But what about the technical people? By this I mean the people who’ve already set up a blog or website, who have registered domain names, who are comfortable with basic Internet terminology and concepts. What is the “AdSense formula”?

The only AdSense formula that you need to know is this:

A) Provide content: Search engines love content. As more content you can provide as better off you are. Don’t put all the content on one page. Build many pages with content. The reason for this is that every page gets spidered separately by Google and other search engines. Each page of yours in their index is an additional chance that your link gets mentioned in somebody else search results. Quality content is more valuable to search engines as they want to provide real information to visitors. Search engines do not want to refer to link farms or redirects. If they can refer a customer directly to the most valuable content the better for the search engine. Search engines live of providing good results.

B) Domain Name: Do not use a domain name like www.freewebpages.com/~yourname - search engines don’t like those. It also prevents you from building a brand name (your ultimate goal should be building a brand). Spend the $9.00 per year for your own domain name. It’s money spend well worth.

C) Your website design: The simpler the better. Here is a rule of thumb: text content should outweigh the html content. The pages should be W3 validated and work in Internet Explorer as well as Mozilla’s Firefox. If you go too fancy with stuff some search engine spiders might not be able to read your pages. Look at Google, eBay or Yahoo themselves - simple design, easy to navigate and people are flocking to it. If you use sub-directories the directory names should be descriptive (i.e. “steel-products” or “paper-clips”). The same is true for you pages. If you are able to give pages a descriptive name as better you are off in the long run.

Website performance is critical. If your pages load too slow you will punished. Make sure the website sits on a fast web server and that the page sizes are 20K or less. If you can keep page sizes to 15K or less you are ahead of the curve.

D) Build one content page per day or at least 3-4 per week. You may think you do not have that many products. But establish yourself as a source of product or industry related information. If customers can learn from the content you provide they respect you and your business and this will lead them to use your services and products, too. Pages with 300-600 words should be more than sufficient.

E) Keywords: Make sure you use important keywords in the title of each topic and through-out the text without looking like a SPAMMER (meaning: do not go overboard using the keywords). Find out what important keywords for your business are.

This article can be published by anyone as long as a live back link to http://www.smallbusinessland.com is provided. (this note can then be removed)

Christoph Puetz is a successful small business owner (Net Services USA LLC) and international author.

Guides, Tutorials, and Articles for small businesses - http://www.smallbusinessland.com

Free stuff Online

In Affiliate Marketing you are promoting 3rd party products and in return you earn a share of a sale generated from your marketing efforts. We all have seen those little Amazon.com banners on different websites. These would be a very simple form of affiliate marketing. More sophisticated versions are complete stores build around Amazon.com or based on data feeds from other vendors. In some cases the affiliate has to build his own website and store - in others there are white label website templates or pages available for the affiliate to work with. Only when it comes to the actual sale the customer is redirected to the 3rd party vendor who carries the actual product.

Not a new variant but a not very well-known version of affiliate marketing is the promotion of affiliate product links/websites via Google AdWords. The power of advertising on Google.com is combined with the affiliate link. The affiliate partner does not need a website anymore, he directly links the customer to the 3rd party. With Google AdWords very targeted marketing is possible and well-written ads equipped with the right keywords can bring in big bucks. All the affiliate has to do is to figure out which keywords are affordable to promote. And that’s where secret to success is. Everyone can buy the expensive and obvious keywords to promote products but when it comes to affiliate success via PPC advertising (aka Google AdWords) the inexperienced marketing folks are being weeded out or are left with big holes in their pockets. Finding the right combination of keywords, target group, ad copy is the critical piece of the puzzle.

Overall - affiliate marketing via PPC on Google or via Overture (competitor of Google AdWords) can be very lucrative and quite a few people are making a living of it. It sounds easy to do but to break into this field a new affiliate needs a lot of luck, big bucks or patience and knowledge.

About The Author

Christoph Puetz is a successful Entrepreneur and international book author.

Samples of affiliate marketing can be found on http://www.eclassad.com and http://www.christiansinternet.com for your review.

BUT … that doesn’t mean you throw your hands up in dispair and give up ;o) Stick with me for a few minutes and we’ll go over a few ideas that come to mind and see if they get your creative juices flowing.

Firstly, what the heck is a “Niche” anyway?? I mean I am sure you have seen the word flying around the Internet and a lot more lately. You’ve seen newsletter articles and email letters from some of the top guru’s now sprouting “Niche” as the new “catch” word of the time.

The term is NOT NEW. Basically a “niche” is finding a specific target market and catering to their specific wants and needs.

Ummm let me give you an example…

As a marketing coach/consultant my business is providing a service “marketing” to businesses. Now obviously the business arena is too general so what I want to do is break it down into bite size sectors or smaller target markets. I may want to deal specifically to the needs and wants of Dental Offices and decide to specialize in Dental Office Marketing. I could take on the legal sector and specialize in marketing legal practices.

Get where I am going here??

I can’t be all things to all businesses out there, so I break the business sector down into target markets and the find the ones that I want to specialize in and cater to that group specifically.

Now, you may be thinking ok, that’s good for you being a marketing coach, but I am an affiliate for a progam…how does “niche marketing” affect me?

Glad you asked ;o)

When people first come online with the desire to start some sort of eBusiness they typically go into the “emarketing” niche and promote products/services with a marketing theme. It makes sense from a marketing point of view, you go where there is demand.

However, with demand also comes competition and the “online marketing” arena is saturated and highly competitive.

So…what do you do?

Well, what you need to do is sit and think of markets outside of the “online marketing” arena which could also use your products/ services and target your messages specifically to them.

Umm I feel an example coming on here…ah ok, here is one for you.

Lets say you are an affiliate for an autoresponder service. Excellent service because you know that anyone who starts a business online needs an autoresponder. While that is great, what isn’t so hot is the fact that you are not the only autoresponder service in cyber-land and they too are targeting the same niche you are.

But…the difference between you and them is this article ;o)

See, we all go for the obvious niche or target market when we sign onto an affiliate program. We go after the others just like us and market to them. What we fail to do is find the OTHER niches or target markets out there that haven’t heard of an autoresponder and have no idea what it is let alone how much time we can save them.

I am thinking about niches like, oh…perhaps Real Estate Agents. A few friends are in the market for a new house. Every week they get in the mail (snail mail) the new listing sheets for all the houses listed that week. The idea is that they go through these sheets and see if any of the houses peak their interest and then they are to call their Agent and ask to view them.

It was an ok system, but imagine how much time and MONEY a Real Estate Agent could save if they had an autoresponder service?

All they would have to do is create the new listing templates, enter the email address and names of their client base (even that is automated) and blast out the new listings once a week, or more often if they wanted to. No more printing costs and gone are the mailing costs and the time factor you have saved them is PRICELESS!

See the potential here???

Are you beginning to get the idea about finding other market segments (customers) for your products/services??

If you are an affiliate for an autoresponder service you could promote autoresponders to Dental Offices. They send out appointment reminder cards…imagine the cost savings for them if they had an autoresponder service, not to mention the time savings of having staff to stick labels and post them out??

It is just a matter of seeing what they do and how your service can save them the time and money. AND…the best part about this thinking is that not many take on this sort of business stance.

Now lets get away from the “online marketing niche” for a second and think of other ways of creating profit through niches.

Another thing is to look to your hobbies and interests.

Lets say you dabble at DJing on the weekends as a hobby. With that very hobby you could create profit by creating a little niche site geared towards DJing. Your site could focus on showing someone how to break into the weekend DJ business and provide sites that offer good DJ equipment (that you are affiliated with of course).

The idea about NICHE Marketing is that you DON’T have to stick within the “Online Marketing” niche. You can find a niche based on an affiliate program, a hobby or a special interest.

Some of the top marketers have found other niches like; stop smoking, weight loss, online dating, model trains, travel, golf and yup even cooking.

Don’t limit yourself to the niche of online marketing. Step out and find other market segments that are not being served or where there is limited competition and build your niches around those. It’s like taking a path of least resistance and a path to more profits!

Denise Ryder is a Marketing Coach writing from her home office in Northern Ontario (Canada). Imagine What You Could Accomplish With a Marketing Coach in Your Back Pocket! Take the No Cost TEST DRIVE!

http://www.profitspace.com/coach

How powerful is that!!

While everyone is focusing on their “eBusiness” they are missing the potential that exists in using off line marketing approaches to boost their online marketing efforts.

Here are five things you can do to heat up your efforts.

Articles

Actually if you are already using Articles as a marketing tactic for your on line marketing efforts, use the same articles for off line publications as well. Publishers regardless of the fact they are on or off line are ALL looking for good, valuable content.

Advertising

You know the effects that advertising on line can have for your business. You already have an ad that pulls for you on line. Then why not give it a shot off line and see if you can tap into another possible market.

Again, with the local newsletters in your community and any small business groups there are. Check out their rates and start using off line advertising to generate some exposure from off line sources.

Remember that you have to pay for this advertising so in that regard, advertising in something that you can afford and afford for a long period of time.

Networking

By attending a networking mixer you are getting the best of both worlds. You get the chance to get out and break out of that bubble AND you also get to spread the word about your business by talking with others!!

Depending upon the format, many of these mixers are of a referral nature. Meaning they allow only one business from each industry and through each member’s dealings if they find someone looking for your service or product… then you will get a referral to follow up on.

Business Cards

A business card can end up in more places than you can even dream possible. They are a cost effective marketing tool. How many places do you go to on a regular basis where you could just leave a few business cards on a counter??? Now even if you are an eBusiness owner you can still use this to your advantage.

Here are a few things to consider when getting your cards done.

1. Do not go with black printing on a white card. It screams cheap and newbie. If money is tight, understandable, but go for a coloured card stock with a matching coloured print. It is still inexpensive and it doesn’t scream new, or “Herb Tarlick” marketing practices.

2. Include your business name, contact name, phone number, site address, web site address and of course your address. If for security reasons you don’t want to include your home address then that’s fine. However, make sure you have ALL possible ways for a potential customer to do business with you.

3. USE THE BACK OF THE CARD…what a waste of potential marketing opportunities. So many people forget about this. A business card is a mini- billboard…use it ALL. On the back you could have a few tips and then the email address to your autoresponder for them to get more info. I had an Accountant use the back of her card by providing all the applicable phone numbers to all the tax offices that a business owner would need. Another client of mine is a travel agent and he included all the 1-800 numbers for the prime airlines and car rental agencies. The idea is to make your card a keeper ;o)

Business Alliances

Ok, on line we refer to these as Joint Ventures, Business Alliances is the same thing, but only the name has been changed.

Leverage yourself by finding another business owner off line, where you can set up an alliance and piggy back each other’s marketing efforts. This one takes a little time and effort to set up, but, once it is again you are tapping into prospects that would never have found you otherwise.

There you go, five quick tips and in some regards you can use the same tactic in both on and off line marketing…so why not???

Denise Ryder is a Marketing Coach writing from her home office in Northern Ontario (Canada). Hey…are you a do-it yourself marketer? Are you struggling a little? Need just a little help??? Can you imagine how far your business could grow with a Marketing Coach in your pocket??? Take a no cost Test Drive TODAY!

http://www.profitspace.com/coach

1. Build a solid business foundation before starting. Create a business plan (this should be document revisited every quarter), marketing plan, client profile, and a site map for your web site.

2. Be very consistent. Brand your company and stick to it.

3. Create acceptable and easy to understand policies the build trust: Customer Service, Code of Ethics and a Privacy Policy.

4. Network locally to bring people to your site. Start with the local chamber of commerce as an example.

5. Place your website’s URL address on all your printed business literature — business cards, brochures, newsletters, letterhead, invoices, ads, etc.!

6. Offer added values that are related to your business and the ideal client (target group). A solid resource database helping clients getting most out of your services could be a good start. Maybe offer products. A FTP software for a web hosting client makes perfect sense as they can use it to conveniently upload their files to the hosting web server.

7. Add a “Recommend This Site to a friend” script on your site. If someone visits your site and knows someone else who may appreciate it, this feature will email the page’s link to the recipient. Easy access to a tool like this could increase ‘word of mouth’ advertising.

8. Setup monthly chats about related topics or install bulletin boards (forums) to build a relationships and community. This will attach customers to your business. Invite industry specific folks to a chat so that they can answer customer questions. This is a perk nobody can resist.

9. Teach classes in colleges or schools or speak to groups about subjects relating to your products and services. Students suddenly turn into customers and/or spread the word ….

10. Conduct periodic contests and announce the winners on your site. As a web host you could have contest for who has the best web design on your servers. People like to show off. Use this behavior to attract new clients.

11. Participate in online forums as an expert. Do not SPAM the forums with your advertising messages. Use the signature to quietly promote your services. Once people see you as a valuable member with lots of information and start trusting you, they will start trusting you their business.

This article can be published by anyone as long as a live back link to http://www.webhostingresourcekit.com is provided. (this note can be removed as long as a link from the author’s resource box is provided)

Christoph Puetz is a successful small business owner (Net Services USA LLC) and international author.

Guides, Tutorials, and Articles for small businesses - http://www.webhostingresourcekit.com