How to Market Your Information Marketing Business

There continues to be increasing demand for gathering information and selling it in a convenient format to individuals who do not have sufficient time to do things on there own. In today's post, you'll discover three reasons why Diane Conklin loves the information marketing business.

Marketing is the ability to create an opportunity and a desire within a prospect to buy your products or services. The big picture is, nobody wants to put forth the effort to catch the fish. That is what makes information marketing the big business that it is today. The industry is fueled by the lack of time available to people and a growing desire for work-life balance.

As an information marketer, you can meet this great demand by gathering information and selling it in convenient forms to people who don't have the time to do things themselves.

Reasons to love the information marketing business

1. No other business provides the revenue, flexibility and lifestyle that information marketing provides. Much of the work is home-based, part-time and requires very little start-up costs.

2. Because there is such a demand for information products, anyone can use their own expertise to create a million dollar business within 12 months or less. Information marketing is an emerging and ever-growing field made up of knowledgeable and marketing savvy entrepreneurs who package their expertise into convenient forms such as DVDs, books, e-books, CDs, magazines, websites, teleseminars, webinars, coaching programs, seminars and conferences.

3. There is a market for creating an information marketing business for just about every topic you can think of. Using information marketing, Diane offers her proven business building secrets including marketing systems that help you effectively market your new business. She teaches all there is to know about using direct response marketing methods which concentrate on getting clients and making sales. And, she helps you measure results so you know which methods are getting you the most return on your marketing dollars.

One of her secrets includes this... Warning for Information Marketers: Avoid the Common Mistake of Limiting Your Marketing Program to One Marketing Method. Don't mistakenly assume that everyone is on the internet. By using a multi-step, multimedia approach you will maximize your profits and ensure stability. Diane recommends using at least three or four sources that deliver great results. The key is to avoid becoming dependent on any one media type. That way if one of them slows down or dries up completely you will still have new clients, money and sources flowing into your company.

Lastly don't forget that from newspaper to internet, no matter what the media type you choose, you should always use direct response marketing. It delivers the best results and makes the most money. How to Get Started in Marketing Your Information Marketing Business Now Diane is just one of 12 experts in the field of info-marketing who offer real world advice in the new book Start Your Own Information Marketing Business, an easy-to-follow manual that offers steps to building a successful info-business from the ground up. The group's compilation of tips gives you the tools you need to duplicate their success.

To learn more about direct response marketing and how to make it work for your business look for Start Your Own Information Marketing Business in bookstores now. You can also go to InfoMarketingStartUp.com for a free video, book chapter, subscription to the Information Marketing Association's "Info-Marketing Success Strategies" email newsletter and copy of the Millionaire Blueprints magazine.

Robert Skrob, President of the Information Marketing Association teaches entrepreneurs how to build 6 and 7 figure income information marketing businesses simply by creating products once and getting paid many times over. Now you can get his FREE Video revealing how 5 info-marketers easily created fast-selling products & how you can too. Get free access now at http://www.infomarketingstartup.com

Create Positive Relationships With Blog Owners

Creating relationships with blog owners, especially those with blog's of significant page rank, can have tremendous benefits. Here's a breakdown of what you can do to create long-term relationships with high page rank blog owners within your niche. This is essential for creating in-bound links with value.

10 Steps to Creating Positive Relationships With Blog Owners!

1. Search for blogs in your niche. You can use a tool like Comment Hut or Technorati.

2. Sort your results via page rank, with the highest at the top of your list as this is your priority when searching for related blogs.

3. Visit the blogs one by one. Read the content and get a feel for what the blog is all about. Is this something you have knowledge about? Can you contribute?

4. Either write two articles yourself, re-write two Private Label Rights articles, or have two written for you for $5 - $10 each on eLance or Getafreelancer.com.

5. Submit one of the articles on the blog. Keep in mind that it should be a high quality, value adding article that is aligned with the subject matter of the blog you're submitting to.

6. Contact the blog owner via his or her profile or contact us link. Provide him with a compliment about their blog and tell them you just posted an article on their blog via a comment form.

7. Tell them you have other articles that are totally unique and you would like to provide that article for their blog (exclusively). Ask for permission to post it, your only condition being that you can leave your signature file at the end of the article. Keep in mind that the purpose here is that you will include a link or two to your web sites.

8. In most cases, the blog owner will agree as "content is king." Good job! You just
got another valuable backlink from a high page rank blog, plus you have just started a great relationship with the blog owner.

9. With a little work on your side you could even re-write the articles and submit them to article directories such as GoArticles for to gain even more in-bound and traffic to your sites.

10. Repeat the process...

Clearly this is another great way to use blog commenting software, but only if you're prepared to do a little work. At best (if you can afford it), we recommend you outsource as much as possible while you concentrate on marketing and building your business.

Keep in mind that you're going for quality here. Be sure to identify, prioritize, and dialog. Your quality links will accumulate faster than you could imagine.

Yahoo! Answers: Some Helpful Tips

As an Internet marketing professional, I get asked a lot of questions about doing business online. Recently, a friend turned me on to Yahoo! Answers ans asked me to respond to a few questions. Each day now, I'm spending about 15 minutes responding to questions related to marketing, internet marketing, and SEO. Here's a recent dialog that I wanted to share with my blog readers.

Question: What is On-Page Optimization and Why Is It Important To Your Website?

Answer: Search Engine Optimization is the combination of both on-page optimization and off-page optimization. Both are essential for reaching #1 rankings. I like to explain the concept in terms of building a house. If you want the tallest, most sturdy house on the block, you need a strong foundation. This is where on-page optimization comes in.

On-page optimization is what you do to make your sight highly visible to search engines. The easier your site is to crawl, the more accessible it is, and therefore, the easier to rank.

That said, you need to follow good on-page optimization principles. Many of which are listed in the various responses here. My favorites are: use of H1, H2, and H3 tags; proper Meta Tags including a robots.txt file, a keyword density between 3 - 4% and the use of bold and italicized keywords. Don't underestimate the power of good meta tags. Keep your title tag to less than 60 characters and your keywords to no more than 12. Make sure your description repeats your keyword phrase twice and your good to go.

Two final important mentions. Give a lot of thought to your navigation. Search engine spiders use this to access all the pages of your website. Make sure your links are easy to follow and minimize java. Lastly, use submit a site map to Google - you'll be glad you did.

I hope you found this question and answer valuable. When thinking about doing business online, all forms of optimization are important. Check back for my answers to other frequently asked questions!

Some Helpful Advice About YouTube

As most of you know, doing business online is just par for the course in today's online marketing world. That said, I know that I'll be providing many more posts related to Internet marketing in the months to come. Today is no exception.

One of my subscribers sent me an email about how he was finding great sites to link to him. He was finding these sites on of all places.....YouTube. Now before you think you know what I'm talking about let me explain and give you the short version of the email he sent me.

He said that he was looking for content to add to his sites and thought he would look on YouTube for some videos. He found some that worked for his niche and then he noticed something he had never seen before.

When he clicked on the video and it started to play he saw there was a tab below that video that was called "Statistics & Data". I've never noticed this myself, so obviously I wanted to share it with all my blog readers.

When he clicked on it, YouTube listed all the sites generating clicks for that video.

Now, maybe you've seen this before but what he did has made a difference in the traffic to his site....and his rankings! He made a list of the sites and then started contacting those sites with request to link to his site and some of his videos.

Did everyone respond, no. Did everyone link to his site, no.
But...some did! He has been able to build up a good number of quality backlinks that actually get traffic and increase his PR all at the same time. Which has resulted in a boosting of orders.

What a great way to see YouTube to your advantage.

Now take action and head over to YouTube and locate some videos for your niche. Then, click on the stats tab and see who's driving them traffic.

Good Web Design: Easier Than You Think

Designing a web site takes more than skill. A new site must offer a web design that is attractive and able to grab the attention of a large number of web site visitors. Web design is more art than science and must engage web site visitors.

Good web design, coupled with programming that optimizes your web site pages for search engines can go a long way in increasing the visibility of your site among search engines and web site browsers.

Here are some helpful tips that when implemented can generate engaging designs that are easily spidered by search engines and improve effectiveness.

1. What does your website communicate?
Your answer to the question will lead you all the way to a good and meaningful web design. For designing a website, one should have a theme. On getting to know more of what the website is about, as a designer or as a Webmaster, it will be easy for you to design accordingly.

2. Plan for your web design before you start.
Planning makes work proceed smoothly. The first step in planning is research. Surf through the web to find sites similar to yours. Do a simple yet meaningful research to understand the pulse of the visitors. On doing so, your first impression will always be the best one.

3. Set your theme and web page layout.
After your research and planning, the vital part of your web design is the collection of assets. The first step will be theme selection and webpage layout. There are personal websites, informational websites, ecommerce websites and service providing websites. It is all in the hands of a designer to select a matching theme to satisfy the need and implement it attractively.

4. Properly designed sitemap and navigation.
Navigation within your website should be clear and easy to follow. Always try to implement normal links for moving around, and avoid animated buttons. The column to the right of the webpage should have good navigational links. The site map is another important and easy way for finding web pages in the website. So, never forget these as these are the principal tips to be remembered while designing.

5. Proper usage of images and text
Web design is all about expressing the ideas of your business to your target audience. For it to be a success, use of correct images for communicating the content of the website to the visitors is a must. The text in the webpage must be search engine optimized and must convey the message clearly.

This post adapted from John Williams of DotCom Infoway, a professional Web Development Services company delivers web design services for all your needs, specializing in complete website development solutions with expertise in Web Application Development services to global clientele.

Branding Doesn't Have to Cost A Fortune!

Branding is the cornerstone to any good marketing campaign. Without your brand, your business will never amount to its full potential. What are the benefits of branding? Branding results in:

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- word of mouth
- recognition
- repeat business
- improved reputation

There are a number of ways to enhance the branding of your business for little if any money. These techniques are often overlooked by most marketers because they are so simple and cost effective. Offline opportunities include:

- Stickers
- Flyers
- Bulletin Boards
- Bumper stickers
- Business cards

Opportunities online can include:

- Bios in articles
- Forum Signatures
- Email Signatures
- Social Media Pages
- Blog Comments

There are certainly plenty more options available but some of these are commonly overlooked. Giving away products can be good for branding as well as long as the samples are small or made available on a trial basis. Giving employees items with your company logo can spread your brand as well.

Keep these tips in mind if you want to build your brand and save money too.

Promotional Article Writing: What You Should Know

I’m sure most of you are aware of the marketing power of a well-written promotional article about your industry or business. A compelling and educational article on your audience’s topic of interest will drive traffic to your website and increase customer confidence in your expertise. Best of all, it requires no investment aside from your time and effort.

But where do you start? The following quick tips (presented in chronological order) should serve you well in starting out upon this method of online advertising. All of these points could be several pages in themselves, but this should give you a good overview of the process.

Think of an Article Topic

Write what you know about, first and foremost. Brainstorm topics of which you have specific knowledge. It doesn’t have to be something obvious either. Write about a recent challenge your company faced and how you overcame it. Write about an interesting situation that you know is a common problem in your industry but that is not often addressed. Don’t be afraid to present yourself or your company as imperfect, or as facing challenges.

For instance, one of the articles I plan to write in the next few weeks will be about our video production company’s work on a forklift training video. It was the first industrial training video our company had done, and I plan on laying out our specific challenges and what we learned from the process. Of course I will include the fact that the customer was very happy with the finished product, but I will also express the worries and difficulties we had along the way. (Also make sure you get permission from your clients if you plan to mention them specifically in the article.)

Keyword Research

If you’ve done any work on doing search engine optimization for your website, producing an effective web article is quite similar. Because you want your article to be relevant in searches, you need to put a lot of focused keywords in your content. First make a list of all the keywords and phrases that you want your article to be relevant for.

For instance, in preparing for this article, I thought about who I wanted to read it. I did internet searches to research what kind of language was being used in the industry, and I used a thesaurus to find similar terms. I came up with a list of keyword phrases that included: ‘writing promotional articles’ ‘how to write online articles’ ‘writing web articles’ ‘how to write articles that advertise’ ‘tips for promotional internet writing’, amongst many others. Research will give you a good idea of the kinds of search terms that are relevant, and this will allow you to use these synonyms and phrases in the body of your article.

Winning Article Writing Strategies

Excessive self-promotion won’t often work in the web article format. Your audience doesn’t want an obvious advertisement; they want to be educated and/or entertained, and that’s what you should be striving to do.

Be concise and use short paragraphs. If you find yourself writing more than 1,000 words, think about splitting your content into two articles. You’re writing for an often impatient audience, used to immediate gratification, so don’t get literary or meander. Of course, this isn’t always the case; if you’re writing for potential customers in your industry and you know they like to read dense, jargon-y content, you should cater to them.

Multiple Titles

Put specific effort into coming up with several good titles for your article. They should be as straightforward and as keyword-rich as you can make them, as the title is the major thing that search engines will be noticing, and because a good title will make relevant potential customers want to click on it. You will want to alternate these titles when you post your article on different article database sites.

For example, the first internet article I wrote I titled ‘Tips for Effective Website Video’. Some alternate titles I posted it under were ‘Producing Effective Website Videos’, ‘Tips for Making Company Website Video’, and ‘Pointers for Avoiding Bad Website Video’. You get the idea; the more good titles you give your article, the more likely it will come up for these different combinations of keywords.

Posting Your Internet Article The Right Way

Research good article-posting databases, particularly ones that focus on your industry. No two sites are formatted exactly the same. Some require you to break your article into bullet-points with headings above each paragraph. Some require you to know some basic html code for putting in your website link or making your title bold or in italics. Some will require you to enter in a short synopsis of your article. Some will require unformated basic html code, so you should save your article in a basic text format as well.

The Article Resource Box

The resource box is the section, usually at the bottom of the article, where you can put in a short bio and a link to your company website (the format varies from site to site.) Some of the sites will require you to know a tiny bit of html coding to put in your link manually. You can find this easy enough by doing a search for basic html code.

Give on-line article writing a try, and let AddMe know how it has worked for you. We’d love to hear your stories about how it has increased business for your company.

Zachary Elwood is a Writer/Project Manager for Via Regia Writing Services, Inc., a content creation company based in Portland, Oregon.

Is Your Marketing Taking Advantage of Web 2.0

Hi all.. real short post today. I've been getting a lot of questions lately on how to use Web 2.0 in marketing plans and activities. The bottom line is that we should all be paying a great deal of attention to the happenings on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flicker etc. Combining these social networks and funneling the traffic these generate to your site is proving highly valuable for customer acquisition.

Here are some suggestions for using the different types of new (they really aren't that new anymore but may be for some) media...

Facebook – Create a fan page for your product or service

Twitter – Play around with this micro blogging tool, prompt your customers to join and keep them posted via real time updates

LinkedIn – Great for finding the right person to speak to within a organization

YouTube – Now being used to upload informative product reviews and “How To” videos

Flicker – A powerful photo sharing social site, great for sharing photos of your products and industry events.

Gone are the days where we can solely rely on just one website, one new fad, or a new outlet to build brand and drive traffic. I suggest having some fun with these new and exciting tools. Every one's business is a little unique, so you'll have to give some thought to your specific goals and different campaigns or format to test. But one thing is certain... you need to start.

How To Make Sure You're Getting Feedback

Sometimes getting feedback from you customers is like pulling teeth. But in today's post, we learn some helpful ways to get feedback that improves your business and improves relationships with customers. The trick is to encourage your customers to actually utilize this a feedback option for themselves and for your benefit. Here are five sure-fire ways to encourage customers to give you the feedback you need.

Make the Process Quick

When your customers are asked to provide feedback shouldn't necessarily give them a list of hundreds of questions. What if you were in there shoes? While this might seem helpful to you, if a customer has to spend more than five minutes on a feedback form, chances are high that they will either lie or they simply won't fill it out at all. Try to limit your questions to about five to ten questions with short or multiple choice answers. You can always rotate your questions out when you have enough answers and then find out the answers to new questions that come up.

Make Giving Feedback Easy

Feedback forms which are easy to find and easy to use are the ones that will get used more often. Place your feedback form somewhere along the checkout process when people might be waiting for things to happen - the form will pass the time. Or you might want to create a link in the receipt email that you send to them at the end of a transaction. You might also send out a short email after the transaction is over to see what their feedback might be.

Make Feedback Worthwhile

Some people will want to have something in return for their opinions. If this seems to be the case, you may want to offer a discount on their next order or perhaps create a sort of contest in which one of the names is drawn each day for a prize. If you find that your customers aren't answering your questions, it may just be a matter of giving them something in return for their time - and it doesn't have to be something substantial either.

Make Providing Feedback Fun

Feedback forms that are fun to use are the ones that will get used most often. Simple multiple choice surveys are bright and colorful and you can see the results of others surveys as well, if they are set up in a certain way. Perhaps when they click on a certain answer, they will see a picture or they might get a response for their opinion. Try to create a feedback form that is interactive to help engage them and make the time they spend pass quickly.

Make All Feedback Confidential

Customers are sometimes nervous to give feedback for fear they will be identified with a negative response. Make sure that you are not asking for any identifying information, if possible, to show that you simply want feedback and aren't going to penalize anyone for something that went wrong during a transaction. Of course, this is harder to do when you have a feedback form during the checkout process, so you might want to leave the feedback as a separate transaction.

The value of feedback is immeasurable. It can help you find a new direction for your business or to choose a new product to sell. On the other hand, you might find out about problems that need to be addressed immediately. In any case, make sure that you are reading the answers and responding to them.

This post provided by Scott Oliver who offers free video coaching to help you build a profitable home business FAST. Get an hour of "Website Traffic Secrets" and "Minisite Creation Tactics" for FREE -- immediate access here: http://www.InstantWebsiteBusiness.com