ADVERTISING ON WEB- DO's AND DONT's
By: Lata Budhran

Advertising your business in the correct manner is a sure shot key to success. Advertising helps you to reach out to a larger number of people from other websites. You definitely cannot expect these many people to come to you on their own. But Advertising is very, very COSTLY! And if you don't watch out, you may actually be going broke after paying your advertising bills, if your ads do not generate revenue. So, you should make sure you get value for your money.

With my own experiences in this field, I have drawn up some questions for Webmasters who are new to the field of Website Marketing. Take a good look at them EVERY TIME you make your advertising plan.

* Where are you placing the ad? Are you selecting the right kind of medium? It won't pay to place ads on websites when you have a business of an essentially local nature. A newsletter or an ezine catering to the needs of locals of your area will be a better choice. And better still, do not advertise on Websites and Newsletters just because everybody else is doing it. Ask yourself strictly- Do I really need to advertise online?

Google’s Groundbreaking AdWords Select™ Program
By: Lee Traupel

One of the absolute best online marketing processes available to any business today is Google’s AdWords Select™ advertising program. It produces immediate results within minutes after being setup, drives highly qualified traffic via selected keywords and can be monitored and modified on a 24/7 basis via Google’s excellent online interface. There are no hidden fees – it costs a mere $5. USD to setup a campaign and requires a credit card submission at startup. We highly recommend this interactive marketing process to all of our clients and incorporate an AdWords Select component with all of our marketing campaigns.

Google’s Pricing Model

Google charges you on a CPC (“Cost per Click”) basis – you only pay for each clickthrough to your web site from Google’s, no more no less. You don’t pay for “impressions” (number of times someone views your add) like many first generation Internet advertising models – it’s truly a results driven marketing process.

Keywords costs can vary tremendously ranging from $.05 to $11. USD or more per keyword - Google assigns a “minimum cost per click” for specific keywords based on “market value” and “performance history” via Google’s AdWords Select program history.

Creating your own web directory
By Clare Lawrence

Building your own web directory can be a very rewarding project in its own right.

I spent a lot of time looking for directories for my own use, before I decided to start my own.
I considered writting my own script, but then realised that there lots of scripts already out there, that work and run successful directories. So why re-create the wheel?

I purchased an off the shelf directory script selected a reasonable priced hosting package using www.discountdomainsuk.com, installed it and within an hour my first directory was up and running.

My directory is called www.allthebizz.com and is a global business directory.

New Realities for E-Mail Marketing
By: Lee Traupel

Spam e-mail is no longer the mild irritant it once was – it’s clogging corporate networks and ISP mail servers and has become a real productivity drain, forcing corporate and consumer e-mail users to spend 20-30 minutes a day dealing with this deluge of junk! According to recent figures, unsolicited bulk e-mail now makes up to 36% of all e-mail, up from under 8% just over a year ago. And, what’s worse, more and more legitimate e-mail is not getting through to recipients due to Spam filtering taking place via ISPs and/or corporate networks.

Opt-in E-Mail Marketing

Joining forums can boost traffic and be fun
By: Clare Lawrence

Are you looking to boost your websites traffic? Why not try joining on-line forums.

The Shifting Marketing Landscape!
By: Lee Traupel

Many of us in the marketing services and/or agency business are starting to see some real tangible marketing patterns emerging that businesses need to be aware of if they want to leverage their marketing dollars in this “post .com implosion economy.”

Good Web Site Design increasingly More Important

It’s imperative for a company to have a quality web site today – but many firms are still throwing up web sites that are just poorly designed or overly complex. Poor navigation (menus and overall site structure) when coupled with low quality graphics is really problematical (!) – online visitors think less of your company as a result which will hurt revenue in the long run. Many think just doing a minimal job is sufficient but they aren’t factoring in how close your competition is! On the web any potential customer is only one click away from seeing a high quality web site that is well designed and conveys a quality image

A good rule of thumb when budgeting for a web site is to assume you will pay approximately $250-300. USD per page – this should include your graphics design, content development, setting up registration forms, etc. This may sound too expensive for many companies but for better or worse perception is reality in the online world! So, don’t short change yourself, put some resources into your web site and be prepared to continue to do so – it’s now a vital component of any company’s ongoing marketing processes that needs constant upgrading like traditional marcom (PR, print, etc.) materials.

Marketing Maxims for Today’s Challenging Times
By: Lee Traupel

These are turbulent times for all businesses - necessitating streamlined marketing processes that are finely honed to mesh with today’s sputtering global economy.

1) Don’t stop advertising because the economy is sluggish - increase it, as many of your competitors are foolishly slowing down and you can grab market share! Look at what Dell has done to Gateway in the last eighteen months – Gateway has lost 10-20% of their market share and are pulling in their horns, while Dell’s slice of the pie has grown bigger.

Maximizing ROI via Web Site Traffic Analysis
By: Lee Traupel

We are clearly well past the innocent “golden age” of the Internet – Darwinian economics have become the order of the day today. Any company worth their salt must maintain a web site as an information resource and/or to generate incremental ecommerce revenue. Qualified traffic is the name of the game, as it’s the oxygen that keeps a good ecommerce web site thriving. Consequently, it’s very important to have an understanding of your web site traffic or visitor activity; i.e. baseline information that includes the number of visitors during specific time periods, originating location (domain), where the visitors went on a site and how long they stayed on specific sections or pages of a web site.

On-line Advertising
By: Clare Lawrence

Looking for ways to give your website a traffic boost?

The web offers a bewildering array of advertising opportunities

Pay Per Click Search Engine Basics
By: Mario Sanchez

Pay per click search engines let you set up an account with an initial deposit, and then bid for the top positions in the search results pages for keywords or keyphrases that you are interested in. Your bid will typically be set in cents or dollars per click. When a prospect clicks on your link, you are charged the amount of that bid.

Naturally, the keyphrases that people search for the most will command the highest bids.

Some pay per click search engines operate their own brand of search engine. However, the bulk of the traffic to bidding web sites doesn't come directly from them but from partner sites. Links to bidding web sites will appear at the top of the search results page in partner sites, clearly marked as "sponsor results" or "sponsor links".

For example, Overture (formerly GoTo), by far the most popular pay per click search engine

Raising Capital in Today’s “New Economy”
By: Lee Traupel

We’ve helped a number of clients develop business plans and raise capital from “angel” investors, corporate entities and venture capitalists during the last 6-8 years. It’s always a daunting process that can be full of pitfalls and require a tremendous amount of work – but it can be done! Here is some perspective gleaned from years of experience.

The most important rule for raising capital to consider is: it’s never easy to raise capital when you need to! Meaning, investors are inherently risk aversive, can be very picky (a real understatement!) and they are looking for the best deal with the greatest upside and minimal risk.

Rule number two – don’t raise capital!

Finally – New Spam Prevention Product that Works!
By: Lee Traupel

Businesses and consumers are drowning in a never-ending deluge of Spam (junk mail) – according to reports just released by Quris, Inc. Spam has increased 450% from June of 2001 to now. Furthermore, 70% of respondents indicated they are receiving so much e-mail in the form of Spam that it’s negating their acceptance and responsiveness to legitimate opt-in e-mail messages (permission based). The average business user is forced to spend 20-30 minutes a day wading through Spam clogged e-mail in-boxes trying to separate legitimate e-mail from the junk in order to delete the latter.

Many companies have tried to offer Spam solutions that are based primarily on filtering technology. But, most of these products and services have not worked well in practice – the ingenious spammers have learned work arounds by constantly changing their fake e-mail addresses and text to avoid the blocking filters. It’s been a war of attrition to date and the spammers have been wining so far!

Start a Blog
By: Skip Lombardi

What would you think if I told you about a guaranteed method to reach 100% of your target audience? Beyond that, what would you think if I told you that you could develop a base of prospects who would look forward to hearing from you? You can do this, and more, by starting a blog.

Emerging Sources for low cost Web Site Traffic
By: Lee Traupel

Qualified traffic is the lifeblood of any web site today, especially for ecommerce sites that are selling goods or services online. But, many media buyers and or owners of web sites are paying too much for traffic by relying on top tier PPC (“pay per click”) search engines like Overture or Google’s Ad Words Select programs and others.

There is a new breed of traffic development firms emerging in the interactive marketing world that are brokering qualified traffic to the highest bidder on a CPC (“cost per click’) basis. These companies are bypassing tried and true business processes by flipping the business proposition 180 degrees – they don’t find clients and then optimize their web site for search engines, they do it the other way around. Traffic brokers develop their own domains by optimizing them for the top tier search engines.