Catching Up With Online Business

When Google introduced their new Adsense revenue sharing program, people began to wonder if things would change. Certain questions have been burning in people’s mind like: what’s going to happen to Associate Programs, how do they compare against Google’s Adsense and will Adsense cause Associate Programs to be obsolete?

Well, that really depends on a number of things, which I will go over. In this article I am only going to cover a few advantages and disadvantages of using Google’s Adsense vs Associate Programs and which Associate Programs will prevail.

In case you are not familiar with Google’s Adsense, Adsense is a new service provided by Google. This service allows you to have text based advertisements on your web site, known as Google Adwords. In return, you will receive a share of revenue based on a pay per click arrangement.

How Does Adsense’s Advantages Compare To Associate Programs

Adsense and Associate Programs share some of the same advantages such as, Adsense is free to join and so are most other Associate Programs. Making them both easy to start and suitable for you whether you are a beginner or an experienced marketer.

Another advantage with Adsense, is that you never have to search for advertisers. Google supplies you with the advertisements by using highly relevant content targeted ads. This will insure that only precisely relevant advertisements are displayed on your web site. As for Associate Programs, you will have to search for quality programs and the relevancy of the program will depend on the one you select.

Adsense enables you to filter out up to 200 urls, so you don’t have inappropriate ads or display advertisements of your competition. The last thing you want is to send traffic to your indirect competition. No one in their right mind would do that, right! Moreover, with Associate Programs you can select which ones you want to promote, instead of worrying about advertising your indirect competition.

How Does Adsense’s Disadvantages Compare To Associate Programs

One of the biggest disadvantages of Adsense, is that they never really tell you what percentage you will receive. I don’t know about you, but wouldn’t it be nice to know what percentage of revenue you will receive. If an Associate Program was to do that, they would have absolutely no one participating in their program, but somehow Google can manage to get away with that. With associate programs, you immediately know what your commission percentage is going to be before you sign up.

Even though you can filter certian urls, you will still receive inappropriate advertisements. The advertisements are only as good as the person who wrote them and if they select keywords or phrases that are too general, this will result in inappropriate advertisements appearring on your web site. Most Associate Programs enable you to write your own promotional advertisements, giving you a little more freedom.

Adsense does not rotate their advertisements, so eventually your click through ratio will decrease, as repeat visitors are less likely to click through them. Eventually, I’m sure Google will improve the way it does it’s content targeting and start rotating their advertisements. By promoting an Associate Program you can simply change the wording of the advertisement, but with Adsense you can’t do that, you have your hands tied behind your back.

Adsense’s stats are terrible, they don’t tell you which advertisements your visitors are clicking through or which keywords are involved. Google supplies Adwords users with the adequate stats, you would think that they would do the same for their Adsense partners.

You should keep in mind that any advertisement that is on your web site, is portrayed to be your recommendation. If you are advertising a poor product or service on your web site, it will reflect on your credibility. Any product or service that you promote, should be a reliable one. Otherwise people will assume that you have poor judgement and it will hurt your credibility. By promoting Associate Programs, you can pick and choose quality products or services to promote, giving you full control, without damaging your credibility.

Which Associate Programs Will Prevail

Even though Adsense has a substantial amount of disadvantages, it will still have a major affect on a lot of Associate Programs that are currently operating today. In fact, you could say it’s a wake up call for many merchants, especially for the ones who operate a poor Associate Program. So if you operate your own Associate Program, that has a low commission percentage and/or has a poor conservation rate, now might be a good time to start thinking seriously about improving your Associate Program.

As to which Associate Programs will survive and prevail over Google’s Adsense, it will be determined by a number of things. In order for Associate Programs to prevail, they will need to offer a high commission percentage of 40% or higher, have a high conservation rate of 1% or higher, and be a breeze to promote.

In the end, Google’s Adsense is merely just another avenue of generating profits on your web site. Associate Programs will not become obsolete. Moreover, they will filter out the good Associate Programs from those that are bad, and only the quality ones will prevail.

Moreover, you can expect that Google will improve their Adsense campaign overtime, proving that they are a worthy adversary to the Associate Program industry. You must be able to adapt and improve as changes occur.

About The Author

Rich Hamilton, Jr is the CEO/President of http://www.ElitesMarketing.com. You can start earning cash today by joining our FREE Two Tier Associate Program and make $45 - $270 per sale http://www.ElitesMarketing.com/assoc/.

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This year many companies will send their customers and associates corporate Christmas cards that are printed with their company details and greeting. The benefits are obvious - maintaining relationships with key customers, demonstrating how greatly their custom is appreciated and sending a Christmas message can only be good for future business. The reality though is that it’s all too easy to send a card that generates a negative impression of the company, tarnishing the customer relationship.

By following simple steps, it’s possible to avoid costly mistakes and maximise the goodwill that a Christmas card generates.

Firstly, consider the image your company portrays and the industry in which it operates. For example a teamwork orientated card would be well suited to a Consultancy, whereas a travel company may send a card with a more global theme. Also remember that not all your customers may celebrate Christmas so the message on the card front needs to be appropriate to everyone, regardless of cultural and religious background - cards that state ‘Season’s Greetings’, ‘From All of Us’ and ‘From All The Team’ are good choices.

To help choose the ideal card, it’s a good idea to create a shortlist of the ones you like and then take advantage of the free samples that many suppliers will provide. This enables you to view the actual card and inspect the quality of board it’s produced on. You may want to check whether the board is sourced from sustainable forests, and even better, FSC certified

Careful thought should be given to what’s printed inside the card. Like the card design, the greeting needs to be appropriate and suitable to all recipients. Essential company information such as address, telephone, fax, website and email should be included. Like any marketing collateral, it also makes sense to display your company logo, so increasing brand presence and recognition.

Ensure that the list of recipients is up-to-date with the correct contact and current mailing address - there’s nothing worse than a new contact receiving a card addressed to their predecessor.

Be sure to sign the cards - this provides a personal touch, demonstrating how important you feel the recipient is to your business. It also shows that real time and effort has been spent. Add a small specific message as this makes the card even more exclusive.

One of the more common mistakes is not allowing enough time for signing, especially if there’s a lot of cards and signatures required. Try circulating cards well in advance of when they’ll be posted or if necessary arrange a ’signature session’ on a set day. Include all those that work most closely with the customers in this process.

Finally, be organised! Purchase cards in plenty of time so they can be signed and then sent at the start of the Festive period. This is especially true for companies mailing overseas where some final post dates for airmail are in early December.

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Every professional or consultant knows that clients typically hire people they know, like and trust. But how do you build trust with strangers?

As Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 150-year-old essay titled “Compensation” teaches, first you must give if you want to receive. The best positioning strategy for professional service firms is to build trust by giving away valuable information. That’s why professional service firm marketing works best when it demonstrates expertise by educating prospects, not asserting superiority through flashy brochures and Web sites.

Based on best practices research, here are 10 must-do positioning steps every professional service firm and technology service should take.

1. Identify the target market. Find a potential market niche that will be profitable. In today’s market, clients demand specialists. You want fewer prospects to be interested in you, but you want them to be much more intensely interested. This requires focus. It doesn’t mean you’ll turn down a client who doesn’t fit into your two or three chosen verticals — it simply means you won’t be actively shaping your marketing message toward them. Evaluate your business. Have you sold most of your products to golf-ball manufacturers, pet stores and electrical suppliers? Then those are the three places to start thinking. But if pet stores in general don’t have the budget for your products, you’ll need to look harder.

2. Make a promise. Determine what promise you or your firm is making to your target market. This includes your unique selling proposition: what you do, who you do it for and how you are unlike competitors — all in 25 words or less. Are you willing to make a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee a part of that promise? You need to decide what makes you different from everybody else, and you need to overcome fear of focus — the desire to want to be everything to everybody. People hire professionals who specialize. Very few people would hire a surgeon who says he can do everything from tonsillectomies to facelifts and open-heart procedures. When you’re in pain, you want a specialist — not just somebody who’s “good with a knife.”

3. Check your reflection. Take a fresh look at your logo, letterhead, business cards, office space, wardrobe — anything tangible that a prospect could use as a basis for an early opinion about you. Design changes every few years. Take a hard look. Do your printed materials look like they’re stuck in the disco era? This is where it pays to overspend. There are five attributes that clients use to judge professionals, and appealing tangibles heads the list.

4. Create an educational Web site. Create an easy-to-update, database-driven Web site that demonstrates your competence, rather than asserts how great you are. The Web site is the cornerstone of new marketing, and must not be a mere electronic brochure. Your Web site is the silent salesperson that prospective clients visit before making the decision to grant you permission to meet. We have information available on the most common blunders in Web design, and we share that with clients.

5. Determine proprietary process. Create a proprietary problem-solving process that you name and protect by obtaining a trademark. Your process must have a mysterious name that requires explanation. A proprietary process is not only a marketing asset that will allow you to charge more, but also will make your work less accidental and improve the quality of your service.

6. Conduct proprietary research. Conduct research that you own. Begin by choosing the three biggest problems your target clients face that your service can solve. What clients want to know most is how they stack up to their competition. Your specific answers will command client and media attention.

7. Create white papers or how-to articles. Write articles on how clients can solve their biggest problems. In essence, you are giving your insights away for free. These are used on the Web site and in the lead generation efforts. You need to give away information on how to solve problems in general so clients will trust you enough to hire you to solve their specific problems.

8. Create an image folder. Create an image folder that will not go out of date for a minimum of five years. The folder needs to be appealing and should contain as few words as possible. There are several techniques to ensure the folder has a long and useful shelf life, like not printing photos of people (fashions change) and phone numbers (so do area codes). Next, create the adaptable contents for the folder. You may choose up to three target markets, and need materials to adapt to each one. This allows you to project an image of a specialist with a specific process for each target client base.

9. Create a PDF of tips brochure. Avoid printing a brochure if at all possible; instead create an electronic version that can be read by anyone with an e-mail address and free Adobe Acrobat software. You can post the brochure on your Web site, e-mail it to clients and even use your own laser printer to create print-on-demand versions for Internet-averse potential clients. As to the content, think guidebooks with tips rather than the traditional puff pieces.

Henry DeVries is a marketing coach and writer specializing in lead generation for professional service firms. An adjunct marketing professor at UCSD since 1984, he is the author of “Self Marketing Secrets” and the recently published “Client Seduction.” Visit http://www.newclientmarketing.com or e-mail questions to henry@newclientmarketing.com.

© 2005 Henry DeVries, All rights reserved. You are free to use this material in whole or in part in pint, on a web site or in an email newsletter, as long as you include complete attribution, including live web site link. Please also notify me where the material will appear.

The attribution should read:

“By Henry DeVries of the New Client Marketing Institute. Please visit Henry’s web site at http://www.newclientmarketing.com for additional marketing articles and resources on marketing for professional service businesses.”

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One of the most effective methods of getting traffic to a sales page is very well-known within Adsense circles (used to send traffic to Adwords advertisers through the Adsense program), but not as well known for traffic generation directly to sales letters.

That method is the content site. There are literally thousands of people making a living online by simply creating content sites, placing Google Adsense code on those content sites and collecting a check from Google every month.

There are literally thousands of others who have sales pages selling products and services who have never created a content site and pay for their traffic through the Google Adwords program. Much of that traffic is coming from those who are creating the content sites and placing Google Adsense code on their pages.

Isn’t that interesting? If you have a sales page selling a product or service; how much could you save by cutting Google out of the loop? A lot! If you have been creating content sites and depending on Google for a paycheck, how much more could you earn if you sent that traffic to a site selling an information product of your own? A lot!

There is even more money to be gained with this strategy then you might first imagine. At first, you might be tempted to think that the only money being left on the table is the money going to Google for providing the Adwords and Adsense programs. Nothing could be further from the truth. If that was the only money involved, then the percentages that Google keeps are very small… their service is well worth that price.

But it’s not! That money is only the start. Let’s consider the following facts to see that we can actually earn a multiple of whatever you are currently earning from your Adsense check or from your product site if you cut Google out of the loop.

1. The Adsense algorithm isn’t perfect. It often shows ads that aren’t very relevant. If you cut Google out of the loop, you can make your content site to sales page site traffic 100% relevant 100% of the time.

2. Adsense publishers often only get 0.5%-15% click through rates on any Adsense ad due to a number of factors. The method I will show you in this article will deliver 25% of the hotest buyers from your content site to your traffic site continually.

3. Adsense is currently a negative ranking factor on all three major search engines (see RankingFactors.com for more information on that). That means that by running Adsense on your content sites, they are slowly losing search engine traffic month after month. By removing the Adsense and sending that traffic directly to a product site, you will retain your search engine traffic.

4. Many have reported getting banned by the Google Adsense program. You came to the Internet to make money because you wanted more control and freedom over your life. By getting a large percentage of your income from a single company (Google), you are sabotaging your efforts. You are at the mercy of Google just like you were/are at the mercy of any employer.

5. If you are selling a product using Adwords traffic, you also are at the mercy of Google and bidding wars. You must continually improve your conversion ratio or the ongoing bidding wars will eventually eat up your profit. Google (or Overture or any other bid PPC system) is slowly allowing your competitors to either receive more traffic while you receive less… or causing you to pay them more and more of your profit every month as you are forced to raise your bids to continue to receive traffic.

Wouldn’tyou rather generate your own traffic and not be held hostage to bidding wars?

So we are agreed that you want to cut Google out of the loop whether you are a content site creator or the seller of a product or service; right? How?

Well, first of all you will nead to learn the skills of the other side. They aren’t difficult whichever side of the fence you are on. If you are a content site creator, you can pick up InfoProdCreation.com and have your own product 35 hours from now with 5 hours of work. If you are a seller of a product or service, you already have the skills to create content sites. Just write articles instead of sales pages and give information instead of trying to sell. Make it a multi-page site instead of a single page sales letter.

And I’m about to give you the secret to traffic delivery from a content site to a traffic site. It’s very simple. Create a home page with only the following elements:

1. A very short 2 paragraph, 3-5 sentence description o your product or service (no selling here).

2. A large (size 6) link that says either “Enter Site” or “Enter Here”. This link leads to your product site.

3. Three smaller links (size 2) on a single line below the above link that lead to the rest of your content site. They can say “Widget Articles”, “Widget Reviews”, “Widget Forum” or whatever types of content you have on your content site… about widgets in this case.

You will find that about 50% of the traffic on a content site eventually ends up at the home page. You will find that about 50% of those that end up at the home page will choose to click the “Enter Site” or “Enter Here” link. You will find that those 25% of the content site visitors (50% of 50%) will be fairly pre-qualified to read your offer. In many, many split tests, this traffic has out-performed Google Adwords traffic.

Have fun and please leave a comment and let me know how much more money you are making with this strategy. I would love to hear from you.

Come check The Ramblings of James D. Brausch. My marketing blog is updated regularly with stuff the other guys would put in an ebook and sell you.

When we speak about viral marketing, we are not talking about the newest disease. We are not talking about a Mad Cow Disease variant or something that you need to be vaccinated for. In fact, we are not referring to a disease at all.

What we are talking about is literally the most powerful traffic generation technique available on the internet. Viral marketing is so powerful that it makes the search engines look small and insignificant in comparison. Even link exchanges, as powerful as they can be, wilt into oblivion in comparison.

What you do with viral marketing is create something, anything, that visitors will want to give to other people. This thing, whatever it is, contains a link and perhaps a short advertisement for your website, ezine or ebook. So far so good, this is just good marketing. The viral part comes in because the people who receive these items want to give them to other people, who in turn want to give them away also.

So you see? What you get is an explosion of marketing for a very small price. It’s actually kind of like an avalanche, in that you throw a snowball down a slope and it just grows and grows until the whole mountain of ice and snow is tumbling down.

One very cool viral marketing technique that any web site can take advantage of is greeting cards. I’m sure you’ve run across these all over the web. You select a graphic (a drawing, photo or other image), perhaps a sound file and add some text. This is sent to one or more people via email. These people open the email and click on a link to view their card. They, of course, have the option from here to visit your web site and perhaps send additional cards to other people (or back to the sender).

If your cards are good enough, you can find this technique alone will generate an incredible amount of traffic. Of course, you have the same problem with greeting cards that you have with your web site - you have to get people to it to begin with. Once you do that, however, you will find that it becomes more or less self maintaining. The more traffic you get the more you generate. Just make sure that all of your greeting card pages are listed in the search engines, well displayed on your page (and perhaps all of your pages) and advertised elsewhere as much as practical.

In fact, it’s a good idea to spend as much or more time marketing the greeting cards as the rest of your site, since these tend to create visitors exponentially, while your site is linear.

How do you put greeting cards on your site? First, pick a theme or two. If your site is about model railroads, for example, you might get some photos of trains and train sets; you could include vacation photos, cute animal pictures, scanned drawings or anything else that you feel would make a good card. Just remember to honor copyrights - make sure you have the right to make copies of the materials before you use them.

Once you have a theme or two, you need to find a greeting card service. I’ve experimented with a few options. I’ve tried hosting it entirely on my own site, and what I’ve found is it is difficult to maintain. I’ve also tried it completely hosted on another site and found it is too restrictive.

The service that I settled upon is called CyberGreeting Network - http://cybergreet.net/. This company, in my opinion, provides the best of both worlds (local and remotely hosted).

The pages, images and sound files are stored on your own web site. You can tailor these all that you want so they blend with your pages perfectly. This is the perfect freedom, and as long as you set up the form properly all will work fine.

How do you do this? You download a template file (as explained in their instructions) and modify it to suite your needs. This may require a little effort on your part (as well as some skill with HTML) but the end result will be worth it.

The remote part of the product (which is free, by the way) is the piece that actually formats and sends the card. You see, on your page you get the visitor to supply the answers to a series of questions in a form. The form data is submitted to a CGI routine which puts everything together into a greeting card. Your visitor simply answers the questions and presses submit. You pass all of this to the routine, which then sends the card to the destination.

I was able to get half a dozen pages of greeting cards working perfectly in an afternoon. These remain on my site, and serve me well by creating a steady, growing stream of traffic. I think you would do well to take a look and determine if this will work for your site as well.

About The Author

Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets. This website includes over 1,000 free articles to improve your internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.

Web Site Address: http://www.internet-tips.net

Weekly newsletter: http://www.internet-tips.net/joinlist.htm

Claudia Arevalo-Lowe is the webmistress of Internet Tips And Secrets and Surviving Asthma. Visit her site at http://survivingasthma.com

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