The speed of internet is mind boggling, but there are so many players that it is difficult for any newbie to come out of obscurity.

In online business where business installation costs are relatively less that the establishment cost of a brick-and-mortar business, the cost of advertising can be single most expensive element.

Advertising can be done free of cost on the internet. But this is possible for “experts” who know how to work the free resources to get free publicity on the internet. Even this is time consuming because it takes time to build presence on the net.

Paid methods of advertizing can be expensive for individual entrepreneurs. They have to find out the resources for advertisement that are reliable. Then they have to experiment to see what is working for them.

Not all advertisement give same result and extensive testing is required to find the right workable combinations of resources and the material being advertized.

Co-operative marketing is for the benefit of individual entrepreneurs who have limited knowledge of resources, limited budget and limited time for advertising.

The individual entrepreneurs joining co-op advertising programs are charged nominal fee. The funds of the entrepreneurs are pooled and used for advertisement by the experts.

The advertising resources are bought in bulk, therefore the cost is considerably less than the street price. The experts know the resources and how they have to be used so that they are able to get high traffic at low cost.

The traffic generated by the advertisement campaigns is shared by the entrepreneurs in proportion of their contribution. They get traffic to their websites without hassles.

What methods of advertisement are used by co-ops?

There could be various methods adopted such as advertisement in newspapers, banner ads, pay per click ads, posting links on high traffic pages, expired domain name traffic, video marketing, social book marking, article promotions, solo ads, and press release.

Sharing of email lists is also one of the common methods for bulk advertisement. In this method a list owner of fairly large list send out advertisement to his list for a fee.

When done correctly, co-op advertisement provides a win-win situation for advertisers as well as for their clients; the network marketing can be seen at its best.

Success in internet venture really comes from leveraging the efforts of all the members of the team. Why not join the team of giants and leverage their tremendous presence on the net to kick-start you business with a bang?

See what’s in store for you:

http://SanjayJohari.com

There is a clickable link associated with the banner so that when someone clicks on the banner another web page opens where the advertiser intends to send the visitors.

The banner ads are of standard sizes and are embedded on the webpage using JavaScript program or multimedia object  that are run with technologies such as Shockwave, Java, of Flash. Sometimes sound and video effects are also used for drawing attention.

The advertiser would like to place banner on web pages with related content and with high traffic. The position of the banner on web page is also crucial and the advertiser would prefer to place it at a prominent spot where it can easily come to notice.

Banners can be put at different places such as below the header, left and right columns, bottom of the page and not infrequently within the main content of the page.

What sort of message should the banner give out? This is an advertisement and normal practices of advertising are all applicable.

The message coming out of the text and general appearance of banner ad should draw attention and provoke curiosity. It should not try to sell anything; it should only induce the visitor to click the banner so that they are taken to the landing page.

Should the banner stand out on the webpage or should it merge as an integral part of the theme of the page?

Opinions vary on this point. Some people say that visitors are offended by banners that stand out and therefore avoid it. Others say that the banner should stand out so that it has better chance of getting noticed. There is no general rule on this issue and the best is to experiment with various combinations until effective banner ad is generated.

Where do you put banners?

I would like to put banner prominently on a web page or blog that has high traffic. I would first find such web pages and blogs. These pages are generally on top of search engine results for related keyword. Many of them offer space for banner ads and charge for their service.

Before taking their services I would verify their Alexa ranking to ascertain that these pages have large number of visitors. I would prefer pages with traffic rank1 to 100,000. The page should have content similar to what I am offering so that visitors of that page also get interested in my banner ad.

There are banner placement agencies that can put the banner on high traffic relevant pages. There are various ways in which banner placement services are paid. It could be a sort of rent for showing banner for certain fixed time. Another way is by impressions which is based on number of times the banner is shown.

Yet another method is by action – payment is made on the basis of number of times the banner is clicked.

Although banner is among the oldest form of advertizing, it has its importance and continues to give predictable results.

To know more about banner advertising and any marketing method, visit this site where you can get tons of resources and information.

And new ways of promotions are being found every day. The present craze in social media sites, but older methods of marketing – such as SEO, banner ad, article marketing, PPC – are still going strong.

But the King of promotion has been and, still remains the good old email. Nothing beats email promotion in effectiveness. Those who make staggering amount of money in very short time rely on their lists and the means of communication is email.

The list has been called by various names such as the ATM Machine and Cash-on-Demand.

In the present scenario the list has become synonymous with success in internet marketing. In fact various promotional methods are used only to enlarge the list.

The starting point for making a list is the capture page on which we try to collect email addresses of interested persons in exchange for something valuable to them. Our entire promotional efforts are towards driving traffic to our capture page.

It will always be advantageous to host the capture page on our own domain name where we can have some control in designing the web page. On this page we can ensure that only those links are present that we want our visitors to use and not get distracted to some other site.

It is interesting to ponder over why people go on-line. They are obviously looking for ways to resolve some issue that is bothering them. They want solution to their problem and they want it free.

The internet has developed this cult of expecting things free of cost because so much is available free of cost and people have become used to getting free stuff.

Why do we say that we should offer something free of cost in exchange for email address? Well, there could be several theories on this issue.

Talking about myself, do I like to get things free of cost? Yes, occasionally. Why?

It is not that I cannot afford to pay for a valuable bargain. And I am sure this must be true for most of the people. Still people prefer to get things free of cost.

I have purchased dozens of courses, ebooks, software, membership. But I found that I am not able to use them all. Not because they are bad, some of them are real gems. But somehow I am mentally not prepared to take advantage of all the knowledge and opportunities that are at my disposal.

And I am very sceptical about buying anything on-line. Not because it will be bad, but more likely because I not be able to take its full advantage and then have the feeling that I have wasted money.

But free stuff? Here these situation can arise :

1. It does not matter if it is bad. All I lose is some time going through it.

2. If I am not able to use it properly then also it’s ok because I have not paid for it with money.

3. And if turns out to be good and workable then I’m impressed. I may be tempted to buy more from the same source. And I will remain hooked to the list.

When we offer free stuff for giving email address, it should fall in the category 3 above. Our free stuff is the free sample that is indicative of what can be expected from the newsletter.

List is nurtured and cultured with relationship.The element of trust has to be there otherwise it takes just a second to unsubscribe.

The biggest asset an internet marketer can have is the list of loyal subscribers. This is equivalent to loyal, regular customers of the physical world.

The human touch does matter.

The focus of network marketing should be to provide value. You should be able to contribute positively to your networking partners otherwise why will they be interested?

First of all you are in network marketing field because your have something to offer, something valuable that can help others in some way. This help could be by way of resolving their pain, or generating income for them, or providing happiness, or increasing their knowledge and skill etc.

And there are people looking for just the solution you have to offer.

The marketing skill is really combining these two broad variables – getting people who are looking for solutions that you can make available to them, and building enough trust with your prospects so that they are willing to take solutions from you.

It is human nature that people see things from their points of view, and there is nothing wrong with this. As a marketer you have to develop the skill to look at things from the point of view of your prospects. What they want matters to them much more than what you have to offer. It is necessary to understand their needs as they understand them.

You will certainly not like to trick someone into buying something that they do not want. Therefore it pays to be truthful – any attempt to deceive gets exposed anyway. Your way of presentation has a strong bearing on building relationship. It should arouse interest in the prospects so that they see you different from just another sales pitch.

You have heard the saying – information tells, and story sells. As I see it, the role of the marketer is to lay the facts emphasizing benefits in clear terms and then leave the decision to buy on the prospects. People love to buy but they hate to be sold.

All the age-old tricks of interpersonal relationships still work because basically human nature has not changed in spite of technological progress. For every person his or her name is still the sweetest sound for him /her. It will help to take their names correctly – and with respect – few times during your presentation.

Every person is different from others. Some are able to take decision fast and others remain indecisive for a long time. The marketer should have patience and allow time. But then care should be taken to keep the issue alive so that the prospect is not “forget” and comes to a decision.

The purpose of all prospecting should be to build relationship that is sustainable on long-term basis. Immediate sale should not be the target – sale should come as a by-product of a good relationship.

Your customers are your real assets – they have to be taken care of. Interpersonal skill is one of the most useful art and can be acquired like any other skill.

And this membership site trains you to master the skill.

Some of social media sites have become a craze, particularly for our younger friends. You may be yourself addicted to Facebook which I believe has taken over position of highest viewership from Google.

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are by far the most popular media sites, but there are numerous other sites that have their own followings.

Our job is to get links of our blog posted to these sites, by as many people as possible. In Facebook people can just “like” our blog post to create a back-link. Twitter members can tweet the blog post with or without their comments.

We can encourage the visitors of our blog to “like” and “tweet” our posts if they like them. To make things easier for the visitors, buttons are available for Social Media sites that can be placed on the blog.

Social Bookmarking plug-ins are available for blogs that are free and can be easily installed. “Sociable” plug-in works very well and is highly recommended.

Marketing is all about maintaining relationship with people, interacting with them. Social sites help you to do just that. They are the most cost-effective communication channels and it is up to the individual members to make best use of these tools.

The investments in developing skill for using these tools will be worth making. There are also sites for book marking that we should not forget. Some of well known sites are Stumbleupon, Reddit, Digg, Del.icio.us.

These sites allow you to bookmark web-pages of your choice as “interesting”. Others who visit those book marking sites are likely to see these pages. When you bookmark your own web-post, a back-link is created. There are services such as livewire that can bookmark for you on several bookmarking sites.

In using social sites, it is necessary to maintain etiquette. In bookmarking sites the same pages should not be bookmarked again and again. Apart from your own pages other really interesting pages should also be bookmarked.

In twitter your tweets should be limited to 3-5 a day. There should be balance of people you are following and people following. They have restricted the following to 2000 until you have sufficient number of followers.

You can increase your followers by getting more interactive. You can post interesting tweets of your own and tweet others with meaningful comments. Twitter allows you to open multiple accounts, so if you have interest in several fields it will be advisable to open separate accounts for each of them.

Social sites such as Facebook and twitters should be used for making relationship, not for sales promotion. Any advertisement should be done in a subtle way that doesn’t look offensive. Same applies to the sites that share videos.

The real effect of social sites comes when other people start talking about your blog. Social sites are the future of the most effective type of advertizing – word of mouth promotion. The more “social proof” your product gains, the better will be its acceptance.

To have a thorough knowledge of Social Sites, visit this page:

http://sanjayjohari.com

While optimization of a blog page is important to improve its visibility in search engine searches, off-page optimization has major influence on the ranking of the blog page.

By off-page optimization we refer to links from other websites pointing to our blog and to our blog pages. Both number and quality of backlinks are important.

By quality of backlinks we mean the ranking of webpage where links to our web-pages are placed. Higher the rank of the external web-page, higher the quality and value of the backlink.

There are several so-called authority sites that have high page rank such as Twitter, Facebook, WordPress etc. Backlinks to our blog pages appearing on these sites will give lot of weightage to our blog page helping it to rank high.

It should be the endeavor of blog owner to get many backlinks from authority sites. This will increase visibility of the blog on those sites as well as in the search engine searches. And you will agree that high visibility is crucial for any marketing strategy.

The authority sites that can give high quality backlinks can be divided into following types for sake of convenience and clarity.

1. Article Submission
2. Social Media Sites
3. Directory Submission
4. High ranking blogs in the niche

Article directories such as ezinearticles.com have very high ranking. Articles on subjects related to the main keyword of the blog post can be submitted to such directories. The author of the article is allowed to write resource box at the end of the article in which he can give link to his blog or blog-post.

Leaving your comments on high ranking blogs can generate high quality backlinks. To do this, start with searching high ranking blogs in your broad-based generic keywords. Read the content of the blog post and write some useful information / observations as comment.

On most of the blogs comments are moderated which means the comments have to be approved by the blog administrator before it can appear on the blog. Therefore your comments should provide really useful information for it to be accepted.

You can have a backlinks to your blog in the comment. Normally the link is hyperlinked with your name or a naturally occurring keyword.

I would refer to my video “Promoting A Blog Using RSS Feed Syndication” for getting backlinks by directory submissions.

We will continue our discussion on backlinks in the next post.

In the last article we discussed about keywords. They are important because they indicate the intent of the website and the article. They indicate the basic theme, the focus around which the website is designed.

In this article we will concentrate on using them within the website. We will be talking in terms of blogs rather than static webpage.

A blog is designed for a generic subject like, say, golf. The blog will talk about various aspects of golf such as swing, golf balls, golf clubs, golf courses and so on. There may be several posts in each of these subjects.

For sake of convenience and for giving more focus on each of these subtopics, it will be better to create a separate page for each of these sub-topics. All the articles on, say, golf balls can be placed under a page named “Golf Balls”.

Similarly all articles pertaining to golf clubs can be assigned to a page “Golf Clubs”.

On the home page of the blog all the articles will appear in chronological order, last article appearing first. But if someone clicks on the page “Golf Balls”, only articles related to this topic will appear.

This makes navigation of the blog and readability easier. Each page is more focused on one topic. A reader interested in that topic goes directly to that page and reads articles of his interest.

This arrangement can also help search engine optimization of the blog. Each page should have appropriate title containing a main keyword, meta-tags, and meta-description to tell the search engines what the page is about. The meta-tags can be the main and other targeted keywords.

Care should be taken not to spam the blog. Selected keywords should appear naturally in meta-description. Meta tags should not contain too many tags, about 10-12 closely related keywords should be good enough.

The individual posts should also have same or related keywords. The idea is to make the structure of the blog and its focus should be abundantly clear to the search engines. Then it can be expected that search engines will know which page or post to show for which search term.

In this article we are trying to see what can be done to a blog to make it more search engine friendly. We have seen that proper organization of pages, assigning relevant titles to them, meta-tags and meta-description can be of great help.

Another feature that can help in SEO is intra-linking of blog posts. Each blog post can have links to other pages of the blog. Inter-linking of posts and pages can be of great help.

But again a word of caution. There should not be too many links – say about 2 links in 500 word article should be ok. The links should be created on keywords appearing naturally within the article. There anchor texts should be selected carefully to make them appear natural.

We have been talking about doing things within the blog for its SEO. In the next article we will talk about the most powerful factor for SEO which is outside the blog. This is links to the blog from other sites, or back-links.

Links to the blog from other sites are by far the most important factor that is crucial for rank that the blog is getting in search results. So stay tuned for the next article.

For example, let us assume that I create a webpage which gives information on tuning a guitar. I would like that when someone searches the term “tuning a guitar” and other related keywords, my webpage should be the first one on page one of search engine results.

If it is not the first, then at least it should be among the first ten so that it is still on page one. This is because most visitors do not see beyond page one of search results.

My webpage should appear prominently on page one for targeted keywords so that I get more visitors to my webpage. This is the purpose of SEO.

There are really 3 parts to SEO –

1. Keywords
2. Webpage optimization
3. Links to the webpage from other sites

In this article we will talk about keywords and in subsequent articles we will discuss other parts of SEO.
Keywords indicate the subject of the webpage, they tell what the webpage is about. Normally a webpage should focus on one main keyword representing the theme of the page.

This helps search engines to figure out when the webpage should appear as a search result. The first step is to do some keyword research to find out the exact keyword that people are looking for.

There is no point in targeting a keyword which no one is searching, even if such a keyword “appears” to us as sensible.

Our objective should be to give the readers what they want, not what we want.

There are several very popular keywords that are searched many times. The chances are that there will be many webpages catering to those keywords. If we target very popular keywords we will be competing against giants.

While it will be good to be counted among giants eventually, it will be better to have a humble beginning and target for less popular keywords. By keyword research it should be possible to come out with keywords that are being searched, but still have less competition. It will be easier to rank high for those keywords.

Care should be taken to ensure that ALL the keywords we have shortlisted should be related to the main keyword and to the main theme of the webpage.

After deciding upon the keywords that we want to target, we should design our webpage around those keywords. The content of the page should contain those keywords “naturally” – in the write-up of the content the keywords should appear as a part of the narration. The keywords should not be repeated too many times otherwise it will look like a spam.

The keywords should be included in meta tags and meta description of the webpage. A blog can have several categories. Each category should be focused around a main keyword with few related keywords.

Other categories should be connected with the main keyword and the main theme of the blog. The better organized a blog is with respect to its subject matter, better chances it will have of appearing appropriately in search engine results for targeted keywords.

One of the most important keywords of all your blog should be your name of the name of your organization. Be sure to devote a page on which you tell something about yourself or your organization.

In other articles on serach engine optimization we will continue from here.

One of the objectives of your marketing strategy is to direct internet traffic to one of your landing pages. The URL of your landing page with tracking code looks something like this:

http://sanjayjohari.com/?t=caa&funnel=BBook

The part of the URL after the question mark (?) is the tracking code. The portion before the question mark is of course the web address of the landing page.

The tracking codes can generate a wealth of information for you provided they are properly designed.
Let us see what could be the variables in your marketing strategy.

1. Type of Ads – There are many types of ads such as PPC, banner ads, solo ads, classified ads, videos, ezine ads, press release, blogs and social sites.

2. Places Where Ads are Placed – For each type of ad there are several places where those ads can be placed. For example PPC ads can be placed in Google, Yahoo, Facebook etc. There are numerous sites for placing classified ads, solo ads ezine ads, press release. Then there are so many social sites such as Facebook, twitter, Squidoo, Hubpages and so on. For video distribution also there are so many sites.

3. Headlines of the Ads – You may be experimenting with different headlines for same type of ads to see how they convert.

4. Ad Text – You may be experimenting with different ad texts that appeal to different types of target audience

5. Market Niche and Keywords – There could be several keywords and niche markets that your product can serve. Your ad campaigns will certainly be designed for specific keywords and market segments. In case you are targeting more than one keyword and niche market you would like to track how your ads are doing for each of the keywords.

6. Landing Page and Thank You Page – It is possible to have different landing pages for the same product. Each landing page will cater to particular requirement represented by specific keywords that are being searched. For each group of keywords, the message conveyed by your landing page will be different.

In fact your message to your target audience starts with the advertisement. The headlines and the body of the ads, the videos and blog posts – they all convey messages and are designed to appeal to the target audience. The ad, connected landing page and thank you page – they should be congruent to convey the same message that has drawn the attention of the reader of the ad and prompted him to subscribe.

7. Geographical Regions – Different geographical locations respond differently to the marketing campaigns. The marketer would like to know how his marketing efforts are performing at different places

Apart from the above there could be other variables in marketing campaigns such as language of the ad and landing page.

The tracking codes help us to track how variables such as the above are performing and accordingly modify the marketing campaigns. With the help of tracking code we will know which subscriber responded to which ad, where the ad was placed, which landing page was used, which keyword or market niche appealed to him, and where he saw the ad.

Over a period of time the tracking codes can give us a pattern about how different variables are performing. It is a task in itself to tabulate the tracking codes periodically and have the overall picture of marketing campaigns, but this task is worth undertaking to directions for the future.

Many affiliate programs provide the facility for generating tracking codes.

I often wonder why is it that we do not do what we think, what we know we should be doing.

Is it laziness? Is it lack of commitment? Is it lack of motivation? Or is it something else?

Whatever it is, is there a way out of this impasse?

There could be several reasons why we procrastinate. But what comes to my mind is that it could be fear that holds us back from performing.

But fear of what?

It could be fear of failure. Or fear of not being able to do something big. You see, when we think of doing something, we naturally think of accomplishing something big, some thing that we feel will be important.

And when we see that we are not likely to attain that big, important result we wait.

We wait for the next opportunity, next available slot of time from our busy schedule that never really comes.

So we really have two problems. One is of finding time for our next step. And the next is really taking that big step where we are afraid of failing. And if we fail, we are afraid of not only losing confidence, but also the resources that went into taking that step.

Here I will not talk about ways of finding time. I am my self experimenting and will write in this blog when I have something concrete to share.

The fact that I am writing this post is a part of the experiment. You will notice that I am writing after lapse of several days whereas I had determined that I would write after every one or two days. I have also procured a plug-in recently to distribute my blog-posts, but have not taken its advantage.

Now coming back to the other problem – failure of getting big results. This problem can be resolved when we break it into its components. There are really two components – one is fear of failure and the other is big size of the next step that looks formidable.

The first component is simple to resolve. Just realize that failure, any failure, is not wasted effort so long as you take lessons from the failure. What we perceive as failures are really steps towards progress that add to our learning and experience. These are just parts of the road that we must cover to reach the objective.

Now coming back to that big next step. Any big step can be divided into smaller manageable steps. You will know how – just think over it. Those smaller steps may appear to be inconsequential but they are really important. Even if they do not give immediate gratification they will lead to the big results.

Important thing is to take those small steps CONSISTENTLY, every day if possible. Consistency really pays.

This will not only get your work done sooner that expected, over time you might started getting compounding effect – you start getting more outcome from the same efforts.

The trick to success in internet based business is to take action consistently, even if they are small.