Some Truth About Search Engine Marketing

What Is The Truth About Search Engine Optimization?

A great many people within today’s world believe that websites are a quick ride to fame and fortune overnight. These same folks also believe they can become successful without putting in hard work. I am here to tell you; this very rarely happens and if it does it is accomplished by those with experience in internet marketing.

Most people are also sold on the dream that SEO is the cure-all to their financial woes and they are going to become rich. Successful websites are not always successful in the beginning and sometimes beginning an internet website can prove be to very difficult and time consuming.

Google Search Engine Marketing:

Google is a search engine that your internet website must be listed within. Keep in mind that Google has approximately one hundred billion internet web pages, and this number increases daily. You have to ask yourself, with those kind of figures, why should Google index your one little business website? To be frank, you may not get indexed if you aren’t careful.

Your website is completed, now what?

More than likely when your website is completed, it will join a huge population of other websites waiting to be indexed while it sits dormant, waiting for the google god to smile upon it. There are of course ways to list your business, but a word of warning, this sometimes can prove complex, and it is very easy to make a mess of it if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Search Engine Optimization:

When your website is up and running, you must jump into what is called “Search Engine Optimization”. SEO is not a one-step process. SEO is something which must be constantly performed in order to first obtain and then retain your search engine rankings.

Your primary goal should be to bring customers to your website, then once you have prospects attending your site you need to focus on converting the prospects into sales.

You must also market your site, you have to do this in order for your products and services to get in front of your potential customers. Keep in mind, you must first draw these potential customers into your business website before you can sell them anything.

Sometimes waiting to get indexed brings long waiting periods and frustration for some website owners. Some business website owners complain of a long waiting period before their website appears on the Google Search engine. The truth is, that more than likely you are going to wait at least a short while before internet traffic will find your business within the Google Search engine. With this being said, SEO is not the cure all for your websites’ marketing strategy and you would make a mistake if you solely depend on it for your marketing strategy.

There are some alternatives to search engine marketing. Some great alternatives are email marketing, article marketing, blogging, writing newletters, social marketing and advertising with AdWords and other pay per click networks. These are traditional methods within the internet advertising arena and have been found to work well and be both cost and time efficient.

That’s all well and good but isn’t search engine marketing truly crucial as one of your fundamental marketing needs?

Some marketing experts will gladly inform you that your business should not rely on Google or the other search engines for success. As a businessman you should definitely not expect to make all of your money through traffic from the search engines. However the use of search engine traffic should be incorporated into a well rounded marketing plan. Your plan should also include some article marketing, some email marketing and basically a little bit from each of the afore mentioned marketing disciplines in order to become successful and a source of reliable income.

While I know these things I am writing about to be facts, it is still extremely hard for me to realize consistent success. I understand a whole bunch of knowledge when it comes to internet marketing and its processes but the execution of each taks to perfection is what it comes down to. You must create a plan for every result that you want to obtain and stick to that plan. This is a fact that I am coming grudgingly to understand. The days are gone when you could just wing a one or two page website and expect to make gobs of money. The internet marketing game takes precision in both planning and execution. You must also do at least a little bit of work, usually a lot of work, each day in order to become successful. If you are considering venturing into the internet marketing field, just take a look around and take heed of the hundreds of thousands of other people who are trying to be successful at it right now, and the thousands of people who have given up at it already. This practice is not for the faint of heart or the people who are looking for overnight success. It is truly a process during which you must constantly adapt your methodology and practices and stick with it through the hard times. If you stick with anything long enough you will become successful. I remind myself of this every day.

Please leave any comments or remarks you have below, I look forward and am trying to elicit more participation from my readers on my different sites. This is just another of the many tasks that need to be completed and require consistent time and effort in order to be rewarded with your goal. If I can help with anything please leave me a question or comment and I will get right back to you. Have a great day and happy marketing!

Here are a couple of positive affirmations for you:

“I live each day on purpose.”

“My day is filled with lively experiences.”

“I live true to my values.”

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4 Powerful Ways to Perform Market Research and Uncover Million Dollar Niches for Free

Perform Market Research Before You Do Your Keyword Research

Aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners are often misled or misguided on the topic of how to properly conduct market research that uncovers a profitable niche.

The path most unsuspecting entrepreneurs take is by ending up at keyword tool or database to begin their search.

After putting these practices into place over the last year and a half, I can say with firsthand experience that keyword databases are not the first place to look nor should be even considered. Here’s why.

The primary keyword databases that are currently available to the general public only give search counts on a limited amount of data that accounts for 1% – 2% of the actual searches people do around the entire world. They can only predict (emphasis added) the real majority of searches that are being done on the big five search engines such as Google, MSN, Yahoo, AOL and Ask.com which hold 97%-98% of the keyword data.

Most importantly, keyword research only shows what keyword phrases people are using in the search engines to search for answers, not what people actually buy on the internet. Just because a group of people search for specific terms or brand names does not mean that’s what they purchase. That’s a key distinction many entrepreneurs and business owners tend to gloss over.

When looking for a profitable niche marketplace, your primary focus should be looking for proof of a group of hungry and rabid buyers that want to exchange their money for a service or product (information, physical or digital). Without this crucial qualifier, you may have the greatest product in the world, but you may very well be lacking a market to sell it to.

This article will present a number of great sources to look at which will give you a running start to uncover if a truly, profitable marketplace exists before you go for the gold and put all your resources into a website, product creation or expenditures toward some sort of online property.

Once you establish that you have located a market that contains signs of adequate commerce moving through it, you then have a worthy reason to look further into a keyword research service to find out what keyword phrases people use to find the market you have chosen.

Let’s begin looking at how to identify a profitable market.

MAGAZINES

One of the best ways to find signs of a truly profitable marketplace is looking for a magazine in that industry. If a publisher has enough money to print and circulate a full color magazine, there are most likely advertisers that support the funding of the magazine’s ability to circulate all the copies which most likely means there are sales being made by those advertisers.

Now, this may bring you to question whether there is too much competition in a marketplace with so many advertisers selling in a magazine.

In fact, it’s a great sign to have competition which means there is an adequate amount of customers to sell to and a portion of a sizable pie to be had in that marketplace. If there is very little competition, you may (1) not have adequate product being sold in that space; or (2) not have a marketplace to begin with. The larger the competition is, the larger the piece of revenues you will be able to grab.

Without having to leave your seat, you can hop on over to Magazines.com and looking through the number of different categories to find a profitable topic or industry in which to start an online concern.

One of the things you’ll want to focus in on is the number of subscribers each magazine has and how long the magazine has been in print for stability purposes.

Make a list of magazines you want to look into and then go hunting for them at one of those large dedicated newsstands that covers just about every magazine on every topic, or simply order them from their respective websites.

To get a better look at what people are buying in the online world, you will need to ultimately decide whether you wish to represent physical or digital products.

PHYSICAL PRODUCTS

There are two incredibly huge marketplaces that are massively trafficked, move a lot of product and are great places to find what people are really buying.

Let’s start with the first huge marketplace…

eBay

At eBay, you can look through a list of the most popular products people are buying through auctions or from eBay stores that vendors have setup.  This has become one of the most comprehensive and all inclusive marketplaces known to date so you will find very good market indicators on this site.

Amazon

Another really big marketplace is Amazon, and no, it’s not just for books. You can find just about any product and name brand that is offered for sale, whether physical or digital, online or offline. Again, look at the most popular products in those categories that catch your attention.

DIGITAL PRODUCTS

If you wish to sell products of the digital nature, which does not require inventory and which usually carries high profit margins for affiliates, you’’ll want to check out the Clickbank digital marketplace that ranks product sales from highest to lowest sellers in each category.  The site also ranks by a variety of other factors including age, number of affiliates and gravity which is an algorithm that lumps a bunch of selling categories together and comes up with a number, the higher the gravity, the more you know that product is selling.

Just browse through categories at Clickbank  and you’ll instantly find the top sellers of digital info products, software and subscription services which are located right at the top listings.  You can search any number of niches and product types.  Decide which niche is profitable and then you can move on from there.

Once you gather the adequate market research, you can do one of the following:

• Create an online store that ships out physical products and merchandise (requires inventory)
• Sell merchandise through eBay auctions or their online stores (requires inventory)
• Create a site that represents vendors as an affiliate (requires no inventory)
• Create your own product, service or software for a digital product (requires no inventory)

Having used at least two of the four places above, you can be assured that you have conducted proper market research to uncover “proof positive” what people are buying and, thus, a profitable niche market.

You can then quickly build out a non-complex site with a simple product offering, find some low cost keywords to use in a Google Adwords Pay-Per-Click campaign with a minimal spend of $50 to test the market and see if you have a winner.

If the initial test results pan out, meaning that you pulled a profit from your test, you can invest more energies, conduct more extensive keyword research and expend more advertising dollars. If the test results do not pan out, find another market until something sticks.

I believe this should arm you with enough information to get you moving toward finding a market with bottomless profits.

Here are a couple of positive affirmations for you:

“I am always in the right place at the right time.”

“I am awash in physical and spiritual abundance at all times.”

“I love my job and enjoy getting up and getting started every day.”

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Making Money with Articles: Using Free Article Content

Using Free Article Content

Some webmasters try to use articles from free content directories to get visitors to their site and make some money. This is mostly important for those who have just begun working as an affiliate for several companies and do not yet have any funding, yet need to build small niche websites to draw visitors to their site so that they can begin making revenue.

Although this can sometimes be the only option for those who are running on a non-existent budget, it is not a way that will effectively build your website or your revenue. There are a few potential reasons why this may be detrimental to your business building efforts.

Problem #1 – Search Engines

Search engines will only look down upon your site if it has the exact same duplicated content that other sites feature already. The more sites that share your content, the less effective the content will be in helping you achieve good search engine rankings.

Good search engine rankings are essential in getting visitors to your site so that they have a chance to first view and then hopefully click on your affiliate links. If you cannot even get visitors, then you will never make any revenue. One of your first priorities should be working on the search engine optimization of your site so that you will hopefully rank high enough in the results to attract a lot of potential customers to your site.

Problem #2 – Getting Visitors to Click Through

Although getting your site high on search engine result pages and acquiring site visitors is hard enough work in itself; unfortunately this is only half of the battle. After they enter your site, you must also be able to convince those visitors to click on your affiliate links. If your visitors see the same content they have seen on a multitude of other sites, they will be less inclined to click on your links. One of the reasons for this is that a lot of customers are driven to purchase things that are recommended by people that they either know, trust, or whom they feel like have authority and credibility regarding the products or subject matter.

Again, if your content is just duplicated from other sites, you will not be seen as an authority figure in your niche and your product recommendations may fall on deaf ears. This fact will help to reduce the number of website visitors who will be willing to click through on your links or purchase products from you.

Create Your Own Articles from Scratch

Problem #3 – Author Bylines and Author Boxes

Most free content is only given to you if you agree to place the authors byline under the article in the author or resource box (you can run into copyright infringements and other problems if you try to use the content without following the stipulated rules of author recognition). Crediting other author’s poses a minor problem, because most author bylines include links of their own. When a reader gets done reading a really intriguing article, there is a strong possibility that they will click on the author’s byline link rather than your affiliate links. This is the entire reason why these authors offer free content to begin with, so that they may get their name and links out there to the viewing public. Using this type of content may mean possibly shooting yourself in the foot and losing possible profitable website visitors.

Once you put these three problems together, you are looking at a serious decline in revenue simply because you used pre-created, free website content from article directories. Although it may be the only option for some, if you have the funds to buy your own original content, then you should definitely spring for this route. If you don’t have the funds however, you may be better off writing your own content and then hiring professional writing services once you have established a profit to work with.

What it all boils down to is free article content taken from article directories and other websites may lead to more trouble than it is worth if you choose to feature it on your site. If you use this content there are several issues that may arise. If at all possible, the best course of action for aspiring webmasters to make is to outsource the content that they use on their site and use all original content. A couple of good places to find professional writers is the WarriorForum or Elance.  If the paid option is not available, then take the free route and buckle down and write your own content until you can afford to have your content written for you. This is the tried and true, fail proof method of obtaining content for your sites.  You can also take already written PLR articles and run them through an Article Spinner.  Generate your own content first and once you can afford it, have professional writers develop your content.

Here are a couple of positive affirmations for you:

“I have a wonderful and satisfying job.”

“Everything I do turns into a success.”

“I welcome, and am open to receive all abundance that comes.”

Pick up 15,000 PLR articles covering all topics for only $14.95!

For even more content, visit my other internet marketing and personal development site: Plan for Life Success

Cost Effective Internet Marketing Methods

The Internet has made this world an open enterprise. It has become important for companies to further expand their market and their consumer targets. Beginning a career as an internet marketer may be risky if you do not know what you are doing. It takes some research and knowledge of the territory before you can just jump in and be successful.

You want to be as sure as possible that most of your target consumers will eventually acquire your product. Consider the best products which will definitely capture the interests and meet the needs of a large group of people. This means that first you need to identify specifically who these people are; possibly their location and definitely their level of income. You must have some marketing knowledge and skill to achieve your goals in the field of internet marketing.

Currently, you can use varied Internet Marketing techniques that are easy to begin using. These include email marketing, search engine optimization, forum marketing, article marketing or creating web pages or sites. Since you need to maximize your return on investment, you need to choose Internet Marketing techniques that will help you by being cost effective. Many internet marketing techniques require a little bit of money to learn and to start utilizing, but in theory, once begun they should bring in more money than they cost to use.

Email marketing is a common Internet Marketing technique. This is a cost effective way of communicating and interacting with your consumers. You can repeatedly direct your customers back to your website to check out your products. You may also use article marketing to direct traffic back to your sites. Forum marketing is a popular choice with marketers because all that it requires is to keep up running conversations with other marketers and customers and then driving traffic by including your link in a resource box in your signature. You can also create a newsletter, this falls more under the umbrella of email marketing but it is a very effective technique. Composing a newsletter includes the advantage of building up your email list while you are sending out the newsletter. This gives you a ready-made database of potential clients or customers.

Another great Internet Marketing technique is to construct niche websites. This is a solid strategy to employ since you can display all the necessary information for your target consumers in one place or in a network of sites all offering your sales pitch. The website should pique your target audiences’ interest and also should be complete because you may field all types of transactions from email gathering to sales transactions from the same website. Your websites must be properly constructed so that they handle all means of communication between your customers and you, the marketer.

Another Internet Marketing technique is search engine optimization. This is a technique that requires you to already have websites in place. You then optimize the on-page content, as well as the off page linking and viral content to direct traffic back to your websites. If done correctly, your sites will rank high for certain key search phrases among the different search engines and more traffic will be directed back to your sites.

One last technique to mention is affiliate marketing. To do this, you take on the responsibility of advertising and marketing products for another company. When your link leads to a sale you are paid a commission percentage of the sales price. This can be a very cost effective way of internet marketing. You do not incur much cost when advertising for other companies unless you utilize pay per click marketing. We will save the pay per click discussion for another day.

You can see there are multiple avenues you can choose to begin internet marketing. You may want to just focus in on one method and practice it until you begin having success. I have learned from experience that if you try to succeed using all of the different methods at the same time that you will succeed only marginally in each, which leads to not enough success to make it worthwhile. So focus on one or two methods, and keep using them until you are making a steady income before you branch out to trying more methods.

Sometimes all the marketing choices make you feel like this.

A Day in the Life of an Affiliate Marketer

Being in the affiliate marketing business is not that hard these days with the internet at our disposable. It is much easier now, compared to the days when people had to make use of the telephones and other mediums of communication just to get the latest updates on the way their program was progressing and any changes or updates.

So with the technology now at hand, and assuming that the affiliate is working from home, a day in her life would sound something like this…

Upon waking up and after having breakfast, the computer is turned on to check out new developments in the network. As far as the marketer is concerned there might be new things to update and many statistics to keep track of.

The site design has to be revised. The marketer knows that a well-designed site can increase sign ups from visitors. It can also help in the affiliate’s conversion rates.

That being done, it is time to submit the affiliate program to directories that list affiliate programs. These directories are a means to help attract people to your site and hopefully joining your affiliate program. Website directories are a sure way of promoting the affiliate program.

It is time to track down the sales that the affiliate is getting from their affiliates fairly and accurately. There are phone orders and mail orders to track down. She wants to hopefully see new clients checking the products out. If there are any contacts made, the information is noted down, as it might be a viable source of leads in the future.

There are lots of resources to sort out most days. Ads; banners, button ads and text ads, PPC or CPC. There are also sample recommendations to give out because the marketer knows that this is one way of helping to ensure future sales. Every piece of content that the marketer has on the internet helps them to stay visible and accessible to new prospects as well.

The next step is to answer questions from the site visitors. This has to be done quickly. Nothing can turn off a potential customer faster than an unanswered or an untimely email response from the site owner.

To demonstrate good business procedure and consideration, each inquiry is to be responded to on a daily basis. Nobody wants to feel ignored after all, and customers do not have to be patient in todays’ marketplace, you have a competitor merely one click of the mouse away. The marketer sends several quick but on time replies to inquiries and continues on with day’s activities.

Throughout the day, the marketer is logged on to a chat room where he or she interacts with other affiliates and those members of her downline or affiliate program. This is where they discuss methods of how to best promote their products and their program together.

There are constantly new methods and practices to learn and it is a continuous process. We never stop learning. Sharing tips and advice in chat rooms and forums is a good way of showing support and of keeping up interaction with associates and prospective clients. There are always other prospects out there wanting to join, and they may be enticed by the discussions held between marketers and prospects.

The newsletters and ezines were updated days ago, so it is time for the affiliate marketer to see if there are some new things happening in the market. New happenings and events will be noted and written about in the marketer’s publication to be distributed to new and current customers.

These same publications are also an important tool to help clients keep up to date with any newly introduced products. The marketer has put up a new sale and promotion that customers will want to know about. Publications sent to her list also inform her customers of dates when sales or promotions begin and end.

There comes a time to show some appreciation to those JV partners and others who have helped the marketer in their recent promotions and fortunate increase in sales. The marketer logs onto several social media sites and mentions the JV partners and their sites in glowing recommendations. These will also be published in the newsletters.

The marketer still has time to write out recommendations to those who want credible sources for the products being promoted. At the same time she writes a guest blog post for another marketers affiliate blog. This is yet another way for her products and programs to gain both exposure and authority.

Time flies. She forgot about dinner, but is quite content with the work accomplished today. Now it is time to head off to bed and get ready for the next work day.

Ok… so this may not be all done in one day. But then, this gives you an idea of how a successful affiliate marketer might spend their working day. If you have some additional tasks and procedures that she might have worked on or accomplished, please leave a comment and let us know about it.

The affiliate marketing process

This details the affiliate marketing process,

Here are a couple of positive affirmations for you:

“Money flows to me easily and frequently.”

“I attract positive minded people to me; I draw all things positive to myself.”

“Everything I do turns into a success.”

Hello, and Welcome to Your New Favorite Site!

Welcome to MarketerLink.  I will be bringing you a score of internet marketing resources as this site develops.  I also intend to include both free training as well as more advanced paid training packages.    In the beginning I will be adding to this site a little bit every day.  I really hope you can find something you enjoy, or learn something new every time you return to MarketerLink.   Please feel free to share this site amongst your friends and email lists.  We can set up a true community of like minded marketers and have a fabulous, free sharing environment where we support each other’s efforts.  The internet is sadly lacking for community sites driven to help each individual succeed.  Everyone is welcome here and we respect everyone’s point of view.  Join the community today and make your voice heard! If you are finished seeing what there is to see on this site, please take a minute to check out my Personal Development meets Internet Marketing blog at Plan for Life Success.  At Plan for Life Success I am going to try and integrate a forum inside the site so that all of our members can connect and share their experience and knowledge throughout the readership. You will be able to find many more resources, videos and membership content on that site because we are limited as to the nature of the content we can display on these basic WordPress sites. Take a minute and head over to my main site to find much more relevant content. I am going to try and integrate a forum inside the site also, so that all of our members can connect and share their experience and knowledge throughout the readership. For now I want to wish everyone a good day, and here is to our current and future success!
Here are a couple of positive affirmations for you:
“Healthy living ideas flow to me easily.”
“I am very fortunate to work at what I love to do.”
“My thoughts are always under my control.”