Archive for October, 2008

Let Publishers Use Your Articles

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

Letting publishers use your articles is one of the easiest forms of Internet marketing and yet one of the most effective. However, you must include a byline which gives anyone reading information on who wrote it and how they can contact you. One of the best things you can add to your byline is a link to your website. This will help bring traffic to your website and improve your search engine marketing. This is one of the easiest forms of Internet marketing because you already created the article and other publishers are doing the work for you. The more websites your article appears on the more traffic you will receive all by only writing an article.

Article Marketing Online

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

Article marketing originated before the Internet but both online and offline have the same basic concepts. In the offline form, article marketing is used commonly by businesses as a means of obtaining free press. For instance a business will provide free content to a magazine or newspaper and in return the business contact information will be posted with the content. This works out nicely since the business needs customers and the magazine or newspaper needs content.

Article marketing online is a very similar concept except it’s online. The concept of article marketing online is also businesses or websites submitting free articles to article directories or other websites in exchange for free advertising. Normally at the top or bottom of free articles you will see the business or websites information which is advertising for everyone who reads it. Another benefit to article marketing online is anyone who reads that article can post it on their website or blog giving you advertising that builds without you doing any more work. As you can see article marketing online can be much more effective and plays a key role to Internet marketing.

5 Reasons to Have an E-commerce Website

Monday, October 27th, 2008

1. Easy Concept to Understand

Out of all the ways to make money on the Internet the concept of e-commerce is the most understood. Customers come to your store, purchase one or some of your products, and you make money. Easy enough to understand isn’t it? It’s a lot less complicated than affiliate marketing and trying to find advertisers to consistently purchase advertisements from you.

2. A Market Already Exists

Existing products you know already have a market otherwise they wouldn’t exist or at least exist for very long. For instance if you are selling Nike shoes there is already a market. Nike has been in business long enough and already created a market for you.

3. Easily Expanded

An e-commerce store gets easier to run as it grows. You don’t have to worry about creating new products because they already exist for you to keep adding. As you acquire more sales you will eventually be able to hire someone or multiple people to fulfill them. So all you really have to worry about is regularly adding new products or content beneficial to your existing products.

4. Opportunity to Learn Internet Marketing Principles

As your e-commerce store grows and gains consistent traffic you will be able to “test” things like discounts and sales to see how it affects your business. Once you have found what Internet marketing principles best fit your niche you will be able to take your revenue to its fullest potential.

5. Small Content Requirements

One of the best things about e-commerce is the fact that your main content is your products. So all you have to do is add the details of your product and an image to complete a page. However it is beneficial to your customers and search engines if your create guides or comparison pages for the types of products you offer. The more information you can provide to the customer the better. This will help improve revenue and minimize on customer service inquiries.

List Building

Friday, October 24th, 2008

List building is the process of gathering names and addresses for marketing purposes. One way of building a list is to ask for a customer’s name and email address. This is one step to effective email marketing. Another way of building a list is to ask for a customer’s name, email address, and home or business address. This is the most effective way of list building because you can send information, deals and new products through email and postal mail.

One effective way to build your list is by offering your customer something free but beneficial in return for their information. You may be losing money initially by giving them something free but a good portion of those customer’s will turn into sales, repeat or lifetime customers far outweighing the loss.

There are many different strategies to keeping your subscriber count growing exponentially. One of the most effective ways is to regularly send your list free quality information and or tips. By doing this you will keep your readers coming back and they will feel like being subscribed to you is beneficial. You must make sure you do not send your subscribers information and or tips too often or they may leave feeling annoyed. This way you build a strong relationship with your list then when it comes time for you to release a new product or have a sale they will be interested because they won’t feel like all you are trying to do is sell them something. This is just a start to list building but it should give you an idea of what it’s about and how to do it effectively. List building is just one part of Internet marketing but very key to substantial Internet success.

Blog

Friday, October 24th, 2008

A blog short for weblog is often a personal internet journal that is updated frequently. Blogs are defined by their format: a series of posts to a single page in reverse-chronological order. They are often about the key details of a persons day to day life, about a specific niche or a bunch of information that the author finds interesting. A typical blog combines text, images, videos and links to other blogs or websites. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketches (sketchblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog) and audio (podcasting). The author of a blog is often referred to as a blogger. One of the first and most known websites to contributing to blogging is Blogger.com. This is a website where you can create a free blog by simply creating a Google account.

Affiliate Marketing

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008

Affiliate marketing is revenue sharing between internet advertisers and internet publishers. The advertiser and publisher both win with affiliate marketing. The advertiser receives a sale, lead or click depending on the terms with the publisher. The publisher gets paid once their traffic clicks, turns into a sale, or signs up with the advertiser. Advertisers are commonly referred to as affiliate merchants and the publishers are referred to as affiliates.

Affiliate marketing can be a substantial amount of income for a minimal amount of work if it’s done correctly. A good example of an effective affiliate marketing strategy would be to create a content website or blog that is specifically targeted towards one niche. Once you have your content website or blog running you can then display links and or advertisements of companies or products in your niche or related to your niche. For instance, if you have a blog about baseball you would want to advertise baseball accessories or a baseball e-commerce website. Affiliate marketing has contributed too many leading internet companies success. Amazon.com was one of the first to take advantage of affiliate marketing and now they have hundreds of thousands of publishers promoting them. You can only imagine the difference this makes for their business. If you are not using affiliate marketing in some way, shape or form you are losing thousands to millions of dollars.

Electronic Commerce

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008

Electronic commerce is known as e-commerce or ecommerce which is the method of buying or selling products or services electronically such as the Internet. The form most commonly known is the Internet with websites like Amazon.com, eBay.com and Ticketmaster.com. Internet retailers like these may also be called e-tailers and Internet retail may also be called e-tail. One of the best sources for news and information about Internet retail is InternetRetailer.com.

Today’s electronic commerce normally uses the World Wide Web in transactions. These transactions are normally done with credit cards such as Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover. The acceptances of credit cards and ATM in the 1980s were some of the first forms of electronic commerce that are still widely used and known today. Now when you hear the word ecommerce it is most likely being referred to as the buying or selling products or services on the Internet.

5 Ways to Make Money Online

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

There are many different ways to make money online but there are 5 which are the most successful and known. These 5 ways are e-commerce, affiliate marketing, blogging, free content websites and list building. All of these we will be discussed more in depth in other posts but you will be given a brief description here.

1. E-Commerce

In most niches’ e-commerce is the most effective way to make money online. There are several different ways to run a successful e-commerce website. The most profitable way is to create your own product such as an ebook specifically targeted towards a niche. Some websites use a drop shipping method which is where you offer a product for sale before you buy it. Then when you get an order your supplier will ship the product for you. Another method is to purchase products at wholesale pricing and sell them at retail. You will often find e-commerce combined with affiliate marketing and list building.

2. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is promoting a product, brand or service for another person or company in exchange for a commission. Some affiliate marketing programs will pay you a commission if you get someone to sign up on their website and then even more if that person makes a purchase. There are websites exclusively developed for affiliate marketing towards one niche. This is one of the most effective affiliate marketing methods. This method of making money online is often found in a combination of free content websites, list building and blogging.

3. Blogging

The concept of blogging is where you post information about you, a specific niche or areas of interest. The idea behind this is to bring in traffic from your free information and in return sell advertising based on the amount of traffic you receive. You can also use affiliate marketing and list building as a good source of income for blogging. One of the biggest keys to a successful blog is to write about something you are good at or something you enjoy. This way the information you provide will be beneficial to your readers.

4. Free Content Websites

The concept here is very similar to blogging. You are providing free content to visitors and then selling advertising or promoting affiliates. A blog is a content website but there are also content websites that are not blogs and simply a website. Some examples of content websites are review websites, lyrics websites, how to websites and dictionary websites.

5. List Building

List is building is the method of capturing names, email address and addresses. A good list builder will often setup websites specifically for the purpose of list building. They will offer you something free but beneficial in exchange for your name and email. If they are smart they will consistently provide that person will good free information and every once in a while offer them a deal on something to purchase. Obviously not everyone on your list will purchase but the more you build your list the better your return will be.

Although there are hundreds of ways to make money online these are your 5 most effective ways. If you have no experience online this will help your decision of where to start. If you already have experience and already making money online this may help you build your business by adding different kinds of websites. It could also help by combining some of the different methods such as e-commerce and list building to make a website more effective than it already is.

Niche

Monday, October 13th, 2008

A niche is “A special area of demand for a product or service” thefreedictionary.com. If you want to be successful at Internet marketing you must add the word niche as one of the most important words in your vocabulary. Niche will be used throughout this blog and is one of the first steps you must take to being successful on the Internet. Unless you are a large corporation like Wal-Mart, without targeting a niche you are not taking advantage of one of the most effective and profitable Internet marketing strategies.

Internet Marketing Commerce Blog

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

This is the first post of the Internet Marketing Commerce blog. Here you will find some of the world’s most valuable information on Internet marketing and marketing alone. We will discuss eCommerce, eBooks, website traffic, affiliate marketing, email marketing and much more.