Internet & Affiliate Marketing

Celebrate The Small Victories
by: Daniel Detlaf

Most internet marketing ventures start as one-man operations. When mistakes are made, you know who to blame. But don't just beat yourself up, remember that when progress is made, that was all you too. Celebrate the small victories.

When you are just starting in internet marketing, keeping a positive mindset can be a crucial ingredient of long term survival. On or off the web, most new businesses do not become profitable immediately. Sales can be mediocre as your marketing campaign gets going, and if you didn't plan ahead for this fallow period you may begrudge the out-of-pocket expenses that arise. It is easy to get discouraged.

Worse, many marketers lack basic support and encouragement. In a normal workplace there are other employees to share the load and help solve problems. Not so for most start-ups, and your personal support network may lack enthusiasm. Your friends may think you're a sucker involved with some newfangled scam. Your family may worry that your seemingly unprofitable internet career is interfering with your day job.

You must remember that you are your own manager, and good managers care about their employees' morale and motivation. Notice and enjoy the small milestones in your business as they pass by, whether it is finally getting your web design just right or suddenly nailing the top search position on a good keyword. Reward yourself with a day off or a good meal. Tell your friends about it even if their eyes glaze over; you listen to their stories about their dull jobs, right?

Verbalizing your success is for your own benefit, and it can help you assess your accomplishments and know when you've made real progress along your business plan. Don't commit the common mistake of neglecting the hardest working, most under-appreciated person in your employ - yourself.

3 Quick Tips To Get The Most From Your Pay Per Click Ads

by: Kate O'Neill

Running a pay per click campaign can be a valuable, fast source of online sales – but it can also cost you a lot of money if you don't know what you’re doing. Many pay per click newbies do the following:

* They sign up with a pay per click search engine and start their pay per click campaign.
* They get lots of traffic, lots of clicks and pay lots of money.
* They don't make a single sale.

That's not how it should go - you can make tons of sales using pay per click advertising. I have several websites that ONLY receive pay per click traffic and they make sales on a consistent basis.

The problem is that you have to know what you're doing. With that in mind here are 3 quick and easy tips to help you get the most from your pay per click campaign:

Tip #1: Pull Them In With An Attention-Getting, Optimized Title

Your web site title is the first thing the searcher sees. Make sure it matches what your web site offers or else you'll tick your searchers off - and that's not a good way to start a potential customer relationship!

(How many times have you been looking for something and clicked on a title only to find a porn site or a get-out-of-debt-fast site...talk about bad Internet etiquette!)

Also, try to put the relevant, most popular keywords in the title. Titles with keywords in them have been proven to get up to 50% more click-throughs.

If you can, write a title that lists a benefit to the customer or evokes curiosity. Titles with benefits will pull more click-throughs than stale, factual titles.

“Shed Pounds Fast With Celebrity Diet Secrets” will always beat “The Diets Of Famous People”. One lists a benefit while evoking curiosity – the second just evokes minor curiosity.

Test different titles and see which ones pull a higher click through rate. You'll eventually find one or two titles that pull in the most clicks (as well as the most sales) and you'll probably want to stick with those.

Tip #2: Use Your Description to Pre-quality and Pre-sell

If the searcher gets past the title to the description you're doing well...but you have to hook them with your description. Again, make sure the description elaborates on the title and tells your searcher EXACTLY what they can expect.

This is also a way you can further 'pre-qualify' your traffic. You don't want to spend money on people who don't fit your perfect customer criteria so be as specific as possible about what your website offers them.

Don't just say "A website that sells a variety of cheesecakes" Pre-sell and pre-quality your traffic with a description like:

"Gourmet New York Specialty cheesecakes sold exclusively online. From Chocolate Brownie Cheesecake to Bailey's Irish Cream Cheesecake. Check out our online catalogue if you want to serve your guests something heavenly!"

Makes your mouth water already doesn't it? And chances are that someone only looking for a free cheesecake recipe won't click through so you've prequalified your traffic and your conversion rate will go through the roof!

Tip #3: Think 'Niche' with your keywords

Unless you are Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig, chances are you can't afford to spend $5.00 on the word "diet". That's ok - you don't have to.

You can pick up a huge variety of more specific keywords that probably very few pay per click competitors have bid on (for example, what about 'heart healthy diet'?)

Just make sure to do your homework and remember to get the misspellings people use also.

So those are 3 tips to get the most from your pay per click campaign. By grabbing customers with an attention getting title, prequalifying them with a detailed description and choosing niche keywords, you’re sure to get ready-to-buy traffic for pennies per keyword.

Good luck and may you make millions with your online business!

A Guide on RSS Tool

by: Terry Leslie

RSS is an abbreviation that has evolved into the following, depending on their versions:

• RDF Site Summary (also known as RSS 0.9; the first version of RSS)
• Rich Site Summary (also known as RSS 0.91; a prototype)
• Really Simple Syndication (also known as RSS 2.0)

Today, RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication', and it has the following 7 existing formats or versions:

• 0.90
• 0.91
• 0.92
• 0.93
• 0.94
• 1.0
• 2.0

RSS tools refer to a group of file formats that are designed to share headlines and other web content (this may be a summary or simply 1 to 2 lines of the article), links to the full versions of the content (the full article or post), and even file attachments such as multimedia files. All of these data is delivered in the form of an XML file (XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language), which has the following common names:

• RSS feed
• Webfeed
• RSS stream
• RSS channel


They are typically shown on web pages as an orange rectangle that usually has the letters XML or RSS in it.

RSS feeds can be used to deliver any kind of information. Some of these 'feeds' include:

• Blogs feed - each blog entry is summarized as a feed item. This makes blog posts easier to scan, enabling 'visitors' to zoom in on their items of interest.

• Article feed - this alerts readers whenever there are new articles and web contents available.

• Forum feed - this allows users to receive forum posts and latest discussion topics.

• Schedule feed - this allows users (such as schools, clubs, and other organizations) to broadcast events and announce schedule changes or meeting agendas.

• Discounts or Special feed - this is used to enable users (such as retail and online stores) to 'deliver' latest specials and discounted offers.

• Ego or News Monitoring - this enables users to receive 'filtered' headlines or news that are based on a specific phrase or keyword.

• Industry-specific feed - used by technical professionals in order to market, promote, or communicate with current (and prospective) customers and clients within their specific industries.

RSS feeds enable people to track numerous blogs and news sources at the same time. To produce an RSS feed, all you need is the content or the article that you want to publicize and a validated RSS text file. Once your text file is registered at various aggregators (or 'news readers'), any external site can then capture and display your RSS feed, automatically updating them whenever you update your RSS file.

RSS tools are useful for sites that add or modify their contents on a regular basis. They are especially used for 'web syndication' or activities that involve regular updates and/or publications, such as the following:

• News websites - as used by major news organizations such as Reuters, CNN, and the BBC.
• Marketing
• Bug reports
• Personal weblogs

There are many benefits to using RSS feeds. Aside from being a great supplemental communication method that streamlines the communication needs of various sectors, RSS tools and feeds can also have tremendous benefits in your business, particularly in the field of internet marketing.

RSS tools and feeds provide Internet users with a free (or cheap) and easy advertising or online marketing opportunity for their businesses. Below are some of the RSS features that can help make your internet marketing strategies more effective.

1. Ease in content distribution services. With RSS, your business can be captured and displayed by virtually any external site, giving you an easy way to 'spread out' and advertise them.

2. Ease in regular content updates. With RSS, web contents concerning your business can now be automatically updated on a daily (and even hourly) basis. Internet users will be able to experience 'real time' updates as information in your own file (such as new products and other business-related releases) is changed and modified simultaneously with that of the RSS feeds that people are subscribed to.

3. Custom-made content services. With RSS, visitors can have personalized content services, allowing them total control of the flow and type of information that they receive. Depending on their interests and needs, visitors can subscribe to only those contents that they are looking for (such as real estate or job listings).

4. Increase in (and targeted) traffic. With RSS, traffic will be directed to your site as readers of your content summary (or 1 to 2 lines of your article) who find them interesting are 'forced' to click on a link back to your site.

These are just several of the many things that you can do with RSS. The possibilities are endless, and they are all aimed at providing you with an effective internet marketing strategy for your business.

In the mean time, Good Luck on your journey to success…