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Even for those of us who have been dabbling in the Internet marketing arena for a decade or more, all these latest frenzied “Info-Product Launches” are downright scary. In recent months it is not only the product launches themselves that have become a little frightening, but also the rate at which these product launches keep bombarding all of us in the marketing world. It has become so relentless you feel like you’re an extra, ducking for cover in some war movie; Saving Private Ryan comes quickly to mind.

Once upon a time, not too long ago, you might get hit with one or two really major launches in a year. Now it seems like we are getting two or three a week. Those actively looking for good, solid marketing information will be totally drenched in the latest “How To” ebooks, videos and courses. Plus, throw in all those debuting membership sites, seminars, and private coaching sessions and even seasoned marketers are in serious danger of getting “Info Product Launch Burn-out.”

For the beginning wannabe online marketer it is a virtual mine field. One misstep and you can wake up, scratching your head: did I actually pay that much for a marketing product I can barely understand, let alone put into practice. Don’t get fooled by all the promises of instant wealth or quick riches. If getting rich was as easy as 123… we would all be sporting Donald Trump hairdos.

To make matters worst, all the latest marketing trends seem to be promoting the laziest ways possible to make a quick killing on the Internet. With this simple marketing tactic or that SEO trick, even the dimmest light bulb on the planet can have roaring online success without even breaking into a sweat or using up any of those precious brain cells. Heaven forbid.

The marketing hype has become so palpable and obnoxious it’s like a rich relative who won’t shut up about how much he’s earning while sitting in his pj’s and playing with his PDA.

“How I made 1 million in 52 minutes.” “How I made 100 grand with only a list of 45 subscribers…”

Who is to blame for all this “Info Product Feeding Frenzy”? Well we won’t mention names but these marketers are not shy about what they’re doing. Just the opposite, they brag and boast about how they can manipulate, control and whip prospective customers into such a buying frenzy just to see who can sell the largest amount of product in the shortest amount of time.

Some savvy and ruthless online marketers have turned this whole launch process into an art form, offering flashy videos with real valuable content in order to hook potential customers and capture their email contact information. The info-product launch flows out like a well-rehearsed opera:

Giving the specific date and countdown clock showing when the product goes live.

Incorporating a blog to keep everyone, including the search engines, informed.

Strictly limiting the product or buying time to increase demand.

Even manipulating you to buy the product before someone else beats you to it.

Having top-name JV partners whipping their devoted followers/subscribers with extra bonus offers.

Even enticing said affiliate partners with top prizes from ipods to sports cars.

Everything is in marketing sync for the big day.
Some of the top marketing pros and experts are now even offering courses on how to do exactly that: courses showing HOW you can warm up and psychologically cultivate a whole list of prospective buyers by giving away very valuable information in videos, reports and online calls… all to make that final sale

There is nothing wrong with making a sale. There is nothing wrong with making a hundred sales, but there is something intrinsically wrong when you know in your heart of hearts what you’re selling will never be used by half the people who are buying it.

How many of those sales are from naive or desperate buyers looking for a ‘quick fix’ or ‘easy ride’ to the good life? How many even if they have the money to buy your product will never have the will power and fortitude to carry out the marketing game plan in your product?

How many people are being fooled by all this marketing hype and rhetoric… how many will actually benefit from buying your product? Makes one wonder if that old saying is really true that in any gold rush, it is the people selling to the miners who make the most money.

All of these marketing products should not only come with an income disclaimer, which all the marketers prudently include, if only by some magical power we could see displayed on each product in big bold letters the tell-tell statistic: “How many buyers will actually read/ view/ use and ultimately benefit from the marketing info-product they have just purchased?”

That would be one statistic worth discovering. Of course, there’s no way of knowing, but one could argue this number is quite large. Otherwise, if you believe all the claims on these products, half the world would be Internet marketers and rolling in dough.

Online marketing is not easy. It can’t be done overnight. There is a learning curve and you must pay your dues. Be extra wary of any short cuts and anyone offering them. Magic formulas do exist and while buying the latest marketing product and information can definitely make the journey easier; always remember, no product can make that journey for you. No product or system can automatically make you rích. Don’t be fooled by flashy headlines, smart videos and the latest next big thing.

Nor can anyone say these info-products don’t have real value or merit. They do! They are of tremendous value to those who can benefit from them. If you’re marketing on the web and your sites/marketing are earning you $200-$300 a day or an hour – even just a small tidbit of information or advice can dramatically increase your íncome. Over time the amount paid for any info-product will be returned to you a hundred-fold. Sometimes it has nothing to do with the info-product itself; a marketer might mention a piece of software or program he/she uses in their work that when applied to your own can make a big difference in how much you earn. Been there, done that.

For everything is relative; even the large amounts charged for some of these seminars, coaching sessions or info-products can be justified if the buyer gets his money’s worth and then some. It all depends on the position/angle you’re coming from and how much the information impacts your online business, which will really determine if one benefits from a particular info-product or not.

So the next time you’re bombarded by the latest info-product by some of the world’s best online marketers… STOP, take a deep breath and step back from all the marketing hype and manipulation. Then honestly ask yourself: How can I use this information? Will I use this information? Perhaps, most importantly, can I really afford this product at this time or can it wait?

If you decide to buy, protect yourself by thoroughly checking out the marketer’s reputation beforehand. A money-back guarantee is only as good as the marketer’s word. If there is a payment option – take this route because you will lose less money if refunds are not honored.

Above all, if you’re buying the product because you believe it will solve all your problems and will virtually give you the path to the easy life, just remember this… you have to do some work. You have to put in some sweat equity. You have to do your own homework; no one else can do it for you. It doesn’t work that way. Sure some smart, successful marketer can sell you the answers, but you still have to write the test yourself.

Like most things in life, there are shortcuts; but you have to take them yourself in order to get to where you want to go. Online marketing is no different.

I got into search engine optimization back in 1998. Of course back then SEO was a lot simpler than today. All the tricks like keyword spamming and invisible key phrases worked like a charm. Better still, little tricks like these were acceptable. Not anymore.

In fact, most old-school tricks don’t work today and many can get your pages banned. This is great news for you. Over the next few minutes I’ll show you how to make Google absolutely LOVE your web pages and help you jump to the top!

This is all you need to know… Search engines today place 90% or more of their ranking priorities on content and links. Keywords are still important, but more so in the text of your pages than in any sort of META tags.

BIG TIP: Try to use specific keyword phrases whenever possible. Let’s say you have a web-page dealing with floral delivery. Instead of just the word “flowers”, which has 233,000,000 competing pages on Google, try “send flowers”, which has 1/10th the number of competing pages. Better still, think like people speak (I.E./ I’m sending flowers to my mom.) As it turns out, a lot more people are searching for “sending flowers” than are searching “send flowers” and – here’s the best part – “sending flowers” has less than 1% of the competing web-pages as the search term we started with, “flowers”. Now that’s impressive! You have an advantage over about 99.5% of your competitors with just that single tip. 

Now take the top three or four keywords (and keyword phrases) and list them in order from best to second best and so on.

Now do the reverse for the very last paragraph. Put your least important keyword at the top of the paragraph and end with your most important. This shows consistency.

Finally, try not to repeat any keyword more than three or four times per page. Make it flow naturally.

Having quality inbound links can account for more than 75% of your search engine optimization success. Getting these links is the crucial step that will get you over the top. Next you need to monitor your progress and your site’s status (how search engines really see it). This will tell you not just where you are – but where you are likely to be. In the old days, we used to do all link work and monitoring by hand – and it took a long time (I averaged about 16 hours per week – per site!) My advice to you is to find a good SEO tool and let it do the work for you. If you get the right product, it’s the best money you’ll ever spend.

Dr. Craig Nevill-Manning is a New Zealander who joined Google in 2000 as a Senior Research Scientist to develop more precise search techniques. Previously, Craig was an assistant professor at the Computer Science Department of Rutgers University, where he conducted research in data compression, information retrieval and computational biology. Before that, he was a post-doctoral fellow in the Biochemistry Department of Stanford University, where he developed a software suite used by pharmaceutical research laboratories to identify the role of particular proteins within cells.

A scientist at heart, Craig is probably best known as the developer of Froogle (recently re-named Google Product Search) and the founder of Google’s software engineering center in New York City

Google’s Spelling Bee

As an example of the spelling challenges that Google faces, Craig showed the audience the huge number of ways “Britney Spears” is misspelled on the web. He said it’s encouraging to see that the most popular spelling is also the most correct one. Scale is important! 

Google Maps Lead to Apps

Craig referenced Rodney Brooks from MIT whose provocative paper “Fast, Cheap and Out of Control” offered new logic and a completely different view of machines. The idea is that there is no center of control among robots so you should make lots of them; don’t treat them so precious. Craig said developers should use this logic to create lots of small apps that you can replicate and tweak, rather than one big expensive app that can go horribly wrong. Scale trumps smarts every time!

Experiments in Scale That Have Impacted Google’s Operations

You can now compute the value of any potential move in chess. Based on that information, you can compute your projected probability of winning the game from any move. Chess grand masters put a lot of time into this knowledge. But the opposite is true for the game Go, because there is more randomness to the game play.

The Web 2.0 social media revolution is in full steam. Are people finding your website?

As an entrepreneur, how do you make your business website stand out amongst 435 million other websites and more than 1 million blogs competing for your audience’s attention?

It’s not as hard as you might think.

To begin, let’s look at the demographics of Web 2.0 social networking sites, Myspace.com, Facebook and YouTube.com. This will give you an idea on how to position your message in the Web 2.0 World.

The Web 2.0 Social Networking Revolution

Web 2.0 is a real revolution on the Internet. And these aren’t just college kids…

62% of MySpace visitors are older than 25 (40% are 35+), and 83% are makíng over $30,000 a year. Nineteen percent (19%) are makíng $100,000 and up…

On Facebook.com 46% are over 25 and 34% are 35+, but they’ve got deep pockets. Eighty-eight percent (88%) makë more than $30,000 and twenty-three percent (23%) makë $100,000 or more.
In the years ahead these numbers will get ridiculous…

Social media giant Facebook is currently ADDING a million 25+ (non-student) adults per week to their rosters. That’s 52 million new users a year.

YouTube.com gets over 50 million unique visitors per month. That equals over half a billion a year.

Facebook and MySpace have the equal daily traffic of Google. Experts predict within the next year they will DOUBLE the daily traffic of Google search.
So your prospects are there. The traffic is there. The spending power is there. So NOW is the time you want to establish your presence on the social networking websites.

Web 2.0 Strategy: Why You Should Be a Maven, Not a Marketer

As a website owner, how should you position your message in the Web 2.0 world?

The increasingly savvy buying public will quickly shun marketers. Internet readers want information from the Internet. They don’t want advertising, marketing, or a “pitch”.

According to Schefren in his Attention Age Doctrine, the solution is to become a social media “Maven”.

A Maven is a trusted authority, like a friend, on the social media websites. As you gain their trust, your audience will return to you over and over again wanting to invest in your advice.

Five Steps to Becoming a Social Media Maven

Social Media Maven Step 1: Get in the Game

Begin blogging immediately. Create a video explaining how to solve a problem and put it on YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook with links back to your main website. Just those two things alone will establish more Web 2.0 presence than 90% of your competition.

Social Media Maven Step 2: Share your passion

Build your Web 2.0 website around your passions. Thirty-two year old Gary Vaynerchuk transformed his wine knowledge to his video blog. It now has thousands of subscribers and does $50 millíon dollars a year in wine sales.
Social Media Maven Step 3: Be Controversial

Your audience will remember you more when you challenge the status quo. Controversy sells. Think like the tabloids and the local news channels here

Social Media Maven Step 4: Create World Class Content

You will drive repeat traffic to your website by offering top notch “how to” information. Gary’s wine tastings are highly educational on the benefits of wine, how to cook with wine, and how to choose a wine for your special occasion. Rich’s reports teach Web 2.0 marketing principles.

Remember, as soon as your audience feels that you are “pitching” them, you’ve lost them. So provide content not advertising.

Social Media Maven Step 5: Engage in the Conversation

Web 2.0 is a dialogue not a monologue. Internet businesses profít more when they observe and listen to their communities first before they broadcast their messages. Savvy mavens such as Gary and Rich encourage their audience to ask questions. The answers to these questions then become part of their user-generated content.

How Marketing in a Web 2.0 Social Media Environment Is Exciting.

Visualize it like a big radio or television station or movie screen where you’re the star. You’re building a fan base so you need to entertain, inform, and deliver consistently for your audience.

You have more publishing power at your fingertips right now than at any time in history.

So use it.

Share your passions.

Reveal your trials and tribulations

Tell your story.

And, watch how quickly your audience builds.

UMMARY: Social networking sites are boomtowns for many paid-content marketers. See how a Facebook application opened the doors to millions of potential customers for one marketer in less than five months.

Includes how to build a simple application with viral marketing possibilities that can generate new ad revenue.
Paul Allen, CEO, World Vital Records, sees social networking as the future of marketing for his subscription-based genealogy research service. His team created their own social networking site, FamilyLink.com, last spring to help genealogists create family trees and connect with researchers around the world.

FamilyLink now has 30,000 registered users, but Allen saw a bigger opportunity among Facebook’s 64 million active users. “Our own social network is growing slowly, and it’s going to be a big part of our future strategy, but Facebook is the biggest opportunity I’ve seen in 10 years on the Internet.”
When Facebook opened its platform to outside developers last year, Allen and his team moved quickly. In October, they launched a genealogy application for Facebook users called “We’re Related,” which lets people connect to their family members on the network and create family trees. To date, the app has been downloaded by 2.8 million Facebook members, and the activity within the application has doubled, making it the network’s #1 genealogy application.

Along the way, the team has been testing promotional methods, advertising strategies and lead-generation techniques to learn what role such social networking applications can play in their subscription marketing efforts. They’ve even begun developing co-branded apps with partner companies that want to offer family-related content and activities.

Here are eight tips from Allen on how to build a successful Facebook application and monitor its revenue- and lead generation capabilities:

-> Tip #1. Analyze marketing goals for application

Allen and his team rely on well-tested methods for subscription lead generation, such as affiliate and email marketing and cross-promotion with relevant partners, such as genealogy software vendors. So, when they considered creating a Facebook application, they didn’t necessarily expect it to immediately supplant those techniques.

Instead, they analyzed Facebook as a new channel to reach out to current and potential future subscribers. They saw several benefits to joining the platform:

- Free content distribution site
Offering free content to Web users interested in family history is a big piece of Allen’s subscription marketing strategy. It helps them to make connections between living and deceased relatives.

- Improving demographics
Facebook has been attracting a larger number of older users since it opened its network beyond the original college-age audience. Allen’s team has seen a huge growth in Facebook, for instance, among Canadians over 50 — the typical age of a World Vital Records subscriber.

- New channel for family research tools
Facebook’s members present a new, younger audience for online genealogy tools. The social network creates an opportunity to distribute applications that introduce them to family research.

“We believe there’s a genealogist in every family — either someone who’s doing it already, or a young family member who will become one later.”

-> Tip #2. Make app easy to use

Allen’s team spent several months trying to build an application that would mimic the functionality of their own social-networking site. But the task of translating their code for the Facebook platform convinced them they were trying to cram too many features into the environment.

Instead, they started over and built a new application from scratch using Facebook’s Markup Language. It now performs a simple function: Allows users to find and link to family members on Facebook so they can build a family tree. “Facebook users want a simple application that does one thing.”

-> Tip #3. Reach out to experts to develop app

After trying to figure out the Facebook platform on their own, the team sought out guidance from two types of experts:

- Facebook personnel and expert applications developers
Allen sent his development and product marketing team to six events with Facebook personnel and developers like RockYou, creator of a popular photo-sharing application. His team compiled advice and techniques used by these experts to develop, test and optimize their own application strategy.

- Stanford University class
The Stanford class had built 100 different Facebook applications. Team members sat in on lectures in which class members discussed techniques they learned through the process.

-> Tip #4. Build viral potential into your app

To generate millions of downloads, you need an application with a strong viral marketing appeal. Allen and his team designed the We’re Related application with features that encourage users to share their family content, invite other members to join their family networks and download the application themselves.

Viral touch points:
o Invitations to join family group
o Sharing privileges to let other members view your family tree
o Requests that family members view your tree
o Family discussion and news feed
o Add the We’re Related application icon in member profiles

-> Tip #5. Promote app with ad campaign

To kick start viral growth, Allen and his team seeded the application among a handful of Facebook users through a paid advertising campaign. For 15 days, the team spent roughly $1,000 a day on one of Facebook’s advertising networks, attracting 75,000 early users, who then began sharing the tool with friends and relatives. Within 29 days of launch, they had 1 million users.

“We got that first group of people to adopt the application, then it went viral. We haven’t spent any money for a long time.”

-> Tip #6. Test lead gen tactics for Facebook app

Creating a new lead-generation channel wasn’t the team’s primary goal for We’re Related. Their focus was building a successful app.

At first, they didn’t create widespread connections between Facebook and their genealogy research database. Instead, they used a handful of limited links, such as:

- Branding the application with the FamilyLink logo and linking it to that social networking site’s homepage.

- Adding a World Vital Records search box to the top of the application, so users could research their family history. That tool resulted in 1,000 people a day trying the World Vital Records platform.

-> Tip #7. Monetize app with ad revenue

Facebook lets application developers keep all advertising or transaction revenue generated from their pages within the network. Allen and his team have been testing several of the Facebook advertising networks.

Although he won’t disclose specific metrics, he says his “effective CPM rate” is several times higher than on other online advertising channels he has used. “We’ve been very, very pleasantly surprised at the ad revenue.”

-> Tip #8. Build apps for other sites

Allen’s team is looking beyond Facebook. They believe all social-networking sites will grow, so they are working on We’re Related applications for other platforms, such as Google’s Orkut and MySpace.

“We don’t view ourselves as just a genealogy company. We view our role as a means to connect families using technology, and social networking is a big part of our future.”

As most people who read this newsletter will know, Jill Whalen is a pioneer in search engine optimization. Nicknamed the First Lady of Search, Jill founded the site HighRankings.com in 1995. Today High Rankings has grown to be one of the pre-eminent SEO companies in the US. Jill’s company is dedicated to educating its clients and sharing its knowledge with the industry at large through the High Rankings Advisor newsletter, the High Rankings Forum and her in-house seminars.

In her presentation for Webstock 2008, Jill gave the audience a 45 minute tutorial in SEO Basics. First up, Jill discussed what SEO isn’t. Some of the most common SEO myths she exposed included:

PPC Myths:
PPC ads will help organic rankings
PPC ads will hurt organic rankings
Tag Myths:
you must have a keyword-rich domain
you must have keyword-rich page URLs
heading tags are necessary (H1, H2 etc.)
you need to use keywords in meta keyword tags, in particular you need to use keywords that are included in your page content.

Jill says that it’s actually better to use the keyword tag to include misspellings and other keyword varieties that you don’t have in your pages.
using keywords in comment tags will hurt your rankings.
Content Myths:
page copy must be a certain # of words. Jill actually made up the 250 word limit a few years ago and it’s stuck, but there is really no set limit to please search engines.
that you need to bold/italicize your target keywords.
that you must use a specific keyword density. Jill says that keyword density tools are ridiculous.
that you must optimize a page for a single keyword or phrase per page. Instead, try to optimize each page for 3-5 phrases that are related, so that your copy reads better than repeating one phrase over and over.
that you need to optimize for the long-tail searches. You don’t generally need to optimize for these – engines will find them on their own.
duplicate content will get your site penalized. There is not a penalty as such, but engines will filter out duplicates in lieu of the original copy (or what they think is the original).

Design Myths:

your HTML code must validate to W3C. Not even Google.com validates!
your navigation must be text links not images. Surprisingly, graphical navigation is fine as long as you use ALT tags.
you can’t use Flash. It’s fine to use Flash, as long as it is one element of your page, not a complete Flash site. Use a text-based site too if using a Flash site.
certain design techniques are black hat. Javascript code is legitimate, not just used by black hats.
Link Building Myths:
that Google’s link: command is accurate. It’s not a useful tool. Use Google Webmaster Tools or the Yahoo link command instead.
that reciprocal links won’t count. From the right site, reciprocal links are fine, even very helpful.
that pages are ranked in PageRank order in the search results. They’re not. Google Toolbar PageRank is not accurate anyway so ignore it.
you must be in DMOZ or Yahoo Directory to get good Google rankings. In Jill’s opinion, the Yahoo Directory is not worth the money these days.

Design Myths:

your HTML code must validate to W3C. Not even Google.com validates!
your navigation must be text links not images. Surprisingly, graphical navigation is fine as long as you use ALT tags.
you can’t use Flash. It’s fine to use Flash, as long as it is one element of your page, not a complete Flash site. Use a text-based site too if using a Flash site.
certain design techniques are black hat. Javascript code is legitimate, not just used by black hats.
Link Building Myths:
that Google’s link: command is accurate. It’s not a useful tool. Use Google Webmaster Tools or the Yahoo link command instead.
that reciprocal links won’t count. From the right site, reciprocal links are fine, even very helpful.
that pages are ranked in PageRank order in the search results. They’re not. Google Toolbar PageRank is not accurate anyway so ignore it.
you must be in DMOZ or Yahoo Directory to get good Google rankings. In Jill’s opinion, the Yahoo Directory is not worth the money these days.
SEO Company Myths:

that a #1 ranking will always lead to more traffic or sales. The good rankings need to be for keywords and phrases that people are actually searching for.
that the company can place pages in certain positions. Not possible, unless they’re using Pay Per Click or sponsored spots.
that your rankings will tank if you stop paying the company. Rubbish!
that they have a “proprietary method” of SEO. They’re lying!
that they have a “special relationship” with Google. Again, they’re lying. Google has no relationships with organic SEO companies that Jill is aware of.
that they can increase your rankings without doing any on-page work. Run away!
Next, Jill defined what SEO is. Her definition of SEO is “making your site the best it can be for your site visitors AND the search engines”. She made the point that search engines need to:

- Find
- Crawl
- Index
- Determine relevancy
- show results
So you should keep these top of mind when designing and SEOing your site.

Jill also made the point that search engines don’t know you. So you should disclose what you sell and who you are in plain language that naturally incorporates the keyword phrases. Dumb down your pages for users. What search engines want is good content. If you’re not getting good traffic from your pages, they’re broken, she says. In a nutshell, make sure your pages speak to your target audience and solve their problems.

Jill then discussed how to choose keywords to target on your site. She recommended brainstorming with friends, family and business colleagues and creating a seed list of keywords. Then take that list and run it through keyword research tools such as WordTracker or Keyword Discovery and even Google AdWords to determine the best keywords and phrases to target.

Jill says there are three types of keyword phrases:

1) General and highly competitive terms – not good choices.
2) Long tail – uncompetitive terms – generally no need to SEO for.
3) Relevant and specific terms, which are the best to choose because they highly searched, yet are targeted enough to bring qualified traffic.
Next, Jill explained where to put your keywords. She recommended putting them in:

- anchor text
- clickable image alt attributes (alt tags)
- headlines
- body text copy
- title tags (Don’t make your titles less than 10 words, she says.)
- meta description tags

One of the main advantages of advanced internet technologies is the possibility of hour targeting for ads served to web sites.
Exactly how such targeting is done, that is a tech issue far beyond our e-Marketing topic. What is important to us, e-Marketers, is to be aware of this facility web servers have and use it towards making online campaigns more efficient.

Hour targeting is especially useful when:
- we already know the online buying habits of our target;
- we want to create an association between our products and a certain time of the day when interest might be higher;
- we try to avoid a certain category of customers that are known to be more active at a certain hour interval;
- we know from previous researches that sites where we’re advertising have different categories of visitors, with different interests and behaviour, active at certain hours.

Let us try imagining some examples of justified hour targeting:

- Premium IT products (such as laptops) could probably use a business hours targeting, on the premises that active, working professionals have more buying power. Similarly, off-hours and weekend targeting could be used when promoting basic desktop systems with a lower price to a more younger audience with less buying power and/or buying decision.

- FMCG products might benefit from targeting ads within hour intervals when these products are more likely to be utilized. We would probably want to place ads for coffee on news-delivering web sites during the morning hours; and advertising creams and gels for muscular pains later in the afternoon or evening, when such pains are more likely to occur.

- It is widely known that surfers using a dial-up connexion get online in the evening and at night. Therefore, if we are to promote products or services destined to dial-up users (modems, access cards, offers to switch to a superior connexion) it only makes more business sense to target late hours.

Interesting enough, such hour targeting is not always successful. A media planner might be blinded by the revelation of a cool method to raise efficiency of online campaigns like an adserver, only to realise at a later time that it can be more of a bother. For example, a banner for a banking product placed on a business portal would not need hour targeting, as professionals visiting such portals usually have permanent internet connection whether it is at office, at home, or is using a mobile solution. A regular reader of Financial Times online might opt to access the site in the evening, from the comfort of his home, long after the regular “business hours”, and would be a missed target if we employ hour targeting.

To conclude, hour targeting for online campaigns makes a very powerful and efficient tool, but needs to be performed after carefully assessing surfing and buying behaviours of the visitors on web sites where we advertise.

One of the best ways to drive traffic and attract customers to your Web site is to improve your Google page rank. While a search engine optimization strategy won’t ensure top billing for your site, it will increase the likelihood of higher exposure.
Google uses automated programs known as “spiders” or “webcrawlers” that scan the Web regularly and rank Web sites according to a number of factors. Although much of the process is veiled in secrecy, here are some of the things that factor into your site’s page rank.

Optimizing your site according to these guidelines should help your page ranks. Google claims, however, that its uses more than 100 factors to determine page ranking. Its Web site has a lot of important tips that will give you insight into their process. It also includes some essential advice on tactics to avoid popular SEO scams.
In your eagerness to improve your Google page ranking, it’s easy to lose sight of your customer. Don’t sacrifice the user experience by focusing on luring spiders. Remember, the goal is to draw users to your site and keep them coming back.

You have got your business blog set up and you have started posting pithy, useful information that your niche market would benefit from and enjoy. Days go by, you keep publishing, but no one comments and your traffic stats are barely registering. What do you do?
Like any Web site you own, you must do some blog promotion to start driving traffic to your site. Here are 16 steps, in no particular order of importance, that you can start doing now to get traffic moving to your blog.
1. Set up a Bloglet subscription on your blog and invite everyone in your network to subscribe: family, friends, colleagues, clients, associates, and so on.
2. Set up a feed on MyYahoo.com so your site gets regularly spidered by the Yahoo search engine.
3. Read and comment on other blogs that are in your target niche. Do not write things like “nice blog” or “great post.” Write intelligent, useful comments with a link to your blog.
4. Use Ping-0-Matic to ping blog directories. Do this every time you publish.
5. Submit your blog to traditional search engines.
6. Submit your blog to blog directories. The most comprehensive list of directories is on MasterNewMedia.org.
Tip: Create a form to track your submissions; this can take several hours when you first start so schedule an hour a day for submitting or hire a virtual assistant to do it for you.
7. Add a link to your blog in your email signature file.
8. Put a link to your blog on every page of your Web site.
9. If you publish a newsletter, make sure you have a link to your blog in every issue.
10. Include a link to your blog as a standard part of all outgoing correspondence such as autoresponder sequences, sales letters, reports, white papers, and so on.
11. Print your blog URL on your business cards, brochures, and flyers.
12. Make sure you have an RSS feed URL that people can subscribe to. The acronym RSS means Rich Site Summary — although some define it as Really Simple Syndication. It is a document type that lists updates of Web sites or blogs available for syndication. These RSS documents (also known as “feeds”) may be read using aggregators or news readers. RSS feeds may show only headlines or both headlines and summaries. To learn how news aggregators/RSS readers work.
13. Post often to keep encouraging your subscribers to come back and refer you to others in their networks. Also, include links to other blogs, articles, and Web sites in your posts.
14. Use TrackBack links when you quote or refer to other blog posts. TrackBack links send a message from your server to the other blog’s server letting it know you have posted a comment referring to its blog. The beauty is that a link to your blog is now included on their site.
15. Write articles to post around the Web in article directories. Include a link to your blog in the author information box.
16. Make a commitment to blog everyday. Ten minutes a day can help increase your traffic because new content attracts search engine spiders. Put it on your calendar as a task every day at the same time.

Domain names may have some inherent demand. For example, fish.com recently sold for an alleged $1 million. But few names are that good. I’ve purchased domains for between $250 and $1000. But average domain names are selling for $200 or less — if the seller can get a buyer. The price is based solely on demand.

Of course, the least expensive domain is one which is unregistered, available through a registrar. AIHOST is my hands down favorite registrar for low price and good service. I moved all my domains there last year.

But if you can’t find an unregistered domain, check out AfterNic.com, the Internet center for domain name trading. There you can get an appraisal of your domain name, search for available domain names in your industry, see lists of expiring domains with their Google PageRank and Alexa Rank, and talk to other domain traders in an online forum.

If you were buying a domain name, I would recommend finding half a dozen domain names that might work for your company — that way you’re not feeling desperate. Contact the owners of these “parked” domain names (that is, a “future website will be here” page rather than a real website). Mention that you’ve got half a dozen domain names in mind that you’re interested in buying, if the price is right. Don’t sound breathless. Get a grip. Then ask their price or make an offer. You may be pleasantly surprised. They may be just as ready to sell as you are to buy.