Some Tips to Help Build Your Mailing List

by Guido Nussbaum

Gone are those old days when you had to keep a dozen pigeons at home to send your messages flying out to people you wanted to contact. And gone are those days when you sent out a letter and had to wait for at least a month for a response to come your way. This is a new era of the Internet, whereby emails are the best technique that we have to send out and receive messages in seconds!

Emails are used not only to connect with friends and families, but they can also be used as a portal to reach all those people whom you want to sell your products to and promote to them even via viral marketing. In other words, online marketing has turned simpler and easier with the help of the email connections and its benefits. If you want to advertise or sell your products online, you can create a mailing list database of your own so that your potential customers will be only a click away! The send viral communications so they'll get pass along, inviting others to be added to your lists, too.

History of Email Marketing

Earlier, many companies went crazy with happiness to find an excellent opportunity to double their sales and more. They kept on sending unsolicited emails to all and sundry, and people's accounts were inevitably flooded with unnecessary mails that they did not want. However, unhappy recipients took the matter to the courts, and the companies were penalized for using wrong methods of creating databases of emails.

Finally, ethical online marketers opted for something more convenient and safer. They went for the permission marketing whereby the online customers would register to receive emails and subscription offers at different sites, otherwise the companies would never crack open their email ids and send them messages that they did not choose. This facility can be seen in some online services like Yahoo! and Gmail.

However, there are some illegal methods that are still being used by certain companies to send unsolicited emails to people. One of them is the email leeching software that is used to extract the email ids of people which have been already registered. The second way is to buy up email ids from the other companies to fulfill one's own online marketing needs.

However, there are ways in which you can go for online marketing without having to step outside the law. Here are some methods that you can follow easily to create mailing list database.

* Offer something for free. This is the easiest way to lure the customers right into your net. You can offer a free e-Book or software and in return ask them for their email ids that could be added to your mailing list so that they could be notified about any future free offers.

* If your website includes a content of good quality, you will definitely have people reading them. Offer them the choice of registering so that they could receive newsletters. But make sure that what you send them is short and simple.

* You can start up an online seminar or contest in your website that will draw in huge crowds online. This way, they will have to register, but they will not mind providing you their email ids when they know that you can offer them something worthwhile.

* You can use the contact us form that needs to be included in every website. Here, in the "enter email" box, you can ask the people to offer their email ids so that you can contact them later.

* You can also put in the option to provide you with feedbacks, but while the people do that, make sure that you make it mandatory for them to enter their email addresses.

* You can also go for online surveys, because people feel the need to know a lot about the products that you are selling. For seeing the survey, make it necessary for the customers to provide their email ids.

These quick steps will help to create mailing list database without violating rules. This way, you will be able to increase your connections in the internet, and make more money from online email marketing.

About the Author

Discover more strategies to increase website traffic for free at: http://www.giveaway-list.com/blog . Find out about: social marketing and how it can help your internet marketing, too!

Some Blog Promotion and Management Basics

by John Vespasian

Blogging is taking over the world in terms of activity and influence. Starting up a blog is easy and anyone can get it running in about half an hour. Nobody knows exactly how many active blogs are on the internet. My guess is that today, in June 2009, there must be around 20 million that post new material daily.

Writing original material everyday is a different game. Many are able to begin a blog and publish text during the initial weeks, but taking the venture further is not for the faint of heart. Focused writing requires tremendous discipline and generating fresh ideas everyday is tough.

Six months later, the 20 million blogs that were started get reduced, I estimate, to about 1 million. Of course, in the meantime, another 19 million blogs have made their appearance on the web. This new influx of players re-establishes the market to its former size until the the next round of pruning takes place.

Promoting a blog is not much different from other forms of internet marketing. What is difficult is choosing the way of promotion that matches best your objectives. Are you writing about a popular subject or is it highly specialized? Will you be addressing controversial issues? Here are some ideas:

* GOOGLE ADS: You can purchase ads from Google by bidding for a certain word or group of words. People who search for those words, will click on them, and be directed to your blog. Your cost per click will vary according to the word you choose and how many people are bidding for it at a given time. If you sell high-margin items, this is an alternative that you should definitely explore.

* PURSUING THIRD-PARTY LINKS: If you are a writer, you will most likely be using your blog to promote your current and future books. In that case, you might wish to devote part of your time to pursue third-party links. If you are featured by a major website in your field, the number of visitors to your blog is sure to increase. Introduce yourself and inquire if that website publishes articles by guest writers. Usually, the answer will be negative. Don't be discouraged, move to the next site, and keep trying.

* USING RSS FEEDERS: This approach needs lots of patience, but in the long-term, is by far the most solid. RSS feeders are automatic distribution systems that disseminate the content of your blog to those who wish to receive it. Install one in your blog, so that your audience can subscribe to your posts. Some readers will try it only for a while and that is perfectly fine. Those who really like what you write will stay and allow you to grow.

Your expectations for your blog should be in line with your long-term goals. By posting shocking material, you might attract hundreds of one-time readers, but those are not worth much. What you want is to attract people who move in the same direction as you do.

Typing your name on Google and Yahoo remains the best way to measure how fast your influence is spreading. If you begin your blog from scratch, from absolutely zero, what sort of expectations should you have? How do you know if you are progressing at a good speed?

If you do not have an advertising budget and are not building on previous celebrity status, you would be doing well if you manage to accumulate a few hundred readers or third-party links after six months. If that is the case, congratulations, you are doing great. Your blog belongs to those who stay.

About the Author

JOHN VESPASIAN writes about rational living. He has resided in New York, Madrid, Paris, and Munich. His stories reflect the values of entrepreneurship, tolerance, and self-reliance. See John Vespasian's blog about rational living.

http://johnvespasian.blogspot.com

Number of Businesses Using Network Marketing Continues to Increase

by George Wakeham

Network marketing holds an important place in a country's economy.

According to statistics published by the Direct Selling Association (DSA) in the year 2000, additional income was the main reason for Americans choosing this line of home based business. Worldwide statistics of the DSA show that the number of people who have opted for this line of business has increased from 58 million in 2006 to 62 million in 2007, underlining the importance of network marketing as an effective income source.

Network marketing and direct sales assumed great significance during the recent recession when lay-offs became the order of the day. One should keep in mind that profits from network marketing do not start pouring in from day one. However, network marketing is a high paying business option provided a good compensation scheme has been selected.

Network marketing home businesses are the ideal solution for corporates that have closed down their marketing sectors. The companies need to sell their products or face a loss. Since there is no better sales network that they can turn to for a job that cannot be outsourced - networking marketing online enterprises will have plenty of business to look forward to.

The uniqueness of multi-level marketing which is a form of network marketing is that an affiliate spends the time and effort to train and motivate those he introduces down the chain. This results in creating leaders, entrepreneurs and a skilled sales force in the unorganized sector. The multi-level marketing structure also helps an online business to introduce its products to customers and locations that it may not have been able to reach out to on its own.

The affiliates of multi-level marketing programs are on the frontline and feel the pulse of the customer. They are extremely well placed to provide inputs about customer likes, dislikes and usage patterns which are beneficial for market research and constant innovation.

Theoretically, when an online business opts for a multi-level marketing model of business, it can shift its focus from selling and stocking to improving product quality.

Information technology has indirectly benefited from this form of marketing with more people opting to use network marketing to generate leads online. The Networking marketing industry has created a demand for web designers, developers, content providers, SEO experts, telemarketing service providers and web hosting companies. In the process, networking marketing improves the technical skills of the pursuers of this line of business, making them more IT savvy.

About the Author

George Wakeham is a business coach and mentor that assists serious entrepreneurs in building a profitable online business with multiple incomes streams. George and his team have assisted hundreds of people in generating profits that exceed $250K or more in their first year. For more information and to contact George, visit: http://NETWORKINGOPPORTUNITIESFORWEALTH.COM

How to Make Search Engine Spiders Improve Your Rankings

by Eric Johnson

When it comes to getting your website listed at the top of the search engines keyword search rankings, it is essential for you to gain a deeper understanding of the search engine spiders that crawl over your website. After all, it is the spiders that determine the relevance of your website and decide where your site will land in the search engine results page. Therefore, by learning how to control the direction of the spiders, you can be certain your website will rise in rankings.

Gaining Control with the Help of Robots.txt

You may think that gaining control of search engine spiders is an impossible task, but it is actually easier than you might think when you take advantage of a handy little tool called the robots.txt file. With the robots.txt file, you can give the spiders the direction they need to locate the most important pages on your website while preventing them from wasting time on the more obscure pages such as your About Us and Privacy Policy pages. After all, these pages won't do much to increase your search engine ranking and won't help your target market find your website, so why should the spiders waste their time exploring these pages when ranking your site?

Another positive aspect to using a robot.txt file is the fact that it prevents the spiders from indexing duplicate pages. This is beneficial because having duplicate content can actually reduce your search engine ranking. So, while you are making changes to your website or working on an area that isn't fully developed yet, you can instruct the spiders to leave those pages alone until you are ready for them to be crawled. The same is true if you have a blog on your website, as a blog post created in WordPress will show up in the main post page, in an archive page, in a category page and as a tag page. With the help of the robots.txt tool, you can instruct the spiders to look only at the main post page.

With the help of your robot.txt files, you can tell the search engine spiders which pages they should and should not search through and index. It is important to keep in mind, however, that the robots.txt tool is meant to be used to prevent search engine spiders from searching certain pages. Therefore, you will only need to use it on those pages you don't want the spiders to crawl.

Implementing the Robots.txt Tool

To successfully use the robots.txt tool, you first need to determine which pages you don't want the spiders to search. Then, slowly begin making the changes to your site. By using the tool on only one or two pages at a time, you will be better capable of identifying mistakes that you may have made during the process.

To make your changes, you will need to add the robots.txt file to the root directory of your domain or to your subdomains. Adding it to your subdirectories will not work. For example, you may add the robots.txt file to a url such as http://domain.com/robots.txt or to http://privacypolicy.domain.com/robots.txt. But, adding it to a subdirectory such as http://www.domain.com/privacypolicy/robots.text will not work. With just one robots.txt file within your root directory, you can manage your entire site. If you have subdomains, however, you will need a robots.txt file for each one that you need to manage. You will also need separate robots.txt files for your secure (https) and nonsecure (http) pages.

Creating a Robots.txt File

Creating a robots.txt file is a relatively simple process, as you only need to name your text file robots.txt within any text editor, such as Textpad, NotePad or Apple TextEdit. Your robots.txt file only needs to contain two lines in order to be effective. If you wanted to stop the spiders from searching the archives of the blog on your site, for example, you would add the following to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: * Disallow: /archives/

The "User-agent" line is used to define which search engine spiders you want to have blocked. By placing the asterisk (*) here, you are instructing all search engine spiders to avoid the specified pages. You can, however, target specific search engine spiders by replacing the asterisk with the following codes:

* Google - Googlebot

* Yahoo - Slurp

* Microsoft - msnbot

* Ask - Teoma

The "Disallow" line specifies which part of the site you want the spiders to ignore. So, if you want the spiders to ignore the categories portion of your blog, for example, you would replace "archives" with "category" and so on. If you wanted to instruct the spiders to ignore multiple sections, you would simply add a new "Disallow" line for each area you want to be ignored. Just as you can name specific areas that you want the spiders to avoid, you can also list specific areas that you want specific spiders to view. For example, while you may want most spiders to avoid a specific area, you may want the MSN mediabot, Google image bot or Google AdWords bot to visit those areas. In this case, you can use the asterisk to instruct all search engines to avoid the area while instructing a specific spider to allow the same area. If you want Google's Adsense bot to access a folder, for example, you would create the following command:

User-agent: * Disallow: /folder/

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google Allow: /folder/

You can also use your robots.txt files to prevent dynamic URLs from being indexed by the search engine spiders. You can accomplish this with the following template:

User-agent: * Disallow: /*&

With this command, you are instructing the spiders to index only one of the URLs that matches the parameters you have set. For example, if you had the following dynamic URLs:

* /greatcars/details.php?propcode=ANCHORS&SRCH=tr

* /greatcars/details.php?propcode=ANCHORS&vr=1

* /greatcars/details.php?propcode=ANCHORS

Your robots.txt instructions will tell the spiders to only list the third example because it will disallow any URLs that start with a forward slash (/) and contain the & symbol. You can use the same strategy to block any URLs containing a question mark by using the following:

User-agent: * Disallow: /*?

Or, you can block all directories that contain a specific word in the URL. For example, you might create a robots.txt file such as the following:

User-agent: * Disallow: /corvette*/

With this command, any page with a URL containing the word "Corvette" will not be crawled by the spiders. It is important to use caution when using these directives, however, as they will cause the spiders to avoid all pages containing the word you specify. As a result, you may accidentally block pages that you do want to be indexed. If you do want to block all but one or two pages with URLs containing a specific word, you can create a robots.txt file that specifically allows the page you still want to be indexed. In this case, your robots.txt file would look something like this:

User-agent: * Disallow: /corvette*/ Allow: /greatcards/corvettesandvipers/details.html

It is also possible for you to instruct the spiders to avoid an entire folder on your website while still allowing it to access specific pages within that folder. To do this, you would write something like:

User-agent: * Disallow: /category/ Allow: /category/just-this-page.html

It is important to note that the search engine spiders will ignore general directives if you have one that addresses a specific spider. For example, if you create the following robots.txt:

User-agent: * Disallow: /category/

User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /archives/

The Google spider will still index the category page because you listed a directive that was specific to the Googlebot, which overrides the directive that addresses all search engine spiders. So, if you list a specific spider in your robots.txt, you need to individually list all of the things you want that spider to avoid. In this example, you would have to create the following robots.txt file to get Google to avoid the category and archives sections while telling all other spiders to avoid the category section:

User-agent: * Disallow: /category/

User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /archives/ Disallow: /category/

If you want the spiders to avoid indexing certain types of files, you will need to use the dollar sign symbol. To instruct the spiders to avoid PDF files, for example, you would use the following:

User-agent: * Disallow: /*.pdf$

You would use the same patter for other types of files that you may want to be avoided by the spiders, such as .gif$, .jpg$ or .jpeg$.

Addressing Other Search Engine Concerns

In addition to blocking certain pages from being indexed by the search engines, there are a number of other concerns you may address with the robots.txt tool. For example, if the search engine spiders are downloading your pages too quickly and causing difficulties with your server, you can add a crawl-delay directive to your file that will tell the spider how long it should wait between downloads. In general, it is best to set this directive low, such as somewhere between 0.5 and 1, and then to increase it later if necessary. This robots.txt file would look something like:

User-agent: * Crawl-delay: 0.5

Google does not follow the crawl delay directive, however, and it generally isn't necessary to add this directive to your robots.txt file.

Another handy aspect of the robots.txt file is that it can help you create a path to your XML sitemap. By adding a line such as:

Sitemap: http://www.yoursitename.com/sitemap.xml

By using your robots.txt file in this way, you can submit your XML sitemap to search engines without registering with a variety of different Webmaster Tools programs. You can also store your XML sitemap anywhere you like with this tool, which can be helpful if you manage several sites and want to keep all of your XML sitemaps in one place.

Finally, it is important to realize that it is still possible for a search engine to index pages that you have included in your robots.txt file. There are a number of reasons why this may happen. For example, if someone created a link to the page, it will still get crawled through that link. To close this opening, you will need to unblock the page from your robots.txt file and then place a meta noindex tag on the page before you put the page back on your robots.txt file.

About the Author

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A Sneak Peak at Web 3.0

by Kristie Lorette

Last week, I attended a webinar on the future of marketing. While you have to deal with what is going on in marketing in your daily business life, it's also important to know what you're working toward. You can't get somewhere without knowing where you're going so I thought it would be interesting to share some of this information with you.

3 ways Web 3.0 is changing the marketing landscape

1. Bye-bye keywords. While keywords will still play a role in search engine marketing, Web 3.0 is more than the keywords itself. Founder of Bintro.com claims that semantics will play more of a vital role than keywords. What he means by semantics is that he sees copy going away from keywords and more towards conversational sentences that make sense. We've seen some of this already with blogging. Blogs tend to have more of a conversational tone that readers on all levels can enjoy and learn from.

2. Going mobile. The United States has been a mobile society for quite some time now, but the future of mobile phone use across the globe is expected to increase. The widening reach of mobile phone use will be answered by Web 3.0 with more and more transactions taking place on mobile phones. It is expected that 50% of the world will be using a mobile phone by the end of 2010. Again, this is not in the United States. This is the world.

Think about what mobile phone transactions will do for business. Picture this. You're out to dinner with your spouse. While you're in the lobby waiting for your table, you strike up a conversation with the gentleman sitting next to you and learn he is the ideal client for your product or service. You hook him and he bites. He wants to buy. You pull out your cell phone and process his purchase with his credit card and your cell phone-all in the lobby of the restaurant. You can complete the transaction right now while the sale is hot, rather than having to send an invoice when you return to the office tomorrow or send them to your website and hope they make the purchase.

3. Videos marketing. We've seen the popularity of videos emerge online with the invention of sites such as YouTube. Web 3.0 is going to take the use of videos one step further when it comes to marketing. It'll be less about interrupting your customer's experience and more about creating an experience. Instead of buying a pop-up window ad that pops up when they type in a web address or land on a website, your video ad will be on the website they're visiting. Most Internet users realize that if they click on a banner ad, for example, that they will be directed away from the site they are on. With a video ad, however, when they are ready to hear and see what you have to say, they can hit the play button and watch the video without ever leaving the site they have come to visit. This enhances the customer's visit to the site rather than interrupting it.

Change is on the horizon in how you market and conduct business online. It may change the way you write your marketing copy, accept payments for your products and services, or the types of advertising you buy for your business. Web 2.0 changed the way we do everything online and Web 3.0 continues to alter our approach. Be aware of these changes and start to prepare your marketing efforts now so your business benefits from these changes in the future.

About the Author

Kristie Lorette is a freelance writer that specializes in helping businesses and entrepreneurs create copy that sizzles, motivates, and sells. She is also the editor of The Inky Dot, a bi-monthly e-newsletter that offers tips, tricks, and advice on writing and marketing tips for businesses. You can learn more about Kristie and subscribe to The Inky Dot at studiokwriting.com