After spending the better part of everyday working on optimizing my website, adding content, building links and trying to please the search engines, it makes me mad to check my email and see another company offering guaranteed rankings. These emails often claim that for a certain amount of money they will get your site to rank number one for the keywords of your choice. Just give them a pile of cash and a few months and they will get you that #1 ranking no matter how competitive your field. Here four reasons why no one can guarantee rankings with the search engines…

1. No company can guarantee anything from the search engines except the search engines themselves. There are certainly things that you can do to help your site in the eyes of the search engines. However, at the end of the day there are hundreds of factors that influence your ranking with the search engines. No company can control all of these factors.

2. Search engine optimization (SEO for short) can be a long and grueling process. Sometimes you can see results very quickly. However, more often than not the results take months to show up. This is especially true for markets or keywords that are highly competitive. There are companies out there that spend millions of marketing dollars each year trying to get rankings for certain highly competitive keywords. There is no way that paying a company a few thousand dollars will guarantee that you will rank higher than the big boys.

3. Search engine rankings are based on algorithms that take into account a whole bunch of factors including: inbound links, page content, meta content and the age of the page in question. There are ways to subvert some of these factors and trick the search engines. However, tricking Google and trying to manipulate search results is a very bad idea. If and when the search engines discover your sites deception it is quite likely that your site will be removed from the index. Being removed from the index means that all of your rankings and probably most of your traffic will disappear. Before you try tricking the search engines you need to make sure that you consider the potential consequences of your actions. Can you really afford to get your site banned from Google?

4. Anyone who does search engine optimization on a regular basis should know all of this. Companies who try to tell you that they can guarantee your results either don’t know what they are doing or they are simply lying to you in order to steal your money. Either way, they aren’t the people that you want to trust your business to.

If you need help getting rankings in the search engines, there are lots of reputable search engine optimization companies that are out there. However, you need to make sure that they are up front and realistic with you about the potential for results as well as their methods. In the world of SEO rankings are never guaranteed but hard work usually pays off.

Jeff McRitchie is the director of marketing for www.MyBinding.com and lives in Hillsboro, Oregon. He is responsible for SEO, Search Engine Marketing, web development and customer retention. He writes extensively on topics related to Binding Machines, Binding Supplies, Report Covers, and more

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Yeah…. I have 350 friends, 87 fans, 21 stalkers, 22 followers and 8 admirers… So, why am am still lonely?”

Social media is redefining the meaning of “friendship” and leaving millions who are craving for connection starving for more.

::::> Welcome to the social media paradox.

For example…

Here’s a recent email I got after signing up to Mixx.com recently:

Subject: Someone likes you over at Mixx

xxxx1199 thinks you are a really cool person who knows your way around the web. Check out your new friend’s profile: http://www.mixx.com/users/xxxx1199

Sounds like a potentially new “friend”, right? So, although I know the game, I still couldn’t help but browse over to xxxx1199 (name changed to spare the innocent) and, wow, this guy has a zillion friends!

So much for our blossoming friendship, how could he possibly have time..gees, with all the friends he has already.

OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration but it illustrates the point. A “friend” in the social media sphere is not a friend.

I’m Serious!

Some may think I am making a big deal..trying to be controversial or stirring up a semantic debate.

But no, let me assure you, I am serious.

Primarily because I see this “fake friend” mindset brought on by the mind-numbing proliferation of social media infecting an entire generation of young people.

Obviously, there are millions who have a desire for community building, for being part of a team, for getting input from a group or sharing an affinity for something they like. This desire is as old as humanity.

Until the advent of social media, the way to participate was usually face to face, hand to hand and, sometimes, heart to heart.

Today, you could join hundreds of social media communities without leaving the coffee shop.

The paradox is, although it is easier than ever to be a part of a personal community, once you do so you’ll never hear the sound of another person voice, the touch of their hand or feel the emotion in their heart.

Sidenote: But…you may get an email assuring you that you are a “really cool person”.

A Challenge To You

This is an important subject, especially to anyone involved in social media marketing, because we have a choice:

Do we contribute to this fake friend revolution or do we genuinely participate?

So, my challenge to you is the following:

1. Stop collecting friends like baseball cards.

2. Reply to your friends, fans, admirers and followers…get to know them…listen…heck, give them a call.

3. Don’t post thoughtless comments for the sake of a backlink.

4. Offer to do guest articles for each other, or otherwise increase the dialogue.

5. Create a Squidoo or Hubpages site and promote it for a mutual charity.

6. Don’t brown nose but compliment aspects of each others site or content that you like.

7. In short… Give your “friends” more than you have been giving them.

I promise to take my own advice and perhaps, with our collective effort, we can chart a better course for social media and create genuine, lasting friendships in the process.

Got social media marketing chops? Check out Peter Lenkefi’s social media marketing and blog promotion tips at Web2Center.com.

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Autoresponder is one of the most important tools that all affiliates must have if they want to have a successful affiliate marketing business. It will enable affiliates to build their own list or customer database so that they will have a long term business. It is important to choose a good autoresponder and it must have these 3 features.

The 1st feature is the ability to send out email to the subscriber. This is important as you would want to make sure that your subscriber will be able to receive email from you after they have opt in to join your list.

The 2nd feature is to make sure that the autoresponder will deliver email on time. If you have set the sequence that the customer will receive the 2nd email 2 days after the 1st email, you would want to make sure that your customer receives it. You definitely do not want to choose a autoresponder that send emails to your customer 2 days late.

The 3rd feature is the export function so that you will be able to keep a back up copy of your customer database. It is important that you always have a updated back up copy of your customer database to prevent you from losing all the list if something happens to the autoresponder provider. Make sure that the autoresponder allows you export your list.

These are the 3 important features that you must take note of when you are choosing a autoresponder. It is important that you choose a professional autoresponder as it is a tools that helps to build your list.

Zack Lim is an up and coming affiliate marketer who owns http://www.MyAffiliateMarketingOnline.com providing information on Affiliate Marketing. To get Free “7 Days to Affiliate Marketing” course, go to http://www.MyAffiliateMarketingOnline.com

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NetAudioAds™ is this for real?
This is the first thing to cross my mind as soon as I began to read the initial email I received. Because of it’s source, I gave it a chance and read through it. Although it sounded too good to be true, since it didn’t cost anything to find out one way or the other I figured I’d look into it.

I mean it seems like if someone wasn’t already doing this then someone should!

As someone who spends are little more time on the net than the average bear, I can honestly say that I’m quite numb to the majority of advertising. Even the unblockable pop-ups are pretty much ignored by me. Now, I not foolish enough to believe that the ads have no effect, I’m sure they do, but perhaps not the desired effect of the advertisers.

Like most people an interesting, humorous or captivating ad does get my attention. Many of the INTERNET ads on the major websites like NFL or ESPN are now pretty much streamed TV commercials which looked pretty cool at first. However, after a couple of views only the very rare and no doubt very expensive ones hold my attention past 4 or 5 views.

Years of TV has trained me up in the art of ignoring them and doing other things while they play, so in essence I’m only hearing the audio in the ad anyway. When one of the sites that do play the car commercials etc start, I usually grab a sip of my coffee or take care of something else and then return my attention to the screen after. Half the time I don’t even look for the X to close them as they are finished by the time I had a sip of coffee.

This is where I see the strength of an audio ad, because as a man I’m extremely visual and if my view isn’t disturbed or interrupted I’ll keep doing what I’m doing while audio plays. Some might say, “well not everyone has their speakers on so they won’t hear these ads” that’s true for what I believe is an ever shrinking minority of surfers.

Statistics clearly show that an overwhelming number of people visit You Tube etc every day and I don’t believe they turn their speakers on while they watch the video and turn them off when it’s over. Most folks probably do what I do, turn them on when the computer gets turned on and turn them off when the computer gets turned off.

So I think this is a great idea, I can’t fully endorse the company behind it yet or make any real claims, except to say that I’m signed up (which didn’t cost me anything) and I think that there’s no harm in you signing up too. OK here’s the shameless plug part if you are going to sign up through me is a good a place as any to start I figure.

Besides, I’ll continue to investigate this in my spare time on your behalf as well as my own and post what I find out…

David Dalton - http://www.playaudioad.com

I think this is a great idea, I can’t fully endorse the company behind it yet or make any real claims, except to say that I’m signed no harm in you signing up too. OK here’s the shameless plug to learn more http://www.playaudioad.com

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Would you believe there are tens of thousands of people who have found ways to make money online? Not only that, but their incomes are significant and growing, due to little competition and low cost of entry. If I can do it, then there is no reason why you can’t. You can literally begin making money right away.

There are many, many, opportunities online, but here are the 5 factors you really need to consider, to guarantee your success:

1. Set your goals.
As with any business you need to set goals. Goals help you visualize where you want to go, and keep you motivated when you get up in the morning. You goal may be to earn $500 or $10000 a month, it may be to take that dream vacation, or it may be to give up your job. These are all great goals. It is imperative that you write them down and reread them often. You need a short term goal - e.g monthly goal, to keep you motivated from day to day and a longer term goal 1-2 years - to keep you on track and prevent you from chucking it in. I am confident that if you adopt a positive attitude and embrace your goals then you will soon be making money online.

2. Take time to research.
As I alluded to earlier there are many people making money online - and there are thousands of different businesses that you can try. The internet is a mine field of information and “making money online” opportunities are not difficult to find. However you will need to decipher the genuine opportunities from the scams. Many online promises are just methods to extract money from you. Some do’s and don’ts

DON’T fall for the “get rich quick schemes” that promise huge returns in record time
DO try and email or telephone for more information
DO search online for feedback on the opportunity e.g. try name of opportunity + scam
DON’T part with money without consulting a friend you can trust and/or sleeping on it.

3. Find something that you like.
You’re the boss now - so do yourself a favor and choose something you enjoy. This will greatly enhance your chances of success. A few things to consider:
Do you enjoy writing?
Do you enjoy talking to people?
Do you enjoy working on the computer?
Do you have a flair for sales?
Are there particular things that you are passionate about e.g sports, music?
Do you want to be contactable 24×7?
Do you want to have flexible/fixed hours?
Personally I like to work on my computer on my own time and my choice of internet business matches this. Find out what suits you, and you can weed out the business ventures which are not for you. Don’t settle for second best - choose something you are comfortable with.

4. Find something worth your while.
While it is a good idea to avoid the sales pitch that promises the sun, moon, and stars; it is also important that you don’t take the safe option - that guarantees $5 an hour for sending emails, filling our surveys, or licking stamps. These amount to you underselling yourself, because the opportunities of making money on the internet are so much greater. Look for systems which offer a good monthly return for a few hours work a day - if you find something with a residual income all the better.

5. Anything for an easier life!
One of my motivations for venturing into internet marketing was to create an easier life for myself. As I sat in my day job I used to think - “There must be easier ways to make money” - and there are! Earning a living online means that you have the luxury of working from home and choosing your own hours. It is important that you can exploit these perks, by being able to take time off, take extra vacations and spend more time with your family. You need to avoid the 40-50 hours a week for the sake of your sanity.

http://www.freeearningtips.com

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In part 1 of this series, we discussed some of the most important criteria in selecting an affiliate program that is right for you (and your customers).

To review, an affiliate program allows you to sell someone else’s product on the Internet. The product is supplied by the merchant. You register as an affiliate of the merchant. There is usually no charge to register. Your only job is to refer people to the merchant’s website. Each time one of your referrals buys a product from the merchant, you collect a commission. The merchant is responsible for developing the product, negotiating the sale (through their website), handling the payment collection, sending out the product, and handling any problems. Your commission varies between 30% and 75% of the sale price. You do not need a merchant account, nor do you need to have any sort of checkout procedure or shopping cart. Your only responsibility is to send people to the merchant’s website, they take care of the rest.

There are tens of thousands of affiliate products available. You can start your search by going to ClickBank, they have one of the largest affiliate retailing programs. You can further narrow your search by using the 6 steps listed below:
1) Try to contact the merchant. Many of them will reply quite quickly, others are less attentive. If you ask them a question and never get a response to your inquiry, drop them from consideration. If they won’t respond to your email before the sale, heaven help you if you need to contact them after a sale.
2) Be thorough in your search for affiliate products to promote. Don’t recommend a lousy product to the people on your list just because it has a high payout percentage. This is a recipe for disaster and is one of the surest ways to turn your list of subscribers into a list of unsubscribers. Never recommend a product based solely on how much it pays you. Make sure you offer only the finest products to your customers.
3) Make sure that there is a demand for the product. Visit Wordtracker to determine the number of searches for a particular item. Check the Alexa Ranking and Google Pagerank of the sales page. You want to make sure that the product that you are promoting is selling well.
4) Do they offer a money back guarantee? A good guarantee will boost sales. If they do not offer a guarantee, it could indicate that the product does not deliver everything that is hyped in the sales page. Be cautious before you recommend a product that does not come with a guarantee.
5) Make sure the affiliate program offers real-time statistics showing hits as well as sales. That way, you will be able to see how many visits are required to generate sales. You can use these numbers to calculate conversion ratios and compare it to your other affiliate programs. With this information, it is a relatively easy matter to determine which affiliate programs to stay with and which to get rid of.

6) Visit forums and ask about the product. Check to see how many people are familiar with it. If few people have experience with it, it may not be a big seller. Ask those familiar with it to give you their honest opinion. Tell them that you are considering buying it and ask if they would recommend it. If you get a number of negative responses, find another product to promote.

Do you want to know how I make money? Get all the details in my free ebook entitled, Make Money Every Day!

Make Money Every Day - Free!
http://www.milliondollararticle.com

Write And Make Money!
http://www.WriteEbooksAndMakeMoney.com

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It was not too long ago that most people had no internet leave alone e-mail address. But internet brought in a new era that is full of unlimited information. Internet gave birth to electronic mail popularly known as e-mail. E-mail opened new avenues to the world of communication. In the beginning e-mail was only used as another means of communicating with other people for personal or business related matters. Now people of every age group have an e-mail address. But, since past few years its potential for marketing has been exploited to its maximum both in good and as well as bad manner. At the same time who can disregard the services of direct mail which has been operating since nearly two centuries? It is still the preferred method of communication for many people.

E-mail is the cheapest method of communicating available as of this date. The advantage with email is that you can send email to many people at the same time just with the click of a mouse where as in the case of direct mails one has to go through putting letters in envelopes for each and every person, make different address labels, mail it and also have to bear the cost of mailing. Time is money and e-mail marketing saves a lot of time.

While e-mail marketing might look easy but if you compare the net result the story is totally different. When you are marketing through e-mail you go to make sure that you are e-mailing the right person otherwise the e-mail would end up going to junk folder. Also you got to be careful that you don’t miss the subject or the body of the e-mail otherwise the net result would be same. In this age of spamming, spammers use variety of subjects, so you have to put the subject keeping in mind that it wouldn’t send your e-mail to the spam folder again. In contract the direct mail gets a better treatment. Studies show that direct mail is more efficient and has better success than e-mail. First, it is not as easy to block direct mail as junk e-mail and secondly the process of blocking mails itself is not automated like e-mail. The other reason why people hate e-mail marketing is due to constant bombarding of e-mails from spammers and illegal marketers from Nigerian money scams to porn to online prescription drugs to stock quotes to what not. In addition to that, you also get promotional offers from big companies and who can ignore phishing these days. Due to all these people have developed a negative perception about e-mail marketing and they simply delete or spam the e-mail if they do not identify it as their regular e-mail. In contrast direct mail is seen with respect and people pick their mail as a daily routine and open them with a priority.

Direct mail has a personal feel attached to it, one of the reasons why people prefer mail greetings over an electronic greeting. It takes time to personalize a direct mail where as an e-mail is instant and the fate of e-mail is also instant i.e. immediate deletion. Researchers are constantly puzzled by the mystery surrounding why people are so enthusiastic about direct mail. But no worries this only good news for the marketers that they have something in their tool kit that works. So marketers have the mailing list of potential customers handy and send some nicely composed letters to them about your company and its products.

Snail mail has a potential of going through the hands of gatekeepers and administrative assistants before actually going to their boss which can end up being thrown in trash. The survival chances are rare unless its subject is business oriented and has some important information. But e-mail wins in this regard, as it reaches directly the person to which it is intended to go, after that its fate is left to the person whether to read or send it to spam folder.

A more scientific explanation of why direct mail is dearer to people than e-mail is the sensory perception of people. A direct mail uses three of the four senses of a person i.e. visual, verbal, listening and touching where as e-mail does not use sense of listening and touching. But this can be achieved by adding appealing graphics, text reading ability and streaming audio to the e-mail.

The statistics show that direct mail has not died and in fact the volume has grown by leaps and bounds in past few decades. A typical example is the fact that we receive more magazines, journals, mails from universities, DVDs etc. than we used to receive few years ago. This leaves the marketers with a dilemma about which method to use. The answer is simple, use email to contact only those people who you know and use direct mail for the people who don’t know you.

Learn more about internet marketing advertising and internet marketing strategy at http://ezineadvertisingworks.info/

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The hardest part of having a business in a network marketing program is to retain your downline. Many people think a network marketing program means huge incomes and little work, which is why the turnover rate in multi level marketing companies is higher than any other industry. While people have many reasons for walking away from a great business opportunity the most common reason for people is that something better comes along for them.

At least twice a year there is a new marketing network opportunity coming out and they all claim to be the best. Every new product that is introduced is made available on the internet and in order to get this product to the consumer distributors are needed. After potential distributors understand the way network marketing works they often lose their interest and move on to programs that claim to take less working time and give you more opportunities to get rich overnight.

Realistically there are no ways to get rich overnight while working on the internet. The odds are a few thousand to one that you will earn into the millions with in the first year and most of those that claim this success are the ‘self-proclaimed’ entrepreneurs. It is rather disappointing to see the odds that most people will be able to earn a stable living through a multi level marketing program, but those that are successful understand that working from home requires actually working hard.

Always take time to investigate the business offer even if the most recent email promises you the newest top product that is arriving on the market and that you need to act immediately in order to get in on the ground floor of the excellent opportunity. Many wonder why a hot product isn’t sold in retail outlets, but the truth is that it takes time in order to get shelf space at a retail store and a company can save money on lower distribution costs by selling through qualified distributors once the product has become successful through network marketing.

Don’t panic if you miss the deadline to get in on the ground floor of a business opportunity. The odds are that in another six months a new and more improved product will come out and you can get in on the ground floor of that product. You have to believe in what you are selling in order to be successful with a network marketing system. If you personally use the product or service then it also pays dividends since you can offer first hand testimonials to your potential customers. After customers start to use the product then you can invite them to join the network, even if the only reason is to buy the product at wholesale next time they need it. Eventually the person may see the benefit of the network marketing opportunity and sell their own customers in turn on the idea of becoming a distributor while also building your downline sales.

Starting a network marketing downline for the purpose of making money is fine but the more interest your have in a product the more effort you will put into it. If you believe in what you sell it will be a strong indicator to other distributors and will help you working harder to contact more people so that you stay involved in both sales and recruiting.

Robert is the owner and operator of this website: http://www.fileanddatarecovery.com/ and a true fanatic of learning and sharing ‘how to’ material and info. He is now promoting a great business at: http://www.GlobalResortsNetwork.com/skylab/biz

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When you first decide to market a program, whether it be a network marketing program, mlm, top tier program, your own product, another affiliate product, whatever you are marketing, the first thing you have to do is develop a landing page, some pay per click ads, when we at perfectwealth.com develop pay per click ads we usually write out like six or eight or ten of them. And we place them up there and test them. Same thing with a landing page, write out a landing page, we usually write out one of those and it is probably wiser if you did a couple of them, but we usually do one and tweak that one. And then write up your auto responder series. If you are marketing somebody else’s site then use their content on their sales page to write your auto responder series. And that is it. You do not have to sit there and write out seven or ten emails at one time.

What you can do to get going first is write out the ads and the landing page, get your keywords and then start marketing. Write out your first one or two emails and schedule them a few days apart. Then everyday after that for the next five to seven or ten days, however many emails you want to write, write another email and place it in your auto responder series. After five days of doing an email a day, it will only take you ten to fifteen minutes, pretty soon after ten days you will have like a set of ten emails in your auto responder series and it only took you twenty minutes a day. Instead of trying to write them all at once, you can get stuck, or have writers block for the day, space it out and you can be making sales right away instead of trying to write when you cannot.

One thing you do not want to do is use copy off a sales page to market another product that is not from that sales page, that is like a copyright violation. The owners do not mind if you use their copy to sell their own products, but when you use it to sell somebody else’s product, you can get yourself in trouble. Also initially in the first ten days when you are writing your emails one a day, you can do one pay per click campaign every single day after that. If you want to sky rocket yourself do two or three campaigns, great. But if you are not use to doing it, then start out with one campaign a day, or one campaign every other day, however you want to do it, but you need to consistently increase what you are already doing.

What is a campaign? A campaign is simply what they call in Google Adwords an ad or a group of ads with some keywords. So what are you going to do everyday or every other day? You are going to write another ad or two, find another set of keywords. That can only mean that when you are in front of your computer while you are eating breakfast look at your computer and check your emails and somebody decided to email you on a new program, produce, service, marketing system, person whatever they emailed you about that is in the industry, and you say thank you, thank you, for this keyword or this program or this person that is emailing me so that I can have a new keyword to make a new Google Adwords campaign for today. So you get that and that is going to be the new campaign that you do today.

So generate your keywords off that using the keyword research tool and develop a few more keywords off that and we go over that in our videos at Perfect Wealth Formula, and then do a couple of ads to go along with it. There you go, you have a new campaign, you have got your keywords while you were eating breakfast and after that do your campaign and you are done for the day. Oh, do not forget, you have to write your email for ten to twenty minutes. So it is really not much at all. Now you can sit and do that for the next sixty or ninety days, do not stop after two weeks, do not stop after a week, do not stop after thirty days, just keep going. Stop for what? Your whole goal is once you have your system, and we are going to call this your sales system, you have got your opportunity, your product that you are selling, you have got your landing page, and you know what you have to do, you have to market. So that is all you should be doing.

George Collins has been marketing on the Internet for many years. Discover how to develop tons of traffic to convert to sales, scope out our free report.
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You may have heard the term before, but you might not be aware of what it means Ð especially what it means in terms of you and your business.

It will have the greatest impact on website conversions, yet it is the one thing that most website owners neglect when designing their website.

The Ôcall to actionÕÉ

All good websites have at least one (usually several) calls to action, and they generally prosper because of them.

In short, a call to action is something that asks website visitors to do something. ItÕs your job as a website owner to make the process of ordering a product, requesting more information or signing up for a free report as easy as possible, and providing a call to action is the most important part of that process.

LetÕs suppose, for example, that you have a weekly newsletter that you send out by email to your database. You want to get more subscribers to this list so you include a box on the home page of your website asking people to fill in their details and click ÔSubscribeÕ to start receiving the newsletter.

At the bottom of this box there will probably be a big button bearing the word ÔSubscribe!Õ in big letters, with an arrow pointing to it. It may sound like you are holding the hands of your website visitors and leading them to take a specific action, and in reality you are, but this call to action makes it clear what they need to do to receive some kind of benefit Ð in this case a free newsletter.

But there is more to the call to action than directing people to press a button or click their mouse. You can also make it more enticing and add a certain urgency to the task you are encouraging them to perform.

Think about all the things you have ever ordered online. Did you ever order something because they told you it was in short supply, or that the price would go up in the next couple of hours if you didnÕt order straightaway?

In this sense, a call to action can instil a sense of urgency in your customer. ItÕs worth spending some time figuring out how you can put a call to action to the best use on your own site, as it has the ability to make a real difference to your profits in both the short and the long term.

Web Profits specialises in search engine optimisation, online marketing & web design, helping businesses generate profits from the Internet. For a free report on ‘The Secrets of Online Marketing for Offline Businesses’ visit Web Design.

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