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Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Cell Phone Dropship Business

 

 

Drop Ship Business Is The Easiest Business Out There. Dropshipping provides a number of advantages, including removing the need for stocking goods, no shipping expenses, etc, but it can’t be defined as simple business. Among all dropship businesses, Cell phone dropship introduced a new online selling opportunity. This opens doors to a lot of people who want to earn by selling cell phones online.

The concept behind this form of e-business is that the retailer is going to sell the cell phone unit online directly to the customers at a price that he wants. Once a purchase had been made, the distributor or cell phone dropshipper will be the one to ship the goods directly to the customer. The seller/retailer serves as the middle man between the cell phone distributor and the customer.

In cell phone dropship, the seller is not the one keeping inventory of the items. Once he receives the customer’s payment, he will pay the wholesaler the amount of the cell phone unit he had sold. The difference between the seller’s price for the cell phone and the wholesaler’s price is the earning.

If you are interested in cell phone dropship, the best way to start is by visiting the sites of cell phone dropshippers. You would be surprised at how many sites offer dropshipping. Prior to starting your online business, you have to determine a good and credible supplier. Doing so minimizes certain risks and it can also determine how successful you can be as an online seller of cell phones.

Websites that offer cell phone dropship usually carry multiple cell phone brands. There are some that offer only brand new ones while some offer pre-owned units as well. Carefully studying their terms and conditions can give you an exact picture of what to expect in this kind of e-business.

There is a lot of potential in cell phone dropship. Try contacting several cell phone dropshippers or simply visit their site and check out their prices for each unit. This is important because the wholesaler’s price will help you decide on your retail price. This can help you determine your earnings per completed transaction.

Cell phones are excellent items to sell online. Discover more on how you can start your cell phone e-business by knowing more about dropship. And one way of acquiring expertise on this cell phone dropship business is through my website. You can browse through it and stay posted. And please feel free to add your comments on good cell phone dropship sites below.


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Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Zen Cart SEO by Optimizing Meta Tags in Zen Cart

 

 

If you want to do SEO on Zen Cart, i.e. make your Zen Cart pages more search engine friendly, don’t just use the default settings, although ZenCart pulls the database information automatically for each category and product page and places it in the meta tags. The information includes product name, title, model, price, title/tagline.

Zen Cart enables you to define custom keywords for every category and product page.

1. Create optimized text for your product descriptions

You need to include keyword phrase in the content on the page as well as in the meta tags. The content should contain at least a a paragraph or 2 about the product as search engines love well written descriptive content.

2. Customize the Categories Meta Tags

Go to the Categories section of your admin panel. You will see a round Meta Tags icon on the far right under “action”. If the icon is black and white, custom keywords have not been defined. Click on the icon and a page will open allowing you to enter custom Meta Title, Keywords, and Description tags.

* Include your main keyword or keyword phrase at the beginning of your title meta tag, then add your business name at the end.

* Create an attractive description for your category that will entice visitors to look deeper into your site.

* Add approximately 10 of your main keywords to the keywords meta tag.

* Click save

Your category page is now optimized for the search engines.

3. Customize the Products Meta Tags

* The top of each product page displays a box titled: “Mark What the Product’s Meta Tag Title Should Include:”

* Under this line are check boxes for product name, title, model, price, title/tagline. Uncheck price, title/tagline then enter your description and keywords in the boxes below. Zencart will automatically pull the product name, title and model from the database. (You can add your own tags if you don’t want to use these).

* Click preview to preview the changes.

* Click update to make the changes permanent.

Repeat the above procedure for each of your product pages. Make sure you include the name and model number for each product. If people are searching for that specific model, chances are your page will appear at the top of the search engines because you are the only one that optimized a page specifically for that model.

Doing Zen Cart SEO by customizing your meta tags for every page, will boost your rankings and increase your traffic and sales.


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Drop Shipping vs. Affiliate Marketing: Good and Bad

 

 

Drop shipping and affiliate marketing, as similar as the two programs are, they are quite different in what they have to offer you.

Affiliate marketing usually requires a bit more front-end work, but once the commissions start coming, the maintenance is fairly minimal.

As for dropshipping, you can get set-up and going relatively quickly. With superstores like eBay and Amazon, dropshipping requires no custom landing pages and minimal promotion. This, however, requires a little more work throughout the existence of the campaign. The per-sale-action ultimately requires more work in the long run. Both work very well, but it is up to you to choose which one works best…maybe it is both!

The advantages of dropshipping over affiliate marketing are:

1)Control of the final landing page and how the product is presented.

2) Less competition

3)Ability to set your own price and earnings

4)Ability to track your sales to completion

5)Less time required (in some cases) creating an avenue to sell the products (through eBay and Amazon, for example)

6) Potential higher earnings per sale (relative to affiliate marketing)

unfortunately, the disadvantages of dropshipping over affiliate marketing are:

1)You are now required the action of purchasing each product after a sale

2)Setting up payment methods (though companies like Paypal make this pretty easy…they just take a percentage of the sales)

3)Direct contact with the customer

4)Finding the right product at the right price with the right dropshipper can take some time and negotiating.

5)Higher risk of fraud and poor dropshipping companies.

In summary, the closest program to affiliate marketing that reduces or eliminates the affiliate marketing issues is dropshipping. With dropshipping, you are actually selling the product; you are no longer the middle man. This is similar to buying wholesale and marking up the price for each product, but with a little twist! With dropshipping, you only purchase the product AFTER someone purchases the product from you. In addition, the product is never in your hands; it is shipped directly to the end customer.


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Monday, December 29, 2008

12 SEO Tips For Simple Machines Forums SMF

 

1. Use description and keywords meta's in your SMF forum, if this support, or search for some mods/patches for this. Anyway your description need to be bigger than 50 chars and smaller than 250 (maximum). I recommend descriptions to be around 200 chars.

2.Use h1 for your titles. YES is a problem even with smf with this. Try to edit your templates and add h1 on your titles .... but not on all titles ... just in first title from a thread :)

3. One of SEO problems most simple machines forums SMF face is probably duplicate and irrelevant contents. Some advices to skip this problems:

Someone started the same thread on several forums, if you detect that then you can choose what to do with this thread (move to recycle, delete or leave it.). Also if someone write an entire article on your forum just check with copyscape to see if this is already existing in Google index or not. If exists it is your decision if you keep that article or remove the entire thread.

Also from time to time is good to check if your articles are in other forums/blogs and if you found them in other forums/blogs try to talk with the admin from there to remove them or to put a backlink to the original article.

4.Very short threads: If SE doesn't find anything relevant on your thread then is possible to go in “Supplemental results”.

5.Your forum doesn't have a good internal linking structure. Pay attention on every link on your forum and if are links to non relevant pages (login/registration/calendar) add a nofollow attribute to this anchor tags. In this way you will create a tight internal linking.

6.Get rid of session ID's and use some url beautifiers for your forum. I don't know if this exists for every forum but I know it exists for SMF (seo4smf) :)

7.Install a 301 redirect in your .htacess from your non-www to www or use google webmasters tools and set your preferred domain (just for google so is good to add a 301 redirect).


8.A lot of forums have a big problem ... multiple links to the same article for example forum/index.php?topic=12&message=X, forum/index.php?topic=12&prevnext=next for all this links you need to have and the main article without noindex need to be forum/index.php?topic=12. You need to check your forum to see if this is really working in your forum and if not just try to find some patches what is doing that.



9.Improve quality of your forum posts ... Yes I know you cannot control what an user writes but you can add a recycle Bin on your forum and move irrelevant posts there.


10.Try to remove index.php from your forum and redirect index.php to /

11.Try to install a url beautifier because google or other SE doesn't like too many variables in your url.


12.Another problem on forum is the dynamic part of it. Look on your forum and be sure when you access a page what doesn't exits your forum return a 404 and not a 200 message error.


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SMF (Simple Machines Forum): The Best Open Source Forum

 

 

 

Currently the most prevailing open source forum software online are simple machines forum (SMF) and phpbb. Which one is the best open source forum?

I contacted two people who were administrators/experts and asked their opinion of SMF vs phpBB. Both responded enthusiastically in favor of SMF for a host of reasons including bugs, security, and ease of use. One person said he would not install phpBB onto a client’s website, even if they requested it. The other person just happened to be a Simple Machines Forum (SMF) conversion expert…who quickly provided us with links to the SMF site where you can convert your existing forum into an SMF forum.

Take Home Message: Don’t Install phpBB, even if it seems so easy because there’s a one-click install from your web hosting company’s control panel. Go to the Simple Machines Forum download page and install their software instead. You’ll be very glad you did.


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Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Online Money Make by Email Marketing with Affiliate Programs

 

 

 

This online money make method with email marketing and affiliate programs is to put your product offer or advertisement at the end of someone’s autoresponder signup process.

A professional autoresponder service, one of email marketing skills, provides the ability to create mailing list signup forms that can be copied onto blogs, webpages and the like.

The form is often used in combination with a free offer to entice visitors to join a mailing list. When someone enters their name and email address into the form, they are presented with a webpage telling them to check their email for a confirmation link.

The visitor checks their email, clicks the confirmation link, and they are presented with another webpage that confirms that they have completed the opt-in process.

This is what’s known as a double opt-in signup because it requires the interested visitor to hand over their name and email address (opt-in number one) and then click a link in their email to confirm they want to receive email from the list owner (opt-in number two).

When you sign up for a newsletter or mailing list you usually see these standard set of notices. After completing the signup form, you see a page that tells you to check your email, and you get a page that confirms your opt-in status when you click the confirmation link in your email. It happens like clock work.

However, most new online money make marketers (heck even experienced ones) leave money on the table by not customizing these notification pages. They just use the default pages that are provided by the autoresponder service email marketing and they miss out on opportunities to further promote their own or related products and services.

What they should be doing is putting a one time offer on that final confirmation page to capture a sale from someone who was interested enough to double opt-in to their mailing list.

Here’s where you come in. Since that list owner is not fully using their autoresponder series to it’s fullest potentional, why not contact that list owner and ask to put your custom offer or message on that confirmation page?

Then your message will be seen by every person who double opts in to their list. Depending on the offer and the message you provide you might be able to get in front of a lot of people and not directly complete with the list owner.

If the list owner is interested in affiliate marketing, then you could offer them a percentage of sale. Or you might do well to negotiate a flat monthly fee or a per visitor fee. The right mix will depend on their past opt-in numbers and the conversion rate on your product or service. You might be able to get advertising space that is cheaper per visitor than Pay Per Click advertising.

In conclusion, to make money online, you need some creative thinking, even for email marketing such as autoresponder service, if you can think more carefully, you could find new ways to combine with affiliate marketing as well.


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Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Zen Cart Shopping Cart Site SEO

 

 

Zen Cart has many SEO features already built into it however lots more SEO needs to be done to help your store get good rankings, attract visitors and begin making sales.

Here's what I did for better Google Search engine results, i suggest making a checklist first:

1.) Make a list of the search terms you want optimized. These are all the words and phrases a potential customer would enter on a search to describe what you are selling.

2.) Your web zen cart site pages needs to contain these search words within the text. Google will scan your web zen cart site and create a concentration list.

3.) Very Important IMHO, in your admin, make your category names include your most important terms. And use the plurals and singulars if possible. This shows google your terms are an important part of your zen cart site.

4.) Still in the admin, for each category, and then additionally for each product, click on the circular meta tag link and add the appropriate terms and phrases to each. The top two fields on the meta tag page are the most important. Information given in the meta tags will be used to give info when your listing appears in google. Basically, for some products i used the singular forms, some i used the plural and some i used both, just to make them a little different.

5.) Next, you need to update the file that google uses to show your web zen cart site Title.

Change/update the file includes/languages/English/meta_tags.PHP.

This allows you to add more search terms to the tagline and they won't be seen by the user but google will still recognize it. Notice again how i integrated the plurals between the two lines yet when you see them on google, most of it is hidden so it doesn't look like were just throwing out tons of words and phrases.

save this file and upload to includes/languages/english/YOURCUSTOMFOLDER/meta_tags.php to create an override file to preserve this info when you do an update.

6.) Edit home page description and keywords meta tags

These tags are also included in meta_tags.php. The description is the small blurb the search engines provide visitors searching for your products. Create an attractive description that gets visitors to take action on your zen cart site.

Even though the keywords meta tags does not have much significance these days, include it anyway by adding approximately 10 keywords separated by commas or spaces.

7.) You need to create links to your zen cart site, both incoming and outgoing. if you have no links google doesn't think you're very important. the incoming links are more important than the outgoing, but you need to be connected to other zen cart sites .

8.) If you have completely updated your zen cart site and have included all of your SEO search terms, now you need to make a zen cart sitemap so the search engines can easily index your zen cart site. this is a map of your zen cart site so the search engines know what your zen cart site contains.


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2008 Top 10 Worst Make Money Online Sites

 

2008 Top 10 Worst Make Money Online Sites list is compiled by Nickycakes.  If you didn’t catch last years post, chiggity check it.

Anyway, here’s the list…worst of the worst top 10 online money make sites, 2008:

10. Ms. Daniellems-danielle

Talk about exploiting the fact that you’re female as your only angle on getting readers.  Do you honestly think if the internet marketing crowd weren’t sex-starved parents basement dwelling nerds that you’d have made it over 100 subscribers?  Doubtful.  When you take time out of your day to make a post about a picture with you and Zac Johnson standing in front of the least unique and most overpriced waste of blog design services (unique blog designs..lol) you know your make money online blog is grasping at straws.  It’s cool though, you’ll probably get some drooling acne faced digital point reading college kid to sign up under your adbrite referral link and make you millions!  Till then, pack up shop and find a dayjob, or considering ebaying your used undergarments.  Nickycakes hears that does well with the same sorta crowd.

9. Zac Johnson - Secret Life of a Super Affiliatezac-johnson

If pretending you know about PPC and dressing up as Spiderman and going to childrens playgrounds in the daytime makes you a “super affiliate” then yes, Zac, you are Thuper…err Super..indeed!  To be fair, Zac’s blog started out ok.  He had some good tips at the beginning on how affiliate marketing worked, a few clever ideas, whatever.  And then about a year ago, it all went to crap.  Maybe he paid content writers to write his first few blog posts, and then when those articles ran out he had nothing to write for himself, who knows.  But it soon became clear that Zac had no idea about PPC.  The dude made some decent money back when Yahoo screwed up with their adsense style program and was paying people tons more than they should of per click, but after that dried up and zac’s network of myspace layout sites (lol) got flushed down the toilet, the dude had nothing.  He stuttered his way through an agonizing session at Affiliate Summit where he proved he knew absolutely nothing about PPC, and then he was caught ripping off an affiliates landing page word for word right after publishing a guide on how to make landing pages, and was trying to claim he was some kind of expert on the subject.  He’s now resorted to devoting entire posts to things like figuring out how to calculate how much money you make per hour….daily revenue / 24….you’re a genius zac…really.  This dead horse has been beaten into the ground, time to remove from your rss reader.

8.  SeoBlackhat.com

seo-black-hat

Back in early 2007, this blog/forum had a little credibility.  No longer.  The dude who runs it, Quesadilla, Godzilla, something like that, has turned into the blackhat version of shoemoney, teaming up with the most blatant retards like Marcus “i think making $1k a month cookie stuffing ebay makes me a blackhat allstar” Tandler to try and convince newbies to attend their $5k attendance fee seo gatherings.  Really? Seoktoberfest?  Nickycakes feels really sorry for whoever shelled out $5k to go hang out with this group of asshats instead of spending that money on something….significantly less lame.  Having seen pics of said event, you would have been embarassed to be caught dead at this thing.  Either way, total scam, this dude’s fallen off bigtime, and it shows.  Keep making posts nitpicking the no-follow tactics of news sites like forbes.com big guy…everyone cares..really they do.

7. TylerCruz.com

The first giant douchebag make money online blogger was obviously shoemoney.  Then someone who wanted to be like him, copied everything he did.  His name is john chow.  Then uberaffiliate copied john chow, and people copied uber, all the way down the line till you get to TylerCruz.com.  Same deal.   No good content, tons of worthless posts and contests with the hope that some whale affiliate will accidentally click his link to sign up to marketleverage, or whatever flavor of the month worthless network is sending bloggers free stuff this week, and make him $500 per month to pay for his inevitably unused gym membership and a lifetime supply of little debbies and mt dew.  Listen, bro, if you’re going to be a sheep and get one of those oh-so-gay caricatures drawn up as your blog logo, at least get one that doesn’t look 3 times as skinny as you are.  Really dude, it looks like you ate the guy in your logo.  Be realistic.

6. Daniel Kemp - One Man, One Dreamdaniel-kemp

Ok, so this guy looks like Napoleon Dynamite, and decides to take the hype that surrounded that movie and move it over into the internet marketing realm by pretending to be this really weird guy.  He frequents wickedfire forums where he prentends to be really weird, and makes these videos and really long “intellectual” posts complete with footnotes.  People do actually fall for it and it’s sometimes hard to decide who is more idiotic, kemp himself, or the people who don’t realize it’s a big show.  Really the only reason this guy is on this list is because he posts on wickedfire a lot…the blog isn’t exactly make money online related…

5.  Blackhat World

Do your biggest dreams in life involve making a few hundred dollars a day by pretending to be a girl, visiting chat rooms, and persuading horny guys to sign up to dating services under your affiliate link?  Then this forum is full of people just like you.  Sign up today.  (bhw will likely start some gay thread about this post, and then make a short rally for someone to get some russians to ddos nickycakes’ uber shared hosting acct before giving up like they give up on pretty much everything in life)

4.  Mr Javo

Have you ever had a nightmare where there was this guy who barely spoke english and kept sending you im’s every day asking you to read their awful blog posts and to submit them to digg and get your friends to read them…EVERY….DAY.   Well Mr. Javo has made that nightmare a reality.  There is probably no other blog on the internet that has so many words on it that mean so little.  When this guy first started, he contacted as many people as he could and just bugged the living crap out of them until they agreed to digg or sphinn his blog posts or subscribe to his rss feed.  He does a “blog revenue” post every month where he includes the amount of money he made total in his affiliate marketing ventures, and it’s always less than $500, yet he has written an e-book on getting started with affiliate marketing.  In addition, he has the most annoying to look at caricature blog logo ever drawn.  Gives nickycakes a headache just thinking about this guy.

3.  Digital Point Forumsdigital-point

No surprise, digital point forums makes the list yet again.  Nickycakes was attempting to not repeat any of the “winners” from last year, but really, its hard to imagine digital point could have actually gotten worse since last year, but it definately has.  The place is just a cesspool of 3rd world scammers trying to make a few dollars a month clicking their own adsense ads.  It’s really impossible to describe, and the Cakes is probably preaching to the choir here, but if you’re part of the 1% of the readers who have not been there before, you really have to see it for yourself.  Make your way to the google adsense section on a rainy sunday weekend for more laughs than you can handle.

2.  Banner Blindnessbanner-blindness

For someone who’s been in the industry for a couple years, this guy’s pathetic attempts at viral marketing would be comical if they weren’t so damn sad.  He’s another one of those john chow ripoff clones, but can’t even seem to pull that off properly.   His latest genius viral marketing plan was to hire some average looking model to dress in wrapping paper, rattle off the names of like 50 affiliate networks and make money online blogs before unwrapping herself on camera.  Well, she was clothed in a bikini underneath, and he advertised it as her getting completely naked, strike 1.  The dude obviously shelled out a ton of money for this ultimately boring ordeal, strike 2.  And he got really upset when everyone called him a failure and demanded backlinks from people for his troubles, strike 3.  Here are some simple tips to fix your blog, guy:  Get a theme that doesn’t blind people….bright pink and blue? MOAR LIKE COLORBLINDNESS.COM!  If you insist on tagging most of your posts with 100+ categories, don’t have wordpress list every category on your sidebar so that it extends about 10 times further down the page than your site content does.  Actually…the best tip to fix your blog is just quit the internet man.  Just give up.

1.  Escobar Status

Words do not do justice.

Keep it real.

Sourced and Published by nickycakes


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50 Ways Social Media Marketers Use to Improve Online Marketing and Generate Targeted Traffic

 

Here are 50 ways to improve online marketing,  using social media sites, social media marketing, and social media optimization skills.

   1. Add social bookmark links to your most important web pages and/or blog posts to improve sharing.
   2. Build blogs and teach conversational marketing and business relationship building techniques.
   3. For every video project purchased, ensure there’s an embeddable web version for improved sharing.
   4. Learn how tagging and other metadata improve your ability to search and measure the spread of information.
   5. Create informational podcasts about a product’s overall space, not just the product.
   6. Build community platforms around real communities of shared interest.
   7. Help companies participate in existing social networks, and build relationships on their turf.
   8. Check out Twitter as a way to show a company’s personality. (Don’t fabricate this).
   9. Couple your email newsletter content with additional website content on a blog for improved commenting.
  10. Build sentiment measurements, and listen to the larger web for how people are talking about your customer.
  11. Learn which bloggers might care about your customer. Learn how to measure their influence.
  12. Download the Social Media Press Release (pdf) and at least see what parts you want to take into your traditional press releases.
  13. Try out a short series of audio podcasts or video podcasts as content marketing and see how they draw.
  14. Build conversation maps for your customers using Technorati.com , Google Blogsearch, Summize, and FriendFeed.
  15. Experiment with Flickr and/or YouTube groups to build media for specific events. (Marvel Comics raised my impression of this with their Hulk statue Flickr group).
  16. Recommend that your staff start personal blogs on their personal interests, and learn first hand what it feels like, including managing comments, wanting promotion, etc.
  17. Map out an integrated project that incorporates a blog, use of commercial social networks, and a face-to-face event to build leads and drive awareness of a product.
  18. Start a community group on Facebook or Ning or MySpace or LinkedIn around the space where your customer does business. Example: what Jeremiah Owyang did for Hitachi Data Systems.
  19. Experiment with the value of live video like uStream.tv and Mogulus, or Qik on a cell phone.
  20. Attend a conference dealing with social media like New Media Expo, BlogWorld Expo, New Marketing Summit (disclosure: I run this one with CrossTech), and dozens and dozens more. (Email me for a calendar).
  21. Collect case studies of social media success. Tag them “social media case study” in del.icio.us.
  22. Interview current social media practitioners. Look for bridges between your methods and theirs.
  23. Explore distribution. Can you reach more potential buyers/users/customers on social networks.
  24. Don’t forget early social sites like Yahoogroups and Craigslist. They still work remarkably well.
  25. Search Summize.com for as much data as you can find in Twitter on your product, your competitors, your space.
  26. Practice delivering quality content on your blogs, such that customers feel educated / equipped / informed.
  27. Consider the value of hiring a community manager. Could this role improve customer service? Improve customer retention? Promote through word of mouth?
  28. Turn your blog into a mobile blog site with Mofuse. Free.
  29. Learn what other free tools might work for community building, like MyBlogLog.
  30. Ensure you offer the basics on your site, like an email alternative to an RSS subscription. In fact, the more ways you can spread and distribute your content, the better.
  31. Investigate whether your product sells better by recommendation versus education, and use either wikis and widgets to help recommend, or videos and podcasts for education.
  32. Make WebsiteGrader.com your first stop for understanding the technical quality of a website.
  33. Make Compete.com your next stop for understanding a site’s traffic. Then, mash it against competitors’ sites.
  34. Learn how not to ask for 40 pieces of demographic data when giving something away for free. Instead, collect little bits over time. Gently.
  35. Remember that the people on social networks are all people, have likely been there a while, might know each other, and know that you’re new. Tread gently into new territories. Don’t NOT go. Just go gently.
  36. Help customers and prospects connect with you simply on your various networks. Consider a Lijit Wijit or other aggregator widget.
  37. Voting mechanisms like those used on Digg.com show your customers you care about which information is useful to them.
  38. Track your inbound links and when they come from blogs, be sure to comment on a few posts and build a relationship with the blogger.
  39. Find a bunch of bloggers and podcasters whose work you admire, and ask them for opinions on your social media projects. See if you can give them a free sneak peek at something, or some other “you’re special” reward for their time and effort (if it’s material, ask them to disclose it).
  40. Learn all you can about how NOT to pitch bloggers. Excellent resource: Susan Getgood.
  41. Try out shooting video interviews and video press releases and other bits of video to build more personable relationships. Don’t throw out text, but try adding video.
  42. Explore several viewpoints about social media marketing.
  43. Women are adding lots of value to social media. Get to know the ones making a difference. (And check out BlogHer as an event to explore).
  44. Experiment with different lengths and forms of video. Is entertaining and funny but brief better than longer but more informative? Don’t stop with one attempt. And try more than one hosting platform to test out features.
  45. Work with practitioners and media makers to see how they can use their skills to solve your problems. Don’t be afraid to set up pilot programs, instead of diving in head first.
  46. People power social media. Learn to believe in the value of people. Sounds hippie, but it’s the key.
  47. Spread good ideas far. Reblog them. Bookmark them. Vote them up at social sites. Be a good citizen.
  48. Don’t be afraid to fail. Be ready to apologize. Admit when you’ve made a mistake.
  49. Re-examine who in the organization might benefit from your social media efforts. Help equip them to learn from your project.
  50. Use the same tools you’re trying out externally for internal uses, if that makes sense, and learn about how this technology empowers your business collaboration, too.

Source: chrisbrogan.com


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4 Factors to Open Source Shopping Cart Selection

 

 

The growth of online spending and online money making makes it crucial for you to choose the right shopping cart platform for your business in order to have a competitive site for your customers, targeted website traffic for advertisement, and affiliate marketing for revenue.

Some of the most important features of any platform that have to be considered are, security, scalability, reliability, and support. Some examples of the best open source shopping cart solutions are, osCommerce, Opencart, Cubecart, and Zencart. These are robust, professional, and powerful shopping cart solutions that offer great flexibility.

There are many different open source shopping cart platforms available at varying obvious and implicit prices, but the choice can be a little bit overwhelming for the inexperienced.

Firstly, when choosing a shopping cart platform it is vital that you take these aspects into account as you not only want to make it as easy as possible to accept payments from your customers, but you want them to feel assured in the knowledge that their transactions are completely secure. It is also important to evaluate the different costs associated with each platform.

Secondly, with open source options you have amazing flexibility at your disposal, as you are not restricted to the limitations of the code as you are with proprietary software. An open source shopping cart can be compared to a custom built car, in other words, it can be designed to suite your needs and preferences.

Thirdly, although open source software is free, it does not come without any expense. In order to obtain the flexibility and customization that many prefer, open source solutions have to be built from scratch, which can take much time and effort. Another factor to consider is installation. Many open source shopping cart solutions can be incredibly difficult to install and use, unless you have a degree in IT.

Finally, a thing to consider with open source solutions is that there are no free upgrades and no support. The lack of support may well be the determining factor as to whether you chose the open source option or not.

In conclusion, when it comes to deciding what shopping cart platform you will chose for your business, consider all your options carefully. Work in line with your budget, and choose the right open source shopping cart platform that best suits your needs.


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Monday, December 22, 2008

5 Steps to Success Affiliate Programs and Affiliate Marketing

 

 

Running a successful Affiliate Program and Affiliate Marketing requires more than a good network and software. The overall success is based on the combination of two things: First, the capability of an affiliate program manager to recruit, motivate and communicate with their affiliate marketing partners in order to achieve the objective of driving affiliate programs forward. Second, the efficient allocation of affiliate resources for creative and programming development.

Affiliate Marketing Management and Development covers all aspects of affiliate management, including:

   1. Pre-Launch;
   2. Launch Services;
   3. Core Management Service;
   4. Creative Development Service, and
   5. Conversion Analysis.

Pre-Launch Services
Prior to launching an affiliate program, your site and products are presented to a team of professional affiliates to get their input and opinion on whether your product should do well, what needs to be changed on the site, and what, if anything, they would like to see from you in terms of support tools and affiliate based features.

Launch Services

    * Initial recruiting and commission structure recommendations;
    * Affiliate communication strategy;
    * Development of Affiliate Support Site Design and Content;
    * Development of Support Forum Design, and
    * Completion of "Pre-launch" checklist provided by Affiliate Network.

Core Management Service :

including Affiliate Recruiting, Affiliate Management, Network Management

Creative Development Services
Affiliates have demanding requirements when it comes to the creation of custom banners, full page HTML marketing, templates, and other supporting creative.

Conversion Analysis
Once an affiliate program is up and running it is very important to ensure that the visitors coming to your site are given the best possible chance of checking out.

In summary, Affiliate program and affiliate marketing is not  a stand alone system. It requires an integrated approach. Successful affiliate programs and affiliate marketing require significant work and maintenance.


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The Process for Developing Social Media Campaign, Social Media Marketing and Optimization

 

 

 

Social media campaign, Social Media Marketing and Social Media Optimization can effectively leverage social networks to get your message in front of the right people:


Attain maximum social media penetration by entering targeted and large sites for exposure of your brand.
Attain valuable inbound hyperlinks built around the main website homepage and interior pages.
Drive traffic, bookmarks, and word of mouth buzz.

What can a successful social media marketing campaign do for your Internet Marketing campaigns?

    * Increase Brand Awareness with Brand Engagement – more pages viewed.
    * Generate Publicity, positive buzz and word of mouth.
    * Deliver high amounts of traffic to the website.
    * Convert visitors to buyers of products and services.
    * Generate strong inbound link generation which may boost organic search engine rankings over the long term.
    * Facilitate excellent ROI on internet marketing when maximum exposure is reached.

The process for developing a social media campaign, social media marketing and optimization include:

    * Team brainstorms with the client to come up with relevant concepts.
    * Topic and concept approach finalized agreed by all.
    * Assign article copywriting to client and/or some Partner Network
    * Draft reviewed / revised if necessary
    * Client approves final copy
    * Webpage Design and Creative layout - necessary graphics and media insertions.
    * Client approves layout in final
    * Upload link-bait content to website
    * Revision instructions after upload
    * Submission and Promotion to Social Media News Sites, followed by submissions and tagging on StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us and niche social media sites.
    * Tracking and reporting - traffic and link building monitoring

Social media Campaign, social media marketing and social media optimization need to use tracking to determine the success of the strategy. The track data we look at are:

site traffic and user/visitor signals like increased inbound hyper-links, RSS subscriptions, email sign-ups and page views, New unique visitors translate to lasting positive impressions, word of mouth, email and link forwards, buzz and sales.


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Sunday, December 21, 2008

Opencart vs. Magento vs. Zen Cart: Shopping Cart Reviewed

 

Opencart, Magento, Zen Cart are the three new present open source ecommerce shopping cart system. How to select from them needs to be carefully compared.

Firstly, It is important to know when selecting your shopping cart what features you need.  All the shopping carts should feature the following:

    * Customer management
    * Product management
    * Variety of payment and shipping modules
    * Order receipt emails
    * Ability to use SSL secure layers for ordering process

However the shopping carts vary when it comes to:

    * Time it takes to modify the cart to look like a current web design
    * WYSIWYG ability to modify product descriptions using different fonts, colors, etc.
    * Ability to import/export from Excel spreadsheet
    * Wholesale/Reseller Pricing

The following shopping carts below are open-source meaning that you can modify the source code and customize the shopping cart to your needs.

OpenCart
Website: http://www.opencart.com/
OpenCart looks great and is simple to setup and use. It’s probably aimed at smaller online shops, but is stable, fast, and caches pages. It’s new, so there aren’t many mods or themes just yet. Custom templates look straight-forward though.

My main concerns:
   1. It uses MySQL MyISAM tables (fast with full-text indexing, but no foreign keys or transactions). I’d really expect InnoDB to be used for a shop.
   2. URL aliases/mod-rewrites don’t work and there are few SEO considerations - descriptions and keywords can’t be entered. This should be fixed in the next version, but mod-rewrites need easier implementation (there’s currently a lookup table that must be manually populated with the real and aliased URL for every page).
   3. Template values are inserted using global variables. It feels dirty, and problems could occur with that approach. The current templates use transitional HTML, but I think standards-based versions should be possible.

It’s worth keeping an eye on the project and it’s definitely one I’d consider as it matures.

Magento
Website:  http://www.magentocommerce.com/
A serious amount of effort has gone into Magento. It’s huge, can run multiple shops, and has an Amazon-like plethora of features. The interface is nice, support is excellent, and there’s lots of help including video tutorials. InnoDB tables are used, mod-rewrites work, and SEO is well implemented.

My main concerns:

   1. It has high system requirements and could get slow with lots of users. The system could benefit from page caching.
   2. It’s a seriously complex piece of software and has a steep learning curve. It’s one for large companies rather than one-man stores (I couldn’t get a product to appear on the home page!)
   3. Templating is very flexible and uses XML to define multiple HTML page layouts and sections. But, it’s complicated: there are dozens of files in multiple locations, and the documentation appears to be wrong or out of date. It also seems to embed page-specific JS form validation code in the page head - not great.

Zen Cart - The Art of E-commerce
website: http://www.zen-cart.com
Zen Cart has a very nice wide array of features based on Oscommerce but has gone its own path. You can not install contributions directly from the Oscommerce web site onto Zen Cart. Some of the nice features include product attributes managers, template system, html editor for regular web page contents, built in coupon code system, ability to select what credit cards you accept, and more. An issue with Zen Cart right now is the Easy Populate contribution which would let you import products from an Excel sheet does not work yet. So if you need this feature we recommend the other shopping carts.

Besides, Zen Cart has No licensing fees, Stable, Many contributions from Oscommerce already installed, and Nicer looking default designs pre-installed.

My Main Concerns:
  1. not possible to use Oscommerce contributions, they must be converted to Zen Cart
  2. Admin interface is a little messy in certain areas because there are so many contributions installed

As one of the choices, I use opencart. It is very easy shop script. I was try magneto demo page and my opinion is - slowly admin system. It isn’t good way if you have a lot of product units.


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Lead Generation is Not Only Relying on Contact Form

 

 

These days, every online money make marketer is looking to the web. "How can we use the web to get more lead generation?" is the question everyone is asking. 

It's common that the conversation always starts with "How do I get more qualified visitors to my website?"

However, the question that every online money make marketer forgets to ask is, "How can I convert more of my site visitors to qualified leads?"

Then the question turns to "How are you capturing leads on your website now?"

80% of the time, the answer is "Did you see our contact form?"

For some reason, people are really proud of their contact form. Unfortunately for them, that's not usually working and that's why we're talking.

The low hanging fruit for improving the performance of any online money make website is to have:

 
1) great free educational offers like white papers, ebooks and webinars
2) better calls to action and
3) optimized landing pages. 

You need to create lots of ways that site visitors will be encouraged to share their contact information long before they're ready to buy (or even talk to you). Remember, if the site visitors like to share with you, then there is a chance that they would like to be captured by you and become your lead generation.


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Saturday, December 20, 2008

More Than One Lead Forms Drive Affiliate Lead Generation

 

 

For online money mark marketers in the online marketing world, one effective way for them is that they must drive leads through their sites to generate more traffic for affiliate programs, so as to earn more online money.

Unfortunately, many sites still link to one lead form on the site. A better way is to consider placing lead forms in several places on the site. Providing lead forms on each product/service pages and on other key pages allows you to track where the lead form was filled out and provides a helpful nugget of data for the sales team as they contact that lead.

For one of our clients we have helped deliver exceptional ROI by providing 2 lead generation forms on the primary lead generation page.

An A/B test (Google website optimizer) can be a very useful tool to compare the performance of different webforms：

Form 1 asks the visitor for minimal information, so that they can get back to doing their job quickly, whilst our client receives just enough information to begin the sales process with them.

Form 2 asks for much more detailed information from the visitor about their requirements. This provides benefits to both visitor and client - the visitor gains full confidence that the company they are contacting have taken full consideration of the type of order information they would like to provide, and the company get much more qualified leads which drastically speed up the sales process.

By presenting these 2 alternatives to the visitor they simply need to choose which form fits their time constraints and general requirements, and away they go. Even if they choose the basic form, they are aware of the type of detail that the company is looking for in the more in-depth form, which again reflects positively on our clients understanding of their customers wants and needs.


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12 Free Online Money Make Methods

 

#12: The eBook Method
Creating fast ebooks to sell for huge profits.

It’s a fact that selling your ebooks online is a great way to make a good amount of money. The reason is that people are learning that they can get more up-to-date information and secrets through unpublished ebooks, rather than in the bookstores.

#11: Pay To Surf Trick
Sneaky blackhat technique for Pay-To-Surf sites.

The Method:
Disclaimer: We are not held liable if you get caught. This method is immoral. Do this at your own risk.

#10: Free Downloads For Profit
Making money by providing free downloads.

The process is rather simple. Humans love to get free stuff and tell others about it. Your site looks altruistic in nature, because you are providing free downloads, so they return again and again for more downloads. In addition, they tell their friends about your site, thus further increasing your traffic.

#9: Selling Wordpress Theme Sponsor Links
Make $100/day selling sponsor links in WP Themes.

Webmasters are always looking to get their website placed higher in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). To achieve this, they must have a lot of backlinks to their website that are built up over time. One way to get backlinks over time is to pay you to include a link to their website in the Wordpress Themes that you create.

#8: Default Search Portal Homepage
Reset default homepages to your Google Search code.

There are still many inexperienced Internet users on the web who do not set their default homepage or change it back after it has been changed. To take advantage of this, you can provide the user the option to change it. Many will not, but a few inexperienced users will click OK without reading the message. What better way to make money than to send them to your own Google Search website.

#7: The Double Click Trick
Take advantage of the accidental double-click.

There are many older or inexperienced web visitors that still don’t know that most links through a browser are single-click links. As a result, there are many who double click a link and tend to accidentally click the page that comes up afterwards. You may want to incorporate this into your CTR strategy.

#6: Big Money Thru TopSites
How to cheat TopSites and get tons of traffic.

Topsites are websites with a ranked listing of different website links, generally related by an overall topic. In many cases a topsite is a directory of related web sites which ranks the listed sites by popularity. Popularity is determined by votes for that website.

#5: Social Network Group Method
Affiliate income through Social Network sites.

I don’t expect this method generally will be new to anyone but I want to point out how I have used it with massive results. I hate typing so I will cut right to the chase without fluffs of any kind. This is not a fly by night method and it is not to be rushed but if you do it well you will not only see a continuous income but for a long time as well.

#4: Income From Photoshop Tutorial
Make 10 - 20 cents per tutorial per day. It adds up.

I am easily making $400/day off of this method. It is a great money making method if you are familiar with Photoshop. The traffic is targeted, so they are more likely to click your Adsense. You just have to create enough tutorials to make it work.

#3: Cookie Stuffing Forums
Get a ton of affiliate income by preloading cookies.

This is a big money making idea, some of you may already know this method but for those of you who don’t, it is a good chance for you to start making over $1000 a month from your affiliate companies.

#2: Photoshop Editing Services
Provide graphic design skills online.

One useful technique for making money with Photoshop is providing photo editing services to customers online. Digital Point is an invaluable resource for finding customers. I consider it more than just a standard forum, because everyday there is real business being transacted on that website. One such business is that of webmasters or everyday people looking for designers to provide them with Photoshop design services.

#1: YouTube Marketing Techniques
Generate tons of paying traffic through YouTube.

Going to keep this method short and sweet without any fluff.

Source: http://www.methodlist.com/


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Some Adsense High Price Keywords Related to Online Money Make

 

For people who interest in online money make, keyword search for online money related topics and terms are quite important. Here are the adsense Keywords Regarding Money Making Opportunities, they have an Average CPC/7.9$ USD:

how to earn money fast
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how to make money on ebay
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make money in real estate
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internet business
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financial freedom


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Affiliate Marketing cj Earning Method

 

 

There are ways to earn by using affiliate program such as cj (commission junction).  First you need a cj account and a few active advertisers.

So, we start by pulling up the advertiser list in cj, then we scan down the column looking for every advertiser that has a product catalog. Click the check box next to each of them and click apply. Some will decline you, some will moderate you, and some will accept you no questions asked.

The next part is simple. We buy 30 or 40 inexpensive .info domains. (they can easily be had for under a dollar a piece).

We now fire up and load a couple of these domains into the system. From here we click the keywords link and specifically the cj scraper tool link. Enter the product catalog url for the cj affiliate we want to build a site for, then click go and sit back. Then scrape the product names and url's for each product in the merchants catalog (up to 1000 at a time). We then builds search engine optimized pages for each product.

That's it. Get a couple backlinks to our newly built pages, then move on to the next merchant.

I usually put up 3-5 domains full of products for each new affiliate I am testing. Once they start converting I build up to 50 domains for each one to maximize earnings.

You can also use Blog and ping for backlinks. You can also post links in directories or on .edu sites (I usually blog/ping, and get links from .edu sites personally), and both of those are built into the software. You can also interlink some of your sites together to build a stronger network. The sites sending the traffic may only last a few months in the search engines, but in that time they may each make you several hundred dollars making your ROI very high.

Somebody have been doing the above for over 3 years now. This can be applied to any affiliate program or data feed out there. You can even use it on your own white hat sites that are in need of some fresh traffic.


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Friday, December 19, 2008

Online Money Make Knowledge: Two Tier Affiliate Program

 

 

Definition

Affiliate program structure whereby affiliates earn commissions on their conversions as well as conversions of webmasters they refer to the program.

Information

In a two-tier affiliate program, or a multi-tier program (two or more levels), the first tier of commission is the same as in a regular affiliate program. The only difference is the additional tier(s), whereby marketers also earn a commission on sales generated by people they referred to the program. Sometimes compensation will be written in shorthand as tier1/tier2 (ex. 10%/5%).

It is important to read the fine print to determine if the second-tier compensation is calculated as a straight percentage (% of revenue generated by "B") or a percentage of a percentage (% of earnings generated by "B").

Affiliate programs can theoretically have an infinite number of tiers, but there are practical limitations. As tiers are added, program attract webmasters who are more interested in profiting from the work of others, as opposed to doing any actual work themselves.

Synonyms

two tier associate program

two level affiliate program

2-tier affiliate program

Related Terms

affiliate marketing

Sites

2-Tier.com
2-tier affiliate program directory

AssociatePrograms.com : Two-Tier Affiliate Programs
list of popular two-tier programs

This information is from:  http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/two_tier_affiliate_program/


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