Blogs Bring In More Traffic

The Blog! They're popping up everywhere. Your favorite website has one. Your favorite television show has one. Even your teenager has one. Blogs. What are they? Why are they everywhere you look? Most simply put, blogs are like journals-only, instead of being made of the paper and cardboard kept secret by an even thinner piece of cardboard and a lock your baby brother frequently opened with a paperclip, these journals are online. Why does it seem like everyone has one? Well, because almost everyone does. And there's good reason. Blogs can be used as journals, both private and public; they can be used as ways for fans to discuss the latest episode of their favorite sitcom; or, they can be used by major companies, especially those that are Internet-based, because unlike the traditional forms of advertising, blogs bring in more traffic. For business purposes, there are many ways companies use blogs. For example, a company may have several blogs on its website, each one dedicated to something different: customer concerns, product updates, etc. In addition to being helpful to customers and other website visitors, these blogs bring in more traffic to the website, as well. Depending on the website, more traffic usually means more money. And more money means-that's right-you're on your way to that summer home in Hawaii So, how exactly do blogs bring in more traffic? Well, Adsense ads with Google are a good starting point. The search engine visits your page more each time your update, ultimately moving your blog higher and higher on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) and leading to more revenue from the ads being represented in your blog. Some pointers? First, the blogger will need to decide what he or she is going to write about. Choose a popular topic, one that people are interested in. "Underwater Basket Weaving" probably wouldn't be a very wise choice as not many people seem to be interested in it. Unless, of course, you're business is underwater basket weaving, in which case you should by all means write about it. Next, focus on some keywords-these are the words that search engines are going to pick up on. Don't dowse your blog in these words, but use them whenever you effectively can. Lastly, make sure you write content that will attract, and keep, a strong readership. You want your readers to keep coming back, right? Go ahead, join the millions of people and businesses alike. Get yourself a blog. Or corner your boss and suggest writing one for your company. Explain how blogs bring in more traffic, more traffic means more money, and more money means-that's right again!-you're on your way to Hawaii

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Blogging: one of the best Internet marketing methods that won't cost you a cent.

Blogging: the act of writing in one's weblog. To blog something is to write about something in one's weblog. This usually involves linking to something the author finds interesting on the internet. A weblog is a public web site where users post informal journals of their thoughts, comments, and philosophies. So basically, a blog is an online journal. A blog could be set up to no cost at all, and can be used for just for the fun of it or for business reasons. Blogging itself isn't new at all, it's populary is. Thousants of teenagers all around the world see blogging as an outlet for their emotions, their opinions and interests. Smart marketers however, have discovered that blogging is one of the best Internet marketing methods that won't cost you a cent. Blogging for your Internet business is one surefire way to boost the visibility of your products and services. Find some tips to boost your internet advertising with the help of a blog below: * Keep your customers informed about changes to your website. Important updates, like your new products and affiliate sites, could also be announced through your blog * Use your blog as an archive: keep track of your business objectives and plans through open writing. What could be better than searchable information that could be easily accessed by anyone browsing the web, right? * Write reviews, give your opinion or advice on on specific services or products that are related to your business. * Be sure to include links that will fetch back links and subsequently improve your ranking on search engines. Affiliate links in the form of advertisement banners could also be included in your blog to earn more extra income. * Add fresh and quality content to your weblog on a regular basis: search engines like fresh content. *Post quality content articles to your blog. Allow your visitors to reprint those articles on condition that the author by-lines remain unchanged, and the link url's are left intact. This way, links to your website will spread around the net. * Encourage your visitors to leave comments and feedback. It's the best way to learn and improve your products/services. * Exchange links with other bloggers. In fact, when it comes to blogging, the sky is the limit. Once you're comfortable using a weblog, it's up to you to get creative. Add sound, video, eBooks, pictures, advertisements, ... and give your website the boost it deserves!

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Good Ways to Advertise Your Affiliate Program

Affiliate marketing is a good way to make extra money online, but how do you actually do this? Well, simply put, all you have to do is put in your name and run advertisements. You get your commission check and that's that. Is that really how it works? Well, not exactly. See, many other people will be promoting the same exact program that you are. That means you need to stand out from the crowd to make a profit. First of all, the bottom line is that you need to host your own website. I cannot say it enough that without your own website, you will go nowhere with this. When you register a domain name, make sure that whatever you pick is easy to remember. The rule of thumb is that if you cannot remember the name, you cannot expert someone else to remember it. This means that the person searching will just type in the main website and never even see your site. Another tip you should think about is writing your own ads. You can check with the marketers if this is ok. The thing is that marketers are just going to send you the same ad over and over again. When people click on an ad they have seen a billion times, they tune it out and click on to the next thing. But if your ad is worded a little bit differently, you have a chance of someone stopping and checking it out. Also, it is good to have your own products to sell. If people come to your affiliate website and see that there is a different product not listed each time they visit, they are more likely to come back.

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Your Guide to Top Search Engine Rankings

Does it seem like no matter what you do your website just won't climb up in the search engine rankings? If so, your web site may not be optimized well enough for the search engines to increase your rankings. There are some very important factors that determine where web sites are ranked. These factors are referred to as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques and they can make all the difference in your sites rankings. Here are some of the most important factors that the search engines use in determining your rankings: 1. Web Site Content Content on your site is one of the most important factors for successful search engine optimization. Your web site should provide valuable information on specific subjects relevant to your web site. Furthermore, your content should be updated regularly. It's not enough to just put up a few content pages full of information on your site and then never add to it. This is a continuous process that will help your search engine rankings if done correctly. It's also important that you don't try to trick the search engines by flooding them with multiple versions of the same page, repeating the same content over and over. Doing that will not help your rankings and will eventually lead to your site getting banned from the search engines. 2. Link Popularity Inbound links are very important for achieving high search engine rankings. Most of the search engines today regard link popularity as one of the most significant determinants of your website's rankings. Here are some of the best ways to get inbound links: * Articles - Writing and submitting articles to website's and article directories is a very good way to get inbound links. * Content - Not only will adding quality content help in your rankings by itself, it will also help you with your link popularity. Other webmaster's will want to link to your site because it is valuable to them and their own visitors. * Directories - Submitting your site to online directories will help you gain inbound links. * Blogs - Start a blog that you update frequently with information related to your website's niche. Then, link to your site from the blog. You can also submit your blog to various blog directories to get even more inbound links. * Link Exchanges - Simply find other quality sites related to yours and ask them to link to you in exchange for a link back to them. This is not as effective as it used to be but it is still a pretty good way to get inbound links. When trying to increase your link popularity remember that the more inbound links you get the better, but quality is always better than quantity. Stay away from low quality sites, FFA's, and sites unrelated to yours. The next things that should be considered when doing SEO for your web site are the on-site and the off-site elements. Some of the on-site elements are the title tag, Meta tags, heading tags, ALT tags and highlighting of the text using the bold tag. The Link text is an important off-site element. On-Site Elements: 3. Title Tag and Meta Tags Meta tags help describe the page where they are placed. Though today the Meta tags are not nearly as important as they once were and are definitely not the only things the search engines look for when indexing your site, they are still somewhat important in deciding the relevancy of the page for a keyword search. < Search engines focus on three primary tags to help them determine the relevance of a website for a particular search phrase. The Title Tag, Meta Keywords and the Meta Description... Ideally the title tags should contain less than 64 characters with your most important keywords in them and should definitely be relevant to the content on the page. Do not stuff keywords in to the title tag! The Meta description tag is a summary of the page and its contents. This Meta tag should be 200 characters or less and should contain keywords and phrases you hope to be found for, but it should also read like an introductory lead-in for the page and be appealing to the reader. The description you provide for your page has to convince the visitor that they have found exactly what they were looking for. Probably the least important Meta tag to search engines is the keyword tag. However, it shouldn't be ignored. Keyword tags should be less than 1000 characters. This tag should include important keywords and phrases consistent with the body text, title, and content of the page. Be specific and accurate with the keywords and key phrases in this tag. Again, do not stuff keywords here... they should only be those that are actually on the page and do not repeat any word more than 3 times. 4. Heading Tags The heading tags are given more weight than the ordinary text. The higher the H tag the more weight it carries. You should make use of the heading tags to highlight the important keywords and headings of your page as well as the paragraph headers. 5. Bold Text Bold text is given a little more weight than ordinary text but not as much as heading tags. Make sure to enclose some of your keywords in bold tags when they appear on the page. 6. Alt Text The alt tag provides alternative text when images cannot be displayed... This might happen if the users have set the browsers only to download the text and not the graphics, or if the images are too heavy to download for the user's internet connection. Only include important keywords relevant to your site and the image and do not stuff keywords in them. Off-site elements: 7. Link Text This is a very important factor in search engine optimization to gain higher rankings. The link text can be on pages within your site or what other web sites use to link to you. Either way, it is important. If possible the target page's main search term should be included in the link text instead of just the URL. Do not use identical link text for every link, but do include the target page's main keywords in the link text. Links carry more weight when the text around them is relevant to the target page's keywords and phrases. Following the above SEO information will help tremendously in your search engine rankings. Remember that the search engines are advancing all the time. Don't try to trick them because they will eventually catch on and that could mean the end of your web site. Stick to the basic techniques above and you will increase your search engine rankings without fear of being banned or dropped.

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Ten Steps to Boost Your Affiliate Commissions Today

Interested in boosting your affiliate commissions? There isn't one "magical" secret to increase your affiliate commissions, but here are some simple steps you can take to make more money through affiliate programs right now. 1. Capture e-mail addresses with an "opt-in" list before sending your visitor to the merchant vendor web site. 2. Write an un-biased review article about the product or program you are promoting. Be sure that you mention some weaker points of the program and keep your article honest. This will lower the audiences defenses, as well as increase your articles click through ratio. 3. Promote products that offer residual or recurring income commissions, such as web hosting packages, auto responders, and membership sites. 4. Give away free Viral E-book PDF's loaded with your affiliate links throughout. 5. Create your own Internet marketing ebook, and sell it for $25-35 while giving your customers full resale rights. Fill the e-book with 5-10 of your own affiliate links. 6. Create an affiliate marketing blog and update your content and keywords often. Occasionally, place some affiliate links to quality merchant products, this helps affiliates succeed. 7. Create simple yet affective internet marketing formula that can be condensed into a 10-20 page free PDF. Load the e-book with your affiliate links, products needed for your specific forumla to prosper. 8. Use your opt-in list and start your own affiliate marketing newsletter with valuable information on the best multi-tier affiliate marketing programs. If you had a list of 1000+, and each person were your sub-affiliate to 4 or 5 of the top affiliate programs, not to mention many of them will also buy the products, your affiliate commissions would be through the roof. 9. Join some two-tier affiliate programs and create an affiliate programs review directory of the top ten affiliate programs on the web. Optimize your pages for the keywords "two-tier affiliate program", "multi-tier affiliate program", "free affiliate programs", etc. 10. When running a Yahoo Overture or Google Adwords ad, capture people's e-mail addresses with your opt-in list, instead of sending a prospect directly to a merchant from your site page. You can easily entice prospects to join your opt-in mailing list by offering a free PDF e-book. Of course, this will contain affiliate links of your own! Make it a viral PDF to increase your income from all of your affiliate marketing campaigns. Start using these 10 steps today and boost your affiliate marketing campaign now!

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Get Ranked With Your Blog!

If you are currently frustrated with getting your website indexed let alone ranked you may find this article extremely useful. What we are about to share with you, won't cost you a cent and it will get your site indexed if not ranked, a lot quicker than simply submitting your site to the major directories alone. People use Blogs for all sorts of reasons, to include private thoughts, reminders, and advertising or simply to write something for the sake of writing. Fortunately Google provides this service free of charge, complete with template designs, hosting and a domain name. Once you have read the article we'll redirect you to the right place to open your very own account. Moving on……….. Blogs have definitely grown in popularity, particularly in recent months. They have certainly become an effective method of successful marketing. If you are not familiar with the potential of a Blog, you are about to find out! To really maximize this method of marketing and SEO, there are several things you must implement for it to work. It will take you probably around 15 – 20 mins to set up, then it will be a matter of checking your messages on a daily basis, dealing with a influx of traffic, not to mention the possibility of increased revenues. One of the most difficult tasks to achieving SEO is asking a top ranking site to link to you! They know they are in a good position and probably receive hundreds of messages each day with webmasters asking the same question. You have to admit this would probably drive you insane after a while too. However there is a much easier way to achieve this! And that's with your Blog. You can also gain link popularity, your very own opt-in email list as well as indexing and ranking. Curious yet? We know you are dying to discover how you can get your website ranked using your Blog. Firstly if you do not have a Blog you will need to open an account with Blogger.com It's fast, free and easy. The on screen directions will lead you completely through the process. Even if you have a Blog with another company this article and the Blog itself, only applies to Blogger.com so we recommend you open an account as well. The Blog in question is called Make Money with Your Blog These are the titles of each post. Blog Purpose Use Your Blog To Index Your Pages Allow Others To Post In Your Blog And Why High Ranking Sites Linking To You, Using Your Blog Increase Your Revenue Using Your Blog Blog Content Maximize the power of your Blog Remember you can implement the above titles, completely cost free, so it's definitely worth a look. To keep in line with the Article submissions you will need to visit the Blog to read the titles. There would be far too many characters to include in this article. These titles are not available for resell, but you are able to post comments and please feel free to post your URL's, so if anything this could be a good chance for you to gain extra exposure at our expense! Blog Address: http://blogsequalsdollars.blogspot.com/ Website Address: http://www.24kinanhour.com/aswb.htm Thank you for reading our article, we hope you find this information of value. Be sure to visit us real soon, Article Search and Web Content; Your First Choice In Free Content.

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Super Easy Steps To Blogging Success!

What is a blogger? A blogger is a cross between an educator, an entertainer and an orator; each blogger 'owns these three hats' and 'wears' each of them while in different moods. One other commonality between bloggers is: each blogger is in search of an audience.Pack your bags! If you recognize yourself in the preceding paragraph you are ready to begin your journey into the blogosphere. There are only a few things you need to do to make your journey a success:Find a home for your blogFind a focus for your postsLearn "Bletiquette"PersevereFind a home for your blog! You need a host for your blog, some are free, some charge a small amount per month for their service, some are simple to use and some require more technical knowledge, some have more features than others; choose carefully, once you've established your blog and have a few regular readers you may not want to change your address (your URL).Start by surfing the Internet and the blogs to see what bloggers have to say about their hosting programs. Don't get in over your head by picking a blog host that requires a technical expertise that is beyond your current capabilities. There are many free hosts that are more than adequate to start you off and are customizable -- as you gain new technical skills you can edit your blog template to make your blog look like you want it to look and do almost anything you want it to do, all without changing your URL.If you are using free hosts start blogs at two or three host sites just to see which one you like best and which one gives you the most capabilities right 'out of the box.' When you find one you are happy with, be nice and go back and cancel your other blogs.Find a focus for your posts! Most every blog has a theme, a theme that sets the tone for most (not necessarily all) of the posts on that blog. Your blog can be a topical blog that focuses on a special interest of yours (politics, religion, health care, science, engineering, cooking etc.); a personal blog that focuses on what you are doing that day, where you have been, where you are going or any aspect of your life's journey; or a showcase blog that displays your writing, art, photography, or etc.. Some posts will not fall into your blogs main theme and that's OK -- your blog is a reflection of you, and we all have different moods . . . we all 'wear different hats;' don't decide not to post just because you feel like writing 'something different.'"Bletiquette!" The objective of most bloggers is to attract a regular readership; to do that you need to display some basic (really common sense) blog etiquette (bletiquette!):When commenting on a post, stick to the point, don't get personal or abusive.Never comment as "Anonymous;" if you are ashamed to use your actual blogger name, don't comment.Try to respond to all comments on your post, even if it is just to say "thanks for commenting" (but don't expect all bloggers to do this).Don't get personal by asking personal questions unless you have a long-standing relationship with the other blogger; bloggers enjoy the relative anonymity of a blog and a blogger name.If you are "flamed" (verbally attacked for something you wrote) don't get into a "flame war;" respond politely or not at all.Never take a block of text, a unique phrase, a picture, a graphic or anything else from another blog or from any web page and use it in your post as is, without clearly indicating where it came from.Persevere! Bloggers blog! That's what they do! If you post every day you will improve not only your technique but also your readership; don't give up.Bloggers are very much like novelists. Novelists write every day and finally reach the end of the novel. Then they submit the novel to publishers, file their rejection notices and resubmit to other publishers. Eventually, every novelist who perseveres gets published . . . eventually every blogger who perseveres gets a loyal readership and his or her own measure of success.

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Some ways to improve your king content

There are thousands of articles, books and forum posts which showed that content is king in search engine optimization (SEO). In this article, you can find some ways that can help you improve this king content for your web site. * Content for people first, not for search engines - Some webmasters make a common mistake that they optimize everything for search engines but forget about web visitors. The goal of our website is not only to get high search rankings, but also to sell our service. So you should give your website visitors what they are really looking for. Make sure your content flows naturally and you're not just trying to stuff more keywords in the interest of search engines. If users don't find your content convincing they won't buy from you. * Studying popular search terms - High search engine ranking is meaningless if your website only ranks high on terms nobody searches for. You need to ask your colleagues, vendors, competitors, clients, ... or use online tools (e.g.: wordtracker.com) to identify what keywords which potential customers would use to search your web site, then try to use them often, in titles, and throughout the body. * Building article directory - How can you optimize the content if your web site only offers a simple service? It means there are just several pages in your whole website. So, to increase the content in quality you should write some articles, reviews which are related to your service. A site with more web pages means there are more chances of different terms that will become findable in search engines. You may consider adding free articles to your article directory. On the Internet today, one can find a lot of websites which provide articles free for republishing. Of course you must accept the policy of these web sites and authors before using these articles. * Making a clear website organization - Build a site which is simple to navigate with a well linking structure. Every page should be accessible from at least one text link. It's better to be sparing with image links, Flash, JavaScript drop-down menus, or other codes that are not HTML based... because the search engine crawlers cannot recognize text contained in these kinds of display. In case using them is required, then make sure a text based menu or a sitemap is also included in the Web site. Last but not least, you should use meaningful words in your URLs, use as simple a web page layout and design as possible. In conclusion, it is undeniable that content is king in the kingdom of search engines. The quality of your content is the main factor which decides the success in Internet marketing. So improving your content is very necessary.

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Program MU versi 2 segera diluncurkan

Mitra Usaha KERaN Program Mitra Usaha KERaN sejauh ini telah berjalan dengan sangat baik, dengan total Mitra Usaha sudah mencapai lebih dari 500 Mitra. Untuk lebih meningkatkan kualitas dan kegunaan program ini, KERaN merancang sistem baru untuk Mitra Usaha dengan fitur dan fasilitas jauh lebih lengkap. Selain itu juga dirancang sistem kompensasi pemasaran yang sangat menarik, di mana anggota KERaN/RealPOINT yang menjadi mentor (pendamping) dari Mitra Usaha baru akan mendapatkan bonus pendampingan sebesar Rp500.000,- dalam bentuk point (sejumlah 100.000 Pts). Sistem ini dapat diakses oleh pewirausaha di Indonesia dengan membeli BSP (Business Starter Pack) seharga Rp1.000.000,- (sudah termasuk PPn) di DP terdekat. Untuk yang belum menjadi anggota KERaN/RealPOINT, dengan membeli paket ini otomatis akan terdaftar sebagai anggota KERaN/RealPOINT dan mendapatkan akun eWallet (Dompet KERaN) secara gratis. Dalam paket ini sudah disertakan 500 MPV yang dapat digunakan sebagai insentif penjualan pada anggota KERaN/RealPOINT yang membeli produk/jasa Mitra yang bersangkutan. Sistem Mitra Usaha versi terbaru ini merupakan peningkatan (upgrade) dari sistem Mitra Usaha sebelumnya. Menggunakan BSP, Mitra Usaha dapat menampilkan katalog produk dalam bentuk tabel, dengan satu halaman penuh web yang didedikasikan khusus untuk masing-masing produk (berisi deskripsi sepanjang max. 4000 huruf / setara 2 halaman A4) dan max. 2 gambar/foto plus 1 tautan/link ke YouTube Video per produk).Paket standar BSP sudah memuat 10 slot produk secara gratis (penambahan slot produk seharga Rp50.000,- per slot, sudah termasuk PPn). Mitra Usaha berhak menjual slot produk ini ke pihak ketiga yang ingin menitipkan produknya untuk ditampilkan di web mitra usaha bersangkutan dengan harga ritel sebesar Rp100.000,- (dengan kata lain, Mitra Usaha dapat memperoleh keuntungan “listing fee” produk tersebut di “toko virtual” miliknya). Hasil penjualan slot produk yang sudah dimiliki menjadi milik Mitra Usaha bersangkutan. Kondisi ini memungkinkan Mitra Usaha mendapatkan pengembalian 100% investasi yang dikeluarkan untuk membeli BSP dengan menjual ke-10 slot produk tersebut ke pihak ketiga. KERaN akan menyediakan invoicestandar penjualan slot produk ke pihak ketiga yang dapat diunduh dari website mitra.keran.org. Dengan peningkatan sistem ini, kini Mitra Usaha dapat menampilkan berita/artikel dari blog masing-masing (dapat menggunakan fasilitas blog gratis dari blogger.com, wordpress.com, dsb.) yang akan tampil terintegrasi dengan web Mitra bersangkutan dalam kolom Berita/Artikel. Mitra Usaha juga dapat memasukkan status Twitter miliknya secara otomatis (akan tampil di halaman utama dan halaman berita web Mitra tersebut) cukup dengan mengisikan Twitter username ybs. Cara ini sangatlah praktis untuk menampilkan berita terbaru dari usaha Mitra tersebut karena status Twitter dapat diperbaharui dengan mudah menggunakan SMS / aplikasi Twitter Mobile yang dapat diunduh secara gratis dari website Twitter. Mitra Usaha juga dapat menampilkan galeri foto dengan jumlah gambar max. 1000 gambar dengan mengunggah foto/gambar yang ingin ditampilkan ke layanan Google Picasa (gratis). Cukup dengan mengisikan album ID di Picasa, secara otomatis web mitra akan menampilkan galeri foto tersebut secara terpadu. Cara yang sama digunakan untuk menampilkan galeri video dari Youtube, yaitu dengan membuat channel tersendiri di Youtube yang dikaitkan dengan web Mitra Usaha bersangkutan, secara otomatis sistem akan membuat galeri video terpadu di website Mitra Usaha tersebut. Dengan pertimbangan untuk memacu pertumbuhan Mitra Usaha (yang juga merupakan infrastruktur strategis KERaN sebagai platform jejaring ekonomi), syarat sudah menjadi anggota koperasi untuk Mitra Usaha dicabut. Dengan demikian, Mitra Usaha baru cukup mengalokasikan anggaran sebesar Rp1.000.000,- untuk menjadi bagian dari jejaring Mitra Usaha KERaN (versus total Rp1,5 juta di program MU sebelumnya). Diharapkan setelah merasakan manfaat sebagai anggota Mitra Usaha KERaN dan mendapatkan pemahaman lebih jauh tentang koperasi dan manfaatnya, pewirausaha dengan kesadaran sendiri akan menjadi anggota keluarga koperasi KERaN. Satu hal penting dalam peningkatan sistem ini adalah dimungkinkannya akses penuh ke sistem bisnis KERaN lewat perangkat bergerak seperti ponsel (dengan syarat ponsel tersebut memiliki akses internet) tanpa menggunakan komputer sama sekali (computer-less access). Mengingat masih lebarnya celah teknologi (technology gap) di Indonesia, rancangan sistem baru ini merupakan solusi untuk masyarakat Indonesia untuk memanfaatkan teknologi informasi secara maksimal untuk usahanya masing-masing. Sistem ini juga dirancang untuk berinteraksi dengan pemakainya secara sederhana dan mudah digunakan. Pemakai baru dapat memperlajari penggunaan keseluruhan sistem dalam beberapa menit saja. Sistem ini akan ditingkatkan dalam waktu dekat untuk menjadi sistem jejaring ekonomi skala penuh terpadu pertama di dunia dengan fitur B2C (Business to Consumer) dan B2B (Business to Business) yang sangat lengkap. Catatan: DP yang mendaftarkan Mitra Usaha baru akan mendapat komisi layanan sebesar Rp10.000,- / aplikasi.

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Get in the loop: Affiliate marketing for home internet business

If you desire to work at home, but are sketchy as to whether your business skills are enough to succeed, try affiliate marketing for home Internet business. Affiliate marketing is essentially a Web site network. Let's say you own an interior decorating business. Your Web site is dedicated to promoting your company and reaching out to potential customers. While your service is basically traveling to locations and performing consultations for redecorating rooms and businesses, you know that those who are interested in redecorating their homes are also into household accessories such as candles, curtains, antique furniture, etc. In this case, affiliate marketing for home internet business would involve contacting companies who sell these items, getting their permission to post links to their sites on your Web site, and collecting a percentage of profit for each purchase that company receives because someone clicked the link from your site to theirs and bought an item. In turn, these companies may decide to post the link to your Web site on their site. Someone who is browsing for discount furniture may see the link to your interior decorating business and decide to contact you for a consultation. Once the contract is signed between you and the client, the Web site that sent business your way will then collect a tip. For affiliate marketing for home internet business, having a business yourself is not even really a requirement. If you are nuts about hair products, you can make a living selling hair products without having to take orders or stock products. How is this done? Create a Web site dedicated to hair tips and hair trends. Include columns and articles all about hair that will attract other hair gurus to your site. After your Web site is established, contact several online beauty product stores and set up affiliate marketing agreements. Those who hit your site and/or become a regular visitor will inevitably be interested in ordering these products advertised on your site. Once that advertisement link is hit by your site visitor, and a purchase is made, you will then receive commission. The key to having successful affiliate marketing for home Internet business is simply continuing to increase traffic to your site. The more hits on your site, the more chances you have of gaining profit from purchases made through links on your site. Promoting your Web site, writing articles that contain appropriate keywords and instituting a newsletter to subscribers would be promising ways to attract browsers to your Web site. The more hits you have on your Web site, the more successful affiliate marketing for home Internet business will be. If a company sees that your Web site is regularly visited by hundreds of people daily, they will be more likely to join forces with you in an affiliate agreement.

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The Importance Of Blog Design And Make It Your Own...

Blogs have increased popularity over this past months. Many people have started to create their personal blogs to express their thoughts and feelings. Internet companies have also started their blogs to inform consumers on the latest product news and reviews. Because of this, blogs are also being used as internet marketing media. Before, internet marketing is done by placing banners and links on popular websites, such as news and information sites. Links were also included on newsletters and marketing letters sent to the members of their mailing lists. Many people spend time reading blogs. People read their friend's blogs, their favorite author's blogs, blogs on topics that they are interested in, and blogs on product reviews. With the increasing popularity of blogging, it is even feared that people rely on blogs to get the latest news. While getting news reports from blogs isn't reliable, some people look for product reviews through blogs. In some cases, this is more dependable. While it is true that some media persons are being paid to write good reviews about a certain product, blog writers write about their actual experiences on products and services from a company. Since there are many people who read and start their own blogs, blogs are a good medium to market a product. With the increasing blog traffic means increase in product sales. Blog traffic can be increased by joining affiliate programs and sites, which will list your blog under a certain search category or name. You can also have your blog advertised in popular websites. This, however, will cost some money and is not advisable if you have just started blogging. A writer who has just launched his/her blog will want as much traffic as possible to increase advertisements on the site. Also, some advertisers pay every time their link is clicked or the page that has their link is viewed. When you have increased traffic on your blog, you should try to keep you visitors coming back and recommending your blog to friends and colleagues. This can be done by having informative or amusing content and good blog layout and design. You may develop your blog's content or you can also acquire the services of a web content writer to provide you with the blog articles. The blog's layout and design also plays a big role. While most of the companies offering free blog hosting offer pre-selected templates, there are also some that allows customization that if you utilize this feature correctly can increase your blog's traffic. Here are a few tips to make your blog stand out from the millions of blogs out there that have standard designs. * Customize the banner The banner usually has the most generic designs that are common to the blogs from a blogging company or service. You can personalize this banner by having a graphic with the dimensions of the banner. You can also edit the graphic so that it will also include the title of your blog. In this case, you can create your own graphic or you can purchase professional looking graphics online for less than $10. * Personalizing photos Of course, most of the photos that you will be posting will be your own. However, if you don't customize the photos before posting them, you may miss maximizing the enhancing benefits graphics can add to the page. Adding photo borders can help the photo stand out from the page. It can also add to the design of your blog. You can choose a standard border or you can also create your own border which can be associated with your blog's templates. * Add a favicon Don't you think sites with icons on the address bar before the website's URL are cool? Many people do. These favicons add a professional look to the URL. These easy to do using photo or graphic editing softwares. * Check out blog templates, layouts, backgrounds, textures and skins from sites There are sites that offer free blog templates, layouts, backgrounds, textures and skins. You can make use of these so your blog will not look generic like most of the blogs hosted by the service provider. * Include RSS feeds This is a cool way to inform people with newsreaders about your blog headlines. Tutorials on RSS feeds are available on the internet. * Audio makes your blog more personal Not only does audio personalizes the blog; it can also keep your visitors coming back. You can try having streaming radio stations, mp3 file or playlists loading with your blog. * Advertisements If you have signed-up with Google Ad-Sense, which I am sure you would like to do, make sure that the ads are conveniently placed that these will not hinder your readers' ease in accessing the information on your blog. Try using these tips and you can definitely increase and retain traffic on your blog.

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15 Tips To Drive Traffic To Your Blog

There are many factors that make blogs much better than normal WebPages including the speed at which blogs are indexed, ability to submit to blog directories & normal directories, pings and track backs. All these little things can help drive more traffic to blogs. Here are 15 popular techniques you can use: 1.) Create at least four keyword posts per day. Most of the top blogs such as Boing Boing, Daily Kos, and Instapundit (with literally tens of thousands of visitors per day) publish an average of 30 small 100-150 word posts per day according to "Secrets of the A-list Bloggers: Lots of Short Posts" by http://TNL.net 2.) Submit to My Yahoo! When you submit your own RSS to My Yahoo it is indexed by Yahoo. 3.) Submit to Google's Reader. When you submit your own blog RSS to Google's Reader the Google Blog Search will index your site. 4.) Add a relevant link directory to your blog and trade links like a demon possessed! Although it may take more time than simply submitting to a search engine one time, this method is perhaps the best way to drive traffic to your site. Use software such as Zeus to speed up the link trading process. 5.) Use ping sites like ping-o-matic. Ping your site every time you add a new post. 6.) Submit your blog to traditional search engines such as AltaVista, and MSN. 7.) Submit your blog to traditional directories such as DMOZ. Directories (particularly DMOZ) increase relevance with Google. DMOZ is very picky, but what do you have to lose by trying? 8.) Submit to as many RSS Directories and Search Engines as possible. This is a simple but repetitive process that can be done with software such as RSS SUBMIT. 9.) Comment on other blogs. Do not just leave short, lazy comments like "I agree." Leave well thought out replies that will force readers to wonder "who wrote this?" 10.) Use track backs. If there is a blog that you refer to or quote and it is highly relevant to your subject, leave a track back. It increases your link popularity and may even score a few interested readers from the linked site. 11.) Go offline. Use newspaper ads, public bulletin boards, business cards, even stickers to let as many people as possible know your blog exists. 12.) Ad a link to your blog in your e-mail signature block. 13.) Use Groups (Usenet). Find a relevant group on Google groups, Yahoo groups, MSN groups or any of the thousands of other FREE group services and find like minded people and talk with them. Make sure your use your blog URL like it is your name. 14.) Use Forums. Forums are one of the best places to go for advice. Go to forums and find problems to solve. Make sure you leave your blog name, but be tactful about it; some forums get annoyed with those who selfishly drop a few links to their own site and leave. 15.) Tag your website. Tagging is a new idea that has erupted across the web. Sites like http://Del.icio.us, Technorati and many others have a social feature that allows you to place your article under keywords or "tags" that everyone interested in that tag can see. Although these are some of the most popular ways to drive traffic to your blog, do not limit your self to tips and lists. Use your imagination and you will come up with thousands of ways to drive traffic to your blog!

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SEO: Simulating Organic Growth On A Busy Schedule

When you first launch a website, you naturally want all the content crammed into it that you can lay hands on. But if it's real traffic you're looking for, consider taking a more patient approach. Anyone involved in SEO can tell you that organic growth of relevant content is the most successful long term strategy for search engine placement. When people read that, however, their brains toss the part they don't understand or want to deal with: "organic." What they see is "successful long term strategy" and "search engine placement." And that's where the trouble starts, because it's the organic growth that does the work. What do people mean when they talk about organic growth? Organic growth means slow, steady, continual growth - the way plants and animals grow. When Google ranks your site they look for this pattern of growth to help determine whether your site is "for real." Think of an informational site you visit a lot, a forum perhaps, or a site like Wikipedia. Those sites did not spring into being overnight, chock full of content and with a hundred links pointing to them. They started as miniatures of themselves, and as people posted messages and articles they got bigger and bigger. How can this be harnessed to help promote a website? Timing of updates can be more important than size of updates. A lot of webmasters have a hard time updating their site regularly. They have day jobs, families, and other websites to run. This can lead to a tendency to update sites in large infrequent chunks. To get the maximum benefit from your updates, do this instead: When you get time to update your site, prepare and arrange your new content so that it can be uploaded in small pieces. Get everything ready to go so that the only task remaining is the actual publish. Then upload each small piece separately, allowing a day or two to pass between each upload. By doing this your website ends up with the same content, but search engines monitoring how frequently you update will see a pattern of steady growth. You can still write or gather all your content in one fell swoop, just dole it out to your webserver slowly instead of as a single publish. You won't see immediate results, but give this a month or two and search engines will take notice, to your benefit.

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Problogging: Making Money From Blogs Starting Now!

A weblog (or simply blog) is a website that 'publishes' or features articles (which are called 'blog posts', 'posts', or 'entries'), written by an individual or a group that make use of any or a combination of the following: · Straight texts · Photographs or images (photoblog) · Video (videoblog) · Audio files (audioblog) · Hyperlinks Usually presented and arranged in reverse chronological order, blogs are essentially used for the following purposes: · Online journal or a web diary · Content managament system · Online publishing platform A typical blog has the following components: · Post date -the date and time of the blog entry · Category - the category that the blog belongs to · Title - the title of the blog · Main body - the main content of the blog · RSS and trackback - links the blog back from other sites · Comments - commentaries that are added by readers · Permalinks - the URL of the full article · Other optional items - calendar, archives, blogrolls, and add-ons or plug-ins A blog can also have a footer, usually found at the bottom of the blog, that shows the post date, the author, the category, and the 'stats' (the nubmer of comments or trackbacks). There are numerous types of blogs. Some of them are the following: 1. Political blog - on news, politics, activism, and other issue based blogs (such as campaigning). 2. Personal blog - also known as online diary that may include an individual's day-to-day experience, complaints, poems, and illicit thoughts, and communications between friends. 3. Topical blog - with focus either on a particular niche (function or position) that is usually technical in nature or a local information. 4. Health blog - on specific health issues. Medical blog is a major category of health blog that features medical news from health care professionals and/or actual patient cases. 5. Literary blog - also known as litblog. 6. Travel blog - with focus on a traveler's stories on a particular journey. 7. Research blog - on academic issues such as research notes. 8. Legal blog - on law (technical areas) and legal affairs; also known as 'blawgs'. 9. Media blog - focus on falsehoods or inconsistencies in mass media; usually exclusive for a newspaper or a television network. 10. Religious blog - on religious topics 11. Educational blog - on educational applications, usually written by students and teachers. 12. Collaborative or collective blog - a specific topic written by a group of people. 13. Directory blog - contains a collection of numerous web sites. 14. Business blog - used by entrepreneurs and corporate employees to promote their businesses or talk about their work 15. Personification blog - focus on non-human being or objects (such as dogs). 16. Spam blogs - used for promoting affiliated websites; also known as 'splogs'. Blogging is typically done on a regular (almost daily) basis. The term "blogging" refers to the act of authoring, maintaining, or adding an article to an existing blog, while the term "blogger" refers to a person or a group who keeps a blog. Today, more than 3 million blogs can be found in the Internet. This figure is continuously growing, as the availability of various blog software, tools, and other applications make it easier for just about anyone to update or maintain the blog (even those with little or no technical background). Because of this trend, bloggers can now be categorized into 4 main types: · Personal bloggers - people who focus on a diary or on any topic that an individual feels strongly about. · Business bloggers - people who focus on promoting products and services. · Organizational bloggers - people who focus on internal or external communication in an organization or a community. · Professional bloggers - people who are hired or paid to do blogging. Problogging (professional blogging) refers to blogging for a profit. Probloggers (professional bloggers) are people who make money from blogging (as an individual blog publisher or a hired blogger). Below are just some of the many money-making opportunities for probloggers: · Advertising programs · RSS advertising · Sponsorship · Affiliate Programs · Digital assets · Blog network writing gigs · Business blog writing gigs · Non blogging writing gigs · Donations · Flipping blogs · Merchandising · Consulting and speaking The following are a few things that you need to consider if you want to be successful in problogging: 1. Be patient. Problogging requires a lot of time and effort, not to mention a long-term vision. 2. Know your audience. Targeting a specific audience or group is a key to building a readership. 3. Be an 'expert'. Focus on a specific niche topic and strive to be the "go-to" blogger on that topic. 4. Diversify. Experiment with various add and affiliate programs that enable you to make money online (aside from blogging). 5. Do not bore your readers. Focus on the layout. White spaces, line spacings, and bigger fonts make a blog welcoming to read. Certainly, it is possible to earn money from blogs. One just needs to take risks, the passion, and the right attitude in order to be a successful problogger.

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Search Engine Marketing

As part of your overall Internet marketing strategy, it is important to devote resources to search engine marketing. This component of your marketing mix has become increasingly critical due to the importance that search engines and directories play in how prospects access information. Search engines have the advantage of driving highly qualified traffic due to the self-selection process initiated by the searcher in choosing their search query. Research shows that there are more than 8 hundred million people in the world have the habit to access Internet. 86% of them tend to locate information via search engines. In addition, research shows that most people will only look at 2 to 3 pages of search results, so your ranking among the results is becoming increasingly important. When developing your search engine strategy you need to understand how search engines work, how they are different from directories, and how to maximize their effectiveness in making sure that your business gets as much exposure as your budget allows. Search Engines populate their databases for search results through robotic software programs that crawl the web looking for content to index. This crawling requires that the software find text-based machine-readable content to index and categorize a site. The content accessed is from the meta tags (title, description, keywords, alt image tags), filenames and content on pages throughout your site. Spiders tend to look at the root directory, 1st level files and occasionally will spider your site to 2nd level content. To determine a site's meta tags, right click your mouse and select View Source. If your site has not been developed with search engines in mind, you could have difficulty in having your content properly indexed. Search engines also determine relative rankings of results based on certain algorithms that include factors like link popularity, site traffic, site content, etc. When search engines first evolved, they were based on a "free" business model, where conceptually all sites had an equal chance of being indexed and displayed in search results if their developers optimized with some basic steps. While the basic steps are still an important part of your search engine marketing strategy, they no longer are enough. This is due to the fact that many search engines (and dot bombs) found that it wasn't just about capturing eyeballs, but was also about making money. This has led search engines to modify their business models to capitalize on all possible sources of revenue generated by their traffic and/or technology. Traffic was seen as a logical source for advertising revenues and technology was felt to be transferable for use at other sites requiring robust search engines. To date, most search engines have not elected to go towards a subscription-based model where searchers get charged for accessing information. These new business models require that site developers work even more closely with marketing strategists to ensure that the most effective business decisions are made.

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Make Money With your blog - Why Are Blogs Profitable

There are many bloggers out there that do not comprehend the potential of their blogs; specifically, the money making potential of a blog and how it can be optimized to generate a steady online income. Here are a few reasons why anyone can make money blogging. Blogs are becoming increasingly popular due to the fact that they can be put to use for income generation. Online Marketers use blogs for marketing and bloggers capitalize on that need and make money blogging. So why are blogs so profitable? Well here are four reasons: Highly Targeted Marketing Blog visitors are there for a particular reason. Blogs, being constantly updated are a great source of information on a particular topic. Visitors become repeat visitors, readers and subscribers. Good blogs, the ones that are maintained and updated regularly can and do have steady readership that keeps coming back awaiting the next post and article. These blogs have audiences allowing marketers and advertisers easy access to particular groups. Blogs and Physical Evidence Before I spent a few thousand dollars to buy my new laptop a couple of months ago, I read reviews, testimonials and consumer opinions on many different products. I spent a good 10-12 hours reading, comparing taking notes and asking questions before I made up my mind and spent my money. Most of that time was spent on technology blogs; I read reviews, compared products and was actually pretty happy to find out that this information was readily available online. It helped my make the purchase. Even if the company I bought the laptop from provided me with the reviews I might had been weary and perhaps not taking it seriously. The bloggers that reviewed the products, even if they where paid to do it, gave me a completely different perspective; a perspective that actually helped that company make a sale without using any of its own resources to do so! I was impressed, and still am; particularly of the effectiveness and direct nature of this media, blogging. Here are some more reasons for making money with a blog: Blogs are Interactive Readers will post comments, participate in discussions, talk about their experiences about particular products/topics, draw their conclusions and possibly write about the same topic on their blogs. Aside from the extra exposure an advertiser can get it helps build a better presence for their website with more backlinks. More backlinks, means better rankings and as a result better placement on a search engine result page and more money. Building Backlinks All internet marketers are aware of the importance of building backlinks. Ideally, one way links pointing back to their sites. When someone posts a link with a keyword pointing back to their page, it is like a vote; a vote of confidence for that particular site, at least for search engines. In order for, Google, lets say to weed out all the irrelevant results from searches, they came up with an algorithm that only shows the most popular pages for that keyword. In order to achieve this they rank pages with more links pointing back to them with particular keywords, better and higher. If you want your page to rank better for searches you should strive to get all the backlinks you can find. Other blogs are an excellent way of getting these links. It is not hard to start a blog and turn it into a money blog. All you need to do is first comprehend the potential of your blog and then start putting some work in optimizing it. Once you start getting some visitors you can start making money right away. You can make money blogging with paid reviews. Or if you are into Web 2.0, and a fan of social networking, you can still make make money blogging with Entrecard.

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A Guide To Organic SEO And Its Benefits

What Is Organic SEO?Put in the simplest manner possible, organic SEO is search engine optimization done manually using no black hat methods, no underhand methods and no automated scripting. It is the purest form of optimizing your website for the benefit of search engines, while still retaining interest for your site visitors, and done well it is exactly the thing that search engines are looking for in a website. Once they find it they will reward your site with better rankings and improved positions within the search engine results pages. Throughout the course of this article it will be referred to as simply SEO.Understanding The Search EnginesUnderstanding Search Engines and their general concept is vital to the use of effective SEO methods. Search engines enable their visitors to enter a specific word or term, known as keywords. Once submitted, all pages containing those keywords that can be found in the search engine's directory are listed on the search engine result pages. Each page is "ranked" according to relevancy, popularity and a few other factors. Therefore, in theory, the more relevant a page is to a given keyword the more likely it will appear at the top of the listings.Introducing The Search Engine SpidersAnother important factor to remember about search engines is that they don't use real people to crawl the billions of websites and judge how relevant they are. Instead they use automated software called a "spider" or a "bot" that does this work much quicker. The calculations that the search engine uses to determine the ranking of a website are called algorithms and in the case of the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN these algorithms are changed on a regular basis. The changes and the specifics of the algorithms are not released to the public in order to prevent black hat SEOs from manipulating their sites to reach the top of the pile despite containing to information relevant to the search query or keyword.Optimizing For Search Engines – Optimizing For VisitorsOf course to some extent, all of us reading this article are probably guilty of altering our web pages to meet the whims of search engines but it must be done in a positive and organic way. We understand that optimizing a page purely for the benefit of search engines spiders may massively detract from the actual value of the site to your visitors. Search engines understand this too, hence the evolution of the algorithms. With each new algorithm created and usually patented by search engines like Google, we are getting closer to a structure whereby sites are genuinely judged on their value to visitors. It may sound like an Isaac Asimov novel but the algorithms and the spiders are basically becoming more human like.Basic Components Of SEOThe actual methods of optimizing your website are saved for another article, but the basic components of an SEO campaign are broken down into on page and off page optimization techniques. On page SEO includes factors like keyword inclusion, content optimization, page structure etc… whereas the main contributing factor of off page optimization is inbound links. There are many different factors to each of these areas and different SEOs will give you varying information on which factors are the most relevant to gain higher rankings. These extensive differences in opinion occur because nobody is certain of the algorithm criteriaThe Benefits Of SEOSEO is probably the most beneficial way to conduct Internet promotion. It is highly cost effective, can yield long term results and the leads it generates are opt in and targeted. This doesn't mean you shouldn't consider trying out alternative methods of advertising your site. For many, banner advertisements, press releases (can actually be used as part of an SEO campaign as well), PPC campaigns and sponsored listings prove to highly beneficial and including these will help your site's popularity.To Cost Effectiveness And To LifeThe cost effectiveness is easily determined when you look at the potential of an SEO campaign compared to the method that many consider to be the next best thing – PPC. A PPC campaign will usually cost you anywhere upward of 5 cents per visitor generated. This means that for every thousand visitors you receive you will have paid $50. Some fairly basic SEO work on a web site containing ten pages will generate this kind of traffic on a monthly basis relatively quickly.$50 doesn't sound much but consider that you pay this in one month to receive the desired one thousand visitors. Over the space of a year you will have paid $600, and so on. Now consider that you are competing for a relatively competitive keyword and you find that you need to be paying a minimum of 50 cents per click to generate just the one thousand clicks in a month. All of a sudden you're paying $6000 per year and you are still only getting one thousand clicks every month. $6000 will buy you an awful lot of SEO work and you should find that within a few months you are generating a lot more traffic using SEO.Targeted LeadsTargeted leads are the best type of leads you can generate. It means that the visitors to your site are already predisposed to the basic topic of your site and are interested in what you have to say. It means that they will be more likely to purchase goods or services from your site, click on affiliate links or click Google ads to earn you revenue. Because SEO leads are physically searching for the topic that your site relates to you are guaranteed that they are interested in whatever you're offering. First of all they search using keywords relevant to your site. They then read the description and name of your site and this further compounds their interest in the page in question and click on the link. Already they have become highly susceptible to the message of your web page.So Remember…SEO is a webmaster's greatest tool but treated badly it can quickly blow up in your face. By ensuring you stick to the very letter of the law and do not use any underhand methods you should soon benefit from powerful leads that will frequent your site and earn you revenue.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) For Google, Yahoo, and Msn

In this article I will review the similarities and differences between the ranking algorithms of Google, Yahoo and Msn. Google and Yahoo are considerably reasonably close in terms of off-page factors weighting compared to Msn, which is more on the on-page side. Like Google, Yahoo and MSN will discount obviously identical and unnatural looking anchor link text. Since these algos are frequently updated, I will only concentrate on those factors that do not. Otherwise, mayor updates should take place for them to be replaced by other/better methods. The Google Factors. It is a known fact that Google is focused on links. Therefore, it ranks them by quality and relevancy factors. With that said, on-page factors such as title keywords, content keyword density and relevance also influence the ranking of a given page. Google also looks into the "neighborhood" of your site analyzing outbound links. If you link to related quality sites with relevant content, search engines will associate your site with these "neighbor" sites. The Yahoo Factors. Yahoo tends to be the most active of the three when it comes to crawling. Not a general rule though. But in addition to its nature, having RSS on your site will get it more aggressive and frequently crawled. Similar to Google, Yahoo gives a lot of importance to inbound links, looking into factors like relevancy and anchor text, and heavily at volume of links. Their TrustRank is a form of PageRank, but with a special teleportation to a subset of high-quality pages. Yahoo search rankings appear to place extra importance on your site being listed in their directory, especially for highly competitive terms. Keyword density in title and content relevance also count. The Msn Factors. Maybe a substantial different from the other two, Msn normally gives more weight to the title text. Also, CSS optimization plays an important role at getting better rankings here. Msn is second to Yahoo on links volume, but the link analysis is reversed, analyzing inbound links for quality, anchor text keywords, and relevancy. Inclusion in the MSN endorsed directories would boost your site high in the SERPs. This fact still holds true, but its advantage has lessened with the new Live version. Content freshness is still very important, boosting rank of frequently updated pages. Optimizing for all. Yes, it is possible. Did someone said: wikipedia? Regardless of the algo differences of the mayor search engines, a site with great content that attracts users, and generates lots of natural occurring inbound links having great anchor text, has a great chance of replicating similar success. Of the off-page factors, quality of inbound links is the most important. Of the on-page factors the keyword density in the title. A good balance between conservative keyword density and other elements like RSS and CSS need to exist when used, since they all get particular boots or penalties with the search engines.

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8 BIG Small Business Mistakes

Here's an interesting notion: Do you realize that there are mistakes you can make at various stages of your business' growth that can be slowly killing it for months or even years if you don't watch for them? Well, these mistakes do exist and they are not just reserved for the rookie companies. Many working businesses, including those you might think are "successful" because they've been around for 10+ years, are often still making them… and are possibly losing a lot of money and/or wasting a lot of time in the process. Although some of these big and sneaky mistakes seem aimed more at service type companies, they really do fit the bill for almost any type of industry. I've done my best with the listings below to give examples to prove it. Underestimating Project/Service Time- This is a big one and it pertains to service companies as well as companies that sell a product. This is a service company's bread and butter. If you don't estimate your time to perform each and every service in your repertoire, you will get burned and there is little you can do about it but bite the bullet and learn from it. The best way to estimate time is to do it once yourself or watch your best employee do the task and then throw in a little fudge factor on top of it. For product companies, time becomes an issue with logistics so be aware! Not Knowing YOUR Company Numbers/Incorrectly Setting Prices- Notice I emphasized the word "your". It's a common mistake to use a competitor's as your pricing gauge without actually knowing why they use those numbers. Think about the nightmare you will get yourself into if you take a competitor's price, cut it by 10% and then start selling. What if the competition has a bad pricing structure and is barely making money or even losing money?!?! What if your costs are more than theirs?!?! You can use competitor as a starting point but you can't base your whole strategy on it. Different industries have their own variables as far as costs go and you need to be aware of them for your project or product pricing. What you pay for a product you are going to sell is not the only cost to have in your head when you are pricing products. How much your labor and materials cost for a service is only a piece of an hourly rate. Employees cost more than just salary and not every employee is part of your labor cost. Every company has insurance to pay for. There are tons of overhead expenditures that need to be part of your price. Oh, by the way, the big one that many people forget about in their price is the quality factor. What you include as "standard services" or "standard product features" as well as job site etiquette or in store service or warranties all need to go into your pricing. I'll get to more on why in the next segment. Not Charging for All of Your Time & Costs- This seems like a stupid statement to some but I bet most business owners will admit that they have given away a little too much of the farm at times. Hey, there is nothing wrong with giving a little extra here and there to show you care. But either way, that's not what I'm talking about here. What concerns me are those that put a lot of quality into their work or products or stores and do not cover the cost for it. As an example, say you run a service company and your competitors don't do a certain standard service that you do. You can't just undercut their price to steal a job; you need to have that cost covered in your rate and advertise the fact that it comes with the price upfront. Stores undermine themselves, for example, when they put more people on the floor for customer service but don't charge for it. These things cost you money and when your competitors don't do them it costs them less money. Put out better service and then under price them, and your competition just has to wait a little bit for you to fall on your face so they can swoop back in. As a business owner you need to believe that you are providing your clients worthwhile wares that deserve to be paid for. If you get the chance to explain why your prices are higher, then take that opportunity and do it. If they don't like the fact that you include things that others charge extra for later or that you treat them better, then they are most likely completely price shoppers. You don't want them as regular customers anyway. Trust me. Not Getting Paid Fast Enough- That's right, the old cash flow issue. As long as you are actually making enough money to pay the bills, this problem can be solved, prevented or at least made to be not as bad as it could be. Here's the deal: First off all, bill customers very promptly. It is very common for a small business to not have the procedures or systems in place to get invoices generated and out the door in a timely fashion (see the next segment for more). Again, this would seem unlikely since that's the reason why we are doing the work- to get paid. But it is very easy for the people responsible for getting this info to the billing people to be too busy to get it there or not have enough organization to give it to them the right way. The second part to slowing down or stopping a regular cash flow crunch is to make the quickest payment deals possible with customers and the slowest possible with vendors and employees. If there is any way not to pay employees any more than twice a month, you better do it. Contractors always have an issue with this. If you must pay weekly, then tell them before they are hired that they will be getting the first week held back, essentially buying you a week. It will help, I promise. Part three involves credit. If your company can get a credit card, then get it. This allows for certain important things to be bought (that you can afford) that might come up during a cash flow crunch. Better yet, especially if you have no choice but to deal with 45+ day customer payments, do your best to get a company line of credit. This is a must if you plan on selling to the government or doing commercial service work. These clients often have 60 to 90 day wait periods. Failure to Have Solid Systems and Procedures in Place- Too many procedures (known as "red tape") is the reason why many people start their own business in the first place. Unfortunately, having no procedures and systems in place at all is not an alternative. Depending on the type of industry, business owners must come to a happy medium or chaos and the unknown will ensue. Some basic examples where procedures or systems are needed include billing, collections, payroll, hr (interviewing, hiring, vacations, benefits, job responsibilities, etc.), manufacturing, operating equipment, maintaining equipment, inventory, sales calls/visits and logistics to name a few. Even a one person show needs to have some admin procedures in place. This will make it easier to hire temps and subcontractors and control what they are doing for you. Without at least a watered down version of a system or procedure to do everyday work, you will be to blame for causing many major headaches as your company grows. I can't emphasize how important this is for when you bring on new employees. I'm sure you heard this before, but I am also a big proponent of having an employee handbook even for one employee. It's amazing the trouble people can cause business owners just because they allow you to pay them. Spending Advertising Money Just to Say You Advertise- I would almost rather see my clients not advertise then to spend without regard to tracking the results. There is no point in a marketing campaign if you do not put things in place that allow you to measure how well the plan is working. The other wasteful part of marketing that many people make the mistake of doing, is not tracking their previously successful campaigns. Why some people think that just because a $400 dollar a month ad worked once very well for one busy season, that it will automatically work every year after that is beyond me. Spreading Yourself Too Thin- This is a classic mistake made by every entrepreneur. The key is to figure out when you are at that "wearing too many hats" point and start getting some help. The solution here is to know your strengths and to be able see when you are not performing the duties that demand these skills. If you are the best sales person on the company, you can't get caught up in day-to-day operations. If you do, sales will slip and eventually you won't have any operations to worry about. Think about this to help you figure out if you are spread too thin: Did you really go into business for yourself to work 80+ hours a week? Not Getting Help Soon Enough- Set goals to know when to hire people to take over where you are light on knowledge. Not getting help or waiting too long can kill a company. Most people who start a business do it because they are good at the technical end or the sales end. If you know the best way to make a widget, then your strength is in production and that is where your time should be spent. Hire an outside company or consultant to take care of the sales and marketing and then hire inside when you can afford someone full time. Don't be something to your company that you are not. It will only hold you back. The three big issues people like to tackle themselves but usually are least knowledgeable about are legal issues, accounting/bookkeeping issues and daily operations issues. The odds are that these three things are your weakest link so if you don't have a partner that has the background for these subjects, then be prepared to get help as soon as possible. It's preferable that you do this before you start a business. Although looking for these problems at any time is a good idea, the end of a year or season is an excellent business interval to make sure you are not making these errors. Take the time, or make the time, to fix these problems. If you don't know how to reverse the problems, then get some help. If you really don't have enough time to either figure out if you have these issues or know they are there and can't break away long enough to do it right, then get some help.

READ MORE - 8 BIG Small Business Mistakes

How To Create A "Unique Selling Proposition" For Your Home Based Business!

No matter what type of business you are running (or plan to build) you will likely have competition. Most people think competition is a bad thing – and if you try to take on your competition "head on" it probably is.On the other hand, you can use your competition to learn how to service customers in a different way – a "unique" way – that can make you very successful!How Can You Make Your Business Unique"For example, selling home videos. DVD's, and electronic games is nothing new. And unfortunately for most "mom-and-pop" video stores, Blockbuster came along, and put most of them out of business.So why bother even trying to sell videos and DVD's, right? Well, it depends.Opening another video store would probably be difficult – having the ability to order 20-30 copies of all the popular videos would probably be too costly for most people.But NetFlix didn't look at competing directly with Blockbuster. The owners decided to rent the same products, but in a completely different way – online and through the mail.That's an example of a Unique Selling Proposition!How can you create a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) for your business?Answer the following 5 questions:1. What does your business sell, and who do you sell it to?2. What benefits (not products or services) does your business offer to your customers?3. What does your business do best?4. What part of your business needs the most improvement?5. What do you offer that you do better –or different – than your competitors?If you need help coming up with ideas for the last one – which is the most important question to answer – go out and "shop" your competition:• read their ads• check the yellow pages• do a search online and compare websites• buy a product (or ask a friend or family member, if possible)• join a small business associationThen, narrow down your USP into one or two sentences, and do it – with every letter you write, every ad you place, every customer you serve, every plan you make – and include your Unique Selling Proposition.If you can make your business different from the rest – and stand out above the competition – you'll be well on your way to success!

READ MORE - How To Create A "Unique Selling Proposition" For Your Home Based Business!

Blogging For Bucks - How To Start Making A Real Living With Your Blog And Gain Freedom...

There are many bloggers who make incomes of several thousand dollars per month from their blogs. These are not casual bloggers who only want to see their words and their name online or who just want to put forth a point-of-view, these are serious bloggers who have made blogging into a full-time (or nearly full-time) job. Here are some of the ways they make money from their blogs and ways you can also blog for bucks: Advertising! There are many advertisers waiting for you to approach them, these are programs such as Google's Adsense (https ://www.google.com/adsense/) where you allow companies to place their ads . . . ads related to your topic . . . on your blog. Each time one of your readers clicks on an ad on your blog, you earn a small amount of money (a predetermined amount). A slightly different approach is used by companies such as CrispADS (http://www.crispads.com/). With this type of service, you tell them how much you want to charge for advertising space on your blog and they will attempt to find an advertiser who will pay that price (plus a commission for the go-between company). These are just two of a large group that is expanding daily. Blog Feeds! RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and ATOM Feeds are two of the dominant blog feeds. The object of a blog feed is to distribute every new post you add to your blog to a list of subscribers; you make your blog posts available to RSS or ATOM, people who want to read your stuff on a regular basis can subscribe to your posts and read them on a newsreader. The latest trend is to include advertising to these blog feeds and, as before, if your subscriber clicks on an ad that is included with your feed, you get some money. There are no BIG bucks here yet but its a rapidly growing field. Affiliate Programs! Online companies have been offering affiliate programs to bloggers for years, some of the big ones are Amazon, Linkshare and Clickbank. They work by providing you a unique URL that you add to your blog. Any readers that click through to the company and buy something are providing you with a commission. Another version of the affiliate program is the "mini-mall" concept offered by companies such as Chitika eMiniMalls. The mini-mall works (like the affiliate program), through a link on your blog that takes your reader to a page with a variety of merchandise -- all sales earn you a commission. Sponsors! Large corporations are very aware of the blogosphere and of the growing number of people who read blogs and, in response, they are using blogs to advance their business interests -- blogs may never replace the Michael Jordan-type superstars for corporations but blogs are already gaining many fairly lucrative corporate sponsorships. If you have a blog that is dedicated to a particular topic, e.g., digital cameras, that is published on a regular basis, that has a good readership and is recognized as an authoritative source for digital camera information, your blog may draw the interest of a corporate sponsor and you may be approached to run their advertisements for new products on a long-term basis. If and when you reach that point you know you've made it to the big time, professional blogger's league. Your Product! The methods mentioned above are just a few of the very many ways you can start making money from your blog . . . but there is a catch! As you probably noticed every scheme mentioned and every other money-making blogging scheme you'll find requires a great blog . . . a blog that draws hundreds of readers (as a minimum) on a regular basis. To reach this stage of readership you need a blog that offers the reader some type of unique, quality content. If blogging is to be a money making business for you, you'll need to treat it like a business by dedicating your time, energy and creativity to its success. Also, like any successful business, you need a product or service that is a 'customer magnet.' Your "product" is your content: it could be news or information or entertainment but whatever it is, it must be unique and interesting.

READ MORE - Blogging For Bucks - How To Start Making A Real Living With Your Blog And Gain Freedom...

An Introduction Primer to SEO

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

It can be defined as the process by which a site's rankings in the search engines are increased for the keywords it is optimized for. Good SEO keeps both the user and the search engine in mind. Things that look beautiful on your site may have a negative influence on your site's ranking. Good content ensures return visits. Keyword enriched content ensures that people will find your site.

How many people do you know who actually look at the fourth or tenth page of a search engine's results page? Most people only look at the first ten to twenty search results. SEO can get your site ranked in the first bundle of results.

Aspects of SEO: Content

The web is indexed with keywords. The user types in a keyword string, exact phrase or a single keyword to find a relevant page. Information specialists make use of advanced searching techniques to find deep web content such as information imbedded in databases or dictionaries, but the average user thinks of the first thing associated with his query and types it in. That is why broad keywords on your site will not generate enough traffic because many thousands of pages have that exact keyword. You need specific keywords and keyword phrases.

There must be enough content on the page. Too little information guarantees that the keywords cannot be repeated enough without keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is where there are too many of the same keyword on a page. Search engines will rank your page lower if they see your page as stuffed.

Keyword density must be balanced with their relation to the rest of the page. This means that your main keywords must appear in certain areas of the page. They must preferably stand out from the rest of the text. There are a number of ways to do this but it is a new topic.

SEO: Meta Tags

There cannot be enough emphasis on Meta tags. Meta tags are in the invisible part of your page. It forms part of the source code. This is where the Title, Description, and Keywords, are placed for the search engines. Most engines will not be able to find your site if a Meta Tag is not present. This area is very important because this is where you place your main keywords and the description of your site. Once again, the relation to the title, description and content becomes important. Don't stuff this area with long descriptions since the search engines will throw your page out if the description is too long, or the keywords repeated three or more times. Keep a balance.

You must write a robot.txt file for the spiders to exclude certain parts of your page. The reason is that most of them cannot read Java, and CGI scripts. There are a number of extensions to pages that will lead to exclusion from search engines.

Other SEO factors that also influence the way your page will indexed:

- ALT, TITLE, and AUTHOR tags.

- Number and quality of links to your site.

- Links from your site.

- Sitemap for search engines.

- Names of links to your other pages.

- Color and total number of links

These are just a few of the online and offline factors that influence your ranking. SEO is needed to make your page visible on the Internet where you have to compete with other sites.

READ MORE - An Introduction Primer to SEO

How broken links can hurt your website

If your business has a website, most likely it's constantly changing and evolving. This can be a good thing but how you handle these changes can make a dramatic difference in how effective your website becomes.

Some of your content may be time sensitive, such as information on special promotions, contests and things of that nature. Some content may no longer be relevant to your business, such as discontinued products or services. Most people's first course of action in these cases would be to simply remove these pages and all internal links (links from your own website pointing to your own pages) so that there is no path to them. This is not the best approach and can result in less website traffic and also potentially affect your search engine rankings.

There is a strong possibility that other people have placed links on their website pointing to the removed pages. Some people may have even previously book marked the removed pages for future use. Once you've removed the pages you have eliminated these sources of prospects.

Search engines follow links to find websites and web pages. By removing these pages, you are removing the content that they have come to expect (once they've found and indexed it). If they are unable to find a number of pages that you have improperly removed from your server then they very often will leave your website. This can make getting your new pages indexed difficult and slow.

Fortunately, the solution is relatively simple. If you plan to remove a page from your website you would first set up a 301 redirect to another related page. For example if you had a page named "july-sale.htm" and it is now August, you would set your 301 redirect to automatically send all requests for that page directly to "august-sales.htm" instead. Once that is in place you can safely delete the page. If you've already deleted pages from your website without setting up 301 redirects you can still fix the problem. If you view your error logs on your web server you can find all of the 404 errors which are caused by requests for files that do not exist and then set up a 301 redirect for each missing file

This ensures that when someone comes to a page that no longer exists, rather than getting an error message and leaving, they are instantly whisked away to the next most relevant page and you get the chance to turn them into a client or customer. It also ensures that when the search engines come looking for a page that no longer exists they are redirected to the next most relevant page causing them to spend more time crawling your website. It's important to point out that some hosts do not offer the ability to set up these type of redirects and will recommend adding a java script to the page. This will not work for the search engines because they do not execute any scripts, and it will only work for a portion of visitors.

READ MORE - How broken links can hurt your website

Search Engine Marketing comes of age

The Search Engine Marketing (SEM) industry is going through phenomenal changes as number of search engines increase alongside rapidly evolving techniques and technologies. Today, your web presence is incomplete without strategic online promotion and one is forced to take a serious look at search engine marketing because that is where your customers are. As a result, search engine marketing specialists, have devised many SEM techniques like pay-per-click management, link popularity and Adwords campaigns in Google are becoming much sought after components of any advertising campaigns and internet marketing strategies.


A professional and specialized search engine optimization company should provide with you with customized and well-targeted internet marketing strategy, services and solutions. The SEM strategy should help you achieve maximum awareness about your website, products and services. It should deliver targeted traffic to your website. It should achieve higher level of sales through your website, help you keep your costs low and create brand loyalty among your target audience.


For instance, web design and search engine marketing specialist, Orient InfoSolutions provides strategic solutions for companies wishing to market their business online. Over the years, they have earned for themselves a high reputation as a search engine marketing specialist, specializing in internet marketing strategy and internet marketing solution.


An effective search engine optimization strategy should help you achieve top 10 ranking for your chosen and targeted key phrases in premier search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo. In a study conducted in July 2005, Nielson/Netratings reported that the search engine market share was highest for Google at 48%. Yahoo and MSN had the market shares of 22% and 12% respectively.

A well-designed SEO process should involve indepth research for high quality search engine optimization keywords research that are relevant to your website; writing and incorporating high quality, timely and targeted, search engine optimization keywords rich articles that are of interest to your target audience; defining and incorporating Directory Structure in the website so that directories and file names hit the top keywords you wish to optimize; programming that ensures that text content out weighs the html content and the web pages are visible in all types of browsers, i.e. IE, Netscape, and Opera; meta tag Optimization and submitting your web site to the major search engines and directories. Also researching search engines and directories catering to your target audience and submitting to them is important.

Besides, your SEO solutions provider should build up your link popularity through link exchanges with complimentary non-competing sites. You can also opt for a well-devised Pay Per Click Campaign in Overture, Google Adwords and other smaller PPC search engines.


Orient InfoSolutions is a leading IT solutions provider that specializes in creating strategically positioned and targeted SEM campaigns for you including SEO, PPC campaigns, Link Popularity and online promotion. You can visit OrientInfoSolutions.com for some indepth information on the various kinds of search engine marketing strategies needed to make your website or internet marketing campaign highly effective.

READ MORE - Search Engine Marketing comes of age

Getting Your Site Indexed in Exactseek

Some may disagree with me on the importance of Exactseek. After all, Google, Yahoo, and MSN are the top three sites (not in that order), and then we jump to Exactseek, which is ranked in the top 2000.

However, in the search engine game, Exactseek is a major player with some pretty cool tools and some great stuff to help you market your business online. Whether you choose the free or paid version, you'll get great results, and it's easy to submit your site.

Exactseek is also an excellent way to help you get into the top three because of their spiders. This site gets spidered, and it also gets a lot of traffic. These are two of the reasons for its high rankings.

Although the top three provide about 80 percent of the search traffic these days, this site will help you work on grabbing the other 20 percent that might not find you because you aren't in this directory, or all of the other smaller search engines.

Unlike Google, which is a true search engine because it uses spiders to gather the links of a site, Exactseek is more of a web directory.

Since this is a web directory, you will only need to provide the top level domain for your site, and you should only submit your top level domain.

Before submitting to Exactseek, there are a few things you need to do to make sure that your site gets accepted.

First, you want to make sure that the metatags in your header for your page are complete. Unlike the top three, your metatags are very important here because this is the description of your site that will be shown.

Make sure that you write a good description, and that you properly target your keywords. Not only will this help you in getting your site accepted here, when the other major search engines spider this site, you'll be correctly spidered.

Also, when you submit to Exactseek, you need to provide a valid email address. The reason is that you will need to confirm your submission. If you fail to do this, you won't be accepted into the Exactseek directory.

You can submit your site here: http://www.exactseek.com/add.html.

If you are looking to get exposure more quickly, you will find that Exactseek offers one of the best promotion deals on the internet.

For only $12 per quarter, or $36 per year, you can get a featured listing. This is a very low cost way to get the word out about affiliate programs that you may be selling, and this allows you to be featured on 200+ websites throughout the internet.

Unlike pay per clicks, you pay a one time fee, and you can check for keyword availability.

To find out more, visit: http://exactseek.com/featured_listings.html. You will also want to read the help section prior to submission so that you fully understand the program.

Although Exactseek isn't exactly a search engine, it's still one of the best places to promote your website. Using Exactseek can help you get some of the traffic you won't get from the three major search engines.

READ MORE - Getting Your Site Indexed in Exactseek

Learning How To Create The Ultimate Blog

One wonders where all that pent-up rage, radical views, strong opinions and peculiar beliefs would be deposited without blogs. For some people, blogging offers a cathartic experience in that they are able to write about who or what is troubling them. Yet for others, by simply being able to put an idea out there is help enough for their egos and self-esteem. Writing in a blog would definitely be much cheaper than a session with an overpriced shrink. Entrepreneurs, newsmakers, tech tutors and a whole lot of others also employ the use of blogs for profit or for up to date information. There are numerous reasons for putting up and maintaining a blog but all of them have one common goal, how to get your thoughts across clearly and effectively.

Blog 101's are as ubiquitous as blogs themselves in the Internet. The obvious way to go here is to look for an excellent site that will be able to deliver the goods on creating and keeping up a blog. These sites offer guides, tips, how-tos and even some useful tools that will help you in the wonderful world of blogging. The topic commonly discussed initially is finding a home for your blog or the seemingly thankless job of looking for a host, free or otherwise. You might think that it's easy enough to look for a host, google "blog host" and you'll see that it's not as painless as it appears. The wealth of choices available simply overwhelms the soon to be blogger. Now, let's say you finally found a suitable home for your blog, the next challenge that you need to hurdle would most likely be the design. If you build an attractive and well-arranged blog, then they'll most certainly come. Most blog hosts have built-in tools that will help you with that but the myriad "ready-to-wear" designs will almost certainly baffle the unversed. Blog tutorials have simple yet useful guides about designing blogs that includes topics ranging from text positioning to color schemes. Now comes the best part, content. A truly good blog tutorial site will stand out from other pretenders when it's able to supply bloggers with relevant information concerning content. Ideas on where to get content are very crucial. The only way you are going to get considerable amount of traffic in your blog is if people are INTERESTED in it. Your content plays a very critical role in your blog's success, it is the lifeblood of every single blog out there. If you keep good content flowing steady and fresh, that can only stand to help your blog achieve a level of greatness. Tips on the finer points of increasing traffic for your blog are very abundant in the tutorials. Be sure to take heed because dealing with keywords and search engines will be a joyful task if done properly and with decent supervision.

Bottom line is that blog tutorials are essential partners in your blog making travels because they serve as competent and experienced guides. Up until such time that you get your blogging legs true and steady, I recommend not letting go of these sites.

READ MORE - Learning How To Create The Ultimate Blog

Viral Buzz Blogs Launches Toothbrush Entrepreneur

Austin entrepreneur, Richard Trocino had a great product idea. And, like thousands of other innovative inventors with a new product concept, bringing that idea into a marketplace dominated by long established brands with deep links and dominance in the retail outlets is challenging. In these days of mega corporations and Walmarts, VCs and small business defined by the government in the land of opportunity, one entrepreneur with a grand idea or product may be considered by any of those groups as irrelevant and insignificant. Another challenge faced by small businesses in today's marketplace, like in Trocino's case, is getting an idea produced and generating sales.

In spite of impossible odds, Trocino's invention sells almost faster today than his factories can produce and distribute all over the world. The established companies that were given the opportunity to brand and produce it, now may be wishing they had not dismissed the popular product so readily. Not when the blogosphere is broadcasting around the globe faster and with more range than a speeding bullet; comments appearing include; "OHSO gets my nod for the most stylish and futuristic toothbrush/toothpaste contraption on the market today", "The Coolest Toothbrush Ever", and "World's Most Elegant Travel Toothbrush".

Trocino received micro level funding to get the prototypes built and into limited manufacturing through friends and family after attempts to license the product to both toothpaste and toothbrush companies fell on deaf ears. Similarly, Trocino found his innovation locked out of normal channels of retailing without the benefits of an established proven brand in the marketplace.

Discouraged, but undaunted Trocino abandoned efforts to take the product to market using traditional marketing methods. Instead, like entrepreneurs who have met with unexpected success throughout business history he proceeded by seat of the pants and gut instinct. Acting on a hunch, he put it out there exclusively in the world of the internet and ignored the traditional "wisdom" of standard marketing techniques-no phones, faxes, or printed paper junk mail-nothing but net. A guerrilla marketer does not have the luxury of the corporate behemoths who can afford (since it's investor's and stockholders money not their own) to throw 98% of their marketing dollars away on a numbers game in a business model that justifies and covers its inherent wastefulness by overcharging those sold customers the expenses of marketing to everyone else.

Trocino decided to be a "Swamp Fox" marketer, like General Francis Marion who befuddled the British in South Carolina during the Revolutionary war, and break all the rules of modern marketing warfare. Marketing is a form of warfare and many entrepreneurs have discovered the reality of today's business battlefields. The corporations and financiers have in today's market reality stacked the deck against upstart competition by raising the ante into the game of commerce. One unnamed entrepreneurial internet advice columnist estimates the cost of entry to even be considered for funding by an angel or VC group at between $25,000 and $250,000. That is merely for the development of the business plan, and pre-start up consulting, general expenses and to purchase access to their secretive inner circle. Trocino decided to wander into the unknown swamp of the internet and blogsphere and see what people would do when offered his innovation directly.

Trocino, like most entrepreneurs, is a risk taker, but like most smart business persons likes to reduce risk wherever possible. He knew a good concept poorly executed had little chance of success in the market, so he took his idea to a locally based but internationally known design firm called "Design Edge" and negotiated a co-marketing partnership for assistance in 'packaging' his innovation. Trocino knew that people who travel a lot would naturally respond favorably to the concept of an integrated toothpaste dispensing toothbrush in a self contained case that protects clothing in suitcases as well as keeps things neat and sanitary. With the co-marketing partnership with 'Design Edge' the product took on a new personality within a sexy futuristic design that takes the basic utilitarian idea and wraps it in fashionability and elegance.

Then with a few well chosen words, a friend with a good photographic eye and a smattering of html code, Trocino put up a website at http://www.goOHSO.com, and invited a few friends through http://MySpace.com to look at his new line of toothbrushes. MySpace would become the testing ground and ultimate launch pad for the rollout of his product.

With its stylish modern design and elegant photography, the buzz it generated in cyberspace was somewhat unexpected. In fact, it was explosive!

Driven by the dynamics of blogosphere where coolness and fashionability become badges of personal taste and sophistication, the OHSO toothbrush rapidly found its way onto the personal blogs of graphic designers, and jet setters as the coolest thing since crystal ice. When Josh Spears, the blogger's blogger posted his rave of the sleek product, sales and global visibility exploded. Even the legendary Steven Wozniak, the cofounder of another innovative product, Apple computer, is counted among the OHSO toothbrush users and fans.

Today the product is available in high fashion boutiques in the swanky Beverly Hills bastions of elegance and among the cappuccino makers and executive toys on the shelves of Brookstone stores around the country. Blogs have elevated the sensible, functional, practical toothbrush for harried travelers into fashion statements that provide high status and cool despite it's less than $20 price tag.

Not a bad state of affairs for the beaming Trocino who is today expanding the line with even more designs to satisfy the market demands. OHSO is a product that owes its success to a seat of the pants approach to beat the corporate gorillas with a bit of his own guerilla marketing. He simply put it out there in the vast uncharted cyber world where the old MBA strategies have no more influence on the hip youth market than the full color fall outs in the increasing unread Sunday paper.

Today freedom of the personal press in the global Blogsville rules a small voice with a message, or product like the OHSO toothbrush, can be magnified into a global phenomena. When people like what they see, they tell their friends, who today are everywhere. Just like Richard Trocino's classy and well designed toothbrush.

READ MORE - Viral Buzz Blogs Launches Toothbrush Entrepreneur