Tuesday, 28 August 2012

How to Make Certain Your Online Marketing Biz Survives the Google Panda Update

The Panda update was carried out with the best of Google’s motives. Panda was created in an effort to purge peoples’ search engine results of all of those spammy feeling websites that had started to take control. You know how from time to time you look for something in Google and are given a single poorly written article that is published on ten different websites?
The objective of Google Panda is to make it stop. It just wants to help people get excellent and appropriate search engine results and not merely be met with spam that is intended to game a system and to increase ad earnings. This is good but when you’re a web marketer, it’s natural to be concerned about the changes this update has caused through the market. Places such as HubPages and Ezine Articles have been hit especially hard, which might have been where lots of your site visitors was originating from. That doesn’t imply, though, that you are guaranteed to go down in smoke. In reality, now the traffic you receive is going to be a lot more highly targeted and interested in what it is that you are selling. Obviously, this depends upon your ability to work with the system.
So what exactly is the next step?
Avoid keyword stuffing your articles. It’s great to focus on a keyword or two but do not try to smash them into your content in places where they don’t fit. This has always been crucial in article writing but it is even more important these days. Panda has made Google spiders smarter than they have been. These bots will know when a keyword is used in a natural way and when it is being stuffed.Update your web site often. This can be through the addition of content. It may be through a blog that sees updates regularly. It is actually even possible to do this via the regular sprucing up of your site content. Whatever the reason, update frequently so that Google crawls your web site a lot. Since its Panda update, Google values active web sites even more than they ever have in the past. The more time you allow to lapse between changes, the lower on the search result totem pole you are likely to be.Only allow completely unique content to be published to your web site. Avoid using recycled PLR content. Do not use something you snagged from an open source article website. Google Panda punishes you rather severely for duplicate content — even if it just appears duplicated. The publishing of used content is an extremely fantastic way to make certain that Google’s bots and spiders don’t crawl your site. That can not be great for your bottom line, can it?Work as hard as you can to give and earn high quality links both outwardly and inwardly. You need to actually earn your back links from sites that have good reputations. Directories and traffic funnels won’t help you appear very popular to Google any longer. Google would like to ensure that your link is legit so they also spider the source. This implies that you have to literally earn the backlinks you get.There are many things you could do to help your business and your website be more Panda compliant. Common sense is the basis for most of them. Look at what you would like to find when you search and then make certain your website matches that. If you do this, you should be definitely okay.

Friday, 24 August 2012

Why Should You Be Using Fiverr?

You might wonder why you should consider using a service like Fiverr to generate income online. The basis of this business model is that you would sell services or products to other people that you would be willing to perform or deliver for only $5 - known in Fiverr-speak as a "gig".Of course, some of the services people offer could be worth far more than $5. The sales model is designed to offer services and products at a price which the majority of people would be willing to pay, and many service providers are willing to do things for $5 that people outside of Fiverr are selling for much higher prices. If you think about it, $5 is actually an ideal price for many services which do not take much time or effort to perform. It also works well for most digital products, like ebooks and audio files, which are cheap to deliver to your buyers. The trick is to find products or services which you can deliver for such a low price. With over 1.3 million page views per day, Fiverr has captured the imagination of a huge market of folk who have discovered just how much they can buy for only $5.It's completely free to sign up for Fiverr - there are no monthly service fees to join this huge group of buyers. However, Fiverr makes its money by keeping $1 of every sale. The result is that you get only $4 profit from each sale you make. However, the huge amount of traffic to the site means that there is a good chance that you will make some sales - especially if you optimize your gigs to be as effective as possible.The reviews on the Fiverr site are completely out of the hands of the seller. This means that positive comments are very important. You need to reduce or eliminate negative comments by supplying an excellent service or product, and delivering it timeously.It's very important to conduct your business in an honest and truthful manner. Be sure to read the Terms of Service and follow the rules. If you try to rip people off or if you represent yourself falsely, Fiverr will permanently close your account and withhold any payments which are due to you.Here are some useful tips for creating your profile on Fiverr:When you select an user name, make it relevant for the products and services you plan to offer. You want it to be friendly and inviting, but still professional.It's vital to use a good picture for your profile. It's usually best to use a photograph of yourself, because it shows customers that they're buying from with a real human being, but you could use an image such as your business logo. It's important to make your Fiverr profile as complete as possible. Make sure that you add at least a few lines of text about yourself or about your Fiverr business. Make it look as if you've spent some time working on it, not just slapped up an account and started listing stuff to sell.

Sunday, 19 August 2012

How to do Keyword Research the Easy Way

Keyword research is one of the first things that most internet marketers should learn. Whether you’re doing PPC, SEO, article syndication, or anything else- keyword research is a good, good thing.That said, I’m amazed at how complicated people can make it sometimes! I see it all the time; a new marketer goes through the follow stages-

1)Learn about IM
2)Get excited about making tons and tons of money
3)Jumps in without really learning the basics
4)Fails
5)Comes back to learn the basics
6)Gets confused (sometimes about keyword research, sometimes it’s something else)
7)Tries again (maybe)
8)Gets frustrated
9)Quits

Does that sound about right?

Now I know that some parts of IM are confusing and require constant learning. But keyword research isn’t one of those things. When it comes to selecting good keywords, here are the 3 principles I live by:

Principle #1: Look for Buying KeywordsThis is probably the most important of the 3 principles. You can make money without buying keywords, but it won’t come as easily.
So what’s a buying keyword? There are a few things to look for:
Product namesProduct name + review, reviews, scam, discount, coupon, cheapBuy, cheap, discount, best + product type (best vacuums, cheap washers, buy red high heels, etc.)The people typing in these keywords often have a credit card in hand, ready to spend some money. They’re either ready to buy, or doing research right before they buy. These are the visitors that convert like crazy! If someone is looking for a Fat Burning Furnace review, they’re thinking of buying Fat Burning Furnace. It’s as easy as that.

If you focus on buying keywords, you really don’t need many visitors to your site every day. Your visitors will convert much better than most, so making good money won’t take thousands and thousands of visitors.

Principle #2: Look for Desperate PeopleI know that sounds bad, but I don’t know how else to put it!When you’re desperate, you have a problem that you want fixed now. Doesn’t that sound like someone who might buy your product? After all, your product does solve problems, right?Let’s say that someone’s having marital problems, and things are getting bad. They might go to Google searching for something like:
I need to save my marriage
My wife is leaving me
My wife left me
My wife doesn’t love me anymore

Anyone typing in those kinds of things is asking for help. They have a severe problem, and you can help them fix it with your product.**HINT** Most desperate buyers will either have health, finance, or relationship issues. People don’t get desperate about World of Warcraft or shoes.

Principle #3: More Doesn’t Mean BetterMany new marketers think that when it comes to visitors, more is better. While you might still make some sales, you always want to niche down at least 2 or 3 levels.For example, let’s say that you’re promoting Fat Burning Furnace. Do you think the keyword “lose weight” is good?The truth is that it’s okay, but it’s still not very great. You have no idea who is typing that into Google.
They may be 5 pounds overweight or 500.
It might be a woman who has never worked out a day in her life, or a guy who works out every day and just can’t shed that last layer of fat.
But really, you can’t even be sure if they’re trying to learn how to lose weight!
That is probably what they want, but it’s not what they typed into Google.
Now, let’s take the keyword “how to lose weight”. You’ll get fewer searches each month, but at least you know what they’re looking for. However, you still run into the fact that it’s not specific at all.Finally, let’s look at someone typing in “how to lose weight for new mothers.” This won’t get tons and tons of searches each month, but at least you know who is searching for a solution. Now you can really target your audience, explaining how Fat Burning Furnace is the best way to lose weight for new mothers because of X, Y and Z.

Conclusion
There is more to keyword research than this- but when you really get to the core, this is pretty much all you need to know.Now I admit that when you throw in SEO or PPC competition, you get into a whole new ballgame. Competition is fierce for a lot of keywords, but you can still find some gems out there.If your game is SEO, then I can’t recommend highly enough that you get a good keyword research tool. My personal favorite is Market Samurai but there are some other good ones as well.Thanks for reading, and I hope this article helped clear up some confusion about keyword research!

Monday, 13 August 2012

Social media could turn athlete earnings gold

Olympic athletes are returning home from the London Games, hoping to extend their peak period for endorsement earnings through their increased popularity on social media.Many athletes saw their earnings potential skyrocket during the Games, even existing household names such as Michael Phelps, the US swimmer crowned as the most winning Olympian of all time, and Usain Bolt, the fastest man in the world.The athletes, who both are endorsed by a lineup of global brands, could earn about $50m a year in endorsement deals should they be able to extend their time in the spotlight beyond the halo of the Games, according to SponsorHub, a company that brokers endorsement deals.An athlete’s following on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites has quickly become key in determining this.“Brands always ask how many followers an athlete has,” said Ricky Simms, director at Pace Sports Management who is Bolt’s worldwide agent. “For many companies, this is the way they want to reach their target customers.”Olympic athletes traditionally had a short time frame to capitalise on their performance in the Games because they quickly fade from the public eye, according to marketing executives. But social media has allowed the athletes to extend relationships with fans by sharing messages, photos and videos. Sponsorship now typically involve some social media promotion through an athlete’s Twitter feed or Facebook page. Before the Games, for instance, Bolt posted messages about his sponsors, such as a picture of a refrigerator filled with bottles of the orange Gatorade sports drink Athletes were not permitted to mention sponsors on social media without a special waiver until a period surrounding the Games, which ends on Wednesday. Advertisers that endorsed Olympians but were not official Olympic sponsors also were barred from promoting that connection during the period surrounding the Games. Marketers that endorse Olympic athletes are expected to release a flurry of ads to congratulate athletes when that blackout period ends. Athletes also are expected to hit social media, thanking their sponsors. Bolt is one of the most followed Olympians with more than 8m Facebook fans and 1.6m Twitter followers. Before the games, Bolt had about 620,000 Twitter followers. Bolt’s existing sponsors include Visa, Puma and Gatorade but he is looking to extend his brand further. Mr Simms said Bolt had recently released a new mobile game and is in discussions about using his signature celebratory pose on products ranging from luxury brands to toiletry items and Jamaican-inspired food products.However, some athletes who experienced a quick leap to fame during the Games are likely to have a harder time translating that into new sponsorship deals. Gabby Douglas, the US gold medal winning gymnast, for instance, saw her Twitter followers spike to more than 654,000 from 29,000 before the Games. While she now ranks among the most sponsorable athletes, her appeal to marketers is likely to drop relatively quickly after the Games because of the short tenure of most gymnasts and a lack of interest in gymnastics throughout the rest of the year, industry executives said.Marketers that endorsed her before the games, such as Procter & Gamble, are likely to see the most benefit.“There is no arguing that Gabby’s value as an endorser is exponentially more valuable now than it was when they signed her,” said Kevin Adler, founder of Engage Marketing, a Chicago sports and entertainment marketing company. “If I am a creative and smart athlete agent, I would include bonus clauses that trigger financial incentives if social media audiences grow.”

Tuesday, 7 August 2012

Can You Still Make Money Online in 2012?

For more than ten years of internet history, people have been researching and perfecting ways to make money online. Many of the people who found success early on then tried to sell their methods to other people. With the knowledge that thousands of people want to be able to work from home and that this process has been going on for years, the natural assumption would be that all existing methods are too crowded or overused to still make money online in 2012. Fortunately, this assumption isn't entirely correct. While there are many methods that are just too outdated or overcrowded to achieve a full-time income in 2012, the world of online business is constantly evolving. For every method that the internet has outgrown, there is a new, more automated, and more effective method that replaces it. For this reason, you certainly can still make money online in 2012. Because there is such a large demand for new money making methods that are easy to use, especially given the recent economy, savvy software developers and internet marketers are always trying to come up with new techniques to fill that demand.Although most people won't be able to immediately reach the success gained by those who got into the industry five or ten years ago, it's good to know that most of those "gurus" actually have an interest in seeing everyday people succeed. The more money you make with their methods, the more likely you are to come back to them in the future.Of course, that doesn't mean that every method out there will still make money online in 2012. There will always be people out there who aren't honest in their business practices who might try to take advantage of those who are just getting started with their online businesses. Make sure to take care in who you trust with your personal information and money to avoid getting scammed, and do a little basic research before trying a particular make money online method or program if you are unsure.Also remember that the number one factor in whether you will make money online in 2012 is how much effort you put in. As with most "real" jobs, you will have to put in some extra work if you want to take your income to the next level. So-called "push button" software might be able to make you some extra spending money, but it will take much more work to achieve a full-time income.The number one determining factor in whether or not you will make money online this year is if you are willing to try.