You can have the best looking web site in the world promoting a fantastic product, but if your potential customers don’t know about it, you won’t get any traffic or sales. This is the single biggest problem facing all internet marketers. This is especially so for newbies who frequently get discouraged and give up their attempts to make money online.

What Is Pay per Click

This is one of the more expensive methods of generating traffic, but provides an instant stream of visitors to your site. There are a number of companies offering pay per click advertising, such as Google, Yahoo and Overture, to name but a few. The most well known is the Google Adwords program, which I will use to illustrate the principles of pay per click.

You may have noticed the ads displayed on the right hand side of Google’s search page results. Each ad is associated with a “keyword phrase” (e.g ladies golf clubs) and is displayed next to the search results when someone searches for those keywords.

These ads are known as contextual ads because they are displayed on pages where the content is closely related to the keywords associated with the ad.

You will also come across these ads when you visit certain websites. The same principle applies and the theme / topic of the page matches the keywords associated with the ad. In this instance, the webmaster will receive a payment from Google for displaying their ads. This program is known as Adsense.

How Does Pay Per Click work

Place your ads with Google Adwords and pay for every click that takes a visitor to your site.
The price per click is determined by the popularity of the keyword and its position in the list. Prices generally vary between a few cents and $5 but can be very much more for some keywords.

There is no fixed price for a specific keyword or the position where it’s displayed on the page. The advertiser specifies the maximum amount they are prepared to pay and then Google uses this and other information from all the other advertisers to work out the position of each ad. Exactly how this is done is outside the scope of this article and many books have been written on the subject.

You can open a free “Adwords” account with Google Adwords. They have very good online help screens and examples to help you set up your campaigns.

If this method appeals to you, you can at a later stage spend a lot more time specializing in the numerous strategies that have been devised to make this technique successful. In common with all advertising, the secret is to continually test and improve on the performance of your ads. The bottom line is quite simply, if you make more profit than the cost of your ads, you are on a winner. If not, stop immediately and try something else!

A good idea is to get some help in the form of step by step instructions and coaching videos designed specifically for newbies.

Well the answer is, “it can be” and sometimes even safer. “Well, I just don’t believe that”, you might say and if you read my article in it’s entirety I will try to explain my stand on this.

First let me tell you a little about my online shopping background. I am an experienced online shopper and yes I have had my credit card information stolen but, believe it or not, it was stolen before I ever used it online. I have been on both sides of the fence also; I have purchased products online and sold products online (both as a storefront and on auction sites). I will be happy to say I have had very few instances where I have been skeptical about purchases I have made online and never has my skepticism outweighed the money I save by shopping online. Below you will find the major points to online shopping safety.

1. How do I decide whether a shop is legitimate?

Determining whether a store is legitimate comes down to some of the same principles you use in brick-and-mortar stores. Can I easily contact someone if there is a problem? Does the location seem safe? Does the shop look professional? Do they accept safe forms of payment (discussed later)? These questions should also be used when shopping online. Always check their contact information and make sure it is readily available. Read about their history if it is available. Make sure they have a return policy, and a privacy policy (you can usually find these at the bottom of most stores sites). The store should appear to be a store you would feel safe buying from but this cannot be completely relied on without the other principles.

2. What can I do to make sure that I don’t get ripped off?

Just like in the real world, there is no guarantee that you will never be ripped off. However, there are things you can do to eliminate the chances of it happening to you. Make sure to read all terms of service, privacy policies, and shipping policies on a shops site before making a purchase. When purchasing from a shop and you are to the point where you are filling in personal information (i.e. address, credit card number, etc.) make sure that there is a little lock icon at the bottom right hand side of your browser and that the start of the address is “https://” instead of just “http://”. This shows you that you are making a transaction over a secure and safe connection. You can even click the lock to get even more information about the security. Always read all the fine print when making a purchase and make sure to print your receipt or confirmation as this could be your proof of purchase when making an inquiry to the store if there are any issues with your purchase.

3. Should I pay with cash that way they can’t get their grubby little hands on my credit card number?

I always use a credit card to make purchases online because I have the added protection of the credit card company. Credit cards are the absolute safest way to purchase because you have the legal right to dispute transactions made on your card. Along with my bank, the credit card companies will usually just return your money to you and go after the store or person who made the fraudulent sale. You should check with your card provider and I think you will find that they have a great policy on settling fraudulent transactions for you.

When you use cash or a money order with a fraudulent company or individual, they can essentially “take the money and run”. Does this mean I should never use a check, cash, or money order? No, it doesn’t. It just means you don’t have as much recourse if you end up getting ripped off and extra precautions should be taken.

4. What do I do if I do get ripped off?

First thing you do is cancel your credit card number if you think your credit card info has been jeopardized. This can be a simple call to your bank and explain to them your situation. They will usually work with you and pursue the store or individual who committed the fraudulent activity. If you used cash or a money order there are still things you can do but getting your money back may be a bit tougher. You should always report fraudulent activity to the proper authorities including the Better Business Bureau (bbb.org), the National Fraud Information Center (fraud.org), and anywhere else you can file a complaint.

If you believe there is an identity theft problem visit http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft/ for more info on what to do.

So yes there are bad things that can happen when shopping online but as with any shopping you can eliminate the risk by making informed decisions on whether you are shopping at a genuine and honest shop. You still haven’t answered how online shopping can be safer than traditional shopping. Well here is my take on that and it is strictly a possibility. You enter a brick-and-mortar shop and you find what it is you are looking for. The shop is respectable and well known in town. You head to the cash register and you hand the cashier your credit a card. He/she then swipes your card and has you sign the receipt. You leave the store. A few days later you find out that the person that was working the cash register was new and somewhat greedy sold several credit card numbers with the personal information that was available as well as copies of your signature from the receipt. This “cashier” step in the transaction process is normally bypassed when making online purchases.

You got to the online store?find your item?make the purchase over a secure connection with your credit card directly through a merchant service to your bank. In a brick and mortar shop it is similar with an additional step like this. You visit the local store?find your item?hand your card to the cashier? the purchase over a secure connection with your credit card directly through a merchant service to your bank. In the second instance an extra set of eyes are in the transaction. This example is not to make you more afraid of traditional shopping just to make you more comfortable with online shopping.

I hope I have helped you understand how to make safer online decisions and please shop safely.

About the Author

Thomas Jarrell is the owner of several online shopping resource sites as well as a few online stores. The JAC Mall is one example and it’s a large shopping directory that attempts to only list safe and reputable stores and allows visitors to rate and review their shopping experiences. He enjoys running several online ventures as well as informing those not as familiar with Internet technologies.

Let us take a good look at acronyms in the industry! Search Engine Optimization(SEO), is a term thrown around a million times a day online. So many sites use old techniques that will get there rankings hurt or reversed with there hap-hazard web designs it frustrates me. I don’t want you to be one of them. In fact this article is aimed for creating SEEN web design projects. If you don’t use this anti-SEO (i.e. cloaking and doorway pages) and follow the following rules you can expect decent results with your web design. The basics for SEO are simple and should be used by all web designers and web design services (although that doesn’t mean they are always used):

1. Optimize your site with a high percentage of text relevant to the search terms you intend to go after.

2. Make sure all alt (alternate image tags) and title tags have relative descriptions including keywords.

3. Make sure your site meets current online standards and can be equally viewed among all browsers and operating machines. Even though some pages may still display correctly with incorrect HTML, it can hinder the way search engines will look at them, bringing the overall optimization of the page down.

4. Make sure all pages are under 800K (recommended for fast loading pages).

5. Submit (manually, by hand) to all major search engines, an automatically to lesser engines through (at least) a free search engine submission service or program.

Keeping these five rules in mind will help, however a serious look at other aspects will help even more in SEO. I will go into these aspects in more detail with articles to come at http://SEO-Marketing.LeviSolutions.com but this is a good start.

PPC, otherwise known as Pay Per Click advertising is found on numerous search engines and smaller ones alike. The two major players are Google and Overture (now own by Yahoo), however there are some other PPC engines that use a multiple of lesser engines and quality websites to offer there services. Some will give you a top ten ranking within your keyword searches while others have you bid for placement among there engines. A few simple rules to follow:

1. The content of your site must match the keywords bid on.

2. SELL! SELL! SELL! While traditional SEO focuses on how the search engines will view your page, this is your chance to engage the human customer! Traditional sales techniques work best here.

3. Will visits to your web pages convert into quality leads or actual sales? Make sure the cost of bidding will be recovered, plus some.

4. The more popular the search terms = the more expensive it will be. Keep this in mind and target populated terms with financial efficiency.

5. All of your keywords stand no chance whatsoever of being listed in the top ten positions on the major search engines. Organic top ten placements can be very expensive so this is your chance of competing with terms you don’t rank well with.

Make sure to have a relevant page for your search term. This is critical as we all know from browsing; if a site doesn’t fit the bill in the first three seconds we are more than happy to click that back button.

SEM = Structural Equation Modeling? NOPE! SEM = Search Engine Marketing? NOPE! SEM = Standard Error of Mean? Nope! While all of these are acronyms for SEM, there not the ones we care to discuss here in our brief overview of Search Engine Mechanics. Anything I say in this column may be outdated with the next big search engine “patch” so what I mean by SEM is simple: Keep Up! That’s right, by simply going by what you know, or an article written 8 months ago you will get lost or penalized in your attempts for effective online marketing. Search Engine mechanics is the mathematical art behind the algorithms of the popular, well producing engine online. To find out that a “Jagger Update” relinquishes all reciprocal links to your website in the eyes of the 75%+ that currently engage Google is huge. The mechanics of the currently used search engines is something to keep your eye on. While HTML doesn’t change much each year (comparatively), search engines do. Simply put: make sure you know what to do to get ranked in this ever evolving market!

-One last note: make sure you know what pages are visited and where users are spending there time. If you have a well visited page (found through your web stats) that isn’t receiving much time spent: GUESS WHERE YOU NEED A REWRITE!

This is meant to be, and should be a good start to all wanting high search engine ranking within there web design realm.

-Todd Levi has prided himself in expertise knowledge of Web Design and Search Engine Optimization throughout the past few years. Please visit his work at http://www.LeviSolutions.com

Now if you have been marketing online for awhile you have
probably heard of Google Adwords. Basically, for those that
don’t know, you pay a certain amount for each time some-
one clicks on your ad. This has been a proven way to market
as it is VERY targeted! This usually leads to great
conversion rates. Well when the gurus tell you to advertise
on Google or any other PPC, they don’t tell you the whole
story.

What they haven’t told you is that your ad can be taken off
Google if your CTR (click-thru rate) isn’t high enough. That
means a certain percentage of people that see your ad need
to click on it to keep your CTR high enough. Well you can
make sure that you ad doesn’t get taken off.

You need to “target” your keywords. You can do this by
putting brackets [] around keywords that are two words or
less and putting quotes ” ” around keyword phrases that are
more then 2 words. So if your keyword is golf clubs then it
must be put into brackets like this: [golf clubs]. If you don’t
target your keywords then your ad could show up for people
searching for “how to quit golf.” Those people will definitely
not click on your ad.

Just to let you know, this is FREE information given by
Google if you call them up for help. I’ve seen people sell this
information for $50 which I think is very unfair since they got
it for free.

So just follow these steps to success on Google.
1.) Choose the keywords that you want to target using the tip
I gave you. Make sure people are actually searching for your
keyword and make sure it isn’t super-competitive.
2.) Write an ad. Look at some of the ads on Google and learn
from the ones that made you want to click on their link. What
did they do that made you want to click?
3.) Bid on the keyword. You do NOT have to be number one,
but you do want to be on the first page. Again if your keyword
is too competitive, it is likely going to cost you around $5 per
click which is VERY risky. Paying thay much for a keyword,
you better hope to GOD your ad copy is one of the best of the
world.
4.) If you profit, keep the ad running. If it fails, try to find out what you did wrong. Is the ad copy not good? Is the market too competitive?
5.) Once you start to profit on Google, start advertising on other PPCs. Repeat the process.

Now can you see how you have been lied to this whole time?
These gurus make it seem like you will automatically start
Making money once you place an ad on Google. This will just
make you LOSE money!

If I’m giving out this article with GREAT information imagine what kind of tips I’m giving to my precious subscribers!

If you thought this report was good wait until you see the
second. Go here: http://products4cheap.com/webform.html
and fill it out. I’ll give you a special gift. You just need to take these baby steps then you are on the road to success….and you haven’t even paid a dime!

—————————————————————-

Email this to everyone you know. They’ll love it!

I, Brendan McCaffery of products4cheap.com, officially
authorize everyone and anyone to use my article as
many times as you would like to use it and to send to
any number of people that they want to. The only
condition is that the article stays in it’s original form and
my coordinates stay as an integral part of the article.
—————————————————————-

I’m Brendan McCaffery. I live in Livonia, Michigan. I love to help people out online and my newsletter gives people tips that most people sell as an ebook.

Google’s Adwords service has brought success to many businesses by providing them with a large amountl of highly targeted traffic from as little as 2 cents per visitor. However, there is probably an equal number of webmasters who have paid for adwords and seen little benefit or have indeed made substantial losses. If the latter applies to you, then the following may be of some benefit -

1. Design

First of all, decide how the layout of your ad will appear. Secondly, you should consider what you want to be included in the title and what keywords or details you wish to present to potential visitors to your site. Ensure that your text will encourage only targeted visitors to your site in order to avoid the expense of wasted clicks. Read through all the Google TOS and guidelines before placing your ad or else you risk having it disabled which can lead to charges.

A fair proportion of internet surfers are still very experienced and click on adwords without even realising what it is. Therefore it is a good tip to list prices in your text, so that you can put off clicks from those who would have no intention of purchasing your product or service in the first place.

2. Brainstorm

Before beginning a campaign it is advisable to write down as many keywords and phrases as you can think of. The most popular terms are likely to have been bid up to a high price, making all your click-throughs expensive. Think about what your prospective customers would type if they were looking for what you were offering.

When you have thought of as many words as you can, glance over your list and rearrange what you have into new, useable phrases. Some will be way off target and discarded instantly, amongst the others choose the one that sounds best and you should have a great sales pitch that won’t break the bank.

3. Optimise

Do not go along with google’s suggested cost per click. This is always far higher than necessary. Many advertisers do not understand that their click through rate affects their position to the same degree as how much they pay per click. For example, if you pay 5 cents per click for the phrase “page rank” and your competition pays 10 cents and achieves a click through rate of 0.5%, then in order to surpass this person in position you will only need to double your click through rate, to anything above 1%, whilst still only paying half of what they are Generally speaking, I would always recommend paying half of the google suggested figure for your clicks, the exception being if your business is in a highly competitive field in terms of adwords marketing use.

Now that you have your keywords and pricing in place, you should set your daily budget relatively low for a short time, allowing you to see how successfully this campaign is running, without risking too much money. Leave your campaign to run for a few days, and take good care to note which keywords are leading to sales or enquiries.

4. Experiment

You should continually monitor the performance of your keywords and Ad groups and try to change tiny details from time to time, perhaps one word here and there occassionally. Changing even one word can have an affect on the success of your campaign, either positively or negatively. If you find google disabling your ads because you are failing to obtain enough clicks then go back to brainstorming and generate another set of keywords and phrases which may work better for you.

Even if adwords are working supremely well for you, constant monitoring is important. If other people realise you are generating high profits then it is likely they will start to tap into your market. Continue to experiment with your campaigns to ensure you stay at the forefront of your field.

Lee Munson is the webmaster of http://www.info-sales.co.uk, your link building resource site offering lists of free directories and article submission sites.

One of the best ways to promote a Website inexpensively is to write articles about your Website’s topic and submit them to “free content” sites. These sites are easily found; just type “submit free content” into your favorite search engine. Each article you write will have a “resource box” that includes your name, a brief bio and a link to your own site. These articles are shared with other Website owners to publish them, and soon, your name and links to your site will propagate throughout the Web. The system works well, since search engines respect incoming links to Websites as indicators that the site is important. The more links you have to your site, the more highly the search engines regard your site. Many authors realize that writing articles will generate links, but most write a few articles and then give up. The reasons vary, but most authors will probably say that it simply becomes tedious to spend time writing articles without direct compensation, only to give them away with the faint hope that Website traffic will come about as a result of the work. It is indeed difficult to maintain the discipline to continue writing articles day in and day out, but there is one thing that motivates me on a daily basis – readily observable statistics that show that writing articles is generating traffic for my sites.

There are several easy ways to check if publishing articles is generating incoming links and traffic. One way is to go to Google and type in “link: name-of-website.com” (without quotes.) Google will return a list of sites that contain links to your own site. Usually, these links will come from your published articles, and you can browse through them to see how your articles are weaving their way through the Web. It’s fascinating to see how your articles appear on Websites you’ve never even heard of! If you do such a search on a daily basis, you will almost certainly see the number of links increase daily. It’s a great source of motivation to see that the site that had 20 incoming links yesterday now has 200 today. Each of those links represents a place that someone can click to come to your site, and 200 links is nice, but why not 2000? The more the number of links increase, the greater the incentive you have to write more articles. More articles yield more links, and more links yields more traffic.

I started writing articles about eight weeks ago and I’ve been astounded at the results. One of my Websites went from zero incoming links to 1000 incoming links in just ten days! Once I saw how quickly the links were increasing, I vowed to write at least one article per day. I begin each day by using a link popularity check software tool to count my incoming links. Such tools are freely available;; Link Popularity Check is one such tool. These tools show link counts for several different search engines at once. I’ll also check the stats through my Web host to see where the incoming traffic to my sites is coming from. More often than not, the visitors came from a site with a published article! Once I see the day’s link and visitor count, I am usually motivated to find a topic and write the article for the day.

Writing articles is a great way to generate incoming links to your Website, and the results can increase daily if you just keep up with it. It only takes a few minutes per day to write an article, and the time is well spent.

©Copyright 2005 by Retro Marketing. Charles Essmeier is the owner of Retro Marketing, a firm devoted to informational Websites, StructuredSettlementHelp.com, a site devoted to structured settlements and LemonLawHelp.net, a site devoted to information regarding automobile lemon laws.

So you have a new website but the phone isn’t ringing off the hook? Were you expecting an overnight success with your website?

Having a website professionally designed ensures you have a good looking site that is optimised for the search engines. This article is not about web design or search engine optimisation but outlines some suggestions that you, the site owner, can take to help boost genuine visitors to your site once it has been professionally designed. Once your site has been completed, you may be sitting back wondering where all your new clients are. There are some simple things to keep in mind and some low cost ideas to help you get your website kick started.

THE SEARCH ENGINES
There are only a few search engines worth submitting to. Just think… how many search engines can you name off the top of your head.. and how many do you actually use? If your site was designed by us at Darwin Web Design, we would have submitted to the major search engines for you.

Submitting to the search engines doesn’t actually guarantee a listing and isn’t really necessary at all (although we submit anyway, it can’t hurt). Search engines use a special technology (searchbots) that constantly crawl the web gathering information from websites - and your website needs to be designed properly so the searchbots can find your site and index it effectively.

It can take quite a while (up to a few months) for a new site to be indexed on the search engines and a lot longer to gain a high ranking. With this in mind, it is important to not become too stressed about the search engine side of things and take some additional steps to help boost your site’s popularity.

Warning - You may have come across computer programs that submit your website to hundreds of search engines with the convenient click of a button. While this sounds wonderful, you are better off submitting your site manually ie filling out their individual forms (as they all have different requirements). It’s time consuming to do it manually, yes. That is why I recommend only submitting to the few large search engines that really count.

ADVERTISING AND MARKETING
Don’t neglect the good old fashioned methods of advertising your website such as the yellow pages, print advertising, brochures, letterheads, business cards - infact anything that is handed out to a potential client, ensure your website address is printed large and proud. I recently saw a huge banner in a public area advertising a local service. The banner showed the logo and telephone number. I noted that people are not likely to whip out a pen/paper to jot down the phone number. If the banner featured the website address - especially if it has a simple domain name, this would have been far more memorable and effective.

Also don’t forget cheap yet effective forms of advertising such as displaying your website address on your vehicle’s bumper bar and your shirts. Make it large and eye catching - so you can’t miss it! Your website will be advertised while you’re out and about every day - how easy and cheap is that!

EMAIL SIGNATURE
An effective and free way to constantly advertise your site is to add your website link to the signature of each email you send out (along with your name, business name & phone number). This is easily set up within your mail software to appear automatically when starting and replying to a message and well worth the effort (5 minutes of your time).

FRESH CONTENT
Keep your website up to date. Have you visited a site that looked outdated, giving the impression that the owner didn’t really care… Fresh web content will ensure you are continually updating key phrases to your site too (great for search engine robots). Consider adding and maintaining some of the following content on your site:

Newsletters, price lists, menus, photographic samples of your product or service, timetables and schedules, introduction of new products or services, information sheets and interesting (relevant) articles, recipes, special offers and discounts…

The list doesn’t stop there, there are many ideas that could be applicable to your type of business. Marketing books can offer ideas or you could have a brain storming session with your friends or work colleagues for something truly unique! The more interesting your site, the more chance of other sites linking to you (see next section). When giving content to us for adding to your site, ensure you have not breached any copyright laws.

LINKS TO YOUR SITE (QUALITY NOT QUANTITY)
Try to obtain links to your site from other websites. Search engines will recognise your site as being ‘popular’ if it has other high ranking websites pointing to it and this will boost your ranking. Plus you’ll have the added exposure by actually appearing on other sites. To do this, you need to contact other website owners requesting that they link to your site (and the advantages for them to do so), but approach ‘quality’ sites only. By ‘quality sites’, I mean websites that:

are already highly ranked in the search engines (ie reputable and appear high in search results when searching for a particular key phrase).

contain subject matter that is relevant to your website’s content (that way the visitors to that site are definitely looking for your type of product or service).

Some examples of websites to approach for links:

Informative sites regarding your subject matter

Your suppliers

Specialist directories (eg if you sell pet supplies, search for ‘pet supply directories’ in Google and then add your site to the good sites that offer free submissions)

Local directories - the large search engines are great, but local directories for your town and country are good especially if they are manually maintained and there is some control as to what is added. Geckosite - www.geckosite.com.au has been designed by Darwin Web Design for this very purpose. It is a search directory for local websites in Darwin NT Australia. No other sites are accepted, it is exclusively for Darwin and there is free online submission.

In many cases people will find your site indirectly through another directory or link, whether you were ranked highly in the search results or not… the visitor finds your site, that is the main thing.

Do not discount the option of adding your link to overseas specialist directories, so long as the subject matter is relevant and particularly if you have a niche product or service. Remember that keeping your website informative, fresh and up to date will make it more enticing to link to.

As with the search engine submissions, do not stress out over this! Adding to directories can chew into valuable time. Tackle the task gradually when you are in the mood or have time to spare.

TIP: Don’t waste your time adding your link to ‘link farms’ and other ‘dodgy’ schemes. The search engines recognise these as spam now and this can have a negative effect on your ranking.

USE YOUR WEBSITE TO ITS FULL ADVANTAGE
Your website can save you time and money, even if you are not ranked number 1 or you aren’t getting the influx of new customers straight off the search engines. Use it for what it is - ie a publically accessible document that is available to everyone 24 hours a day.

Your site is still a valuable tool, for example, when you get phone enquiries about something complex that you find yourself repeating over and over, you could refer that person to your website for a fact sheet that they can print out with diagrams and all. You could have forms on your site so people can make enquiries and submit them to you or you could have a special section of the site just for staff. A website can be a powerful vehicle to help you, your staff and clients on a day to day basis - just remember to use it and tell others about it! (its amazing how many people don’t do this).

BE REALISTIC (AND PATIENT)
Perhaps you should be realistic with what you want your website to achieve for you. Are you expecting to become rich overnight with your website? EVERYONE wants to be number 1 in the search engines for a given search term and realistically (and obviously) - only one website can be number one for a given search. How many well established companies are you up against for that number one spot? Is it realistic and achievable to climb to the top? Even if it is a realistic goal, it will take time…

Hint - the more ‘niche’ your product or service is, the easier and more realistic for you. Ensure you are aware of your niche area and make sure your website content reflects this when you have it designed and updated.

Are you worried about how many ‘hits’ you are getting to your site? Once again quality, not quantity count here. If you receive hundreds of visitors to your site but no sales, you’re not doing well even if you have an impressive array of visitors. If you receive only 5 visitors and 3 genuine enquires, that’s far better and your site is working for you.

THE BOTTOM LINE….Is your website worth visiting?
OK, so you’ve had a site professionally designed, submitted to the search engines, specialist directories, practised all of the traditional advertising methods of advertising too and you’re still wondering where all your customers are? Perhaps this item should really be the first to appear: “Is your website worth visiting?” Are you offering something that people want or are searching for? Why should people visit you? Lets face it, not many people are going to go out of their way to read a company brochure on a product or service that isn’t in demand - even if it has good exposure. Think of the junk mail you throw out each day…

So when you advertise your site, you could also add a reason to visit. A special offer, the latest products, some free tips and advice (relevant to your products/services of course), a free assessment or trial, a timetable of events - it all comes back to keeping your website content fresh, informative and interesting.

Eva Pettifor owns and operates Darwin Web Design -
A local web design business in Darwin, Northern Territory Australia. Eva has also created a local search directory for Darwin NT called Geckosite. Visit both websites at: http://www.darwinwebdesign.com and http://www.geckosite.com.au

Copyright 2005 Eva Pettifor

So you have a website up and running. But you won’t be selling anything if the crowds don’t come. How do you get the crowds to come by your website without paid advertising?

Try running a contest!

Besides helping you promote your business, running a contest enables you to collect details about your prospects! After all, those who participate in the contest must somehow be interested in your prizes, right?

Organising a contest is an indirect way to get more information about your prospects. Once you have their emails in hand, you can contact them when you have promotions, discounts, giveaways, freebies and goodies directly.

Yes, running a contest is one of the many ways you can draw the crowd, especially if you offer your products as contest prizes.
But what if you don’t have any products to offer as prizes? No problem! If you run a consultancy, offer your services as the prize. Yet, if you feel that you need to offer something tangible, you could try partnering with other businesses to offer prizes related to your business.

To run a successful contest, here are five important things to remember.

1. What’s In It For Me?

Those who join your online contest are in it for one thing: self-interest. What benefit will they derive from joining your contest? Give them a can’t-say-no reason. This means offering them a contest prize that they simply cannot refuse. The key thing is: never give them a product that is mediocre or worthless. People are not stupid so do not take them for a ride by offering something that you, yourself would not use or buy. Think like your customer: does this prize get me excited if I win? If you can’t even get yourself hyped up about the prize, it’s time to re-think.

2. How Long Does It Run?

Next, determine the duration of the contest. Some run for a month, some run for three. The disadvantages of running a contest longer than a month is that participants’ attention will falter and soon, your contest may be forgotten. A shorter duration may be a good bet sometimes. Again, this depends on how confident you are of your prize and how much attention you’ll expect it’ll garner.

3. Brainstorm For Ideas

Now that you have the prize and duration settled, think about how to present your contest. What type are you looking at? Now’s a good time to brainstorm and decide how simple or complicated you want it to be. Do you want your participants to write a slogan? Do you want your participants to hunt for some information on your website? Again, as the organiser, it’s your call. Based on our experience, give something in between - not too complex to stump them and drive them off, nor something too easy that insults their intelligence.

4. Design The Contest

Finally, it is time to put the contest to work by designing the necessary web pages and forms (if applicable). How do you want the participants to send their entries in? By email? Or do you need them to fill up a form on your website? Before your contest goes live online, get family members or friends to test out the contest and weed out problems, if any.

Another important tip is to also include a page which sets out the rules and regulations of the contest (you don’t want disgruntled participants, do you?). Be sure you tell them when the contest results will be posted online at your website. Most contest organisers will post contest results on their website as well as send an email to the winners, informing them.

5. Promote It Everywhere

Once the contest is ready, it is time to promote the contest to everyone you know. Naturally, the first place to do so would be on your website. Next, promote it on other websites, on newsgroups, wherever you can stick the contest announcement.

Don’t think only in terms of online promotion. You’d be surprised that offline promotion works too.

At the same time, don’t leave out your existing customers either. Send them an email announcing the contest. Tell them to send or refer the contest to friends and families, especially since you know they’ve bought from you and they know your products well (that is, if you are offering your own product).

The key to any successful online contest is to keep promoting it, even until the deadline itself.

Now that you know how to run a contest, go on, get one organised! It takes some work and needs some creative thinking but it’s fun and helps you promote your business in the most innovative way!

Nic Sim is the owner and founder of http://www.RedboxStudio.com – a web design firm dedicated to helping solo professionals and small businesses go online affordably and successfully with its easy to use, no-fuss Redbox DIY Website. Read his business blog for tips and lots more. Go to http://www.RedboxStudio.com for more details.

You’ve worked long and hard to get traffic to your web site.

Now you’ve got to persuade them buy something from you. This is called web site conversion.

It is defined as the number of visitors that turn into customers of your products or services. If they don’t buy something, then all your efforts are for nothing.

Website Conversion Expert Dan Lok says that you don’t need as much traffic to your web site if the people who do visit purchase when they are there.

Here are some of the Dan’s most important keys to online conversion success:

1. Revise and Update Your Web Copy. Use true success stories that reveal techniques and tactics. Create the desire to know or have the product by focusing on the benefits and ease of use. Test and revise till you know the copy works.

2. Find Out Where Your Visitors are Coming From. Track and analyze your web site traffic and learn the sites where your traffic is coming from. Know which advertising or marketing activities produce your true customers so you can focus on those areas and make them grow.

3. Find Out What Your Visitors Are Looking For and Deliver It. Ask your visitors to tell you their needs or wants. Identify the patterns and most common requests. Then modify your offering to meet these needs.

4. Develop A Relationship Before You Try to Close the Sale. Share your knowledge and expertise. Offer free samples or reports. Provide free recommendations. Get the prospect involved and demonstrate you can communicate and are trustworthy.

5. Add Audio to Your Web Site. Pop their interest and surprise them. Many people will respond more effectively to audio. Give them audio messages that educate them and teach them some thing that has real value.

Use these techniques to resuscitate your web site and watch your conversion rate increase dramatically.

Dan Lok is widely known as “The World’s #1 Website Conversion Expert!” But what do you care? Well, if you rush over to his site… I think you’ll come to your own conclusion that he’s the real deal when you see how much FREE (yet extremely valuable!) profit-producing info he’s giving away. Check it out now at: http://www.WebsiteConversionExpert.com

First Generation - The Popup

Popups, if you’re somehow, strangely, not familiar with the term, are those little windows that open when you visit certain sites.

Popups are secondary browser windows that are opened up using JavaScript code. The properties of this new browser window are set in such a fashion that the new window does not have a address bar, status bar or the menu.

Until about a few years ago  the popup was considered to be the biggest breakthrough in advertising on the web.

When they were first introduced they were a great success and click-through rates went through the roof.

Exit the banner ad - enter the popup.

Web marketers could interrupt whatever a visitor was viewing, by launching a secondary window on top of the first  to draw attention to his advertisement or opt-in list or any other item that he wished to get the attention to.

After a while like most good marketing tools, popups started getting abused. Popups would open secondary popups and eventually by just visiting page that has a single popup in it, you would end up with a barrage of say about 15-20 popups. This was exploited by unscrupulous marketers to the fullest, especially those hawking porn sites.

Of course, webmasters who were in tune with the sentiment of visitors, soon began to use cookies to track if the popup was already shown and ensure it was not shown more than once per visitor.

Frustrated visitors soon began complaining about popups.

Popups are your problem? - Get a popup blocker.

Looking at the need of website visitors, software companies soon came up with popup blocking software. These applications read all the code that’s going to the browser and if they find any JavaScript in the page code that’s trying to open a window, BAM, it deletes that part of code. So Bye Bye popup!

Generation Two - The PopUnder

Not to be left behind, web marketers came up with another version, the popunder, which still launched a secondary window but placed it below the primary window. In most cases, the visitor didn’t even notice this popunder until they closed the primary window.

Of course this was less intrusive, but a pain nonetheless and you don’t get an award for guessing what happened next.

Yes you guessed right, the popup blockers soon started blocking popunders as well.

Generation Next - Enter Hover Ads

What the beejeezus are Hover Ads? They are floating ads that popup blockers can’t stop.

The technology that creates Hover Ads is not new. In fact, it’s been available to web designers for at least 2 years now as DHTML (that’s Dynamic HTML to those who don’t know).

These ads cannot be seen by older browsers like Internet Explorer 3.0. But since most netizens are using browsers (IE 4.0 and above) that are capable of displaying this code this type of advertising has started enjoying a rise in usage.

Hover Ads are DHTML layers which can be selectively moved and displayed over the primary page that’s being displayed. The basic code is still JavaScript, but since a new window is not being opened, the popup blockers can’t figure out that an advertisement is being displayed.

These layers can be animated, moved around, made to appear once per session, shown after a delay, etc.

So that makes you ask “Why should I switch from regular popups to Hover Ads?”

The one and only compelling reason. Popups can be blocked! Hover Ads can’t.

So the bottom line is, if you use popups as a part of your online marketing strategy you’re losing out on a lot of potential revenue, coz what they can’t cant see they can’t buy!

Some statistics that make Hover Ads a compelling technology to use:

• The Alexa Toolbar can now block pop ups (10,000,000 Users not seeing your AD).
  
• The Netscape 7.0 Browser has a built in popup blocker( almost 52 million users never seeing your popup ad).
  
• Earthlink provides its users with a popup blocker( prospects who cant see your ad:5,000,000.
  
• AOL released version 8.0 with Popup Blocking capabilities. (Total Subscribers: 35,000,000).

Bottom line: 40 million customers never see your advertisement!

Hover Ads, on the other hand cannot be stopped by blocking software. Their technology is regular JavaScript that runs well in all modern environments, so they are relatively safe to deploy on your site.

“So how can I add Hover Ads On my Website?”

If you are looking for a free way of doing this then there are freely available JavaScript snippets that you can put to use on your site today without buying any fancy software.

A sample of code can be obtained from CodeLifter.com

The drawback here is that you would need in depth knowledge of JavaScript coding, which not many people know about.

Another approach is to use high end HTML editors like Dreamweaver which have DHTML scripts included under the “Layers” menu. Then again, Dreamweaver is an expensive software.

Any other easier option you ask?

One software that quickly automates the creation of Hover Ads, using a simple 3 step interface is the Hover Ad generator.

The Hover Ads created using this software can be fully customized and are very professional looking.

I especially like the opt-in style Hover Ads which lets your prospects sign up for your opt-in list by simply clicking a button. You subsequently receive a mail with their name and email-id.

I’ll let you look up the other four styles on your own.

Summary

If you use popups on your website, chances are pretty good that they are being screened away by some software or another. Perhaps even by your visitor’s ISP - without any active attempts on your visitor’s part to block them. You’ll need to do something about this situation  and soon.

“So, what choices do I have?”

1. Do nothing. Pray that your content is good enough to attract visitors.

2. Visit CodeLifter to get your FREE layer generator script. You will be stuck with one style, though, if you just cut paste. If you know JavaScript you can modify it as per your liking.

3. Use Dreamweaver or your HTML editor, if it has layers support.

4. Check out Hover Ad Generator . They offer a FREE trial.

Satyajeet Hattangadi is the Owner of Novasoft Inc, a software solutions provider, who specialize is affordable customized software solutions.