Form – Websites have only seconds to engage and inspire visitors. Load time, aesthetics, navigation, and function are all vital or potential customers can easily lose interest. Along with the importance of internet marketing, top quality website design shouldn’t be optional; it should be standard.

Ensure you know what makes a website look and feel inspirational whilst combining aesthetics with our expertise in internet marketing and search marketing campaigns. Engaging, informative and useful solutions designed with both the user, and business objectives clearly in mind, are vital ingredients to work alongside website marketing.

Function – Web Development should always be defined, not by artistic, but by business, and therefore, Web Marketing objectives. Whatever your development, business objectives alongside internet marketing should remain the key focus. Other useful functions might include SMS text systems, RSS feeds, downloads, membership systems, forums and collaborative solutions, all contributing to a web marketing strategy to make the most of your internet marketing budget.

Sites should adhere to DDA guidelines making them readable and navigable by all, irrespective of website marketing strategies, user location, experience, or the technology used.

SEO – All our designs and developments should integrate Search Marketing and SEO structural elements, including:

* Keyword and phrase definition, where appropriate terms are applied to draw suitable visitors and maximize search marketing potential.

* Search engine preparation involves the use of clean, current standard compliant HTML code, a high ratio of content to code and a fast-loading, accessible search engine friendly structure to aid search marketing.

* Content & Structure organisation involves making each page contain high quality copy and structural elements – heading, paragraph and other HTML tags to make effective use of search marketing.

* Link Popularity. Global link popularity is of critical importance for successful SEO and search marketing.

* Keyword and phrase definition, where appropriate terms are applied to draw suitable visitors and maximize search marketing potential.

* Search engine preparation involves the use of clean, current standard compliant HTML code, a high ratio of content to code and a fast-loading, accessible search engine friendly structure to aid search marketing.

* Content & Structure organisation involves making each page contain high quality copy and structural elements – heading, paragraph and other HTML tags to make effective use of search marketing.

* Link Popularity. Global link popularity is of critical importance for successful SEO and search marketing.

Feel free to contact us for more information

Search engine optimisation analysis (or, if you’re in America, search engine optimization analysis) is a thorough healthcheck for your website. Free SEO analysis will give you the starting point for investigating deeper into just how effective your website is and how popular it is with those all-important search engines.

Search engine optimisation analysis is exactly what it says it is – a complete analysis of all the components that go up to make your website as noticeable as possible to the search engine spiders that index every page on the Internet. Effective search engine optimization analysis will mean that your website has a much higher chance of being listed higher up the PageRank than just leaving things to chance. Nearly all search engine optimisation analysis consultants carry out free SEO analysis as an initial starting point.

A professional search engine optimization analysis consultant will start by giving your website a thorough initial check. This is usually a free SEO analysis, and lays the foundations for more in-depth search engine optimisation analysis as your relationship with your SEO consultant progresses. The initial free SEO analysis is vital because every website is different and will require its own unique degree of search engine optimisation. Analysis of this initial data gives the SEO consultant a baseline to develop more complex solutions.

Search engine optimization analysis – what it should include

A good search engine optimization analysis should include several key points at the initial stage. Search engine optimization analysis should begin with statistical data, giving you a breakdown of not just information you may be already aware of, but other hidden data such as how many people are using your specific keywords to search the web each day or what your competitors are doing. The initial free SEO analysis may or may not include this data.

As there may be a huge volume of information, try talking to your SEO consultant before you initiate the search engine optimisation analysis, and see if they can include a general overview of the data in the initial free SEO analysis.

Part of the initial free SEO analysis may include a consultation with your consultant to explain the terminology used in search engine optimisation. Analysis is impossible if you don’t understand the terminology, so ask your consultant to sit down with you and go through any terminology that you may not understand.

Specific keyword searches are commonly included in the initial free SEO analysis, listing the most commonly used keywords within your particular sphere of interest. Further search engine optimisation analysis will delve deeper into this important aspect of your website’s development, making recommendations of keywords or key phrases that you could be incorporating into your site to increase the amount of interest it generates amongst the search engine spiders and, more importantly, visitors.

Good quality search engine optimization analysis will take into account current trends, Geo-centric criteria such as differences in spelling and cultural trends, and over-used keywords and phrases. Although the initial free SEO analysis will give you some idea as to the basic state of your website’s keyword health, a deeper search engine optimization analysis will look at this in much greater depth.

Your initial free SEO analysis should give you a rough idea of the number of backlinks your site is attracting, but a more in-depth search engine optimisation analysis will be able to show you how to use this particular SEO tool to your advantage. This would also include the use of social bookmarking and other cutting edge techniques.

It’s not just all about numbers. A good free SEO analysis will give you other evidence and data that will back up the numbers. A more in-depth search engine optimization analysis will then go further into this, giving you a better understanding of both your current and target audiences and how they respond to specific stimulation on the Internet. This can include the use of video and audio media, content copy and other key factors.

The primary free SEO analysis will take into account your current PageRank and possibly even suggest basic ways of improving your ranking on the major search engines. The more comprehensive search engine optimisation analysis will look far more closely at this, as it is one of the key components of SEO.

Feel free to contact for more information

The first thing to contend with is the nature and content of the articles – the messages you are trying to convey and the way in which they’re shared – the copy.

As part of a web marketing campaign, online press releases should take care to highlight the most newsworthy aspects of the stories using clear, competent English to communicate as succinctly and professionally as possible in order for your internet marketing to be most effective.

Don’t simply develop online press releases as part of website marketing to make a sale. Instead offer the media useful information about your organization, products, services or events to maximize internet marketing impact.

Web marketing press releases should be formatted in ways that make them quick and easy to evaluate for busy journalists.

Another issue with this kind of internet marketing is distribution. It’s great having beautifully crafted, informative and interesting online press releases, but if nobody has the opportunity to read them through lack of distribution, or the articles appearing in the wrong places, then the whole exercise is futile and very poor web marketing. Your messages will be lost and your website marketing budget wasted.

There are a variety of web marketing channels through which to share the release and raise your profile through our website marketing campaign management.

A high quality database of handpicked, targeted journalists and editors specific to your business and the information referred to in the release to provide the most effective website marketing possible.

You should also consider Yahoo News, Google News and other news search engines that pick up press releases and consider closely the web marketing benefits of paid inclusion on major web portals such as Yahoo, AltaVista and AlltheWeb.

Syndicated network news feeds, blogging technology and new standards like XML, OPML, ATOM, RSS, and NewsML also provide powerful channels of distribution and raise your search marketing and website marketing profile.

Internet Marketing is best deployed as part of an overall strategic web marketing campaign. Internet Marketing should be viewed as a synergy of business models, platforms, technology and techniques applied to meet business objectives through good website marketing.

Internet Marketing is a powerful concept when applied properly and good website marketing can be delivered through quality web design, site functionality and search marketing through search engine optimisation as well as in a variety of other formats such as:

    * Banner ads

    * Blogs and blog ads

    * Text linking

    * Group marketing

    * Audio/visual rich media ads

    * Podcasting

    * RSS feeds

    * Streaming media

    * E-mail list and newsletter publishing

    * Press release distribution

    * Virally distributed interactive products

Internet Marketing delivers and communicates messages. Internet Marketing is also used to also sell virtually everything from products, brands, concepts, services, information, donations, votes and profiles, making website marketing a versatile tool.

Large marketers continue to spend big online through Website Marketing and Search Marketing. Online advertising alone is worth tens of billions of dollars annually. In 2008 it is estimated that more than $5 billion will be spent worldwide in each of the top four categories of Internet Marketing ads – adult content and gambling, information, electronics, and computing, making web marketing a growing industry.

The US is predicted to lead the world in Internet Marketing through adverts, spending over $45 billion in 2011 purely on website marketing, making internet marketing big business.

The reasons for Internet Marketing proving such a powerful, emergent concept are many.

Internet Marketing is targeted:Internet Marketing can be directed at specific web users, with content and media created to deliver appropriate messages via website marketing techniques. Specialised interest groups and niches can be focused by targeted Internet Marketing.

Internet Marketing is flexible:An Internet Marketing campaign can be very specific, not just in where and how the Internet Marketing campaign will run but also when the web marketing runs. Website Marketing Campaigns can be time exact and efficient.

Internet Marketing is measurable:Internet Marketing campaign performance analytics can be closely studied to reveal key web marketing performance indicators. E.g. – new customers acquired, status of existing customers, profitability of customers by demographic segments, spend per head, return on investment and many more website marketing stats. Website Marketing results are easily accessible, making web marketing and search marketing a great measurable tool.

Internet Marketing is adjustable:As the Internet is such a dynamic environment, website marketing campaigns can be honed as an ongoing process of web marketing. Analytics and Internet Marketing campaign data can reveal strengths and weaknesses in Web Marketing campaigns and website marketing resources deployed accordingly. Website marketing isn’t just focused and proactive, Internet Marketing can also be extremely reactive.

Internet Marketing is Cost Effective:Internet Marketing is relatively inexpensive when compared to the ratio of cost against the reach of the target audience. Using website marketing, companies are able to reach their target audience for a fraction of traditional advertising budgets with good Internet Marketing.

The current economic downturn may offer many potential opportunities for companies to develop effective website marketing, search marketing and advertising. Search marketing incorporating organic search engine optimisation and pay per click (PPC) web marketing campaigns prove the most effective forms of website marketing.

As it is often difficult to distinguish between legitimate and unsolicited e-mail web marketing, it might be a safer bet when considering email internet marketing to look at an opt-in campaign.

Organisations need to be careful when using email as a web marketing strategy that they don’t alienate recipients, or become labeled as spammers for using this kind of internet marketing.

You can design an opt-in email web marketing campaign – an effective communication and internet marketing option to increase customer loyalty.

Make sure you apply the following stages in your Opt-in email web marketing campaigns.

Email Web Marketing Application. Do your message, company and audience lend themselves to email as an internet marketing medium? How best might it be applied? Analyse the potential efficacy and style of appropriate email internet marketing campaigns.

Email Web Marketing Copy. Work hard to ensure the email web marketing campaign uses well-written copy to maximize internet marketing potential.

Creative. Create e-mail designs that load quickly and look great to maximize the web marketing impact. Avoid large images, hidden content and over ambitious styling.

Email Web Marketing List Building. Build true opt-in email web marketing campaigns through subscription lists created through forms, invitations and incentives to maximize the internet marketing impact.

Test. Test for the most effective web marketing combinations of copy and landing pages.

Email Web Marketing Administration. Keep your list clean and usable, monitor opt-outs, remove duplicate and dead addresses.

Email Web Marketing Analysis. Closely track email web marketing campaigns, monitor opened e-mails and used links – adjusting internet marketing campaigns and modifying messages accordingly.

I see it time and time again: The number-one challenge faced by brand-new internet business owners is a lack of traffic. Obviously, if your website isn’t getting any traffic, you’re not generating any sales. And what’s worse is that without traffic, you can’t test the key components of your sales process. And if you roll out a large traffic campaign before you’ve tested your site to make sure it converts maximum visitors into buyers, you risk losing sales and looking unprofessional to potential business partners and affiliates.

So you’re caught in a vicious cycle: Before ramping up a big traffic campaign, you need to test your sales process, but without any traffic, testing is difficult–if not impossible!

In this article, I’m going to give you an eight-step action plan that will show you:

How to get cheap, instant traffic to your website so you can test key components of your sales process–your sales copy, order form, navigation and opt-in offer–before rolling out a large-scale traffic campaign;

How to ensure that every element of your sales process is optimized to convert maximum traffic into maximum sales;

The most effective strategies for attracting thousands of highly qualified potential buyers to your site right away; and the secret to putting your entire traffic campaign on autopilot.

So even if your site is getting no traffic right now, you can be testing the key elements of your sales process tomorrow–and as soon as two weeks from now, you can be rolling out your traffic campaign in full.

Sound good? Let’s get you started off on the right foot!

Step 1: Get the traffic you need to test your website fast! When I talk about testing with new internet business owners, I hear the same two questions all the time:

·          How do I test my site?

·          What do I test on my site?

As you may already know, there are an infinite number of things you can test on your site to help you increase sales. From layout to copy to design, there are limitless combinations of changes that may improve your visitor-to-sale conversion rate. But what’s “enough” when you’re just starting out?

What elements should you focus on testing before rolling out your traffic campaign?

My advice is to stick to the basics. Focus on testing your:

Salescopy, especially your headline, benefits, guarantee and call to action

Order process, which needs to be simple enough for a novice web user to place an order

Opt-in offer, so you can determine if you’re successfully capturing your visitors’ contact information

Site navigation, so you can figure out how many clicks it takes to buy. Ideally it should take less than three.

These are the four critical aspects of your sales process that need to be tested before you start driving traffic. Later on, once you’ve generated sales and have some steady traffic, you can move on to testing other parts of your site.

Of course, all this talk of testing your new site raises one big question: How can you test without traffic?

The solution is simple: Buy traffic through PPC search engines. Pay-per-click search engines are a lot like auctions–they allow you to bid for top-ranking positions under keywords of your choice. For each visitor who searches the keyword(s) you bid on and then clicks through to your site, you pay whatever you bid. Prices typically range from five cents to a few dollars per click-through for popular keywords.

With PPC search engines, you get cheap, instant, qualified traffic–provided you bid on targeted keywords. Not only that, but bidding on traffic in the PPC search engines can help your site get ranked in the free search engines, too!

Here are a few tips to help you start bidding for traffic without breaking the bank:

Bid on targeted, descriptive keywords. So don’t just bid on “sock;” bid on “red wool sock.” Not only are targeted keywords and phrases usually cheaper to bid on–they’ll also attract more qualified potential buyers. Use a keyword selection tool like Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool to research targeted keywords that attract maximum traffic for minimal cost-per-click.

After you’ve tested and tweaked your site with a limited amount of purchased traffic, it’s time to start generating qualified traffic for your site on a larger scale. But how do you go from some traffic to a ton of traffic?

Step 2: Get cheap traffic quickly with PPC advertising. Once you’ve tested your site with limited PPC traffic, the fastest way to ramp up traffic to your site is to roll out a PPC campaign on a larger scale.

This is also a great time to get started with Google AdWords . With Google AdWords, you get instant traffic with no waiting. Because as soon as you put the money down on your keywords, your ad goes up and starts working for you.

Step 3: Get free traffic from search engines like Google. Now that you’ve bid on keywords for a strong showing in the PPC search engines, it’s time to tackle the organic search engines and directories. Search engines like Google and directories like Yahoo! can still be a great source of free traffic for your website. The trick is getting a competitive ranking for your best keywords.

The first step in getting a top ranking in the search engines is to submit or suggest your site to them. In other words, you have to provide them with details about your site. You want to make sure that the “spiders”–automated programs that crawl the web indexing sites for the search engines–find your site and include it in the search results. Create lots of free links in directories.

And don’t bother with companies that offer to submit your site to the search engines. Since each search engine uses a different set of criteria to rank your site, free submission services can actually end up doing you more harm than good, since they submit the same information in the same way to all the engines.

Step 4: Give away irresistible free content for priceless publicity. Believe it or not, a really easy, frequently undervalued strategy for getting traffic is giving away free content to other websites. Even just two or three well-written articles can generate truckloads of traffic, as long as they don’t contain a sales pitch. You want to include rare, hard-to-get information that’ll lend your articles automatic value–the kind of information that establishes you as an expert in your field.

Once you’ve finished an article, write a short bio paragraph about you and your business and place it at the end of your article along with–and this is the most important part–a link to your site.

To locate sites that might be interested in your content, e-mail other website owners in your industry–be sure to choose sites that receive attention and visits from your target market–and invite them to use your article on their site or in their newsletter at absolutely no cost. Many site owners need fresh content, so they’ll be more than happy to post your articles–and it won’t be long before those articles start driving traffic back to your site.

Another option is to give away your articles through free content websites like these:

www.ezinearticles.com

www.freesticky.com

Your articles will automatically be made available to thousands of websites seeking free, quality content–and all you have to do is submit your articles once.

Don’t underestimate the power of giving away free content. And as your articles gain more exposure, don’t be surprised if you’re contacted by high-profile magazine and portal sites related to your industry looking for free articles to include on their sites, too.

Step 5: Get free word of mouth publicity using viral marketing. Simply defined, viral marketing is a way for you to spread your marketing message like a virus. You encourage people to pass on information about your site to others, and you use that word-of-mouth publicity to advertise your business. Once you start the “virus,” it spreads without you lifting a finger.

You can easily duplicate this strategy by doing something as simple as including a “pass it on link”at the end of a free newsletter, something as simple as:

“If you’ve enjoyed this article, please be sure to forward it to a friend!”

By simply asking readers to take action and forward your newsletter, you’ll prompt free word of mouth exposure for your business without any extra cost or hassle.

How else can you put viral marketing to work for you? Here are a few simple ideas:

·          Give away free articles (like the ones I describe in Step 4) that include a “pass it on” link.

·          Give away free demos of your product.

·          Offer a free trial of your service with a “share this great resource” button on the page.

·          Hold a contest on your site, and give participants an extra entry for every friend they refer.

·          Start an affiliate program (see Step 7 below).

By simply encouraging people to “share this resource with friends,” you can attract some great word-of-mouth traffic.

Step 6: Get free links on other high-traffic websites. Link requests require minimal effort from you, but they can absolutely explode your traffic numbers overnight. How? If your site is a featured link on a major site in your industry–one that receives a ton of attention–your site immediately benefits from all the exposure their site receives.

Getting started with this strategy is simple, but you should follow a standard process every time you request a link. Let’s break it down into a few easy steps:

Do a Google search for your standard keywords–the ones that people generally use to find your site.

Make detailed notes about the sites that appear regularly in the top ten listings for your major keywords.

Use the Alexa Toolbar, LinkPopularity or Technorati to find out what other sites these sites are linking to, whose linking to them and how much traffic they’re receiving, then look up their contact information.

Before making contact, make sure you know the correct URL for the site, the URL of the sub-page on which you want your link to appear, the name of the site owner or webmaster, the date you last visited their site, and a brief description of the contents of the site.

When you’re ready to contact the owners of these website and request a link, write a personal e-mail–don’t use form letters. Be sure to include some positive comments about their site, information about you and your site (along with your URL), an explanation of why a link to you would benefit them, and instructions for contacting you to get started.

You want your request to be thorough and professional. If you can present a persuasive argument for why the link request benefits both of you, you stand a better chance of forging a connection. And if you’re really eager to get your link on their site, be prepared to up the ante by offering them a commission or a link on your site in return. The investment could be well worth the extra exposure your marketing message receives.

When other businesses request links on your site, my advice is, be stingy. Just as links on others’ sites serve as a personal recommendation of your site, links on your site are recommendations for their businesses. Only recommend the best!

Okay, now let’s talk about the ultimate linking strategy.

Step 7: Get thousands of websites to promote your business for free. Imagine hundreds, even thousands, of websites promoting your product or service without spending a dime until someone refers a paying customer. You can do this with what’s called an affiliate program.

Affiliate programs–also referred to as “reseller” or “associate” programs–are a great way to get other people (called “affiliates”) to promote your product or service for you. For every paying customer your affiliates refer to your site, you pay them a commission. And since you only pay when you make money, it’s an extremely low-risk option.

Here’s how it works: Your affiliates send visitors to your site using banner ads, text links, letters of referral and so on, while you track these referrals using special software. It’s an extremely powerful way to grow your business because it automates your traffic generation. To get started with your own affiliate program, you need to:

Establish your commissions. To keep your affiliates motivated, you should pay them 40 to 50 percent of your profits per sale.

Get software to track the traffic and sales of your affiliates so you know what to pay them.

Provide your affiliates with tools they can use to promote your products, such as e-mails, banners and so on.

Recruit more affiliates. Look for sites that target your market, and invite them to become affiliates.

Affiliate programs are an ideal way to automate your traffic generation because other people are marketing your site for you. Your sales increase on a daily basis–but your affiliates do all the selling for you, and it doesn’t cost you a dime until they send you paying customers.

Now, for the final step, let’s talk about what you need to do to keep your traffic coming back to your site again and again.

Step 8: Use e-mail marketing to attract repeat visitors. Getting lots of traffic to your site is great, but if you aren’t collecting the contact information–the names and e-mail addresses–of visitors, you’re wasting every single click. If visitors leave your site without buying your product, there’s a good chance they won’t ever be back–and you’ll have absolutely no way of following up with them.

Remember: It can take up to seven points of contact to make a single sale, so you’ll want to begin collecting visitors’ contact information from day one using an opt-in form on your home page. Then send them e-mail messages to follow up and keep them thinking about your site. Need some ideas for e-mails you could send to follow up with your opt-in subscribers? Try these ideas:

·          Monthly or bi-weekly newsletters that include tons of tips and information

·          Free reports on topics your market would appreciate

·          Answers to common questions people ask about your product

·          Offers for products similar or complementary to ones you may have already offered them

·          Free product trials that give potential customers a taste of what you have to offer

·          A “downgrade” offer for a product that’s less expensive or robust than your featured offer

Following up with the addresses you gather is quick, easy and simple with e-mail management and automation software. You can create e-mail messages called “autoresponders” that potential customers receive automatically as soon as they opt-in on your site–within seconds–no matter what time of day it is or whether you’re even at your desk!

That’s right: As soon as your visitors opt in, they’ll start hearing from you on a regular basis without you having to deal with the stress of writing a ton of e-mails to individual addresses. This is a process you can put on autopilot from the very beginning.

Good luck is desirable but following the strategies outlined above you might not need it.

The Marketing Sages is an online website marketing service founded and run by internet marketer Richard Longworth in the UK this service provides businesses both offline and online with search engine optimization services. These services include optimizing websites with the right keywords and meta tags, pay-per-click, and direct email marketing.

Detailed Overview

Arguably the most important thing about marketing on the internet is getting ranked high–and often–in the major search engines. Though a lot of business, both offline and online, know how to market their products and services in many different ways, getting traffic to their websites is often one of the most difficult tasks.

The Marketing Sages is a marketing service that gives businesses the opportunity to take advantage of their expertise in the internet marketing venue. The company has been in business for over 10 years, and their record is sound.

Some of the search engine optimization services that The Marketing Sages provide are organic search engine optimization, opt-in email marketing and internet video marketing. They call their organic search engine marketing service “Search Engine Ranking and Visibility”.

This service focuses primarily on website content, giving it credibility but at the same time inserting the right keywords and phrases that make it show up repeatedly in top results in the search engines.

The Marketing Sages service fees vary widely, according to the specific needs of the business customer. Packages normally include such things as website analysis and search engine, submission, but they may or may not include pay-per-click or email marketing, setting up Affiliate marketing programs, linking campaigns. The Marketing Sages promise a ROI once the analysis stage has been completed.

Reputation

The Marketing Sages has an excellent reputation in the internet marketing industry, and the business industry in general, as a company that provides quality search engine optimization service, as well as other types of marketing services such as print, design, PR activity, telemarketing etc.

If you’re looking to create an online income stream as fast as possible, then promoting affiliate products is definitely the way to go.

As an affiliate, you don’t have to worry about finding, purchasing, warehousing, or shipping stock to customers. Instead, you simply recommend other peoples’ products in exchange for commissions!

All you have to do is attract traffic to your website, then send that traffic to your merchant’s site. When your traffic buys their product, money goes into your bank account.

So what kind of income can you expect from your commission checks?

Well, that depends on a few things. First, what affiliate program do you sign up with? Good merchants offer commissions of 20% to 50% of the profits on each unit sold. If they’re only offering you a measly 5% to 10%, it’s probably not worth your time…

…Because if you really want to make good affiliate money, it’s going to take some work.

How YOU can become a good affiliate, and earn MAXIMUM profits with your website:

Define a niche market, and target your affiliate products to that market. DON’T pick a product just because you think it looks cool… and DON’T cram your site with a virtual flea market of unrelated products!

Find a hungry market, and sell them products they’re likely to buy.

Build relationships and credibility with your site’s visitors. You’ll be a lot more effective if your visitors trust and respect your opinions. That means you’ll have to spend time engaging with your visitors.

Regular emails, blog comments, and even social media sites are all simple, no-brainer ways to establish your expertise, build that credibility, and form those relationships.

Actively market your products. You can’t just post a product plug and then expect profits. Actively marketing means that you’re constantly looking for new ways to tweak your site’s design or salescopy, or to engage with your visitors…

… or even to scope out the competition and see what’s working for them.

Create a content-rich, “sticky” website. Much as we’d like them to, people are just not going to sit still to listen to your pitch. You have to give them good reasons to stop by, so create content that’s useful to them. Try newsletters, product reviews and comparisons, helpful tips, contests, quizzes, polls, and so on.

The more good stuff you’ve got out there, the more likely people are to visit your website on a regular basis!

Constantly test your marketing strategies. Don’t settle for a modest income – once you start getting those first sales, look for better ways to bring products to your site visitors’ attention. Seek new ways to attract visitors to your site. And find more successful ways of converting those visitors into paying customers.

The good news is that it’s EASY to become an affiliate as there are thousands of affiliate programs out there. The challenge is finding the right products and services to sell on your website, and making sure you can sell them.

You, the affiliate, via your website, drive traffic to a merchant’s site.

The merchant may be selling a product eg DVDs or e books, or they may be trying to sign on clients eg a bank. The merchant pays you a commission once the visitor has completed the desired action eg bought a product or completed a registration form

The merchant knows that the visitor is from you because you link to the merchant’s site through a special affiliate link. This link is unique to you and you alone.

Other affiliates will have their own special affiliate link which is different from yours.

Although different affiliate marketers for the same product have different, unique affiliate links, all these links point to the same website, the merchant’s website.

The affiliate aims simply to drive as much ‘targeted traffic’ as possible to his/her own unique affiliate link

The beauty of this is, once your site is up and running, you can continue to earn money from it whether you are in bed, on holiday or sleeping. This is called passive income.

It is passive because after the initial effort of researching your chosen market, building a website and setting up your campaign, you can continue to earn from this with very minimal day to day input in your campaign.

For more information on Affiliate Marketing

Visitors Who Know Exactly What They Want

Make your site visible in search engines for brand names, model numbers, model names, or the benefits as perceived by prospects (e.g., “Sharp microwave,” “e430,” “Zaurus SL 5600,” or “hands-free phone”). According to Dr. Amanda Watlington, iProspect’s director of research, “Searchers create queries in their own language, so it is important that your search terms match their idiom. Surprisingly, the idiom of the searcher is often at odds with the corporate marketers’.”

Smart advertisers set out to win a customer’s heart long before that customer needs their products. The only goal is to be the company prospects think of first and feel best about when the need arises – positive awareness. When I need the latest book by my favorite author, I click over to Amazon to buy it or at least to put it in my wish list (this can be a form of functionality on your site or in your prospect’s heart).

When prospects get to your site, make it easy for them to find what they need and buy it. They know what they want, but that doesn’t mean they’re ready to purchase from you (purchase intent is not the same as a purchase). You must demonstrate the value you provide and ensure they feel confident in their decision to buy from you. Design point of action locations and contexts carefully.

Visitors Who Know Approximately What They Want

Broaden search engine and pay-per-click marketing to reflect where prospects are in their buying decision.

If prospects subscribe to your opt-in email list, don’t try to sell what you have. Segment your list, and offer only what is relevant. Demonstrate understanding of their visit history (when and how often they visit your site and what they view). Notice when you arrive on Amazon’s home page, a product is offered similar to the last one you purchased or viewed?

When prospects arrive at your site, deliver content that informs and persuades toward a purchase decision. The primary reason most prospects don’t take an action is because they lack enough information to feel confident in a decision. This is where “desire data”  is essential. Also, be sure your navigation is designed as part of the persuasive architecture to lead these people through a slower purchase scenario than those who already know exactly what they want. Once prospects decide you have what they want, you must still inspire their confidence in you.

Visitors Who Aren’t Sure What They Want/Are Just Browsing

This is the most difficult type to persuade. They’re probably early in their buying process, just becoming aware they have a need or problem they need help with. If they clearly defined that need, you can help by educating them about the need or problem, and providing possible solutions. It’s hard for most businesses to justify the investment in these customers, as the payoff is usually longer term.

Once upon a time most companies were focused on traffic and eyeballs. Today, more businesses are aware of their conversion problems. To assist prospects at this point, develop content to help them define their problem clearly, then map a path toward a solution. They can’t seek or find a solution to a problem until it is recognized and defined.

Publish an opt-in email newsletter that delivers true value. Don’t shout, “Sale! Sale! Sale!” Your subscribers care only about themselves and their problems, not your company or solution. If you consistently deliver value, they’ll stay subscribed and keep reading. When prospects advance in the buying process, they’ll remember you as an alternative for a solution.

Two Steps to Maximizing ROI

First, maximize your e-business initiative by staying focused on all three types of prospects. Have a clear measure of your customers’ lifetime value. If you focus primarily on visitors who know exactly what they want, most likely you have been acquiring transactional customers, not relational customers.

The biggest way to increasing conversion is to sell to people who bought from you before.

The number two method is educate, inform, empower, and persuade prospects you provide value — and to do this as early as possible in the buying process. No matter where they are in the process, make sure you always talk about their needs.