Archive for October, 2008

by Iza del Carmen, MomAuthority.com

Marketing is important in many of the home business opportunities that we have covered in this ebook. Understanding marketing is a complex process, but here we will try to explain some of the basic things you need to know about internet marketing.

Search Engines

The first thing you must know about internet marketing is how search engines work and why they are important to your business.

Search engines are basically the yellow pages of the internet.  If you want to find something you go to a search engine to find it.  Search engines have a catalogue of websites.  They use a special system to rank the websites.  It has been shown that the first three pages of search engine rankings are the most important because people usually will not look further than that.

The actual system used by search engines is not clearly known, but there have been many verified things that search engines use to rank websites.  It is clear that there are three main things used by search engines to rank websites:

- keywords
- content
- links

Keywords are the words that people use when they are searching.  These words are related to the website.  Keyword content is an obvious part of search engine rankings, however, as the internet grew search engines had to find other ways to rank websites.

People would fill pages on their website with nothing but keywords just to get a good ranking.  When searchers came across such websites they were not happy.  Search engines ended up adding other criteria to rank search engines.  Today if you try to load your website with keywords it actually hurts your search engine rankings.

Search engines rank websites using content.  Content is the actually information on the website.  Search engines prefer websites with good quality content.  This means that the content is not keyword loaded, is usable and is interesting.  Content plays a large part in how websites are ranked.

Links are also used to rank websites.  Links are simply links to other websites.  Websites that have high search engine rankings are a valuable link.  There high ranking will influence your websites ranking.

Now that you know a little about how search engine rank websites you should make serious consideration of keyword use, content and links on your website when you are building it.

You need to do research into the keywords that are relevant to your business.  You want to find popular keywords and use them on your website.

You should also create or purchase unique content for your website.  Search engines are looking for some specific things in content.  They want content that is unique.  It also should be useful and not loaded down with keywords.  Basically it should be readable and interesting.

You also need to find websites to link to.  Avoid linking to lower rated websites in the beginning.  You want to find links to non-competing websites that are related to your website.  You want links that your customers would use but not links that sell what you sell.

It is very important that you take search engine optimization seriously if you are going to rely on your website.  You have to learn as much as you can because without a good search engine ranking your website is going to be lost on the internet and you will not end up selling anything.

Advertising

Advertising covers a wide range of things.  It can be actually placing ads on other websites or even offline.  It can include flyers and business cards.  It also includes using articles.  Let’s take a look into each of these types of marketing.

Placing ads online or offline is probably what you think right away when you hear advertising.  For offline businesses it is the main source of advertising.  Online it is not as effective, yet it is still important.  You can place ads on other websites or in online classified.  You can put ads in newsletters and even use them within your signatures on emails and forums.

You should learn about how to create good ads.  A good ad should be eye catching and interesting.  It needs to be simple, yet give enough information so people know what you are selling and how they can buy it.

Using flyers and business cards is a great way to advertise via word of mouth.  This works great, but is limiting for your internet business.  You can only advertise in your area which is only a fraction of your market.  However, it is low cost and can help bring in customers when you are just starting your business.

Article writing is one of the most popular methods of advertising in internet business.  Article writing as advertising involves writing an article, a short piece of about 250 words minimum, that includes a short bio area where you put your business information and link to your website.

These articles are submitted to article directories.  An article directory is like a library of articles.  They are also free for others to use.  So, not only can people find your article through the article directory, which are usually listed high on search engines, but other people can put it on their website and that allows you even more exposure.

Promotions

The last area of marketing to look into is promotions.  People love promotions and as a new business it is a great way to get people to at least stop by your website and check out your products.

Promotions can include a range of deals or freebies.  You should come up with something that would be valuable to your target market.  Depending on your product, sometimes all it takes is a free sample to get someone as a customer.  Sometimes offering free shipping or a percentage off on the purchase total will work.  Experiment with different ideas and see what appeals to your customers.

by Iza del Carmen, MomAuthority.com

Psychic readers, also know as tarot card readers, usually work on the telephone or they can work online through chat rooms and email. What a psychic reader does is uses psychic abilities, tarot cards or other divination tools to give reading to people about their future.

There are many different companies out there and almost all of them hire freelancers.  Some do testing and others do not. The pay is usually for talk time, which means you only get paid for the time you are on the phone.  The pay is actually quite good because these lines get a lot of business.

For both jobs you will usually need a private phone line with no features.  You also will need to be flexible about what hours you work.  These types of jobs usually allow you the most money making possibilities during the late and overnight hours.

Pros

- If you enjoy this type of work and you have a real gift for reading tarot cards or giving psychic readings then this can be a great way to use your gifts to help others and make money at the same time.

- You usually have free reign to work when you want to.  You can work as little or as much as you want.

- The earning potential is great with this type of work.  You also will usually get paid weekly.

Cons

- If you are not confident in giving advice then you may not do well in this job.

- You sometimes have to deal with obsessive, argumentative and rude people.  Some people will not behave very well if you do not tell them what they want to hear.