Adwords for Beginners

To be honest, when I started out with Pay-per-click, I had no idea in the world what I was doing. I had a friend who did a lot with pay-per-click but it seems like every time I asked him about it, he simply told me that it's not that difficult. He would start jabbering on about this, that, and the other. At times, I wasn't even sure we were speaking the same language. I think he was getting frustrated trying to explain it to me and I was getting frustrated trying to understand him. Thank goodness for Google or I may never have figured it out. Turns out, Google has a whole bunch of videos to help you and actually walk you through Adwords.

I'll put it into three easy steps for you. People gave me these same three steps when I first started out, and I really wish I would have listened to them a little more.

Step one: Visit the Google Adwords Learning Center

Some people will tell you that it's pointless to go to this site and check out what Adwords has to say about their program, but I say, who better to teach you how to use Adwords than those who actually created it? Seriously, watching these videos could be a miracle for the Adwords beginner. In fact, even if you know nothing about it at all, they start out at the very beginning, you're covered.

Step two: Remember to do Your Research

Okay, so you've watched the videos and you feel pretty good about things. If you don't feel good about things after watching those videos, I would suggest that you do your research on any area that you're still confused about.

I did extra research anyway. I realized that I did all my research on the physiology of Adwords but I hadn't done much research on the psychology of Adwords. I started reading up on blogs and forums; any information I could get my hands on. I even had an eBook that a friend sent me to help me out in the process. I would pick at my friends knowledge now and then and eventually, I started to feel like I knew what was going on.

I guess I should also say that I really didn't know a lot until I actually started using Adwords

Step three: Actually Start Using Adwords

Yep, that's right, it's time to actually start using Adwords. Give it a try, just don't get too excited to start off with. I'll be honest, you're going to fail. Yeah, I got pretty discouraged when my friend said that to me, but it is pretty much inevitable that you will fail miserably on your first campaign in Adwords. Even professionals, who use Adwords a lot, struggle when they first start a new campaign. There's a lot of tweaking that must be done before your campaigns will start to be effective. The tweaking process is when the knowledge you have gained from your research of various sites will really become useful to you.

Good luck to you. If you need any additional help with online business techniques, please read other posts from our blog.

Amazon Affiliate Program - Market Reseach

Doing market research before starting a business is like having an accurate flight plan before you go on a trip. If you don't have anything planned out there are a whole slew of hazards that can endanger your flight, make it failure and take you somewhere you don't want to go. Imagine an eager young pilot who wants to get out and be free like the birds but who has no plan. He gets up in the air and immediately has a rush of adrenaline. He's away from civilization doing his own thing.

However that rush soon fades and He finds himself a little lost. He frantically searches for landmarks or cues that will show him where he is. Instead He decides to just keep going in the same direction because he figures he find some city or airport. Unfortunately His freedom is taken right back and he is a slave to his aircraft. He soon begins to run out of fuel and has to make a crash landing. If only he had made a flight plan he could have traveled somewhere exciting. Instead he was just thrilled to be up in the air.

So it is with business. Eager young entrepreneurs romanticize about owning their own business so they rush in and find out quickly enough that they're lost and too far invested to just stop. With a business if you're just winging it even if by some slim chance you turn a profit you will most certainly end up in a place you dont want to be. You may even need to make a crash landing by filing bankruptcy. If only you had made a flight plan. If only you had done thorough market research.

In this Course we're going to review the elements of market research as it pertains to creating and profiting from websites based on Amazons Associate program. With proper, in depth research you'll discover niches that will make you consistent money by selling Amazons products.

1. Keyword research
2. Product research
3. Competition research
4. Domain name research

Before we go in depth into the "how" and "what" of each element we will discuss the "WHY". Understanding why will give you the motivation and big picture perspective necessary to really make this course successful for you and will help you realize your personal financial goals. This is going to be specific stuff that will really help you in the long run and many of this can be applied to a lot of different business models as well.

1. Why Keyword Research?

Simple. People use search engines to find what they're looking for on the internet. Search engines use keywords to organize the results they deliver to their user. Some keywords are used more than others and therefore it would be very profitable to convince the search engine that you're worthy to be served up as a website for the higher volume keywords. Why keyword research? If you choose the wrong keywords you wont get any traffic to your website. And in this game traffic=money.


2. Why Product Research?

After some keyword research lets say you come across the keyword "chocolate candy bar". The next step would be to check out what products would be relevant. Obviously chocolate candy bars would be a good thing to sell if that was your chosen keyword, however people don't buy candy bars on the internet. Not only that but candy bars are very inexpensive so even if you were able to sell any each sale would amount to pennies. This is why you do product research. You need to find products that will pay well and that people will buy online.


3. Why Competition Research?

If you were to pit a mouse and a rottweiler against each other who would you bet on? The obvious choice is the dog. He far out matches the mouse. In one swing the dog could break the mouses neck. When you're just starting out you want to choose small niches where you'll be able to reasonably compete. Don't go after the electronics industry. You'll go up against behemoths like best buy, circuit city and Walmart. The more narrow your niche market the less competition there will be and because you're just starting out you'll want to go small.

4. Why Domain Name Research?

This is what your website will be known by. You want to make sure you can get a reputable domain extension and a reasonable keyword rich name. Doing proper research on potential domain names can dramatically effect how soon you start to see sales.

Top 5 Ways to Bring Disaster to Your Website

There are several mistakes made by Internet marketers all over the world. Some may see these mistakes as trivial but add up all the small mistakes and you have big problems.

Disastrous Design

One of my biggest pet peeves, when it comes to the Internet revolves around poorly designed websites. Have you ever gone to a site that looks like a rainbow it has so many colors or that looks like it's a newspaper because it has so much copy all over it? I look at sites like these and wonder how on Earth the owners are making any money off of them.

To avoid this mistake, if you know nothing about design, higher a web designer to build your website for you. I think you'll be very happy with the result, more sales. Do your research first, however, in order to make sure you're getting a website that will work well for your business needs.

Poor Product Presentation

Here's a kicker, product presentation, that will either make your site or break it. Here's a tip, when you're presenting a product to the public, you want it to be the best you have and you want to take pictures of it for your website that will show off all the wonderful amenities of the product in question.

I'll give you a poor example from my past experiences. When I was in college I was looking for an apartment for my friend and I to live in. I walked into one apartment that I will never ever forget. We walked in and low and behold right there on the floor, just inside the door, there was an ant hill. Now, you may imagine this as a small group of ants, no, it was seriously a pretty good sized pile of dirt, an actual ant hill inside the living room, right next to the kitchen. I remember thinking to myself, “if this is their model apartment and supposedly the best they have, I don't ever want to live here. So it is with your website and the way it looks. If you don't present your product in the best way you can, people are less likely to want to purchase it. In fact, they may tell their friends all about it and then they won't want to go to your site either.

Catastrophic Content

Your content says a lot about your company, your product, and your ability to run a business. Your content can have a very negative impact on the way your viewers see your site and what it stands for. Reversely, Some content can actually boomerang your site into more sales and better leads.

For example, do not fail to place some kind of privacy and security policy on your site for easy access to your customers. Having this will help give your potential customers confidence in your ability to keep their private information secure.

There are also things you can put on your site that will make your potential customers confidence diminish. This includes any content which is crude, inaccurate, and unorganized. These examples are only some of many factors.

Snail Speed

Loading speed is a huge factor in people buying your products or not. If a potential customer has to sit there and wait for your page to load, chances are they'll click away from it and go to one of your competitors. If your site isn't up and running effectively, do not pay to send extra traffic to it; if you do, you're pretty much throwing your money away at no benefit to you.

Reduced Recognition

It's very important to have good branding on your web page. Look at your own page, will potential customers know who you are and what your selling, above the fold? The part of the page above the fold is what a person sees when the page first loads before they scroll. In essence, it's the first real perception your potential customers will have on your company and your product.

Unless you're trying to have the worst web page ever, for your own sake, change your website if you need to in order to make it pleasing to the eye.

Not all Links are Created Equal

Okay, first off you need to realize that not all links are created equal. This means that even if you have multiple links on forums, social media and article directories, someone else could get a more relevant link with a higher page rank that could be stronger than all your less authoritative links.

Forums

Let's be honest, you're not going to get a lot of link juice out of links from forum comments or posts. However, the time it takes and the difficulty of creating a link on a forum page is not very high. This means that you could do several forum links in the time it takes to create one more authoritative link. How does this all fit in together, well, it's anybody's guess how many non-authoritative links a person needs before they're at the same level as one link on an authoritative site with relevant data and a high page rank.

Guest Posts

Guest posts, you're getting warmer with these, a lot warmer. In fact, if you can get a site that Google terms a high authority site to allow you to write a guest post with a link in the content, you're doing pretty great. If this site is a PR 4 or 5 you should be excited, if it's a 6 or higher and it has relevant content to what you're posting about, you've pretty much hit the jackpot.

Are you wondering how hard it is to get a guest post? Well, let me paraphrase some advice given to me by a friend, “your chances go up significantly when you ask”. Meaning, I can't tell you what your chances are or exactly how to ask a person for a guest post, but I can tell you that if you don't try, your chances are pretty much zero.

Social Media

Social Media was my first love when it comes to link building. I got on this band wagon when it came through and thought it was the best thing in the world. Now-a-days, most social media site links aren't going to bring you a lot of link juice. To increase the worth of your links you should write optimized, authoritative content. Make sure that it's meaningful and lengthy enough to be deemed worth indexing.

Buy Links

The easy way out. If you have the money to do this and the sites are authoritative, have a high page rank, and are relevant to your content, do it! Don't be ashamed to do it; lots of people buy links, and there's nothing to be ashamed about. In fact, buying links can actually get you ranked in the top positions on Google a lot faster. A word to the wise, however, be very careful that you buy from credible sites.

These four examples are just four of hundreds of ways to build links to your site. Some are more simple than others and require very little maintenance, others require quite a bit of time and maintenance. You should also want to give, directory listings, social bookmarking, and other link building ideas a chance.

The moral of this post is...go for links on sites with high page ranks and use the other links to give you a little extra power.

5 Ways to Make Money Online, Your Gateway to Success

Small Niche Website

One of the best ways to make a little extra money online is to start up a small niche website. Doing this is pretty simple, all you really need to do is find a niche, build a website, find a supplier and go for it.

Finding a niche can be very time consuming and, depending on your skill level, could be a difficult task. I would suggest coming up with three ideas and then see if there are some keywords you can rank for under those ideas. I can almost guarantee that your first few keywords or ideas will not be very fruitful so you may need to repeat the keyword finding process multiple times.

Affiliates

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make a little extra money online. In fact, it's relatively easy to make a little extra cash. The amount you make from affiliate marketing probably depends on how much expertise you have in that area.

If you would like to sell products as an affiliate marketer, I would suggest visiting sites like Amazon and checking out their affiliate programs. It's a great way to be an affiliate for a certain product.

Selling on Auction Sites

Selling on auction sites like eBay and Amazon has got to be a classic way of making money online. There are many ways to make money on eBay and Amazon. For example, you could sell things that you find around the house that you don't need anymore or you could even drop ship on eBay or Amazon. However, it is sometimes difficult to find good drop ship companies that will allow you to sell their products on auction sites. Be careful and only sign contracts with those companies who will allow auction site sales.

Flipping Websites and Domain Names

Flipping websites and domain names can be very profitable if done correctly. Depending on the domain names in question and the amount of profit earned each year by the site; you could sell your flipped site for thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Be aware, however, that not every site is going to bring this much money. In fact, there are websites for sale on Flippa.com right now for bids as low as twenty-five dollars.

Write an E-book

You could even write your own e-book about anything you're interested in and sell it through e-book directories. If you write about something you are really passionate about, perhaps it won't seem like work at all.

Please be aware that none of these five ways are guaranteed to make you a lot of money, business is all one big gamble.

4 Things ALL Articles Must Have

The importance of articles in today’s websites and internet based companies are immeasurable. They dictate a lot in the success and the drive of traffic into one’s site. It has become a key element in making a site work and earns a profit. A website operator and owner must have the good sense to include articles in his or her site that will work for them and earn them the many benefits articles can give to their site.

Articles have been known to be the driving force in driving traffic to a website. Articles are a factor in giving site high rankings in search result pages. The higher a site ranks the bigger slice of the traffic flow pie he gets. With a huge number in traffic flow, there are more profits and more potential for other income generating schemes as well.

But, it is not just about stuffing your site with articles; they have certain requirements as well. These requirements must be met to obtain the maximum benefits an article will provide for your site. A well written article will catch the eyes and interest of your customers and keep them coming back for more. They would also be able to recommend your site to others.

Here are some tips to help you and assist you in making your articles. Below you will read about four things all articles must have to make it successful and helpful in making your site a profit earning and traffic overflowing site.

• Keywords and Keyword Phrases.

An article must always be centered on the keywords and keyword phrases. As each website visitor goes to a site, there are those who are just merely browsing but actually looking for a specific something. When this happens, a searcher usually goes to a search engine and types in the keywords they are looking for (e.g. Toyota Camry, Meningitis, Tax Lawyer and Etcetera). It could be anything they want.

The Important thing is that you have an article that has the keywords that are related to your site. For example, if you maintain an auto parts site, you must be able t have articles about cars and their parts. There are many tools in the internet that provides service in helping a webmaster out in determining what keywords and keyword phrases are mostly sought out. You can use this tool to determine what keywords to use and write about.

• Keyword Density

Know that you have your keywords and keyword phrases, you must use them fully. An article must have good keyword density for a search engine to “feel” its presence. Articles should at least have ten to fifteen percent of keyword density in their content for search engines to rank a site high in their search results. Getting a high rank is what articles do best for a site.

Keyword density is the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase is used on an article. The number varies depending on the number of words used in an article. An effective article must have a keyword density that is not too high or too low. With a very high density, the essence of the article is lost and may turn off a reader as well as the search engines. It comes off as overeager. A low number may be ignored by the search engines.

• Good Article Content

Like what is stated above, you cannot just riddle an article with keywords. They must also be regarded as good reading materials. Articles must be able to entertain people as well as provide good information and help for their needs. Articles should be written well with correct spelling and good grammar. If you want people to trust you, make your work good and well thought out.

People respond well to figures, facts and statistics. Try to get great information and as many facts as you can. A good and well written article will boost your reputation as an expert in your chosen field or topic. As more people believe in you. They will be able to trust you and your products.

• Linking Articles

And another important thing to remember. If you are going to submit articles to ezines and/or contribute your articles to newsletters and other sites, DON’T ever forget to include a link to your site. A little resource box with a brief description of your site and you should always be placed right after your articles that you have submitted. If people like your articles, they will most likely click on the link directing them to your site.

How to Get Started on eBay

Are you interested in using eBay to buy the products that you need or even sell items that you no longer want? If you are, you will need to create an eBay account, if you haven’t already done so. Although many automatically assume that getting started with eBay is a complicated task, it doesn’t have to be. All you really need to do is follow a few simple steps and you should be good to go.

The first thing that you will want to do is visit eBay’s website, which is located at eBay.com. Once you are at eBay’s website, you can then click on the link that allows you to register a new account. At that stage, you will be brought to a signup form. That signup form will ask you a series of questions. For instance, you will need to enter in your full name, your address, your telephone number, as well as an e-mail address. You will also be required to come up with an eBay screen name or sign in name, as well as an eBay password, which will be used to access your eBay account. Once you have correctly filled out the form, you will be sent a verification email from eBay.

Once you have received eBay’s verification email and followed all of the instructions, which will help you validate your eBay account, you will be able to start using eBay right away. When you first get started, you may need to sign in to your eBay account. As previously stated, you will need to use your eBay sign in name or screen name and password to do so. For that reason, you may want to write down your sign in information and keep it in a safe place. Once you have signed in to your eBay account, you can then do whatever you want; buy or sell.

If you are interested in using eBay to shop online, to buy, you will want to start searching for items to buy. This can be done a number of different ways. eBay allows you to browse through their large selection of items, by detailed categories. You can also perform a standard eBay search or an advanced one. Searches are more likely to give you accurate, tailored results. When browsing or searching for something in particular, you should be able to see a large number of auction listing all on one page. The information that you will be presented with at this time is the standard, bare minimum. If you would like more information on the item in question, such as how much shipping costs or too see additional pictures, you will want to click on the link to view the detailed sales page. Should you like what you see, follow the instructions to buy and you will have made your first purchase on eBay!

As it was previously stated, if you are interested in selling on eBay, to make a little bit of extra money, you can also do so. The only difference is that you are required to pay small fees to become an eBay seller, unlike eBay buyers who have completely free accounts. The amount of money that you are charged will all depend on your auctions, particularly how much you list each item for, as well as how well each item sells. To get started with selling, you will want to click on the “sell,” link at the top of the eBay webpage. What is nice about listing items for sale on eBay is it is relatively easy to do. For instance, you need to choose a category for your item, make a headline for your auction listing, write a description of your product, upload pictures of what you are selling, outline shipping costs, as well as accepted forms of payments, but everything is outlined for you, in a step-by-step matter.

Whether you are interested in becoming an eBay buyer or an eBay seller, you can do both, in as little as a few minutes. eBay, as previously mentioned, is considered one the most shopped at online marketplaces. For you, this means that if you are looking to make money on eBay, you should be able to do so and if you are interested in buying on eBay, you should be able to find millions of products to choose from.