Image via CrunchBase

These days it’s very easy to get an anti-Google mindset very quickly. I mean, they make it so dang easy! If they’re not de-indexing your sites, they’re banning your Adwords or Adsense accounts, and in general making life miserable even if you are trying to play by their rules. It’s enough to make someone shout “BING!!”

So, in an environment where Google ranking algorithm changes are taking place as fast as they can find a new cuddly animal to name them after and sites are falling like so many Panda droppings, it begs the question; is Google really necessary for those of us who want to market on the Web, and if so how?

The answer is, it sorta depends.

If your aim is how rank organically and reap the benefits of “free” traffic, (which is in itself a misnomer) then be aware that Google commands nearly 70% of the organic search market.

“Googling” has become a verb, and searching on almost any other search engine (except YouTube, another Google property) is only usually undertaken when a Google search doesn’t satisfy.

Ranking highly there is an exercise in adaptation and constant vigilance, and there are no guarantees. Do everything right, according to their best practices, and you still can find your site left out in the cold. It’s enough to make a grown webmaster tremble!

Additionally, Google makes it hard to leave them. Their suite of tools and applications such as Google Docs, Calendar, Gmail and more are becoming more and more mainstream, and Google Analytics, like it or not, is used by more webmasters than any other analytics program.

And now they’ve even invaded (after several false starts) the social media realm with Google+, which will eventually threaten Facebook’s social dominance if the current pace goes unabated.

So who then would be a candidate to leave Google out of the equation when it comes to their business? Believe it or not, there are a few.

Now we won’t go into the scenario where one wants to be totally free of Google influence, etc. as that is far harder and a bit paranoid, as it is ubiquitous. Rather, we will look at a few instances where you can do quite well without Google and their search engine.

Firstly, it’s hard to say you just want to say you will simply optimize for Bing and Yahoo, as they pull lot of their cues from Google as well, whether they’ll fess up to it or not. Moreover, many of the ranking factors are similar, such as backlinks, social popularity and more.

The best way to opt out of the Google crap shoot is to have your own products. Never mind all the obvious benefits this brings you, the plain facts are you can do quite nicely without worrying about where you rank in Google outside of your product name. (Which should rank well by virtue of its uniqueness, hopefully!)

Setting up your products to take advantage of the biggest possible reach would most certainly include email marketing, affiliates, and paid traffic. Let’s look at each of those by themselves.

Email Marketing – Hopefully you at last begun to build your email list by the time you are launching your products. This can be far and away one of the most lucrative avenues to large number of sales. (Depending on the size of your list, of course!)

Do yourself a favor and warm up your subscribers with an email series that delivers (presells) terrific content that will engender a desire to actually take a good look at your product when it actually launches. Especially if it is not cheap. People these days need a moment (and some strategic pre-selling) before pulling the trigger on expensive products. This can also be true if you’re new, and haven’t yet developed a reputation for delivering high quality products.

And the best part? Google has nothing to say about any of this!

Affiliate Traffic – One of the easiest ways to generate a lot of    sales is by attracting affiliates and JV (joint venture) partners to help you market your launch. How this works is you offer an attractive commission (typically 50-75% for digital products; and far less for physical products, for obvious reasons!) You can extend your reach exponentially and reach people who would’ve never seen your product. You do your part by providing as many tools as possible for the affiliate or JV to succeed. This can include things like Banners, email swipe copy, videos and more. The easier you make it for them, the more you’ll attract and the better job you’ll do.

And the funny thing is, some of their review sites will do quite well in Google, without any effort on your part!

Paid Traffic – Clearly the fastest and sometimes the most targeted traffic you can get is through the use of paid traffic. This can take on many forms, and it doesn’t have to include Google Adwords. (As a matter of fact, they make it downright difficult for many markets to even pay for traffic!)

Never fear, as there are many places that can deliver the traffic you need. Besides traditional PPC (pay per click) through Bing Facebook, or any of the second tire providers, there is also a vast world of PPV (pay per view) and mobile traffic that is yours for the asking, and at the moment can be had for very reasonable rates for many keywords, and URLs.

People have become conditioned to think that Google Adwords was the only game in town, and that could not be further from the truth! There is a lot of traffic ready to come to your site right now, if you will but seek it out.

Life without Google? Possible, and quite lucrative if you find the right avenues. The bottom line here is not that Google is necessarily evil, but that they are an advertising company; NOT a search engine. They serve up the results they want to, for their own purposes. Not some altruistic mission to “serve up the best search results”, but rather the ones that make them money! Just the facts.

These are in essence email mailings to a list you don’t own, mailed on your behalf, for a predetermined fee. These lists can range in size from 100 to 250,000 subscribers, and have many advantages over other types of marketing, among them

•    You get to mail to an ultra-targeted “buyers” list.
•    You can effectively pre-sell your offer before they arrive on your landing page, thus boosting conversions.
•    Since the email is coming from someone they trust, it has the feel of an endorsement, again helping with conversions.
•    It’s an incredibly easy way to build your own list.
•    You don’t need any technical expertise whatsoever. If you can write an effective email, this method can bring loads of subscribers or affiliate cash in no time at all!

Solo Ads – What Matters Most?

There are a few variables that matter a great deal when you are considering which solo ads to run.
The size of the list is something to look at. While they can run in numbers from very small to very large as we said, not all lists are created equal. The responsiveness of the list is also a factor. If this list has been beaten down with offer after offer, they may well cringe when they see another of these come around. This makes a list of 200,000 with an open rate of 1% equal to a much smaller list of  10,000 that has an open rate of 20%.

Two other factors that matter are the click thru rate (CTR) of your ad, as well as the conversion rate of your landing page. If the landing page is yours, you can control that to a large degree. If it is say, an affiliate offer, you’re somewhat at the mercy of the quality of their landing page.

This brings us to whether or not it is wiser to use your own landing page or that of someone else. Of course the easiest way is to use one that is already made for the product. You can have this up very quickly, or in the case of direct linking not have to do anything at all other than link to it.

The reason why you may want to consider using your own landing page, even for an affiliate product, is that it can do two things for you that direct linking cannot. One, you get a chance to pre-sell your prospects on the product before they get to the sales page. This can be useful when the sales/landing page itself is not strong, or if you have personal experience you can relate that will convince the reader that they need to look into this. Second, you have the chance to grow your own list!

How To Build Your Own List With Solo Ads!

One of the best strategies out there right now is to use solo ads to build your own list. The best way to do this is by using your solo ad to drive prospects to a squeeze page which has a free offer for them. When they opt-in and take you up on your freebie, they are offered a one time offer (OTO) for a related product or service. You will sell a great number of the OTO’s as they’ve already gotten some thing for free from you, as long as they product you’re offering is good and not priced out of the ballpark.

I hope you can see the beauty of this. You are building your lists and making sales at the same time. Very often the sales from the OTO will more than cover the cost of the ad, and then of course you have the list of buyers you will be able to market to for some time!

Let’s look at the math of something like this. Solo ad vendors will usually guarantee a set number of clicks they will deliver to you. Suppose you buy a 500 click ad for $200. Say the free offer in your mailing attracts a 30% clickthrough rate (small for free offers!) and the one time offer tied to it converts at 20% for $17 (again, stupid small; but for the purposes of illustration…)  you’ve just made $510 and added 150 names to your list, (150 for the free offer and 30 buyers!) You just made a net $310 for building your own list!

Where Can You Find Solo Ad Providers?

The best three places to find purveyors of solo ads are in my mind
•    Google
•    Ezine Directories
•    Forums

Google is very easy to do this with as you merely go to a Google search box, and enter a search along these lines in the box: “network marketing + solo ad”. Of course, the first part of that search string are your keywords, and the second telling the search engine you want to see results for solo ads with that term. You can also replace “solo ads” with “ezines” and “newsletter”, as these are also possibilities for running solo ads.

Go through the results and you’ll come up with a number of places that sell solos, and then you need to go there and contact the site owner to inquire about rates, availability, open rates, specific niches, dates and more.

There are also a number of great ezine directories out there, the best of these being The Directory Of Ezines. This makes the search process so much easier.

Forums are another great place to look, and many of them, especially The Warrior Forum, have a large number of solo ads providers who lurk there, as they know that is where they customers are!

Solo ads can be a great way to not only make sales, but also to build your list in a relatively short amount of time, and can be done for a very small investment of time and money. Add solos to your marketing arsenal today!

There seems to be two schools of thought about using pay per click (PPC) advertising online for business these days: people either absolutely hate it, and all the hoops they make you jump through, or others quietly go about their business, reaping the rewards of a platform that can bring many advantages to the smart marketer.

The truth is, that like any other marketing platform, it needs to be used with care and wisdom, in order to gain the kind of results you are seeking. Let’s take a long view of PPC in general, and look at how it might be an effective strategy for you to use in your online business.

So What Exactly is PPC?

PPC is an advertising platform that places targeted ads on search engine results pages as well as websites that have indicated that they would like ads on their sites. You place a bid and this, along with a few other factors, determine where your ad shows. This type of advertising has many advantages, some of which are

Speed – You can have campaigns up very quickly, and start seeing results nearly immediately. This can be very effective for testing new products, sales and squeeze pages, and more.
Targeted Traffic – By using the ad platforms interface, you can effectively target you who want to view your ad. The ad platforms are all a bit different, and some use keywords as the method of targeting, while others use other demographic factors to determine the audience for your ads.
Ability to Test – You can test headlines, site designs, sales copy and a myriad of other conversion factors before you spend a lot of time and money developing your site.
Extensive Tracking Data – The ad platforms themselves have good tracking and stats, but you can always use a third party solution to accomplish this as well, like Google Analytics, GetClicky and others.

The traffic numbers you get are of course dependent on your ad spend and click through rates, but if your campaign proves to be successful, you can always scale it up!

PPC is not without it’s dangers, however. There are many things you need to consider when running a PPC campaign. Here are a few:

Form a Budget – It’s very easy to spend a lot of money if you’re not careful with PPC. Most ad networks have safeguards and daily budgets you can work with, Use them!
Make A Marketing Plan – This includes identifying the keywords you want to  pursue, the demographics that are imp0rtant to you, and what the competition is doing in the space. Do this beforehand, so as not to waste time and money!
Who Are You Targeting? – Take some time upfront to learn who your ideal customer is. Having this information in hand at the start will color every aspect of your campaign.
Explore Long Tail Keyword Opportunities – Instead of chasing the competitive and extremely expensive keywords everyone in the space is going after, instead focus on more of the long tail “buying” phrases that the competition is likely overlooking.
Get Great Ad Copy – Writing PPC ads can be tricky, as you only have so much space, so choosing every word carefully for maximum effect is paramount. Web searchers are getting more and more savvy, and paid ads have to stand out to get the clicks.
Take Care With Landing Pages – This is very important. Not only will you need to satisfy the ad networks (Google is particularly finicky!) you will want your landing page to get results. This would be a great area to test!
Check Your Reports and Analytics – You need to know which ads are not only getting the clicks, but making the sales. (Two different things!) You can use this data to adjust your campaign as you go along, eliminating under-performing ads and elevating winners.

Using these guidelines on nearly any pay per click ad network you choose can bring great results if undertaken carefully. Make it your business to learn how to use this ad medium right, and to treat it seriously, and you won’t be disappointed!

So which Ad Network Do I Choose?

Ad networks come in many flavors and sizes. Google Adwords was one of the first and is still by far the largest, but here are many  other good alternatives.

Google Adwords – Still the big dog in the space, but getting increasingly harder to work with. The now infamous “Google Slaps” heard round the world are now legend. It can work if you can meet all of their expectations. Miss one, you’re gone!

Yahoo Search Marketing – Now only for monthly budgets of $10,000 or more. Smaller accounts are now directed to

MSN Adcenter – Yahoo’s new partner in PPC. Slightly less expensive than Google, but also a good alternative.

Facebook Ads– Perhaps the best choice nowadays. More friendly to marketers, and not as keyword centric (they rely on user demographics) Facebook has by far the biggest audience.

Twitter – Relatively new to the game, Twitter Ads now only has Promoted Tweets to play with, but very shortly will have a self-service ad platform, sometime  in late 2011.

Also there are a number of second tier PPC networks that can bring decent results. These would include

Ask.com
Miva
AdBirte
Kanoodle
LookSmart

Pay per click advertising can be a lethal marketing weapon in the hands of a smart marketer. Take the time to learn what you’re doing, and how the different ad networks operate, and you be very pleased at the results you get!

For many social media marketing is this big scary thing that they have no idea how to access or utilize for their online business. For others, it’s a big playground they’ve yet to figure out. Still others simply don’t see the power contained there.

For all of these groups, however, the day when it could be ignored or shoved to the side while you do more “important” marketing tasks is over. You read it here first! (snicker, snicker!)

Today social media marketing is no longer the unwanted stepchild in the family of marketing; it has become the child of great promise, the Golden Child  that can  take simple human connections and turn them into marketing gold.

This transformation has taken a while, but is now here. What used to be a platform for keeping in touch with old schoolmates, has now morphed into a full-fledged marketing machine. There is now no end to courses and systems teaching you how to market on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social sites.

What most marketers need to understand is that this is where the people are now! They spend an average of nearly an hour a day on Facebook, their Twitter client is always open, and email is within arm’s reach 24/7. People are connected more than ever, and it’s now your job to connect to them!

So, in some very broad strokes, let’s paint a picture of just what the social media landscape looks like, and how you need to be able to inject yourself and your marketing into it!

The Essential Social Media Sites
For Your Business!

There are 4 right now. They are

Facebook – Today every business needs a presence on Facebook. With more than 600 Million users, and still growing, it’s far too big to ignore. Facebook pages are easy to set up, and can accumulate very large numbers of people who like them. You can contact those people, and Facebook is a terrific tool for building and fostering relationships. More and more ways are being found every day to access and utilize the power and reach of Facebook.

The very definition of viral, Facebook users have an average of more than 130 friends apiece, and when anything of yours gets posted on their wall, their friends get it also, and so on, and so on.

Videos spread quickly on Facebook, and now with webinars making inroads there as well, it is fast proving to be the ultimate marketing platform. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can get around to Facebook later on. Doing so will be marketplace suicide!

Twitter – Concurrently, Twitter is to Facebook and your site what a good agent is to a top actor. It’s there for you to spread the word. In fact, that was the genesis of it’s very inception, telling others in your world what you are up to. What better way to keep your followers, friends and prospects abreast of your activities than by a tweet letting them know where they can go to find out more, see something cool, read your latest and get your most recent offerings.

Twitter likewise has the capability of gathering very large numbers of people into your sphere of influence. These people are there for you, unless you prove unworthy. Don’t make that mistake!

LinkedIn -  With over 100 million people connected in a business environment; somehow you thought this wasn’t necessary? The worlds largest professional network is an ideal place to not only further establish your business identity, but also to foster relationships among those who may be partners and clients in the future.

LinkedIn has so many useful facets that it’s hard to pigeonhole it as merely one thing; it is many. You can keep up with friends, keep in contact with colleagues, and expand your circle of influence. You can also find work if you are so inclined, and it’s a great place to keep up with the business world in general. Definitely make sure you are LinkedIn!

YouTube – The world’s largest video sharing network, with very often more views a day than it’s parent company, Google, YouTube has a unique space in your social sphere, and that belongs to your video channel. Making sure you utilize this is another way of not only keeping your content, products and services in front of people, but also in helping your site rank better. Your YouTube channel’s popularity can be of large benefit here!

To be sure, there are other sites, and as sure as Lindsay Lohan will take skip rehab, there will be another social network come along to challenge the status quo.

One more thing: be sure to handle your social networks with care. Don’t spam them, don’t pester them with marketing messages 24/7, and by all means don’t discount the power of word of mouth. It can sink you just as fast as it can crown you!

Learning how to get a handle on the social networking aspect of your online business needs to be a large priority right now! Develop systems, utilize useful tools and do whatever you can to tap in to the giant sucking sound that is the world passing you by!

Video has taken the world by firestorm, and to say that it’s a key component in anything related to online business would be a gross understatement! Everywhere you turn there is a video available for you, whether it’s a sales message, entertainment, or something personal, video has become  the medium of choice in this generation.

YouTube itself gets more than 2 billion views daily, and is growing still. Video on Facebook and other social outlets continues to expand, and it’s becoming rare to see anything promoted online that does not have a video component!

Video sales letters are fast replacing both short and long form salescopy, and while the words themselves and the message may be identical, the medium has undergone a sea-change.

So it’s become abundantly clear that in order to compete in today’s marketing landscape you need to be involved in video! The question for you is, how?

So What Does It Take To Do A Video?

These days, not much! I realize many of  you may be veterans at shooting your own videos, but for those who are new to this, let me run down the ways you can get video into the mix.

Outsource – If you absolutely feel as though you can’t or don’t want to do this, don’t let that stop you from having video as a weapon in your marketing arsenal! You can easily outsource this at whatever level you feel comfortable with. You can have someone simply do lead generation videos, or full-on marketing pieces. Know that this will cost some coin, and proceed accordingly.

Flip Cameras or Phones – You can take video with nearly anything these days. Your phones, Flip cameras, iPads and more will take decent videos that can be shot impromptu, when you’re out and about, or at an event. These devices, if you don’t already own them, are getting less and less expensive, and you can be shooting videos tonight if you are so inclined!

Slideshows and Screen Capture Videos– If you’re really camera shy or need to be able to show data or screenshots form your computer, you can always do a slideshow video in PowerPoint, Keynote for Macs, Jing, or any number of other solutions. These can very easily be done in an hours or two, and look surprisingly good! A great way to deliver solid content to your followers!

Traditional Video Shoot -  You could always go the tried and true method of hiring someone who has a professional video camera and have it done for you that way. Of course, this is the most expensive and time-consuming method detailed here. The quality of the video will likely be better, so you simply need to consider the tradeoffs.

How Can You Use These Videos?

Any number of ways! This is one of the best online businesses ideas you can implement. Here are but a few:

Opt-in Bait – Using video as a free gift for opting in to your email list is a terrific use of them. A good video that goes viral can add hundreds if not thousands of people to your list over time. It can be a short time, too!
Killer Content – When you are in the habit of delivering up great content for your followers, video is a good way to do it. It can be done fast, is a  lot more fun than sitting down and pounding out a long and detailed post or article, and has far more chance of being spread far and wide than any other medium.
Presell Sequences – You’ve no doubt seen many of these by now. A content-rich video pre-selling series that leads to the inevitable…
Video Sales Letter – The way of sales letters these days. It’s far easier to convey an emotional trigger when you’re dealing with not only words on a page, but live video, music and a compelling narrator. This beats just words on a page every time, and is responsible for the difference in conversion rates. All of their senses are engaged, and you have a much better shot at getting to them emotionally.
Blog Posts – An easy way to make a blog post, many bloggers now post through video exclusively. While that may be extreme, a mixture is clearly a good thing, especially SEO wise!

So Where Do I Post These Videos?

Obviously you want to post them on your site or blog, and on YouTube. A viral video there can bring in hundreds of thousands of views, sometimes millions!

You also want to post in other video sharing sites, such as Viddler, Vimeo, Revver, Metacafe, DailyMotion and others. This can amount to a lot of traffic as well.

Also, be sure to post to your Facebook Page, and announce your video postings on Twitter!

Be sure wherever you post your videos, (other than your own site) that you have a link leading back to where you’d like your visitors to end up. I’ve seen many videos on YouTube that have gotten hundreds of thousands of views, and not a link in sight!

Video is a lethal weapon in a marketers bag of internet opportunities. Be sure to make a plan for making video a part of the plan!

Display advertising, or more commonly know as banner ads, (though it is much more than that now) is not one of the newer ideas for online businesses. Banners have been around since the beginning of the internet, and you may have actually become somewhat blind to them.

But the thing is, they still work! According to a ComScore study released in May 2011 U.S. online display advertising market delivered 1.1 trillion impressions in Q1 2011! That is a nearly double increase over Q1 2010!

Also, this surge in display advertising has prompted eMarketer to nearly double its ad growth prediction for 2011. Their researcher had predicted the market would grow 10.5%, but now it “expects a 20.2% rise and projects that display will overtake search as the largest online ad spending category by 2015.”

Display advertising isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. We are a visual mob, and they way to reach us is by showing us something, whether it be video, rich media, or a simple banner ad.

That said, there are also other advantages to display advertising that need to be mentioned when it comes to getting business online.

Economical – Display advertising tends to be priced with a cost per impressions model, which results in far less cost to the advertiser. The same ad you would spend dollars for on Google’s Search Network can be had for much less on the Display Network. Of course, you still need to be mindful  of things like your ad spends, ROI and more, but all in all you’ll get more bang for your buck!
Creative – You can do things visually you can’t with text only, and in fact text can play a large role in your display ad. It’s a more creative medium to begin with, and if you can manage to incorporate rich media into your ads, perhaps utilizing video for example, you can stand out from the crowd even more!
Evocative – The use of images, colors, and sound (if you use video) in your display advertising can evoke emotional responses not easily accomplished using text only.
Huge Reach – Some of the ad networks have very large reaches, with their advertising partners spanning the globe. Companies such as Facebook (346 Billion impressions) Microsoft, Yahoo Google and AOL among  many others are driving this trend.

Ads can come in a variety of sizes:

Not all networks use all of these, but most have at least the major ones.

Moreover, each ad network has tools to help you in building your ads. Google’s help is very good, with tutorials and video showing you exactly how to get going.

So What’s The Best Use Of Display Advertising
For My Online Business?

Obviously, if you have products or services display advertising can go a long way in helping to get the word out. These types of ads can also be beneficial in list building, by offering some thing of value in return for their email address.

They are also useful in generating direct sales leads, and can be one of the more cost-effective ways of doing so.

They are also useful in testing out new products, ads and page designs, as you can get a lot of visitors in a relative short period of time, for not much investment.

Make sure not to ignore the message in favor of the medium. Just because it’s a display ad, your headline and text needs to communicate what you need to say to your core audience. Missing the boat on this just leaves you with a pretty picture that does nothing to further your cause!

Google, Facebook, MSN AdCenter  are the major players here, though there are many others that can bring your display ads to market.

You would do well to seriously consider making display advertising part of your marketing mix. For a small investment you may be able to not only get valuable data to help in other marketing efforts, but very likely gather leads and emails at the same time!

The game it is a changing! If you’re looking to build an online business you need to know that the formula for success has  undergone and continues to undergo radical changes. Recent search engine algorithm updates within Google such as the ongoing Panda updates have made it abundantly clear that what passed as  content-rich sites before is no longer the case.

Panda was mainly aimed at sites that utilized either scant content, content that could be found elsewhere, (not original sources) and spun, gibberish content. Also affected were sites that were merely pages that are solely there for the purpose of Adsense, affiliate marketing, squeeze pages and the like.

What Google (and the others are following suit closely behind) is attempting to do is to make their index a repository of original and useful content for their customers, the searchers.

The problem with this for marketers is two-fold. It drastically changes the game a lot of webmasters were playing to get good rankings for keywords within the Google search engine results pages (SERPS). What worked before, such as spinning content, using PLR articles, and scraping content from other sites, all of it containing their keywords, no longer cuts the mustard.

What works now is original, expert and useful content, and the more of it the better. Whereas before what constituted a web page that could get ranked was anywhere from 100-400 words. Now, it seems the sweet spot has moved to between 600- 1000 or more.

This is good news and bad news. The bad news is you have to come up with sufficient content to make the cut, or you can’t play in the game! The good news is that you now have the opportunity to deliver wonderful, rich content that would be impossible to cover adequately in 300 words! Google has done you a favor!

In today’s socially-driven marketing landscape, (not only on Google!) crap content will be avoided like the plague, whereas value-driven, topical and cutting edge content will be spread far and wide, bringing you many of the same benefits you were seeking with all that thin content before!

You’ll be talked about, linked to, ReTweeted and Liked to death, and the end result will be far more traffic and sales. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

So How Do I Create Great Content, and
Where Do I Put it When I Do?

Delivering terrific content is the order of the day, but how to go about this? What if you’re not a great writer? Where do I find writers, and the age-old question for writers; “What do I write about?”

If you simply aren’t able to put words together in a semi-coherent fashion, or you don’t have the time or inclination to do so, then you need to have staff or outsourcers do it for  you. This can free you up to do many things that only you can do for your business.

If at all possible, however, you should write at least some of your blog, Facebook Page or other outlets as much as you can. Your readers want to get to know you, particularly if you’re in direct marketing, or even more important, attraction marketing. Your personality, drive and enthusiasm are what they will follow, and you want to make sure you can convey this at every opportunity. (Video is a great for this!)

Valuable content can consist of many different types: blog posts, articles, videos podcasts, reports, ebooks, and more. Here are   from the  HYPERLINK “http://www.copyblogger.com/creative-content-marketing/”49 Creative Ways You Can Profit From Content Marketing excellent blog CopyBlogger. (See, they benefited from putting out terrific content by getting me to link to them!) These ought to get your creative juices flowing!

There are many spots you can place your content other than your own blogs or sites. You can make postings on your Facebook page, create a Facebook Notes entry, create a Squidoo lens, a HubPage, videos on YouTube, guest posts on popular blogs (very effective for getting large spikes of traffic and links!) and many more spots. There are literally more than 1000 Web 2.0 sites you can create content on, and these can add up to a large number over visitors over time.

The two main takeaways here are to first of not be overwhelmed at the seeming immensity of the task that lies before you. How do you eat an Elephant? — One bite at a time! Secondly, understand that in order to be an authority on any level, your content needs to be top-shelf!

You have a lot to say! However you choose to do this, make a plan to start distributing the best and brightest web content you can possibly create, both on your properties as well as others, and watch your traffic and results begin to blow up!

There is little doubt that the best converting sales model in internet marketing is the use of webinars and live presentations. Studies show that they outstrip every other method of converting prospects to sales by an immense number, sometimes more than 30%!

This has a lot to do with our proclivity for watching rather than reading, and this YouTube generation is very attuned to whatever visual medium they can get their hands on! This means not only the aforementioned webinars and presentations, but also video sales letters, videos in general, live streaming TV, video chat and more.

Let’s look at how you can best use these technologies in your business, and what are some of the ways to proceed!

Live and Recorded Webinars

Definitely today’s hottest trend in getting the word out, webinars have become the tool de jour for not only making direct sales, but also in training, prospecting and preselling. It’s getting to the point where if you’re not doing some form this this medium, you starting to lose out to those who are!

Here’s some of the reasons why you need to getting in to this big time!

Big Reach – How does getting your message out to 1000 at a time compare to 1? Especially if you have to travel to get to that 1! Not favorably, I’m sure you’d agree! Webinar software allows you to reach hundreds more people at a time, and often many who you would never have been able to find otherwise!

Perpetual Aspect – One of the best features about webinars is that you can set them up to run perpetually! People can sign up to come to one of your pre-recorded webinars at any time of the day or night. You literally have a tool that is working for you day and night! And now, with new tools allowing us to create this feature on a Facebook page, the possibilities are truly scary! Think of the viral component of some 600 millions users being able to access your webinars at any time, and just try and not salivate!

Great Intro Tool – This can be a very safe way for you to introduce both yourself and your products in a very safe, non-threatening environment. Your attendees will get a chance to not only get to know you, but learn about your products and services in a non-pushy fashion.

Branding – Webinars can be a great tool to help with branding your business or yourself. You get to broadcast your message as many times and in as many ways as you can imagine, and control the way you are being perceived. Branding conventionally can take a long time. The timeline has just shrunk!

List Building – Without a doubt, webinars are one of the best ways to go about building an email list out there today! People are very hot to view webinars, and don’t think twice about giving up their email in exchange for the terrific content you’re going to be delivering to them via this webinar! And that is the key, by the way. Make sure you are using your webinars to give great value, and you’ll have people literally coming back for more!

Generate New Sales Leads – As lead generation tactics go, webinars far outpace any other method. It’s not uncommon to have 30-40% sales occur ON the webinar, and many more on the followup emails you will send them. How’s that compare to having to pay for traffic to come to your site, and then hope they decide to download a free report, etc?

Launch a new product – Webinars are very effective at launching new products or services. Many are now using the webinar sales model as an alternative to a traditional internet marketing launch, as it is far more economical, and not nearly as many moving parts!

Less Intimidating – Your prospects/viewers feel very much more at ease, sitting in the comfort of their own home, learning all the great content you are sharing with them. This model sets the prospect at ease, and virtually removes all resistance to the sales message. They can click away whenever they feel like it, so it’s incumbent upon you to make them feel as though if they do, they’ll really be missing out!

The Social Aspect – As mentioned earlier, Facebook is a terrific tool for not only promoting your webinars, but now to host them as well! Participants get a chance to ask questions and chat with the speaker, the moderator, and each other. Imagine all your social channels, including Twitter tied into this machine! You can envision the possibilities, I’m sure!

Live Events and Presentations

The (much) older sibling of webinars, selling live from the stage has long been one of the best ways to sell your products. The thing is, it’s definitely not for everyone.

Most of us aren’t really cut out for standing up in front of large audiences and delivering a compelling and profitable sales pitch. The Tony Robbins of the world are rare.

For those who do feel comfortable in this medium, it is a goldmine! Filling a room with people who’ve likely paid a hefty fee to attend in the first place, and then being able to sell to a captive audience like that is what direct sales people long for!

This type of event does have some obvious drawbacks. Besides the personal aspects, there is the cost factor. It’s not cheap to book meeting and convention space, catering, security, event help and more. This type of event needs to be carefully costed out before being utilized.

Smaller, more personal events, like perhaps holding a meeting at your local Chamber of Commerce, are far more doable, and will get you the same results though on a far more manageable scale and cost.

Some people even combine the best of both worlds and set up a recorded webinar to play at events like these, and field questions afterwards. There are obviously a lot of options!

Whichever method you choose…
make this a part of your marketing mix going forward. For those who are not comfortable in front off a crowd, use webinars, even PowerPoint slideshows to get involved in this medium. You won’t regret it!

Some of the more popular webinar and presentation software out there are:

GoToWebinar
Presentation Domination
Webex

Content Marketing – One of the best ways you can drive visitors, build authority and rankings in the search engines is by producing content. This can take the form of article marketing, Web 2.0 sites, Video marketing, RSS, podcasts, forums, guest posts, webinars and much more. The more places you can deposit your links and content (in addition to your own site or blog) only adds to the reach you have at your fingertips!

Paid Advertising – One of the fastest ways to get targeted visitors is to run a paid advertising campaign. This usually takes the form of pay per click ads. You are very likely familiar with Google Adwords, and they are the big dog in this space. What you need to know though is that they are very hard to use for network marketers, as this is a business they are not fond of. Far more accommodating are MSN, and Facebook.

Taking Advantage of the Social Networks! – Far and away the most exciting aspect of using the internet for business leads is by using the power and reach of the social networks. Facebook has nearly 600 million users worldwide, and you can reach a LOT of them very quickly and effectively. You can reach people based on their demographic interests, and find prospects who are interested in what you have to offer. In short get them coming to you, instead of you going after them. Become the hunted, and stop being the hunter!

Spending some time getting very good at these aspects of online marketing will zoom you to the head of the class, and help you make the money you’re seeking. Take some time to find out which are the best High Tier Affiliate Direct Sale products you can promote, and get started promoting them today.

Is Working From Home A Good Fit For You?

At first blush this seems like an easy question. Why wouldn’t you be absolutely thrilled and far more productive when working out of your home? Well, let me list several ways things can get a bit sticky!

Do you have small children? If so, count yourself blessed! On the other hand, the temptation is far too great for small kids to leave you alone and let you work, when it’s far more fun to play! Not their fault: they’re doing what they’re supposed to!

Will you do the work? Being at home invokes a sense of relaxation, free time, etc. Do you possess the discipline necessary to get down to work when you need to?

Can you filter out distractions, whether it be from family, friends, the TV, the refrigerator?

Can you carve out a workspace that allows you the freedom to get the work done?

There are more, but I’m sure you get the idea.

What Working At Home Is NOT!

What working at home is not is a license to skip the work. While everyone admires the idea of the “4 Hour Work Week” it is not feasible for everyone, in all circumstances. While you may get there eventually, the reality for many of us is that’s that there’s just as much work at home as there was at the office

It is also not an excuse to massage deadline and customer expectations around your home life. Once you start down that slippery slope and drop the ball once, damage is done. Save the afternoon nap for the weekend!

The Major Key To Work At Home Success

The most important factor and critical key to work at home success is the ability to focus. The challenges of working at home already make this a skill you desperately need to possess, and you need to make sure it is your working mantra if you work at home!  The ability to shut off distractions, focus and complete your work will make succeeding working at home a far greater likelihood than were you not to have this ability. Make sure you are single-minded about this, and you’ll like the results!