In-Tune News You’ll Want To Use

A lot of my life’s lessons have been expensive, but maybe none so much as my earliest experiences on the Internet.

I immediately saw the potential and jumped in. I could now check traffic before leaving home, shop at home, and send a birthday card without a stamp.

Soon I discovered money could be made online and I jumped into that, too. In no time at all I’d handed hundreds of dollars to people who promised me I’d have a big car, home on the beach, and never have to go to an office again.

I eventually realized the secret is to screen the offers to determine those which are legitimate business opportunities. And, over the years, I’ve made some money.

I’m not rich yet, but I’ve learned a lot, earned some money, and still love the Net.

When my granddaughter was born, my daughter-in-law figured that something had to change.

Although she’d gone to work in an office when their firstborn was a toddler, she and my son knew that two little ones equal five times the work.

She wanted to stay home with the kids but didn’t want to give up her income entirely. When I suggested a home office, she balked. She said she’d been told it is very hard finding legitimate home based businesses.

We went online and I showed her several sites where she could find excellent employers who offered work at home jobs. She applied to several.

Currently she is working as a virtual call center representative and builds her schedule around her family. The income helps out and she’s enjoying working at home.

When non-profit organizations aren’t out changing the world, they’re appealing to supporters and the public for donations. Fundraising is a constant challenge for non-profit organizations and it’s not because people don’t want to give the money - it’s because people don’t always know that there’s a need.

Fundraising efforts include direct mailings, advertising, and marketing campaigns. Each of these is costly and there’s no way to guarantee return on investment. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to gain exposure and elicit donations without having to dip into the coffers? You can - they’re called “editorial placements,” or as we in media relations like to say “free advertising.”

Newspapers and magazines live and die by their content. If people don’t want to read what they’re printing, they’re in trouble. Being able to offer a print publication (or even a broadcast network) with a story that will entertain, educate, or inspires its readers is a challenge, but well worth it if it’s printed.

Which of the following newspaper placements do you think will garner more public response: an ad placed in the “weekender” or “volunteer opportunity” sections describing your organization and asking for donations; or a touching feature story about how the organization is making a difference in the community? The feature story will almost undoubtedly send more people to an organization’s Web site than an ad, and the funny this is that the feature story cost the organization nothing to secure.

Why does the public respond more strongly to a feature than an ad? Because appearing in the media provides instant legitimization. People tend to trust the organizations or people they see in the paper or on TV. If you run a non-profit animal shelter that is featured on the weekend nightly news’ adopt-a-pet segment, chances are the public will think of you first when looking to adopt a pet as opposed to if you simply placed an ad in the Sunday paper every week.

So how do you obtain “free advertising?” By reaching out to the media every chance you get. Smaller organizations that utilize community support can offer personal feature stories on certain overachieving volunteers. The media loves a good “feel good” story: how one volunteer has made such a difference, how a beneficiary of the organization’s services is thriving now, and so on. How did your organization start? Did someone sell their business to establish a women’s shelter? Does a local mother care for homeless animals on her farm? Here are some ideas to help inspire you to develop a story for your organization or cause.

Every person has a story.
Discover the stories behind the people in your organization and make the media aware of them. By “story,” I mean a simple, conversational story - the type you might tell a friend. Pitching a story to the media doesn’t mean you have to write it and offer it in its entirety. When you pitch a story, you simply let your media contact know about it. They’ll decide if it’s a fit and pursue it further.

To get an idea of the kinds of stories the paper and local networks like, spend a few weeks tuning in or scanning the pages. It will be obvious the kinds of things they’re looking for.

Pay close attention to the journalists and reporters who write on topics related to yours. These are the people you are going to want to contact with your story.

Local outlets want local stories, and this can represent multiple opportunities for media coverage. For instance, if the person your story focuses on lives in a town other than where your organization is based, you can pitch the story to both locales.

Let the world know what’s happening.
Hosting or sponsoring an event can garner more attention than a two-line announcement in the calendar section. What is the story surrounding your event? If you’re launching a clothing drive for professional attire to help women get jobs, highlight a success story, such as a woman associated with your organization who overcame hardships and landed a great job that changed her life. If you’re hosting a casual fun-day dog show for kids to benefit a local animal shelter, find a pet owner who plans to enter his or her adopted shelter dog.

Even your fundraising events can be promoted through editorial placements. You don’t have to have a high-profile MC or a gala to make the news. If this is an annual event, how do you expect to surpass last year’s donations? How were the funds used? If they built a library or added a wing to a senior center, what’s the story behind that?

Announce Everything
Organizations in large cities face direct competition for donations and media coverage. To help improve your chances of media attention, do everything you can to stay in the news (or at least in the minds of the news writers in your area). Is there a staffing change or new hire (a positive one)? Announce it. If you’ve added a service to your organization, announce it. In sales and marketing, a consumer needs to hear about a product seven times before he or she will buy it, on average. The same is true for donations to non-profits. The more often the public sees your organization in print or hears about it on the radio or on television, the more likely they will be to consider donating. Keep that in mind the next time you’ve got news to share!

Media relations is about building relationships and having an idea of what the public wants. It’s not as complicated as it may seem, after all, you are the public. What do you want to read? What would be interesting to you? Talk to your co-workers and friends and find out their opinions. Identify the media people in your area who cover the types of things you and your organization do and begin to build a relationship. Before you know it, you may have them calling you for a story.

Drew Gerber is Co-creator of Press Kit 24/7(http://www.PressKit247.com), an online press kit technology. In addition to helping non-profits and small businesses manage their own media relations through technology, Gerber is Co-Owner of Wasabi Publicity, Inc., a PR firm representing causes, nonprofits, and businesses that make a difference. An expert in the art of listening and in building relationships, Gerber can be reached at Drew@publicityresults.com.

Most small business owners equate expenses with overhead items and capital expenditures such as buying a PC, notebook, printer, modem or version upgrade to Microsoft Office XP. These kind of small business owners often desperately need your computer consulting business assistance to see the big picture and the total solution.

In order to help your prospects and clients leverage their IT infrastructure, you need to elevate your price quotes, proposals and invoices from transaction status to investment.

Your Computer Consulting Business as an Investment

An investment usually has at least the perception of quantifiable and somewhat immediately measurable benefits. If you’re still proposing individual hardware and software purchase recommendations, it’s time to move your sales pitch toward a more cohesive, proactive technology plan - of which your proposed small business network becomes “mission control”.

Small business IT expenses tend to be somewhat random and haphazard. When technology is looked at as overhead, purchases are often made only when there’s an emergency.

Have a Plan

When IT investments are made, on the other hand, there’s a written plan of attack. This is the project plan that your computer consulting business started developing during your initial consultation and IT audit for how standards are supported, how purchases are made, how projects are implemented and how pilots are rolled into production use.

Take the results of the IT audit, or similar fact-finding mission, and be proactive. To run a successful computer consulting business, you must help your small business clients get out of the fire extinguisher mode.

Understanding Client’s Downtime Costs

While the investments associated with data backup, power protection or virus protection certainly are not trivial, they often become quite small in the whole scheme of things — when you compare costs to the value of the data being stored and the potential business impact if the data were partially or completely lost. It’s crucial for you to understand your computer consulting business’ client’s true costs of downtime.

It’s much easier to protect data when the data is well organized. In many small businesses, you’ll find critical data being stored on an individual’s local “c:” drive. Because the data is so decentralized, it’s nearly impossible to adequately protect the valuable information.

The Bottom Line about the Computer Consulting Business

Alternatively, data may be stored on a server in a disorganized fashion, making it difficult for others in the company to locate the files at a later date. You can add tremendous value to the installation, and help increase ROI on your client’s networking investment, by devising a well-organized file, folder, and share structure.

Copyright MMI-MMVI, Computer Consulting 101. All Worldwide Rights Reserved. {Attention Publishers: Live hyperlink in author resource box required for copyright compliance}

Joshua Feinberg, co-owner of Computer Consulting 101, gets computer consulting businesses more steady high-paying clients. Now you can too with your free access pass to proven computer consulting secrets at www.Computer-Consulting-101.com

I get hundreds of emails per week and as you might expect, many of the emails contain similar questions. There are probably ten questions that I get asked most. I will save nine of them for another time as I want to talk about just one of the top ten questions today.

The basic form of the question varies but essentially it is the same and here it is:

‘I have read everything I can about marketing online.

I understand how to get traffic to my website.

I know how to make my website appealing to customers.

I know about generating income with ‘backend’ products.

I understand everything you have taught me over the past X years….

BUT WHAT DO I ACTUALLY DO?’

Yup, the question is simply ‘What should my online business actually be - what should I offer - what do I do?’

Of course, this is the $64,000 question and there is no easy answer. If I could pluck guaranteed business ideas out of the air every time someone asked for one, I would be a rich man. Unfortunately, I can’t and neither can anyone else. Even if someone did have a pool of surefire ideas, would they really be willing to share them with others for nothing?

However, I can try and help you come up with your own idea by making suggestions and eliminating some, almost certainly, bad ideas.

Firstly, do something that interests you and that you know about - if you are not interested in your product and don’t have the first clue what you are talking about, I can guarantee that you will not be successful. For example, don’t try and sell products about making money on the Internet if you yourself are not making money on the Internet.

Secondly, don’t do something that is already being done by thousands of other people unless you can add a highly unique ‘twist’. For example, you will never make any money setting up a general online auction site - there are already plenty of established sites with millions of registered members. Why would anyone want to use a brand new auction site with no members when they can sell on eBay?

Thirdly, (and I know I keep banging on about this but it is important), find a small market that is easy to target rather than a huge, general market. Small doesn’t have to mean ’small’ on the Internet. The money is in the niche markets - trust me.

I know how hard it is to come up with an original idea but it isn’t impossible and plenty of people do it everyday. If you can’t come up with something yourself, spend time surfing the Net and ‘brainstorming’ with others in forums such as: http://www.traderonlineforum.com

Copyright 2004 Richard Grady

About The Author

Richard Grady has been helping people earn online since 1998. Find out more about Richard at: http://www.thetraderonline.com. Free wholesale search engines: UK- http://www.wholesale118.co.uk and US http://www.thewholesaletrader.com.

Marketing your business is a must if you want your business to succeed. One method is via leaflet distribution which is a proven and effective method for getting your business name infront for your target market. It is important you know where and who your target market is as canvasing an area will produce poor results. When doing your leaflet distribution your distribution company will be able to give your vital information about your target demographics. They use data from the royal mail that let them know where your tarhget market lives as well as their income and age group. Knowing this before you distribute can increase your response rate and give you a better outcome for your campaign.

As your leaflet distribution campaign is on the way you can check up on the progress of your campaign by calling your leaflet distribution company and asking for a progress report. A reputable leaflet distribution company will be able to provide this without any problem. Do remember as with any marketing results can be predicable but not guaranteed.remember that the results of leaflet distributoin aren’t guaranteed. A poorly planned or targeted campaign will be a waste of money, which can put you out of pocket if you are a small company.

The first thing required for successful communication - be it in sales or something
else - is to find a common interest.

Success is achieved when two individuals agree they have the same goal and are
discussing which of them is going to do what in order for them to reach their
common goal faster, easier and with greater certainty.

If the person you are talking with feels, even slightly, that he has been cheated
or that you took advantage of him - by him being your means to reaching your
goals - he folds from the game. Often, this other person could be a customer
who feels your greatest desire is selling your product - without considering
whether that product will meet his needs or desires.

If you don’t first harmonize, by finding a common interest, you end up creating
a situation wherein each party is engulfed in defending their interests: one
is proving why something is good and beneficial to the other and the other is
defending himself by proving why that same thing is of no use to him and doesn’t
suit his needs.

By doing this, you presume:

1) You will convince the other party to accept your truth, or worse …

2) You can make the other party feel so “good” about the purchase that they will
be back to buy more from you!

This is often impossible. Sure, your prospects may actually buy, sometimes -
but this doesn’t come even close to securing a long-term relationship with them
and ensure they will repeatedly purchase from you.

The solution is somewhere else, and a very simple one at that: once you discover
the common goals you and your prospect share (such as ensuring greater success
for your prospect’s company), you help him realize those goals.

Mr. Ron is a sports shoe importer. He was always having problems negotiating
with his suppliers. Then he changed something. Before he sat down at the table
again to negotiate with his supplier, he said:

“Look, we all have the same goal - getting your top-notch sport shoes to the
public. Let’s not waste time arguing and fighting over petty issues. Why don’t
we imagine there’s a customer standing here in front of us right now. Let’s all
put our suggestions on the table and discuss how each one of us can help make
this customer’s decision easier and faster and what we can do to make him want
to return more often and buy more of your shoes from me.”

Just saying these few sentences placed him and his supplier on equal and common
ground to negotiate. A few days later, he sent me a note saying this was the
best and fastest deal he ever made. And it was so simple …

>> How an Importer Cultivates Loyalty From His Customers - Even When The Competion
Offers Higher Percentages

How do you negotiate in the real world? How can you convince your prospects
to buy something from you and keep buying it over and over again? The easiest
and most successful aproach is helping the store (in any way possible) sell your
goods as fast and easy as possible so that they will see buying from you as an
opportunity and not like purchasing from you is a liability.

That said, the best starting place for negotiating is: develop an efficient marketing
system for your product (purchasing, logistics, marketing, sales, after-sales
activities, follow up, etc.), test it in the real world and then offer it to
the store along with the product.

This way you’re not just selling your product as if you were saying: Here it
is, now make the best of it … and by the way, we’re not through yet; whether
you buy something from me today or not, I’ll be back soon to sell you this product
(if you decide against purchasing it today) or a new product…

Offer the tool and the solution. The fabric and the scissors.

When would you rather buy an unknown product from someone to sell? Would you
choose the untested product or the one that that has been market tested, comes
with a case study that precisely shows the marketing system they used and how
to handle its marketing, sales, product education, market approach and similar?

And what if they could even forecast the actual and approximate sales success
for this product, on the basis of previous experience, based on your sales team
working according to the suggested system (in other words: if you already knew
approximately how much risk the product presents for your company)? Or, what
if they even showed you how all these procesess work in practice? Or even further,
what if they offered you sales team training along with the product?

If you offered all this, you really wouldn’t need to have any polished negotiating
skills to generate the client’s interest - you are already offering them exactly
what they want and need … and more. If you did all this consistently and as
part of your work ethic, you would find yourself in the desirable situation of
you being able to choose whom to trust to sell your product.
The sales people would be seeking you out instead of the other way around!

This is negotiating for the new era that is not only marked by greater sales
success, but also by deeper and more friendly human relationships, an excellent
flow of information, the ability to act without fear or bad feelings, and above
all, alot of satisfaction, pleasure, respect and joy. This is what happens when
you solve problems where they begin: at their cause!

About the Author

Nikola Grubisa is a European Marketing and HRM Consultant and the co-author of
a European bestseller “The Millionaire Mindset: How to Tap Real Wealth from Within”.
If you are wondering how top marketers are marketing in Europe and at the same
time want to discover the path to true wealth, please subscribe to his new free
eZine “The Millionaire Weekly Memo”. Click here: http://www.TheMillionaireMind.net?a1-aa

Many people think that the Internet offers a tremendous marketplace, while others will question the extra effort and money to purchase and design a website. Some of the money-making values of having a website are summarized in the following paragraphs for your consideration.

1. If you have a local group of customers and want to expand to the neighboring areas, states or even, countries, without spending massive amounts of costly advertising money or even leasing more company space, then the Internet can work very well for you. Niche markets (small groups of customers scattered about that are interested in a very specific item or service) also work very well on the Internet.

2. As a business owner, you need to provide a map and directions to your store for your customers and enable them to look up specials, discounts, limited merchandise, or varieties and prices of each item you market. For instance, let’s say you sell cheesecakes and you would like to spend less time on the phone explaining the different varieties, how many people the different varieties will serve, prices, and availability. Here’s how this could work online for you. You would provide a secure, encrypted order form thereby collecting the person’s credit information as well as their address, phone, and email information. They would list their preferences as to varieties and sizes of cheesecakes. This form would be sent directly to your email or to your fax so that you would have the items ready for the customer to pick up that day or the day they designate. You would have the cheesecakes shipped for those that cannot make it to your store. When a customer returns to order another product from your website, they would not have to fill out most of the form as it would already be in your database.

3. You build their confidence when you show customers that you have their best interest and shopping convenience in mind when you open a website and properly maintain that website with new and updated information. Customers will appreciate being able to read about the owners, the store’s policies, the service after the sale, and any other items you think would develop a rapport to allow them to do more business with you. Having a website allows your company to develop its style and branding and develops a sense of security for the customers in doing business with your firm.

4. A small operation can look just as important as a large corporation. A website builds confidence and value into your products and services and allows you to receive orders you may have missed without being on the Internet.

5. If you do advertising on the radio or TV, newspapers or direct mail, having a website gives the customer a place to review what you tell them in the ads in much more detail. Every ad should reference your website so customers can view the details at a time and place that is convenient 24 hours a day seven days a week. You can quickly change and update information on a website without the expense of printed materials.

6. You can do any promotion online that you can do offline and much cheaper. Coupons, money-off sales, discounts, employee recognition, limited merchandise you want to move, all these can be marketed on your website. Keeping the website up-to-date can be provided by your webmaster at a very nominal fee.

I hope that you can see from some of the above points that having your own website is necessary in today’s marketplace for any small or medium-sized business as well as any at-home business. Customers are out there looking for you and you need to take advantage of where they are looking and, right now, that is the INTERNET! Since your competitors have a website, they are perceived as being more up-to-date. The ease, convenience, special online savings, information about your company’s mission, your services, your ability to communicate with customers are all important reasons for having a dynamic online website. Online marketing will only continue to grow…WILL YOUR CUSTOMERS FIND YOU ONLINE?

Hans Hasselfors is a successful business entrepreneur and internet marketing consultant. Get the net working for you. Join a community of like-minded authors and publishers and make your living online. Become a member of our article directory. www.SubmitYourNewArticle.com

Every internet business needs traffic.

No matter what business you have, extra 100, 200 or 1000
visitors per month will benefit YOU with extra sales and cash in
your bank account.

A website with no traffic is like a shop in a desert where even
birds don’t pay a visit.

And the result follows, that site never makes a single red dime.

Getting targeted traffic to a site is the toughest part in
building a profitable internet business, I am sure you know that.

And this is something you have to do consistently, each and
every single day.

Once you stop promoting your website your site traffic will fall
back to zero or just stay where it is right now.

The biggest reason most web businesses fail is due to lack of
traffic.

If your site is not making money, I bet it is everything to do
with your marketing and nothing to do with your product or
website.

A site with a decent copy will make hoards of money if you feed
it with continuous flow of non-stop lazer targeted traffic.

You can use my 6-step system right now to get non-stop surges of
instant life-time traffic and credibility.

1. Create approximately 50 quality articles in your niche.

Put a resource box below your articles with a 3 to 4 line ad of
your product and a link to your website.

2. Post these articles on your site and submit your pages to top
search engines like Google, Yahoo & MSN.

3. Now create a mini-ebook using these 50 articles.

4. Provide this quality ebook to your subscribers for free once
they subscribe to your ezine.

5. Give them free resell and distribution rights to your ebook
and allow them to pass it on to their friends or relatives.

6. Give them permission to post your articles on their site or
publish it in their ezines or newsletters.

Tell them to keep your resource box intact.

Using this simple 6-step system you will start receiving quality
traffic from…

1. Search Engines. 2. Your mini-ebook. 3. Other websites that
post your article. 4. Ezines and newsletters that publish your
articles.

This system will get you some few visitors initially.

But once these articles spread like wildfire you will have…

1. Hundreds if not thousands of incoming links to your site.

2. High search engine rankings.

3. Instant surges of free, lifetime, permanent, viral &
lazer-targeted traffic to your site, that will not stop even if
you want.

So make sure you start pumping up this system today to enjoy
complete ‘traffic-freedom’ in future.

Paid search seems like an easy nut to crack. Target the keywords that make sense for your business, write a compelling ad, manage the bidding process, and see the sales come in.

Unfortunately, due to the swarm of advertisers that have now embraced the medium as a quick alternative to gaining natural rankings, the market has become much more competitive and retailers need to consistently monitor paid search metrics to not spend marketing dollars unwisely. For a company to receive maximum ROI within paid search platforms, clickthroughs must be monitored for performance and various variables need to be tested to optimize the campaigns.

Although paid search ad platforms are technological marvels and one of the most advanced advertising mediums that have ever been invented, the reality is that paid search follows direct marketing rules that catalogers have been following for 100+ years. In the early days of catalogs, retailers realized that people in unique segments responded to different messaging in various ways.

To ensure that a catalog business would continue to grow, catalogers would take their learnings from a previous campaign and leverage them within subsequent mailings. They would change the ad copy, change the products etc - continually trying to exceed previous successes. Sometimes the changes would work - sometimes it wouldn’t - but catalogers were always trying increase their previous metrics.

The lessons of the past still hold true today in search marketing. Even though the level of variables may be less than an average print catalog, online retailers still need to consistently monitor the performance of their paid search advertising and recreate new ads with changes that better speak to consumers.

For those who may be new to paid search marketing - below are the variables that retailers can control within paid search:

1. Advertising Headline - The anchor text to the hyperlink within the ad

2. Advertising copy - The brief text below the headline that delivers the desired message

3. Landing Page - What webpage the consumer is taken to after clicking on the ad

4. Cost per click - How much the retailer is charged after the consumer clicks

Let’s examine each in detail and outline how to optimize each piece for success…

Advertising headline

This may be the most important piece of your paid search advertisement. It’s what the consumer first sees and an attention grabbing headline drives further consumer action.

Both overture (Yahoo’s paid engine) and Google Adwords provide an advantage to retailers that utilize the searched for keywords within their headline. In these instances, Google and Overture BOLDFACE the keyword which makes the word better stand out within the ad.

Although there are no concrete metrics to support this claim, it is widely believed in online marketing circles that the boldface type improves click through rates and drives more traffic to a site.

We recommend that when you are creating your campaign - you include your keywords in every ad headline. Not only will it convey a sense of relevance to the consumer because you are re-communicating the keyword that they are looking for, it will also stand out from the pack due to the bold type. Follow this rule and you are instantly ahead of 50% of your competition in optimizing your ad for maximum click through rates.

Advertising Copy

When writing advertising copy for search engines remember these three words - “Call to Action”. In the limited space that a retailer has to persuade, the advertising copy has to suggest some type of benefit by engaging the consumer to take action with the advertisement. Below are a couple examples of incorporating “Calls to Action”.

• Solid Oak Furniture , See our difference in quality
• Motorcycles for enthusiasts - Learn more about the leader in motorbikes
• Get ahead of the competition, Meet us to learn how you can sell more stuff

Each one of these examples is very simple but they all have a common theme of stating a benefit and providing the consumer with a next step. This tactic engages the consumer and makes an ad more compelling - hence a higher CTR rate.

Landing Page

It’s amazing the number of poor landing pages that are in search marketing today. Retailers pay upwards of 30-50 cents a click to send someone to a homepage! In any retail paid search program it is crucial that the landing page of an ad takes a consumer to that exact product or product category page.

A new tactic that retailers are embracing is to take users directly to checkout/shopping cart when they search for a specific sku or product.

For example, if a consumer searches for Sony DVD Player xjh432 (lets say to do product research), forward thinking retailers are putting the product searched for already in a shopping cart while showing related accessories, promotions, and warranty plans that correspond with the product at the time of the landing page.

This tactic is fairly aggressive, maybe almost too much so, but could be an interesting method to test when measuring your search strategies.

Cost Per Click

If you are like the rest of the retail community participating in paid search, you have seen PPC prices rise anywhere from 30-70% over the last year. In what was like a mad bidding rush, retailers embraced automated bid management tools to ensure the top spot rankings. In reality however, the top two spots are not always the spots that produce the best ROI on marketing dollars.

Next time you are configuring a paid campaign, try bidding into the 3rd and 4th slots of a search term. You will see a drop in traffic but will also likely see an increase in search sales conversion. When placed in those spots, retailers get traffic of consumers that have already spent time within the first three listings (both paid and natural). These consumers are more likely to convert in the 3rd or 4th spot as long as the price is competitive, policies regarding returns and shipping are clearly outlined, and the site provides adequate content.

If a retailer can save approximately 40% off of PPC prices within this spot - it becomes a no brainer to leave the #1 spot to someone who has much deeper pockets, as you net more profit contribution in the long run.

Be rewarded from testing

Within all of these components, continuously test to “beat the control”. Try new approaches and new phrases and try reaching new customer segments at higher percentages.

By improving your clickthrough rates within the Adwords platform, you will be rewarded with a higher ranking without paying any incremental PPC costs. Google’s paid search platform algorithm has been built to reward retailers with better copy - retailers can consistently rank higher than competitors paying more by having better formulated ads.

Google also offers advertisers the ability to run two ads concurrently at once within an ad group. Take advantage of this functionality by testing two distinctly different ads. See which one converts worse, at both a sales and clickthrough level, and change it to something new. Run the ad again and keep monitoring progress.

By consistently optimizing your paid search campaigns by testing and changing the four variables listed above you will maximize the profitability of your campaigns and be on your way to better understanding the motivations of your customers within a search marketing environment.

Craig Smith is the founder of Trinity Insight LLC - A consultancy that helps online retailers reach higher levels of success.

http://www.trinityinsight.com

The faster, you can build your opt-in email list, the more money you will make online. It is actually as simple as that. Yet we all know how difficult it is to get just one subscriber for your email newsletter or a single name for your opt-in email list.

Still, here’s a useful tip to help anybody build up his or her opt-in email list a lot faster. It is based on human nature, which is always an important aspect for marketers to consider in every promotion exercise they undertake.

Focus on a problem and then point to your email newsletter as the source of numerous excellent solutions for the problem.

Every marketer knows that folks respond much more quickly when they are trying to solve a problem. For instance if you are selling anti-spam software and have an opt-in email list then you should focus on producing useful articles on effective ways of reducing spam. You can then post a small part of your article at article directories and then tell your audience in the resource box at the bottom that to read the rest of your article, they will need to subscribe to your ezine or email newsletter.

This simple technique can help you build up your email opt-in list much faster than you ever thought possible.