in mind that you are asking a person to view an advertisement. I wouldn’t do it, and most won’t either. You will need to give the customer an incentive to click on that link.

Webpage designing programs and utilities now allow for viewing multiple pictures in a single webpage. This picture cascade is similar to an automatic slide show presentation. You can capture several images from the video itself, compile them and send your message through.

If the customer does click on the image or slideshow, you have to options of how to let him view your video. The first one is already mentioned above. When the customer clicks the image, a new browser window opens and your video loads onto it. The second option is to use streaming video where, the video is stored in your storage device and the link on your email newsletter activates the video stream. In this manner, the customer is not displaced from his/her current browser, thereby causing you to avoid annoying your customer.

A few years ago, we saw the megabyte standard hard drive replaced by the gigabyte hard drive. In 2 to 10 years, the terabyte may become the standard storage size for a personal computer’s hard drive. How big is it? One letter or character including spaces and punctuations is equal to 8 bits. 8 bits equals 1 byte, 1,000 bytes equals a kilobyte, 1,000 kilobytes equals 1 megabyte, and so on and so forth. With this potential
for increased storage capacity, email service providers may decide to increase account storage capacities again. This next increase will definitely accommodate an entire video file as an attachment to email messages.

In the meantime, creativity needs to take over where technology has deficiencies. To be able to send the best in quality video to your customers, you will need to go about it the most efficient way.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Advertise with Adsense


Advertise with Adsense

Adsense is a great marketing method that can be quite effective for your business. It involves advertisements for your business being posted on the websites of others. In a world where
millions access the internet every day, this type of marketing is very effective. It has the potential of generating more traffic to your website. A percentage of that traffic will
likely result in an increase of sales for your business.

It is less expensive that other types of marketing because you only pay when a consumer clicks your link from one of the websites you are advertising on. This is a great opportunity for
new businesses, small businesses, those on a low marketing budget, and larger businesses that are looking at ways to market their products or services while cutting out unnecessary costs.

Take a moment to look at various websites on the internet. I am sure you will find several sites that offer advertisement links for other businesses. You will also notice they look professional and attractive. Are you ready to give advertisingwith Adsense through Google a try? The process is very simple. You will need to go to www.AdWords.com. Here you will complete a
detailed application. It is important to use relevant keywords for your products or services as this is how matches will be made to relevant websites who will be posting your ads. Google
Adsense offers great tutorials to help you select the right keywords for your business.

Google Adsense allows you to create your own ads just like you would for any other type of advertising campaign. They program allows you to format for specified languages and geographic locations. Once the ads are posted on various websites consumers can choose to click on the link and be directed to your website. This is the only time you will pay an advertisement host website. When you set up your ads, you will decide how much you are willing to pay per click on your advertisement. You will also have the opportunity to change and edit your advertisements any time you like. If the advertising is going well you might be able to increase the amount of sites you advertise on.

There is a five dollar activation fee for each new business to set up an account on Google Adsense. Most credit cards can be used for payment as can Paypal and Post-Pay. There is no minimum dollar amount you have to pay each month. Again, you only pay for when consumers click on your link from a website you are advertising on. If they access a webpage with your advertisement on it and read it but don’t click on it, then you pay nothing.

As with most other types of business, there are scammers out there waiting to take advantage. Click fraud is a problem with Adsense advertising. Click fraud involves setting up a system to
click on advertisement links or doing it manually to earn more money from the business that is advertising. Another reason click fraud is done is to damage competitors by clicking on
their ads, knowing they will have to pay out more money. If you participate in Google Adsense for your advertising needs, it is a good idea to purchase Click Fraud software for your own
protection. Google also works very hard to monitor such fraudulent activities.