Sunday, February 14, 2010

Social Bookmarking As An Aggressive and Acceptable Blog Marketing Tactic

Social bookmarking websites are becoming more and more popular. They allow you to save bookmarks online and Tag/Categorize them with keywords instead of saving them as bookmarks in the favorite's list of your browser. This is particularly useful when your browser based bookmarks have become unwieldy. It's also help since you can access your bookmarks from any computer where you have an internet connection.

I have compiled a list of Social Bookmarking websites from a number of sources. You can find it here: http://www.blogmarketingtactics.com/social-bookmarking/social-bookmarking-top-links.html

Once you have bookmarked them, you can view them, sort them by category/keyword as well as see links from others that have been categorized like yours.

You also establish RSS feeds for each category (tag) that you 'subscribe' to. This alerts you to new links in your areas of interest. Your bookmark collection/RSS Feed becomes viewable to others who can also copy your bookmarks to their own collection. So now you can aggressively promote your RSS feed to the RSS Directories and Search engines, syndicate them and make them available to a much wider audience.

Social bookmarking sites also help you to meet other people who are interested in the same topics you are and who may also have knowledge of web resources that you don't.

On Social Bookmarking sites, you first create an account. Then you bookmark interesting and useful things in the area of your interest or expertise. By doing so you create a useful Feed. Once you've done that you intermittently, (or aggressively), add useful and interesting items, (that could use additional exposure), from your own content. Make an honest effort to contribute USEFUL information and links. This is all about sharing and exposure. Done properly, you can be as aggressive as you want to be about sharing information. You can share your blog(s), links to your informational/resource sites etc. Think about the fact that when you share links to other's resources, you're also effectively promoting their content as well.

This is a way you can aggressively and ethically promote your content and the content of others. I personally have hundreds of gigabytes of my own information and information of others, connected to my notebook. In the final analysis, it's doing me no good what-so-ever just sitting there. But by organizing it, online, I can help myself, (getting organized, getting my content exposed, etc.) and help others at the same time.

If you spice up your feed with too much sales and marketing related or self promotional stuff, people can and will easily drop their subscription to your feed. And instead of gaining good will and doing a service to the internet community you could get labeled as a spammer and suffer the consequences.

So while being aggressive is possible and acceptable, being careful to consider the best interest of the community is certainly warranted.

Balancing being ethical and providing a useful service to others with promoting your own content enables you to be as aggressive as you like. But remember, in the final analysis, others will make the decision on whether it's ethical and useful or spam.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Internet Marketing Mantra - One Niche You're Rich

Have you found yourself wondering why you are overwhelmed? There is so much material on the Internet regarding internet marketing. If a person tries to digest all of it at one time, they will will experience a bad case of online marketing indigestion. This is not a good feeling to have. I have had these feelings before as well.

The solution to this issue is to narrow your focus on one niche. You see it is much easier to become an expert in one area rather than two or more areas. I have made a decision to devote my time to making money on the Internet. There are countless ways to make money in this world today. You can make money in real estate, the stock market, by owning your own offline business and in numerous other ways. But the people who really do well in this world financially are known primarily for one thing. Bill Gates in known for Microsoft. Warren Buffett is known as a stock expert. Donald Trump is known for real estate. I am sure that they have other things that they focus on now but they are known as being experts in a certain field. What do you focus on? Many things or one thing? I am willing to bet that if your answer is many you are in a state of Internet marketing disconbobulation. Find something you like doing and become an expert at it. The trick is to find something you like doing that is profitable financiallly. This is the secret to making money on the net.

If there is a market for your product, you can sell it. Do a search on google and see how many results your area of focus will bring up. If you use keywords, you will get better results. The more targeted the results the better. It is easy to develop a product when you are an expert in that area because you know something that your buyers don't. You are the expert and they are not. They will pay large sums of money to acquire your expertise.

As marketers we must understand that our time is extremely valuable and the more we focus on too many things, the more time that is wasted. This time could be better spent focusing on one niche. It takes time to learn what your niche market wants. After you learn what they want, give the people what they desire. If your child wants a piece of pizza and you give them fish that would cause sadness in their hearts. They may cry and be upset with you. In the same way, if you give your target market something different then what they are asking for they will remove themselves from your list or no longer associate with you.

So use your time wisely and learn what your target market wants. Once you have determined what they want, if you do not already have a product created to meet their needs create one. Remember what they have told you and use the desires of their hearts as your blueprint to create an excellent information product.

Your job as the expert is to provide the answers to the questions that your target market is asking. You answer their questions with your products and you will be seen as an expert by them. You can also become qualified as an expert by creating a blog about your niche market. You can have your readers post their questions on your blog. Answer their questions on your blog and they will also begin to view you in a different light. This will prove to them that you care about what they have to say. People buy more easily when they trust the person they are buying from. A blog is a great way to create an atmoshpere of trust. You can also build a great deal of rapport with your market in this way as well. You can get to know your market on your blog and they can get to know you. An excellent method to implement to accomplish this is simply to be open with your life. Talk about your family and life on the blog and you will find that your market is more likely to talk about their family.

You now have a number of concepts to implement in your Internet business right now. The key is to go out and do them. You will be greatly rewarded if you do. One niche can indeed make you rich.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Planting an Internet Marketing Seed

It is vital to create a product that will allow you to eventually expand into other markets. The goal is for the people who initiallly buy your product to also buy your next products. Since you have proven that you can be trusted by delivering a product to your clients they love it should be much easier to obtain their business when your new item hits the online marketplace. We need to understand a seed is truly important indeed. You need to see your first product as that seed.


You see this is about creating an Internet marketing kingdom, a virtual empire of products that all start with one tiny seed that is planted in the fertile soil of those hearts that are eager for your particular product. For example, I am in the process of creating a set of onlline videos where I teach students the various techniques needed to speak English. My area of expertise lies in the field of ESL(English as a second language) of which I have been blessed to have over 10 years of experience teaching to adult learners. My target market would be foreign adults who wish to learn English via video.

I realize though that if I wish to branch out and sell different yet similar products later I will have to pick a product that these learners would also enjoy. This led me to recall the great end of the semester food parties in the classes that I taught where both myself and my students brought in dishes from other countries that many enjoyed. Now I know that my second product launched will be an esl cookbook with recipes submitted from actual students. The cookbook will be sold to other esl students online. Branching out even further, a cooking forum would be established as well as an online cooking class with graduates of my esl video courses eventually teaching the course. It is amazing to see how all this began from the planting of one little seed. The online esl videos seed grew to become a cookbook, an online cooking school and a cooking forum. As we all know marketing is a numbers game and the bigger number of people you have on your marketing list the better your chance of survival and dominance.


Think about your online marketing seed before you plant it. You want to plant something that will grow into something huge. When you look into the jungle you see an incredible array of trees. That is what you should want your seed to turn into. The trees in your Internet jungle will be represented by the vast amount of names on your email list who want your first and additional products. The product you create should also appeal to as many people as possible. I know those who may not be interested in esl may be interested in cooking and vice versa. I could use the cooking bait to reel in the esl fish and use the esl bait to reel in those who love cooking.

When your Internet marketing seed is sown you will reap the harvest of personal freedom. This translates into having the freedom to spend time doing what is really important. Even though I am blessed to be doing well working from my home right now, my goal is to create an online marketing kingdom. God is of course the king, I am the king, my wife is the queen and my daughter is the princess. I plan to give my little girl the choice to attend college or as the princess of the family become the boss while the queen and I enjoy our travels. It all starts with that tiny Internet marketing seed. The Bible talks about having the faith of a mustard seed and what can happen if we have just a bit of faith. We have to have dreams, big dreams and seeing those dreams become realities is quite inspirational and shows that this Internet marketing thing is real. No one in your circle of naysayers can argue with your results unless they choose to be up against the truth of your success.

Monday, January 4, 2010

3 Simple Steps For Newbies To Start In Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is an arrangement between an online merchant and affiliate, in which the affiliate earns a commission for generating sales, leads and/or clicks for the merchant's web site.

Affiliate marketing works in a win-win situation for the merchant and the affiliate. The merchant gains opportunities to advertise his products for free to a larger market which will increase his sales. The more hard-working affiliates he gets, the more sales he can expect. By getting affiliates to market his products and services, he is saving himself time, effort and money in looking for possible markets and customers. When a client clicks on the link in the affiliate website and purchases the product, recommends it to others who look for the same item or buys it again, this way the merchant leverage his chances of earning. On the other hand, the affiliate marketer benefits from each customer who clicks on the link in his website and who actually purchases the product or avails of the service provided by the merchant. Usually the affiliate gets commission per sale, which can be fixed percentage or fixed amount. The best is that it won't cost a single dime to join an affiliate program.

If you want to be an affiliate marketer and make money out of the Internet, you may follow these three most basic steps to start your effective affiliate marketing campaign.

Your first step is to identify a particular niche you are interested in or passionate about so you won’t be bored and forced to develop your affiliate web site later on. Focusing on a specific area you known well, it will help you bring out your best. Here are a few places you can research on - ClickBank Marketplace, AssociatePrograms.com, LinkShare.com, CJ.com etc

Secondly is to look for good paying merchants and high converting products. Make a list of good paying and high converting affiliate programs for your chosen niche and create a website. In choosing the products, you must also consider the support they are giving - Marketing materials may include articles, text links, banner ads, classified ads, reports, etc.

There are many affiliate networks and affiliate solution providers that can give you info on the most profitable products and best paying merchants. So be wise enough to choose the right affiliate program.

Now that you have decided which products to promote and the merchant you are supporting and have created your own web site with a domain name and reliable hosting, you are ready to promote. This is the toughest part, since it is through this that you would be able to increase traffic to the business website, sales and of course, profit. In affiliate marketing, it is possible to earn large sums of money in a short span of time if you use the right strategies and methods.

How to promote the products would need a separate discussion. You must continue to educate yourself by reading books, courses or other articles online about the best and proven advertising techniques.

Remember, there is no quick path towards success. Affiliate marketing may seem very tempting due to numerous encouraging testimonies of merchants and affiliate marketers alike who have benefited from it, but it really involves in a great deal of hard work and persistence. You also need to be creative and flexible.

Most affiliate marketers don’t understand this, so when they don’t make sales, they quit, look for other programs and carry on the same mistake. In the end, they said that affiliate marketing is just one of those scams in the Internet. You can work your way to great success if you employ the right strategies in affiliate marketing. You can make money as an affiliate marketer if you willing to do what it takes.