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Localized techniques for Maryland
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Are people pulling in money on the internet?
You're seeking information about Maryland or maybe Maryland is the state you live. You're promoting a product or service and you wish to promote it to visitors to your site who reside in Maryland and various other places as well. You've read that customers are spending lots of money each day shopping online and you're dead set on figuring out how you can earn money from the internet.
True Statement #1
People do make good money on the web, but it's probably not you.
True Statement #2
Business owners that do make the money, are not necessarily more web savvy than you.
True Statement #3
Those that are successful online are not especially gifted or better educated, but rather they have learned a few tricks of the internet trade. The difference in the 'haves' and 'have-nots' is not measured by any number of college degrees, but rather by the application of a few common sense strategies.
Are you one of the following?
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A person involved with Your home business
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A entrepreneurial business, with products or services of your own?
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Typical homeowner with a garage overflowing with 'stuff' you want sell?
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A reseller of products or services provided by another source?
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Someone interested in affiliate programs?
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An MLM'er, distributor, or network marketing professional
representing products or services offered by your company?
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A web site owner living in Maryland
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Or someone thinking about doing one of the items listed
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If any of the above activities sound like you, this article is for you. You are about to be taught exactly what to do this year to help guarantee that next year your business, website or blog is more profitable.
Internet marketing tips and techniques for Your home business...
If you wanted to state simply 'what' the Internet is, you could make a strong case for the argument:
The internet is a place to dig up things
Listen closely to what many people say when they're talking about the internet:
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"After a little research I found exactly what I needed..."
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"Let me pull-up the TV guide, I think it's on tonight..."
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"Yea, $20 bucks on eBay, can you believe it..."
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"Welcome onboard, how'd you hear about us? Online?"
Everybody's looking, finding, or searching for something. Everybody. So, it's your task to help customers find you. It's a little more effort, but it's not nearly as hard as you might expect. Give yourself about one hour to explore in detail each strategy listed below. After you understand the basics, you might wish to pace your efforts so that once week you tackle one approach until you have each one up and running.
STRATEGY #1
Blogs have become a required part of any well planned marketing strategy. Bottom line, get one. A blog (or weblog) is little more than a platform helping you to blab about whatever you might be interested in... perhaps subjects related to your products and services, your profession, or the benefits and endorsements surrounding your products and services.
Market statewide by focusing on how this all relates to Maryland or the benefits people from Maryland might enjoy.
The reason a blog or weblog is a must for your internet marketing strategy is because it gives you an instant voice on the internet to provide news and information about the stuff you are doing. Your blog or weblog should link to your various other web pages and sites. Blogs are "search engine" friendly and much more likely to get registered in Google, MSN search, Yahoo etc than your website.
Invest a little quality time setting up a 'profile page' on your blog (or connected to your blog) that tells visitors a little about you and your business. Also remember to link to this profile page from your various other web site pages.
Post short but frequent messages every week (more often if possible). Keep it lively, interesting, and topical but above all don't hype and don't write sales pitches.
Need advice? Here are links to a few premier blogs that offer quality services. Some are hosted others you can host.
STRATEGY #2
Invest a little time learning about "folksonomy" or "tags" and how they can benefit your online marketing efforts. A good place to explore is Technorati http://www.technorati.com/help/tags.html
Once you understand the basics of how tags interact with your site, start using them on your blog and in comments you post to other blogs. Open a no cost photo sharing account at Flickr http://flickr.com/ to upload photos with descriptive titles and stories related to your business, Your home business, or your products and services. Don't forget your tags!
Open a FURL http://furl.net/ account to save and share bookmarks or favorites linked to all your important web pages. Again, add well worded descriptions and associate proper tags to every bookmarked page.
Never stop linking... return to your other site pages, your blog, and your profile page and add links to your Flickr and FURL pages.
STRATEGY #3
Start an opt-in e-mail list and/or give visitors the opportunity to subscribe to your RSS or XML feed.
Most website owners have unfortunately found out few people purchase anything on that first visit. How often has anyone ordered or even contacted you from your site? It takes a bit more "relationship building" to get past first base, so to speak.
Here's what researchers have learned about who's most likely to buy products or services on the Internet:
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40% of adults with net access, subscribe to or have received opt-in e-mail in the past three months... (Source: Bigfoot Interactive)
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People tend buy from non-brand names AFTER they subscribe to newsletters put out by those same web site owners.
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91% of opt-in subscribers are more likely to buy... (Source: eMarketer Inc)
What's the bottom line here? No matter how much traffic you manage to get to your web pages or blog, if you do not provide visitors a motivating reason to sign-up for a newsletter, you will likely hamper your opportunity to make sales by over 90%. Add a subscription box to every page that you plan to direct visitors to. Do not list any web page on a search engine, business card, or other promotion if that page does not have a way for visitors to join your list.
Internet marketing tips Bonus Idea: Many web site owners now offer XML or RSS feeds as an alternative to newsletter subscriptions (not necessarily a replacement). Explore options to offer XML or RSS feeds to your web site visitors. Email as a delivery vehicle has lost some of its punch and profitability in recent years. Users are confused about what is quality content in their email folder and what is SPAM and unwanted advertisements. XML or RSS feeds are not nearly as technical as they sound and are worth investigating.
STRATEGY #4
A search engine marketing campaign will drive more website traffic at a lower investment than any other form of website marketing. Period. Yet the overwhelming majority of website owners ignore this technique to a continuous flow of highly motivated visitors.
Consider these points.
A Georgia Tech survey revealed that over 80% of its respondents discovered web sites through search engines and were searching with intent to buy something.
eMarketer statistics showed that last year, search engine marketing (SEM) skyrocketed. Growing over 120% -- just in the US. Paid search advertising accounts for about 40% of total internet ad spending.
All these millions are being spent by entrepreneurial businesses, big businesses and people just like you. It's called PAY-PER-CLICK ( PPC or COST-PER-CLICK ) and it allows you complete control over your search engine listings. No more optimizing, waiting and praying only to end up as listing number 5302 on page 384 under the keyword phrase "why bother" because that's where some search engine employee (or worse yet, some robot) thought you belonged.
Pay Per Click places you behind the mix-master where you can whip-up well worded PPC ads (called listings) with spiffy headlines (called titles), interesting descriptions (10 to 20 words or so) and bake up perfect matches between keywords and keyword phrases. YOU chose and the destination or landing pages you want to link search customers to.
With pay-per-click, site owners decide how high in the rankings (or search results page) they want to appear by bidding penny by penny for the top spots. Keywords popular among web site owners cost more while other more diligent site owners find less expensive keyword niches that may bring equally good results for much lower per-click bid rates.
The unique advantage in PPC advertising is that you can bid on dozens or hundreds of keywords connected to your products, services, business or affiliate offer while never spending a penny until someone CLICKS your listing. Add to this the fact that some keyword listings in some PPCs can start as low as 1 cent a click.
There are many expert websites and eBooks with recommendations about setting up a PPC marketing campaign. Many charge you way more money than it's worth (be careful), but the best we've found is free and is available to anyone joining this internet marketing newsletter.
Musings of an Internet Guru: Newsletter
Click here to subscribe (free PPC eBook included)
http://www.danhollings.com/class/newsletter.html
Here are a few expert search engine suggestions and keyword brain storming ideas to get you going:
- Forget stupid characters. We are talking search engine listings (not eBay) so cool the clever punctuation it L@@KS stupid!!!!!!!! Don't make SOME words CAPITALIZED; it looks like you're shouting desperately for business. Respect the people who read your search engine listings.
- People are by nature often interested in things like 'saving money', 'making money', 'curing something', 'striking a deal', and getting anything of value that is 'free'... but be careful. The addition of such self-interest phrases in your ad copy may skew your clicks upwards while leaving your sales flat. If you're tempted to try such phrases... test, test, test... while keeping an eye on your bottom-line.
- Bluntness works: 'Refinance 4.5%', 'Viagra $39', 'No Interest VISA', etc
- These are the type words that appeal to searchers: more information, complimentary, love, youthful, safe, new, benefit, gain, money, happy, glad, proven, guarantee, resource, fast, results, discover, how you, how to, your, yours, you'll, healthy, natural, magic, secret, comfortable, save, proud, secure, solution.
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The Maryland Marketing Strategy
Go local. Yes, people from Maryland search for stuff to buy using "Maryland" as their keyword. That means you must include search ads targeting Maryland and bid on keyword phrases containing Maryland.
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The secret to results with any pay-per-click marketing campaign is preparation and consistency. Do your homework at the start to find less expensive keywords to bid on, think up a quality title and description for your search listing and stick with it for at least 12 months as you learn the rules. Set a reasonable budget that you are comfortable with (perhaps $78 a month) and consider that your dues in the search engine school of hard knocks. After you graduate, you'll begin to see results. It's an education worth the time, money and commitment.
STRATEGY #5
Don't start any other techniques until you have the strategies outlined in this article implemented. However, you should invest in yourself by reading articles and eBooks on internet marketing.
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ArticleArticle911.com source:
Article researched by ArticleArticle911.com staff and contributors.
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© Copyright 2005 by
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