Well, if it does, you are probably doing it wrong!

The whole point of advertising is to generate income or increase sales.  Advertising is not something you do:

a) When you have a chance to get around to it

b) Once you are successful  enough to "afford" it

c) When you have extra money

Advertising should be a part of a complete marketing campaign and should not really be done on it's own without being part of a bigger picture.

The idea is design a whole marketing campaign that works together.  Advertising becomes a part of this and you should be able to track your advertising.  A well designed campaign will have mechanisms built in that allow you to monitor your advertising every step of the way.

Advertising is an investment and you should know what the return is.  Advertising should produce a positive return on your cost.

If you are losing money by advertising, then stop doing it!  Get some help to create a marketing strategy and implement it to make money.

I was reading a post on a forum the other day where a fellow marketer referred to a well-known marketer Ken Mcarthy as an "old school direct response" marketer.  That caught me in my tracks for a minute.  It was almost as thought his person had implied that Ken was somehow out of date, maybe not quite up to speed on some of the latest trends and fads in the online marketing world.

In fact, as I have mentioned before, the fundamentals of marketing are the same today as they were a hundred years ago.  And in fact, there is valuable information in books that were written 100 years ago that could still turn any internet business around.

See, what some people fail to understand is that marketing online today is just different tools to do the same job.  You still need a good headline, you still need a good call to action, a follow up system, upsell, etc, etc.  The guys that were doing this through small ads and postal mail 100 years ago had the same issues and hurdles to overcome as we do.  We just have different tools, a different medium.  Same marketing.

In fact, it should be easier for us today.  100 years ago, they had to run an ad in a magazine or newspaper and then wait for the people to get that, and mail in their orders.  It could take a couple of weeks before you even knew if your firs ad was responsive or if you had to tweak it.  Now we can do that with Google Adwords in a matter of minutes to get results.  Maybe it has gotten too easy for us and we have become lazy.  We are so used to getting immediate results that we don't even bother to try harder.

Don't discount the ideals of the old school direct marketers, these people know where it is at.  Sure , they may not be up to date with Twitter or the latest trend in online video but I am going to suggest that a direct response marketer from 100 years ago could do better online today than most internet marketers.

Tags: affiliate marketing, niche marketing, website optimization, internet marketing, internet marketing tips

"FutureConsumer.com," a book by renowned futurist Frank Feather, takes a fascinating and sometimes frightening look at the world in 2010.

Feather predicts that by then, "the Internet will gobble up 31% of consumer spending, leaving most brick-and-mortar retailers in rubble."

His message for your business? Adapt or die.

Here are 15 ways the "Webolution" will affect your business - and your lifestyle.

1/ By 2010, 40% of the North American workforce will work from home -

either for themselves or someone else.

2/ "By 2005, people will spend twice as much time with their PCs as with

their TVs." - Andrew Grove, chairman Intel Corporation

3/ Of the 115 million North American households in 2010, 83% will have at

least one computer, 79% will be online and 66% (or 76 million

households) will actively shop and buy online.

4/ There will be 500 million Internet users world-wide by 2010.

5/ The number of automobiles purchased completely online in 2010:

5 million.

6/ By 2020, "fifty percent of everything we read will be in electronic form."

- Dick Brass, Microsoft's Vice-President of Technology Development

7/ By 2018, newspapers will stop publishing paper editions.

8/ Online learning will replace schools as education takes place at home.

9/ "Greeting cards will become museum curiosities" as sending electronic

greetings become the norm.

10/ A "Webphone" - part cell phone, part palmtop computer - will replace

everything you now carry in your wallet. Coins, cash, checks and credit

cards will become obsolete.

11/ By 2010, 92 million North American households will bank online.

12/ Your digital refrigerator will automatically reorder your groceries for you,

via the Web, when you run low.

13/ By 2010, tele-medicine, where patients and doctors interact online, will

be a routine part of daily life and health maintenance.

14/ By 2010, all software will be downloaded - or rented on a pay-per-use

basis.

15/ Mass advertising will become a thing of the past. Instead, e-marketers

will pay consumers to receive their advertising messages.

Think about how these changes will influence your life and your business. Then, modify your marketing strategies accordingly to prepare for what lies ahead. Don't say we didn't warn you.

To read more of Frank Feather's insights, get his book "FutureConsumer.com" by going here:

www.amazon.com

Tags: article marketing, internet marketing, niche marketing, affiliate marketing, Jonathan Hook

One of the most important aspects of internet marketing is getting traffic to your website. If you send more people to your website, you will make more money. If you publish advertisements, your advertisers will pay more for the increased amount of traffic your website has and thus how much traffic you send them. If you sell a product or service, the amount of traffic you get will correlate very strongly with the amount of sales you make. In this article, I will explain some different ways you can get traffic to your website.

Pay for It - The first option is that you can buy traffic. You can do this by purchasing advertisements. You can buy banner ads or text links. You can even pay bloggers to blog about your website. You can also buy a certain amount of traffic from a pay-per-click service, such as Google AdSense, Microsoft AdCenter, or Yahoo Search Marketing.

Start a Blog - If you do not already have a blog, it is a great way to get traffic to your website. Both users and search engines love blogs because blogs are a constant source of useful and fresh content. Blogs generally come with standard features that cause them to help promote themselves. For example, they have RSS and ping services which notify others when you make a post. You'd be surprised how much a good blog can promote itself.

Forum Posting - Most forums allow users to put a link in their signature, which is displayed below their posts. You can take advantage of that by going to forums related to your niche, and posting in them with a link to your website in the signature. It will not work well if you spam. The trick is to make useful posts that interest other users and get them to click on your signature link. If your time is valuable, you can always pay other people to post on forums with a link in your signature, but you will want to make sure that they do not spam.

Article Marketing - Another way to promote your website is by writing articles and submitting them to other websites. At the end of the article, you can put a link back to your website. If the article is good, interested people will click the link back to your website .You can submit your article to article directories. You can also give the article exclusively to one website. Popular websites will be more willing to publish an article that is exclusive.

Blog Commenting - You can post comments on blogs, and you will usually have the option to enter your URL. When people read your comments, they may click through to see your website. This works much like forum posting. Again, the trick is to not spam but to make quality comments so that readers will be inclined to check out your website. The more helpful you are, the more helpful they will assume your website is.

Those are just some ways to get traffic to your website. Different methods work better or worse for different websites. Test out different ways of promoting your website and find what works best for you.

Tags: internet marketing, niche marketing, internet marketing tips, article marketing, gregg hall

Internet marketing is quite simply marketing that is done using the internet. Marketing refers to the promotion and advertisement of goods and services. It includes all the commercial aspects of transferring goods and services to a customer. Internet market usually includes advertising websites and products ordered over the internet, but internet marketing can also be used to promote offline businesses.

The most major part of internet marketing is probably the attempt at getting web traffic to a certain website. Traffic generally refers to the amount of hits and visitors a website receives. Traffic is also measured in quality based mostly on how targeted the potential customers are to the product. For example, a website about fishing that sells fishing poles would want a fisher to visit more than someone who does not fish.

There are many ways to generate traffic. Internet businesses can pay money to get traffic to their website using methods such as banner advertisements and pay-per-click campaigns. Other common methods of traffic generation include viral marketing and posting about your website on other websites.

In addition to traffic, internet marketing also includes other aspects associated with getting the most customers to buy whatever the business is offering. These other aspects commonly include the effectiveness of the sales-pitch, the product, the website, and the customer service. The important parts of marketing differ from business to business, depending on what they are selling and to whom they are selling it.

Improving your internet marketing efforts will require that you analyze log files and tracking data. To do that, you must first install software on your website to record, log, and organize server data. This information will give you important statistics, such as how many people come to your website, which pages they visit, and how long they stay. You can use the information to compare the results of different campaigns. You can also use the information to find conversion rates. Once you find out when, where, and why some of your website visitors leave or do not leave your website, you can use that information to make changes that will help you get them to do what you want.

Internet marketers have to keep in mind certain concerns. For one, they have to worry about cost. The cost needs to be less than the revenue it generates, or else the internet marketing campaign will not be profitable. Another concern is traffic overload. If a website gets more traffic than it is used to getting, then it may overload the servers. That can make the servers slow or cause them to crash all-together. It's recommended that marketers continually ensure that their servers can handle the traffic. A big marketing campaign can turn into a waste if the servers crash due to unusually high amounts of traffic.

When internet marketing, it is usually helpful to test and analyze. For example, testing different marketing campaigns will allow you to compare their cost-effectiveness. Also, testing how much of your computer resources are used in a marketing campaign will help you find out if they can handle a bigger campaign.

Tags: niche marketing, gregg hall, affiliate marketing, website optimization, internet marketing

"How To Run Your Own Server Without Being A Propeller-Head"

Server Admin for the Technically Challenged.

In this incredible new series of videos you're going to see exactly what you need to do to "drive" your server and not let it "drive" you!. Concentrate for a change on your sales and marketing and NOT on the technical side. What's Inside This Video Series Well just check out the menu on the main page

No More Guesswork !

See the complete information at cPanel Magic

 

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