Self Employed Blog

Blogs increase the popularity of your site and its keywords with a search engine. The reason this works so well is because many of the top article submission sites are already ranked, meaning that they hover always at around six or seven in page ranking on Google as it is.

This means that if you post articles about a niche topic you could easily end up in the top results. For instance if you write twenty articles, in twenty days most of those articles will turn up on the first page or two of Google in about a month. Quite simply, you can’t even buy this type of publicity.

The idea is that your link is on this article and that people will click on it or that other websites will pick up your article and put it on their site. The drawback to this of course is that most of the large article directories also have their ads on your article page that people will click on too. There is no way around this except to write an article that points them to a link on your site and not someone else’s.

The link that is clicked on can be an affiliate link but even better, have the link connect to a page that is filled with affiliate links. This increases your chances of having your links clicked on by many times.

To submit articles go to Ezine Articles which is one of the top ranked sites like this on the Internet.

Deciding what to sell as an affiliate can be difficult as there is so much to choose from out there. If you already have a website, then you might want to choose products or services that relate directly to what is on your site.

However, you don’t even need a website to be an affiliate marketer. You can simply send out emails or put affiliate links in a blog. This is called bum marketing. In fact, many bum marketers decide what to sell simply by keeping their eyes open for popular keywords and trends and then trying to capitalize on that.

One thing that all the great entrepreneurs and successful marketers do recommend is to try and at least sell something that you like. Don’t pay attention to trends or what your family or friends tell you to sell. Hot reports about a market can also be very misleading.

Just because something has a high payout does not mean you will be able to be a good affiliate. Things that represent your passions are often better choices. Selling something that you feel you can stand behind is also a good idea as you will be more inspired especially when it comes to writing persuasive sales copy for what you are selling. It is also more ethical if you can stand behind what you are selling as well as better for you spiritually along the lines of that contemporary new age catch phrase –Do what you love and the money will come.

If you want to look at a large site that is an affiliate broker and that has all types of things to sell check out Commission Junction.

Google’s Adsense select listings are small boxed text ads that appear to the right of search engine listings on a Google page.

Like other pay-per-click engines Google lets you decide how much you want to pay for a click. However, Google doesn’t rank sites by how much they are willing to pay! Instead, they rank them by how much money they make for Google!

Lets say you have an ad that generates a 2% Clickthrough Ratio (CTR). This means every time Google shows your ad 100 times, on average, 2 clicks result. And suppose you’re willing to pay 50 cents for each click. The result is that, on average, Google earns 1 cent per showing your ad 100 times.

A competitor of you may be willing to pay 75 cents per click. However his ad only generates a 1% CTR because it is not written as well as his. If Google shows his ad 100 times, he’ll get 1 click and Google gets 75 cents. This means that your more persuasive ad will appear in a higher position, because it generates more money for Google. Even better, Google will automatically adjust the amount you pay down to the minimum amount needed to maintain your position.

This means that Google’s system rewards those advertisers who can write good ad copy that attracts clicks, and that sponsor relevant keywords. In fact, if your CTR on a keyword drops below 0.5%, Google stops showing your ad altogether. A word from the wise - this can be very frustrating for newbies, simply because you may find that the very keywords you are using and that are rejected have been suggested by Google’s keyword search tool!

The charge is $5.00 to open an adwords account and of course the money you have agreed to pay per click. To enlist go to Google Adwords Select.

If you are a small web business you will definitely benefit from a perk like free web conferencing. This is a virtual space that allows you to share information and work together with your colleagues. It is the ideal platform for telecommuting employees but it can also be used to meet with friends. The best thing about it is that it can save you hundreds or even thousands in business long distance.

When looking for free web conferencing try to find one that is more than just a chat you can upload power point, jpg and other types of images and displays easily. Large documents are also easily transferred from one participant to the other and all images and documents can be uploaded so that everyone can view them at the same time. The best thing about it is that it allows you to host live conferences and interact in real time.

There are all kinds of ways you could use this including to train people online and present graphics. You can also hold group chats or self help seminars.

Also, if you get a platform like this it is a good idea to make sure that it can save online sessions. Some of the group chats are great for brainstorming new products in that way.

There are number of free web conferencing programs available online but one people often talk about is VYEW as it has a lot of the information features just described.

Press releases have always been and always will one of the most powerful forms of marketing and advertising available on the planet! The exposure and recognition that a TV blurb, newspaper or magazine write-up, editorial or product feature has been known to transform small companies into multi-million dollar businesses almost overnight. The key is to write a great press release so you can get the attention of the media in the first place.

If you can get a journalist to write about you will enjoy all kinds of positive attention.No amount of paid advertising can often do as much as two-minute news segment that favors your great new product or service.

There are some companies on the net that I have tried and live up to their promises. One is Advanced PR, which for $249 will send your press release out to as many as 12,000 news contacts. This is a deal for the money.

A full-service advertising agency will do most of the work of posting banner ads for you, and it will lend its expertise to the process. Agencies help you seek out suitable publisher sites, they negotiate the price of banner ad space, and they help you make the best use of your advertising budget.

One drawback is that advertising agencies usually deal only with accounts of a certain minimum size. However hiring an online advertising company to design and post a banner may be a necessary if you are planning on becoming influential online. A sloppy or unprofessional ad will only give you a reputation as the same.

Photo by b_d_solisÂ

You can make money with a blog. It can be a platform for affiliates or it can also be used by a business to introduce a new product or service or create excitement about a new product. But more than the money you can make specifically from blogging, your service or product simply has a better chance of being known in the market if you can get others to read your blogs and link back to them.

However, keep in mind that a blog is a different beast then something like a press release. Forget about writing copy that is full of flashy hard-selling talk. The idea here is to be more casual and friendly. You don’t need inflated language. The purpose of a business blog is to create a reputation for being a company that cares for its customers.

If you are a particularly talented blogger, the writing pieces that you post could also lead to invitations to seminars and speaking engagements. The blog is an invaluable tool if you are styling yourself as an expert or a guru on a subject and selling a book.

It is easy to see how a blog can help you accomplish everything – from increasing your visibility in the search engines, to drawing more traffic to your site, to creating more credibility for your reputation. A business blog is probably one of the single most important tools that you can use to augment your business and it is one of the only ways to actually create a business where you sell something –even if you don’t have a web site or a store.

One of the easiest sites to set up a first time blog on is Blogger, although you may want to consider using a stand-alone domain name (one that doesn’t include http://yourname.blogger.com) for branding purposes.

There is no reason why your small freelance business can’t go global because nowadays there are all kinds of online sites offering free long-distance service. A good example is Skype, which could save your company thousands of dollars in the cost of long distance. You can also talk to clients whenever you want for free. No more waiting for the most convenient time your plan will allow you to talk to a client.

This handy online tool allows you to phone anyone that you like anywhere in the world and talk to them for free using your computer’s microphone and speakers. You can also read what is going on as people speak. This is because at the same time, a record of your chat will automatically scroll on the site so you can now keep a paper trail of all conversations and refer to them for later reference. This is invaluable for sending follow up to your customers. You will never have a misunderstanding then.

You can also use this type of long-distance service to train employees or communicate with your clients with proposals or other cards.

You can also use Skype as you would an ordinary instant messenger service and simply use it to chat if you want.

The days of messing with a tape recorder to do interviews are over. Your chat is recorded. This also saves money on transcriptions and also mistakes in accuracy such as misquotes.

Not everyone is aware of this, but Google offers a complete home or business office solution that contains several applications. The good news is that you can also download the applications separately and add them to your website. There is an entire suite of Google applications. You can download a 10 GB email account with a customizable address called G Mail, an IM application called Google Talk or an online calendar that can be used to establish goals and deadlines.

There is also a premium version of Google Office that you can pay for that turbo charges your website’s capability to interact with your customers. Even more incredible is that you can create your own web pages that Google will host for free.

The great thing about these applications is that they are all on the same interface. You can set up the calendar so that your customers can book time or appointments with you online or you can use it to keep track of deadlines. You can also use your own domain name with Gmail that further helps brand your website as your website’s name.

You can also save money on long distance by holding conversations in chat form using Google Talk. This means that you can teleconference at no cost.

The great thing about all of this is that it is absolutely free. It’s a little bit of a tragedy as until Google’s free application suite people were paying a lot of money on internet tools to make their freelance or small internet business run more smoothly.

If professional looking invoices are important to you then you might want to look at the FreshBooks service. Freshbooks is an online invoicing and time tracking service that saves you time and makes you look professional.

You can try the trial by sending out one of sites many very polished looking Fortune 500-style invoices. The tool also interfaces well with the U.S. Post Office so that you can send invoices by post or by regular email.

You can also this tool to set up an invoicing system with your staff. FreshBooks will also help you keep track of when a deadline from an employee is due, when it is time to release an advance and create reports so you can keep track of your business.

FreshBooks is worth exploring if you want a more corporate or professional looking image. Why is this important? Studies have shown that the more professional the invoice, the more secure people feel about paying you. The idea is that if you are going to brand yourself you might as well brand big.

Find out which freelance or outsourced projects are worth maintaining by using the FreshBooks reports, which will help you keep track of deadlines and monies due.

You can also use the reports generated by Fresh Books as a record for proving your income for taxes.

If you are starting an online endeavor you need a niche for your business because by operating in a niche, it will allow you to make your customers feels special. The great thing about niche marketing is that it allows you to develop a clique with your membership. People love to belong to forums, groups or chats that talk specifically about a hobby, interest or unique niche.

Niche marketing really benefits those who want to sell informational products such as ebooks. This is because people will for information that is rare or unique. Yet another way an ebook or report can be used in niche marketing is to give it away for free.

People will forward your information to people who are likely to click on the links in your ebook to buy the products that you recommend. Or they might be inclined to visit your website.

An understanding of niche marketing is also vital if you are using pay per click programs such as Google Adsense to monetize your site. An important part of niche marketing is knowing what keywords your clients might use to search for products on your site.
This is also an aspect of submitting search engine optimized articles to e-zine and article directories in order to boost your site’s page rankings in popular search engine indexes such as Yahoo or Google. For ideas on how to get started when you develop a niche check out the concepts to help you get started at Smartzville.