I was also thinking about trying to get a write up in the paper . Would I have to pay for that & who would I consult with at the newspaper company ??

1) Start a Myspace page, a few hours a day add a shit load of people within 5 miles of your Salon. Do this often, then start posting bulletins each day about your salon and holiday offers.

2) Call your local news station and say your Salon is giving 3 free make overs for single moms looking for jobs, or something catchy for the Holidays. Hell, there are a million things you can offer. The News LOVES This type of holiday cheer, feel sorry stuff.

powered by Yahoo Answers

I have a website http://askthetrainer.com/ and a forums http://forums.askthetrainer.com/ which I need more Indian traffic to increase my google rank.

What is a way to get more traffic from India?

Some of the ways you can advertise your website and increase traffic are:
1. Post an article about your website on related blogs and get free back links
2. Submitting to directories
3. Free classifieds
4. Forums

Send an email with a description of your website to e@culx.net for a list of websites for free advertising

powered by Yahoo Answers

i want to make money online easily but i dont know what to sell or provide for a cost please help me.

I've visited and participated in various sites where people can make money and was most annoyed by how many of them used "employees" as spam mules. For example, Cash Crate requires its people to pass out their email addresses like they're candy, and though people might make a couple of dollars here and there for their efforts, no one compensates them for the amount of spam their email (or alternately managed email) address receives.

If you'd like to read a list of options which includes spam-free sites like DeviantArt, Zenfolio, eHow, and so many others, please click on the link below.

powered by Yahoo Answers

I am currently selling custom store designs such as eBay store logos, banners, custom blog designs, My Space designs, and a few eBooks that have reselling rights that were written by my friend, Danna Crawford, who is also an eBay Power Seller. Her eBooks about eBay selling tips and strategies are phonomenal!

I am thinking about writing my own eBooks on selling strategies and e-commerce solutions about marketing, promotional, and advertising tools to give maximum exposure for optimal success for any Internet busines.

Let's face it. Competition is getting harder on the Internet. I feel that my expertise in graphic design and web solutions can help others. Does this sound like a good idea to you?

Thanks and please see my profile to see examples of my graphic design work.=)

Have a blessed day,
Tonya's Dynamic Designs
(an eBay store)
Click On My Picture to get a direct link to my eBay store! =)

What matters more is how well you can market your eBooks and actually make profits from them. You can also protect your ideas because they are valuable Intellectual Property–an IP lawyer may be beneficial. This way when you sell your ebook you will rest assured that no one will copy your ideas and market them as their own, while making profits from them.

With IP protection you can license buyers and charge them a fee for rights to resell your ideas for profit. So, each time your buyer resells your ideas, they must also give you a percentage profit if you've protected your intellectual property well. Also, if someone tries to use your ideas as their own, you could sue them easily, if it's well protected IP.

Your idea is will be an excellent one when you can actually make a profit from it, otherwise, it could just end up being only a dream. Work at it, it may become a reality and make you some money, too.

powered by Yahoo Answers

Here is a website traffic strategy that takes less than 90 minutes to implement, but generates free website traffic on an ongoing basis - potentially for years.

It operates on the principle that “long tail” keywords have very low competition, so your ability to rank on the first page of the search results on Google, Yahoo and MSN is not only easy, but fast as well.

Here is how you do it:

Use a keyword research tool like Wordtracker.com to research keywords related to the topic of your website. Use their “competition search” function in order to find out the number of competing websites on Google. (For more details on how to do this, click the link at the end of this article for a free resource guide.)

Browse through the keyword results and look for keywords with a predicted 24-hour search volume greater than 10, but with a “google” competing pages count of less than 1000.

Why a competition rate of 1000? Isn’t that a lot? Well surprisingly enough, the number of supposedly-competing pages is not really representative of the true number of pages actively trying to rank high for any given term.

The number simply represents how many web pages happen to contain the particular keyword phrase we’re looking at. In fact, taking any given competition number, probably as few as 1% of those web pages are actively trying to rank high for that keyword. That means that if there are 1,000 web pages bearing a particular keyword, only perhaps 10 of them are actively competing for it.

Thus with fewer than 10 active competitors, the prospect of ranking on the first page (i.e. the top 10) of search results is very good.

Let’s look at an example.

Suppose we do some keyword research for the keyword phrase “dog food.” Wordtracker shows that there will be a predicted 1358 searches every day for that term. However, there are 1.6 million competing web pages. For sure, ranking on the first page for that term could be a “home run” in terms of traffic, but there would be an enormous amount of competition for that first page. Even 1% of 1.6 million is still 16,000 active competitors.

The chances of outranking 15,990 of them are slim to none. This is a polite way of saying that shooting for that particular term is a gigantic waste of time. The predicted search volume of 1358 searches per day is a red herring. It’s distracting. It’s irrelevant. It only matters to the top 10 web pages, and that isn’t going to be you. So don’t let it sway you into wasting time targeting that keyword.

Instead, consider some of the “long tail” keyword phrases, their predicted daily search volume, and their competing web pages:

“top ten dog foods”, 88 searches/day, 1040 competing web pages
“hypoallergenic dog food”, 86 searches/day, 539 competing web pages
“best dog foods ranked”, 86 searches/day, 1010 competing web pages
“best dry dog food”, 70 searches/day, 511 competing web pages
“dog raw food diet”, 68 searches/day, 333 competing web pages
“recipes for homemade dog foods”, 67 searches/day, 110 competing web pages

And the list goes on. And on.

So, just for these 6 terms alone, there are an estimated 465 searches per day. If you could rank on the first page of the search results, how much traffic do you think you’d get? Well clearly it would depend on whether you were in the first one or two spots, or lower down the page. But assuming just 10% of the searchers visited your website, that’s still 46 visitors per day just by targeting 6 achievable keywords.

Think how much traffic you’d get if you targeted 60. Or 600.

But before we get too carried away, we have to talk about two more steps. Knowing what keywords to target is crucial, but actually doing the work to compete for them is what makes everything work.

First, you need to create a web page on your website that caters to the desired term. Your best results will come if you “theme” your website, so that all the web pages that talk about dog food, for example, link only to other pages that talk about dog food, and not to any other topics or websites.

Then on the specific page in question, you need to create some content. Not necessarily a huge amount - but some. You need to include the keyword phrase you are targeting in the Title tag of your web page, and again a number of times in the text on your web page. Don’t over-do it, but just write naturally using your keyword whenever it makes sense to do so.

Don’t over-think your web content. It’s important, but not critical. The really important bit comes next.

Write an article. Make it 400-600 words and write it “about” whatever keyword phrase you want to target. At the end of the article, you have a “resource box” in which you can place a link back to your website. Instead of merely linking to your domain name, link directly to the keyword-specific page you just created. And when forming the link, ensure that the keyword phrase appears in the text of the link (called the “anchor text”).

Then distribute your article to article sites around the Internet. You can submit it to sites like ezinearticles.com and isnare.com for good exposure. You can also sign up for a service such as articlemarketer.com for maximum exposure.

Over the coming weeks, your article will be picked up by dozens - perhaps hundreds - of websites, all linking back to your new web page. It won’t be long before your new web page rockets to the top of the search engines.

So, how much of your time does this whole operation take? It depends. Probably less than 90 minutes. Keyword research takes about 10 minutes, writing web page content about 20 minutes, and writing and distributing a short article about an hour.

Of course, it won’t be long before you’ll want to hire out the task of article and content writing. This way you’ll get far more web pages done because you’ll have other people doing the work. Elance.com or rentacoder.com are excellent venues to find writers who will create content and articles for you for between $5 and $10 per article.

This strategy is tremendously scaleable and can bring you an enormous amount of free website traffic. It has brought success to many an Internet marketer, and it will for you too if you simply follow it. There are new keywords and phrases being used every day as new products are invented and new ideas become popular. This means that the supply of achievable “long tail” keywords will never be exhausted and you can have as much free website traffic as you want.

“Do You Really Need Testimonials at Your Site?” By Jim Daniels

I get this question a lot. And frankly, I’ve never been a big
testimonial guy. Well, until recently.

If you’ve ever wondered about the effectiveness of testimonials,
this article should clear any doubt in your mind.

As most of my subscribers know, I develop and promote Internet
marketing products and services. And this is a niche that is,
well… somewhat crowded.

Heck, just do a search at google.com for “internet marketing
expert” and you’ll find more than nine million (yes, that’s
9,000,000) web pages listed.

Wow. That’s a lot of experts. (I wonder how many of those nine
million really know their stuff.)

But heck, do a search for ANYTHING you need or want online and
you’ll find thousands, if not millions of choices.

So who do you believe?

That’s the question millions of potential customers want to know!

Who can they believe? Who can they trust?

What website will not rip them off or leave them for dead after
they get their money?

As a web business owner myself, I hate to have to admit this,
but… making purchases from unknown vendors on the web can be a
real crap shoot. There are far too many cons, scams, cheats,
hacks and just plain old bad businesses on the web.

And because of that, TRUST is something you have to instill in
your visitors order to make sales on the web.

But how do you portray an image of trust online when customers
can’t see you or shake your hand?

Simple. You let your other customers do the talking. Here’s a
perfect example from my site…

__________________________

Good Afternoon Jim,

“In a word, WOW! “

“Your ezWebBusinessBuilder is a one-stop source for developing
all aspects of a successful Internet business. The information
and tasks are easy to understand and implement. It is clear you
will help many people ‘get it all together’ for long-term
success.”

Thank you, Chip Snyder Hagerstown, Maryland
__________________________

Even the GIANTS realize the value of testimonials…

Go to amazon.com - one of the web’s largest Internet-only based
retailers, and look for any product you might be interested in.
When you get to the product page, more than likely you’ll find
one thing prominently displayed…

Customer comments.

Why does amazon.com include these with nearly everything they
sell? It’s a simple theory. People are more comfortable
purchasing when they can first read what people like themselves
think about the product. It makes them feel more at ease knowing
not only that other folks like them bought it already, but
exactly what they thought of it.

Simply put, a few good customer testimonials can increase sales
literally overnight. How do I know? Last Friday I posted a bunch
of fresh testimonials at my site and saw my conversion rate
increase by 30%. Overnight.

The site where I experienced an overnight increase in conversion
rate can be viewed at ezWebBusinessBuilder - notice how I worked
the testimonials into the copy. They not only help answer
potential customers’ questions, they flow with the copy as well.

And yes, even I was surprised at how effective they were. I’ve
never been a big fan of blending testimonials into copy, but
that little experiment convinced me that I was stubborn about
that for far too long.

If you are not using plenty of testimonials at your site
already, I suggest you start. If you don’t have any, just drop
your customers a line and ask them what they thought of X
product or Y service. If you’ve been in business any length of
time you surely have some happy customers who would be willing
to write letters.

And if you’re brand new to business, fear not. You WILL get
testimonials. I suggest you use a follow-up autoresponder to
contact customers a month or so after they make any purchase
from you. You don’t need a long questionnaire, just a simple,
“what did you think” message will suffice. You’d be surprised at
how much a customer will tell you when you leave it up to their
own imagination.

Here are five tips on using “customer comments” at your
website…

1. Make sure testimonials at your site are specific and not
generic in nature. Generic testimonials are not as believable as
detailed comments. So ask your customers to elaborate on their
comments if possible.

2. Be sure to get permission from your customers to use the
testimonials.

3. Include the customer’s full name and geographic location. A
good sprinkling of customers across the globe shows that your
product/service works everywhere.

4. Use customer comments throughout your websites and
newsletters. Set up a whole page of letters like I have here -
and then take your very best one or two testimonials and put
them on your most prominent pages.

5. Consider the top three or four reasons your potential
customers may be hesitant to order. Then post customer comments
that address those issues.

OK, let’s wrap today’s tip up with a quick summary…

The web is still like the wild American west 100 years ago –
full of snake oil salesmen. If you want to establish your web
business and earn steady, reliable income, you need to earn the
trust of your potential customers.

Letting potential clients read comments from your best customers
is still the best way to do that. So do it, and do it over and
over. You may be surprised at the results.

Email marketing is simply the most cost-effective means of all Internet marketing channels. With the flexibility to narrow down and target future customers without the expenses of postage, paper, etc., email goes unmatched by any other medium. But no matter how cost-effective it is, there is still an associated cost, so you will obviously want to get the best return on your investment. To help you find the perfect service, here are a few things you should look for in an email marketing solution.

Firstly, keeping your emails out of the “bulk” folders of your future customers has got to be the most important aspect of any solid email marketing campaign, as what good will even the best email creative do for you and your company if it’s deleted before it’s even read? With more and more ISP’s and email services sorting the inbox-worthy email from the spam (and offering to delete the “not-worthy” before the recipient could even check it), finding a service with a proven track record and high percentage of delivered messages is the single most important feature.

A “smart-tracking feature” will allow you to easily decipher which messages are pulling in the most potential customers and which are a waste of your time, efforts and money. In direct marketing, it’s crucial to be able to track everything possible so you can eliminate quickly what isn’t working.

Having access to your database at any time is a point that so many companies tend to overlook. You should be able to access any and all lists and key features when it’s convenient for you, not for your service. Remember- not all great ideas come between 9 and 5, Monday through Friday.

All auto-responders should do their job, responding automatically and quickly to any queries from future customers, letting them know how important they are to you and your business. Customers do not want to be treated as a number, so an email marketing solution should reflect this.

Of course, having the absolute best service without easy set-up and management is just plain useless. You should be able to get in and set up quickly and easily, with plenty of options available to you to get a campaign up and running from day one. Online support and customer service whenever you need it should be a given.

And finally, we’ll touch upon SPAM. Be sure that your email marketing service is fully compliant with all CAN-SPAM issues, as you want to be sure that your auto responder (as well as yourself) stay out of legal trouble. Helpful features such as SPAM-Check steer you in the direction to write your messages more effectively and keep them from ending up in the “bulk box”.

Welcome to the third and final article of this series. I had a tough time deciding which of the many free advertising options to cover. In the end I went to the search engines and ran a series of searches for pizza and restaurants. From these, I selected two items which typically showed up in the top ten search results.

The Open Public Directory Project

The Open Public Directory project is a group of volunteers who strive mightily, without compensation or reward, to find the best websites and include them in their directory. These volunteers have high standards. They ruthlessly discard websites with redundant or questionable content. Only the highest quality sites, those with original content or which are the primary source of information on a topic get into the OPD.

As part of the OPD, the volunteers maintain a separate space just for restaurants. This restaurant directory is located at www.chefmoz.org. It contains restaurant names, addresses, phone numbers, style of cooking, web addresses and truly exhaustive descriptions of the restaurants amenities.

Every single restaurant owner in the world should visit www.chefmoz.org and add their information. You can even include reviews and links to other websites on the Internet which contain reviews of your restaurant.

Since every listing is reviewed by an editor, search engines, such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN use the Chefmoz directory as one of the highest quality resources. The directory is logically organized by country, state and cities. In many cases, when someone searches for restaurants in a particular city, the Chefmoz.org directory listing for that city is among the top 10 search items returned. So it is a good idea to have your restaurant represented, have your web site available and your menu online.

To add your restaurant, navigate to the correct www.chefmoz.com local directory, and click on “Add Restaurant.” You will be guided through a series of pages where you can provide all your information and submit the information to be reviewed by an editor. If your town is not already included, you can click “Add Restaurant” at the state level and your listing, if accepted, will create the new directory for your town.

Online Yellow Pages

One of the most popular places where consumers search for local businesses is the online yellow pages sites. There are several, such as www.superpages.com and www.switchboard.com. They all attempt to have at least the minimal information for every business in a particular town. Some will even let businesses list their website for free. The www.superpages.com site will let a business create a free business profile which includes a link to their website. Take advantage of this and create your free business profile on superpages.com. The superpages.com listings are frequently among the top 10 items returned for local searches for restaurants or pizza. You want to be there when people go looking for you.

Offline Online Marketing

Unless you are located on a rest stop for a major interstate highway, all of your customers are going to live within a few miles of your store.

Fact: 80% of your customers use computers. And that percentage is growing.

Fact: most people find websites outside of the internet. They hear them on radios, read them in magazines and newspapers, see them on business cards, flyers and circulars and read them on window, vehicle and sidewalk signs.

These medias are excellent ways to get your web address and online ordering message in front of your customers. Your website and online ordering message should be included as a matter of course in every one of your advertising pieces, whether it is your takeout menu, your window sign, your pizza box, your delivery vehicle sign or a newspaper insert ad.

Your web address is easier to remember than your phone number. Take advantage of this by putting it where your local customers can see it.

By providing your web address, you are inviting people to visit you and check you out in a completely comfortable way. The web visitor does not feel awkward about checking out your menu online. They do not have to engage in an uncomfortable phone conversation as they try to decide whether to give your food a try. They are comfortable and relaxed and when they see your online ordering menu, these comfortable and relaxed people may just place their first order with you then and there.

One of my clients built up their online ordering from $100 per month to over $1,000 per month with more than half their online customers identifying flyers, newspaper ads and the window sign as the source where they found the restaurant’s website.

You want everyone within a couple of miles of your store to know your web address. So don’t make the mistake of limiting your Internet advertising only to the Internet.

So how is this free Internet advertising? Because these are marketing strategies you are, or should be using anyway. It costs next to nothing to add the words “Order online at our website – www.yourpizzeria.com” to your next batch of menus and flyers. And don’t forget that window sign.

One of our clients used a window sign to announce their web site and online introductory offer and got a constant stream of new customers registering for online ordering.

Low Cost Internet Advertising

In addition to the free marketing strategies, consider using some low cost paid Internet marketing.

One of the least expensive Internet advertising strategies is called Pay Per Click. As you might expect, it means that the advertiser pays for every person who clicks on their Internet ad.

Search engines such as yahoo! and Google provide this advertising service and display ads to people who enter specific search terms into the browser. The advertiser can choose exactly what search terms he wants entered to make his ad appear.

For example, a restaurant can use search terms such as “pizza delivery Jersey City” or “pizza restaurant Jersey City” and have his Internet ad show up only when someone enters that search term.

If the person doing the search clicks on his ad, the advertiser is charged. The cost per click is usually very low. Typically 25 cents or less, depending on competition. A bidding system is used to let the advertisers set their limits and daily and weekly budgets let the advertiser manage and monitor the ad campaign expenses.

One reason the cost is so low is because competition for highly local keywords is still very small. A restaurant owner in Pittsburgh is not going to select “pizza restaurants Bangor Maine” as his keyword. At the same time it is a mistake to use too general a keyword, for example just using “pizza restaurant” will not only cost much more per click, but will be seen by people who are hundreds and thousands of miles from your store. So using the highly localized keyword not only reduces the cost of the pay per click, it also pre-qualifies the people who see that add.

It is a good bet that someone searching for “pizza delivery Jersey City” lives in Jersey City, wants to order a pizza and would prefer it to be delivered.

Sources of Pay Per Click advertising are Google Adwords, adwords.google.com, Yahoo!, www.overture.com, and City Search, www.citysearch.com.

Final Thoughts

I hope you found this and my previous articles useful. We have barely scratched the surface of Internet marketing. There are many, many other techniques and strategies ranging from local link exchanges to banner ads, search engine optimization (SEO) and many many other strange and wonderful topics which can help bring visitors to your website and customers to your food.

In the end, your online business will prosper because you decide to take advantage of the power of the Internet and let it work for you. Like any other part of your business, it has to be done as part of the whole. Your website and online ordering will bring you revenue only when your customers learn about it and are encouraged to use it.

Spread the word and watch your online takeout and delivery orders grow!

Copyright 2005 Elisha Burke

Regarded as one of the choice Internet marketing systems offered
to small businesses, affiliate marketing has caught the
attention of accomplished entrepreneurs across the globe. With
virtually no risk involved in the affiliate marketing game,
payment is made only after results are provided. That is one of
the several reasons that this form of trade has such a high
level of popularity. And with a considerable number of programs
currently available online, it is critical to make yours shine
brightly above all other professional affiliate marketing
systems.

Those with affiliate marketing expertise can easily secure an
income of five figures per month. However, less than 5 percent
of all individuals involved in these affiliate programs reach
this milestone. A huge blunder that many affiliate potentials
make is trying to merchandise too many products instead of
concentrating on one particular market. In lieu of dispersing
your endeavors, focus on your passion, advertise it, and sell it
to the best of your abilities.

It is your responsibility to research the product or services
that you are offering to the public. With the information you
gather, you can produce a resource that builds your credibility
with future customers and fellow affiliates. When you have the
confidence of your peers, you are building trust in the world of
affiliate marketing.

Once you have decided the affiliate market you are interested
in, it is time to actively recruit partners. It is in your best
interest to find individuals that have already developed traffic
and would profit from your offer. You should provide your
partners with promotional material, and make their affiliate
marketing job as fun and easy as possible. Always keep in
contact with your partners, and be sure to deliver updates or
changes on products and services. It is also advisable to send
tips on how to be successful in the marketing environment.

Promotion is a major component in any form of marketing. Several
top affiliates use pay-per-click search engines. However, use
these search engines with caution. If you don’t know what you
are doing you may lose money. It is best if you discover how to
obtain natural search results or employ a search engine
marketing firm.

Becoming a marketing guru is definitely not something that will
happen overnight. Affiliate marketing takes research,
motivation, and most of all, patience. But, as with all things,
in the end it is all worth it.

By far, one of the best resources to learn the basics of making
serious money in affiliate marketing is Rosalind Gardner’s The
Super Affiliate Handbook: How I made $436,797 Last Year Selling
Other People’s Stuff Online. For additional information on this
easy to understand handbook visit http://burkepublications.com

To keep yourself motivated and to receive more helpful
information about the nuts and bolts of starting and maintaining
a profitable online business subscribe to Manna Success
Newsletter. Get this free weekly newsletter at
http://news.burkepublications.com

Another source of essential information for making money in
affiliate marketing is ClickBank Mall’s Red Hot Products for
Online business. Click here or visit
http://burkepublications.com

Books, magazines, websites or any other source that can help me learn how to effectively market my business online.

The most effective way to advertise on the Internet is to first set up a website and publish its domain name on major search directories such as Google.com, Yahoo.com [at http://www.google.com/addurl/?... and MSN.com since 85% of Internet shoppers rely on these search directories to provide them with goods and services. In a sense, these search directories are a very large Internet Yellow Pages.

Nevertheless, should your website or opening webpage fail to contain "generic" keywords, then anyone using such "generic" queries will not be able to discover your website. Your domain name [URL] of your website, in a sense, will be invisible, undiscoverable.

You may want to consider some simple algorithms which, when observed and committed in designing of a website with placement of various critical metatags that can surely achieve a high search engine presence and increase Internet traffic to your website. These metatag strategies work well with published webpages at Google and Yahoo.

Design: Should you create an extensive Flash-based website, make sure to fill-in the property entries such as the Title, Description and Keywords. Failing to do so, leaves no hard HTML or ALT resource that can be readily indexed by search robots. Also consider the Internet audience and their incoming setup. For example, if they are on analog/dialup, Flash webpages take too long to load up and therefore analog users will likely lose interest and discontinue entering the Flash site. On the other hand, anyone on hi-speed DSL lines, will welcome Flash pages which load quickly. So before designing a pure Flash websitge, ask the simple question, "Who's my end user - is he on dialup or DSL?" And if you had to choose between these two users for maximum marketability, then select analog users since 80% of most resident users are still analog Internet subscribers and pure HTML designed webpages is best for them.

A non-Flash-based website which relies on hard text, is far easier to be indexed by search robots. Limit the use of stylized text saved as .gifs since as a graphic, they are not indexable by search robots.

Avoid use of frames since any number of search robots are unable to properly classify textual material.

Placement of Metatags:

A ranking or search order does take place with Google and Yahoo and it begins with the "Title" metag which should consist of no more than 65 characters separated by commas. The "Title" should describe in generic terms, the goods and services, followed by a location from which the resource is located, i.e., city, state. The placement of a domain name which is not generic within the "Title" is not appropriate, unless your domain name is a major recognizable brand name.

The second metatag is the "Description" which is usually 25-30 words to form a complete sentence which best describes one's goods and services.

And the very last category - "Keywords" are also somewhat limited to 15-16 words which can be plural and compound in nature. Again, avoid multiple entries which could be mistaken as "spamdexed entries" which is defined as the loading, and submission of repetitive words into a particular metatag category. "Spamdexing" when discovered on a webpage and reported to Google's spamreport.com can result in the elimination of your website from their search directory.

Here's an example of a very highly-placed website on Yahoo.com: Begin with the search query "pizza downtown los angeles." It will bring up some 1.4 million+ websites as results. Check out where "Pizza Next Door" is ranked. It's in the Top Five! Again, Pizza Next Door's high web presence was achieved by proper web design and placement of relevant metatags according to Yahoo's publication guidelines.

Good luck!

powered by Yahoo Answers