Marketing Revolution with Blogs and RSS

Marketing Revolution with Blogs and RSS
Do you know that there is a marketing revolution happening online this very moment?Before that, let's go back in time and take a look at the major revolution or 'waves' that has occured when the Internet became a business or marketplace.First there was the Search Engine revolution, with Alta Vista, Yahoo and now Google coming onto the scene and with webmasters busy tweaking their pages for high ranking on these search engines which means more traffic.Then there was the email marketing revolution, when people discovered the use of email as a means for follow up selling and is still being widely used today.Finally, there was the affiliate marketing wave, popularised perhaps by Amazon, and with most businesses following using this model to distribute and sell their products.And today, we have blogs and rss feeds being used as a new form of marketing for businesses. Blogs appeared few years back, and in a way was similar to a forum, except that with blogs, you call the shots and can write and talk about anything under the Sun.When it first appeared, blogs were thought of nothing more than just a tool for people to express their rants, feelings, emotions and so forth. However, soon savvy marketers recognized the use of blogs as another channel of marketing - be it branding, selling, promotion etc.Today, blogs have taken on a whole new meaning and become sophisticated in look and content to the extent that it has become a powerful way to market products and services. There are so many ways you can earn money with blogs, which is discussed in my multimedia e-book.RSS Feeds are basically a way of distributing/circulating/syndicating your contents, which can come from your blogs, your newsletters, and so forth. In my multimedia e-book, "Marketing Rampage with Blogs and RSS" I show you in video how easy it is to create a feed in under 10 minutes!Think of a giant sea octopus. Imagine its long tentacles with suction pods all over reaching out to grab food. RSS Feeds is like a giant octopus, with UNLIMITED tentacles and UNLIMITED REACH for you to "grab" your prospects.Does that send shiver down your spine?

How to Cash In on Blogs

How to Cash In on Blogs
Over the past year or so, more and more webmasters have been creating their own blogs (web-logs). If you don't already know, a blog is sort of an online diary which is updated at regular intervals by the author(s), and can be viewed by the public.Blogs can have a wide variety of topics, including personal thoughts, news, sports, politics, technology, or virtually anything else you can think of. And like any other website, a blog can be used to make money.The most popular way make money with your blog is to put some sort of pay-per-click text ads on it. Some companies that will pay you for doing this are Google Adsense (http://www.google.com/adsense) and BidClix (http://www.bidclix.com). Depending on the topic that you choose to write about, your ads might make anywhere from $0.05 to $1.00 per click.

Make Money Blogging

Make Money Blogging
You have created a blog and your blog is dedicated to a niche industry. Have you ever thought that the blog could make money for you? We would look here in this article, ways and means, to make money blogging. Lets first have a look at what are the prerequisites for a blog needed to make money:1. Blog needs to be dedicated to a niche market.2. Updated regularly.3. Enough back links (Don't worry for it. Directory submission would be enough to begin with)4. Good blog host or application (blogger, Xanga or typepad recommended), and5. High quality articles or news items supported with images.Get the above criteria in place and Hurrah... You are ready to Make Money Blogging.Top 5 Ways to Make Money BloggingLets now take a look at top 5 ways using which you could make money blogging:1. Google AdsenseGoogle Adsense delivers text and image ads to the authorized websites/blogs depending on the content of the website. Small code is required to be pasted at proper locations on a webpage and Google automatically recognizes the page. Google shares the revenue it gets from the advertisers whenever a visitor clicks on these ads. Google bills advertisers on price per click basis (PPC). Advertisers are required to pay only when any visitor clicks on their ads. They bid against each other for the keywords in order to receive better placement and thus prices for each keyword differ from one another. It is better to choose keywords for your blog which pays high $ per click.2. AmazonAmazon Associate program is another important way to make money blogging. The Amazon Associate program gives opportunity to website/blog publishers to promote any product from its inventory by adding a predefined code to their website/blog, which, when clicked by a visitor, takes them to the relevant product page. Once the visitor buys the product, the blog owner will be compensated with a commission.3. BlogadsYou can use Blogads as an effective tool to have a better control over the advertisers in your blogs. You can analyze and compare your profits with any one of your online agencies. Blogads can be simply specified as an advertising service used for the web logs or blogs. From the total money generated by Blogads, it retains 20% of it and the remaining money is paid to you through PayPal or checks. Alternative Services:• Crispads is another useful network focused on the blogs. You can put your advertisements in their blogs using Crispads. You can move through their RSS/ATOM feeds that help in generating revenues. • Tagword – It is similar to Blogads. It makes you select the ads and their price.Users can place their text-based ads in the site within minutes and the ads will be displayed instantly on the website. 4. Affiliate ProgramsYour affiliate programs can help you earn a lot of money for selected products and services. Lot of websites offers you to become affiliate members. These affiliate programs can provide a better reach and an in-depth exposure to the products. The commissions for the sales differ according to the quality of the product, sales and marketing strategy involved. You can gather information related to the commissions by looking into the catalogues of Link Share and Commission junctions. 5. Text Links Text links has emerged out to be the best form of moneymaking source that you can use instead of cluttering or crowding the page with ads. You don’t have to make these text links prominent within your website. This link can act as an extra value to your site and will also help to promote the rankings of other sites. In most of the cases you will find these text links placed in the bottom of the web pages. The best part of this strategy is that the publishers send and accept links as the market continues to grow.

The Huge Marketing Potential Of A Simple Blog

The Huge Marketing Potential Of A Simple Blog
A Blog (also known as Weblog) is traditionally a webpage where pre-surfer or a blogger "logs" all pages he/she finds interesting. In other words, it is a Web page that contains brief, chronologically arranged items of information. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author.Weblogs provide a series of annotated links to items such as news stories, and often include personal rants. They are maintained by one person, most commonly someone who is involved in Web design or some other tech-related field.A blog is often a mixture of what is happening on a particular website and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site, although there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people. Blogs can be used to introduce products to potential customers.People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but the trend gained momentum with the introduction of automated published systems, most notably Blogger at blogger.com. Thousands of people use services such as Blogger to simplify and accelerate the publishing process.Blog as a marketing tool:Blogs offer huge marketing potential. They are highly strategic tools that can strengthen relationships, share knowledge, increase collaboration, and improve branding. Besides, blogs can represent the real voice of the website.A weblog can take the form of a diary, a news service (or summaries of and links to current news items on a topic), a collection of links to other Web sites, a series of book reviews or products, reports of activity on a project, the journal of an expedition, and much more. Businesses can use this tool to effectively advertise their products or services.One of the most interesting ways to use a weblog is by allowing it to function as a discussion forum for customers of your products or services. In this case, the webmaster can give posting rights to other people – visitors and customers, and their posts may or may not be reviewed before they are published to the Web page. Customers, in such a way can post favorable comments about the websites offerings. Some weblogs are set up in such a way that only the owner or the owner and certain other people have posting rights, but anyone else can add comments to the posts.Weblogs when used with newsletters present immense marketing opportunities:- Articles within newsletters can be linked to a blog, extending life and creating a massive conversation.- You can offer a bidirectional forum to customers to get true, personal opinions on your products and services.- Company experts can start a blog and become industry experts, helping your company edge out competition and, through this interactive forum, draw customers into another exchange of information and thoughts.- The beauty of this interplay is you can layer your blog with editorial controls.How to create a Weblog?The majority of weblogs are now created using software or services designed specifically for this purpose. Some of the software is free - and some of the organizations that provide weblog software will also provide free server space to house a weblog so that it is publicly accessible on the Internet.There are also commercial versions of some of the free software; these commercial versions often provide more features. Some weblog software is available only as commercial software. Alternatively, bloggers can create and maintain their weblog using free software or a free weblog service, but use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to load the resulting weblog to their own Website.There are many blogging softwares available easily on the Internet. One of the most popular weblogger is "Blogger" which can be used for free at http://www.blogger.com. Most webloggers simplify the process of Website creation. However, they do require basic knowledge of FTP, Website structures and a few technical terms. Besides, creating an advanced weblog requires knowledge of HTML.So get out there and start your own Blog…it's free, easy and can work seamlessly with the rest of your website or newsletter.

Interactive Content - Blogs, Forums and Feedback - what does

Interactive Content - Blogs, Forums and Feedback - what does

Both search engines and customers love fresh, updated information. Nothing promotes a business online better than staying in touch with prospects. The more interactive the continued contact, the better the relationship that is built with a potential client. But there's no need to groan at the thought of having to work hard at adding new content to your web site, it's not as complicated as you might think.For more information about how to get interactive with your customers, take a look at our guide "Building Online Relationships" available here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_4.html The business principle of continued contact and online relationship building has given rise to the popularity of online business blogs, forums and feedback opportunities. Interactive online communication define the web site owners as experts in the eyes of visitors, and serve as a promotional vehicle for other products and services that the business seeks to sell. Continued, interactive contact can bring many benefits, such as:·You'll find out what type of content visitors want to see at your web site. This will attract your visitors to revisit and read the content.·You'll find out how to improve existing products or services. This will attract new customers to buy from your business.·You'll find out which products or services your customers would like to see you sell in the future. This will increase your back end product sales.·You'll find out how to improve your customer service. This will cut down on customer complaints and how to better resolve problems.·You'll find out how to improve your sales letters or adverts. This will increase your sales, traffic or subscribers.·You'll find out how to design your web site to fit your visitors' needs and wants. This will increase the time your visitors spend on your web site.·You'll find out what kind of non-related products or services your customers would buy. This will help your business easily move into a different market.·You'll find out how to better price your products. This will help you sell your products or services at a price that will pull the most orders.·You'll find out the interests of your potential customers. This will inform you where to market and promote your products.Getting Started So where do you start? Do you need a blog, a forum, or a feedback form? All have different uses and your selection will depend on the needs of your particular business and your limitation with regard to time and/or budget. Below are some of the options and some ideas for adding interactive and fresh content to your web site.For more information about how to establish and maintain online relationships with your viewers and customers, get a copy of our guide "Building Online Relationships" available here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_4.htmlWeblogs or Blogs A blog is basically a series of posts that appear by the date posted like an online journal. Setup is minimal and the interface is easy to learn- if you can use a word processing package, you can write a blog! Services like Moveable Type and Blogger make it incredibly easy for anyone to publish on the web. Blogs can be integrated seamlessly into your site so that they have the same look and feel. You can use a blog to publish an events calendar or comment on developments and news from your industry. A blog can be strictly professional, announcing special offers or new product info or it can be casual and create a "personality" for your company. What can a blog do for your business? Think about what your customers want to know.To add interactivity, several blog programs come with a "comment" ability built in. This allows general users to create an account and post their comments to your blog. This is something to be careful of as you can get negative comments along with the positive.Forums While online forums are popular and the perfect method of relationship building, starting a forum and maintaining one can be challenging, especially in the beginning when members can be few and far between. The challenge for most new forum owners is to get beyond the initial start up phase and move onto a phase where the forum members themselves promote the forum simply by posting.Forums have become a common feature in many websites. With good free scripts available, and paid scripts being relatively cheap, it seems that every new website has its own forum(s).But is it wise to add forums to your website? On the pro side, large, active forums generate content for your website. They add a "sticky" element as most people come back, at least to monitor developments on their threads. Some forum software allows members to opt to receive an email whenever someone replies to their thread. Most people use it and that automated email sends them right back to the forum and therefore, your web site.However, forums can take a long time to pick up and an empty forum can actually drive new visitors away. You need to constantly monitor your forums to make sure that they are clean of spam, troll posts, and just keep everything in order. In addition, forums are database-type applications that generate web pages on the fly. Every time a user views a page, it's being created from scratch. As the forums become more active, this can take a heavy load on the web server's resources and ultimately increase your hosting costs. A forum is an incredible tool for building content and a community but it's not a task to be undertaken lightly; it requires a lot of time and energy and some technical knowledge (or a tech budget!) If your industry has a need, or your product has a loyal following, a forum is a great tool to build content while drawing like-minded individuals together. A forum is great for market research, technical support, building a fan base, trading ideas and knowledge, and many, many other benefits. Try to get a base of people from similar business or industry experts to post at your forum. It's exposure for them and helps to build a solid foundation for your information. If you decide to start a forum, be sure to use one that is search-friendly, such as www.InvisionBoard.com or www.phpbb.com, and set aside a good chunk of time to promote it and administer it. For more information about how to establish and maintain online relationships with your viewers and customers, get a copy of our guide "Building Online Relationships" available here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_4.htmlFeedback Unsolicited feedback is a powerful and convincing tool! Let your customers tell other customers why they love you. It's much more compelling than your own claims. Unfortunately, customers normally need to be asked for their opinion. You can ask for feedback on any area of your business, your web site, your ordering process, your levels of customer service, your delivery service, etc. The easiest way is to simply set up a form to allow customers to submit their feedback. Keep it fairly brief and allow a space for comments. You can then use the information provided to improve your customer experience, and with permission, publish the ones you choose. Often other web site owners that are also customers of users of your web site can be enticed to write a review or testimonial for your site in return for a link back to theirs. This helps them with link popularity but it helps your site as well it shows a real person wrote that review. Ask The Expert This is a great way of not only interacting with potential customers but also establishing your business as an expert in its field. Using a simple question form or forum software, users submit questions and someone at your company answers them. The Q&A are both published on the site for users to read once they are answered in a "knowledge database" or "FAQ" section. This is less time-intensive than a full-blown forum but a great way to keep a finger on the pulse of what customers want to know while still adding content on a regular basis. Summary If you are interested in building loyalty and interest in your company as well as repeat business and you want to get increased traffic from the editorial or free listings in search engines, you have to offer more than just sales information to your users. If you create a plan for content that offers value and interest to your customers, you can have a site that is built to sell AND drive repeat business

How to Boost Traffic to Your Blog:Keyword Research

How to Boost Traffic to Your Blog:Keyword Research
If you are serious to make money from blog, you must think about keyword before you write. And use that keyword repeatedly (more frequently than your high school English grammar teacher would say "it's a good English.") in your blog. Why you have to use a keyword?Using keyword in your blog is one of powerful ways to bring traffic to your blog. Why? It's simple. People search using keywords to look for information. If your blog includes those keywords, they will find your blog from the search engine result page and will come to you to find the information they were looking for. But is that really simple like that? Not exactly. Two things must be considered.
The keyword you're using must be related to your blog topic. When you're blogging about 'racing car' for example, if you use 'basketball' as a keyword, it won't help you bring the traffic. Moreover, if the visitor came to you to find information about 'basketball', he will leave your blog having bad impression on you because he couldn't get any relevant information from your blog.So, the rule number 1 is to use the keyword related to your topic.
Suppose you discovered high demand keyword (a keyword many people uses) related to your blog topic, does using that keyword guarantee you a lot of traffic? What if many bloggers are talking about similar topic using that keyword? If so, although many searchers use that keyword, probably they'll go to other bloggers who are ranked more highly in the search engine than you.The point is that you have to find the keyword that has high demand but a few supply. In other word, you have to find 'niche keyword.'How to find the 'niche keyword'?It's two fold. First, find the demand and then the supply.How to find the demand of the keyword?
Use a keyword search tool. I found Search It is handy and best of it's free. A con is that an additional promotion page provided by SBI (Site Build It) will be open. But you can close it and that doesn't harm you from using search tool, Search It. Here is a short introduction on how to use "Search It!"Once you get through Search It, you will see Search It! window which has 4 boxes. Suppose you want to talk about 'car',
choose 'Brainstorming' at step 1 box in the "Search It" window,
choose 'overture suggestion' at step 2 box
type 'car' (without quote) at step 3 box
click 'Search It!' button (you may notice that there is step 4, but you don't need to fill it at this stage. If you try write something the program will tell you that you don't need to choose at this time.)
then a leading page will be open, which explains the technique you are using. Click 'Please .....results.' link to see the result.
the resulting page looks something like,Count SearchTerm3467549 car1914166 car insurance
You see the number in Count column? That's the demand of the keyword.
You also notice that other search terms are shown in the result page. Save this keywords and count somewhere, in case you have to refer it later.How to know the supply of the keyword?
For this end, you don't need any other tools. Just go to Google, Yahoo or whatever search engine you like and type car in the search box.
Look upper right bar of the search result page and you can find something like "Results 1 - 10 of about 301,000,000 for ''car". The number '301,000,000' is the approximated number of supply. For sure, not all of them are blog, but realize that if you talk about car you're just 1 out of 301,000,000. This means that you may not pick up "car" as your keyword and choose other topic if you want many visitors to find your blog from the search engine. This is why you need to save above demand table somewhere.
Now that you know the topic "car" is too competitive, the next thing you can do is to find the number of supply for other keywords from the table you saved. Continue this step until you find less competitive keywords.You may choose several keywords and use them in your blog. But remember that if you post a short blog, it's better to focus on only one keyword. If it's long, you may choose primary and secondary keyword.To sum up,
Use Search It to find reasonable demand of the keyword related to your blog.
Check the number of supply from a search engine, for example, Google.
Choose the keywords that have high demand and low supply.
Finally use that keyword in your blog repeatedly with the frequency of a bit more than your high school English teacher would tell you.

Small Business: To Blog or Not To Blog

Small Business: To Blog or Not To Blog
A weblog, or "blog" started out as a personal journal on the Web. They have evolved far beyond that initial concept. Now, weblogs cover as many different topics as there are people writing them. Some blogs are highly influential and have readership which exceeds most traditional newspapers, while others are mainly intended as personal journals to be shared with only family and friends. So, should you consider blogging?The power of weblogs is that they allow millions of people to easily publish their ideas, and millions more to comment on them. Increasingly people write, read and comment on blogs. Many people mistakenly believe that blogs are only personal diaries. More and more, blogs are being used by businesses to attract customers. Since blogs now come in all flavors, let’s look at the basics of blogging.A blogger is someone who writes a blog. The “Blogosphere” is a word used to describe the online community of bloggers and their writings. A blog differs from a website only because it is a website that is updated frequently, most often displaying its material in journal-like entries. An entry, a post, or a posting, are the terms often used to refer to a specific article or commentary written by the blogger on his or her blog. Many weblogs allow readers to write a reaction to what was written in the blog entry. These comments can often be found directly following the blog entry. For millions of people, blogging is a hobby. For some, like journalists, writers, business leaders and political leaders, writing blogs enhances their professional careers. A blog gives the voice a broader audience and allows more direct and interactive contact with the readers. Some bloggers have readership numbers approaching that of big media and are able to earn income from their blogs. But potential profit should not be the primary motivation for blogging.Why should a blog be part of your business’ marketing strategy? The blogging movement is picking up speed, particularly for businesses. Blogging is one arena where the size of your company won’t matter. A blog is NOT the place to promote your product or company. It is a place to promote your ideas, provide tips, and express yourself in the hopes of building an audience. That audience may , in turn, become customers.There are two key concepts to keep in mind when deciding whether you will launch a blog or not; providing quality content and blogging regularly. These are critical to creating an audience for your blog.A successful blog is written with a distinct audience in mind. In this way, you can provide content that is unique to your audience’s issues, needs, or desires. If you create content they like and wish to return to read, you will produce quality content. Successful bloggers have a focused topic and a unique personality.Both your topic and unique style will cause your audience to return to your blog. When they return, it is critical to stay true to your audience and tone of your blog. If people are reading your blog, it’s because they like your topic and tone. Try not to stray from your typical topics and style too much. This will give your readers a reason to link back to your blog on an ongoing basis. But your content and tone are just one element to consider. Also critical to your ongoing blogging success is how frequently you update your blog.If you don't update your blog often enough, blog readers will move on to other blogs. There are too many blogs out there competing for your reader’s attention. Blog readers will go where the content is. Successful blogging takes a commitment of your time. When you begin blogging and wish to capture an audience, you should be prepared to blog every day. In this way, you can develop an audience who counts on you to help them begin or end their day. This means you should also try to post at the same time each day. Your readers will get accustomed to your schedule and check your blog at the appropriate time. The time of day is not as crucial as the consistency in your posting. So, is a blog right for you? You tell me. Do you have a distinct topic in mind? Do you have a strong opinion or passion for the topic? Do you know what audience you are writing for? Do you have the time to commit to regular postings on your blog? If so, see you in the blogosphere!