Archive for December, 2009

The face of the internet is changing and for many sites it will be time to make massive changes or face extinction, advertising and good content will not be enough to guarantee survival it will require a  lot more effort on the part of site owners in order to maintain traffic numbers and positioning on the search engines.

It will be important that site owners and webmasters ensure that evey piece of content on their sites is also registered on as many social networks as is humanely possible, the greater the saturation of pingbacks from the social networks the better they can expect their sites to perform, of course this means tons of extra work.

SEO and site submissions will fade in importance replaced by social bookmarking and good marketing practices, various forms of advertising will still be a strong influence in a sites prominence on the internet but without the addition of social linking sites will suffer badly in the coming year.

Socializing your site will entail a little more than simply installing one of the many social bookmarking scripts though, site owners and webmasters will need to establish a strong presence within each network, building friendships and groups of followers, these are extremely important as these same people will be the driving force behind your sites promotion and the root source of your sites traffic, initially you will need to establish your self within the network and it is a good idea during the first few weeks to post often but avoid any direct advertising of your sites, many networks will only allow advertising is certain locations and it is imperative you stick to their rules or face being banned.

When joining a network it is always a good idea to use your real name over an alias and where possible a photo of yourself (I suggest a good clear head shot photo over a full profile as it allows viewers to look into your eyes and establish a sense of trust).

Avoid making outlandish claims and avoid conflict at all costs, you can still prove your point with out getting nasty and gutter talk will upset more than just the person it's aimed at, be polite at all times and remember you are trying to build respect and trust, it will pay off in the long run as people begin to see you as a pillar of the society.

Once you have established your self within these communities it's time to look at ways you can promote your sites, my favourite is to include links within my signature as this will be seen in all areas of the network and in most is not deemed to be against the rules.

There are 4 main traffic areas in most social networks where you need to be very active these are

• The Network Forums.
• The Network Article section
• The networks Groups
• The Networks Blogs

Most networks also have a classified section however i would not waste time or money there as people generally visit a social network to meet people and gain information not to visit the classifieds (would you go to the swim pool to do your grocery shopping ?).

Posting articles in a social networks article system or blog system needs to be done right in most cases you will be allowed to use some html and this is very handy as it will enable you to put links to relevant articles on your sites within these postings, forums and group areas are normally controlled more rigidly and posting of links is generally frowned upon so you will need to rely on your signature to get people to your sites.

Performed correctly social bookmarking will rocket your sites value and turnover, it will expose your products and services to millions of users and with the launch in 2010 of Googles Caffeine search system and personalised search will see it gain page 1 on a regular basis across a much wider range of queries, You will be seen as an authority figure in your field and could even see approaches from other companies wanting you to feature on their pages and in their publications.

As a webmaster your New years resolution should be to become hyper active as a social networker and Survive the coming Netquake.

Alternative business is a term to break the mindset falsely given to the home based business industry because of the minority of Internet users that practice fraud and scams.

Alternative business start ups are seeing a huge spike as millions of unemployed professionals have taken their skills online in a tough economy and tight job market. With over 10% unemployment in the United States alone the most experienced workers, true experts in their industry, are finding it hard to gain employment over college graduates that offer new direction at a lower salary.

I am just such a person. I have over 16 years of business management experience and have been marketing online since January 2003. I don't have a college degree but have made a range of employers millions of dollars in income due to my real world experience. My experience though will come in handy to someone starting out in management and business promotion though, so there is opportunity still to be found even if not in employment in my chosen profession.

So how are older and more experienced experts making a move to online business?

The biggest trends I am seeing online are in:

• Former executives and managers offering consulting services online on a per project fee basis.

• Industry experts from all levels building for profit blogs and sharing tips and strategy from their years of experience with their readers, and earning money through selling advertising, using affiliate programs, and through PPC Publisher programs such as Google Adsense or Bidvertiser.

• E-book, video, and audio training courses. Experts are becoming self publishers at the speed of light and beginning to create complete training systems in their niche industry in the form of well written manuals, video training, and audio book formats and selling through such channels as Amazon, E-bay, Click Bank, and PayDotCom.

• Displaced sales professionals and stay home moms and dads are also turning to affiliate marketing and selling other expert's products to add extra cash to make ends meet.

• Still others prefer to accept some degree of retirement and have opted to become online business start up investors, angel investors, and silent business partners.

So how much money are they making and how hard is it starting a Alternative Business?

Starting a online business is pretty easy but success takes effort and ethics. The money varies based on exactly what approach you use and also depends on if you are an affiliate or a program author. The most successful are finding a path to Internet millions and the least successful are supplementing that unemployment check with few extra dollars each month. Your mindset also dictates success. A home business is a real business and requires time and often money. You see free to join programs and others touting free advertising etc.. but there are in reality only a few methods to gain targeted visitors and convert sales and they require real effort and research or at least a small investment .

The most lucrative Alternative Business or Home Based Business enterprises seem to be coming from the development of targeted training memberships sites, and from e-book series authors who have a line of products and a team of affiliates working to help promote and sell their multi-part courses. They will write a new step in the system every month to two months expanding on the first book or audio and if the information is good they can see each new release exceed $100,000 in sales using popular affiliate management services like Clickbank mentioned above or running their own in house affiliate system like we do at My Viral Business.

Our own business model provides tools, supplies, training, and advertising for Alternative Business. We have a developing online store with website scripts, templates, themes, and training manuals for starting a home based business. We also provide low cost hosting services and through ISEDN have begun offering sponsored keyword targeted search engine advertising for less then $4 a month across more the 400 search engines and directories including our own Easy Search Live and directory network.

Important rule of thumb: Affiliate programs offering real products of value are a good move that is often free to get started. Joining a membership site with no product of value is not. Counting on all those free sign ups to upgrade and pay you is a pipe dream especially if you yourself have not taken the upgraded membership. Again all programs you want to join offer a real product of value because those that don't are illegal in most countries. Cash Gifting sites are Ponzi schemes, they are illegal no matter what the site says, and no one online becomes a millionaire in 30 days. Come on now, you have lived long enough to use your brain and live in reality.

Regardless of your skill set and interest the first step to turning your experience into alternative business profits is to get your feet moving forward. Bookmark this blog to get articles and ideas on how to start, run, or improve your online business and add our feed to your favorite RSS feed reader today.

Andy Anderson

My Viral Blog

2010 will go down in Internet history as the year SEO died, with the looming release of Googles Caffeine and Personalised Search the death bells are sounding for what has been the backbone of Internet life.

Meta data and code structure will become almost redundant under the new systems as sites are positioned on their traffic numbers and content popularity, traffic figures will be determined by the use of google analytics primarily and while the numbers can be artificially inflated by the use of traffic exchanges and surf bars it should be noted google will discount this traffic and possibly penalise sites found using these methods.

Site owners will be encouraged to use good Marketing , Advertising and Social bookmarking methods to deliver traffic, For SEO companies this means changing their operations away from on page optimization techniques over to Search Engine Marketing and Social Marketing Optimization, In some cases it will mean complete re-training of their staff to encompass the new requirements.

The new system may also see the demise of the page rank system as we know it with sites being ranked on their position in the results rather than on their code structure,meta data and content.

The reshuffle will certainly upset some site owners as they lose their coveted page 1 positions replaced by sites that have good followings in the social area but have had very little SEO performed, it's not all gloom and doom though caffeine and personalized search will prove a fairer system for site owners.

Site structures will also change as site owners realise that using a blog based cms offers a fast track into the new Search results, sites using scripts like wordpress will find meeting the new requirements a breeze thanks to the scripts adapability and ability to encompass social bookmarking, these sites are also much faster to load and certainly much easier to maintain and keep up to date.

certain SEO aspects will still be required like keywords,descriptions,alt tags and titles but using a blog based script allows the site owner to manage these without having to pay an expert, adding and updating site content is also much easier requiring only basic knowledge and the ability to use a wysiwyg editor which is normally built into the script.

So why has Google decided to kill off SEO, well as the demand for greater speed and delivery of information grows it has seen the need to change how we access that information and how we find the sites carrying it, the Search algorithms have grown more and more complex over the years and still struggle to deliver relevant material, SEO has been largely a game of guesswork between seo companies, webmasters and Google which further corrupts the results delivered to the public, under the new system much of the guesswork is gone companies will have a clear understanding of what they require to gain good positions in the search results and their regular users will play a big part in how well their site performs, results will become more relevant for the user based on their surfing habits and we should see an increase in overall speed as sites become more user friendly.

I am about to reveal to the web community a secret, one that may see me banned from almost all payment processors but one that needs exposing, as the title of this post denotes the secret concerns exchange rates and how the internet population is being scammed.

if you deal with any overseas transactions regardless of the currency you pay with you can guarantee one thing… your not getting the correct exchange rate, I sat thinking about this while watching the financial news where they announced the current exchange rate for the Australian dollar against the US dollar Currently a little over 91 cents i then did a test conversion using Paypal and XE.com  where it was immediately obvious there was a descrepency while XE'com said the Us dollar was worth $1.11 AUD Paypal told me $1 USD = $1.07 AUD a difference of 4 cents Xe.com informed me that my AUD $ was worth .89 cents a 2 cent descrepency  making paypals exchange rate .87 cents.

Now it may seem i am quibling over a couple of cents but when you add up all the 2 and 4 cent skims taken from the thousands of daily transactions performed every month of every year you start to see the enormaty of the scam we are talking millions of dollars a year skimmed from unsuspecting and trusting users.

I don't class myself as a scrooge but i do object to paying a transaction fee then finding out that the payment processor has also skimmed extra undeclared money from me and other users money i doubt they include in their taxation as that would expose their scam and possibly bring the authorities down on them.

I think it is time they got their act together and started being open and honest with their clientelle and started paying the right exchange rates especially in todays economic climate.

As the title suggests in this post I am covering Keyword research, a task that can be frustrating and time consuming, however it is important that you research the keywords used in your site, marketing and advertising properly .

To start with you are going to need a good keyword research tool, one that can check and compare results from several different sources is best as while you may be aiming to score well on Google you cannot afford to ignore results from other engines like Yahoo or Msn Live etc as these will also play a huge part in how well your campaign fares on Google.

Often Search companies will supply these tools for users and Easysearchlive.com is no different  you will find an extensive tools page here http://velocitymarketerhosting.com/seo-tools/ (Velocity Marketer Hosting is owned by Easy Search Live).

To start your keyword research you first need to decide what niche your site fits best in try to drill this down as accurately as possible for Velocity Hosting this would look something like this Web Hosting>low cost>unmetered. this establishes the core keywords most relevant to your site or campaign, we would then use the keyword tool to compare the top 10 results on the major search engines this will then leave you with a generated list of keyword/phrases that the top 10 listings on the search engines have used, (sometimes this list can be quite extensive) and the number of seaches performed using those keywords/phrases.

Keeping in mind the top few results are likely to be quite expensive in a PPC campaign and competition on various search engines will also be extensive select a few that have reasonable traffic (it is better to have a few keywords rather try to compete for the top keyword phrase).

By this time you will definitely be looking for a cup of coffee and that niggling sensation is the start of the headache so it may also be time to reach for the Tylenol.

Having selected your keywords/Phrases it is time to check what it is going to cost you to run those keywords in a PPC campaign, you need this information because if they are outside of your budget then it is pointless using them on your site (Marketing and Advertising campaigns get better results when the keywords match those of your site).this can be quite time consuming also and be prepared to revise your keyword list or start from scratch.

Time for another coffee and a bunch more tylenol

When you have finally sorted out which keywords you will use it's time to start drawing up your marketing plan, now the key to a good marketing plan is to keep it simple try to avoid over complicating what should be a simple process.

You know which keywords are going to be used so lets order them according to importance, next we want to look at how we are going to use them and where, some will be suitable for anchors in textual advertising  while others will remain simply as extra tags or be used as content anchors on your site.

We need to identify where and when we are going to place our advertising ie Google adwords and determine exactly how much of the budget to allocate to that campaign  (each keyword/phrase is classed as a seperate campaign), Our Target Audience and the start and end date of the campaign.

the next phase is to design your adverts ensuring that the chosen keyword for each appears at least once in the ad content.

Be sure to  write all this up and place it where it can be a visual reminder, I personally like to use a whiteboard next to my desk for this purpose as it allows me to check on what i have done or what needs doing at a glance.

Launching your Campaigns:

a mistake a lot of first time advertisers and marketers make is to panic because it's been a week with no indication of a result, campaigns need time to work and patience is the key here, my campaigns normally run for a minimum of 6 months with control checks evey month and a revision check every 2 months this allows sufficient time for the campaign to propogate throughout the web and allows for proper modelling of the results, campaigns that are under performing may need tweaking at the 2 monthly revision and this can be a simple as changing the wording of the ad slightly or simply changing the colors used.

Constant changing of the ad is detrimental to it's effect remember it needs time to be seen by the Internet community and your Target audience so make changes subtle and leave some time between them.

When performing the monthly checks what you are looking for is the number of clicks each ad has received and what your ROI (Return On Investment) has been for the period, you are also looking to see that your ads are in fact being displayed and that there are no errors in the ads (sometimes a webmaster can change the formatiing of his/her site and this can adversly affect the formating of your ad, it may now contain extra symbols or spelling errors or the colors may have varied from the original, in which case some urgent repairs may be required.

In closing my tip is "Don't rush things , think the campaign out thoroughly and keep a big box of tylenol next to the coffee pot "

Anyone who has ever used PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertising knows that to get a listing under the top used keywords means spending copius amounts of money on each of the main keywords even then there is no guarantee that your bid will be beaten 5 minutes after placement.

I hope through this article to show the reader alternative tactics that will produce the same sort of results received when you successfully win the bidding war but without spending all that money.

The first step in any successful advertising campaign should always be keyword research closely followed by the development of a sound marketing plan which encompasses exactly where the ads will appear.and what their content should be.(i'll cover this in more detail in future posts)

Now for small companies struggling to make an impression on the Internet there are alternatives to competing with the large corporations in PPC advertising, rather than looking to bid on high usage keywords they are better off spreading their available budget across a broad range of lesser keywords the results will only be slightly less than if they had gone for the major keyword, in fact in some cases they will gain results that surpass those using the major Keyword both is traffic and positioning as they gain more exposure.

The other option small business owners can look to is CPM (Cost Per Month) advertising, this form of advertising rotates users through the number of slots available for each keyword guaranteeing exposure in the top 10 places, this form allows for accurate budgeting and has simular results to PPC without the bidding war on top keywords, a shining example of this is the ISEDN form of CPM advertising.

The bottom line is small business should not even consider competing in bidding wars as this will ultimately lead to failure

In the old days of SEO it was important to make sure your sites code was valid to W3c standards and that your Meta data was correctly formatted, sites required loads of 2 way and one way links and a constant stream of fresh relevant information.

With the launch of Google's Caffeine  SEO has been tossed on its head, 2 way links (reciprocal)  are basically worthless and your meta data and code standard moved down on the weighting scale, instead it is now imperative to employ Google analytics into your site structure if you want to stand any chance of making page one of the search results.

Caffeine depends on information gathered by Google analytics in order to rank and position your site according to user information collected by analytics, Google have also started a personalized search system which is also integral to how your site is positioned in the results.

So what does this mean for SEO's and site owners, well for starters it means most SEO's will have to rethink their strategies and in many cases embark on a complete restructure of the sites under their care since the strategies they have had in place will no longer have the same effect as before.

The key to the new Caffeine system is Traffic and lots of, the more traffic a site receives the higher it is going to rank and position and it's part of a clever ploy by Google to increase it's advertising sales while raising the bidding war for top spots on the major keywords, site owners will need to increase their advertising budgets if they want to stay in the race for traffic and sales, SEO will be overtaken in importance by SEM and SMO and the costs incurred by site owners will rise tremendously forcing many small businesses to leave the Internet scene forever.

Meanwhile those that have relied on carrying the Google advertising on their sites and who have basically put Google where it is today will continue to receive breadcrumbs in return for their efforts, very few of the millions of site owners carrying Google adsense on their sites see decent levels of income from the Search Giant many on approaching the monthly claim threshold see a degradation of the ad quality supplied to their sites as Google chokes off the click rate and restricts their earnings forcing them to wait even longer to meet their $100 monthly minimum.

In some cases they will have their accounts terminated with out just cause and lose the income from their labors, (this has personally happened to me and while google did send me an email stating they would send me a check for the balance of my account  a lousy $36 they did not offer any sufficient reason for canceling my membership nor have i seen any sign of the check after 4 months).

To me it would seem that Google while putting on a face of performing a public service is changing it's systems in order to feed the Giants Greed and need to totally control the Internet and it's users.

Caffeine and Personalized Search are just another Tactic being employed to achieve this, Google is trying to play Big Brother to the world and decide for all of us what we see on the Internet , it is collecting information on each and every user despite the fact in some cases this is a breach of privacy (Germany has already raised this issue regarding Google analytics and is considering a Ban on it's use on .de tlds) It's maps system poses a security nightmare for countries even though sensitive areas are blacked out we are talking only a small area and when you think about it from a strategist point of view those black spots make ideal targets for a nuclear attack after all land a bomb within a kilometer of the black spot and your guaranteed to wipe the target out if the blast doesn't do the job the radiation will and they must be considered vital to a countries security to have required blanking out, so thank you Google for painting all those bullseyes .

The information they collect can also pose a threat to every Internet user notice the rise in spam and Internet scams lately and the fact a lot of it is personally addressed to you, well the people behind those annoying emails get their information via sites that collect mountains of data on it's users and their surfing habits the main repository is of course Google.

Now it may seem i am slamming Google quite a lot in this article but like the Berlin wall it's no use attacking with a toothpick if you want to make any impression that could cause them to reconsider the effect they will have on the general population of the Internet you need to use a large sledgehammer or two.

Yes some people will benefit from Caffeine and Personalized search but it won't be the small business man or in many cases the family members who turn to the Internet for information or to purchase needed items a little cheaper, those that are going to benefit most are the large corporations followed by the larger companies that can afford to plow an extra million or two into it's yearly budget, and of course Google.

For the families it's just another intrusion into their daily lives another struggle to find information they need as the Google index gets turned on it's head and well shaken put enough money into a lie and it becomes fact, control the flow of information and you control the world.

I sit at my desk trying to nut out a new article concerning my favourite subject "Search Technology" and the phone rings, reluctantly i reach across and pick up the receiver and some one starts excitedly telling me in broken english i have just qualified for a new mobile phone, I politely tell them i am not interested and hang up.

As i return to my labours the phone rings again and again i answer, this time the same voice in broken english tells me i can have free phone calls for a year, a little annoyed i again tell the person i am not interested and could they please refrain from calling me as i need to work on my article.

Hanging the phone up i consider taking it off the hook as all these interuptions are destroying my concentration, but i leave it on the hook because i am expecting some calls from clients.

All is quiet for 10 minutes when the phone again rings, this time it is someone new offerring a free roof inspection again the english is barely understandable and as i say No Thank You the person launches into how they can give me a new mobile phone if i agree to the inspection, not wishing to be rude i patiently wait until they have finished their sales pitch and i again tell them i am not interested and could they please take my number off their lists.

I am in the process of hanging up when the phone signals a second call coming in so i quickly press the button to take the second call, surely this has to be a real call and not yet another spammer wasting my time, but no it's the first caller again trying to give me a mobile phone, by this time my blood pressure is well on it's way up and i curtly tell the caller that for the last time i am not interested in what he is offerring and to remove my number from his list.

I settle down to get some serious work done as time is slipping away and i would like to get my article submitted, alls quiet once more and i secretly congratulate myself that i had stopped the spam callers from interupting my day, surely they have got the message by now that i have a huge NO Sale sign posted by my number.

Paragraph 3 or what should have been paragraph 3 was interupted by a knock on the door, resigning myself that this was not my day i get up to answer the door only to find a small asian looking man with a poorly made badge and tatty clipboard launching into yet another sales pitch about – you guessed it mobile phones, what is it with these guys heck to me a phone is a phone and as long as it works i don't care if it's the latest technology or has 3000 games built in, I quickly and rudely interupt the sales pitch to tell this intruder that if he don't get the hell off my porch i'm gonna set my dog on him when the blasted phone rings yet again.

This is the final straw, I storm back into my office wrench the receiver off the  hook yell a few obscenities into the speaker and throw the phone out the window, kissing goodbye to a partnership deal i had spent months working on in the process, Life isn't fair.

Our world is fast becoming overloaded by spam, spam created by small brained people that think if you hassle a person long enough with your offer they are eventually going to buy, become annoying to the point of violence and your guaranteed a sale, Now i have seen this work in TV advertising where the ad is so obnoxious in it's delivery (a common one is the "Where do ya get it" ad which is delivered in a high pitched grating voice) that people actually buy the products on offer, but there has to be a limit to where and how companies should and can advertise and I feel the phone is not a valid vehicle for advertising in this manner.

Spam is definitely annoying and moreso since it does seem to work for the companies that use it they record good sales numbers regardless of the millions of people they have upset along the way, it needs to be stopped or at least regulated in such a way that it does not impact on a persons daily life to the point where they become violently abusive and have their mental and physical health put at risk.

So if you get spam in any form it should be reported don't buy in the hope they will go away buying has the reverse effect it increases the amount of spam 10 times over the only cure is to make spam useless as a sales tool "No Sales = No Spam" as these unscrupulous marketers move on to find new ways to dupe you out of your hard earned dollar.

Recently we announced that Easy Search Live had Joined the ISEDN network of Search providers, as part of our membership we are able to offer the ISEDN alternative to PPC advertising.

Now while PPC has been a mainstay of advertising in the past it is fast becoming too expensive for all but the richest companies as bidding for top keyword placement rises above realistic levels, a fact forcing many small companies to look at alternative ways to advertise their business.

ISEDN ads provide a low cost alternative to PPC while retaining the exposure through it's network of 400+ Search Engines and Directories, the other advantage of ISEDN advertising is that every ad enjoys equal exposure as it is rotated through the ad slots for each keyword, this means your ad is guaranteed to show in the top ten places on a majority of the network for a majority of it's run time.

The ISEDN ads are also very cost effective in comparison to other advertising systems, instead of a bidding system there is just the one low fee per keyword (around $4 per month) this allows advertisers to maintain their budget while increasing the number of keywords/phrases the ads will appear under.

Coupled with millions of searches performed monthly ISEDN advertising all adds up to better Bang for your advertising dollar click here to check it out for yourself