November 1, 2008
The only way that you can get the word out about a product or service is through marketing. There are many ways to do marketing. It can be through advertising or word or mouth. Sometimes people market without realizing they are doing marketing. Even talking about a product or service to someone can be considered marketing.
When someone markets, they should keep a tight eye on the return on investment. This could be determined both in money and time. Ask this question: How much time and money did I spend, and then how much was the return? If you spend more time and money on marketing and not receive a decent return, then you have to look at other ways to promote your product or service. You might not hit it right the first time and you may end up losing some money and time. If you sit back and analyze your efforts, you can make decisions on where to put your resources next.
Some people are just born to market. It is in their blood and is natural for them. They can promote anything to anyone. They are believable and trustworthy and others want what they have because of that. Other people do not have the skill and should put their time and effort into other things. Every product and every service has to be marketed in some way, shape, or form. If you want to sell a health or beauty product people have to believe that it will make them feel healthier and more beautiful.
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May 24, 2008
A non-conforming and anti-non-conforming album. Out of the ghetto! Or inside, depending on your own will. Things that may appear as a veil of anarchy, in reality are “self-conformity”, conformity with your own identity with own origins and traditions. “Right”, “Left” (and their parties) become conventional words and the individual with his mood acts as principal pusher for ideals: full ideals, lived, current and not “told”.
“Gloucester Road” with its apocalyptic sceneries goes back to neofolk, which has been inspiring Viking for so long during these years. According to Viking “Gloucester Road” is easy “busking” as in the tube, when, instead, the album presents an artistic maturity in composition and esecution, and a gap in quality between Viking’s past and present works. Obviously there’s something to improve, besides Francesca lives her sweet 22nd year of life and she has a life in front of her.
In addition to the new Viking-signed songs, there are 2 Jethro Tull songs in the album and a German military ballad with new lyrics, rewritten by a young Italian comrade. “Gloucester Road” is no planned album (it was recorded suddenly!), instrospective and Viking decided to repropose 3 songs from her past, completely transformed because “these songs deserved more”. Among these “Towards the light”, whose interpretation will touch you particularly. Finally, “13 songs for the damned” is the subtitle of the work. Mankind, ready to take off towards divine knowledge, daily disgraces, research for independence and mental freedom are the main concept of the album.
Viking dedicated a song to Denis from the band Kolovrat, another to an Italian girl from the North, of which Viking does not remember the name, and there’s a sort of dedication to the Italian pub “Cutty Sark”, victim of explosion, on the booklet (there’s a map of the tube and the only bold name of station you can read is “Cutty Sark”).
Why London? Why Gloucester Road? Maybe it’s passion for the town and for the tube. Viking is addicted to the old trains of the District Line. Everyone has got own insanities! The production is AshTree Records. It’s hard to say whether it is a professional, semi-professional or a non-professional work (the “recording studio” is always Viking’s “secret lab”). This album has no schemes for both mainstream and amateurish music. This album is independence!
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May 16, 2008
Depending on your site’s subject matter, you might even be able to start earning a significant income purely from the popularity of your site. For example, if you have a site on jokes you might be able to get a substantial amount of traffic, but you’re unlikely to earn a huge income.
On the other hand, if you have a top ranking site on Google for the keyword phrase “web hosting”, you’ll be able to earn at least $1-2 million (probably more like $3-4 million) per year from that site alone. However, to get into the top 10 in Google for the phrase “web hosting” is extremely difficult, you would need to be a search engine pro to do it - even then, it might take you two years to get there with a team of 5 people working around the clock.
A profitable site will be based on a good keyword phrase, a good topic (or subject material) and be different enough to stand out from the competition. If you can combine these elements successfully you’ll increase you chances of turning a profit from your site.
Keep in mind that there are a number of niche areas where there is not so much competition but still the opportunity to make a decent profit. There are hundreds of such areas where you have the potential to earn $500-2000 per month. We’ll talk about keyword research and finding profitable niche areas in later issues, but for now, let’s look at the basics of how to get a site to the top of the search engines.
I’m going to focus on SEO for Google because it’s the largest (and the best) search engine which will generate the most traffic, especially if you can master all of the right optimization methods. Google has a very complicated system for determining which sites make it to the top of the search engine. There are many factors involved and there is no precise formula. A further consideration is that Google often changes its formula so you can’t rely on it being the same from month to month. However, there are a few key factors which are unlikely to change dramatically:
Keywords phrases should be one of the most important considerations when you are optimizing your site (remember that for each page of the site you should concentrate on one or two keyword phrases).
Keyword phrases (which you want to get to the top of the search engine for) should be well researched. For more information on researching keywords, have a look at http://www.profitpuppy.com/keyword-research.htm where you can find links to useful keyword tools.
Key factors for getting to the top of Google:
1.The keyword phrase in the title of the page - you should have the phrase in the title of the page.
2.The keyword phrase in the text of the page - you want the keyword phrase to be up the top of the page, preferably as high up the top of the code on the page as possible. You also want the phrase repeated a few times on the page. Don’t worry about how many times, just at least 3-4 times and more if you think it fits in naturally with the content of the page.
3.Include the keyword phrase in a large font heading with H1 tags (this may make a small difference).
4.Links into your site from other sites (covered in more detail below).
5.Links within your site (covered below).
6.Links to other sites (covered below).
Links into your site from other sites
This is probably the most important factor for getting good search engine listings. You need to have good links coming into your site from other sites. You want those links to be from popular sites that also have lots of links coming into them. Google uses a Page Rank system which is a rough measure of how many links are coming into your site. You want links from sites that have good Page Rank. Creating 50 of your own sites and interlinking them won’t increase your page ranking.
How do you get links from other sites?
The main ways are to: Create a great site that people naturally want to link to, Get an affiliate program so people can link to your site and get paid, swap links with other sites, get listed in directories such as dmoz.org and buy links from people who have sites with a high PR (Page Rank). Again, we’ll be talking about this in more depth in another issue of the newsletter.
The most important consideration with incoming links is that you need to have the keyword phrase in the link that directs traffic to you your site. Getting listed in directories such as DMOZ (Open Directory Project) can also help you significantly in getting a good search engine ranking in Google.
Links within your site
It helps once again if you have the keyword phrase in the links to each page of your site. For example, let’s say you have a site on baby products and you have one page where you are trying to optimize for the keyword phrase “cheap baby supplies”. You should make sure that links that come into that page have the phrase “cheap baby supplies” so that your links look like this: Click here for cheap baby supplies
Links to other sites
You can improve your page rank if you link to other sites that have high search engine listings for the phrase that you are trying to optimize for. Note: it can also hinder if you link to pages that are off-topic. For example, you don’t want to link to a chemical arms factory from your baby supplies site.
Some other things you don’t want to do (and some things that make no difference at all) are:
1.Repeating the keyword phrase multiple times on the page unless it makes contextual sense.
2.Placing hidden links on your site - for example, links that are the same color as the background of the page won’t be recognized by Google.
3.Optimizing your site too carefully - if it’s obvious that you have optimized your site for Google (for example, if all your incoming links use the same keyword phrase) you may be penalized. Google looks for sites that are more ‘natural’ in their structure, so if all links look the same this won’t look like an organic site to Google robots and you may be penalized for it.
4.Despite popular opinion, Meta tags don’t really help at all. However, the description tag is important because that is the description that will appear in your listing on Google.
Finally, you may have heard of people using automated pages and or ‘cloaked pages’ to get high search engine rankings in Google. Personally, I don’t believe in taking this approach as it’s a non-sustainable way of getting high search engine rankings (that’s not say that some people who aren’t very successful at it). I know of atleast 3 highly successful companies who generate automated pages using this software http://www.profitpuppy.com/traffic. This is a sneaky way to make it to the top of of the search engine rankings, but it can work; one guy I know is earning several million dollars per year using this technique. So it can work, but as I mentioned before, I don’t think it’s sustainable and the Google engine doesn’t take kindly to it.
How do I submit my site to the search engines?
My personal philosophy is that if your site is not found naturally by following links then it is unlikely to rank in the search engines - I don’t usually bother submitting to search engines.
So that’s the basics of how to get to the top of the search engines. We’ll have a look at the more advanced stuff later on. It takes a lot of time knowledge and dedication to get there but once you master it, SEO is a fantastic way to get traffic and make money on the web.
Robert Rawson
AKA: http://www.profitpuppy.com/
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May 3, 2008
Banner Stands are an attractive and convenient way to showcase products and messages to a target audience. They are usually portable and flexible structures and carry attractive graphics.
One of the popular types of banner stands is the retractable banner stand. Easy to use, retractable banner stands work like a window blind- simply slide up the graphic over a pole and secure it. Retractable banner stands are also called roll up banners.
These banner stands are ideal for trade show displays. Because the printed graphic is stored inside the base, assembling and re-assembling is easy and takes little time. Retractable banner stands take about a minute to set up. All that is required is extending the pole and raising the banner.
Retractable banner stands also protect the printed graphic during transportation as it is secured at the base. Retractable stands like roll up stands exhibit displays and pop-up displays are ideal for exhibitions and trade shows.
There are two types of indoor banner stands - pole and retractable. Of these, the retractable banner stand is the most popular. It is has many advantages. For one, it is easy to use and does not require any training. It does not require any tools to set up. It does not have any bits to loose. The best feature about it is that the graphics are protected in a cassette. However, retractable stands are more expensive than the ordinary pole type. They are heavier than other banner stands. It is also difficult to change the graphics.
Budget roller or retractable banners range from $150 - $300. Banner stand prices include the printing of the full color graphic using digital artwork used by the company.
Retractable banners are a wise choice for exhibitions, trade shows, etc. as they are easy to assemble and costly graphics are protected. They can be setup for a show in a matter of minutes and taken apart and reassembled for the next show.
Banner Stands provides detailed information about banner stands, retractable banner stands, roll up banner stands, banner stand exhibits and more. Banner Stands is the sister site of Promotional Advertising Specialties.
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April 14, 2008
If you have a Web site and you aren’t using Google Adsense, you should be.
Adsense is very easy to use and almost guarantees you will make money on your site.
Just go to www.google.com/adsense and sign up. Google will review your site over the next few hours or days. If the company believes the site is honest and provides good content for your visitors, you will be approved and can start adding Adsense click-through ads to your site.
But first, you have to select an Adsense ad size and format. The experts I have read say that you should have Adsense in two places on your home page.
The first is at the very top of the page before anything else, including your headline and text. These experts also say to choose Adsense for content, then “text ads only,” and, finally, “120×600 skyscraper.” Before you hit Continue, be sure to check out the Colors shown below Format. Again, the experts say you want your Adsense ads to look as much like your Web site as possible, so be sure to pick colors that match your site. I personally want my Adsense ads to look like the text on my pages, so I choose black for headline and text — against a white background. I also do not have a border around my Adsense ads as, again, I want them to look like my content.
The second place you may want to put Adsense ads is towards the bottom of your home page. Here, you may wan to use a horizontal layout such as a 728X90 Leaderboard.
After you put Adsense on your home page, you will have to decide what to do about your other pages. My suggestion is that you experiment. For example, you might have the 120×600 skyscraper at the top of some pages, and other pages with a horizontal banner somewhere within your text. Or you might try a vertical or square banner on the right side of several pages.
Be sure you assign Adsense channels to each of the different pages so you can see which format works best, i.e., delivers the most revenue. To do this, just click on the Channels tab at the top of the Adsense Setup page and type in the URL of your home page and click on Create a new channel. You will need to do this for all of the pages where you are experimenting with Adsense size and format. One you have entered all page URLs, be sure to click on Activate. You can then come back to this page from time to time and click on Continue to Reports to see who your various pages are doing.
Then you can sort of relax and let Adsense earn you money - even when you’re sleeping.
Here’s one more good tip. If you’re looking for a great place to vacation, choose Denver. Denver is unique in that it offers the best of two worlds — the fun things to do and see that you find only in a big, sophisticated city, plus the breathtaking scenery, unforgettable vistas and amazing wildlife you find in our nearby Rocky Mountains. To learn more about the best Denver vacation, just go to Just go to http://www.best-denver-vacation.com.
Douglas Hanna is a retired advertising and marketing executive. He has lived in the Denver area for nearly 35 years and is the author of more than 120 articles on Internet marketing, Denver, and family finances.
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