Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Fred Vanhoosen
Today's economy is especially hard on middle-class families and others who basically live week-to-week. Without careful budgeting and tending to finances, it's getting easier and easier to end up short of money at the end of each month. Ironically, it seems the tighter your money gets, the more expensive necessities such as utilities and food become.
In this article, we offer seven tips that if used can help the average American family reduce their living expenses by at least $100 per month.
Reduce Food Expenses, Without Giving Up Good Food
Fortunately, with a little discipline and work, there are ways to decrease your spending without sacrificing too much. Having said that, there is one area where most people can dramatically cut down on their expenses, and that is eating out. "Eating out" includes eating in restaurants, grabbing food from the fast-food drive-throughs, or ordering take-out food to eat at home. Even a simple fast-food meal for a family of four costs twice as much as eating at home.
Buy A Sunday Newspaper: Shop The Grocery Ads and Clip The Coupons
To get started on saving on your food bill, you need a little organization. Start by carefully reading your grocery store's weekly ad in the newspaper or online and making note of which items are on sale. Many stores seem to be having a lot of buy one/get one free sales, and you should take advantage of these items. What you don't use this week, you can use in the coming weeks.
In this way, you can also build up a store of extra items so that you are never caught without food for a meal. If certain meats are on sale, buy double portions and freeze half.
Another sure-fire way to save money at the grocery store is coupons! If you don't get a newspaper on Sunday, you should start. You will save a lot more money by the coupons you can clip than the paper will cost. Cut only the coupons for items you actually use or can substitute for your usual brands.
Plan Your Meals In Advance and Reap The Savings
The next step takes the most time but brings the highest rewards: make a meal plan for the week, with an eye on the sale items at the grocery store and the items for which you have coupons. If your family eats breakfast, make a list of the items you will need to provide seven breakfasts. If you or your family eat lunch at home or pack a lunch for school or work, list what will be needed to provide seven lunches - be sure to include the weekends.
This is a good area to begin eliminating eating out. It is much more economical to take a lunch that to eat out.
Good lunch ideas include sandwiches, fruit or salads. If your workplace has a microwave available, consider taking leftovers from dinner rather than the more expensive microwave meals. This is also a good chance to reduce excess calories and junk foods from your diet.
For your dinner meals, try to plan items that can be used for two dinners or for leftovers for lunch. Some good dinner ideas include a roast beef (two meals and lunch leftovers), oven-baked or fried chicken and stews. You can also make a large portion of dishes like lasagna and have enough for one or two dinners. A good alternative is to freeze half of the amount you make for a quick dinner another night.
When planning your dinner menus, it is important to plan one or two dinners that can be prepared quickly. This is where the frozen portions come in handy. They can be easily thawed and require no work or planning. Everyone has nights when they are too tired after work to cook, and that is where the temptation to eat out or order take-out food can ruin the budget. Be sure to always have food available for quick and easy meals when you don't have the time or energy for cooking.
If you have frozen a portion of another meal, such as lasagna or a stew, just pop it in a dish, microwave it and you can put dinner on the table in a matter of minutes. Once you have made your menu planner, make a list of everything you need for each meal. Also list all household non-food items that you need or that are on sale.
Make A Grocery List and Skip The Impulse Items
Try to get everything you will need for the entire week or month in a single trip to the grocery store. It is best to limit your trips to the grocery store to once a week or less. Most people pick up one or more "impulse items" each time they go to the store, so the less often you go, the better.
Stick to your list - unless it's something you actually forgot and will need for one of your planned meals, don't buy it!
A good way not to forget anything that you use on a regular basis is to put a small piece of paper on the fridge with a magnet - when you are getting low on something you use often (salt, coffee, sugar, detergent, etc.), jot it on the list and add these items to your weekly shopping list. Be sure to stock up on freezer and storage bags so that you will always be able to easily store your leftovers. A lot of food that could easily be frozen and used for another meal is lost by being shoved to the back of the refrigerator and sitting there until it goes bad.
Several small portions of various frozen leftover dinners can be combined to give your family a "pot luck" dinner.
Count Your Savings To Justify The Discipline
These methods of meal planning and shopping can save you 25% to 35% off your weekly grocery bill. If it seems like a lot of work, put a dollar amount on it. A savings of $40.00 means that you are earning $20.00 an hour if you spend two hours cutting coupons, reading grocery ads, planning your menu and making a shopping list.
Reduce Your Electric Bill
Another big expenditure each month is the electric bill! There are small things you can do to cut down, such as turning out lights in rooms that aren't being used, turning off power strips to eliminate the "energy vampires" that constantly suck power to recharge phones, batteries, etc., and turning off your computer each night.
Manage Your Hot Water Supply
However, to really save money, look to your hot water heater! These are a tremendous consumer of electricity. Go to your circuit breaker and find the switch that controls the hot water heater. Modern hot water heaters heat up very quickly - you simply do not need to have it running all day, keeping the water at a constant hot temperature when no one is home or using hot water. Turn the hot water heater on when you get home from work and let it run until bedtime. There will be more than enough hot water for dishes, showers and the washing machine.
If you need to do laundry during the day, turn it on for about 15 minutes - while you're waiting for it to heat up, you can run a cold water load. Let the hot water heater run while you are using hot water, and then turn it off. And speaking of the hot water heater, invest in an inexpensive hot water heater wrap to keep the water in there hot, and check the temperature setting. There is never a need to have your hot water heater set higher than 125 degrees.
Follow These Seven Tips To Save Hundreds Of Dollars Yearly...
Following the tips in the article could easily help the average American family save anywhere from a hunred to a few hundred dollars a month. Take these tips to heart, and you will be able to live a richer life as a result.
About the Author:
Fred Vanhoosen writes about the payday loan / cash advance loans industry. To learn more about these cash advance loan products, we recommend reading the following overview of the payday loan concept. Learn more at: http://www.fastcash4all.net/
Read more of Fred Vanhoosen's articles.
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I will seek to answer those questions here, as well as to provide a Day Planner to enable the new online entrepreneur to navigate the maze of building a successful online business. When I find great advice by other writers, I will include that information as well. --- Clinton Douglas IV, Founder of Vasrue.com |
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Newsletter Publishers: The Redheaded Step Children Of Internet Marketing
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Bill Platt
People who publish online newsletters, often referred to as "ezines", have always played an important role in the growth of the Internet economy. In fact, if you listen to any of the Internet gurus, they are going to tell you time and again that the most important thing you can do towards the success of your online business is to build a list.
I think Titus Hoskins said it best when he said, "It is a well known fact that the key to successful online marketing comes from building a well targeted and responsive opt-in email list. This is mainly because your online marketing success comes from building relationships with a large subscriber base." Titus is the owner of http://www.bizwaremagic.com/
Successful newsletter publishers have built profitable niche businesses that represent the very specific needs of very specific consumers in the marketplace. While it is true that some newsletter publishers have subscribers that number in the hundreds, those who have been building their newsletter for years have a subscriber base ranging in the 10's to 100's of thousands of subscribers.
Joel Christopher (http://www.masterlistbuilder.com) says, "It's not just about building a list of names and emails, it's about building relationships and connections." He also says that newsletters are "not about huge numbers, it's about conversions. Converting names and emails into prospects, then into customers/clients, and finally into people who will promote you."
For the newsletter publisher, it is about giving readers what they want and to win the loyalty of their readers for the years to come.
Alexandria K. Brown, The Ezine Queen (http://www.ezinequeen.com/) advises her clients, "By showcasing your knowledge and skills, you will attract more and better clients and customers. You don't have to go say you're an expert. Instead, your audience will assume it." She also recommends, "What many folks don't know is that THE easiest and most effective way to do all this is to publish an e-mail newsletter or ezine."
As an advertiser, it makes a lot of sense to have your ads appear in the newsletters that best serve your target market - preferably in those newsletters that have a large subscriber base of responsive readers.
Ironically, it was newsletter marketing that turned me on to the potential of article marketing to promote my online endeavors. Ten years ago, I had a newsletter of my own. In order to grow my opt-in mailing list, I began doing advertising swaps with other newsletter publishers - a process by which I ran an ad for the other newsletter, and in turn they ran my ad in their newsletter.
As the result of those advertising swaps, I found that some newsletters had a really responsive group of readers. I was so impressed with the interest generated for my business in some newsletters that I began to pay for advertising in those mailing lists.
Angela Booth (http://www.hotwebcopy.com/newsletters.html) says, "Once someone is on your ezine's subscriber list, you can connect with them each week or each month. Since you need to have several interactions (some authorities say up to seven times) with a customer before they buy, an ezine gives you the ideal way to build the customer relationship." Booth also pointed out that "An ezine can be 'the lifeblood' of your business."
Yes, the money is in the list. And there is money not only for the person, who owns the mailing list, but also the advertiser who supports the publisher of the newsletter, and the persons who are involved in contributing content to the newsletter.
I never fully appreciated that concept until March 6, 2000. That is the day that my first "reprint article" was published in a newsletter called Internet Day. It was a fairly substantial publication, formerly operated by http://www.Internet.com. In 2000, Internet Day had over 150,000 subscribers. The response to that article was huge. I signed on a boatload of new subscribers to my newsletter, and I began to field questions from other Internet marketers about their businesses.
Suddenly, I was considered an expert, and my advice was in demand.
Between you and I, although the article was decent, it was not exceptional, and I was not the guru that so many of Internet Day's readers wanted to believe that I was.
But, Internet Day did teach me a very important lesson about the value of writing reprint articles. When an article gets published in a newsletter, it can drive a boatload of traffic to the authors' website on the day of publication, and over the next three days after publication.
In a recent article of his own, Willie Crawford (http://timic.org/) explained, "I also understand that part of my job as an ezine publisher is to serve as a filter. My subscribers learn to expect quality from me, and will pay more attention to future offers from me than they will from the marketers who filled their hard drives with a bunch of useless 'fluff'."
When I sit down to write an article, I write that article with the express intention of making sure it is good enough to be considered by a publisher for his or her newsletter.
In my thinking, publication in a newsletter can be more important than publication on a website, because it can literally put thousands of readers on my website in a single day. Over my years of writing articles, I have found that publication in a major newsletter can very realistically send a wave of thousands of targeted visitors to my website in just a few days - visitors who are interested in buying what I sell.
It is true that like everyone else, I also want my articles to be published on websites, so that I can get that all-important link popularity from Google and to improve my websites' rankings in Google's search results. But above links on websites, I want my articles exposed to large newsletter audiences. I find that I still get my articles published on websites, whether I write the article with the intent of finding publication in newsletters or not.
Did you realize that most newsletters are archived on the Internet? So when published in a newsletter, not only do I get a ton of traffic from the newsletter itself, but I also get links from the newsletter's online archives, and I also get my articles published on websites, whose webmasters tend to reprint articles found in their favorite newsletters.
One example of someone who reprints articles found in her favorite newsletters is Debbie Johnson (http://friendfeed.com/debbiejohnson). Whenever she sees one of my articles in a newsletter that she reads, she adds the article to the forum at http://www.DreamTeamMoney.com. This results in my article being read by hundreds, perhaps thousands of additional people - people who may have not had the chance to see my articles elsewhere.
Another example of someone who republishes articles they like, after reading that article in a newsletter, is Flavio Bernardotti from Alessandria, Italy. After reading one of my articles in a popular newsletter, Flavio republished the article on his Italian-speaking website (http://www.bernardotti.it/portal/showthread.php?t=128997).
If you think for a minute that my article would have been published on Debbie's or Flavio's forums if the article had not been published in several large newsletters, then you are bound to keep overlooking the real potential of publication in newsletters.
This article has actually been inspired by a number of people, with whom I have spoke with on the phone. Each wanted to know a bit more about my business. And when I told them that our article distribution service targets publication in newsletters and websites, I was told that they did not care about publication in newsletters. I was told by each person that his or her only concern was links on websites to propel their websites rankings in Google.
Every time I hear this from a potential client, my initial thought is, "Oh, my mistake... I have mistakenly believed you were in business to make money..."
To tell you the truth, I am floored when I hear people tell me that newsletters don't matter... I have personally earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in free advertising, as a result of my articles appearing in newsletters over the years. And more to the point of everyone reading this article, I have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in new sales, as a result of being published in newsletters.
Yes, I do get links in websites also, and my websites generally rank well in Google and other search engines for competitive keywords. But my Google rankings are only part of the story... Less than 10% of the 2.5 million page views on my website were delivered by Google in 2008, and still, I received more than 200,000 visits to my website in 2008, as a result of the thousands of top 10 and top 20 listings my websites possess in Google.
The truth is that you can target newsletters with your articles, and still achieve your search engine goals. But then again, if you never write articles that newsletter publishers want to publish, you will never know the power of newsletters for driving traffic, sales and search engine rankings.
While newsletter publishers may be the redheaded stepchildren of most Internet marketers, they are and will always be "my favorite stepchildren".
About the Author:
Bill Platt has operated The Phantom Writers article distribution service since 2001. Rather than to rely on article directories, The Phantom Writers has been designed to send articles to the newsletter publishers and webmasters who are most likely to want to publish an article. One of his customers recently said, "I've used other article distribution sites, but your distribution seems to yield a higher quality of publisher and a higher volume. So I'm a happy camper, even if you are more expensive." Learn more at: http://www.thePhantomWriters.com/
Read more Articles written by Bill Platt.
Copyright © 2009 Bill Platt
People who publish online newsletters, often referred to as "ezines", have always played an important role in the growth of the Internet economy. In fact, if you listen to any of the Internet gurus, they are going to tell you time and again that the most important thing you can do towards the success of your online business is to build a list.
I think Titus Hoskins said it best when he said, "It is a well known fact that the key to successful online marketing comes from building a well targeted and responsive opt-in email list. This is mainly because your online marketing success comes from building relationships with a large subscriber base." Titus is the owner of http://www.bizwaremagic.com/
Successful newsletter publishers have built profitable niche businesses that represent the very specific needs of very specific consumers in the marketplace. While it is true that some newsletter publishers have subscribers that number in the hundreds, those who have been building their newsletter for years have a subscriber base ranging in the 10's to 100's of thousands of subscribers.
Joel Christopher (http://www.masterlistbuilder.com) says, "It's not just about building a list of names and emails, it's about building relationships and connections." He also says that newsletters are "not about huge numbers, it's about conversions. Converting names and emails into prospects, then into customers/clients, and finally into people who will promote you."
For the newsletter publisher, it is about giving readers what they want and to win the loyalty of their readers for the years to come.
Alexandria K. Brown, The Ezine Queen (http://www.ezinequeen.com/) advises her clients, "By showcasing your knowledge and skills, you will attract more and better clients and customers. You don't have to go say you're an expert. Instead, your audience will assume it." She also recommends, "What many folks don't know is that THE easiest and most effective way to do all this is to publish an e-mail newsletter or ezine."
As an advertiser, it makes a lot of sense to have your ads appear in the newsletters that best serve your target market - preferably in those newsletters that have a large subscriber base of responsive readers.
Ironically, it was newsletter marketing that turned me on to the potential of article marketing to promote my online endeavors. Ten years ago, I had a newsletter of my own. In order to grow my opt-in mailing list, I began doing advertising swaps with other newsletter publishers - a process by which I ran an ad for the other newsletter, and in turn they ran my ad in their newsletter.
As the result of those advertising swaps, I found that some newsletters had a really responsive group of readers. I was so impressed with the interest generated for my business in some newsletters that I began to pay for advertising in those mailing lists.
Angela Booth (http://www.hotwebcopy.com/newsletters.html) says, "Once someone is on your ezine's subscriber list, you can connect with them each week or each month. Since you need to have several interactions (some authorities say up to seven times) with a customer before they buy, an ezine gives you the ideal way to build the customer relationship." Booth also pointed out that "An ezine can be 'the lifeblood' of your business."
Yes, the money is in the list. And there is money not only for the person, who owns the mailing list, but also the advertiser who supports the publisher of the newsletter, and the persons who are involved in contributing content to the newsletter.
I never fully appreciated that concept until March 6, 2000. That is the day that my first "reprint article" was published in a newsletter called Internet Day. It was a fairly substantial publication, formerly operated by http://www.Internet.com. In 2000, Internet Day had over 150,000 subscribers. The response to that article was huge. I signed on a boatload of new subscribers to my newsletter, and I began to field questions from other Internet marketers about their businesses.
Suddenly, I was considered an expert, and my advice was in demand.
Between you and I, although the article was decent, it was not exceptional, and I was not the guru that so many of Internet Day's readers wanted to believe that I was.
But, Internet Day did teach me a very important lesson about the value of writing reprint articles. When an article gets published in a newsletter, it can drive a boatload of traffic to the authors' website on the day of publication, and over the next three days after publication.
In a recent article of his own, Willie Crawford (http://timic.org/) explained, "I also understand that part of my job as an ezine publisher is to serve as a filter. My subscribers learn to expect quality from me, and will pay more attention to future offers from me than they will from the marketers who filled their hard drives with a bunch of useless 'fluff'."
When I sit down to write an article, I write that article with the express intention of making sure it is good enough to be considered by a publisher for his or her newsletter.
In my thinking, publication in a newsletter can be more important than publication on a website, because it can literally put thousands of readers on my website in a single day. Over my years of writing articles, I have found that publication in a major newsletter can very realistically send a wave of thousands of targeted visitors to my website in just a few days - visitors who are interested in buying what I sell.
It is true that like everyone else, I also want my articles to be published on websites, so that I can get that all-important link popularity from Google and to improve my websites' rankings in Google's search results. But above links on websites, I want my articles exposed to large newsletter audiences. I find that I still get my articles published on websites, whether I write the article with the intent of finding publication in newsletters or not.
Did you realize that most newsletters are archived on the Internet? So when published in a newsletter, not only do I get a ton of traffic from the newsletter itself, but I also get links from the newsletter's online archives, and I also get my articles published on websites, whose webmasters tend to reprint articles found in their favorite newsletters.
One example of someone who reprints articles found in her favorite newsletters is Debbie Johnson (http://friendfeed.com/debbiejohnson). Whenever she sees one of my articles in a newsletter that she reads, she adds the article to the forum at http://www.DreamTeamMoney.com. This results in my article being read by hundreds, perhaps thousands of additional people - people who may have not had the chance to see my articles elsewhere.
Another example of someone who republishes articles they like, after reading that article in a newsletter, is Flavio Bernardotti from Alessandria, Italy. After reading one of my articles in a popular newsletter, Flavio republished the article on his Italian-speaking website (http://www.bernardotti.it/portal/showthread.php?t=128997).
If you think for a minute that my article would have been published on Debbie's or Flavio's forums if the article had not been published in several large newsletters, then you are bound to keep overlooking the real potential of publication in newsletters.
This article has actually been inspired by a number of people, with whom I have spoke with on the phone. Each wanted to know a bit more about my business. And when I told them that our article distribution service targets publication in newsletters and websites, I was told that they did not care about publication in newsletters. I was told by each person that his or her only concern was links on websites to propel their websites rankings in Google.
Every time I hear this from a potential client, my initial thought is, "Oh, my mistake... I have mistakenly believed you were in business to make money..."
To tell you the truth, I am floored when I hear people tell me that newsletters don't matter... I have personally earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in free advertising, as a result of my articles appearing in newsletters over the years. And more to the point of everyone reading this article, I have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in new sales, as a result of being published in newsletters.
Yes, I do get links in websites also, and my websites generally rank well in Google and other search engines for competitive keywords. But my Google rankings are only part of the story... Less than 10% of the 2.5 million page views on my website were delivered by Google in 2008, and still, I received more than 200,000 visits to my website in 2008, as a result of the thousands of top 10 and top 20 listings my websites possess in Google.
The truth is that you can target newsletters with your articles, and still achieve your search engine goals. But then again, if you never write articles that newsletter publishers want to publish, you will never know the power of newsletters for driving traffic, sales and search engine rankings.
While newsletter publishers may be the redheaded stepchildren of most Internet marketers, they are and will always be "my favorite stepchildren".
About the Author:
Bill Platt has operated The Phantom Writers article distribution service since 2001. Rather than to rely on article directories, The Phantom Writers has been designed to send articles to the newsletter publishers and webmasters who are most likely to want to publish an article. One of his customers recently said, "I've used other article distribution sites, but your distribution seems to yield a higher quality of publisher and a higher volume. So I'm a happy camper, even if you are more expensive." Learn more at: http://www.thePhantomWriters.com/
Read more Articles written by Bill Platt.
Expired Domains - Opportunities to Make Decent Money in the Gloom of Global Recession
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
Expired domain name industry may watch a positive trend in the year 2009. Due to halting global economic indicators and drastic job losses, experts believe that online business trend may also see a steep decline vis-a-vis small and medium businesses operating out of borrowed capital. There are possibilities that a number of domains connected to business houses dropping and becoming defunct in this year. However, most of these domains belong to an average to good bracket; you can still expect some very good domains names dropping off the registrars' database. Some of them could be your trump cards and you may wish to backorder for them by using a good registrar service.
If you are a newbie to the world of expired domain names, you may face a daunting situation while buying a good domain. Profitability factors for expired domains in the year 2009, seems to be even when you consider a period of lull in the world of online business. Creating strong domain gains may not be possible until the end of this year when we are likely to see some sort of positive momentum in the global economy.
To buy a profitable domain, you may wish to consider several issue and parameters:
Conduct a thorough research: You will need to be very careful of what you spend on buying ridiculous expired domain names. While it is worthwhile to use a professional service to your domain names, you will need to be extra careful as most of the domains that drop mat belong to an average class. As a result, you will need to find conduct a detailed research to search for good domain names.
Never become too emotional with your domain names: Bidding and auction processes on expire domains could be very fierce. Some special domain names are too enticing and attractive. Never become too emotional about them. After all, you do not own them, not yet! If someone is serious in suggesting a bid price higher than you suggest, let him or her take away that domain. Do not sit on a particular domain name just because it is too good.
Always place a minimum bid price on an expired domain name: Proxy bidding may not really work for you in some cases. Instead, place a minimum bid and wait for the auction process to finish. If you feel that there is a scope for additional bidding, then you can suggest your price. Know your bid price and the maximum amount you are ready to spend.
Look for a name that is lesser than four characters. These domain names are extremely good and it worth spending your money in owning them. However, it is very hard to find these domains, as they are not available right away. There may be some of them with an auction house; make sure that you bargain on their price.
Expired domain gains are possible only when you consider the viability of buying a particular domain. This year provides you an exciting opportunity to find and buy very good domains that could act as your potential money-spinners in the coming years.
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
Read more Articles written by John Khu.
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
Expired domain name industry may watch a positive trend in the year 2009. Due to halting global economic indicators and drastic job losses, experts believe that online business trend may also see a steep decline vis-a-vis small and medium businesses operating out of borrowed capital. There are possibilities that a number of domains connected to business houses dropping and becoming defunct in this year. However, most of these domains belong to an average to good bracket; you can still expect some very good domains names dropping off the registrars' database. Some of them could be your trump cards and you may wish to backorder for them by using a good registrar service.
If you are a newbie to the world of expired domain names, you may face a daunting situation while buying a good domain. Profitability factors for expired domains in the year 2009, seems to be even when you consider a period of lull in the world of online business. Creating strong domain gains may not be possible until the end of this year when we are likely to see some sort of positive momentum in the global economy.
To buy a profitable domain, you may wish to consider several issue and parameters:
Conduct a thorough research: You will need to be very careful of what you spend on buying ridiculous expired domain names. While it is worthwhile to use a professional service to your domain names, you will need to be extra careful as most of the domains that drop mat belong to an average class. As a result, you will need to find conduct a detailed research to search for good domain names.
Never become too emotional with your domain names: Bidding and auction processes on expire domains could be very fierce. Some special domain names are too enticing and attractive. Never become too emotional about them. After all, you do not own them, not yet! If someone is serious in suggesting a bid price higher than you suggest, let him or her take away that domain. Do not sit on a particular domain name just because it is too good.
Always place a minimum bid price on an expired domain name: Proxy bidding may not really work for you in some cases. Instead, place a minimum bid and wait for the auction process to finish. If you feel that there is a scope for additional bidding, then you can suggest your price. Know your bid price and the maximum amount you are ready to spend.
Look for a name that is lesser than four characters. These domain names are extremely good and it worth spending your money in owning them. However, it is very hard to find these domains, as they are not available right away. There may be some of them with an auction house; make sure that you bargain on their price.
Expired domain gains are possible only when you consider the viability of buying a particular domain. This year provides you an exciting opportunity to find and buy very good domains that could act as your potential money-spinners in the coming years.
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
Read more Articles written by John Khu.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Masters Of The Google Universe: How To Achieve Top Google Rankings
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Bill Platt
For years, it has been well known that Google's search algorithm is driven by the number and quality of links pointing to a particular URL. And as a result, it was all the rage for some time to buy links on web pages that had a high Google PageRank (PR).
But in March of 2007, Google's mouthpiece Matt Cutts declared that Google was going to fight back against Paid Links. Google put a shot across the bow of many online marketers, letting them know that the days of easily buying links from high PageRank pages in order to influence a website's ranking in Google were over.
The Shot Heard Around The World
With Matt Cutts declaration, a world full of online marketers began to cry foul. It was said that "They can't do that!"
But the truth was and is that the Google Search Algorithm is Google's intellectual property, and therefore, Google can do anything they want within their algorithms - no matter who those changes might hurt or help.
By the end of the Summer of 2007, the people crying foul had quieted down a bit and got back to the business of trying to find new ways to manipulate their website's rankings inside of the Google search results. That is the way it has always been and always will be.
The summer of 2007 was just such an oddity... For me, it has always been exciting to challenge the brains at Google to get my websites to rank well within Google's search algorithms. But for some reason, at that moment in time, many of those who held the top rankings in Google felt as if it was their God-given right to be at the top of Google's search results, and how dare Google oppose God's decree in this matter.
Yep, I know I am going to catch flak for that statement - comparing a few webmasters to religious zealots - but that is how I roll sometimes.
For me, Matt Cutts was telling people to work harder to actually "earn" what they have been given. For me, it was a chance to rededicate myself to the goal of ranking well in Google for competitive keywords. For me, I did not have to change anything I was already doing, because I have never gained a single ranking in Google by paying for a link from any web page. (wink)
Google's Search Engineers Are Not Foolish
Matt Cutts has said time and again that Google does not want to attack any problem in their search algorithms by manually deleting any participant in the Google search ranking game.
Instead, Google in every case wants to program a solution to address a particular bad practice.
I guess it might be easier for me to understand since I am also a computer programmer. It is a hobby I really enjoy, and I exercise my mind with computer programming anytime I want to improve my own websites or to build a new website. I keep my brain sharp by solving problems in computer code.
So, whenever I see Google making moves in one direction or another, I try to visualize how I would solve their algorithm problems in computer code.
In my mind, solving the paid links issue was a super-easy solution. Just look at the pages linking to a particular website, and then do a cross-comparison of the PageRank of all of those linking pages. If all of the pages linking to a particular URL have a PageRank of Four or higher, then chances are that those links were artificially created, through some kind of paid linking system.
Let me explain this in an example, where all of the sample web pages have 100 inbound links each:
If Site A has all of its 100 links on pages that have a PageRank of 4 or higher, then that is unnatural and therefore suspect.
If Site B has all of its 100 links on pages that have a PageRank of 0, then those links offer no value to the Internet community as a whole, and therefore Site B should not measured as a quality search result.
If Site C has a mix of PageRank 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 links, then that is more natural in its structure and it also shows that some of the links are considered to have value in the Internet community as a whole. Therefore, Site C has proven itself worthy above Site A and Site B in Google's search results.
This example should show in no uncertain terms how easy it was for Google to properly address the issue of paid links and to put a stop to people using paid links to manipulate their websites' ranking in Google's search algorithms.
Publication Standards
A couple years back, I wrote another article discussing this concept in relationship to article marketing. You can read that article with third-party commentary from Chris McElroy, aka NameCritic, on the Article Content Provider Blog.
In a nutshell, I was discussing the role of article directories in the article marketing industry. Again, this solution came to me from my programming mind. The simple way for Google to have dealt with all of the junk articles that have been written for the purpose of building links to a website is to look at the article in the context of where that article is published.
The article marketing carpet bombers send their articles to hundreds of article directories to get hundreds of links pointing to their website. But the role of the article directory has always been to be a repository where newsletter publishers and webmasters could go to find articles that they would like to reprint in their own newsletters and on their own websites.
Some article directory managers bring a commitment to providing publishers with only quality articles. Other article directory managers approve anything and everything sent to them.
Through computer programming, it is relatively easy to identify which websites are article directories and which ones are not.
If an article is of good quality, then niche website publishers will find the article and put it on their own website. If the article is a crap article, then the only websites that will accept it are those article directories that publish anything and everything given to them.
As a result, it is easy for Google to look at the Linking Portfolio (list of publishing websites) of a single article and to see which articles were considered worthy of reprint by human reviewers. If the article only exists on article directory websites, then the article must not provide any real value to other people. But if the article is of good quality, the article will be able to be located on article directories AND on niche websites.
This concept very elegantly feeds into Google's overall strategy of determining which web pages people recommend to others. After all, if you look at Google's PageRank, it is very simply a system which measures how many people have voted on the quality or value of a particular web page.
Expanding On Google's PageRank Formula
Google loves any system that they can conceive to measure how much value the overall Internet community gives to a particular web page.
Google naturally treats links found in the Yahoo! Business Directory and the Open Directory as higher value links, because the search engineers at Google understand that links in these directories are all approved by a human being.
Google also gives extra value to social bookmarking websites, because the concept behind social bookmarking is that individuals "bookmark" a web page when they find that web page to offer good value to its readers.
Google openly dislikes paid links and can easily identify those paid links, without having to jump through too many hoops. (This should not be confused with paying for a service that will help you increase your rankings in Google. Paying a service provider to provide services to you is very different than just paying for links on high PageRank web pages.)
Google also appreciates reprint articles that have a Linking Portfolio beyond the article directories. Once again, Google appreciates reprint articles that are shown to provide real value to individuals in the greater Internet community.
When you take a close look at the original premise of Google's PageRank, it has always been about creating systems that measure the value of a web pages to find which web pages will best answer a searcher's question. Rightfully so, Google believes that the best way to ensure that they are able to give their users good quality search results is to look at what web pages others have already deemed useful.
Herein rests the secret to ranking well in Google's search results. If you can create content that people will find useful, interesting, and valuable to others, then Google's seach algorithms will look favorably upon your website.
Author's Note - This article was originally published at: http://karmaseo.com/blog/2009/04/top-google-rankings/
About the Author:
Bill Platt has written about SEO and article marketing for a number of years. As the owner of http://www.linksandtraffic.com/ Bill has also been providing search engine optimization services to his clients for a number of years. If you are currently spending at least $1000 per month on pay-per-click search advertising, you owe it to yourself to review and consider Bill's Performance Based SEO Service at: http://linksandtraffic.com/seo-services/search-marketing.html
Read more Articles written by Bill Platt.
Copyright © 2009 Bill Platt
For years, it has been well known that Google's search algorithm is driven by the number and quality of links pointing to a particular URL. And as a result, it was all the rage for some time to buy links on web pages that had a high Google PageRank (PR).
But in March of 2007, Google's mouthpiece Matt Cutts declared that Google was going to fight back against Paid Links. Google put a shot across the bow of many online marketers, letting them know that the days of easily buying links from high PageRank pages in order to influence a website's ranking in Google were over.
The Shot Heard Around The World
With Matt Cutts declaration, a world full of online marketers began to cry foul. It was said that "They can't do that!"
But the truth was and is that the Google Search Algorithm is Google's intellectual property, and therefore, Google can do anything they want within their algorithms - no matter who those changes might hurt or help.
By the end of the Summer of 2007, the people crying foul had quieted down a bit and got back to the business of trying to find new ways to manipulate their website's rankings inside of the Google search results. That is the way it has always been and always will be.
The summer of 2007 was just such an oddity... For me, it has always been exciting to challenge the brains at Google to get my websites to rank well within Google's search algorithms. But for some reason, at that moment in time, many of those who held the top rankings in Google felt as if it was their God-given right to be at the top of Google's search results, and how dare Google oppose God's decree in this matter.
Yep, I know I am going to catch flak for that statement - comparing a few webmasters to religious zealots - but that is how I roll sometimes.
For me, Matt Cutts was telling people to work harder to actually "earn" what they have been given. For me, it was a chance to rededicate myself to the goal of ranking well in Google for competitive keywords. For me, I did not have to change anything I was already doing, because I have never gained a single ranking in Google by paying for a link from any web page. (wink)
Google's Search Engineers Are Not Foolish
Matt Cutts has said time and again that Google does not want to attack any problem in their search algorithms by manually deleting any participant in the Google search ranking game.
Instead, Google in every case wants to program a solution to address a particular bad practice.
I guess it might be easier for me to understand since I am also a computer programmer. It is a hobby I really enjoy, and I exercise my mind with computer programming anytime I want to improve my own websites or to build a new website. I keep my brain sharp by solving problems in computer code.
So, whenever I see Google making moves in one direction or another, I try to visualize how I would solve their algorithm problems in computer code.
In my mind, solving the paid links issue was a super-easy solution. Just look at the pages linking to a particular website, and then do a cross-comparison of the PageRank of all of those linking pages. If all of the pages linking to a particular URL have a PageRank of Four or higher, then chances are that those links were artificially created, through some kind of paid linking system.
Let me explain this in an example, where all of the sample web pages have 100 inbound links each:
If Site A has all of its 100 links on pages that have a PageRank of 4 or higher, then that is unnatural and therefore suspect.
If Site B has all of its 100 links on pages that have a PageRank of 0, then those links offer no value to the Internet community as a whole, and therefore Site B should not measured as a quality search result.
If Site C has a mix of PageRank 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 links, then that is more natural in its structure and it also shows that some of the links are considered to have value in the Internet community as a whole. Therefore, Site C has proven itself worthy above Site A and Site B in Google's search results.
This example should show in no uncertain terms how easy it was for Google to properly address the issue of paid links and to put a stop to people using paid links to manipulate their websites' ranking in Google's search algorithms.
Publication Standards
A couple years back, I wrote another article discussing this concept in relationship to article marketing. You can read that article with third-party commentary from Chris McElroy, aka NameCritic, on the Article Content Provider Blog.
In a nutshell, I was discussing the role of article directories in the article marketing industry. Again, this solution came to me from my programming mind. The simple way for Google to have dealt with all of the junk articles that have been written for the purpose of building links to a website is to look at the article in the context of where that article is published.
The article marketing carpet bombers send their articles to hundreds of article directories to get hundreds of links pointing to their website. But the role of the article directory has always been to be a repository where newsletter publishers and webmasters could go to find articles that they would like to reprint in their own newsletters and on their own websites.
Some article directory managers bring a commitment to providing publishers with only quality articles. Other article directory managers approve anything and everything sent to them.
Through computer programming, it is relatively easy to identify which websites are article directories and which ones are not.
If an article is of good quality, then niche website publishers will find the article and put it on their own website. If the article is a crap article, then the only websites that will accept it are those article directories that publish anything and everything given to them.
As a result, it is easy for Google to look at the Linking Portfolio (list of publishing websites) of a single article and to see which articles were considered worthy of reprint by human reviewers. If the article only exists on article directory websites, then the article must not provide any real value to other people. But if the article is of good quality, the article will be able to be located on article directories AND on niche websites.
This concept very elegantly feeds into Google's overall strategy of determining which web pages people recommend to others. After all, if you look at Google's PageRank, it is very simply a system which measures how many people have voted on the quality or value of a particular web page.
Expanding On Google's PageRank Formula
Google loves any system that they can conceive to measure how much value the overall Internet community gives to a particular web page.
Google naturally treats links found in the Yahoo! Business Directory and the Open Directory as higher value links, because the search engineers at Google understand that links in these directories are all approved by a human being.
Google also gives extra value to social bookmarking websites, because the concept behind social bookmarking is that individuals "bookmark" a web page when they find that web page to offer good value to its readers.
Google openly dislikes paid links and can easily identify those paid links, without having to jump through too many hoops. (This should not be confused with paying for a service that will help you increase your rankings in Google. Paying a service provider to provide services to you is very different than just paying for links on high PageRank web pages.)
Google also appreciates reprint articles that have a Linking Portfolio beyond the article directories. Once again, Google appreciates reprint articles that are shown to provide real value to individuals in the greater Internet community.
When you take a close look at the original premise of Google's PageRank, it has always been about creating systems that measure the value of a web pages to find which web pages will best answer a searcher's question. Rightfully so, Google believes that the best way to ensure that they are able to give their users good quality search results is to look at what web pages others have already deemed useful.
Herein rests the secret to ranking well in Google's search results. If you can create content that people will find useful, interesting, and valuable to others, then Google's seach algorithms will look favorably upon your website.
Author's Note - This article was originally published at: http://karmaseo.com/blog/2009/04/top-google-rankings/
About the Author:
Bill Platt has written about SEO and article marketing for a number of years. As the owner of http://www.linksandtraffic.com/ Bill has also been providing search engine optimization services to his clients for a number of years. If you are currently spending at least $1000 per month on pay-per-click search advertising, you owe it to yourself to review and consider Bill's Performance Based SEO Service at: http://linksandtraffic.com/seo-services/search-marketing.html
Read more Articles written by Bill Platt.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Schmooze To Sell
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Paul Barton
Schmooze.
Why schmooze? Because schmoozing is how to sell.
To schmooze, according to one dictionary definition, is to: Talk casually, especially in order to gain an advantage or to make a social connection.
In the world of selling or business, you could translate that definition this way.
SCHMOOZE: CRITICAL 1ST STEP IN MAKING SALES
To schmooze is a critical first step in making a sale or getting a referral.
Why is schmoozing critical?
Because it's a proven fact people prefer to buy from and do business with people they know, like and trust.
And schmoozing (conversation and small talk) is the main way to accomplish this.
CONVERSATION PAVES THE WAY
That's because conversation and small talk pave the way to creating rapport and building a relationship.
Rapport and relationships are often built by establishing "common ground" with the customer -- about something that has absolutely nothing to do with the product or service you're trying to sell.
A good case in point was the experience of a coaching client of mine, a home improvements salesman.
SCHMOOZING SALESMAN SUCCEEDS
He made a sales call on a homeowner to sell roofing and siding.
It turned out the homeowner had previous sales calls from other companies seeking to sell him roofing and siding.
Since the salesman did not know the homeowner, he decided to break the ice with a compliment to the homeowner about his landscaping . . . a subject the salesman, himself, was interested in.
The customer was delighted . . . both by the compliment and the fact the salesman was into landscaping, too.
They proceeded to talk about landscaping for the next 30 minutes, never mentioning the roofing and siding -- the purpose of the sales call.
DEALING WITH A FRIEND, NOT A SALESMAN
When the salesman introduced that subject, the homeowner was no longer dealing with just a salesman.
No, the customer was now dealing with a human being he had something in common with.
He was dealing with someone he knew, someone he liked, someone with whom he had rapport.
The result:
The homeowner gladly signed the order on the spot -- an order costing $7,000 more than he had originally planned to spend.
Schmoozing worked for this salesman.
PRACTICING WHAT I PREACH
It has also worked for me -- many times.
One of the most memorable came when I was attempting to sell my marketing consulting services to a manager from a major corporation.
I had not known him, so I asked him to lunch . . . just a get-acquainted lunch because I had no particular project or service in mind since I knew nothing about his needs.
At lunch, we chatted for about an hour and quickly established a common ground -- because he was a marketer, too, and, I found, he was a golfer, like I am.
The result: He did not have a current need for my services, so no sale resulted . . . at least not then. However, a month later I got a call from him and he told me a colleague of his out of state might be able to use my services.
The result: Over the next year, I did $50,000 worth of business with his colleague, and later, did several thousand dollars worth of business with him, too.
All because I took the trouble to schmooze.
Sometimes in the business world, you're not necessarily trying to make a sale, but, rather, gain the cooperation of someone.
One of the best examples of the power of schmoozing in this area comes from a story in a national business publication about an attempt to locate and close down illegal moonshine stills in Kentucky.
The Federal government had sent in a series of agents, but could get no information from the locals to help them locate the stills.
THE PERSUASIVE PEDDLER
At length, they decided to send in an agent in disguise as a fish peddler, asking him to make friends with the locals by schmoozing with them at every opportunity.
In short order, the agent had gathered information from the locals leading to the closing of more than 100 stills.
The moral of this story?
Your ability to make conversation -- to schmooze -- to build rapport and relationships with people -- is one of your most powerful selling tools.
So, when you're selling, think of it this way:
Schmooze or lose.
About the Author:
Copyright (c) 2009 Paul Barton
Paul Barton is a marketing consultant and conversation coach, and author of several books, including: How To Be GREAT!!! In Conversation, How To Build Rapport And Relationships and How To Make People WANT!!! To Buy From You.
http://www.howtomakeconversation.com/
Read more Articles written by Paul Barton.
Copyright © 2009 Paul Barton
Schmooze.
Why schmooze? Because schmoozing is how to sell.
To schmooze, according to one dictionary definition, is to: Talk casually, especially in order to gain an advantage or to make a social connection.
In the world of selling or business, you could translate that definition this way.
SCHMOOZE: CRITICAL 1ST STEP IN MAKING SALES
To schmooze is a critical first step in making a sale or getting a referral.
Why is schmoozing critical?
Because it's a proven fact people prefer to buy from and do business with people they know, like and trust.
And schmoozing (conversation and small talk) is the main way to accomplish this.
CONVERSATION PAVES THE WAY
That's because conversation and small talk pave the way to creating rapport and building a relationship.
Rapport and relationships are often built by establishing "common ground" with the customer -- about something that has absolutely nothing to do with the product or service you're trying to sell.
A good case in point was the experience of a coaching client of mine, a home improvements salesman.
SCHMOOZING SALESMAN SUCCEEDS
He made a sales call on a homeowner to sell roofing and siding.
It turned out the homeowner had previous sales calls from other companies seeking to sell him roofing and siding.
Since the salesman did not know the homeowner, he decided to break the ice with a compliment to the homeowner about his landscaping . . . a subject the salesman, himself, was interested in.
The customer was delighted . . . both by the compliment and the fact the salesman was into landscaping, too.
They proceeded to talk about landscaping for the next 30 minutes, never mentioning the roofing and siding -- the purpose of the sales call.
DEALING WITH A FRIEND, NOT A SALESMAN
When the salesman introduced that subject, the homeowner was no longer dealing with just a salesman.
No, the customer was now dealing with a human being he had something in common with.
He was dealing with someone he knew, someone he liked, someone with whom he had rapport.
The result:
The homeowner gladly signed the order on the spot -- an order costing $7,000 more than he had originally planned to spend.
Schmoozing worked for this salesman.
PRACTICING WHAT I PREACH
It has also worked for me -- many times.
One of the most memorable came when I was attempting to sell my marketing consulting services to a manager from a major corporation.
I had not known him, so I asked him to lunch . . . just a get-acquainted lunch because I had no particular project or service in mind since I knew nothing about his needs.
At lunch, we chatted for about an hour and quickly established a common ground -- because he was a marketer, too, and, I found, he was a golfer, like I am.
The result: He did not have a current need for my services, so no sale resulted . . . at least not then. However, a month later I got a call from him and he told me a colleague of his out of state might be able to use my services.
The result: Over the next year, I did $50,000 worth of business with his colleague, and later, did several thousand dollars worth of business with him, too.
All because I took the trouble to schmooze.
Sometimes in the business world, you're not necessarily trying to make a sale, but, rather, gain the cooperation of someone.
One of the best examples of the power of schmoozing in this area comes from a story in a national business publication about an attempt to locate and close down illegal moonshine stills in Kentucky.
The Federal government had sent in a series of agents, but could get no information from the locals to help them locate the stills.
THE PERSUASIVE PEDDLER
At length, they decided to send in an agent in disguise as a fish peddler, asking him to make friends with the locals by schmoozing with them at every opportunity.
In short order, the agent had gathered information from the locals leading to the closing of more than 100 stills.
The moral of this story?
Your ability to make conversation -- to schmooze -- to build rapport and relationships with people -- is one of your most powerful selling tools.
So, when you're selling, think of it this way:
Schmooze or lose.
About the Author:
Copyright (c) 2009 Paul Barton
Paul Barton is a marketing consultant and conversation coach, and author of several books, including: How To Be GREAT!!! In Conversation, How To Build Rapport And Relationships and How To Make People WANT!!! To Buy From You.
http://www.howtomakeconversation.com/
Read more Articles written by Paul Barton.
Why Have a Home Business?
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Michelle Penfold
Working from home has its advantages. There are many reasons why there is an increase in start up home businesses. Of course the worsening economy is one of the biggest incentives for starting a home business. Here are some benefits.
Benefits Of Working From Home:
Adaptable hours: you can select your own hours when you own your own business. You can choose how long you can work and have more time for your family. Instead of working for others you will be able to have more free time.
Fewer expenses: this is another advantage of having your own business. Unlike a bricks and mortar business you do not have to shell out for office space. You do not have to commute to work, and waste your money and time.
Sole proprietor: You are the CEO and owner of your own business. Nobody is going to give you orders! No more supervisors breathing down your neck. Your business will rise or fall by your decisions.
Relieve tension: no more stress from your 9-5 job. You can now work in a calmer atmosphere from home. Tension and stress are some of the major causes of health problems today. When you cut down your stress you will improve your health and relationships with everyone around you.
You are in charge of the money: You are solely responsible for how much you are going to earn. Whatever you make will come directly to you, not to the big boss. It is wonderful to realize that the work you do for your business will benefit you.
It is plain to see the benefits of working at home. When you own your own business you will be very satisfied. You can expand your knowledge and skills. At last you can enjoy your working hours and finally make the most of your life. Plus you have the satisfaction that you are working to achieve financial independence.
There are a variety of ways to develop your business. You can help others by using your life experiences. For instance if you have been raising a family you can start a parenting site to help others who are having family problems or are single parents.
Developing a business around your hobby is a very enjoyable way to run your business from home. Build a website and start a free ezine based on your hobby. You will attract many people who share your passion. Another idea is to develop a membership site and include tips, information and even a forum. You will be able to earn a nice living by charging a small monthly fee.
Joining a network marketing opportunity is another way to make a profitable home business. There are a wide variety of these types of businesses to choose from, some are total scams but others are very good. In order to differentiate between the good and the bad you will need to do your research well. One of the best opportunities is Mona Vie. This company is well established and has been in business for more than 4 years. The product is very good and you will have the double pleasure of not only using it but also selling the product to others, when they join your team of sales people.
About the Author:
Michelle Penfold is a Network Marketer. She specializes in Health and Wellness products. Please visit her at: http://www.network-marketingopportunity.com
Read more of Michelle Penfold's articles.
Copyright © 2009 Michelle Penfold
Working from home has its advantages. There are many reasons why there is an increase in start up home businesses. Of course the worsening economy is one of the biggest incentives for starting a home business. Here are some benefits.
Benefits Of Working From Home:
It is plain to see the benefits of working at home. When you own your own business you will be very satisfied. You can expand your knowledge and skills. At last you can enjoy your working hours and finally make the most of your life. Plus you have the satisfaction that you are working to achieve financial independence.
There are a variety of ways to develop your business. You can help others by using your life experiences. For instance if you have been raising a family you can start a parenting site to help others who are having family problems or are single parents.
Developing a business around your hobby is a very enjoyable way to run your business from home. Build a website and start a free ezine based on your hobby. You will attract many people who share your passion. Another idea is to develop a membership site and include tips, information and even a forum. You will be able to earn a nice living by charging a small monthly fee.
Joining a network marketing opportunity is another way to make a profitable home business. There are a wide variety of these types of businesses to choose from, some are total scams but others are very good. In order to differentiate between the good and the bad you will need to do your research well. One of the best opportunities is Mona Vie. This company is well established and has been in business for more than 4 years. The product is very good and you will have the double pleasure of not only using it but also selling the product to others, when they join your team of sales people.
About the Author:
Michelle Penfold is a Network Marketer. She specializes in Health and Wellness products. Please visit her at: http://www.network-marketingopportunity.com
Read more of Michelle Penfold's articles.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Will Global Financial Crisis Result in Benefits to Expired Domain Market?
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
The year 2009 seems to be a year of uncertainties and imponderables. Now that this year is in front of us, most people are under tremendous tension and stress with looming job losses and depreciation of cash assets. With so much doubts lingering about their abilities to make a decent living, people may start looking for alternative sources of income that is just enough to sustain their living. When the money deposits are no safer in a bank, how does an investor plan to keep his or her money? It might be quite difficult for anyone to protect their investments from emerging inflation as well as big companies facing bankruptcy.
There is one possible answer to all these emerging problems. Expired domain names could be the real answer for today's investment problems. You can quote a number of reasons for this possibility:
Expired domains are a big global community. Most general impression is that internet can never fall because of its true universal appeal and makeup. In spite of global recession, internet is growing at a satisfactory pace that is likely to remain so for the next decade or so.
Expired domains are stable and this unique factor makes it a very good candidate for a lucrative business.
Domain names expiring are immune from economic recession and pending debts.
Expired domain is fit enough to face any unstable economic situations.
Expired domains are those profitable virtual assets that are intangible and inexpensive to own and manage
The cost to hold your expired domain is very less when compared to other businesses
The growth potential for expired domains is still very good though the big hype around it is coming down over the years.
Internet is still the cheapest and cost effective medium that anyone can access very easily. Domains provide an easy way for people to acquire knowledge and perform business activities.
Expired domains provide a perfect opportunity to maintain them as hedge; this unique factor makes them as viable instruments of profitability.
In spite of visible threats like cyber terror, cyber attacks, virus threats and spam, expired domain business remains the most desirable business in the world of internet commerce. The average price for domain registration is coming down very drastically while the cost of owning a very good expired domain seems to be somewhat constant. Internet is a very stable medium and people still believe that it will weather and encounter any type of problems including global recession.
In an unstable period like today, the likelihood of expired domain buyers holding on to the old domains and buying news ones at the same time, may increase at an astonishing pace. People who saw the age-old days of dot com collapse are too wise to part with their precious expired domains. As a result, domains expiring are still the preferred mode of investment for thousands of domain traders; most of them are still doing their business as if nothing serious is happening around them!
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
The year 2009 seems to be a year of uncertainties and imponderables. Now that this year is in front of us, most people are under tremendous tension and stress with looming job losses and depreciation of cash assets. With so much doubts lingering about their abilities to make a decent living, people may start looking for alternative sources of income that is just enough to sustain their living. When the money deposits are no safer in a bank, how does an investor plan to keep his or her money? It might be quite difficult for anyone to protect their investments from emerging inflation as well as big companies facing bankruptcy.
There is one possible answer to all these emerging problems. Expired domain names could be the real answer for today's investment problems. You can quote a number of reasons for this possibility:
Expired domains provide a perfect opportunity to maintain them as hedge; this unique factor makes them as viable instruments of profitability.
In spite of visible threats like cyber terror, cyber attacks, virus threats and spam, expired domain business remains the most desirable business in the world of internet commerce. The average price for domain registration is coming down very drastically while the cost of owning a very good expired domain seems to be somewhat constant. Internet is a very stable medium and people still believe that it will weather and encounter any type of problems including global recession.
In an unstable period like today, the likelihood of expired domain buyers holding on to the old domains and buying news ones at the same time, may increase at an astonishing pace. People who saw the age-old days of dot com collapse are too wise to part with their precious expired domains. As a result, domains expiring are still the preferred mode of investment for thousands of domain traders; most of them are still doing their business as if nothing serious is happening around them!
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
How Information Products Help Customers Say Yes Faster
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Judy Murdoch
An unfortunate side effect of an economic slowdown like the one we're in currently, is spending slows down.
If you're a small business owner the slowdown in spending shows up in two ways:
1. Some prospects and customers who might have said "yes" in the past are now saying no because they simply don't have the resources to pay you
2. Those who DO have the resources are take longer to say yes
This means less revenue coming in and if you own a small business, that's a big "ouch" for your bottom line.
=======================================
Oh the Irony of It All!
=======================================
What's funny about this situation in a not-so-funny way is that during economic downturns, your clients and customers need what you offer MORE THAN EVER!
Why? Because we're all in business to solve problems people have, right? Recessions typically multiply problems and amplify the pain we feel from those problems.
But we also become hyper-aware of the downside of our actions and we feel there's no wiggle room for error. We become extremely Risk Averse.
Whether or not their fear is founded in reality, customers step back and become less willing to do anything that is new or risky because they don't feel safe.
If you're having doubts whether you are offering something customers really need because your sales have slowed down, I'm suggesting it isn't that they don't need what you're selling--it's because these scary times are making them unusually risk averse and less willing to take chances.
=======================================
Reducing Perceived Risk Using Information Products
=======================================
To help your prospects and customers feel safer to spend, you need to reduce their perceived risk of working with you. There are many ways to do this including lowering your prices, doing one-day sales, etc. But I'm partial to creating information products because the benefits extend far beyond the immediate revenue streams they provide.
Information products reduce perceived risk for prospects and customers in two important ways:
1. It's easier to say "yes" to buying a $19 how-to guide than a six-month $4,000 consulting engagement.
2. When customers get results using your information products they develop confidence in your ability to deliver what you promise.
This makes it easy for your customers to feel good about buying your more expensive products and services.
=======================================
Two Easy Information Products Small Business Owners Can Create and Sell
=======================================
How-to guides and tip sheets are my favorite low cost information products to offer because it's easy for your prospects to see the value they'll get.
How-to guides teach them how to do something they've always wanted to do; step by step
Tips sheets tell them how to do something better and get better results
The other thing I love about how to guides and tip sheets is they're easy to create because all you're really doing is answering a common question you get from customers.
=======================================
Example: Using a How-to Guide as a Low Cost Information Product
=======================================
Amy is a coach who works with what she called the corporate "walking wounded"; typically high level managers who have successful corporate careers but are tired of the cost to their personal lives.
Amy's core service is one on one coaching; typically clients work with her for six month intervals at $600 per month.
Amy has noticed that even though stress levels are higher than ever, people who once would have said "yes" to becoming one-on-one clients are now saying things like,
"I'm just happy to have a job."
"What if I get laid off, I'll need that $600"
"What if I work with you and you don't help me?"
And they're putting off the possibility of working with her.
Amy asked herself "If there were just one thing I could do to help these folks what would that thing be?"
She realized that for busy, stressed out professionals, taking on something new would require very small, simple steps. Small to the point of being ridiculous.
So she did some brainstorming around small but significant changes her clients made and came up with over 100 small actions. She edited the steps down to 101 and created a booklet: 101 Ways to Have More Fun and Less Stress at Work.
She sells it on her website and brings a dozen hard copies to sell at networking events.
Amy is very clear that this booklet is not a substitute for her coaching services. However people who buy the booklet get some substantive help and a percentage of those who buy the booklet like what Amy has to say enough to eventually become one-on-one clients.
The results:
Amy reduced the perceived risk of her services and has helped 50 prospective customers who otherwise would have put off working with her
In addition, two prospects who otherwise may not have hired her, felt confident enough about what she had to offer that they signed up and became one-on-one coaching clients.
=======================================
Bottom Line
=======================================
During challenging times such as our current economic uncertainty, your customers become very sensitive to perceived risk and less willing to commit their time and money -- especially when it comes to buying new products and services.
If you aren't currently selling information products that enable prospects to get a small but significant taste of what you can do for them, you are missing an opportunity to bring more revenue to your business AND to help more customers sooner than later. My best to you and your business.
About the Author:
Judy Murdoch helps small business owners create low-cost, effective marketing campaigns using word-of-mouth referrals, guerrilla marketing activities, and selected strategic alliances. To download a free copy of the workbook, "Where Does it Hurt? Marketing Solutions to the problems that Drive Your Customers Crazy!" go to http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm
You can contact Judy at 303-475-2015 or judy@judymurdoch.com
Copyright © 2009 Judy Murdoch
An unfortunate side effect of an economic slowdown like the one we're in currently, is spending slows down.
If you're a small business owner the slowdown in spending shows up in two ways:
1. Some prospects and customers who might have said "yes" in the past are now saying no because they simply don't have the resources to pay you
2. Those who DO have the resources are take longer to say yes
This means less revenue coming in and if you own a small business, that's a big "ouch" for your bottom line.
=======================================
Oh the Irony of It All!
=======================================
What's funny about this situation in a not-so-funny way is that during economic downturns, your clients and customers need what you offer MORE THAN EVER!
Why? Because we're all in business to solve problems people have, right? Recessions typically multiply problems and amplify the pain we feel from those problems.
But we also become hyper-aware of the downside of our actions and we feel there's no wiggle room for error. We become extremely Risk Averse.
Whether or not their fear is founded in reality, customers step back and become less willing to do anything that is new or risky because they don't feel safe.
If you're having doubts whether you are offering something customers really need because your sales have slowed down, I'm suggesting it isn't that they don't need what you're selling--it's because these scary times are making them unusually risk averse and less willing to take chances.
=======================================
Reducing Perceived Risk Using Information Products
=======================================
To help your prospects and customers feel safer to spend, you need to reduce their perceived risk of working with you. There are many ways to do this including lowering your prices, doing one-day sales, etc. But I'm partial to creating information products because the benefits extend far beyond the immediate revenue streams they provide.
Information products reduce perceived risk for prospects and customers in two important ways:
1. It's easier to say "yes" to buying a $19 how-to guide than a six-month $4,000 consulting engagement.
2. When customers get results using your information products they develop confidence in your ability to deliver what you promise.
This makes it easy for your customers to feel good about buying your more expensive products and services.
=======================================
Two Easy Information Products Small Business Owners Can Create and Sell
=======================================
How-to guides and tip sheets are my favorite low cost information products to offer because it's easy for your prospects to see the value they'll get.
The other thing I love about how to guides and tip sheets is they're easy to create because all you're really doing is answering a common question you get from customers.
=======================================
Example: Using a How-to Guide as a Low Cost Information Product
=======================================
Amy is a coach who works with what she called the corporate "walking wounded"; typically high level managers who have successful corporate careers but are tired of the cost to their personal lives.
Amy's core service is one on one coaching; typically clients work with her for six month intervals at $600 per month.
Amy has noticed that even though stress levels are higher than ever, people who once would have said "yes" to becoming one-on-one clients are now saying things like,
And they're putting off the possibility of working with her.
Amy asked herself "If there were just one thing I could do to help these folks what would that thing be?"
She realized that for busy, stressed out professionals, taking on something new would require very small, simple steps. Small to the point of being ridiculous.
So she did some brainstorming around small but significant changes her clients made and came up with over 100 small actions. She edited the steps down to 101 and created a booklet: 101 Ways to Have More Fun and Less Stress at Work.
She sells it on her website and brings a dozen hard copies to sell at networking events.
Amy is very clear that this booklet is not a substitute for her coaching services. However people who buy the booklet get some substantive help and a percentage of those who buy the booklet like what Amy has to say enough to eventually become one-on-one clients.
The results:
=======================================
Bottom Line
=======================================
During challenging times such as our current economic uncertainty, your customers become very sensitive to perceived risk and less willing to commit their time and money -- especially when it comes to buying new products and services.
If you aren't currently selling information products that enable prospects to get a small but significant taste of what you can do for them, you are missing an opportunity to bring more revenue to your business AND to help more customers sooner than later. My best to you and your business.
About the Author:
Judy Murdoch helps small business owners create low-cost, effective marketing campaigns using word-of-mouth referrals, guerrilla marketing activities, and selected strategic alliances. To download a free copy of the workbook, "Where Does it Hurt? Marketing Solutions to the problems that Drive Your Customers Crazy!" go to http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm
You can contact Judy at 303-475-2015 or judy@judymurdoch.com
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Protect Your Financial Future With An Online Business
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Bill Platt
The world around us is concerned about the future. With Obama in the White House and record government spending during this economic recession, many of our neighbors are sweating what the future holds in store for them.
I worried about it for a bit, and then I realized that those of us who live our business lives on the Internet will not see the same depths of recession that our brick-and-mortar counterparts will experience.
All one has to do is to visit their local restaurants or the retail shop that offers the newest in cell phone products to realize that while people are fearful, they are not broke. People are still spending money to a large extent.
While people are still spending money in the marketplace, some businesses are continuing to fail around us... Not because the businesses do not have good products or people willing to buy those products, but because many industries rely upon bank loans to help them bridge the gap between production and payment from their clients.
For example, the automakers have to carry a huge burden of cost between the production of an automobile and when that vehicle is finally sold to a consumer. It is not the lack of customers that are killing the businesses we all know and respect, but instead, it is a lack of bridge capital (a.k.a. commercial credit) that is killing American businesses.
Look Out For Number One
If you are one of those people who are wondering whether your job will still be there next year, the only person who is going to look out for your best interests is you.
Starting an online business can be a very inexpensive process. Depending on the angle you take with your online business, you may only need to spend less than $50 per month to get on your feet with a viable online business.
For people who are just getting started with an online business, I strongly recommend Site Build It (http://www.thephantomwriters.com/sbi). SBI provides a system that enables anyone - and I do mean anyone - to build a commerce-ready website in just a couple hours. Beyond a user-friendly website building tool, SBI also offers training to help its members to be more successful.
One of the factors that make SBI so attractive in my book is its focus on Affiliate Products.
What Are Affiliate Products?
Affiliate products are products that are set up to enable third-party persons (affiliates) to advertise the product and earn a commission on any sale that is generated from the affiliate's advertising.
For example, the affiliate program from which I have made the most money over the years - to be honest, thousands of dollars over the years - is the product line offered by World Wide Brands (http://www.thephantomwriters.com/wwb).
World Wide Brands is committed to helping online sellers find the companies who sell products wholesale and the companies who offer drop shipping services to online sellers. If you are not familiar with the term "drop shipping", it means that you would be able to buy a product from them and have them "drop ship" the product directly to your customer, as if you had that product in stock when the product was purchased from you and you delivered the product from your own warehouse.
I introduce people to the products offered by World Wide Brands, through a special link that tracks my referrals, and if the person I delivered to the World Wide Brands website makes a purchase, I earn a commission on that sale. It is as simple as that.
Another affiliate program that is very similar to World Wide Brands is the program offered by Doba (http://www.thephantomwriters.com/doba). Rather than a catalog of drop-shipping companies, Doba is an Ebay-Certified drop shipper.
Simply put, an Affiliate Program is any product or service from which you can earn a commission, if you do your part by delivering a buying customer to the seller's website.
Affiliate Networks
There are literally thousands of companies who offer affiliate commissions on the sale of their products or services. Fortunately, we don't have to search the web for weeks on end to find available products and services that we would like to sell.
There are companies that have been built for the purpose of helping sellers initiate affiliate programs for their products and services. These companies literally represent hundreds and sometimes thousands of sellers who offer affiliate programs.
Within each network, you can shop for the products and services that you wish to sell from your own website. Within some affiliate networks, you can just plug in a product to your website and begin selling. Within other affiliate networks, you may have to request the right to promote a product and wait for the seller to approve your affiliate application.
Clickbank.com is an affiliate network company that enables you to start selling any product in their network, without forcing you to wait on approval to begin selling a product. This is the primary reason why most software developers choose to work almost exclusively with the Clickbank network.
Other affiliate network companies of note include:
Commission Junction (www.cj.com)
PepperJamNetwork.com
CommissionSoup.com
LinkConnector.com
LinkShare.com
ShareASale.com
Getting started with these affiliate networks is easy. You simply need to sign up for an account and verify your email address.
Personally, I have accounts with each of the above-mentioned affiliate networks.
Where Most Websites Fail
Where most webmasters fail in their quest to make a living online is in the final step. Once a website is set up with products and services to sell, the final and most important step in the process is to drive traffic to the website.
To be honest, I even failed in this part of the equation when I got started online. Fortunately, I got started way back in 1995 when the Internet was still brand new. Back then, there were not a lot of people who had mastered the Internet marketing concept - well, there were not many people bragging about how well they were doing online with Internet marketing anyway.
I finally started getting my head around this online marketing thing in 1999, when I discovered people who were teaching others how they could be successful with an online business - in the same way that I do now.
In 1998, I started reading articles like this one - articles intended to teach people how to be successful with an online business. But I was a bit slow on the uptake...
It was by chance in 1999 that I saw a link in the one marketing newsletter that I read every week. That link suggested that I could write an article and submit it to the newsletter for consideration of publication.
It is true that I did not know a lot about marketing a business online, but I thought that maybe I could share a lesson that I had learned while operating my online newsletter. So I wrote a short article of about 700 words and submitted it to that newsletter.
It was a full three months later when I received a message from the editor of the publication telling me that my article would be featured in his publication the next day. With that email, my future was forever changed.
When published in that newsletter, my website which had seen 750 visitors over the previous two years suddenly served several thousand visitors in one day. I was ecstatic.
With my initial success, I wrote six more articles in six weeks and sent them through a mailing list that told publishers about the availability of my articles. Then I got distracted for several months and forgot about articles.
By chance, six months later I noticed a sudden and huge surge of traffic to my website, so I did a bit of investigation as to how that had happened. Lo and behold, one of my articles had been published in another large newsletter.
Upon learning this information, I decided that I needed to check on the reprint success of those first six articles. I was able to track a pretty wide swath of newsletters that had reprinted my articles; although I am certain that I missed a few. But with the newsletters that I was able to find that had used my articles, they had a combined circulation of 1.5 million readers.
With this discovery, I never again let articles disappear from my marketing plan. These days, I write a new article every time that I launch a new website, and I strive to put new articles out as frequently as I can manage to do, for all of my income-generating websites.
The trick in using articles as an advertising platform is that the article should teach its readers something of value; otherwise publishers will not want to use them. Sure it is true that you can still get a lot of links to your website from websites that publish your articles, because webmasters tend to be much less selective about the articles they are willing to publish. But I figure that if I am going to take the time to write an article, then I should take the extra time to ensure that a newsletter publisher and any quality-oriented webmaster will be just as likely to publish that article, as the webmaster who has no standards at all.
At the end of every article is a paragraph that tells the author's biography. When done right, the paragraph that tells you that this article was written by Bill Platt will also tell you what website I am wanting you to visit and why you would want to visit that website. When my article and my "about the author" information is done well, you will visit my website. And hopefully once at my website, you will decide that you may be interested in purchasing what I offer.
Advertising Is Available In Many Formats
Using articles to promote a website is what is referred to as "article marketing", but it is only one method of dozens that are available to help you promote your new online business.
You should use whatever advertising methods work well for you. For me, article marketing is my primary method of advertising online, but others might prefer pay-per-click advertising in the search engines.
In the end, it does not matter what method of advertising you choose to promote your website, so long as you actually use some method of advertising to bring potential customers to your website.
The Light At The End Of The Tunnel
Once you have your website built and traffic coming to your website, you will notice that light far off in the distance at the end of the tunnel. With your first sale, you will begin to realize that you really do have it in you to be successful online. After a number of sales, you will realize that it is simply a matter of time until you are earning an income substantial enough to protect your income, in the event that your employer decides that they need to cut your job to survive the current recession.
In the end, you are the only person who will do what is necessary to protect your financial future. By starting your own online business, you will begin to gain something even more powerful than money... You will gain a respect for yourself that you have never had before, and you will begin to understand how it is completely within your power to control your own destiny in this life.
Author's Note: This article originally published here: http://article-blog.thephantomwriters.com/online-business/2009/04/04/
About the Author:
Bill Platt owns and operates http://www.ThePhantomWriters.com/ Article Distribution Service. Through his service, he can help you get your articles to newsletter publishers and webmasters interested in using articles written by other people. If you do not feel that you are able to write your own articles, you could always hire a ghost writer, or try out Bill's new service called Sponsor Articles, which merges co-op advertising with article marketing. Learn more at: http://www.SponsorArticles.com/
Copyright © 2009 Bill Platt
The world around us is concerned about the future. With Obama in the White House and record government spending during this economic recession, many of our neighbors are sweating what the future holds in store for them.
I worried about it for a bit, and then I realized that those of us who live our business lives on the Internet will not see the same depths of recession that our brick-and-mortar counterparts will experience.
All one has to do is to visit their local restaurants or the retail shop that offers the newest in cell phone products to realize that while people are fearful, they are not broke. People are still spending money to a large extent.
While people are still spending money in the marketplace, some businesses are continuing to fail around us... Not because the businesses do not have good products or people willing to buy those products, but because many industries rely upon bank loans to help them bridge the gap between production and payment from their clients.
For example, the automakers have to carry a huge burden of cost between the production of an automobile and when that vehicle is finally sold to a consumer. It is not the lack of customers that are killing the businesses we all know and respect, but instead, it is a lack of bridge capital (a.k.a. commercial credit) that is killing American businesses.
Look Out For Number One
If you are one of those people who are wondering whether your job will still be there next year, the only person who is going to look out for your best interests is you.
Starting an online business can be a very inexpensive process. Depending on the angle you take with your online business, you may only need to spend less than $50 per month to get on your feet with a viable online business.
For people who are just getting started with an online business, I strongly recommend Site Build It (http://www.thephantomwriters.com/sbi). SBI provides a system that enables anyone - and I do mean anyone - to build a commerce-ready website in just a couple hours. Beyond a user-friendly website building tool, SBI also offers training to help its members to be more successful.
One of the factors that make SBI so attractive in my book is its focus on Affiliate Products.
What Are Affiliate Products?
Affiliate products are products that are set up to enable third-party persons (affiliates) to advertise the product and earn a commission on any sale that is generated from the affiliate's advertising.
For example, the affiliate program from which I have made the most money over the years - to be honest, thousands of dollars over the years - is the product line offered by World Wide Brands (http://www.thephantomwriters.com/wwb).
World Wide Brands is committed to helping online sellers find the companies who sell products wholesale and the companies who offer drop shipping services to online sellers. If you are not familiar with the term "drop shipping", it means that you would be able to buy a product from them and have them "drop ship" the product directly to your customer, as if you had that product in stock when the product was purchased from you and you delivered the product from your own warehouse.
I introduce people to the products offered by World Wide Brands, through a special link that tracks my referrals, and if the person I delivered to the World Wide Brands website makes a purchase, I earn a commission on that sale. It is as simple as that.
Another affiliate program that is very similar to World Wide Brands is the program offered by Doba (http://www.thephantomwriters.com/doba). Rather than a catalog of drop-shipping companies, Doba is an Ebay-Certified drop shipper.
Simply put, an Affiliate Program is any product or service from which you can earn a commission, if you do your part by delivering a buying customer to the seller's website.
Affiliate Networks
There are literally thousands of companies who offer affiliate commissions on the sale of their products or services. Fortunately, we don't have to search the web for weeks on end to find available products and services that we would like to sell.
There are companies that have been built for the purpose of helping sellers initiate affiliate programs for their products and services. These companies literally represent hundreds and sometimes thousands of sellers who offer affiliate programs.
Within each network, you can shop for the products and services that you wish to sell from your own website. Within some affiliate networks, you can just plug in a product to your website and begin selling. Within other affiliate networks, you may have to request the right to promote a product and wait for the seller to approve your affiliate application.
Clickbank.com is an affiliate network company that enables you to start selling any product in their network, without forcing you to wait on approval to begin selling a product. This is the primary reason why most software developers choose to work almost exclusively with the Clickbank network.
Other affiliate network companies of note include:
Getting started with these affiliate networks is easy. You simply need to sign up for an account and verify your email address.
Personally, I have accounts with each of the above-mentioned affiliate networks.
Where Most Websites Fail
Where most webmasters fail in their quest to make a living online is in the final step. Once a website is set up with products and services to sell, the final and most important step in the process is to drive traffic to the website.
To be honest, I even failed in this part of the equation when I got started online. Fortunately, I got started way back in 1995 when the Internet was still brand new. Back then, there were not a lot of people who had mastered the Internet marketing concept - well, there were not many people bragging about how well they were doing online with Internet marketing anyway.
I finally started getting my head around this online marketing thing in 1999, when I discovered people who were teaching others how they could be successful with an online business - in the same way that I do now.
In 1998, I started reading articles like this one - articles intended to teach people how to be successful with an online business. But I was a bit slow on the uptake...
It was by chance in 1999 that I saw a link in the one marketing newsletter that I read every week. That link suggested that I could write an article and submit it to the newsletter for consideration of publication.
It is true that I did not know a lot about marketing a business online, but I thought that maybe I could share a lesson that I had learned while operating my online newsletter. So I wrote a short article of about 700 words and submitted it to that newsletter.
It was a full three months later when I received a message from the editor of the publication telling me that my article would be featured in his publication the next day. With that email, my future was forever changed.
When published in that newsletter, my website which had seen 750 visitors over the previous two years suddenly served several thousand visitors in one day. I was ecstatic.
With my initial success, I wrote six more articles in six weeks and sent them through a mailing list that told publishers about the availability of my articles. Then I got distracted for several months and forgot about articles.
By chance, six months later I noticed a sudden and huge surge of traffic to my website, so I did a bit of investigation as to how that had happened. Lo and behold, one of my articles had been published in another large newsletter.
Upon learning this information, I decided that I needed to check on the reprint success of those first six articles. I was able to track a pretty wide swath of newsletters that had reprinted my articles; although I am certain that I missed a few. But with the newsletters that I was able to find that had used my articles, they had a combined circulation of 1.5 million readers.
With this discovery, I never again let articles disappear from my marketing plan. These days, I write a new article every time that I launch a new website, and I strive to put new articles out as frequently as I can manage to do, for all of my income-generating websites.
The trick in using articles as an advertising platform is that the article should teach its readers something of value; otherwise publishers will not want to use them. Sure it is true that you can still get a lot of links to your website from websites that publish your articles, because webmasters tend to be much less selective about the articles they are willing to publish. But I figure that if I am going to take the time to write an article, then I should take the extra time to ensure that a newsletter publisher and any quality-oriented webmaster will be just as likely to publish that article, as the webmaster who has no standards at all.
At the end of every article is a paragraph that tells the author's biography. When done right, the paragraph that tells you that this article was written by Bill Platt will also tell you what website I am wanting you to visit and why you would want to visit that website. When my article and my "about the author" information is done well, you will visit my website. And hopefully once at my website, you will decide that you may be interested in purchasing what I offer.
Advertising Is Available In Many Formats
Using articles to promote a website is what is referred to as "article marketing", but it is only one method of dozens that are available to help you promote your new online business.
You should use whatever advertising methods work well for you. For me, article marketing is my primary method of advertising online, but others might prefer pay-per-click advertising in the search engines.
In the end, it does not matter what method of advertising you choose to promote your website, so long as you actually use some method of advertising to bring potential customers to your website.
The Light At The End Of The Tunnel
Once you have your website built and traffic coming to your website, you will notice that light far off in the distance at the end of the tunnel. With your first sale, you will begin to realize that you really do have it in you to be successful online. After a number of sales, you will realize that it is simply a matter of time until you are earning an income substantial enough to protect your income, in the event that your employer decides that they need to cut your job to survive the current recession.
In the end, you are the only person who will do what is necessary to protect your financial future. By starting your own online business, you will begin to gain something even more powerful than money... You will gain a respect for yourself that you have never had before, and you will begin to understand how it is completely within your power to control your own destiny in this life.
Author's Note: This article originally published here: http://article-blog.thephantomwriters.com/online-business/2009/04/04/
About the Author:
Bill Platt owns and operates http://www.ThePhantomWriters.com/ Article Distribution Service. Through his service, he can help you get your articles to newsletter publishers and webmasters interested in using articles written by other people. If you do not feel that you are able to write your own articles, you could always hire a ghost writer, or try out Bill's new service called Sponsor Articles, which merges co-op advertising with article marketing. Learn more at: http://www.SponsorArticles.com/
Protect Your Financial Future With An Online Business
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Bill Platt
The world around us is concerned about the future. With Obama in the White House and record government spending during this economic recession, many of our neighbors are sweating what the future holds in store for them.
I worried about it for a bit, and then I realized that those of us who live our business lives on the Internet will not see the same depths of recession that our brick-and-mortar counterparts will experience.
All one has to do is to visit their local restaurants or the retail shop that offers the newest in cell phone products to realize that while people are fearful, they are not broke. People are still spending money to a large extent.
While people are still spending money in the marketplace, some businesses are continuing to fail around us... Not because the businesses do not have good products or people willing to buy those products, but because many industries rely upon bank loans to help them bridge the gap between production and payment from their clients.
For example, the automakers have to carry a huge burden of cost between the production of an automobile and when that vehicle is finally sold to a consumer. It is not the lack of customers that are killing the businesses we all know and respect, but instead, it is a lack of bridge capital (a.k.a. commercial credit) that is killing American businesses.
Look Out For Number One
If you are one of those people who are wondering whether your job will still be there next year, the only person who is going to look out for your best interests is you.
Starting an online business can be a very inexpensive process. Depending on the angle you take with your online business, you may only need to spend less than $50 per month to get on your feet with a viable online business.
For people who are just getting started with an online business, I strongly recommend Site Build It (http://www.thephantomwriters.com/sbi). SBI provides a system that enables anyone - and I do mean anyone - to build a commerce-ready website in just a couple hours. Beyond a user-friendly website building tool, SBI also offers training to help its members to be more successful.
One of the factors that make SBI so attractive in my book is its focus on Affiliate Products.
What Are Affiliate Products?
Affiliate products are products that are set up to enable third-party persons (affiliates) to advertise the product and earn a commission on any sale that is generated from the affiliate's advertising.
For example, the affiliate program from which I have made the most money over the years - to be honest, thousands of dollars over the years - is the product line offered by World Wide Brands (http://www.thephantomwriters.com/wwb).
World Wide Brands is committed to helping online sellers find the companies who sell products wholesale and the companies who offer drop shipping services to online sellers. If you are not familiar with the term "drop shipping", it means that you would be able to buy a product from them and have them "drop ship" the product directly to your customer, as if you had that product in stock when the product was purchased from you and you delivered the product from your own warehouse.
I introduce people to the products offered by World Wide Brands, through a special link that tracks my referrals, and if the person I delivered to the World Wide Brands website makes a purchase, I earn a commission on that sale. It is as simple as that.
Another affiliate program that is very similar to World Wide Brands is the program offered by Doba (http://www.thephantomwriters.com/doba). Rather than a catalog of drop-shipping companies, Doba is an Ebay-Certified drop shipper.
Simply put, an Affiliate Program is any product or service from which you can earn a commission, if you do your part by delivering a buying customer to the seller's website.
Affiliate Networks
There are literally thousands of companies who offer affiliate commissions on the sale of their products or services. Fortunately, we don't have to search the web for weeks on end to find available products and services that we would like to sell.
There are companies that have been built for the purpose of helping sellers initiate affiliate programs for their products and services. These companies literally represent hundreds and sometimes thousands of sellers who offer affiliate programs.
Within each network, you can shop for the products and services that you wish to sell from your own website. Within some affiliate networks, you can just plug in a product to your website and begin selling. Within other affiliate networks, you may have to request the right to promote a product and wait for the seller to approve your affiliate application.
Clickbank.com is an affiliate network company that enables you to start selling any product in their network, without forcing you to wait on approval to begin selling a product. This is the primary reason why most software developers choose to work almost exclusively with the Clickbank network.
Other affiliate network companies of note include:
Commission Junction (www.cj.com)
PepperJamNetwork.com
CommissionSoup.com
LinkConnector.com
LinkShare.com
ShareASale.com
Getting started with these affiliate networks is easy. You simply need to sign up for an account and verify your email address.
Personally, I have accounts with each of the above-mentioned affiliate networks.
Where Most Websites Fail
Where most webmasters fail in their quest to make a living online is in the final step. Once a website is set up with products and services to sell, the final and most important step in the process is to drive traffic to the website.
To be honest, I even failed in this part of the equation when I got started online. Fortunately, I got started way back in 1995 when the Internet was still brand new. Back then, there were not a lot of people who had mastered the Internet marketing concept - well, there were not many people bragging about how well they were doing online with Internet marketing anyway.
I finally started getting my head around this online marketing thing in 1999, when I discovered people who were teaching others how they could be successful with an online business - in the same way that I do now.
In 1998, I started reading articles like this one - articles intended to teach people how to be successful with an online business. But I was a bit slow on the uptake...
It was by chance in 1999 that I saw a link in the one marketing newsletter that I read every week. That link suggested that I could write an article and submit it to the newsletter for consideration of publication.
It is true that I did not know a lot about marketing a business online, but I thought that maybe I could share a lesson that I had learned while operating my online newsletter. So I wrote a short article of about 700 words and submitted it to that newsletter.
It was a full three months later when I received a message from the editor of the publication telling me that my article would be featured in his publication the next day. With that email, my future was forever changed.
When published in that newsletter, my website which had seen 750 visitors over the previous two years suddenly served several thousand visitors in one day. I was ecstatic.
With my initial success, I wrote six more articles in six weeks and sent them through a mailing list that told publishers about the availability of my articles. Then I got distracted for several months and forgot about articles.
By chance, six months later I noticed a sudden and huge surge of traffic to my website, so I did a bit of investigation as to how that had happened. Lo and behold, one of my articles had been published in another large newsletter.
Upon learning this information, I decided that I needed to check on the reprint success of those first six articles. I was able to track a pretty wide swath of newsletters that had reprinted my articles; although I am certain that I missed a few. But with the newsletters that I was able to find that had used my articles, they had a combined circulation of 1.5 million readers.
With this discovery, I never again let articles disappear from my marketing plan. These days, I write a new article every time that I launch a new website, and I strive to put new articles out as frequently as I can manage to do, for all of my income-generating websites.
The trick in using articles as an advertising platform is that the article should teach its readers something of value; otherwise publishers will not want to use them. Sure it is true that you can still get a lot of links to your website from websites that publish your articles, because webmasters tend to be much less selective about the articles they are willing to publish. But I figure that if I am going to take the time to write an article, then I should take the extra time to ensure that a newsletter publisher and any quality-oriented webmaster will be just as likely to publish that article, as the webmaster who has no standards at all.
At the end of every article is a paragraph that tells the author's biography. When done right, the paragraph that tells you that this article was written by Bill Platt will also tell you what website I am wanting you to visit and why you would want to visit that website. When my article and my "about the author" information is done well, you will visit my website. And hopefully once at my website, you will decide that you may be interested in purchasing what I offer.
Advertising Is Available In Many Formats
Using articles to promote a website is what is referred to as "article marketing", but it is only one method of dozens that are available to help you promote your new online business.
You should use whatever advertising methods work well for you. For me, article marketing is my primary method of advertising online, but others might prefer pay-per-click advertising in the search engines.
In the end, it does not matter what method of advertising you choose to promote your website, so long as you actually use some method of advertising to bring potential customers to your website.
The Light At The End Of The Tunnel
Once you have your website built and traffic coming to your website, you will notice that light far off in the distance at the end of the tunnel. With your first sale, you will begin to realize that you really do have it in you to be successful online. After a number of sales, you will realize that it is simply a matter of time until you are earning an income substantial enough to protect your income, in the event that your employer decides that they need to cut your job to survive the current recession.
In the end, you are the only person who will do what is necessary to protect your financial future. By starting your own online business, you will begin to gain something even more powerful than money... You will gain a respect for yourself that you have never had before, and you will begin to understand how it is completely within your power to control your own destiny in this life.
Author's Note: This article originally published here: http://article-blog.thephantomwriters.com/online-business/2009/04/04/
About the Author:
Bill Platt owns and operates http://www.ThePhantomWriters.com/ Article Distribution Service. Through his service, he can help you get your articles to newsletter publishers and webmasters interested in using articles written by other people. If you do not feel that you are able to write your own articles, you could always hire a ghost writer, or try out Bill's new service called Sponsor Articles, which merges co-op advertising with article marketing. Learn more at: http://www.SponsorArticles.com/
Copyright © 2009 Bill Platt
The world around us is concerned about the future. With Obama in the White House and record government spending during this economic recession, many of our neighbors are sweating what the future holds in store for them.
I worried about it for a bit, and then I realized that those of us who live our business lives on the Internet will not see the same depths of recession that our brick-and-mortar counterparts will experience.
All one has to do is to visit their local restaurants or the retail shop that offers the newest in cell phone products to realize that while people are fearful, they are not broke. People are still spending money to a large extent.
While people are still spending money in the marketplace, some businesses are continuing to fail around us... Not because the businesses do not have good products or people willing to buy those products, but because many industries rely upon bank loans to help them bridge the gap between production and payment from their clients.
For example, the automakers have to carry a huge burden of cost between the production of an automobile and when that vehicle is finally sold to a consumer. It is not the lack of customers that are killing the businesses we all know and respect, but instead, it is a lack of bridge capital (a.k.a. commercial credit) that is killing American businesses.
Look Out For Number One
If you are one of those people who are wondering whether your job will still be there next year, the only person who is going to look out for your best interests is you.
Starting an online business can be a very inexpensive process. Depending on the angle you take with your online business, you may only need to spend less than $50 per month to get on your feet with a viable online business.
For people who are just getting started with an online business, I strongly recommend Site Build It (http://www.thephantomwriters.com/sbi). SBI provides a system that enables anyone - and I do mean anyone - to build a commerce-ready website in just a couple hours. Beyond a user-friendly website building tool, SBI also offers training to help its members to be more successful.
One of the factors that make SBI so attractive in my book is its focus on Affiliate Products.
What Are Affiliate Products?
Affiliate products are products that are set up to enable third-party persons (affiliates) to advertise the product and earn a commission on any sale that is generated from the affiliate's advertising.
For example, the affiliate program from which I have made the most money over the years - to be honest, thousands of dollars over the years - is the product line offered by World Wide Brands (http://www.thephantomwriters.com/wwb).
World Wide Brands is committed to helping online sellers find the companies who sell products wholesale and the companies who offer drop shipping services to online sellers. If you are not familiar with the term "drop shipping", it means that you would be able to buy a product from them and have them "drop ship" the product directly to your customer, as if you had that product in stock when the product was purchased from you and you delivered the product from your own warehouse.
I introduce people to the products offered by World Wide Brands, through a special link that tracks my referrals, and if the person I delivered to the World Wide Brands website makes a purchase, I earn a commission on that sale. It is as simple as that.
Another affiliate program that is very similar to World Wide Brands is the program offered by Doba (http://www.thephantomwriters.com/doba). Rather than a catalog of drop-shipping companies, Doba is an Ebay-Certified drop shipper.
Simply put, an Affiliate Program is any product or service from which you can earn a commission, if you do your part by delivering a buying customer to the seller's website.
Affiliate Networks
There are literally thousands of companies who offer affiliate commissions on the sale of their products or services. Fortunately, we don't have to search the web for weeks on end to find available products and services that we would like to sell.
There are companies that have been built for the purpose of helping sellers initiate affiliate programs for their products and services. These companies literally represent hundreds and sometimes thousands of sellers who offer affiliate programs.
Within each network, you can shop for the products and services that you wish to sell from your own website. Within some affiliate networks, you can just plug in a product to your website and begin selling. Within other affiliate networks, you may have to request the right to promote a product and wait for the seller to approve your affiliate application.
Clickbank.com is an affiliate network company that enables you to start selling any product in their network, without forcing you to wait on approval to begin selling a product. This is the primary reason why most software developers choose to work almost exclusively with the Clickbank network.
Other affiliate network companies of note include:
Getting started with these affiliate networks is easy. You simply need to sign up for an account and verify your email address.
Personally, I have accounts with each of the above-mentioned affiliate networks.
Where Most Websites Fail
Where most webmasters fail in their quest to make a living online is in the final step. Once a website is set up with products and services to sell, the final and most important step in the process is to drive traffic to the website.
To be honest, I even failed in this part of the equation when I got started online. Fortunately, I got started way back in 1995 when the Internet was still brand new. Back then, there were not a lot of people who had mastered the Internet marketing concept - well, there were not many people bragging about how well they were doing online with Internet marketing anyway.
I finally started getting my head around this online marketing thing in 1999, when I discovered people who were teaching others how they could be successful with an online business - in the same way that I do now.
In 1998, I started reading articles like this one - articles intended to teach people how to be successful with an online business. But I was a bit slow on the uptake...
It was by chance in 1999 that I saw a link in the one marketing newsletter that I read every week. That link suggested that I could write an article and submit it to the newsletter for consideration of publication.
It is true that I did not know a lot about marketing a business online, but I thought that maybe I could share a lesson that I had learned while operating my online newsletter. So I wrote a short article of about 700 words and submitted it to that newsletter.
It was a full three months later when I received a message from the editor of the publication telling me that my article would be featured in his publication the next day. With that email, my future was forever changed.
When published in that newsletter, my website which had seen 750 visitors over the previous two years suddenly served several thousand visitors in one day. I was ecstatic.
With my initial success, I wrote six more articles in six weeks and sent them through a mailing list that told publishers about the availability of my articles. Then I got distracted for several months and forgot about articles.
By chance, six months later I noticed a sudden and huge surge of traffic to my website, so I did a bit of investigation as to how that had happened. Lo and behold, one of my articles had been published in another large newsletter.
Upon learning this information, I decided that I needed to check on the reprint success of those first six articles. I was able to track a pretty wide swath of newsletters that had reprinted my articles; although I am certain that I missed a few. But with the newsletters that I was able to find that had used my articles, they had a combined circulation of 1.5 million readers.
With this discovery, I never again let articles disappear from my marketing plan. These days, I write a new article every time that I launch a new website, and I strive to put new articles out as frequently as I can manage to do, for all of my income-generating websites.
The trick in using articles as an advertising platform is that the article should teach its readers something of value; otherwise publishers will not want to use them. Sure it is true that you can still get a lot of links to your website from websites that publish your articles, because webmasters tend to be much less selective about the articles they are willing to publish. But I figure that if I am going to take the time to write an article, then I should take the extra time to ensure that a newsletter publisher and any quality-oriented webmaster will be just as likely to publish that article, as the webmaster who has no standards at all.
At the end of every article is a paragraph that tells the author's biography. When done right, the paragraph that tells you that this article was written by Bill Platt will also tell you what website I am wanting you to visit and why you would want to visit that website. When my article and my "about the author" information is done well, you will visit my website. And hopefully once at my website, you will decide that you may be interested in purchasing what I offer.
Advertising Is Available In Many Formats
Using articles to promote a website is what is referred to as "article marketing", but it is only one method of dozens that are available to help you promote your new online business.
You should use whatever advertising methods work well for you. For me, article marketing is my primary method of advertising online, but others might prefer pay-per-click advertising in the search engines.
In the end, it does not matter what method of advertising you choose to promote your website, so long as you actually use some method of advertising to bring potential customers to your website.
The Light At The End Of The Tunnel
Once you have your website built and traffic coming to your website, you will notice that light far off in the distance at the end of the tunnel. With your first sale, you will begin to realize that you really do have it in you to be successful online. After a number of sales, you will realize that it is simply a matter of time until you are earning an income substantial enough to protect your income, in the event that your employer decides that they need to cut your job to survive the current recession.
In the end, you are the only person who will do what is necessary to protect your financial future. By starting your own online business, you will begin to gain something even more powerful than money... You will gain a respect for yourself that you have never had before, and you will begin to understand how it is completely within your power to control your own destiny in this life.
Author's Note: This article originally published here: http://article-blog.thephantomwriters.com/online-business/2009/04/04/
About the Author:
Bill Platt owns and operates http://www.ThePhantomWriters.com/ Article Distribution Service. Through his service, he can help you get your articles to newsletter publishers and webmasters interested in using articles written by other people. If you do not feel that you are able to write your own articles, you could always hire a ghost writer, or try out Bill's new service called Sponsor Articles, which merges co-op advertising with article marketing. Learn more at: http://www.SponsorArticles.com/
Friday, April 17, 2009
Can I Target Only High-end Customers With My Publicity Offer? Publicity Dilemma 5
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
Got something you want to use as bait for prospective customers? Publicity can be a great way to spread awareness of the availability of your giveaway item. Write a press release announcing it and highlighting its usefulness to your target market, and often the media cooperate in getting the word out. It also works to send a sample of your free report, audio, video, spreadsheet or whatever to media outlets with a cover sheet describing where and how people can request it.
Things get tricky, though, when you hope to restrict your bait to a certain population. It would be rather silly to put out a press release on the newswires saying, "Anyone who owns a vacation home can go www.zzz.com to download a free energy efficiency report." By making such an offer public, it would become known not only to vacation home owners but also regular homeowners and those who rent. Anyone reading the press release or the resulting coverage could request your freebie.
It might seem that you could avoid opening your publicity offer to the general public by mailing, emailing or faxing your release about it to your preferred media outlets, such as to Vacation Home Magazine, instead of distributing it on the newswires. However, once your offer gets published anywhere, you lose control over it.
In the early 1990s, I had a giveaway offer published in the newsletter Bottom Line/Personal. People could get a free copy of my booklet "6 Steps to Free Publicity" by sending a self-addressed stamped envelope to a certain address. The free booklet offer was a wise investment on my part, because Bottom Line/Personal's subscribers were all paying $39.95 annually for the publication and thus were good prospects for follow-up publicity services.
What later happened, though, was that several downmarket publications picked up the offer and reran it without asking me. I was extremely annoyed to learn that a book with a title like "Best Free Things" had apparently reprinted the offer. Anyone who would buy such a book was not likely to hire me to create a publicity campaign. In fact, I continued to receive self-addressed stamped envelopes for 10 years after the Bottom Line/Personal notice ran, mainly from various aftermarket announcements.
Sometimes you can prevent such problems by making the content of your bait relevant only to your target audience. For instance, if you offered a free report called "Maintaining Your Kubota Tractor So It Stays in Service for More Than 10 Years," few people not owning Kubota tractors would bother to request it.
In the end, the very aspect of publicity that makes it appealing can undermine its usefulness when you are trying to accomplish something very specific. Publicity is an affordable method of getting the word out because the news media have a constant need of stories. But the media are in charge of the process after you hand over ingredients for their work. It's up to them to help you, ignore you or go against your wishes.
For the individual or organization hoping to target only affluent customers, I suggest using direct mail rather than publicity to deliver your offer. Direct mail stays under the radar. It's controllable. Mail your offer only to high net-worth households, and the chances remain very good that only high net-worth households will see it and take advantage of it.
About the Author:
Publicity expert Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity, Persuading on Paper, Web Site Marketing Makeover and eight other books. She has engineered coverage for herself or her company in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Success, Women in Business and dozens of newspapers around the world. Get free access to a one-hour audio recording in which she answers the most common questions about getting media coverage at http://www.yudkin.com/publicityideas.htm
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
Got something you want to use as bait for prospective customers? Publicity can be a great way to spread awareness of the availability of your giveaway item. Write a press release announcing it and highlighting its usefulness to your target market, and often the media cooperate in getting the word out. It also works to send a sample of your free report, audio, video, spreadsheet or whatever to media outlets with a cover sheet describing where and how people can request it.
Things get tricky, though, when you hope to restrict your bait to a certain population. It would be rather silly to put out a press release on the newswires saying, "Anyone who owns a vacation home can go www.zzz.com to download a free energy efficiency report." By making such an offer public, it would become known not only to vacation home owners but also regular homeowners and those who rent. Anyone reading the press release or the resulting coverage could request your freebie.
It might seem that you could avoid opening your publicity offer to the general public by mailing, emailing or faxing your release about it to your preferred media outlets, such as to Vacation Home Magazine, instead of distributing it on the newswires. However, once your offer gets published anywhere, you lose control over it.
In the early 1990s, I had a giveaway offer published in the newsletter Bottom Line/Personal. People could get a free copy of my booklet "6 Steps to Free Publicity" by sending a self-addressed stamped envelope to a certain address. The free booklet offer was a wise investment on my part, because Bottom Line/Personal's subscribers were all paying $39.95 annually for the publication and thus were good prospects for follow-up publicity services.
What later happened, though, was that several downmarket publications picked up the offer and reran it without asking me. I was extremely annoyed to learn that a book with a title like "Best Free Things" had apparently reprinted the offer. Anyone who would buy such a book was not likely to hire me to create a publicity campaign. In fact, I continued to receive self-addressed stamped envelopes for 10 years after the Bottom Line/Personal notice ran, mainly from various aftermarket announcements.
Sometimes you can prevent such problems by making the content of your bait relevant only to your target audience. For instance, if you offered a free report called "Maintaining Your Kubota Tractor So It Stays in Service for More Than 10 Years," few people not owning Kubota tractors would bother to request it.
In the end, the very aspect of publicity that makes it appealing can undermine its usefulness when you are trying to accomplish something very specific. Publicity is an affordable method of getting the word out because the news media have a constant need of stories. But the media are in charge of the process after you hand over ingredients for their work. It's up to them to help you, ignore you or go against your wishes.
For the individual or organization hoping to target only affluent customers, I suggest using direct mail rather than publicity to deliver your offer. Direct mail stays under the radar. It's controllable. Mail your offer only to high net-worth households, and the chances remain very good that only high net-worth households will see it and take advantage of it.
About the Author:
Publicity expert Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity, Persuading on Paper, Web Site Marketing Makeover and eight other books. She has engineered coverage for herself or her company in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Success, Women in Business and dozens of newspapers around the world. Get free access to a one-hour audio recording in which she answers the most common questions about getting media coverage at http://www.yudkin.com/publicityideas.htm
Can I Target Only High-end Customers With My Publicity Offer? Publicity Dilemma 5
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
Got something you want to use as bait for prospective customers? Publicity can be a great way to spread awareness of the availability of your giveaway item. Write a press release announcing it and highlighting its usefulness to your target market, and often the media cooperate in getting the word out. It also works to send a sample of your free report, audio, video, spreadsheet or whatever to media outlets with a cover sheet describing where and how people can request it.
Things get tricky, though, when you hope to restrict your bait to a certain population. It would be rather silly to put out a press release on the newswires saying, "Anyone who owns a vacation home can go www.zzz.com to download a free energy efficiency report." By making such an offer public, it would become known not only to vacation home owners but also regular homeowners and those who rent. Anyone reading the press release or the resulting coverage could request your freebie.
It might seem that you could avoid opening your publicity offer to the general public by mailing, emailing or faxing your release about it to your preferred media outlets, such as to Vacation Home Magazine, instead of distributing it on the newswires. However, once your offer gets published anywhere, you lose control over it.
In the early 1990s, I had a giveaway offer published in the newsletter Bottom Line/Personal. People could get a free copy of my booklet "6 Steps to Free Publicity" by sending a self-addressed stamped envelope to a certain address. The free booklet offer was a wise investment on my part, because Bottom Line/Personal's subscribers were all paying $39.95 annually for the publication and thus were good prospects for follow-up publicity services.
What later happened, though, was that several downmarket publications picked up the offer and reran it without asking me. I was extremely annoyed to learn that a book with a title like "Best Free Things" had apparently reprinted the offer. Anyone who would buy such a book was not likely to hire me to create a publicity campaign. In fact, I continued to receive self-addressed stamped envelopes for 10 years after the Bottom Line/Personal notice ran, mainly from various aftermarket announcements.
Sometimes you can prevent such problems by making the content of your bait relevant only to your target audience. For instance, if you offered a free report called "Maintaining Your Kubota Tractor So It Stays in Service for More Than 10 Years," few people not owning Kubota tractors would bother to request it.
In the end, the very aspect of publicity that makes it appealing can undermine its usefulness when you are trying to accomplish something very specific. Publicity is an affordable method of getting the word out because the news media have a constant need of stories. But the media are in charge of the process after you hand over ingredients for their work. It's up to them to help you, ignore you or go against your wishes.
For the individual or organization hoping to target only affluent customers, I suggest using direct mail rather than publicity to deliver your offer. Direct mail stays under the radar. It's controllable. Mail your offer only to high net-worth households, and the chances remain very good that only high net-worth households will see it and take advantage of it.
About the Author:
Publicity expert Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity, Persuading on Paper, Web Site Marketing Makeover and eight other books. She has engineered coverage for herself or her company in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Success, Women in Business and dozens of newspapers around the world. Get free access to a one-hour audio recording in which she answers the most common questions about getting media coverage at http://www.yudkin.com/publicityideas.htm
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
Got something you want to use as bait for prospective customers? Publicity can be a great way to spread awareness of the availability of your giveaway item. Write a press release announcing it and highlighting its usefulness to your target market, and often the media cooperate in getting the word out. It also works to send a sample of your free report, audio, video, spreadsheet or whatever to media outlets with a cover sheet describing where and how people can request it.
Things get tricky, though, when you hope to restrict your bait to a certain population. It would be rather silly to put out a press release on the newswires saying, "Anyone who owns a vacation home can go www.zzz.com to download a free energy efficiency report." By making such an offer public, it would become known not only to vacation home owners but also regular homeowners and those who rent. Anyone reading the press release or the resulting coverage could request your freebie.
It might seem that you could avoid opening your publicity offer to the general public by mailing, emailing or faxing your release about it to your preferred media outlets, such as to Vacation Home Magazine, instead of distributing it on the newswires. However, once your offer gets published anywhere, you lose control over it.
In the early 1990s, I had a giveaway offer published in the newsletter Bottom Line/Personal. People could get a free copy of my booklet "6 Steps to Free Publicity" by sending a self-addressed stamped envelope to a certain address. The free booklet offer was a wise investment on my part, because Bottom Line/Personal's subscribers were all paying $39.95 annually for the publication and thus were good prospects for follow-up publicity services.
What later happened, though, was that several downmarket publications picked up the offer and reran it without asking me. I was extremely annoyed to learn that a book with a title like "Best Free Things" had apparently reprinted the offer. Anyone who would buy such a book was not likely to hire me to create a publicity campaign. In fact, I continued to receive self-addressed stamped envelopes for 10 years after the Bottom Line/Personal notice ran, mainly from various aftermarket announcements.
Sometimes you can prevent such problems by making the content of your bait relevant only to your target audience. For instance, if you offered a free report called "Maintaining Your Kubota Tractor So It Stays in Service for More Than 10 Years," few people not owning Kubota tractors would bother to request it.
In the end, the very aspect of publicity that makes it appealing can undermine its usefulness when you are trying to accomplish something very specific. Publicity is an affordable method of getting the word out because the news media have a constant need of stories. But the media are in charge of the process after you hand over ingredients for their work. It's up to them to help you, ignore you or go against your wishes.
For the individual or organization hoping to target only affluent customers, I suggest using direct mail rather than publicity to deliver your offer. Direct mail stays under the radar. It's controllable. Mail your offer only to high net-worth households, and the chances remain very good that only high net-worth households will see it and take advantage of it.
About the Author:
Publicity expert Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity, Persuading on Paper, Web Site Marketing Makeover and eight other books. She has engineered coverage for herself or her company in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Success, Women in Business and dozens of newspapers around the world. Get free access to a one-hour audio recording in which she answers the most common questions about getting media coverage at http://www.yudkin.com/publicityideas.htm
Buying Expired Domain Names - Some Simple Suggestions
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
Hundreds of expired domain traders buy a number of expired domain names, sell them to the highest bidder or flip them into useful web sites to make more money and profit. However, most of them commit a number of mistakes and blunders in the process, which could be due to a number of reasons and factors. Here are some simple suggestions and tips to help you in buying good expired domain names:
Dropped domains can be anything! If a domain was dropped by its previous owner, you may not be too sure about its quality and commercial viability. A dropped domain is not as good as a domain purchased from a person who no longer needs it. Dropped domains may not show good return on your investment, as the inherent quality of those domains will be still under doubt vis-à-vis traffic and incoming links. Under usual circumstances, dropped domains can result in a total loss of search engine ranking as well as accumulated traffic. Google and other major search engines may delete the entire list related to an expired domain, soon after the announcement of drop. On the other hand, search engines like DMOZ and Yahoo are more liberal in their approach. Yahoo always charges a hefty registration fee of about $299 to list a particular domain. It makes sense to buy an expired domain listed on these two search engines just to save some money and time. Domains expiring must be treated in a different way, as you are not too sure of the future course of events; the dropping domain may be picked up invisible buyers through a buying process called domain backordering.
Another mistake that a number of expired domain traders commit is to hold on to their inventory in the hope that someone will come forward to buy their domains. Never ever, commit the mistake of holding on to your domains. Rotate your domains; if you find a lucrative offer, go ahead and sell it. Create a big turnover by selling your stock whenever you get a good offer. If at all you are planning to resell you domain, do not park it with anyone. Instead, create a good web site, host it with a goof host and create catchy and SEO friendly content and images. Once you feel that you have a good web portal, and then you can search for a good buyer, who is ready to pay a big price.
Before buying any expired domain, ensure that you are checking the history of domain in a comprehensive manner. The best way to conduct a comprehensive search is to use the WayBack Archive, which provides you basic information on a particular domain that has just expired. Everyone agrees that incoming links and traffic contribute a lot to the value of an expired domain. While it is very difficult for a newbie domain trader to find out if there is any traffic attached to a particular expired domain, experienced and hard-boiled ones can scent a domain that displays lot of traffic and links.
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
Hundreds of expired domain traders buy a number of expired domain names, sell them to the highest bidder or flip them into useful web sites to make more money and profit. However, most of them commit a number of mistakes and blunders in the process, which could be due to a number of reasons and factors. Here are some simple suggestions and tips to help you in buying good expired domain names:
Dropped domains can be anything! If a domain was dropped by its previous owner, you may not be too sure about its quality and commercial viability. A dropped domain is not as good as a domain purchased from a person who no longer needs it. Dropped domains may not show good return on your investment, as the inherent quality of those domains will be still under doubt vis-à-vis traffic and incoming links. Under usual circumstances, dropped domains can result in a total loss of search engine ranking as well as accumulated traffic. Google and other major search engines may delete the entire list related to an expired domain, soon after the announcement of drop. On the other hand, search engines like DMOZ and Yahoo are more liberal in their approach. Yahoo always charges a hefty registration fee of about $299 to list a particular domain. It makes sense to buy an expired domain listed on these two search engines just to save some money and time. Domains expiring must be treated in a different way, as you are not too sure of the future course of events; the dropping domain may be picked up invisible buyers through a buying process called domain backordering.
Another mistake that a number of expired domain traders commit is to hold on to their inventory in the hope that someone will come forward to buy their domains. Never ever, commit the mistake of holding on to your domains. Rotate your domains; if you find a lucrative offer, go ahead and sell it. Create a big turnover by selling your stock whenever you get a good offer. If at all you are planning to resell you domain, do not park it with anyone. Instead, create a good web site, host it with a goof host and create catchy and SEO friendly content and images. Once you feel that you have a good web portal, and then you can search for a good buyer, who is ready to pay a big price.
Before buying any expired domain, ensure that you are checking the history of domain in a comprehensive manner. The best way to conduct a comprehensive search is to use the WayBack Archive, which provides you basic information on a particular domain that has just expired. Everyone agrees that incoming links and traffic contribute a lot to the value of an expired domain. While it is very difficult for a newbie domain trader to find out if there is any traffic attached to a particular expired domain, experienced and hard-boiled ones can scent a domain that displays lot of traffic and links.
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
Buying Expired Domain Names - Some Simple Suggestions
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
Hundreds of expired domain traders buy a number of expired domain names, sell them to the highest bidder or flip them into useful web sites to make more money and profit. However, most of them commit a number of mistakes and blunders in the process, which could be due to a number of reasons and factors. Here are some simple suggestions and tips to help you in buying good expired domain names:
Dropped domains can be anything! If a domain was dropped by its previous owner, you may not be too sure about its quality and commercial viability. A dropped domain is not as good as a domain purchased from a person who no longer needs it. Dropped domains may not show good return on your investment, as the inherent quality of those domains will be still under doubt vis-à-vis traffic and incoming links. Under usual circumstances, dropped domains can result in a total loss of search engine ranking as well as accumulated traffic. Google and other major search engines may delete the entire list related to an expired domain, soon after the announcement of drop. On the other hand, search engines like DMOZ and Yahoo are more liberal in their approach. Yahoo always charges a hefty registration fee of about $299 to list a particular domain. It makes sense to buy an expired domain listed on these two search engines just to save some money and time. Domains expiring must be treated in a different way, as you are not too sure of the future course of events; the dropping domain may be picked up invisible buyers through a buying process called domain backordering.
Another mistake that a number of expired domain traders commit is to hold on to their inventory in the hope that someone will come forward to buy their domains. Never ever, commit the mistake of holding on to your domains. Rotate your domains; if you find a lucrative offer, go ahead and sell it. Create a big turnover by selling your stock whenever you get a good offer. If at all you are planning to resell you domain, do not park it with anyone. Instead, create a good web site, host it with a goof host and create catchy and SEO friendly content and images. Once you feel that you have a good web portal, and then you can search for a good buyer, who is ready to pay a big price.
Before buying any expired domain, ensure that you are checking the history of domain in a comprehensive manner. The best way to conduct a comprehensive search is to use the WayBack Archive, which provides you basic information on a particular domain that has just expired. Everyone agrees that incoming links and traffic contribute a lot to the value of an expired domain. While it is very difficult for a newbie domain trader to find out if there is any traffic attached to a particular expired domain, experienced and hard-boiled ones can scent a domain that displays lot of traffic and links.
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
Copyright © 2009 John Khu
Hundreds of expired domain traders buy a number of expired domain names, sell them to the highest bidder or flip them into useful web sites to make more money and profit. However, most of them commit a number of mistakes and blunders in the process, which could be due to a number of reasons and factors. Here are some simple suggestions and tips to help you in buying good expired domain names:
Dropped domains can be anything! If a domain was dropped by its previous owner, you may not be too sure about its quality and commercial viability. A dropped domain is not as good as a domain purchased from a person who no longer needs it. Dropped domains may not show good return on your investment, as the inherent quality of those domains will be still under doubt vis-à-vis traffic and incoming links. Under usual circumstances, dropped domains can result in a total loss of search engine ranking as well as accumulated traffic. Google and other major search engines may delete the entire list related to an expired domain, soon after the announcement of drop. On the other hand, search engines like DMOZ and Yahoo are more liberal in their approach. Yahoo always charges a hefty registration fee of about $299 to list a particular domain. It makes sense to buy an expired domain listed on these two search engines just to save some money and time. Domains expiring must be treated in a different way, as you are not too sure of the future course of events; the dropping domain may be picked up invisible buyers through a buying process called domain backordering.
Another mistake that a number of expired domain traders commit is to hold on to their inventory in the hope that someone will come forward to buy their domains. Never ever, commit the mistake of holding on to your domains. Rotate your domains; if you find a lucrative offer, go ahead and sell it. Create a big turnover by selling your stock whenever you get a good offer. If at all you are planning to resell you domain, do not park it with anyone. Instead, create a good web site, host it with a goof host and create catchy and SEO friendly content and images. Once you feel that you have a good web portal, and then you can search for a good buyer, who is ready to pay a big price.
Before buying any expired domain, ensure that you are checking the history of domain in a comprehensive manner. The best way to conduct a comprehensive search is to use the WayBack Archive, which provides you basic information on a particular domain that has just expired. Everyone agrees that incoming links and traffic contribute a lot to the value of an expired domain. While it is very difficult for a newbie domain trader to find out if there is any traffic attached to a particular expired domain, experienced and hard-boiled ones can scent a domain that displays lot of traffic and links.
About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
What if My Publicity Angle Needs a Photo? Publicity Dilemma 6
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
Occasionally I hear from someone who laments that they can't possibly reduce the charms of what they sell to words. Only a photo, they claim, adequately conveys what it is and why it is so wonderful.
Unfortunately, however, even the most skillfully taken photographs are not self-explanatory. Why do you think every mainstream media outlet rigorously provides captions for its photos? And why do you suppose successful ecommerce sites never try to sell with product photos alone? Indeed, photographs without captions can be far more mysterious than verbal descriptions.
Think about a photo of a scrumptious-looking plate of pasta primavera, for example. Just looking at the photo, could you know for sure that this is pasta primavera and not, say, pasta alla veronica? Could you see from the photo that this was the first dish created by Chef Geri Halcomb after recovering from cancer treatment? Would you realize from the photo that the pasta is organic, from locally grown wheat and only 120 calories per serving?
Whereas photos need context and verbal pointers to be complete and persuasive, words by themselves can tell the story and sell the reader. Consider the ability of radio to place you in a scene or a novel to conjure up a vivid world you've never visited. Of course, film and video, or words plus pictures do often have greater power and clarity than words alone.
When you're aiming at media coverage, understand that the writer or broadcaster has to use words to explain your offering. It's your job to help with that. With your words you set the context, explain the purpose and audience and provide essential details. An accompanying photo illustrates or fills out what you mean and adds richness to the words.
With that said, if you feel a photo does the job of a thousand words, then provide a verbal description that is as clear as you can possibly make it and then also make one or more photos available. Or for some types of items, get an actual sample into their hands along with the verbal pitch.
Here are three ways to transmit your words-plus-photos or words-plus-sample pitch to media outlets.
1)Mail it. This works especially well when you're sending a sample item. Make sure the accompanying words clarify the purpose, audience, materials, maker, availability, price of the item and how/where to buy it.
2)Email. Media people don't like opening email attachments from people they don't know, so either insert the photo right into your email pitch if you can or post the photo on your web site and provide the link to it in your email.
3)Press release distribution service. Some such services, such as Emailwire.com, allow you to include a photo or even two with your release at no extra charge. When readers look at a page of press release material and some of the summaries have photos and others not, the ones with accompanying photos practically scream "Read me, not the others."
Give your story the best possible shot at media coverage by carefully providing context and details in your verbal pitch and amplifying that with a photo.
About the Author:
Publicity expert Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity, Persuading on Paper, Web Site Marketing Makeover and eight other books. She has engineered coverage for herself or her company in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Success, Women in Business and dozens of newspapers around the world. Get free access to a one-hour audio recording in which she answers the most common questions about getting media coverage at http://www.yudkin.com/publicityideas.htm
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
Occasionally I hear from someone who laments that they can't possibly reduce the charms of what they sell to words. Only a photo, they claim, adequately conveys what it is and why it is so wonderful.
Unfortunately, however, even the most skillfully taken photographs are not self-explanatory. Why do you think every mainstream media outlet rigorously provides captions for its photos? And why do you suppose successful ecommerce sites never try to sell with product photos alone? Indeed, photographs without captions can be far more mysterious than verbal descriptions.
Think about a photo of a scrumptious-looking plate of pasta primavera, for example. Just looking at the photo, could you know for sure that this is pasta primavera and not, say, pasta alla veronica? Could you see from the photo that this was the first dish created by Chef Geri Halcomb after recovering from cancer treatment? Would you realize from the photo that the pasta is organic, from locally grown wheat and only 120 calories per serving?
Whereas photos need context and verbal pointers to be complete and persuasive, words by themselves can tell the story and sell the reader. Consider the ability of radio to place you in a scene or a novel to conjure up a vivid world you've never visited. Of course, film and video, or words plus pictures do often have greater power and clarity than words alone.
When you're aiming at media coverage, understand that the writer or broadcaster has to use words to explain your offering. It's your job to help with that. With your words you set the context, explain the purpose and audience and provide essential details. An accompanying photo illustrates or fills out what you mean and adds richness to the words.
With that said, if you feel a photo does the job of a thousand words, then provide a verbal description that is as clear as you can possibly make it and then also make one or more photos available. Or for some types of items, get an actual sample into their hands along with the verbal pitch.
Here are three ways to transmit your words-plus-photos or words-plus-sample pitch to media outlets.
1)Mail it. This works especially well when you're sending a sample item. Make sure the accompanying words clarify the purpose, audience, materials, maker, availability, price of the item and how/where to buy it.
2)Email. Media people don't like opening email attachments from people they don't know, so either insert the photo right into your email pitch if you can or post the photo on your web site and provide the link to it in your email.
3)Press release distribution service. Some such services, such as Emailwire.com, allow you to include a photo or even two with your release at no extra charge. When readers look at a page of press release material and some of the summaries have photos and others not, the ones with accompanying photos practically scream "Read me, not the others."
Give your story the best possible shot at media coverage by carefully providing context and details in your verbal pitch and amplifying that with a photo.
About the Author:
Publicity expert Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity, Persuading on Paper, Web Site Marketing Makeover and eight other books. She has engineered coverage for herself or her company in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Success, Women in Business and dozens of newspapers around the world. Get free access to a one-hour audio recording in which she answers the most common questions about getting media coverage at http://www.yudkin.com/publicityideas.htm
What if My Publicity Angle Needs a Photo? Publicity Dilemma 6
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
Occasionally I hear from someone who laments that they can't possibly reduce the charms of what they sell to words. Only a photo, they claim, adequately conveys what it is and why it is so wonderful.
Unfortunately, however, even the most skillfully taken photographs are not self-explanatory. Why do you think every mainstream media outlet rigorously provides captions for its photos? And why do you suppose successful ecommerce sites never try to sell with product photos alone? Indeed, photographs without captions can be far more mysterious than verbal descriptions.
Think about a photo of a scrumptious-looking plate of pasta primavera, for example. Just looking at the photo, could you know for sure that this is pasta primavera and not, say, pasta alla veronica? Could you see from the photo that this was the first dish created by Chef Geri Halcomb after recovering from cancer treatment? Would you realize from the photo that the pasta is organic, from locally grown wheat and only 120 calories per serving?
Whereas photos need context and verbal pointers to be complete and persuasive, words by themselves can tell the story and sell the reader. Consider the ability of radio to place you in a scene or a novel to conjure up a vivid world you've never visited. Of course, film and video, or words plus pictures do often have greater power and clarity than words alone.
When you're aiming at media coverage, understand that the writer or broadcaster has to use words to explain your offering. It's your job to help with that. With your words you set the context, explain the purpose and audience and provide essential details. An accompanying photo illustrates or fills out what you mean and adds richness to the words.
With that said, if you feel a photo does the job of a thousand words, then provide a verbal description that is as clear as you can possibly make it and then also make one or more photos available. Or for some types of items, get an actual sample into their hands along with the verbal pitch.
Here are three ways to transmit your words-plus-photos or words-plus-sample pitch to media outlets.
1)Mail it. This works especially well when you're sending a sample item. Make sure the accompanying words clarify the purpose, audience, materials, maker, availability, price of the item and how/where to buy it.
2)Email. Media people don't like opening email attachments from people they don't know, so either insert the photo right into your email pitch if you can or post the photo on your web site and provide the link to it in your email.
3)Press release distribution service. Some such services, such as Emailwire.com, allow you to include a photo or even two with your release at no extra charge. When readers look at a page of press release material and some of the summaries have photos and others not, the ones with accompanying photos practically scream "Read me, not the others."
Give your story the best possible shot at media coverage by carefully providing context and details in your verbal pitch and amplifying that with a photo.
About the Author:
Publicity expert Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity, Persuading on Paper, Web Site Marketing Makeover and eight other books. She has engineered coverage for herself or her company in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Success, Women in Business and dozens of newspapers around the world. Get free access to a one-hour audio recording in which she answers the most common questions about getting media coverage at http://www.yudkin.com/publicityideas.htm
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin
Occasionally I hear from someone who laments that they can't possibly reduce the charms of what they sell to words. Only a photo, they claim, adequately conveys what it is and why it is so wonderful.
Unfortunately, however, even the most skillfully taken photographs are not self-explanatory. Why do you think every mainstream media outlet rigorously provides captions for its photos? And why do you suppose successful ecommerce sites never try to sell with product photos alone? Indeed, photographs without captions can be far more mysterious than verbal descriptions.
Think about a photo of a scrumptious-looking plate of pasta primavera, for example. Just looking at the photo, could you know for sure that this is pasta primavera and not, say, pasta alla veronica? Could you see from the photo that this was the first dish created by Chef Geri Halcomb after recovering from cancer treatment? Would you realize from the photo that the pasta is organic, from locally grown wheat and only 120 calories per serving?
Whereas photos need context and verbal pointers to be complete and persuasive, words by themselves can tell the story and sell the reader. Consider the ability of radio to place you in a scene or a novel to conjure up a vivid world you've never visited. Of course, film and video, or words plus pictures do often have greater power and clarity than words alone.
When you're aiming at media coverage, understand that the writer or broadcaster has to use words to explain your offering. It's your job to help with that. With your words you set the context, explain the purpose and audience and provide essential details. An accompanying photo illustrates or fills out what you mean and adds richness to the words.
With that said, if you feel a photo does the job of a thousand words, then provide a verbal description that is as clear as you can possibly make it and then also make one or more photos available. Or for some types of items, get an actual sample into their hands along with the verbal pitch.
Here are three ways to transmit your words-plus-photos or words-plus-sample pitch to media outlets.
1)Mail it. This works especially well when you're sending a sample item. Make sure the accompanying words clarify the purpose, audience, materials, maker, availability, price of the item and how/where to buy it.
2)Email. Media people don't like opening email attachments from people they don't know, so either insert the photo right into your email pitch if you can or post the photo on your web site and provide the link to it in your email.
3)Press release distribution service. Some such services, such as Emailwire.com, allow you to include a photo or even two with your release at no extra charge. When readers look at a page of press release material and some of the summaries have photos and others not, the ones with accompanying photos practically scream "Read me, not the others."
Give your story the best possible shot at media coverage by carefully providing context and details in your verbal pitch and amplifying that with a photo.
About the Author:
Publicity expert Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity, Persuading on Paper, Web Site Marketing Makeover and eight other books. She has engineered coverage for herself or her company in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Success, Women in Business and dozens of newspapers around the world. Get free access to a one-hour audio recording in which she answers the most common questions about getting media coverage at http://www.yudkin.com/publicityideas.htm
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