Does website design make a difference in how long people will visit your website or if they’ll stay and shop? You bet. You’ve seen the websites that scream “bad idea” and you know those folks are losing potential customers to their ineffective website design. Whether you are an internet newbie or an experienced marketer, you should understand that good website design is part of the success equation.

So here are my 10 tips on how to create killer website design that will invite potential customers in instead of scare them away.

1. Easy Navigation- The road to success

When people come to your website they are usually searching for something in particular. It might be recipes for a healthy low fat diet that takes less than 30 minutes to prepare or what is the best business to start online. Whatever they want, you need to have the answer. So ask yourself, why do people come to my website? When you know that then you know you should make it easy for them to find it.

I have been on countless websites that make it difficult for me to do business with them. And you know what my first response is? “Next!”
I am onto the next website to see if they can answer my question. People don’t want to waste their time hunting for things that should be easy to find.

So, if people come to your website to find widgets, have a button easy to see and locate that says “Widgets”. People have been trained to look to the left of the website for the navigation bar.

2. Flashing Gizmos - The exit ramp to a dead end street

You’ve seen those sites where the elephants are dancing and the poker chips are running across the screen asking you to click on them…the only thing they have ever done for me is give me a headache and to reach the “let me get out of here as fast as I can” button on my computer.

If you are a running a professional site, please don’t use flashing graphics. Guaranteed you are encouraging people to leave your site. People have come to you for information. Not to click on an ad or have their brain scrambled.

Make your website a pleasant environment for the customer to be in. Just like a store. Think about when you go to the mall. You want to go in a store that is clean, well laid out, has good customer service and the products you are looking for. Your website should reflect this. If it is what you expect in your shopping experience then does it not reason, your customers are looking for this in your website.

What about music? Well, it depends. On most business sites I would suggest not. But let’s say you have a realtor by the ocean who rents out homes for summer vacations. They have music that sounds like the ocean is lapping at the foot of your desk. I think music is appropriate in this venue but I would definitely have it “off” as people log onto your site and give them an option to turn it on. Don’t forget many people are surfing in their office environment and don’t want the boss to find out. If your music is loud or on as people log onto your site and can’t find a quick way to turn it off, they will leave your site faster than a cat that just saw the jaws of a Doberman!

3. Color - Enhancing the highway scenery

Color is an individual preference but studies show that colors have an affect on people’s emotions. Look at the top sites like Amazon; their layout is simple and so is their color scheme.

My recommendation would be to go with the flow. If you have a financial investment site then conservative colors seem to follow. If you sell beach items then lots of fun colors apply. If you have a bridal shower website, I would say soft pastels. Think about your audience and you will know the color scheme.

4. Page Links - I-95 to your destination

This is a no brainer but make sure all of your buttons are hyperlinked to a page and the right destination page. No one including Goggle likes broken link pages. It can be tedious but do it anyway. As you hover over the button and look down in the left-hand part of your screen, you will see the hyperlinked page. Just verify that yours are correct.

5. About Us - Is your map reliable?

People usually want to know basic things before they do business with you. Who are you, how do I get a hold of you, what is your product or service guarantee, will you resell my email address, what is your privacy policy, when will I get the product, etc. You need to answer these questions to create trust between you and your potential customer.

6. Sitemap - How do I find my way around this big city?

Let’s say you have a lot of products or pages and resources. A sitemap helps people where to find what they are looking for quickly without have to rummage through your whole site like a lost soul. They are not hard to create but are useful for large sites. It also helps the search engines to know what you are about very quickly.

7. Fast Loading Pages - All lanes are go!

There is nothing worse than slow loading pages. You can optimize your graphics for your website. People hate to wait. You can check your page load time and page rank on Alexa.com. Slow pages equal death to an online business.

8. Shopping Cart - Need to buy some souvenirs

If you are selling items or services, you need a reliable and well organized shopping cart. I have seen some websites that have a zillion products listed and to email them for orders. What a nightmare! Yes, the shopping carts will charge you a fee but it is worth it for them to handle the transaction. There are many good shopping carts available and I would research them based on your business’ needs.

9. Templates or Original Design- Chevrolet or Porsche

People often think that to have a website designed is going to cost thousands. So they opt for the templates and throw together sites. There is nothing wrong with this approach except I can tell the difference between what I call a “canned” site and one that was created from scratch. While I don’t think a website that uses templates will turn off a customer, I just think it may not be as appealing.

Have fun with your online business. You can go to any number of photography sites and download professional photos from cows to race cars. This will make your site look more customized.

Again, I recommend that you shop for a good web designer. I paid around $400 for a basic site to go up. I know others would have charged me $1000 or more. That’s why you need to shop and see examples of their work.

10. Customer Service - The Finish Line!

Okay so how is customer service a website design? Well, customer service should be written all over your site. From tips, to free reports, to guarantees, to fast and reliable shopping. People want to know you know what you are talking about and can deliver the goods they want.
Give a little and I guarantee you’ll get in back tenfold.

Jan Peterson founder of http://www.goldstarreview.com researches and reviews business opportunities including internet marketing, real estate investing, affiliate marketing, financial investing and more. Over 400 FREE reports available.

I took it for granted that people implicitly understood the difference between Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. However, I had to change my thinking when, in a meeting, I got asked this very question; what’s the difference?

In my view the root of the answer lies in the early days of the Search Engines. We did not have the Google AdWords and AdSense or the MSN AdCenter or Overture. What we had were Search Engines and the art of making it to the top of the pile was a very technical one, hence the phrase Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization by definition is therefore a mostly technical skill which revolves around ensuring that what we code, how we code, ensures that our site appears as high on the search rankings as possible for our given keyword or key phrases.

The landscape changed quite dramatically with the introduction of paid advertising. With products like Adsense and AdWords we now enter the realm of Search Engine Marketing. Advertisers now have the ability to drive their visibility on the search engines right to the top of page one on Google, simply by bidding for their respective keyword.

Search Engine Marketing by definition is therefore no longer a technical skill, but now has all the aspects of marketing a product or service. You are faced with the same questions as you would be if you were marketing in the physical world. Factors like brand, price, positioning and unique selling point become much more important.

A business who wishes to establish an online presence would be silly to ignore the basic fundamentals of Search Optimization even if they have the budget to drive traffic to their site through Search Marketing. My recommendation to any company who are going to create a web presence and intend selling a product is that you need both.

The other question we need to answer is whether the two are mutually exclusive, inclusive or is there some overlap? There is a definite overlap between the two and the easiest way to look at this is the “keyword” link. In classic Search Optimization one would optimize based on selected keywords which one wants to rank for. Often use would be made of tools such as Keyword Density Analyzers to determine what percentage of total text does a specific keyword or phrase take up.

In Search Marketing we still focus heavily on keywords, since we need to bid for those same keywords in terms of our online advertising. In fact the entire keyword scenario moves up a gear as we try to uncover a broader base of keywords that will bring in targeted traffic at a reduced cost per click. The key to Search Marketing becomes exploiting the “long tail of search”, which refers to the larger selection of less frequently searched terms.

Ken Metcalf is a professional engineer, also holding a business commerce degree. He writes articles in his spare time on technical topics
ranging from low level programming to The SEO Blog which deals with search engine optimization. For more information on
using Search Engine Technology visit The SEO pages here

You probably already use the Online World for many things. Whether you use it for entertainment, research, sending E-mail to friends and family, or just discussing numerous subject topics with others.

Of all things you can do online, there is one that you should definitely know how to do. MARKET ANY BUSINESS ONLINE!

That’s right, with the power of the Online World to reach millions of people, online marketing is definitely an awesome tool that no business should be without. Just because of the simple fact alone that advertising is practally FREE. The ability to get the results of thousands of dollars in free publicity is practically unheard of in business today. Only recently have more and more people figured out how to utilize the ever exploding online world to market their business efforts.

Think about it, there is probably no business in existence that could not benefit from free publicity! And the fact that properly utilizing free advertising raises net profits to unbelievable levels! Using any or all of te major online services, or the INTERNET, can help you market your business efforts.

Let’s start with plain old advertising. On America Online, for example, they let you place classified advertisements for FREE! They have a variety of classifications to choose from. By placing these small free ads you can generate some very quality leads that can turn into sales. Or if you are a really good marketer you could sell something straight from your free ad. Wouldn’t that be something, using the actual free ad to do all of the selling.

The other services offer free advertising from time to time. When they do charge for classified ads it is usually very inexpensive, and still a great deal considering how many people those ads can reach. When you place any advertisements you should always “code” your ads. This means put something in each individual ad that will tell you, if you get any business from it, which ad it came from. This way, you will probably find that some sections are better producers than others, and you will want to concentrate on these sections and not the ons that weren’t making any money.

To code an ad your could make them request a certain “report” on more information. You should give each report a different code for each ad. Such as: “ask for report #1tv” , this way you would know that this request came from the ad in the televisions for sale category, and so forth. If they send you an order straight from the ad, make them give you an order#, which would be different for each ad. THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE WHO ARE ADVERTISING ONLINE ARE NOT USING THESE AD CODES!!! THIS IS A MAJOR MARKETING MISTAKE!!!

By not tracking exactly which ads are making money, they are wasting their time by continually placing ads in loser categories. The actual code can be anything you want to assign to it. ALWAYS keep track of every ad you place. Make a not of what it said, where and when it was placed. You will be pleasantly surprised when you analyze your “ad data” and see some positive trands developing. Just repeat these trands and it will help you make more money.

How would you like to find a name list of several hundred ( or even thousand) people who might be interested in the particular product or service you are selling based on their jobs or interests? Wouldn’t that be great!? Well you can and the online services supply this service as part of your regular membership.

This little unknown tool is called a “Member Directory!” You can do searches in the directory for other users with certain characteristics. For example, if you were selling fishing equipment, you could do a search by “fishing”. All of the people that were registered in the directory and had listed fishing as one of their hobbies would show up on that search list. You could now send each one of those people an e-mail message telling them about your product or service, it’s just like using a mailing list, but you have no postage! (WARNING: Be careful how you go about this, it could be spamming or unsolicited e-mail.)

You could also get the names of several prospects by doing some “browsing” in the different topic forums. Using the earlier example of looking for people who fish, you could look under sports until you found a discussion on fishing. You could then take note of the users’ names that were participating in the discussions. You could do the same thing on the INTERNET with one of the many newsgroup tops that they have.

The bottom line is that you “test” and record the results of your online marketing efforts. Then just repeat the steps that are making you money and expand on them to reach more people.

Doing simple research on the internet. The internet has several mailing lists that are dedicated to marketing on the internet. You will also find hundreds of articles on the World Wide Web. By searching one of the WWW search engines like Webcrawler you can find all the information you can read. Use search strings as: “online marketing”,”internet advertising”,”selling online”, and so on.

You can also find many books on the subject at your local bookstore or being advertised online.

Mark Heading

“Copyright, 2005, MA Heading”

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Broadband phone service uses your broadband Internet connection to transmit voice signals via IP networks. This technology is commonly referred to as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) or IP Telephony. Broadband phone service converts voice signals to digital packets which are routed to their destination and reconverted at the receiving end.

Broadband phone service appears, to the user, to operate very much like the traditional telephone networks. You can use an ATA (analogue telephone adapter) that connects to a router or modem or an IP phone that connects directly to a router or modem. The difference is that with an ATA you can use your existing phones to connect to the network.

Once set up, you can use your broadband phone service to place or receive calls to or from anywhere in the world. One of the most attractive selling points of broadband phone service is the low cost of long distance and International calls. Many IP phones service providers include extra services such as call waiting, voicemail, and caller ID at no additional cost.

There are a few drawbacks that you need to be aware of if you are planning to switch to broadband phone service. You must, of course, have access to a high-speed Internet connection and if your Internet connection is down you lose your phone service until you get back on line. There are still some reliability and security issues but it’s likely that these will soon be addressed as consumer and business demand for broadband phone service increases.

Gary Caskennette is the owner of VoIP Place, a news and information site about the rapidly developing technology of Voice over Internet Protocol. More information can be found at VoIP Place.

Blogs, are often defined as frequent and ongoing publications of personal thoughts and opinions of the Internet or websites. And, of course - all of certainly know what Marketing is. We are constantly bombarded with every sort of Marketing ploy through almost all forms of electronic media and print media as well. Blog Marketing is an exploding tactical and strategic process on the Internet whereby personal opinion and marketing coalesce to advise, promote, guide, persuade or dissuade any or all of us in our purchasing decisions.

The Blogger generally provides his/her expertise and opinion to “assist” the consumer in making all sorts of decisions. These Blogs cumulatively provide guidance on virtually every aspect of known existence. Blog Marketing is potentially a perfect platform for “guerrilla warfare” marketing as well - everyone from Joe Schmoe on the street to top politicians and corporate executives can use this method to promote a personal agenda or to sell something in the guise of authoritative and disinterested position. Caveat emptor is the watch phrase still as it will always be. Still, Blog Marketing offers many positive contributions as well. The future customer is able to obtain more information about positions, products, or services than in the traditional marketing format of advertisements.

Opinion is what it is and everyone knows the old saying about opinions - it would behove the person being blogged to consider and the potential agendas of the Blogger. The promise of blogging is that more information about the subject may be obtained or that truly outside of the box thinking might emerge into public view.

Gunnar Berglund has been a “internet- hardworker” for the last five years He publishes The meonit Gazette http://gazette.meonit.com and runs http://www.meonit.com and http://www.visualxmleditor.com

If you have been looking for a way to make some money from home, you have probably come across the idea of selling things on eBay. You can start an eBay business to make a little extra money to finance the family vacation, or you can turn it into a full-time business that pays all your bills, and more.
Getting started with making money on eBay is pretty simple.

To start with you will need to create an eBay account as well as a Paypal account to make and more importantly receive payments.

Ebay uses a feedback rating system that allows buyers and sellers to indicate and comment on how the transaction went. One of your first tasks of your new eBay business should be to get your first few ratings in. Since the rating applies to both buyers and sellers, you can start by purchasing small everyday items that you would have bought anyway through eBay to get your rating up.

Make sure you pay promptly and when you are ready to start selling make sure your customer service is excellent and your products are what your buyer is expecting from the description or better. You should have a great feedback score in no time, which will go a long way when it come to earning the trust of potential buyers.

The first few items that you put up for sale can simply be things you have laying around the house. Dig through your closet, your bookshelves and that stack of old CDs and DVDs that’s collecting dust. Before you know it you will have a great stack of things to get your eBay business off the ground without spending any money. From here you can start visiting yard sales, or look through the sales racks of stores such as GAP.

Your next step will be to do a little research on eBay to get a feel for how you should set up the auction and how much you can expect each item to fetch. EBay will let you look at recent completed auctions. Take advantage of this great free learning tool. Click on the advanced search link and check the box that says “Completed Listings Only”. You can then enter the search term, what category to look for, what country the item should be listed in etc.

Hit search and you will see all the completed auctions of this item in the last few weeks. Pay attention to which auctions made the most. When where they listed, for how long. What title did they use, what description, what picture. Can you see anything else that distinguishes this auction from the ones that did not do so well? Study the listings and you will quickly pick up on things you can do to make the most of your auctions.

Now it’s time to get your feet wet with your first few auctions. Just jump in there. EBay’s step by step listing system makes it easy and fast. Repeat what’s working for you and continue to keep an eye out for those completed auctions that did well. You’ll be off to a great start.

For more ebay tips, suggestions, advice, articles and resources head over to http://www.mommysplace.net

What are the secrets? Is traffic all that counts? Everybody is talking about traffic and of course traffic is important but what else counts? Why are some people doing very well and there is not much noise around them? They just do their jobs and are raging in millions of dollars without anybody knowing about it. What is the secrets to their success?

I recently listened to one of these men which gave an exclusive interview. He is now taking in over 14 million dollars per year and his goal is to make over 50 million per year within short, I understood what he was talking about and what made him so successful was totally different from the advertising I see all over the internet. He talked about the basic things in his business and shared his deepest secrets about how to be successful both on the internet and in traditional business. It was very inspireing to listen to him and it was almost as I was sitting at the table with him and actively taking part of the interview.

Also when the interview was over the listeners were able to send in questions and he answered them very informatively. It is a privilege to get an opportunity to listen to men like him.

Has worked in marketing for many years in different countries, is now a student of the internet.

If you are interested to listen too you can go to http://www.online-biztips.com/ for more information.

Blogging has been practiced for years. But it’s just recently that it has been considered as one of the addicting fads. Many people have resorted to blogging as an outlet for their emotions, a little online nook where they can blurt out whatever just bugs them or whatever makes them feel elated. Savvy marketers have also discovered that blogging is one of the best Internet marketing methods that won’t break your bank account.

Just what exactly is blogging? Blog is the widely used term that refers to web log. In a nutshell, a blog is like an online journal. A blog could be set up to no cost at all, and can be used for just for the fun of it or most importantly for business reasons.

Blogging for your Internet business is one surefire and easy way to boost the visibility of your products and services. Here are a few ways to boost your internet advertising with the help of a blog:

1. Make your clients or customers abreast on your website’s alterations. Your new services, products and affiliate websites could also be announced through your blog.

2. Share your opinions, advice or reviews on specific services or products that are related to your business. Publishing is a very easy process with blogging.

3. Keep track of your business objectives and plans through open writing. Your blog content can be easily stored through archives. What could be better than searchable information that could be easily accessed by anyone browsing the web, right?

4. Include links that will fetch back links and subsequently improve your ranking on search engines. This could be better executed through putting well-written articles in your website. Affiliate links could also be included in your blog to earn additional income.

5. Collect response through the ability of blogs to fetch comments from your blog readers. You can learn and improve your products and services through the comments and feedback left by your readers.

6. Connect easily with other bloggers. When other bloggers notice that you have something good in your blog, they will put you in their favorite lists that will automatically link you to their blogs.

So, how do you set up a blog? Here are some of the options you can make use of to take advantage of this fun way to advertise your Internet business.

Either you load a blogging software or let a blogging hosting service do it for you. Host services such as LiveJournal and Blogger.com are the most popular in this field. Those hosts will provide you with easy instructions on how to put up your blog easily.

Jo Han Mok is a frequent guest and featured speaker at Internet Marketing bootcamps and conferences on subjects such as copywriting and Joint Venture Marketing. Visit his website to find out how he can help you turn mere words into cash!
http://www.MasterWordsmith.com

We have all made choices in life that two seconds later we know we should take back. Especially when there is money involved this can become a problem. In the age before computers it was very simple to change your mind about something you purchased. However, since computers have come into the picture changing your mind has become a lot more complicated process.

In terms of eBay there are a few rules that apply when a bidder decides to change his or her mind after winning the bid on an item. This can be both challenging for the person bidder and the seller, but remember no matter what your circumstance you do have the right to retract your bid on an item after you won, if you choose to do so.

The problem is mainly about credibility. While there are many legitimate reasons to retract a bid on eBay, such as accidentally entering an incorrect amount for your bid, we must also keep in mind that eBay will allow you to retract your bid for almost any reason. This means that a compulsive customer could decide to retract a bid for illegitimate reasons more than a number of times. This not only is a breach of the contract mentioned in the buyer’s guide, but also it wastes the seller’s time and resources. This can also damage the buyer’s reputation and possibly disqualify him or her from future bids. For these reasons I would not recommend bidding on an item unless you are completely confident that you want it.

Though retracting is never a healthy idea for your reputation, more than likely at one point you will need to use this option. Your first move should be to notify the seller immediately about the reason you are retracting. Next, click on the “Services” link that is located at the top of the navigation bar. From there find and click on the “Retract Your Bid” link which is located under “Bidding and Buying Services.” Then, put the item number in the form located on the Bid Retractions page. Last, you can select an automated explanation, click on the “Retract Bid” button and rest easy that your bid has been removed from the auction.
The eBay management, in reality, is reasonable on things like these. In fact, eBay may accept whatever reasons buyers have whenever they want to pull back a certain bid. But then, it may pose harm on the bidder’s reputation in the future.

Retracting can sometimes be a necessary life saver. But remember, while eBay will accept many different reasons for retracting bids, just as a final warning, it can and will hurt your reputation if you abuse this feature.

eBay Information and Resources at http://call-center.advertising-selling.com/

If you are trying to sell a product or service on your website, then it is important to make your site as professional as possible. You might think designing that your own website to look like a professional did so is a rather difficult proposition, however there are many tools online that will help you achieve professional looking design.

Step #1 URL

First of all, you want to come up with a URL that is professional. This means nothing long, difficult to spell or pronounce, or vulgar. What you want is a short and easy to remember URL that has something to do with your website and one that people will be able to share easily with others through word of mouth. This might take some effort to come up with because many simple URLs are taken, but with some thought and creativity you will be able to come up with something that works. NOTE: Don’t even think about registering a domain unless it is a .com!

Step #2 Design

When it comes to design you want your page to look professional. Fortunately, there are thousands of professional web page design templates that you can either buy or download for free. Then, all you have to is upload your grammatically correct and perfectly spelled content and your appropriate photos and graphics to have a professionally designed site.

Step #3 E-mail

You want to make sure that your web host supports e-mail for your URL. This is an important design element that makes you appear professional.

Step #4 Newsletter

A weekly or monthly newsletter on your website about current trends, need to know information, and the like is a great way to appear professional and well put together.

Step #5 Secure Payments

For a professional website you must be able to accept credit card payments and they must be on a secure server. There are no if, ands, or buts about it. If you do not accept credit card payments and if your site is not secure you can forget making any online sales. Be sure that your website itself is as secure as possible and that the software you use for credit card processing is safe and has extra security measures build in.

Step #6 Testimonials

Testimonials are another excellent way to build confidence in your product and promote a professional appearance. When you make a sale, simply send a follow-up e-mail asking for feedback and permission to post what they have to say on your website. Testimonials can really make a difference!

Step #7 Password Protection

If you have a membership type site, you’ll want it to be password protected so you can save the information of each member, allowing them to personally manage their pages. This is very important and can really give your website a professional appearance that will stand out.

Michael Turner reveals his foolproof way to increase website traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it free right now at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/

Now-a-days installing blogging softwares are just few minutes of click and run jobs. In few minutes you can install a nice looking blog ready to be published. Until this stage, everything seems simple, but when it comes to promoting something as complex as blogging softwares or CMS (Content Management System) applications for that mater, on which blogging softwares are based, can be quite tricky and painful. It is as much painfully easy to install blog software, as it is painfully hard to promote it on search engines if you do not know the correct direction to make headway.

Even though Wordpress comes with features which will help you to make your blog search engine optimized, but these are too basic features to be relied on and you will still need to make changes yourself to better it.

Mata Tags

Meta tags which are important for search engine optimizing your blog, doesn’t come bundled with your Wordpress, when you install it. You will need to install a plugins to have your meta tags displayed on your blog head. Meta tags can be added in the header.php file of your blog. A list of popular Mata tags plugins can be found at http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Meta.

Permalink Tag

Every blog has a Permalink feature; it is the permanent link (URL) to a post or page on your blog. Having keyword rich URLs will surely help your blog being pulled for important keywords. You can customize your permalink structure to have more keywords instead of default /category/year/date/time/hour/minute/second/post_title as your post URL. For instance, you can remove %seconds%, %hour% or %post_id% in your parmalink tag. These are not necessary and having them as your URIs will only make it look longer. Also you can do away with %date% tag altogether to just have %category% in the URIs.

Category names

Be careful while making categories. You can always have the category names as keywords so that your final URIs will be full of keywords.

Tagging

You can have tags especially Technorati Tag plugin installed for your blog posts. Tags are basically names of categories or subjects. With tags in your post, you can categorize your posts based on these tags. While tagging will increases traffic to your blog, it will also make it search engine friendly.

Making above changes to your blog will definitely make it look more search engine optimized and will help you increase its online visibility in Search engine result pages (SERPs).

Happy SEO Blogging!!

Rakesh Ojha is a SEO specialist and Online Marketing Consultant with over 5 Years in SEM Industry. Contact him at rakesh@searchengineoptimization4u.com or visit his website at http://www.searchengineoptimization4u.com.

Read latest SEM and SEO articles on his blog at http://semblog.searchengineoptimization4u.com

The Internet gives you an easy access to information and services and it is becoming the wave of the future. With the hype of broadband enabled services, competition is increasing and prices are dropping. Broadband has opened a whole new world of creative opportunities for individuals and businesses alike and has made ordinary Internet browsing extraordinary. With amazing speeds and reliable connections, all Internet activities are best performed with a dependable speedy connection. Gone are the days of expensive phone calls and slow speed Internet access. Today, broadband allows you to access Internet at lightening speed from home or anywhere at the most affordable prices.

Looking from the consumer’s point of view, it’s good news for them, as they would obviously like to pay less for a service. People are becoming aware of broadband services available for low prices and so they are switching from dial-up to broadband. Apart from the prices, a number of factors like faster downloads, the introduction of Voice of Internet Protocol (VoIP), offering customers free, or extraordinarily cheap, telephone calls; and the enormous success of online computer games has led to the switch over from dialup to broadband.

It is expected that the prices will continue to fall and customers will continue to get more for their money. Customers are always looking for the providers offering less price and more quality and are willing to switch their existing service provider if he doesn’t fit their needs. But the biggest problem for the customers wanting to take advantage of lower rates by switching their provider is paying a service charge to the provider for installing a modem.

With the competition among Internet providers becoming more severe every day, consumers are getting great choice. A number of providers are willing to cut down their prices to match their competitor and get business. Changes and technological advances in the world of broadband are happening all the time. The price wars have finally begun with the competition soaring among high-speed Internet providers. Cable companies are also competing with the broadband providers in a bid to gain their position in the market by slashing prices and increasing access speeds.

Alen

UK mobile phone directory

Are you the type of person that enjoys probing, investigating and researching a subject? If so, then here’s a way you can make some easy money from all your cerebral efforts.

Not so long ago, selling ‘website links’ on eBay was quite a money spinner.

Essentially, the idea was to compile a useful list of links for a particular niche market, say for example, wholesale suppliers / dropshippers, and then sell this, with some explanatory text, to any interested buyers.

The quality of this information often varied from the totally inadequate to the extremely useful. Perhaps because of this inconsistency in quality, eBay now tends to frown on this type of basic product even if the customer happens to get good value for money.

However, the general concept of selling ‘internet content’ is still a financially viable one and something that can be adapted and improved upon. So if you decide to try and sell the results of your research then you’ll probably have to devise a more acceptable ‘end product’ to ward off the attention of the eBay policy hounds.

Obviously, your aim should be to offer relevant, informative and, ideally, unique information that’ll be of great value to your customer and well worth the money paid for it. So with that as your goal, let’s try to work through an idea and explore it’s possibilities.

Let’s imagine that you’re a keen cyclist and that you know all about the best cycling web sites that deal with discounted equipment suppliers, beautiful cycling locations, cycling holidays, great cycling clubs etc. This information would no doubt be extremely useful to many cycling enthusiasts. And it‘s something they’d be prepared to pay good money for rather than spend hours themselves surfing the web.

And remember that this kind of research could apply to any market from antiques to xylophones and everything in between. So no matter what your interest, if you can offer some really useful and interesting information then it could be offered for sale on eBay.

But how do you turn this raw information into ready cash ?

Well, you could still try to sell a list of your web links but as mentioned earlier, this is not considered to be appropriate by eBay. So you could experience some listing problems with this approach. However, there is an alternative.

What about making a simple video of your own research efforts?

This could show you locating the sites of interest, with close up screen shots, and offering tips on how to get the most from the sites and the best way to use them.

This approach is more than likely to circumvent any eBay listing problems. And you could charge more for this type of ‘tangible’ item because there’s more of a perceived value on the part of the customer with this type of product than just an email list of links with descriptive text.

Admittedly, your costs will increase and you’ll have to spend time shipping the items sold but your increased selling price should more than compensate for this extra effort.

And you don’t need to be an expert in any particular subject to make this work for you.

If you already have a passion for something then so much the better. This means you can get started straight away. But if you’re naturally inquisitive and enjoy doing research then you could chose virtually any marketable topic and start to explore its possibilities. The choices are endless but to make it pay you need to focus on what’s in demand.

Getting feedback from your customers is vital. You can then use this in all your listings to generate even more sales and establish your credibility. It may be difficult at first but if you‘re confident in your product then ask for feedback and promise to do likewise. Most buyers will respond to your request.

Also, special care and attention must be spent on your eBay description.

As you’ll be selling something that is completely new and unknown then you must provide the full story about your product. You must present a good, specific description that emphasises all the positive benefits. Don’t be frightened to sing the praises of all your hard work and what your product can do for your customer.

Let’s say that you haven’t got a clue about any subject whatsoever or any sites to use for your video. Also, you just haven’t got the time to spend hours on research.

Well, how about ‘outsourcing’ or, in effect, paying someone else to do all the donkey work for you? This doesn’t have to be costly. If you visit www.elance.com, you can hire freelancers, and other specialists, to do all your research at a very reasonable cost.

So if you decided that there’d be a lucrative market for a video / CD on collecting Chinese snuff bottles then you can hire a researcher to locate all the relevant web sites, write some descriptive text, and then use that information to launch your product.

And talking of markets, that reminds me of probably the most important aspect of this exercise….finding a ‘hot’ market to sell into.

You’ll need to find the right market from the outset. You should spend some time on this exercise and identify a niche where lots of people are hungry for the information you will be offering. This can take some time but the effort you expend on this will ultimately be reflected in the level of your sales.

And if your chosen subject was sufficiently extensive, you could create a series of videos / CD’s and then sell them separately.

So once you had made a first sale on eBay you could later contact your buyers and make an offer for your other products ‘outside’ of the eBay marketplace. This way you would save on listing fees. You could then chose another topic / market and repeat the process.

Another idea is that you could use your video / CD’s simply as a means of creating a list of interested buyers.

So you sell your first CD as a lead-in product at minimum cost. You then add the bidders / buyers to your email list and offer your other, more expensive, products to them as you feel appropriate.

If you find the right market then your product could carry on selling for some considerable time. And if your market is big enough then you can easily create a semi-residual income from a relatively small amount of initial effort and investment.

Finding that ‘hot market’ with lots of hungry buyers is the key to success with this particular scheme but it can make your research a very profitable pastime.

A little effort, creative skill and perseverance could soon put that extra cash into your bank account.

Author’s Note

Finding the best products on Clickbank can be a time consuming, frustrating business.

But now you don’t have to waste your valuable time searching through the 10,000 Clickbank products trying to find that elusive digital item in your exact area of interest.

Take advantage of this unique ‘j’ (just find it) search facility by clicking on the link below.

http://www.clickbanjk.com

It will help you find the best products that interest you…quickly and easily.

And you can also learn how to sell either your own products or those created by experts as an affiliate.

Clickbank is still the easiest way to start your own internet business…use the ‘j’ search and get started today.

Search Engine Marketing is very important if you want your online business to succeed. It is all about good quality high value (unique is best) content, it is what the search engines want, as it is what the searchers are looking for. This is just a quick list from the top of my head but is enough to keep you busy.

• Articles: this is the most powerful way for 2006 and beyond to generate good quality one-way in bound links. Submit them to article directories and submission services, do a search on your favourite search engine for article submission services or article directories to find relevant ones for your industry. Note it is a good idea to use relevant keywords and phrases in your articles but only if they make sense.

• Press Releases: another sure fire way to generate quality links from authority sites. Press releases are much more powerful that advertising as they are objective. Again if you are not familiar with writing press releases do a search in your favourite search engine for information on how to write a good press release, for example type in ‘tips for writing a good press release’. Then do a search for good press release submission services PRWeb.com is a very popular service

• Add regular fresh content to the site: Your search engine marketing will only succeed if you do this - you could reuse the articles used for submissions etc… But this would probably not be the best method. Although a good idea would be to write a series of articles, use a few of them or a shortened version or an abstract (still with good quality unique content of course) for submission to the directories. Make sure you tell the readers that further articles and information can be found on your website, enticing them to visit your site to read the rest of the articles.

Make a point to add fresh content to your site on a regular basis. For example if you are in the Overseas property industry you should add new properties, buyers guides, area guides, country guides, case studies, customer testimonials, resources (i.e. weather, travel info, car hire etc… these can be affiliate links to generate additional streams of income).

Set yourself up a Blog and make regular posts to ping the search engines every time you add fresh content to your site, this will alert the search engine spiders, who will come crawling to review and index your new pages. Again if you don’t know much about Blogs, use your favourite search engine to find out how to set one up. Wordpress.com is a popular service.

• Joint ventures: i.e. you email your database in return for an email to another company’s database. You know your industry; you should know who to tap up for a joint venture. Don’t simply view similar websites as competitors, this is short sighted; instead view them as opportunities and colleagues. You can swap links, exchange content (publish each other articles), email each others databases etc… use your imagination, get creative, there is enough traffic for most websites to succeed. As long as your website adds value and offers good quality unique content you will succeed.

• Hooks: you can offer your visitors something of value in return for them signing up to your newsletter. For example, again if you are an overseas property company Free Brochures, Buyers guide, legal or tax information

• Competitions: use incentive based viral marketing i.e. enter your site visitors into a competition for every friend or colleague they tell about your site or who they get to register for your mailing list.

• Optimise your web pages and articles: as this article is talking about using fresh content for your search engine marketing strategy I thought it best show you how to create an optimised page, for those of you that don’t know how.

In my experience I have found that it is important to optimise each webpage for a maximum of two phrases only.

Title

Title = phrase one | phrase two

Meta keywords

Also try to keep your Meta keywords limited to a few, use the same two phrases first as in your title although you can bulk it out with another phrase, like so;

Meta Keywords: phrase one, phrase two, phrase three

Meta Description

The Meta description must also start with your keywords but be descriptive at the same time, like so;

Meta Description: Phrase one, information for about phrase two from your company / website name

Alt tags

First 3 images on the page should contain the phrases but also describe the picture/image, like so;

Alt 1: phrase one company name logo
Alt 2: phrase two picture
Alt3: phrase one photos

Headers

It is also very important to have header tags with the keyphrase in, like so;

Start the page copy with a header tag

< H >Phrase one< /H >

Copy

The first 50 words must also contain the two phrases.

Copy

Then use another header with a phrase

phrase two

copy

< h >phrase one< h >

etc…

It is recommended to have between 500 - 1300 words on the page with a keyphrase weight of 2 - 5%

The key phrases should be strategically placed in an hour glass shape in the copy, i.e. a few at the top a couple in the middle and a few at the bottom.

But don’t over do it, make the copy read naturally with all the words in context.

It is also recommended to have the keyphrases in bold and italic somewhere on the page as this tells the search engines that they are important, I usually put them in the footer like so.

Phrase one | phrase two

Links

Last but not least it is recommended to have your key phases in hyper links i.e. linking text

For example you can have anchor links to the different header tags on the page for navigation or run of site link at the bottom of the page that contain the keyphrases of the page they are linking to.

And there you have it, a quick guide on how to optimise a webpage.

Use these web page optimisation techniques for all pages, articles, and fresh content you add to your site and you can’t go wrong, you are giving the search engines what they want, easy to understand content rich pages, regularly updated.

In return the search engines will give you what you want good-targeted traffic that will convert into enquiries.

Follow this search engine marketing guide, build solid content and good links and your search engine marketing campaign should be a success. if you liked this article and want to learn more visit loudmouse.biz

Luke Fitzsimmons has been working online for 5 years and is a search engine marketing and optimisation professional. Luke currently runs the Overseas Property Webshow http://www.overseaspropertywebshow.com and looks after the internet marketing campaigns of the webshow client’s micro sites, including SEM, SEO, PPC, and email marketing. Luke’s personal site is a Search Engine Marketing Guide http://www.loudmouse.biz

What is a broadband phone? How does a broadband phone work? Where do I find broadband phone service? How much can I expected to pay for a broadband phone and broadband phone service? These are the questions I have asked and set out to answer in this article.

What is a broadband phone? A broadband phone is essentially a telephone that makes calls to another telephone via a broadband connection.

How does a broadband phone work? When a phone call is placed the call is routed by a private branch exchange (PBX) from a company like AT&T, SBC, or Sprint. The difference is that the data from the phone call, which is the voice data from you speaking, is transferred back and forth through the internet using a technology called voice over IP (VoIP). A traditional phone transfers data over phone lines.

Where do I find broadband phone service and how much does it cost? A list of broadband phone service providers and their lowest monthly rates is below.

Broadband Phone Service Providers
Lingo - $19.99
Net2Phone - $14.99
SpeakEasy - $83.90
Voice Eclipse - $12.95
Voice Pulse - $14.99
Vonage - $14.99
ZingoTel - $14.95

I hope I have been able to answer some of your basic questions concerning broadband phones and goodluck with your future broadband phone endeavors.

Jason D. Barrett is currently focused on writing articles for InfoBriefs.com (Brief reports on several topics), ChildInsure.com (Child Insurance), and ScoutTechnology.com.