obi wan kenobi but is the force with you.

In the world of selling things online – be what you
sell a product or an idea – there are key concepts that
just can not be ignored.

Today I cover one of the most important, and one that
costs nothing to do … but can mean more sales, more
happy customers and more success.

I hope you enjoy it!

Charlie Page

————————————————–
Can You Market Like A “Guru”?
————————————————–

What do Marlon Sanders, Yanik Silver, Alex Mandossian,
Armand Morin all have in common?

They use the #1 marketing method known to mankind.

Happily, YOU can use it too. In fact, I will personally
teach you how to do it in a friendly and easy to follow
step-by-step way.

You will LOVE what this can do for your online
business!

http://www.RealWorldTactics.com/cmd.php?ad=410212

——————————————————
YOU Are the Brand
(c) Charlie Page
——————————————————

How many times have we heard “Xerox this”, when the
copier involved may not be a Xerox brand at all?

What brand do you think of when you hear the words
“Just do it”?

How about ordering a “coke” when what you really wanted
was another soda?

Branding is a powerful tool in our business lives.
While Nike and Xerox are prime examples of this idea,
all businesses can benefit from branding.

But can YOU, the solo operator of a small business (and
this does apply even if you work at home alone) use
branding to your advantage?

More importantly, does branding really matter in your
life?

I believe the answer is yes. Not so much because you
might “hit it big” and become the next Wal-Mart but
because good branding lowers sales barriers.

Read that again …

Good branding lowers sales resistance.

Let me give you two examples from the online marketing
world.

One is Armand Morin and the other is Alex Mandossian.
Both are very successful online, one for creating the
Big Seminar and a range of software tools.

The other for teaching people how to market online
using tools like teleseminars.

These men have paid careful attention to branding and
it has paid off.

But the KEY is this … they paid careful attention to
branding from the beginning!

How?

In how they wrote sales copy
In how they provided customer service
In how they worked with others
In how they answered emails

Everything they did was with a mind toward creating a
brand that said “this person delivers quality”.

Because of those efforts they are successful today.

AND, perhaps more importantly, when they introduce a
new product or service it is met with happy
anticipation, NOT skepticism.

Why? Because they created that image, that brand.

Now, how can YOU profit from this?

I believe there are seven ways you can begin today to
build your brand.

It does not matter that you are not famous online.

It doesn’t even matter if you are yet to make your
first dollar — thinking about branding now will pay
big dividends in the future.

Here is a seven step formula that will give you a great
start toward establishing yourself as the brand of
choice.

* * * Know Where You Stand Now

What name pops into your customer’s mind when they need
what you do? If it’s not your name, why not? Do you
have a name or slogan that is easy to remember and
clearly describes what you offer?

* * * Know Where You Want To Go

What do you want to be known for? Like it or not,
customers will define us if we don’t define ourselves.
Do you want to be the low-price leader? Do you want to
be the value-added vendor?

We can’t (as much as we might like to) be everything to
everyone. Choose a theme for your business and promote
that theme at every opportunity. Soon, you will become
associated with the ONE benefit that is your strong
suit.

* * * Narrow Your Niche

Be such an expert in your field that you are the
natural choice to call when what you do becomes what
they need.

Marketing, either offline or online, creates the
greatest impact when it frames YOU as the smart
solution to a client’s problem.

* * * Give Away Some Work

If giving away your expertise means increasing your
exposure, strongly consider it. You are BUILDING a
reputation.

There is nothing wrong or manipulative in trading work
for exposure, rather than cash. Sometimes a good word
from an influential customer pays bigger dividends than
the best advertising.

* * * Be Everywhere At Once

Oh, if only wishing made it so. The Internet can get
you close.

If you market online, participate in several forums or
blogs where decision makers and people of influence
hang out.

Choose your answers very carefully, but answer every
question you can, always bringing home the message that
you are the best choice.

If you market offline, consider adjusting your budget
to have a presence in each medium (TV, radio, print,
billboard) to reach the widest possible audience.

* * * Listen And Follow Up

If you give your product or service (or even advice) to
someone, follow up to see how it worked out. Be brief
and humble, but follow up to make sure you are on the
mark.

When you do this you not only evaluate the quality of
what you have given, you have an excellent opportunity
to see how it effects real people in the real world.

* * * KNOW Your Stuff

Nothing can replace the good will you create when you
do your very best work for every client or friend.

The key factor in branding is this. On the most basic
level, the level where clients live and work, your
company is represented by a person.

In your business that person may be YOU.

If you really know your stuff, and are willing to
invest some time, you can become the natural choice for
solving problems that arise in your field.

When those calls come, or those emails arrive you can
begin to build an endless chain of referrals that will
carry your business to new heights.

And that is a beautiful thing indeed!

————————————————–
Charlie Page helps people succeed online with products
that educate combined with personal support.

To see all that Charlie offers, including a chance to
work with Charlie personally, visit him now at …
http://www.RealWorldTactics.com

By Chris Crum

SEO changes all the time as search engines make adjustments to their algorithms and user interfaces, users adopt new technologies, etc. Still some things never change, like Google’s view on spammy links.

In a new post to the Google Webmaster Central blog, the company has expressed its most recent viewpoint on earning quality links.

Sidenote: Listen to what Arnel Leyva of Covario has to say about search and social media from this recent interview WebProNews did with him at SMX Advanced:

Visit WebProNews for more on this article

Scott Bolan Speaks:

Mental and Psychic Attack is just as real and harmful as a vicious physical attack by a mugger or rapist!

Here are a few real-world examples…

Being told as a child “you’ll never amount to anything” or, “you’re so stupid!” over and over again.

How about these other attacks on your mind and spirit “money is evil,” “you should feel guilty,” “you are bad,” “those______ people are bad,” or “Everyone is out to get you”

Or how about these beliefs implanted in you by others, that set you up to fail: “women only want a man with money” or, “you just can’t make it in this world”

Or how about “you just can’t make it in this economy”, or “the government is out to get you”

As simple as it seems, we are ALLOWING these psychic attacks by agreeing with them verbally and mentally.

They cause you to doubt yourself, your abilities, and your potential. Thus, you don’t achieve your potential or realize your goals.

This is the very root reason people don’t reach their Full Potential and Get What They Want!

It may come in other forms:

A co-worker trips you up and causes you to doubt yourself, so you stutter, delay or don’t perform at your best, and he gets the promotion you were trying to get.

Some chick you’re dating (by the way, Warriors never “date”), entices you to spend lots of money on dinner and drinks, all in the hopes that “maybe” you’ll get some physical affection.

Your friends tell you that self-improvement doesn’t work, is a “sin”, or that you’re “greedy” because you have new ideas about succeeding and making money.

Your friends snicker and laugh at you when you share your hopes and dreams with them.

People tease you about having children or wanting to have children.

A television or internet commercial shows sexy women around a product – psychically telling you that using the product will get you laid (particularly beer, cigarette and shampoo commercials, but it goes for just about anything)

The pastor tells you that God made you sick in order to teach you a lesson, when the fact is God made your body to heal itself, and you were unknowingly using it wrongly and feeding it unhealthy things, which caused the sickness (‘my people perish for a lack of knowledge’)

The list of daily mental and psychic attack is endless!

You are bombarded with it every waking moment – from news reporters feeding you fear and sensually/socially manipulating your thoughts, to schoolteachers giving you faulty information and confused politically-correct logic.

Newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and…the SPEECH of others who are all programmed and spouting the same “psycho-babble”

It’s called that for a reason, you know!

We are so immersed in it that we absorb it like a sponge and eventually use it to attack ourselves and others around us… without knowing it, and without meaning to!

Think about it: Does a fish know it’s wet?

Likewise, we don’t know we’re “wet” with this programming.

It’s a “vampire-bit” that infects you, and then impels you to unintentionally go out and infect others.

Failure is something most of us would like to avoid. Unfortunately, we all experience it periodically in our lives – but we can learn from it. Sometimes the failure is inconsequential, like when you lose a friendly card game. Other times our failures carry more serious consequences, like when you fail to fulfill your marriage vows. In both of these extremes, failure can be a great teacher as well as a great dispenser of emotional pain.

Failure is defined as the act, state or fact of failing. It’s also thought of as the exact opposite of success. However, failure isn’t necessarily the arch-nemesis of success. As the great Henry Ford wrote, “Failure is simply the opportunity to start again more intelligently.” With that said, my message to you today is simple: Don’t let failure end your dreams and stop you in your tracks. It simply shows you one more way that doesn’t work. The key to finding success is to use failure wisely by learning from it and moving forward.

Question:  How do I promote my Web site on the Internet?
Answer:
For an e-business, search engines provide the most effective — indeed, the only — way of promoting a Web site on the Internet.

Search engines offer two distinctly different means of displaying search results: Organic listings (i.e., the main results of any Internet search) and pay-per-click advertising (usually branded as “Sponsored” results). The former format relies on the search engines’ proprietary algorithms for deciding the relevance and thus the rankings of indexed content in relation to the search engine users’ search terms.

The latter is an entirely bid-based concept in which the Web site owner (aka the “advertiser”) bids for the top ranking for a particular keyword.

The first step in the search engine marketing process for your site is to ensure that it is featured in the Web page indices of the applicable search engines.

Although search engines rely on so-called spiders to build their indices of Web pages, you can sometimes speed up the indexation process for your site by submitting its URL directly to the Internet’s search engines. Search Engine Visibility, allows you to easily submit your site to more than 200 Internet search engines and directories.

Search Engine Visibility makes it a snap to promote your business online, increase your online visibility and make money on the Internet…in four simple steps! NO technical expertise is necessary. If you can type and click, you can use Search Engine Visibility! It even works with Safari, so Mac users can enjoy the benefits, too! Still not sure? We even included the comprehensive Search Engine Visibility Help System, offering tips, guidance and detailed tutorials on search engine optimization and the search engine industry. Available at www.webhostingsavings.net .

Merely having a site indexed will not guarantee a traffic boost to your Web site. To drive traffic to your site through Internet search engines you must pursue a high search engine ranking for applicable keywords and phrases. To attain a high organic search engine ranking, one must undertake a meticulous and targeted search engine optimization effort for the site in question.*

Question:  What is pay-per-click advertising?
Answer:   An alternative and/or supplement to the demanding, time-consuming search engine optimization, pay-per-click (PPC) allows you to pay for a top search engine ranking for desired keyword(s). In a nutshell, advertisers (i.e., Web site/business owners) bid for the top ranking for a given keyword. The advertiser that places the highest bid is ensured the top ranking for that keyword. — Until he/she is outbid. The second-highest bid is secured the number 2 ranking; the third-highest bid will claim the 3rd spot, etc.

4 Steps to Success:
	Search Engine Optimization – Position your Web site for the best possible ranking with leading search engines. Search Engine Visibility’s keyword and site optimization show you the words and phrases search engine users search for (powered by Yahoo!’s Sponsored Search). Improve your site’s search engine performance with the latest news and developments from Search Engine Land, delivered directly to the News and Article feeds within Search Engine Visibility.
	Web Site Analysis – Search Engine Visibility’s robust analysis (including keyword usage, spiderability, and Robots.txt files and Robots Meta tags) of your site’s strengths and potential weaknesses helps you secure crucial search engine success. Improved Site Spider increases the performance of the Site and Keyword Analysis tools so you get detailed, site-specific results faster than ever before.
	Submission – Easily submit your Web page(s) to leading search engines. Around the world or region-specific, it’s up to you. Search Engine Visibility (Formerly known as Traffic Blazer) helps you submit your site to more than 200 search engines and directories in all! Target your local audience. Submit your site to local search engine programs like Google® Local, Yahoo!® Local, Live Search (MSN) and Local.com™. * For brick-and-mortar businesses only; not available to online-only businesses. Or use Search Engine Visibility to submit your blog to more than 75 blog search engines and directories.
	Reporting – No more wondering about results. Search Engine Visibility is loaded with reports that give you answers, including Link Popularity to gauge the crucial number of inbound links to your Web page; List Checking to verify that your Web page is listed with the Internet’s leading search engines and directories; Alexa®/Google® Rank to assess your page’s online performance; Competitor Rank to compare your site’s search engine ranking to that of your competitors; and Keyword Ranking to learn your current ranking on AltaVista®, HotBot®, Lycos®, and MSN®.
*Search Engine Visibility supports submission to AlltheWeb, AltaVista, AOL, A9, Dogpile, Netscape, Excite, and Hotbot by enabling submission to search engines Google, Yahoo! and Windows Live, which provide the search results for these search engines and portals. All search engine names are registered trademarks of their respective owners. All rights reserved. Search Engine Visibility is Available at www.webhostingsavings.net

Search Engine Optimization also commonly known as SEO involves the proper coding, presentation, and structure of a site to improve the quality and volume and traffic through search engine results.  One way to achieve this optimization is to include unique content that appeals to more users and can also be easily indexed by search engine robots.  Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design.  Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that tend to harm search engine user experience. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques and may remove them.

Reciprocal Linking is a mutual link between at least two objects, it can most commonly be found between two websites to ensure mutual traffic.  Website owners often submit their sites to reciprocal link exchange directories, in order to achieve higher rankings in the search engines. Reciprocal linking between websites is an important part of the search engine optimization process because Google uses link popularity algorithms (defined as the number of links that led to a particular page and the anchor text of the link) to rank websites for relevancy.

Email Marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail to communicate commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing.  There are several uses of email marketing one would be sending emails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or old customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business.  Another would be emails sent by the company to their customers with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing old ones to buy something immediately by adding advertisements or store links within the message.

A blog is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order.  As in most cases a blog can be private, but recently businesses have begun to use them as a form of promotion. Blogs are either used internally to enhance the communication and culture in a corporation or externally for marketing, branding, or PR purposes.

Social media has a number of characteristics that make it fundamentally different from traditional media such as newspapers, television, books, and radio. Primarily, social media depends on interactions between people as the discussion builds using technology as a connector.  This includes writing content that is remarkable, unique, and newsworthy. This content can then be marketed by popularizing it or even by creating a viral video and posting it on popular video sites. Social Media is about being social so this off-page work can include getting involved in other similar blogs, forums, and niche communities.

Some other Topics include but are not limited too.
o Content & Copywriting
o Email Marketing
o Integrated Marketing
o Measuring ROI
o SEO
o Web Analytics
o Web Conversion
o Web Strategy
o Web Usability
o Banner Advertising
o And the list goes on…

MrSaveware

I have just put up a Twitter Counter and it also shows some of my followers. If you are on Twitter and want to follow me or want to sign up 1st it is fast and easy way to do it from the Savewareworkspace.com site. Just go to the about me page and click on follow, or on this Blog on right side bar.  I am trying to follow mostly people or companies that have a lot of Web techniques, tools, SEO knowledge etc. What we need! So you may want to follow some of my followers. Just like we do, I found another way to help you find what you looking for fast all on one spot. I will try to keep to Relevancy for us but is it OK I follow Pamela Anderson? hehehe www.savewareworkspace.com

In our family community, I am just your humble servant.
MrSaveware

The promise of earning large profits without really doing much work has temped many to ‘to have a go’ at affiliate marketing, and will continue to do so ‘Pigs Fly.

A common misconception is that all an affiliate has to do is place a merchant’s advertisement on a website, and like Magic! The checks start rolling in…

So if this is the case, why do so many do just that and barely make enough for a decent cup of java?

Affiliate Marketing, just like other forms of marketing takes work. Period.

Successful affiliates marketers don’t just sit back and wait for the money to come rolling in, they promote their merchant’s business and products, while consistently working on building lists of buyers and prospective buyers.

When promoting ‘think outside the box’. Marketer’s who think differently are more often successful than those who seem to be walking, talking and working on autopilot. Wouldn’t you rather listen to someone who opened your eyes to a different angle? For example: You’re selling an e-book about gardening, the sales letter talks about learning what soil to plant your begonias in and how to build your own decking. Now take another view, ‘when you master the basics of gardening, sit back and enjoy homegrown veggies cooked on the bbq your just built, while relaxing on your new decking, etc…’ See the new angle you’ve just introduced?

If you want to be successful in affiliate marketing and if you want to continually grow your affiliate checks, you’ve got to be prepared to put in the graft.

Here are a few tips to help you to continually grow your affiliate checks:

Know what you’re talking about and become an expert on your chosen affiliate product
After all, how can you expect to sell something that you know nothing about? Purchase the affiliate product yourself and put it through it’s paces.. Tell your customers the products good points and bad points from first-hand experience. Most importantly – do your research!

You need your own website
Or at the very least, a short, easily remembered domain name. Affiliate links are ugly things and so often hijacked and your commissions stolen. Cloak your links and setup separate directories on your server for each affiliate product you’re promoting to make your links clean and easy to remember.

Write your own affiliate ads
Write a review, submit a testimonial – in your own words. Entice your prospects by giving your honest opinion, telling them why you think your affiliate product would benefit them. This way, you’re not putting on any ‘hard sell’, and your prospects will be thanking you for selling to them!

Visit forums, discussion boards and social networks related to your product
This can be a huge drain on your time, so be careful not to spend too long chatting and reading. Simply adding a signature to your posts directing people to a free report, your opt-in form or even your sales page can prove to be very effective. (Care must be taken to read individual forum’s terms and conditions of adding a signature).

Publish a free newsletter or ezine
The purpose of your online publication should be to inform people about your relevant subject, lightly scattering your affiliate links in appropriate places. Don’t go overboard with links; this will undoubtedly annoy your subscribers – there’s no quicker way to make them ex-subscribers! Don’t forget to put an optin form for your publication on your website and blog.

Create a short report
On the same subject as your affiliate product and offer it to your prospects for subscribing to your free ezine or newsletter.

What’s important is that you are able to attract more traffic to your site and stimulate visitors into clicking your affiliate links. If you can master this, then your affiliate marketing efforts should prove fruitful.

This is a blog I posted on the Bonanzle auction site for the logos on there but some can apply to a website, this just part of branding but brought it home for us to read.

If you look at twitter and look up mashables he has 5000+ followers. He uses his photo, head shot. Getting somebody’s attention and remembrance. You look at a photo and recognize the person that has a booth you visited already, and then you feel comfortable in the fact you know something about that booth and may visit it again. If you put words then you have to read them. Maybe make the words photogenic so they stand out from the rest. Maybe on twitter a head shot is good because you are the one writing the content. If you have a store/booth then a photo shows the visitor the person they will be buying the goods from. Once again making them feel comfortable. I have a lot of websites so I use my logo as branding of course so they recognize a professional business and it gives creditability to my other sites they may next visit, but on a website I can put my photo in the bio/about us etc.

Maybe a good idea is to do a test. Change the photo to a logo or icon and leave it for a while and see if it gets more reaction. Of course has to be a booth that is selling X amount of goods so they may notice.

Or how about this. Take a vote. Look at my Avatar then go to my booth and look at my Saveware logo on the banner. Tell me what you think is better or even looks better. Comment in the chat box on the site so not to fill up this blog of course.

The more feedback we get the more we can fine tune the booth, ava, banner, etc. Dose anybody know if this blog has a category for reviewing each others sites? If not they should. Weather a good review or bad constructive criticism is part of success.

Each auction/sales site may have a theme. Bonanzle everything but the ordinary. Me Personally I like y’all Avatars it makes Bonanzle a place to explore and see all the neat’o avatars people come up with. The guy with the Straw Hat. When I first got here I thought the same person was emailing me till I seen the name. Yep the photo the 1^st thing I look at that catches my attention, not words. But it is confusing and not very creative to use the ava from the site. Sorry whoever using that one, it is a great ava, just everybody and my uncle using it and makes them look noobie. Just go to google and search on the keywords “FREE Avatar”, FREE clipart”, “FREE photos”, “FREE pix”, “FREE icons”, etc. Yap you guessed it they are most all Royalty FREE to download and use.

MrSaveware