What is Article Marketing and How Does it Work?

Article Marketing is the publication of written content on websites other than your own. Sometimes these websites may have similar content or products as your business. Sound like helping your competition? Here’s the catch. Your article includes a backlink – a link that leads to your own website. Simply put, you provide an article on other people’s websites that ends with a link back to your own website. The idea is that for those sites using your article, they must include the link back to your site.

The quality of your article’s content is a deciding factor in how many people will publish it on their sites. This is why it is very important that your articles be well written, purposeful, and relevant to the subject. If you don’t or can’t write the articles yourself, you might want to consider paying for someone to write for you. In the long run it will be worth it.

Is Article Marketing Effective

Article Marketing has become extremely popular because of the way search engines do their searching. There was a time when the number of visitors to a site was a critical factor in its listings with search engines such as Google or Yahoo. Today, however, the key determinant is the number of backlinks: pointers from other sites to yours. To understand how the backlinks work in relevancy to your page listing, you must first understand the search engine process.

Your page’s popularity, known as the page rank, is judged by two factors: how many backlinks there are to your site; and the popularity of the sites that those backlinks are on. For example, let’s say you have two backlinks to your site listed on two different websites. One of those sites, say Microsoft.com, has a very high page rank. The other, BobsDoItYourselfComputerRepair.com, has a pretty low page rank. Your site will receive more notice from the search engines because of the link on the more popular site. So, backlinks on high-profile sites will inevitably raise your page ranking.

Creating and Submitting Articles

When creating your articles, remember that quality is of utmost importance. People are looking for information, and a well-written, relevant article will position you as someone who knows what they are talking about in a reader’s mind. If you don’t think you can write your own articles, there are many online outlets for finding writers.

Once the article is written, add a link to your site along with your by-line. This is called a resource box and can include a little bit about you and your business as well as the link to your website.

Next, you will need to get your article submitted to other sites. You don’t have to do this yourself. There are literally thousands of article marketing source sites on the Internet that can do it for you. However, the more popular ones are those that produce the most effective traffic. Among these are EzineArticles.com, ArticleDashboard.Com, and GoArticles.Com. Each of these will provide excellent sources for backlinks, but be prepared to submit only well-written articles, as they tend to be quite thorough in their screening process.

Check Your Article Marketing Campaign

Once you have submitted your article, give it a few weeks to make its way out onto the World Wide Web. Then, use one of the many backlink-checking tools available on the net. Most are free and can be found by doing a simple web search. Domain-Pop.com and IWebTool.com provide some of the more popular tools. The larger search engines (i.e. Google.com) provide backlink-checking tools also. These programs are usually easy to use and require no download. Simply go to the site, put the web address of your site into the appropriate space, and hit enter. In a few seconds you will be able to see how many backlinks your site has and, in most cases, exactly what sites those backlinks are listed on.

Article Marketing is not only one of the most effective techniques for building your page rank and popularity, but is also one of the most simple and most inexpensive, particularly if you have good writing skills of your own. Remember to keep your article content similar to the content of your site. People surfing for the information in your articles will only click on the link in your resource box if it is relevant to their own personal interests. Also remember that article marketing takes time and effort. It doesn’t happen overnight. With every article you put out onto the web, you are putting out another way for potential visitors to find you. Over time, this will increase the traffic to your website and will eventually increase your sales.

Author’s Note: This article also published here.

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Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat. Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. Go to http://www.Brandsplat.com/ or visit our blog at: http://www.brandsplatblog.com/

Read more articles written by Enzo F. Cesario

All the search engine optimization (SEO) Internet marketing and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising isn’t going to create the sales you want with bad landing pages. You’d be just wasting your time and money.

And the truth is that almost EVERY page on your website is a landing page, except for your Privacy Policy, Terms of Use or Service, and possibly your About page.

I’ve seen websites more than DOUBLE their conversions with landing pages that are properly designed to convert traffic to conversions…those opt-in sign ups and direct sales.

Think about it — doubling your sales without increasing your PPC advertising or without increasing your SEO efforts! How much money could that put in your pocket?

When you take advantage of strategies like that, that’s when you start beating out your competition!

What’s Landing Page Optimization All About?

When searchers come to our websites from the search engines, they are in a path from one website to another. We have to interrupt that process, drawing these searchers into our website and into our story. We must balance the connection with our visitors and make an emotional connection, while offering them real substance, as well.

We MUST answer these questions:

1. where am I?

2. what can I do here (what is your offer)?

3. Why should I look here and STAY rather than click away? This MUST be answered in the top 4 to 4/12 inches of your Web pages (above the fold)

How Do You Begin Optimizing Your Landing Page Design?

First, start by clearly explaining what you want your website visitors to do and WHY they should do it.

Why should they buy from you or opt-in for future contact? What’s in it for them?

Why should they choose you over other websites they can visit? What separates you from your competition?

Essentially, what’s your Value Proposition?

You should be able to clearly explain the advantage to your website visitors in 2 to 3 short sentences.

Right now, if you’re not sure exactly how to describe your Value Proposition, you’re surely NOT alone! The great majority of people I coach with their websites are in the same boat, when they start out.

My suggestion: Start brainstorming and making good notes. It also helps to have the input of a Internet marketing consulting coach outside your business, who can help you clearly define and explain what you offer your website visitors in a compelling manner, without using your industry jargon and lingo.

Reduce Anxiety From Your Purchase And Opt-In Processes

Anxiety can also be defined as fear or concern. Now, you can never have a anxiety-free website, if you sell a product or service or if you seek an opt-in email address.

Anxiety occurs in opt-in sign up processes, when providing an email address. When making a purchase, providing credit card information causes anxiety.

But how can you REDUCE the anxiety to the least level possible?

There are many techniques you can follow to accomplish this.

One of the best examples is to post your Privacy Policy page link right next to your sign up button, for your opt-in contact. This helps reassure your visitors you aren’t selling their email address and will generate a higher opt-in conversion rate than not posting your privacy policy, all other things equal.

Other anxiety reducing techniques are:

1. emphasize credit card security when ordering 2. offer pricing guarantees 3. deal with product | service quality concerns with guarantees and third-party certifications, awards, etc.

These techniques must be used at the exact point where the anxiety occurs.

Next, Reducing Friction From Your Web Pages

Friction can also be defined as annoyance and irritation. To maximize your sales and opt-in conversion rate, you need to minimize the friction all across your website.

Friction occurs in the prospect’s MIND, not really on the page.

It is a Psychological resistance to a given element in the sales process.

So, how can you reduce friction?

One way is to limit fields to the minimum number needed for both purchase and opt-in forms. Friction = Length and Difficulty.

While space here limits a complete discussion of all the techniques you can take advantage of, another way to limit friction is to make your landing page design take advantage of natural eye movement, working with it, rather than against it. You’ve got to be careful with multi-column designs.

Wrapping It Up

Consider the value to you of an Internet marketing consulting coach, who can help maximize your landing page design at an affordable cost.

Using Landing Page Optimization techniques will help you potentially DOUBLE your conversions…your direct sales and opt-in sign ups…without increasing your PPC advertising expenses and without requiring higher SEO rankings.

This is real money we’re talking about.

And there are even coaches out there who can train you to do the work yourself, without you having to pay full-service prices (and without you having to spend the money or the time to become fully trained and certified in Landing Page Optimization).

This could turn out to be the KEY element missing from your Internet marketing plan.

Editor’s Note: This article previously published here.

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Marketing online since 2004, Paul Marshall can help you market on a budget. He’s a Landing Page Designer offering affordable marketing services (and d-i-y Coaching). Receive your Free Introductory Consultation, just visit Strategic Web Marketing.net today!

Read more articles written by Paul Marshall

Whether you are making direct sales from your website or sales lead generation (or both), optimizing for Google doesn’t need to be that hard.

In fact, in time you may find it easier to perform SEO for Google than for other search engines.

Remember That Google Is Much Smarter Than The Other Search Engines

Since Google is more intelligent, you have to treat them differently.

If you’re trying to spam them, their intelligence is going to be a problem for you. If you’re playing by the rules and providing valuable content for searchers, then you should have no problem.

What Google wants is valuable content that satisfies their users’ search queries. They want searchers to find what they’re looking for, not clicking the back button quickly, but who stay on the sites they visit.

There are some in the SEO community who believe time your visitors spent on your site is one of the calculations Google uses right now in their algorithm to assign organic rankings.

Whether this is the case or not is really irrelevant: we should all want to deliver quality content that meets our searchers query, keeps them on our sites and that leads to a conversion, a sale or sales lead generation.

Are You Optimizing For Yahoo! Search And Bing, Too?

With Yahoo! Search and Bing (formerly Live Search and previously MSN) you need to have the keyword phrase you optimize for on the page. There may be some exceptions, but this is a solid rule to follow.

The order of the keywords makes a difference with them, too.

As an example, with Google, Blue Widget and Widget Blue are treated the same way. Not so with Yahoo! and Live, they are treated as completely different search phrases.

Given the very high market share that Google has, you may want to just optimize for Google and not Yahoo! or Live. After all, depending on whose numbers you’re looking at, Google’s market share is basically 60% to 70% of all U.S. searches!

(And there are hundreds of other much smaller search engines, with such small market shares that they aren’t normally worth worrying about.)

But if you decide to also optimize for Yahoo! Search and for Live Search, then you will likely have to create more pages, to cover all your keyword phrases.

So, as you create more pages for your keywords, you clutter up the Internet, unless those pages are really unique, valuable content.

And then there is that duplicate content filter that Google has…you don’t want to run afoul of that.

If you do optimize for the other engines, unless the additional content is very unique, you might be advised to keep Google out of those pages (using your robots.txt file).

Knowing That Google Is More Intelligent, How Do We Optimize Differently For Google?

With Google’s use of LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing), your pages do NOT actually have to contain the keyword phrase(s) you’re optimizing for. But your pages had better contain words strongly related to your chosen keyword phrases.

In fact, it is common to see high ranking pages where the keyword phrase isn’t in any of the HTML tags and where it also isn’t in the page text, either. Common keyword density numbers for top ranking pages in Google range from 30% all the way down to 0% keyword density.

Why is this and how do we benefit performing Google optimization?

Google is smart enough to understand similar words and phrases (now is when we get to use that word Synonym from English class). Thus, the actual keyword phrase doesn’t have to be on the page. But words related to the same theme as your keyword phrases need to be on the page.

But if our keywords don’t actually have to be on the page for Google to understand the page is about our subject (our keyword phrases), how does Google make that determination?

Off-Page SEO Is The Key To Your Google Optimization And To Your Sales Lead Generation

The links from other websites to your Web pages and what these links say about your pages is the KEY to optimizing for Google. Remember, links need to be pointed towards your interior pages, not just to your home page.

And those links need anchor text.

Anchor text is the wording that people click on to go to your Web page, when the actual link doesn’t show your website url (and file name, if going to an interior page).

Anchor text tells Google (and to a lesser degree, other search engines) what your Web page is about.

Even if the actual keyword phrases aren’t used on your page, the theme of the page text should match the anchor text pointed to that page. You want the wording to be compatible and complimentary.

You don’t want to confuse Google as to your pages’ themes. That can cause real problems.

Quantity Versus Quality

When considering links to your Web pages, quantity is important. You will have to research your competition to give you an idea as to the number of links you may need.

Two tools you can look into are SEO Elite and OptiLink. You can Google both.

But MUCH more important is the quality of your links. The better quality your links, the fewer you will need versus your competition.

Part of how you can evaluate quality of potential links to your site is that site’s home page Google Page Rank.

Now, Google Page Rank is on a page-basis, not a site-wide basis. But the home page Page Rank can tell you if Google considers that site to be an “authority site”.

You can install the free Google toolbar if you haven’t already and activate the Page Rank feature. While the information is literally months old, it’s the easiest way to view a page’s Page Rank.

You want some links to your site from websites with a home page Google Page Rank of at least 5.

One thing you do want to watch: Don’t have to high a percentage of your links containing the same anchor text. Aim for no more than 50% of your anchor text to any page being the same exact anchor text.

Wrapping It Up

For effective Google optimization, start by pointing enough quality links to your Web pages. One-way links are much more effective than reciprocal links, where you link back to the site that has linked to you.

Stay away from triangulated or 3-way links schemes. This is where site A links to site B which in turn links to site C. This is a “no-no” which Google can catch and will penalize for.

Use your keywords as anchor text for your links. Hold down the percentage…don’t have 70% of your links to one page using the same exact anchor text!

Even if you don’t have the keyword phrases on your page, you can still have top rankings, as long as your links’ theme matches your Web page content those links are aimed at.

Following this strategy, you can also optimize your pages for more than one keyword phrase. And without creating dozens and dozens of junk pages, just to cover all your keywords.

You’ll be able to increase your online sales and your sales lead generation, more easily.

Editor’s Note: Also published here.

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Marketing online since 2004, Paul Marshall can help you market on a
budget. He’s a Sales Lead Generation expert and an
Affordable SEO Services specialist offering affordable marketing services (and d-i-y Coaching). Receive your Free Introductory Consultation, just visit Strategic Web Marketing.net today!

Read more articles written by Paul Marshall

Take the initiative. Most businesses will not even realize you exist, simply because they don’t have the time to shop around to look for various vendors. Don’t be shy when contacting companies directly; ask to speak to the decision-maker in matters which concern your business offering. Remember, you may have the solution to their problem.

Don’t wait for them to come to you. At times it won’t matter how much spending you allocate for advertising; a business owner might just be too busy to pay attention to your ad. When considering the amount of information a person is subjected to in a day, it’s understandable that your message is just white noise to your audience until you engage them directly. Also, many people will be more cautious and unwilling to take the lead on making purchases, as they’d rather be ’sold on it’ by you.

Treat your area rep with respect and care. Remember, this person may not be the decision-maker, but they do report to the person who is. At times companies don’t really shop for products; instead they shop for a business that they trust to provide them with products, or solutions to their problems. If your local area representative has been well-treated, the name of your company may come up during recommendation-time.

Don’t ignore a representative, or treat one badly. When reps try to contact you, be courteous and kind. In business, even among competitors there is potential for collaboration, do don’t burn your bridges prematurely. Remember, you only have fifteen seconds to form a first impression upon meeting them, so make it count! Maintain respectable conduct and form good rapport with your area reps.

Market yourself to people. Join service organizations, sponsor events, go out and mingle! While most people don’t care who is sponsoring an event, the other businesses involved in the event do. These types of events can be great opportunities to get to know those who are willing to invest in the venture.

Attend seminars, lectures, luncheons, and events. There are many places where you could possibly locate new business. If you can, have representatives present explicitly selling the offerings of your company. Even as a guest, you can generate good leads at the right functions.

There are many ways to get business-to-business (b2b) lead generation started. Just ask yourself what market you are going to focus on, and which people offer the best potential short and long-run business opportunities. Even if a client isn’t able to work with you this quarter, this could change in the future. Once you generate a lead, stick to it – these things take time, and you don’t ever quite know when it will finally pay off.

Author Bio: M. H. “Mac” McIntosh is described by many as one of America’s leading business-to-business marketing and sales consultants and an expert on sales leads. He is president of Mac McIntosh Inc., a sales and marketing consulting firm that helps companies get more high-quality sales leads and turn them into sales. More tips at Mac’s Sales Lead Insights: B2B Marketing Blog.

If for instance you are going to grace an event like a concert or an exhibit, you can actually e-mail everyone in your contact list about the event you are gracing. Provide a catchy headline, a brief and concise information about the event. This may contain, the date the event will take place, where it is going to happen, who are the people involved, how much will it cost if there will be any payment required, what to wear if it’s a formal event and how much fun to be there and how much they would miss in case they have decided to snob the event you are pulling together. Aside from an e-mail marathon, posting a blog about it is also pretty much helpful. You can also post announcements to your social network sites like FaceBook, MySpace, Bebo or Multiply. You may leave your contact information in your announcements and blogs so that if somebody got interested they will be able to reach you where ever you may be. Just make sure that you always dash at least a pinch of creativity to your compositions. You also must not forget that people are as extremely busy as you. So always make your articles brief, catchy yet concise. Give it a little punch that will make your readers go really excited. They have to end up looking forward to your event after reading your article. If you are selling products and services, you might want to try inviting some people to try the services you offer for free or for a discounted price. You have to make sure that they end up satisfied with what you have just offered them so that it wont be too much of you to ask a simple review that they may upload over the internet through a blog or by asking them to let their friends know about you.

The good things that you will be getting from these simple steps are really remarkable and most likely longer lasting than an expensive marketing program. Imagine the low cost that it needs compared to getting an ad published in a newspaper. It is even much less effort for you. In free publicity ideas mentioned you can even create ties to people who are listened to and are credible enough. You can also generate new costumers because through the power of the word of mouth. This can establish your credibility and will produce higher demands and good association with the right people.

Author Bio: Ready to really learn all about the best free publicity idea?? Paul Hartunians free publicity information center will teach you and many other aspects of publicity.?? Visit http://www.7dollartrial.com now to get powerful profit-producing?publicity?tips!

First of all, a membership site is nothing more than a system for password protecting some “content,” and a system for handling recurring billing of members. So they can be very simple, and in fact can be set up using all free resources.

You could even think of a membership site as another type of list, only one where you don’t have to contend with email filters. You communicate with your “list members” inside the site instead of via email.

In deciding to set up a membership site, the first question that you should answer is what niche or topic would the membership site be focused on. Are there enough people interested in that topic to make it profitable? Do people interested in that topic spend money on it?

The simplest way to answer the above questions is to ask yourself, “What phrases would people interested in my proposed topic type into a search engine?” Come up with a list of keywords they’d likely use.

Next, go to Google.com and enter those keyword phrases into their search box, and look at how many searches there are for those terms as well as how many webpages there are out there targeting those phrases. Look off to the right side of the page and see if there are “Google AdWords” ads displayed. If you see ads off to the right side of the page, that means that people are paying to advertise to people interested in that topic. That’s generally a strong indicator that people searching on those terms are also buying!

Your research shows you how many searches are done on your keywords each month, and indicates if there is a large pool of potential members for your new membership site. There is no hard and fast rule for how many searches there should be. This just gives you a feel for if this is a viable niche for a membership site.

How many members do you need for a successful membership site anyway? If you have a site that has 200 members each paying $20 per month, would you consider that a success? What if that site only took 2 hours per month to maintain?

The secret to making a site easy to maintain, by the way, is to have your members interact a lot with each other, and generate most of the content!

There are many successful online entrepreneurs who have a dozen or more small, simple, memberships sites, each with only a few hundred members. Most of these sites don’t generate a fortune, but collectively they afford a very comfortable lifestyle.

There is no reason that you have to stop at one simple, easy to maintain, membership site. You could easily launch one a month, and in a year have a dozen. If each produced just that $4000 in our example above, that would be $48k per month.

If your goals aren’t that lofty, you could stop with just one simple membership site producing just that $4000, or you could go for a lot more members. If you set your site up properly, you’ll have to spend very little time actually maintaining it.

So, are you missing out by not having a membership site?

Probably.

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Willie Crawford has been marketing goods and services on the internet since 1996. He operates numerous simple membership sites. To learn how you can set up your own membership site in under six minutes, using all completely free software, visit: http://YourNewMembershipSite.com

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Selling expired domain names is actually difficult considering the stiff competition that exists among domain traders. First, you may never know the personal preferences of people who are looking for expired domain names. People have varied needs and requirements for expired domain names. You may wish to know for what purposes, uses people buy, and use expired domain names. Here are some general tips and ideas:

You can classify expired domains under two broad categories depending on the uses and purposes. Under general circumstances, people may buy expired domain names either for non-profit or personal uses, or for business and for uses of profit.

Expired domain buyers for non-profit and personal uses:

A number of non-profits and charitable organizations keep looking for good domains expired and buy them for their charitable activities. These organizations would need domain names that match the objectives and goals of their charity. On the other hand, millions of people also buy expired domains for personal purposes. Someone may need an expired web domain just to publish family photographs, while others may want to buy them to print personal blogs. The most essential thing for these people is to make a connection with their friends and family members.

Tip:

~~ Most people under these categories look for expired domains that end with .org or .info extensions.

These domains are actually cheaper and people, who look for such domains have a severe budgetary constraint.

These domains are difficult to sell as people tend to register fresh domains. ~~

Finding out an expired domain buyer for this category is actually very easy. People who look for these categories of names are very choosy and specific, as they would need only a specific type of name. Once you segregate these names and list them, you can contact them with your best prices. Make sure that you are offering something that is useful to your personal customers. Non-profits are very specific, because they want web domains based on particular keywords. On the other hand, people who buy personal domains are easy to handle and manage. You can even offer an extra, free expired domain as a gift, when they buy a domain at a profitable rate. Mixing your expired domain portfolio with personal and non-profit type of domains may offer you a streamlined business with varied options and choices.

This article published here.

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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

Recently, there has been a whole army of new search engines debuting on the web. If you’re a full-time online marketer like me, you really have to keep your eyes open to what is happening on the web, especially relating to search engines which deliver most of your quality traffic. Also keep in mind, this piece may be fairly biased since Google is directly or indirectly responsible for around 80% of my online revenue, so any opinions may be slanted in Google’s favor, not that they need any favors from me or anyone.

But as an online marketer you have to try to remain objective and examine all angles in regards to these new search engines. Despite this, in marketing and webmaster circles, everyone will know even if you have the number one ranking for a certain keyword in all three major engines Google, Yahoo! and MSN – Google supplies the most traffic, hands down.

Despite its obvious dominance, Google is still basically the new kid on the block. We have to remember, there have been many search engines before Google and there will be many more search engines after Google. Every entity has its day and then hands the torch along to whatever comes next. It’s one of those subtle facts of life we all learn eventually.

Everybody has their day – empires, countries, leaders, companies… or even search engines. Are Google’s days as top dog really numbered? Probably not in the immediate future, but there are some new kids on the block that could definitely kick some sand in the face of Google and stir things up, we might even see a few serious squabbles here and there.

In a recent article on CNN, by John D. Sutter, entitled “New Search Engines Aspire To Supplement Google” the author examines some recent new search engines. The author discusses: Twine, Hakia, Searchme, Cuil, Kosmix, Wolfram Alpha, Topsy, TweetMeme and OneRiot. Each of these are different, making your web search more personal, more visual, or connecting your search to new social networks like FaceBook and Twitter.

Some experts say Wolfram Alpha is the most likely candidate to give Google some serious competition because Wolfram can do something Google can’t; it can create information rather than just reading/presenting content already on the web. Will it present a solid threat to Google’s dominance?

Perhaps, a more fitting sparring partner will come from an old rival with very deep, deep pockets. We are talking about the new search engine from Microsoft called Bing, which is very similar to Google in many ways, yet different. Bing’s results are very similar to Google in a lot of ways, yet Bing serves up the results in a very pleasing arrangement, with a nice preview button for each listing and giving you related searches and your search history on the left hand side. Only time will tell if everyone would rather be binging instead of googling. To Bing or not to Bing, that is the question? There’s a very informative article on Bing by Farhad Manjoo on Slate entitled: “Beware Google: Microsoft’s New Search Engine Isn’t Half-bad.” Just Bing or Google to find it!

I personally like this search engine much better than MSN mainly because the home page of Bing is very appealing and only has the search box on it so you’re not distracted with other news listings like on MSN and Yahoo! One of the main reasons for Google’s success, besides the superior search results, has been its simplicity. Keep it simple and you may just be able to compete.

Then again, this is a bit of a biased judgment, since many of my own keywords and sites rank high in Bing; some even higher than they are listed in Google. I routinely monitor countless keyword phrases in all the search engines and lately Google has been favoring big Brand Name listings on their first page results. We are also seeing more Product Listings (Old Froogle), more video and more news listings… competition for Google’s first page has become multi-layered and extremely competitive. What’s a poor small online marketer to do when Google goes corporate?

Actually, Bing is not my favorite search engine of the new ones forcing their way into the spotlight.

For me, the one that shows the most promise and may give Google some competition is Searchme, which is a visual search (much like the iTunes interface) where you can shuffle through screenshots of webpages instead of a list of links. Searchme, which touts itself as the first multimedia search engine, has been around for a few years but is not widely known to web users. Performing a search on Searchme with a 24 inch monitor and 64-bit Windows is a hundred times more enjoyable than using Google Search or Bing for that matter. It is a hundred times faster than Google mainly because you can generally find your information without clicking through to the sites displayed.

Searchme is truly an eye opener but can it give Google some serious competition. The jury is still out, but I believe over time as web users upgrade their computers, operating systems, and their graphics… Searchme will be more accessible to more web users. Never know, with the right backing and marketing, any of these search engines, especially Searchme and Bing could blossom into a formidable opponent even for the mighty Google.

Here’s why: Human Nature!

Whether we admit it or not, most of us (Humans) are lazy, we want the fastest and easiest route to solving any question or problem. Searchme gives us the answer much quicker than Google and in a much nicer way. Mainly because we are also visual creatures, given the choice between receiving pages of text and viewing images of sites/answers, most of us will take the visual route – we will choose TV over radio, music videos over records… video enhanced content over just plain static HTML. As the web turns into more of an interactive multimedia operation; visual search will always win out over text search any day of the year.

Most humans also have a need for speed, in our fast paced life styles, we all want a speedy solution to our problems. Search is no different, we want quick answers now, we want instant solutions and immediate gratification. Nature of the beast. If Searchme, Bing or any of the other search engines becomes faster than Google at giving the right answer, then it’s a whole new ballgame.

Google must obviously know there are challenges to its search engine dominance. Otherwise, why would they be offering many new features in their SERPs; we are seeing more images and videos. Plus, Google has just introduced the “show options” link at the top of their SERPs, which presents their search results in many different ways. They even have introduced the “Wonder Wheel” as another viewing option, which gives a whole new way of using Google’s search results.

Google’s Achilles’ Heel may just be the thing that gives it all its revenue: text ads. There may be a backlash on all those Google ads littered across the web, especially among the younger computer savvy crowd using such sites like the Google owned YouTube, where Google has nearly obliterated the videos with its ads. Everyone dislikes advertising, no matter what form it takes.

However, any news of Google’s demise will be greatly exaggerated, because Google, like any smart company with tons of resources, has kept morphing and changing with the times, quickly adapting to new features as our usage of the web keeps changing. Google has perfected the art of staying one step ahead of the competition. This is one champion that won’t go down without a fight to the finish. Top dogs rarely do.

If they ever present a serious challenge to Google, Searchme, Bing or any of the above search engines, will have a formidable opponent in the opposing corner, one that has gained almost insurmountable prestige and brand recognition around the world. Any major battle will instantly have a “David vs Goliath” scenario attached to it. And we all know how that one played out!

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The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous
niche sites. These 10 SEO Tactics Bring Me Over 2000 Visitors Daily:
SEO Tips. To learn more Internet Marketing Tactics try:
Marketing Tools. Copyright (c) 2009 Titus Hoskins. http://www.bizwaremagic.com This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

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Making money online used to pretty much require you to have your own Web site, products to sell and some marketing savvy. But a new generation of dot-coms have arisen that will pay you for what you know and who you know without you having to be a web designer or a marketing genius.

But it’s hard to tell hype from the real deal. I did a search on “make money online” and “making money online”, and much of the information out there is just promoting various infoproducts, mostly about Internet marketing. I see why people sometimes ask, “Is anyone making money online besides Internet marketing experts?”

So I put together a list of business opportunities with legitimate companies that:

Pay cash, not just points towards rewards or a chance to win money
Don’t require you to have your own Web domain or your own products
Don’t involve any hard-selling
Aren’t just promoting more Internet marketing
Give a good return on your time investment

In the interest of objectivity, none of the links below are affiliate links, and none of them have paid or provided any other consideration for their presence here. These are legitimate companies with business models that allow you to get paid for a wide range of activities.
Help friends find better jobs.

Sites like ReferEarns, Zyoin, Who Do You Know For Dough?, Bohire and WiseStepp connect employers with prospective employees, many of whom are already employed and not actively job-hunting, via networking – the people who know these qualified candidates. Rewards for referring a candidate who gets hired range from $50 on up to several thousand dollars – not chump change. If you know a lot of job-seekers (and who doesn’t these days?), this is a great way to break into the recruiting business with no overhead.

Connect suppliers with buyers.

Referral fees are a common practice in business, but they haven’t been used much in online networking sites because there was no way to track them. Sites like Salesconx, InnerSell and uRefer now provide that. Vendors set the referral fees they’re willing to pay (and for what), and when the transaction happens, you get paid. uRefer also allows merchants to set up referral programs for introductions and meetings, as well as transactions.

Write.

A growing number of sites will pay for your articles or blog posts. Associated Content and Helium will “pay for performance” based on page views for just about anything you want to write about. Articles on specific topics they’re looking for can earn direct payments up to about $200. The rates are probably low for established writers, but if you’re trying to break into the field and have time on your hands, they’re a great way to start. Also, a lot of companies are looking for part-time bloggers. They may pay per post or on a steady contract. Our Weblogs Guide posts blogging jobs weekly in the forum.

Start your own blog.

You don’t have to have your own Web site, or install blogging software, or even figure out how to set up the advertising. At Blogger you can set up a blog for free in less than five minutes without knowing a thing about web design, and Blogger even automates setting up Google AdSense so you can make money off your blog by displaying ads and getting paid when people click on the ads. To make even more money from it, set up an affiliate program (see below) for books, music, etc., and insert your affiliate links whenever you refer to those items. You’ll have to get a lot of traffic to become a six-figure blogger, but pick an interesting topic, write well, tell all your friends, and you’re off to a good start.

Related: Monetizing Your Blog

Create topical resource hubs.

Are you an expert on a particular niche topic? Can you put together an overview of the topic and assemble some of the best resources on the topic from around the web? Then you can create topical hubs and get paid through sites like Squidoo, HugPages and Google Knol. Payments are based on a combination of ad revenue and affiliate fees. You’ll get higher rates doing it on your own, but these sites have a built-in supply of traffic and tools to make content creation easier.

Advertise other people’s products.

If you already have a Web site or a blog, look for vendors that offer related but non-competing products and see if they have an affiliate program. Stick to familiar products and brands – they’re easier to sell. To promote those products:

Place simple text or graphical ads in appropriate places on your site

Include links to purchase products you review or recommend in a blog, discussion forum or mailing list you control

Create a dedicated sales page or Web site to promote a particular product

They all work – it just depends on how much time you have to spend on it and your level of expertise with Web design and marketing.

Related: How to Really Make Money on the Internet With an Amazon.com Affiliate Site

Microstock photography.

You don’t have to be a professional photographer to sell your photos for money. People are constantly in need of stock photography for websites, presentations, brochures and so on, and are willing to pay for the right image. People generally search for images on stock photography sites by keywords, not by photographer, so you have the same chance as anyone else of having your image picked. Just be careful that you don’t have images of trademarked brands, copyrighted art or people’s faces that are readily identifiable (unless you have a model release), but just about anything else is fair game, and I promise – you’d be amazed what people need pictures of, so don’t make any assumptions. If it’s a decent photo, upload it. Some sites to get you started include Fotolia, ShutterStock, Dreamstime and iStockphoto. The great thing about this is that it’s truly “set it and forget it”.

The above list is by no means comprehensive, but it highlights some of the new and interesting ways to make money online without investing any money, without having a product of your own, and without having expert sales and marketing skills. Most of all, unlike taking surveys or getting paid to read e-mail, the potential return on your time investment is substantial.

Author Bio: Click the link, to learn how to make money online by some of the most successful people to date http://TopSecretOnlineProfits.com

To do that, you will need to figure out how to bring your own uniqueness to what you’re providing in your business. There are some ways that they could be accomplished:

Niche marketing- Finding a specific group of business owners to market to; can increase your chances of getting your items chosen by the consumers.

Providing certain kinds of content- For example, you can choose to sell only materials that cover various topics on PLR content. Or you could cover all kinds of topics using only reports to give them that information.

Knowledge or experience- If you have knowledge or experience in any certain area, then you can use that to your advantage. There are many ways to do that. If you have a business degree, you can use that to establish a level of expert status for yourself. Maybe you have owned a business in a particular niche for several years, which gains you credibility as well as expert status.

Point of View- Sometimes giving a different point of view on a topic can establish your uniqueness and gain you a nice sharp edge on your competition. For example, maybe you have inside information on a particular topic. This could be used to play on the business owner’s desires.

Establishing a name for yourself- This is a strong tactic to use within the social networking communities. Once you build rapport with the fellow members of the group you have joined; you start to show them what you’re all about. As they get to know you; you start to become a ‘celebrity’ of sorts within that niche. Voila! You’ve established a name for yourself and people have trust to buy from you.

Broaden your horizons- Get yourself out there to every corner of the internet. Join Message boards, forums, run a blogging community, and utilize all the available tools the internet provides like social bookmarking sites. The more your name is out there, the more your business is known. And then what? More Sales happen.

Show your caring side- Don’t be afraid to show that not only are you a business person, but you’re a caring one as well. Those who are caring tend to build rapport with their target audience easier and quicker. For example, if you’re a mom who owns a business, and you target other moms who have businesses; you should show that. When the target audience can see you’re just like them, they will be more drawn to you.

Using a different format- Most of your competitors are probably providing their customers with simple written materials on various topics. To stand out, you could use a different media format to offer your information with. This could be:

• Video format
• Audio format
• Teleclasses/Webinars

These formats give your customers a different way to learn their information from. Instead of always having to read a document on their computer, they can watch a video of you talking about it instead. You can also attach a written transcript with it, so they can follow along if they choose or give them something to refer to later on when questions arise.

Online Business owners have the desire to succeed. They also have the desire to learn how to better themselves and their business. Put these two factors together and you have a prime Money making opportunity on your hands.

Get into this billion dollar industry and market the information they want, need and most of all desire. This is Problem-Solution. They have a problem and you have the solution. You have the knowledge to offer them, so give what they desire-information on how to succeed.

Author Bio: One way to make it easy to get this information out to your market is with the Special Report Club. Each month you receive a new fully-customizable 30 page report & complete marketing materials, so you can start selling information the lucrative online business owner market right away. While you’re there, join the affiliate program for recurring monthly commissions.