Have You Heard About The Blog And Ping Combo?

You may have a new website you want to get indexed with the various search engines at the soonest possible time. Or you may have an existing website which you want to position well in the search engine results. Or you may have a good performing website which you want to remain competitive. Whatever your reason may be, you’re sure to benefit from the blog and ping combo.

Now, you may have heard or read about this before, but your never realized how it works. Or this may be the first time you have been acquainted with this surefire technique. Regardless, much can be learned from this article as we discuss the basics and the mechanics of the blog and ping strategy.

It All Starts With A Blog

Web logs, or blogs as people have fondly referred to them in recent years, were originally designed for social purposes. People used it as online diaries where they could post their thoughts, the events of their days, their secret desires and the likes. But blogs possessed some very special qualities that internet marketers found hard to dismiss.

* Blogs figure prominently in search engine results. The first few pages of some queries would yield many blogs occupying premium spots.
* Blogs are basically free web publishing tools. A little tweaking and it could become a website of its own.
* Blogs are easy to update. Just press EDIT or PUBLISH and you’d have new content in a flash. No need to change the source code. The system will easily take care of that.
* Blogs have their own communities. Bloggers often link with one another. This is a level of connectivity that is pretty hard to come by in other mediums.

Hence, online businessmen started using blogs for marketing purposes.

The strategy goes like this:

1. Create a blog dedicated to the subject your main website is catering to. Preferably, you should create an account with www.blogger.com , because this service is owned by Google, the most widely used search engine in the World Wide Web.
2. Post regularly, and include a link to your website in majority of your messages. Also include your links with popular keywords as anchor texts.
3. Include a link to your own website on the navigation bar.
4. Just to emphasize – you have to post REGULARLY. This means at least every other day. No sweat, though. Short posts of 200 words in length would be enough.

It’s About RSS As Well

Blogs produce RSS feeds. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication, a technology that would allow you to broadcast any changes on your blog to subscribed systems. This is actually the heart of the blog-ping combo. You have to learn how to syndicate your RSS feeds.

If you’re using blogger, it’s easy. Take your blog’s URL. For example, it is:

www.thisisyourblog.blogspot.com

Now, all you have to do is to add the extension atom.xml. So, it should appear like this:

www.thisisyourblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml

This is the URL of your RSS feeds.

Now you need an RSS aggregator somewhere which could pick up your RSS feeds. Preferably, it is a website that can be easily crawled by search engine spiders. The perfect spot for this is www.my.yahoo.com . Simply create a Yahoo account, then go to the said page. Find the ADD RSS button, then press on the same. Then paste the URL of your RSS feeds.

Every time you’d update your blog, RSS feeds would be generated and displayed in www.my.yahoo.com .

Now It’s Time To The Ping

Once your www.my.yahoo.com is set up, every time you’d post a new entry on your blog, you’ll have to go to www.pingomatic.com . Fill up the appropriate fields, then submit. This will inform a lot of blog directories that your blog has new entries. And this would drive the search engine spiders on a feeding frenzy. It’ll be a reminder for them to check out your blog come the next relevant query.

Again, you have to do this every time you will post a new entry. No exceptions!

How powerful is the blog-ping combo?

Your new website will get indexed in Yahoo within 5 days. This is guaranteed! And with Yahoo picking up your website, and with www.blogger.com being owned by Google, it wouldn’t be long until the world’s most widely used search engine would index your new website as well.

And if the blog-ping combo could do this for new websites, just think of the possibilities it could provide for older ones. Fantastic, isn’t it?

Back Selling And Cross Selling Can Provide More Income Streams For Your Online Business

Almost every online business follows a basic model. This is a tried and tested system that would allow you to effectively sell your products in the World Wide Web. It is an automated system that could act as your sales agent 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, even when you’re offline. Have you followed this basic model so far?

Let’s have a checklist:

* Have you pinpointed your target market?
* Have you come up with a product to sell?
* Have you created a search engine-optimized website?
* Have you promoted your website well, through article marketing, forum marketing, blogs, and outside links?
* Have you come up with a sales page for your product?
* Are you garnering enough traffic for your sales page?
* Have you integrated a follow-up system in your website?
* Have you determined a price for your product?

If you have done all these things, then there is no reason why you shouldn’t rake in some substantial earnings.

The only concern left that we have to tackle is how to sustain your profit. Surely, if you’d gather a stable stream of visitors for your web page, you’d be able to generate some sales. But you should always aim for more.

And this can be done through cross-selling and back selling.

Cross-selling involves the sale of products related to the main products you are selling. For example, you are selling an eBook on dog grooming. You could offer supportive products like dog grooming kits, dog instructional videos, and the likes. You don’t have to come up with these products yourself. You could simply look for other online businesses offering these items, and you could sign up as their affiliate. As an affiliate, you just have to refer people to the other business’ sales page, and when the visitors you have referred would decide to make some purchases, you’ll get a commission for every sale!

Back selling is slightly more complicated. It involves offering your other products at the exact points of sale. Points of sale are those moments during the instruction when your customers are most willing to purchase something. By offering them other products during these times, there is a higher likelihood that they’d buy from you! These points of sale can be broken down into:

* That moment when your customer clicks on the order button. He will be diverted to a new page for his payment details. You could include a pop-up for this page advertising your other products. Better yet, the pop-ups could even employ urgency marketing to better your chances of bagging more sales.

* That moment when your customer has just purchased a product from you. Normally, he’ll be redirected to a Thank You page. In the Thank You page, you could advertise other offers as well.

When automating your online business, do keep these in mind. If you manage to integrate cross-selling and back selling tactics in specific points of your website, you’d be able to rake in more profit! It’s as simple as that!

Do you need some products to cross promote of to offer at the backend of every deal? You could check out the many affiliate programs online. For sure, there is one which is relevant to the subject your business is servicing. Simply choose the products that complement what you’re offering, or at the very least, target the same audience your own products are aiming for. This would provide for you the greatest chance of success when it comes to the aforementioned supplements for your online sales.

How To Boost The Salability Of Your Resale Rights Products

Selling products with resale rights is a very lucrative online business. However, not everyone can success with this endeavor because of the intricacies involved with such a trading.

To ensure maximum profitability in this field, you must learn how to package your resale rights products correctly. And this involves some knowledge on the different factors that make or break resale rights marketing. Let’s take a look at them, their nature and reasons, how to avoid the perils they bring, and how to use them to come up with a resale rights package that your prospects would find very difficult to resist.

1. Exclusivity. People will be more interested to buy products with resale rights if their sale is limited to certain number of people. There are many reasons for this. Primary of these is the fact that resale rights are appealing because they would provide for the purchasers an additional income stream. But if the product with resale rights is sold to an unlimited number of people, the market would just be saturated and there will be little room to make a profit. The same is true for products with resale rights that may be sold to a limited number of people when such a number is in the hundreds if not the thousands. The best approach is to sell your resale rights products to a maximum of 50 people, though a lower number would always prove better.

2. Price. Though you are justified to sell your resale rights products for a price higher than the value of the basic package, if you sell the same for an exorbitant cost, you’d have problems effectuating some sales. As a rule, multiply the value of your basic product by three. Let this be the selling price for your resale rights product. Though, you must remember, the lower the price, the more sellable your offer would be.

3. Restrictions. Resale rights can come with restrictions. But too much of them would compromise the value of the product. You may restrict certain usages for your products for example, and this would alienate some people who would otherwise be interested with the same. The rule here is to enforce only the restrictions that would preserve the worth of your resale rights product for the benefit of your purchasers. These should be restrictions that are enforceable to all of them so that their interests would be protected from possible abuses by some of the purchasers.

4. Market life. Selling your resale rights product when it is at the end of its market life would be tough. People will find little value for it, since they would have the impression that they’ll have a hard time selling the same. To allay their fears, suggest a unique selling proposition they could use. For example, you could recommend the inclusion of valuable bonuses to increase the appeal of the product, in case they’d decide to buy its resale rights from you. Or you could recommend the inclusion of supplementary products to come up with a turnkey package that would likewise increase the offer’s salability.

By considering these factors that affect the perceived value of your resale rights product, you’d be able to develop an approach that would make your offer more attractive to potential purchasers.

Here are the steps you should try to take, in a nutshell:

* Determine the cap for the number of people who could buy your resale rights product. As we have mentioned earlier, the lower the number, the more sellable your offer would be. But the determination of the cap should go side-by-side with the viability of the profit you will be able to make.

* If you decide to sell your resale rights product to 40 to 50 people, it is advisable to peg your offer at one and one-half the amount of the basic package if it were to be sold without resale right.

* If you decide to sell your resale rights to 20 to 40 people, it is advisable to peg your offer at twice the amount of the basic package.

* If you decide to sell your resale rights to less than 20 people, you could charge up to three times the amount of the basic package.

* Prepare a special report which would help your purchasers maximize the profitability of the resale rights product they would be buying. You could do this by suggesting the employment of certain strategies that they may not have considered when it comes to reselling the product they have bought. This would also give them the impression that you’re an online businessman who over-delivers, which would be great for branding purposes.

* Offer a post-sales service. This is not limited to merely technical matters about the product. It may include consultancy sessions that would help them earn some income from the reselling of the product they have purchased from you.

It’s all about the packaging. The conditions surrounding the resale rights product you have prepared may not be favorable for your behalf, initially, but with some hard work and clever thinking, you’d be able to turn the tide to your advantage.

How To Create Your Own Information Product

If you have been dabbling with internet marketing for some time now, you’re most probably aware of the fact that information products are one of the easiest and most profitable things that your could sell online. Information products may be eBooks, special reports or articles which you could offer for a price.

Preparing information products is quite easy, at least in theory. All you need are two things:

1. Information; and
2. Writing skills

Information is the hottest commodity in the World Wide Web. This is why the Internet is called the information superhighway. If you’d be able to provide the right kind of information, you will never run out of potential customers. This is especially true if you manage to find a hungry market where the demand for such information would be immense.

Writing an eBook is very similar to writing a special report. An eBook is work composed of approximately 30 or more pages. Anything shorter would be considered as a special report. Here are some simple steps you could take to come up with an information product of this type:

1. Select a topic from the niche you have previously chosen. This topic must correspond to a particular aspect of the niche, something that people would want to know about. For example, in our running example of dog grooming, supposing you choose the niche of shih tzu dog grooming, a good topic to write about is “how to select perfect grooming kits for your shih tzu.”

2. Prepare an outline for your work. It should be as organized as possible. Start with the most basic concepts, and gradually proceed to the more advanced ones.

3. Do your research! This is very important. If you’re offering something in exchange for your prospective customers’ hard-earned money, you should give them something valuable. A well-researched work is what they deserve.

4. Fill up your outline with the necessary information. If you have a great outline, this shouldn’t be a problem. All you have to do is to write about what you have researched and include them in the specific portions allotted by the said outline.

5. This is very important: avoid plagiarism. Plagiarism could ruin you. You need to learn how to respect intellectual property rights when you’re doing business online. There are no ifs and buts about it. You need to come up with an original work to sell.

6. Once you have finished the draft of your eBook or special report, have it proofread for errors. Make corresponding corrections.

7. Once you have your error-free manuscript, you would need to come up with an attractive and attention-grabbing eCover for your work. People always say that no one should judge a book by its cover. This is rarely practiced however. Many books, and many eBooks, are sold on the basis of their covers alone. Invest on a good eCover to boost your sales.

8. Then you would have to convert your work into .pdf format. Being in .pdf format would allow more people to read your eBook, as a variety of computer platforms recognize this file type.

Once you have completed these steps, you will own an information product that is ready to be sold!

But what if you are not possessed of writing skills, or you simply don’t have the time to write? Does this mean that you can’t come up with your own information product? Most definitely not, of course, as there are many ways to skin the cat, in a manner of speaking. For starters, you could always try outsourcing, or contracting the services of an outside party to help you prepare the information products you have in mind. Another option is to make good use of private label rights, better known as PLR in the industry today. Products sold with PLR would allow the purchaser to alter their contents and even name themselves as the author of the works.

There is no excuse why you couldn’t come up with your own information product. If the internet promises to be your ride to a good life, then an information product, quite surely, is your ticket to hop aboard that freight train.

How To Get Your Website Indexed By Google Within 7 Days

What was once considered as impossible is now a very real probability. Yes, your website can be indexed in Google’s database within a week’s time after it goes live! How are you supposed to do this?

Google said that you should not bother to submit your website to them. They will find your website, and once they do, they’ll index your web pages. The reason behind this is quite simple. Google uses links to hop from one website to another. If they arrive at a page that is unfamiliar to their database, they will index it… and thus is the method by which your very own website can be a part of their database.

The problem is, there are literally billions of web pages out there. Even with the mechanical precision by which it operates, it will take weeks, if not months, before Google can stumble upon your website for proper indexing. The trick is in expediting this process. And how are you supposed to do that?

Let’s put it this way. If only one website is linking to yours, Google has to crawl through that site before it could discover yours. 1 in 1,000,000,000 is not a favorable ratio. But what if you have 1,000 websites linking to yours? Alas! Your website would have better chances of getting indexed fast!

The number of websites linking to yours is called your link popularity. To check your current link popularity, use the tool that can be found at www.linkpopularity.com .

Regardless of what number would appear (which, chances are, would be zero if you have just published your website), we will have to build your link popularity to at least a thousand so that Google can find your website within a week’s time.

How are we to do this?

Here are some specific steps you should follow.

1. Write 10 highly informative and unique articles about the topic of your website.

2. If you can’t write articles, as such would require a lot of time, hire a freelancer to do it for you. Go to www.rentacoder.com , www.elance.com or www.guru.com and advertise a job. You’ll receive some bids, and it’s up to you to select the best freelancer for the task you want done.

3. Submit these articles to as many article directories you could find. The ones you shouldn’t miss are www.exinearticles.com , www.goarticles.com and www.isnare.com . Being linked via the latter option has been known to work well with MSN rankings. There are more than a thousand prominent article directories today. If you have one article in each of their databanks, then you’d have a thousand pages linking to your website.

4. Create a blog at www.blogger.com . Choose the default hosting option, that is, allow Blogger to host your blog. Blogger is owned by Google. You see the point we’re driving at here? Make sure that your blog would link to your main website, either as a mention in your posts, or as a fixed link on your menu bar.

5. Link to as many blogs as possible. Chances are, the owners of those blogs would link to your blog as well, and the readers of those blogs may even do the same thing.

6. There are sure to be some forums devoted to the subject of your website. Find these forums and create an account with each of them. Use the tool at www.link-advantage.com/search to find the online community related to the subject of your site. Once you’re a member in those forums, include a link to your website in the signature box that would be provided for. Your signature box will appear in every post you will make. The trick here is to publish as many significant posts as you could. Each post will serve as a link to your main website, and would improve its link popularity.

These steps can be done in 3 days, and before the week is over, you’d be surprised that your website would have been indexed by Google, as well as the two other main search engines at that.

How To Get Your Website Indexed By Google Within 7 Days

What was once considered as impossible is now a very real probability. Yes, your website can be indexed in Google’s database within a week’s time after it goes live! How are you supposed to do this?

Google said that you should not bother to submit your website to them. They will find your website, and once they do, they’ll index your web pages. The reason behind this is quite simple. Google uses links to hop from one website to another. If they arrive at a page that is unfamiliar to their database, they will index it… and thus is the method by which your very own website can be a part of their database.

The problem is, there are literally billions of web pages out there. Even with the mechanical precision by which it operates, it will take weeks, if not months, before Google can stumble upon your website for proper indexing. The trick is in expediting this process. And how are you supposed to do that?

Let’s put it this way. If only one website is linking to yours, Google has to crawl through that site before it could discover yours. 1 in 1,000,000,000 is not a favorable ratio. But what if you have 1,000 websites linking to yours? Alas! Your website would have better chances of getting indexed fast!

The number of websites linking to yours is called your link popularity. To check your current link popularity, use the tool that can be found at www.linkpopularity.com .

Regardless of what number would appear (which, chances are, would be zero if you have just published your website), we will have to build your link popularity to at least a thousand so that Google can find your website within a week’s time.

How are we to do this?

Here are some specific steps you should follow.

1. Write 10 highly informative and unique articles about the topic of your website.

2. If you can’t write articles, as such would require a lot of time, hire a freelancer to do it for you. Go to www.rentacoder.com , www.elance.com or www.guru.com and advertise a job. You’ll receive some bids, and it’s up to you to select the best freelancer for the task you want done.

3. Submit these articles to as many article directories you could find. The ones you shouldn’t miss are www.exinearticles.com , www.goarticles.com and www.isnare.com . Being linked via the latter option has been known to work well with MSN rankings. There are more than a thousand prominent article directories today. If you have one article in each of their databanks, then you’d have a thousand pages linking to your website.

4. Create a blog at www.blogger.com . Choose the default hosting option, that is, allow Blogger to host your blog. Blogger is owned by Google. You see the point we’re driving at here? Make sure that your blog would link to your main website, either as a mention in your posts, or as a fixed link on your menu bar.

5. Link to as many blogs as possible. Chances are, the owners of those blogs would link to your blog as well, and the readers of those blogs may even do the same thing.

6. There are sure to be some forums devoted to the subject of your website. Find these forums and create an account with each of them. Use the tool at www.link-advantage.com/search to find the online community related to the subject of your site. Once you’re a member in those forums, include a link to your website in the signature box that would be provided for. Your signature box will appear in every post you will make. The trick here is to publish as many significant posts as you could. Each post will serve as a link to your main website, and would improve its link popularity.

These steps can be done in 3 days, and before the week is over, you’d be surprised that your website would have been indexed by Google, as well as the two other main search engines at that.

How To Set A Price For Your Online Product

How To Set A Price For Your Online Product
(Plus, How To Use Dynamic Pricing To Boost Your Sales Rate)

Internet marketing, by its very name is about promoting your products online. But to believe that internet marketing is all about, well, marketing, would be quite restrictive.

Assuming that you have already acquainted yourself with the intricacies of product creation as well as the myriad forms of advertising tactics that can be implemented online, we will now discuss a matter that could make or break your success in internet marketing.

Now, what we will be discussing is a subject that many online businessmen have taken for granted. It is that very thing that would connect your business to the affirmative action of your visitors. It is that very thing that would convert your visitors into paying customers.

We’re talking about the price for your product.

How exactly should you price your product? Naturally, you would want to reach a range that would recover the investments you have made for its creation and promotion. This is called the break even point. Anything above the break even point would be considered as your profit. Naturally, again, you would want to attain as much profit as possible.

So these are the two things that determine price:

1. how much you have invested; and
2. how much you want to earn per item

There are two approaches that are generally used when it comes to pricing. Let’s take a look at them.

1. Price your product a little over the break even point, and rely on the volume of items you will be able to sell.

2. Price your product substantially higher than the break even point, so that every sale would reap some substantial rewards.

If you foresee your product to be a hot seller, then the first approach would be the best one for your needs. You could just rake in your earnings through the several sales you will be able to achieve.

If you foresee slow sales for your product, then the second approach would be more appropriate. Each sale would give you what you need, and you won’t be pressured to sell a lot of items to realize your earnings.

But both approaches have their own shares of problems. Pricing your product too low might just give your prospective customers the impression that your product is of inferior quality. Pricing your product too high would alienate a large segment of the market.

Personally, I say that you should price your product for what it’s worth. Let the market forces take care of themselves. If you bestow a fair price for your product, you won’t have to worry about the backlash of consequences. Each product is a different case, and it merits special attention when it comes to pricing. Keep this in mind when deciding on the right price for the same.

But here’s a very secret tip: you could use the price of your product to tremendously boost your sales. Yes, you read that right. YOU CAN USE THE PRICE OF YOUR PRODUCT TO TREMENDOUSLY BOOST YOUR SALES. This is through a process called dynamic pricing. Dynamic pricing can create an urgency that would compel people to purchase your product as soon as possible.

There are some tools that would allow you to implement dynamic pricing for your offers. The way it works is that you’d offer a product for an amazingly low price, with a warning that after a specified period of time, the price would increase. This increase would continue until the offer is priced beyond your market’s budget.

For example, an eBook can be offered for a mere $5 today. After 25 hours, its price would increase by $5. And after another 24 hours, the price would again increase by $5… and so on and so forth. The result would be mass hysteria, as the members of your target market would line up in a hurry to purchase your offer while it is cheap.

Dynamic pricing is one of those novel marketing strategies that has proved successful for many online businessmen. It’s worth the try if you want to experience an immediate rush of incoming orders.

The Pros And Cons In Establishing An Ebay Store

Ebay has provided some amazing opportunities for many people to earn online. This widely popular auction site has become the primary destination for users who wish to purchase anything – ranging from tangible products to digital items – hence making eBay a website visited by millions of people every day. Because of the volume of transactions happening in its pages, eBay has also become a virtual market place where thousands, if not millions, of dollars exchange hands on a daily basis as well.

Do you want a piece of that big, big pie?

Then you must first have to establish an eBay store.

Now, this is not a strong recommendation. This article is not meant as a sales pitch for a membership with eBay, rather, it seeks to present the advantages and disadvantages of building your own eBay store. You must remember that eBay isn’t the only place where you could peddle your goods. It is a good place where you could sell your items, but there are other alternatives you could consider. Should you settle with eBay? Or should you explore the alternative options? Let’s study the matter more closely.

There are most certainly a lot of benefits that could be gained from establishing your own eBay store. Let’s take a look at them.

* You’d be able to sell in a hotly visited environment. You’ll be able to expose your products to a wide array of prospects.

* Once you have upgraded to a Featured Store, you’d be given $30 worth of PPC keywords per month. This means that your store would appear prominently in the results for the particular keywords that users will search for. Such would most certainly drive more traffic to your auctions.

* A Featured Store would also deliver some advanced reports for your auctions. You could use the statistics delineated therein to improve the way you construct your sales pages, and the way you present your items for better efficiency in your future offers.

* A Featured Store will also allow you more eBay pages, which would mean more exposure for your products. It’s still a numbers game. The more auctions you have running, the more earning opportunities you could capitalize on.

* A Featured Store would allow you to reduce the size of the eBay banner appearing in your every auction. This would give you the chance to work on your page and bring the focus of your visitors to the items you will be selling.

* Ebay provides a certain level of seller protection and dispute resolution for potential problems you might encounter with your buyers.

Though these are great advantages for your online business, please bear in mind that they do not come without cost. There are also other disadvantages that are attached to having your own eBay store.

* Ebay stores don’t come free. A basic store setup would cost $15.95 per month. A Featured Store status would cost an even higher $49.95 per month. And the king of all kings, an Anchor Store, would require you to spend an onerous $499.95 per month.

* Having your own eBay store would pressure you to perform well when it comes to your sales. Though some may consider this as a benefit since such will motivate the seller to plan his course of action, the dangers will be experienced when you fail to earn enough profit to cover the cost of your subscription.

* People go to eBay expecting the best deals in the online market. You have to compete at this level, otherwise, the moment people would see the going rate for your auction, they’d immediately hop to the next item up for sale.

* You’d be bound by eBay’s selling policies. You cannot go around some of these restrictive policies, otherwise, you account can get suspended, or worse, terminated.

Establishing an eBay store is a solid choice for a business model. But you have to determine your goals as well as your marketing plan. Would an eBay store help you accomplish them? Or would selling your own goods in your own website, or through some affiliate automation program like www.clickbank.com , www.paydotcom.com or www.cj.com be better for your online business?

The choice is yours.

The Pros And Cons Of Purchasing PLR Products

Every online businessman needs content. Whether it is meant to drive traffic to his website for PPC purposes, or whether he plans on using the same to help sell his digital products, he would need content to convey his business message.

But original content is rarely cheap. Often, online businessmen have to pay around $5 to $15 for a 400 word article. And a single article is not enough for their purposes. They need at least 20 of them to jumpstart a content site. They need at least 50 of them to combine as an eBook. The amount quickly becomes inaccessible to most online businessmen, especially those who are just starting out.

This is the reason why PLR products have become widely popular in recent months. PLR stands for private label rights, which basically means the right to alter, alienate, or otherwise dispose of the said products anyway you please.

There are some advantages and disadvantages in availing of PLR products, however. Let us take a look at them, as well as the solutions around the problems.

Benefits:

* PLR products are cheap. Since you will be sharing the expenses with other purchasers, you won’t have to contend with the total cost of production by yourself. An eBook ghostwritten by a freelancer, for example, can range from $200 to as high as $1,000. But a PLR eBook sold to many people can be sold for a cost below $100.

* PLR products can become excellent search engine fodders, if you’re in PPC business. All you have to do is to rewrite 25% to 50% of the pieces to avoid being tagged as dupe content.

* PLR products make excellent backbones for your own works. Since the thoughts and the flow of the ideas are already there, it would be easier for you to work on them and come up with totally unique content.

* PLR products give you total freedom to alter the contents thereof, as well as resell them for any amount you feel is justified. This means that you could combine PLR articles, for example, to come up with your own eBook. Or in reverse, you could separate some parts of a PLR eBook to come up with several articles or e-courses. The possibilities are endless, and you have full liberty to proceed as you wish.

Problems:

* PLR products, if used for website content without changing at least 25% to 50% of what is written, will be susceptible to search engine filtering because of duplicate works. This can lead to a lower page rank for your website, or worse, a de-indexing for your web pages. Since 80% of your traffic would come from the search engines, this would be a dire consequence indeed.

* PLR products may be difficult to resell. A lot of other people would purchase the same product, and each one of them would be your competitor. Imagine if 2,000 people have purchased the same PLR product, you’d have 1,999 businesses competing for the same market.

* PLR products, if used for article marketing without changing at least 25% to 50% of their content, will be rejected by most article directories. A lot of article banks these days employ a script that weeds out similar submissions. The rejection of your PLR articles would be the least of your worries, as worse things can happen, including the outright banning of your account.

Solutions:

* Treat PLR products as the base for whatever marketing tool you have in mind. If you desire articles for web content or for article marketing purposes, use your PLR articles as basis for an improved work. Most of the information that could be conveyed is already there. You’ll be able to save a lot of time on research and organizing your thoughts. Try to rewrite the pieces, and effectuate a 25% to 50% change to their content.

* You could try article wrapping as well. Pinpoint the main information of the PLR article. This should be somewhere in the middle. Often, PLR articles have information wrapped between an introduction and a conclusion. Just change the introduction as well as the conclusion, and you’re good to go.

* Hire freelance writers to rewrite your PLR products. Since the base information is already there, freelance writers can charge you as low as 25% of their normal rates.

* Mix and match. Do not hesitate to combine two or more articles to come up with a work that is seemingly different from the original materials.

PLR products are great options, especially for budget-conscious online businessmen who are need of content in large amounts. The disadvantages presented by their nature should not dissuade anyone from considering them as viable solutions to a great need, as there are several solutions that can work around the problems that come with their nature.

How To Study Your Website’s Competition And Steal Their Spot

Many things can be said about the benefits of having an online business. Inexpensive marketing platforms, a global audience, automation and the likes are just some of the top answers whenever online businessmen are asked why they decided to establish their enterprises in the World Wide Web.

But there’s one factor that is often left undisclosed. The online field would also require you to compete with hundreds, if not thousands, of other businesses jockeying for the same market. It’s a virtual race for sales, or for clicks if you’re engaged in a PPC venture. And since any given market is finite, the number and strength of your competition plays an important role in determining your success in the internet marketing industry.

Competition is said to be at its highest level in the search engine game. As you may very well know, 80% of the traffic that can be generated from any website would come from the search engines. If you are competing with 100 other enterprises, this means that you should try your very best to beat all 100 of them for the top spot in the search engine results page for every relevant query. This is the best way to ensure that you’ll get first dibs on a prospect before they could grab a hold of him.

As is usually the case, search engine optimization (SEO) techniques abound to help you gain good position in search engine results. Mastering these techniques would give you a greater chance of succeeding in the online industry.

At least in theory.

In practice, however, things aren’t that easy. What remains unsaid is the fact that most of your competitors would be doing the same thing. You’d still have to compete with the tactics that they themselves would employ. And if all of you would be implementing the same strategies, then it’s back to square one. If you can’t get ahead of them in the search engine positions before, there’s no reason why you’d get ahead of them after employing the same tricks that they likewise employ.

So what should you do?

Here’s an unorthodox strategy. Instead of competing against your rivals, you could actually learn from them. And in the process, you could steal their spots.

Competition is always about figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of your opponents. The keys to victory lie in replicating what your opponents are doing correctly and correcting what your opponents are doing wrong.

And these can only be achieved by studying their performance.

Let’s give it a shot through an example.

Supposing your online business has something to do with dog grooming. A cursory look at Google would reveal that you have around 10,000,000 pages servicing the same subject. An approximation based on averages would tell us that around 2.5 million webmasters are engaged in the same field.

On the number one spot in the search engine results would be petgroomer.com. This website’s spot is your aim. Your goal is to dislodge this website from its number one position.

How are you supposed to do that?

Let’s try to study the website. On your Internet browser, go to VIEW then select SOURCE. You’ll be taken to a text file that would reveal the source code of the said website. Now study this source code and answer the following questions:

* Are you doing the SEO techniques the website is employing?
* What is the website implementing that you’re not doing?
* What are you doing that the website is not implementing?

For example, the said website is employing META tags. Are you using the same META tags? Does he have more META tags than you do? The website also hosts a variety of content pieces. Are its content pieces better than yours? Are there any keywords in such pieces that you have failed to capitalize on? The said website is also using ALT tags. Are you using ALT tags for your pages with same level of proficiency?

Again, just as a reminder, the trick is to determine what your competitor is doing right so that you’d know what to imitate, and to determine what your competitor is doing wrong so that you’d know where to beat him.

Now go to www.linkpopularity.com and run a check on that website’s URL. You’d know that the said website has 1,927 MSN back links and 2,760 Yahoo back links. The next step is to acquire more back links than what this website has. This is where you should employ off page SEO tactics so that you’d be able to beat the aforementioned number one website. If you will manage to get more back links, then chances are, Google will consider assigning your website a higher page rank.

These are the secrets to studying – and beating – your competition, even if the playing field is fairly built. As Arie De Geus did say, “the ability to learn faster than your competitors may be only sustainable competitive advantage.”

How To Find A Profitable Market

The common mistake committed by most novice online businessmen is coming up with a product without determining a hungry market. Why is this dangerous? Because the product might not cater to a certain demand. Without demand, no one would buy the said product, and such would surely be disastrous for any business.

So the first lesson in any internet marketing course should be about finding profitable markets.

Now, despite how intimidating this subject may sound, it’s actually quite easy to pull off. All you need is an idea. Yes, like one of those eureka moments. This idea can come to you at any time… while watching a movie, for example. Or while reading the morning papers. Or while viewing the billboards by the road your way to drop off the kids at school. This idea may also be inspired by your current or previous profession, or a passion you nurtured when you were still enrolled as a student.

It is always advisable to carry a small notebook with you, so that whenever these ideas pop up, you could write them down so that they won’t have to fade from memory. If you have a personal digital assistant (PDA), the better it would be for you.

So how would you know if the idea that enters your mind is the right one to build a business for?

This wouldn’t be difficult to figure out. Surely, an idea would entail thoughts of various possibilities you do with the same. An idea about dog grooming can make you think of a dog grooming service, for example. Or an idea about pest control can make you think of a do-it-yourself pest control eBook.

Once you have an idea, it’s time to determine its profitability. For this, you would have to use the tools found at:

www.inventory.overture.com

Or…

www.nichebot.com

Simply type in the idea you have in mind, and press the submit button. You will then be presented with a list of keywords and key phrases that are related to the subject you have entered. Each keyword or key phrase would have an indication of the number of searches that they have gathered from internet users. The number of searches made for a particular keyword or key phrase is a good barometer of the demand for the same.

Naturally, you would want a keyword or key phrase that has gathered many searches, right?

This shouldn’t be the case. Demand is just half the battle. You would also need to determine the number of competition you would have for that particular market. To do this, you just have to run a search using the particular keyword or key phrase you have selected. Look at the number of web pages catering to the said subject. If this number is less than the number of searches made for the same, then you have a profitable idea indeed!

Let’s illustrate.

Your idea is about dog grooming. So you use the tools mentioned above, and type in the phrase “dog grooming.”

You’d immediately get some keywords or key phrases like “shih tzu dog grooming” or “dog grooming cases.” The searches for these terms are greater in number than the web pages catering to them. As such, you could consider them as highly profitable markets. These markets are what many people call as niches. Finding a niche is the first integral step in making money online.

Once a niche is determined, focus on it. If you’re not familiar with the subject, do some research. Build a website that would provide accurate and educational information about the topic. Employ marketing strategies to give it the exposure it deserves.

It all starts with finding a niche. The sooner you discover one, the sooner you will realize the many promises that the online world can offer.

How To Make Your Own Video Products

Here’s a not-so-secret secret: the market is getting tired of the usual eBooks and special reports that promises the most revolutionary information. They want something new… something more… something that they could actually respond to. And it as become an Internet marketer’s challenge to come up with novel products that would excite a market slowly sinking to indifferent stupor.

And the most encouraging product types that have been invented in recent months are video products. Yes, video that you could actually watch from your monitor screen. Video that is accompanied by audio commentaries, which seek to inform, if not to entertain.

There are many reasons why video products are better than written works, which have become passé after a decade or so.

* People respond more to what they could see and hear, rather than what they could merely read.
* People are more stimulated with what they get to enjoy watching.
* Some information which cannot be clearly conveyed with written works can actually be demonstrated with video presentations.
* Video presentations present information in a clearer, and often, more concise manner.
* Video presentations are viewed as more professional products compared to their counterparts.

Indeed, video products are easily better options compared to conventional varieties. But the problem that most Internet marketers experience with this medium is the seemingly complicated process involved in their creation. This, however, should not be the case. With the right knowledge on how to proceed, you’d realize the creating a video product is easier than baking an apple pie.

Let’s take a look at the essential steps.

1. Select a subject you want to tackle, preferably a subject you are already familiar with.
2. Select a particular aspect of that topic which you will want to discuss. It should be something engaging and helpful for your future customers.
3. Prepare an outline of how you will discuss the said aspect of the subject.
4. Do your research.
5. If your subject involves a certain niche, get a digital camcorder and record the appropriate material. You may choose to add your audio in real time, that is, while you’re filming your footage, or later on, during the editing process.
6. If your subject involves online affairs, download the screen capture program at www.camtasia.com . This would allow you to capture your computer screen’s movements in .avi format. Camtasia would also allow you to record the audio in real time, or you may prepare a different audio file via Windows Sound Recorder and synchronize both formats later on.
7. Edit the materials using a video editing software program. There are many of these for sale, but if you want something readily available, Windows XP comes with a movie maker program already.
8. If you will offer your video product for download, convert your file into .wmv format to compress its size.
9. If you choose physical delivery, burn your video product on CDs or DVDs, and prepare them for shipping.
10. Then you could market your product already.

Nothing is complicated about it. Creating your own video product is indeed that simple. Anyone could do it, actually. And the applications for this type of creation are amazingly diverse.

* You could add video components to your sales page to increase your response rate.
* You could offer downloadable video lessons to increase consumer confidence.
* Instead of preparing a written manual, you could demonstrate what is needed to be done with a software product you’re offering through a series of videos that can be packaged with your item.

The possibilities are endless. The above examples are just a sampling of the many doors that video products can open for you. If you want to favorably position yourself in the online marketing field, do consider creating your own video products as soon as possible.

How To Find The Best Resale Rights Offers

Resale rights are quite popular these days. They have become great alternatives to actually creating your own products. You won’t have to spend time, money and efforts in preparing some products to sell. And since these resale rights products will be sold to quite a number of people, the cost of purchasing the same can be kept at a minimum.

But not all resale rights products are built alike. Some are simply better than others. When you want to dabble in the potentially rewarding world of resale rights marketing, you have to consider some things in order to secure the best deal for your needs and expectations. Let’s take a look at the factors you have to look out for to guarantee success with resale rights offers.

* Be on the lookout for products with resale rights that are being offered fresh, meaning, they have never been sold anywhere else before. A lot of online marketers are interested with product creation alone. They’d rather leave the marketing aspect of the business to their customers. These people churn out products and sell the same with resale rights. It is how they do business. And since these products will be fresh, the market will respond to them quite well.

* Be on the lookout for products with resale rights that are still at the peak of their market life. These are products that are still experiencing good sales. The market has yet to be saturated with these items, and there is a lot of room for you to market the same to the aforementioned audience.

* Be on the lookout for products with resale rights that will be sold to a limited number of people. Remember, each purchaser of the resale rights to a particular product would be your competitor. You’d want to have as little competition as possible. A product with resale rights that is sold to 100 people would limit its profitability. A product that is sold to 20 or less people would be perfect, as there is enough room in any given market for all players to earn some profit.

* Be on the lookout for products that offer private label rights as well. Private label rights would allow you to alter the said works, and even name yourself as the author. Purchase two or more similar products with private label rights and you could mix and match their contents to come up with a totally new work that can be marketed as something fresh and innovative.

* If you’re on a tight budget, then try to find products with resale rights that are at the tail end of their shelf life. These products should be selling at bargain prices, given the fact that there is little room in the market to sell the same. How could you earn from them, then? Well, you could choose to offer them for free to attract the attention of potential leads for your other products. Or, you could offer a unique selling proposition and support the said product with a battalion of bonuses that cannot be found in other offers. This would make your package an irresistible option for your target audience. Or you may even use such products as bonuses to jack up the value of the other products you will be selling.

The bottom line is, with the right resale rights product, you could potentially earn substantial income. It’s just a matter of finding the most favorable deal for you, and with the tips we have discussed above, there is no doubt that you will be able to procure the best possible deal for your business.

How To Build Your Own Digital Store

What good are your products if you don’t have a place where you could sell them, right? Think of the internet as one big marketplace. Naturally, to be able to sell your wares in a venue like this, you will need a store… a digital store. This digital store takes the form of your website.

A website that sells information products does not have to be complicated. In fact, the simpler it is, the better it would be. Designing your website would depend on what products you’re selling, and how many products you’re actually offering.

If you’re just offering one product for sale, you could simply host one page for the same. This page is called a sales page, or a sales copy. A sales page is where you could try to persuade your visitors to purchase your products. This can be done in a variety of ways. Usually, internet marketers hire a copywriter to prepare a sales page for their goods. However, copywriters don’t come cheap. Some of them charge thousands of dollars per sales page. Some even charge a percentage of the sales you’ll be able to generate, as their fee. If the copywriter is good, trust that whatever he will come up with would most certainly result in quite a number of sales, and eventual profit, for your online business.

The question that needs to be asked, really, is if you have the resources to procure the services of one?

Even if you don’t have such allotted resources for such, you could still prepare your own sales copy. Simply keep in mind the following guidelines:

* Your sales page should start with an attention grabbing headline. If you’re selling an eBook about dog grooming for example, you could emphasize on the best benefit that your readers would be able to derive from the same. Here is an illustrative headline: “Finally, An Ebook That Reveals Easy And Comprehensive Steps In Keeping Your Canine Companion Squeaky Clean!” Remember, a headline should be able to grab your visitors’ attention to compel them to read the rest of what you have to say. Always be guided by this rule.

* After your salutations (“Dear Sir/Ma’am;” “Dear Internet Friend;” Dear Valued Customer;” etc.), you should first introduce who you are and what your business is about. This would make your readers know that they are dealing with a credible expert in the field. Also, this would diminish the anonymity that sometimes makes them hesitant to trust you with their hard-earned money.

* Establish the necessity for the product you’re about to offer. Discuss the market and why there is a need for your goods. This can be done by enumerating some problems with the way things are. With our running example of dog grooming, you could create a semblance of necessity for your eBook if you would discuss the rather unpleasant smell that unclean pups would leave in the house, or the fur that comes off their bodies because of their lack of grooming, etc.

* Introduce your product. Include the specifications for the same.

* Enumerate ALL the benefits that could be derived from the use of your product.

* Lastly, create a sense of urgency. Many internet marketers label this as a “call to action.” This is where you would be able to get them off their seats, in a manner of speaking, and punch their credit card details to order your product. This is the most important component of your sales page.

A sales page can easily become the entirety of your website by itself. Simply add a payment button that would lead your would-be customers to the payment processing page. This is dependent on the merchant account you will procure. PayPal, 2checkout, and ClickBank are the most popular payment processors for online businesses.

If you’re offering multiple products for sale, you would need a sales page for each of them. Your landing page (the page that would load up when the visitor would type in your URL) should contain links to each of your product’s sales page.

Five Fantastic Ways To Automate Content Update

We all know that content is king on the internet. The maxim has been cited so many times that it has already become a cliché. Well, it has become a cliché because it’s true. The internet IS the information superhighway. The processes in the World Wide Web are fueled by information. Users search for it. Web publishers provide it. And when you could give the information that people want, then you’re in business. Whether your online endeavor is based on Pay Per Click (PPC) programs or the sale of digital products, quality content will drive people to your pages.

Indeed, content is your best investment for your online enterprise. But preparing unique, premium content is often not enough. You must strive to regularly update your content so that the search engine spiders would constantly crawl through your pages and fetch them for every relevant query. This is the key to good search engine placement. It is very effective…

… but it is also very demanding.

Writing good content is taxing enough. Having to write the same on a regular basis could be difficult. Having to write the same on a regular basis for several websites could be hellish. Surely, there must be an alternative or two which could spare you from having to write your own content to update your website and win the favor of the search engine spiders, right?

Well, here are five fantastic alternatives that not a lot of people are employing. Knowing them alone could give you the edge over your competitors in the race for good search engine positioning.

1. Try RSS. RSS, which stands for Real Simple Syndication, is a technology that was first used by news wire services online. RSS allows users to display specific files every time they are uploaded on a source website. If website A, for example, generates RSS feeds to announce new articles uploaded to its server, and websites B, C, D and E are subscribed to website A’s RSS feeds, they could display the said feeds on their desktop via an RSS aggregator. For online marketing purposes, these RSS feeds can also be displayed on your web pages. All you need is to download some programs that would enable you to do this. Make sure that you get an RSS-to-HTML reader, so that the RSS feeds you will display on your pages can be readable for the search engine spiders. Afterwards, all you have to do is to subscribe to an appropriate RSS feed, and every time the source website would post new content, you’ll be able to display the same on your own website.

2. Create your own forum. Online users normally gravitate towards forums that are dedicated to their own passions. If your website has an attached forum, you’d be able to invite your visitors to sign up with the same. They’ll be left to their own devices. They’ll create threads about matters they are interested with. They will pots messages to their hearts’ liking. And you will have a virtual well of constantly updating content, without having to type a single word!

3. Integrate a feedback manager. If you’re posting articles as content, then you might want to include a feedback system for the same. This would enable your readers to leave their comments below the said article. Basically, your article would serve as the catalyst for content that will continuously be added by interested readers who want to share their piece of mind on what you have posted.

4. Run a contest. Offering a prize for the visitor who submits the most engaging article relevant to the subject of your website, for example, would encourage a lot of people to submit entries that you could use as your own content. Just remember that your contest rules should include a term which states that submitted entries can be published on your website as a condition to their inclusion in the contest proper.

5. Run a mini-article directory. Try to visit www.ezinearticles.com or www.goarticles.com . See how these websites ensure for themselves an abundant supply of great content? Simply follow their model, and implement the same on your website, even if it would be on a downgraded level. You’d be able to guarantee for yourself a good flow of new content!

How To Choose A Product To Sell Online

Any veteran internet marketer will tell you that the first step towards attaining online wealth is to find a hungry market, or a niche, if you will. A hungry market is almost always profitable, given the great demand for appropriate products, as well as the virtual absence of competing enterprises servicing the said segment.

Once you have selected a profitable market, or a niche if you will, it’s time to think about what product you could offer. Products are the items you could sell. They are the ones that will ultimately deliver some profits for you. Business is all about selling something, after all. You have to offer something to get another thing in return.

Here are the more popular items you could sell online:

* Traditional information products. These include eBooks, special reports and even articles. They are excellent choices because all you really need is information and the writing skills to put them down in writing. The best way to convey information is through the written word. Also, traditional information products are capable of being delivered digitally. You won’t have to worry about shipping costs and storage space. Everything would be stored in your hard drive, and you just have to retrieve the same whenever someone purchases what you have to offer.

* Non-traditional information products. With the many things made possible by the internet, a lot of possible vehicles for information have also popped up. Products like video lectures, audio lessons, and podcasts have become prominent items that have proven to be hot sellers. Non-traditional information products are not limited to these choices, however. You could always come up with something new. The limit is your imagination.

* Tangible goods. You could also sell physical items. However, you have to bear in mind that such requires storage space (which can become problematic if you’re planning to sell high quantities of different products) and shipping charges (which can be a drag when it comes to really large items).

You’re not only limited to products, however. You could also sell your services online. Here are some examples of the kinds of services you could offer to prospective clients:

* Consultancy
* Web design
* Search engine optimization (SEO) advise
* Graphic design
* Data encoding
* Ghostwriting
* Copywriting
* Customer service handling

This requires appropriate skills. If you’re good with writing, then you could most certainly find a lot of clients who would hire your services for a fee. If you’re good with web design, you could be employed by some webmasters who are in need of good websites.

Choosing the right products or services to sell would depend on a few considerations. Let’s take a look at them.

* What product or service is most appropriate for your target market? What do the people in the said market need? What do they want? What product is most accessible for them?

* What product or service will you be able to offer? Some products require financial investments. Do you have the budget to pursue such? Or would you be better off in creating a product that requires little financial demands? Services require certain degrees of skills. Do you have those skills?

* What product do you think will be able to sustain profit for a long period of time. The length of the earning potential, or the market life, of the said product should be enough to reap great earnings for you. Profit, after all, is the bottom line for every business.

Once these considerations have been satisfied, you could safely say that you have found the right product for the business you want to pursue.