Latest Publications

Organizational Strategies – Are You Losing Money Without Them?

Matt’s new link building software Seolinkvine is better than MyArticleNetwork? Find out more now.

Many people consider internet marketing as the easiest business model for fast profits and personal freedom. Many people sell internet marketing ventures as “make money in your spare time” endeavors. The harsh truth of the matter is internet marketing is a business model, like any other, and like any other you’ll need to work at it and put time into it before it becomes profitable. One of the first things that you need to do when you set up your IM venture is organize your business structure. More organization means more efficiency, and that means more focus and more money. Here are a few ways that you can organize your IM business.

First, decide on a dedicated area for your online business. It’s not absolutely necessary to have an entire roon, although that could be a nice thing. There are good reasons for the special place for this. This is a great time-saver for you. Without a work space, your business will easily get scattered all over the place. Next, depending on your situation you may be able to claim a tax deduction for your home office space. For US home businesses, if your office is a certain minimum size, you’re able to write off a percentage of your mortgage, or rent.

Is Seolinkvine by Matt’s better than Viral Submitter Pro? Find our now.

You need a desk, and there is no way around this.

Of course, it IS possible to get by with only your smarts and a laptop – but you really do need a desk. A desk will allow you a central location for all the things you need to do business. Doing your IM business from your own desk will give you more of a feeling that this “IM thing” you’re doing is actually a real business. Your work desk just needs to let you do your job – flat surface, decent shape – good to go.

When you schedule an appointment, be sure to write and record it on a personal calendar, or in an appointment book if you keep one. Use resources such as email reminders for any important dates that won’t occur for some time off. Avoid any delays with recording appointments because if you get in the habit of doing that one day you’ll miss an important appointment and that won’t be good. It’s certain that you would not want to miss an important conference call with some Vice President, right? So you can easily avoid problems by just taking a moment to write down your appointments. Organizing your business helps you earn more money. You’ll save time by preventing any redundant tasks, and you’ll just be more efficient. You’ll be able to take care of your business better, if you organize yourself and it and track it.

What are Some of the Benefits of Internet Marketing?

The advent of the internet has changed the way we do many things in many positive ways. Everything has been transformed, from the way we communicate to the way we research and buy new products. Shopping has been made easier than ever before. Rather than drive to the local bookstore, you have the option of browsing for new books to buy on your computer from the comfort of home. Entrepreneurs and smart marketers understand the advantages of the internet and are putting this awareness towards growing their businesses online. The internet can allow them to create marketing campaigns for their various products or services that don’t cost huge amounts of money on advertising. If you’ve been building a brick and mortar business offline, then you could benefit from moving your business online. Initially it does take time for any business to carve out its own place online, but the effort invested will reap rewards in the form of extra sales and increased revenue. Internet marketing still presents so many new frontiers to conquer that the only limit placed on you and how far you want to take your business success is your own imagination. This article will look at some of the reasons internet marketing has so many benefits over the traditional marketing models.

The biggest advantage of marketing online is that you have access to customers round the clock, 24/7. Your website is your online employee and it will work for you no matter what else you’re doing or even if you’re sleeping. You really can put your business on auto-pilot. Not just your site but every other thing you set up to help you with your marketing works on its own, this includes the articles that you write (which will keep sending you the traffic), your social media properties, your ezine/newsletter, etc. You have the potential to have several automated salesmen working for your business around the clock. Those little individual steps you take towards building your online business will start to show results on their own. There’s a wise old saying that says “the older your business gets, the less work it takes” is valid for even modern internet businesses. When your website gets older, it becomes into a stronger business that you will get you the exposure and the money automatically. Internet marketing has a far greater chance of success if you spend the time initially to set it up the right way so you can reap the rewards over the longer term.

In conclusion, you have the advantage of being able to build a lifestyle, an income and a business that could create a whole new level of security for you.

A new course is causing quite a buzz in the Internet Marketing community and you can find more information about it at this Fast Track Cash Bonus page.

The Top Ten Critical Issues Facing any Web Design

Whether you have a Calgary Web site or are looking to establish a web presence in Calgary or anywhere else around the globe, you will need to understand these critical 10 web design usability issues:

1. Good Impressions Last
Studies have shown that the human eye generally reads a webpage in an “F” pattern, from top left to right. Therefore, the hottest screen area on your corporate web site is the top left area. Post your critical info there, especially your corporate logo. The only exception to this may be to center the logo in the top area if the logo is symmetrical. Overall, your website needs to create a great first impression and establish confidence and trust in your visitor. Your Web design should not outshine or overwhelm your key message or web content or branding on any page, including the home page.

2. Good Navigation is Key
It is ideal to have consistent and universal navigation on your business Web site. This means having a main menu that can access all pages at any time and this menu is “above the fold” – see notes below for that.. This makes it easy for visitors to find the information that they need quickly and smoothly and also maintains confidence in their experience with your company. Having supporting navigation such as breadcrumbs or contextual “previous” and “next” buttons or links to related items will reinforce the web site’s overall usability. Consistency is critical, and remember that navigation, such as text links and a site map, is also used by search engine robots when indexing your web site pages for their search results.

3. Contact Information
Make it easy for web users to contact you by displaying your Cochrane office address or phone number clearly on all pages of your web site, or at least on your key pages. You can also have a contact us page that has details, such as different branches, key contacts or a contact us form. Today,it is also not uncommon to see live chat options so a visitor can connect with your staff as they surf!

4.   Get Visitors to Act on Something
Even if it is just to get a visitor to fill out a web form, a website needs a “Call to Action” – this is an action that is defined by a combination of site navigation, content generation and site functionality, including e-commerce processing. What do you want visitors to do on your site? Where do you want them to go? What is the next logical step once they have found your web site? Is it to call you? Source a product online or learn something? Or perhaps share information with a co-worker in the form of “send to a friend email”or pre-recorded video.

5. Keep it Above the Fold
Keep the critical information in the top area of your Calgary web site, or wherever you are, above the fold where someone has to scroll down to keep reading. This is why logos, menus and the main calls to action appear in the top part of the site design – they need to be top of mind and easy to see, without the viewer having to scroll down the page to find the web content they want. Of course, when indepth information is needed pages can be long, however, consider using a PDF document for more archived items and content, as it keeps the actual Web page shorter and more manageable, plus you can brand your PDFs as a source of viral marketing, with Web links back to your home page on your website. Google and other search engines also index PDFs similar to Web pages, so your PDFs will also turn up in the search engine results.

6. Web Content that Invites and Offers a Return
A relationship is an ongoing commitment from both sides, it is not a one way street. While the visitor is looking for a product or information, your Calgary business is looking for that potential lead and the sale they bring– and as it has been said, it is so much easier to make a sale to a person who has already bought from you before. So, when I say “offers a return” I mean it’s a return for both sides, the returning customer finds continual value in your offers and you retain them as a loyal customer or client. So keep content timely, updated and consider adding a blog or Content Management System to your business Web site.

7. Clear Content Layout
Organize your web content so the visitor can easily flow from one web page to the next. Make sure that information is prioritized in a hierarchy of need (both for them and you) and provide the information or product to them as efficiently as possible.  Consider the home page as the portal to the Web site’s key areas and lead the visitor to what you can offer them (e.g. latest deals, latest information package, latest blog entry, etc.) and then give it to them. Ensure that each page follows a consistent layout for navigation and branding and that the content area is organized in a clean manner so the design of the site does not interfere with content delivery.

8.  Looks Do Matter
A web presence’s impression is made not only by what is included in the web site, but what is left out. Bypass banner ads, third party advertising, non-interactive flash media and overwhelming colour schemes that blatantly fight for the visitor’s attention. Your viewers are generally looking for one thing on your site, so make it easy to find by keeping the overall web structure and design layout of the site simple, clean and direct.

9. Secure Your Site to Ensure Trust
With billions of Web pages online these days, visitors need to know, more than ever, that they can trust their valuable time and money to your site’s offerings. Get security seals and trusted third party endorsements, a 256-bit SSL Certificate tells your visitor that you have planned to secure your Calgary web site properly. However, there are subtle, yet effective, ways to show your visitor that they can trust your site: include properly written privacy policy, terms of use, shipping and returns policy, Unique, secure login areas, state clearly you will never sell or share their information with a third party unless they agree and only email them to the degree to which they have agreed.  A basic way to create trust from the first impression is to have your site professionally developed as this shows you have invested your own time and money in something you feel is worthwhile to others.

10. Polish to a Shine
Errors happen, it is technology after all, and while we all want to believe that technology can deliver 100%, 24/7 – is that reality? The reality is knowing that accidents happen, glitches happen and once in a while upgrades need to be made. The reality of the Web is that technology is expanding and those tools made to make your life easier still take time to learn and use. As technology progresses we must be prepared to update, upgrade and expand along with it. By working out all of the errors such as broken links (this requires ongoing maintenance), spelling errors, broken images, browser inconsistencies, etc. you can present a well-polished gem to your website visitor, which will inherently carry its worth in its visual appeal, optimum functionality and delivery of relevant, needed content.

Please consider the above 10 key points to improve your current web site or if you are looking to start your own Cochrane or Calgary Web Design site.

For more information about Calgary Web Design and Calgary Graphic Design Services, please visit www.blinddrop.com.

You Need a Blog To Stay Competitive As an Internet Marketer

If you want to become a super affiliate, check out this course called Hard Cash Hijack.

Even if you are brand new to internet marketing you know that many of your competitors have started blogs. Blogging, along with social media, is the new way of communicating online. You probably already have your list of favorite blogs. Why haven’t you started your own blog yet? They are much quicker to get started with than with traditional websites. Plus they literally will only cost you a few dollars to get up and running. There is no simpler way to set up a site than by using a blog. If there was a such thing as a perfect method then blogging is it. Blogging can be used for many reasons and one of them is making money. Why should your internet business have a blog? Ready to kick-start your blogging empire?.

Blogging brings in more visitors than straight forward article marketing and other forms of promotion. The frequently updated content-based pages of blogs is the primary reason you get visitors coming to blogs. The basis behind this is to try and build a following of people who come back to your blog regularly to read the content updates you post. By constrast, if you use article marketing to link to a sales page, you might attract a few visitors that arrive once and don’t come back. A blog, on the other hand, can bring in dozens of repeat visitors who, hopefully, end up trusting you so much that they will buy whatever you are selling them.

Blogging can provide an excellent source of different income streams. As your blog becomes more popular, you could begin to sell advertising space in your sidebars. You’ve probably heard of Google Adsense. That’s one of the many advertising services available to bloggers. There are others out there that want to take advantage of bloggers audiences. Text Link Ads is one such company. Another such company is AdBrite. You might even consider selling directly to individual advertisers as well. If you sold six ad spaces along your sidebar at $50 a month, that’s an extra $300 each month in extra blogging income.

Following the methods laid out in Hard Cash Hijack you can become super affiliate soon..

Every post you make on your blog is another opportunity to work on your keywords, which helps your blog to rank better in search engines. With a higher ranking, more people are able to find your blog, which should mean more sales of your products. Many internet marketers compete to get their sites and blogs onto the first page of search results, which can give them a massive boost to business. Rankings on search engines are dependent on several things, such as keywords, links pointing to and leading out of your blog and internal deep-linking, which are all things that can be done easily with a blog. If your blog made it to the top of the search engine rankings, you could see a sharp increase in the number of visitors arriving at your blog, who could become future customers.

There are so many reasons to blog as an internet marketer. Blogging can be a great way to build up extra income that can be used to fund other products and projects. You can use your blog’s comments to learn what your customers really think and what they really want to buy. You can get visitors to subscribe to your site, which could earn you more money. The options are limitless.

What ever happened to Ask Jeeves, Netscape or AOL?

Many internet companies have come and gone in the last decade since the internet has been in existence. Here are just a few.

Ask Jeeves:

What it was: Dominant search engine for 10 years at the AskJeeves.com web site.

What happened?: The Ask Jeeves web site) has been (around for over 10 years now, but many Internet novices found the AskJeeves.com domain name name easy to misspell. At one point, Jeeves was proclaimed to be the most often misspelled search engine on the Internet (Wordtracker reports that the misspelling “Geeves” still gets thousands of queries each day). In 2001 the company shortened its name and did away with its butler mascot to simply become “Ask.com.” When you just ask Jeeves a question these days you really aren’t asking “Jeeves” anything. What you ARE doing is using a powerful search engine that built its name and reputation on delivering answers to questions asked in natural, everyday language. The other main difference–and one Ask hopes will make it stand out from the crowd–is its stance on ads. The message is clear: Fewer ads displayed above search results reinforces the company’s commitment as a good search engine.

AOL:

What it was/is: AOL has a long history on the internet, being one of the first companies to really get people online. Throughout its lifespan, it has been involved with a number of high profile acquisitions, perhaps the largest of which was the 1999 acquisition of the Netscape Communications Corporation. Netscape was known to many as the leader in web browsing, and had developed a number of complementary solutions that allowed for a rich suite of internet tools. During its peak years, AOL had 34 million members and was worth $200 billion.
What happened?: In February 2008, Jeff Bewkes, the CEO of Time Warner – announced that the company’s intention to split AOL’s Internet access and advertising businesses in two. There is a possibility of selling the Internet access division at a later date – which means that the once-great AOL broadband services are practically helpless. The lesson learned is that companies which deal with ever-developing technologies need to stay abreast of not only the technologies, but the latest developments in terms of the mood of the customers. Otherwise, when you combine the changes in technology with other, more subjective, factors, your once-great product will suffer under the duress.

Netscape:

What it was: Netscape was the original internet browser (like your Internet Explorer or Firefox of today). Netscape promoted that “the web is for everyone” and stated one of its goals as to “level the playing field” among operating systems by providing a consistent internet viewing experience across them. The Netscape (web~internet} browser interface was identical on any operating system.

What happened: Netscape’s web browser was once dominant in terms of usage share but lost most of that share to Internet Explorer. By the end of 2006, the usage share of Netscape browsers had fallen, from over 90% in the mid 1990s, to less than 1%. The Netscape brand is still extensively used by AOL. Some services currently offered under the Netscape brand, other than the web browser, include a discount Internet service provider and a popular social news website. In December 2007, AOL announced it would no longer be updating the Netscape browser.

Get Adobe Flash playerPlugin by wpburn.com wordpress themes