Marketing in 2010 - the New Age of Internet Markting

I recently launched a new informational website in the life insurance niche. Specifically, it's intended to provide information about the differences of Term Life Insurance vs Whole Life Insurance for those looking for coverage. It's monetized through contextual advertising, but differently than I might have done so years back.

Back in the early days of Internet marketing, there were much fewer ways to make money online, however the general sophistication of marketers was considerably lower. Many of the online business models we take for granted today, such as video marketing, CPA or Cost Per Action, and many more didn't even exist yet.

Today there are literally dozens of different business models. Many of the "tried & true" methods and platforms still exist, but have gotten much more sophisticated - both in the skills necessary, and the level of the consumer.

Email marketing continues to be very big, largely because email communications has continued to grow exponentially. And in that case, the effectiveness relies on a very sturdy and stable concept - communications with an audience. The main changes have been that people become immune to many of the more common marketing messages, and spam filters increasingly filter out these types of emails. However in general, building up trust by communicating directly with an audience continues to be one of the most effective forms of marketing.

To be effective in 2010, the Internet marketer must evolve with the market. It's imperative to keep up with the changes in technology. For example, Social Bookmarking and Social Media, which didn't exist at all a few years ago, has grown into an essential part of many people's online experiences. Beyond Myspace, there is Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and many more social "Web 2.0" platforms. Learning how use these newer mediums is essential.

Along with the newer technologies, it's equally important to follow and keep up with the trends in online marketing. For instance, Pay Per Click (PPC) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has gone from a relatively inexpensive means of purchasing traffic, to a mega-competitive field where the inexperienced user can very quickly lose their shirts - and wallets!

So how do we get on top of, and stay on top of the newer trends and methods? One sure-fire way is to simply be observant. Look around you - your own email inbox, the places you go when you're surfing online, etc. See what stands out, what other marketers are doing, and take note. Dissect what they're doing, and how they are going about it. Read Ads, particularly the ones that catch your attention. This is one of the best and most effective means of strategic marketing research.

Make sure you avail yourself to the tools available as well. Applications such as Google's Webmaster Tools becomes an invaluable lifeline to what is going on with your own websites.

Spend some time on the marketing forums. Not only should you be asking questions, you should pay particular attention to the threads of other marketers. Reading these threads can not only keep you abreast of new affiliate products, marketing opportunities, and methods, but can give you the necessary insight into how others are using them effectively.

They say "Nothing is new under the sun", however in this business, that's a dangerous perspective. The technology changes, and as it does some methods become obsolete, while others take their place.

Remember, your survival as a successful Internet marketer depends on taking advantage of the "right" tools and opportunities!

The Benefits And Hazards Of Using PPC

One of the greatest systems in internet marketing is PPC (pay per click), which has revolutionized the way people view advertisements. For those of you who are new to the concept of internet marketing, it is a field where people are paid to create some wonderful concepts where companies are able to market their products or websites online and pay the advertisers for bringing traffic onto their site. For some sites, however, Pay Per Click may not be an option for a few reasons. For instance, I might want to send traffic specifically about the American Heart Association 3 Day Diet Plan, but not want to pay for each click. A similarly non-PPC page on a real-estate foreclosure site, asking How Does Foreclosure Work, may not be a good candidate for paid traffic. Unfortunately, some marketers have developed scams and taken them to a whole new level with the introduction of sites that pay members a fee to click and visit the websites that the advertisers provide to them. The members in turn gain a profit for the number of advertisements they click. They are provided with a fixed amount of adverts per day for which they have to wait for a whole 24 hours before the adverts are available to be clicked on again. Another scheme created is the referral system. A person becomes a member (consider him as member A) of the advertisers website, the member tells his friend (consider him to be member B) to join the site, now the member B has been referred to this site through member A. Hence member A gets a part of the profit (equal to a portion of what member B has gained) as a commission for referring a friend.The higher the referrals the higher the commission pay obtained by a member. Some websites impose a penalty on the members for clicking an advertisement more than once. His "punishment" may range from losses of the day's payout to even termination of the users account. Scamming PPC is not some thing to be dealt with lightly. It serves a large sector on the internet marketing world. From an advertisers point of view PPC is a totally different thing. The company's set a budget depending on how many times they wish to display they're adverts online .The advertisers provide the companies with a set of clicks based on the budget provided and finalized. This system works as follows: A customer searches the internet for a particular product he is interested in, after finding a product based on the relevant search he clicks the link enabling him to view the company's ad.This is repeated until the value set by the advertisers has ended after this the companies advertisements do not show up on the search results. The Company pays the advertisers for each and every click generated by a customer.There is also software to measure whether the click provided by a customer is a legitimate click or not. This helps save the company money on wasted clicks made by people who might be trying to scam as in the illustration above. As one of the most effective ways for companies to grow and sell they're products online, Pay Per Click will be leading into further development to make internet marketing a common way to market company brands throughout the web.

SpeedPPC Creates Astounding PPC Results - Plus an EXCLUSIVE DISCOUNT!

SpeedPPC has slashed the time it takes to get accounts set up, it’s literally like having extra staff in the office working for free and has saved us thousands of hours work.

It’s actually a suite of tools, all based on ultra-smart methodologies.

Relevancy and Quality Score are vital for your campaigns’ success. That means tight-knit relationships between your keywords, ads and landing pages.

SpeedPPC’s patent-pending process builds the anatomy of a perfect campaign – in a way that makes it easy and hassle-free for you!

You can launch powerful PPC marketing campaigns of any volume, quickly and effortlessly.

We used to spend an insane amount of time each day setting up tightly grouped campaigns and ad groups by hand & using inefficient “keyword sorter” tools.

With SpeedPPC however, we are now saving on average 3 hours per day setting up campaigns! Not only that, but SpeedPPC has allowed us to expand our keyword lists (and create matching landing pages/PPC campaigns) in record time… targeting more long-tail keywords than we ever thought possible (thanks to your Expansion Keywords!).

SpeedPPC is a must-have tool for anyone remotely doing anything with Pay Per Click marketing.

What Is Search Engine Marketing?

"SEM", or Search engine marketing, is a type of marketing that focuses on generating a high ranking on the Internet search engine results pages ("SERPs") of the major search engines. Search engine marketing – also known simply as "search marketing" – includes search engine optimization (SEO) on the one hand, and various kinds of paid search engine marketing including "pay-per-click", "paid inclusion" and "paid placement" on the other.

A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help users find information stored on the Internet. Essentially, search engines were built to help minimize the amount of time required to locate information. Nowadays, they are the main tool used by Internet users to find the information they want. Consequently, search engines are a major source of web traffic for many websites. Moreover, because search engine users tend not to look beyond the first few pages of results, the higher the ranking achieved by your website, the more search engine traffic it is likely to receive.

Search engine optimization is the process of increasing your search engine ranking for specific keywords. In other words, if you know that many of your prospective customers tend to search for your products and services using particular keywords, you want your site to be highly ranked in the SERPs for those keywords. In general, to achieve a high ranking, you need your website to be perceived by the search engines as being highly "relevant" for those keywords. Although the algorithms used by search engines are a carefully guarded secret, it is generally believed that this involves designing your website in a certain way, as well as attracting "back links" from other relevant ("authority") sites.

While achieving a high ranking in the SERPs via search engine optimization can take time and effort, it doesn't take much time to get a high ranking in the paid listings… if you're willing to pay! Essentially, you can have your site or ad appear high on the paid listings in return for a fee. Pay-per-click advertising, for example, is where the search engines display a short ad for your website on the right-hand side of the SERPs in return for a fee. The amount of this fee will depend on how popular are the keywords you're targeting. Fees can range from $0.05, to $5 to $50 per click!

Paid inclusion programs are programs where, in exchange for a fee, a search engine will guarantee the inclusion of your website listing. The downside of these programs is that they cannot guarantee that the pages will rank high for certain keyword searches. This is in contrast to paid placement programs, which do guarantee top listings if you pay a high enough fee. Paid placement can be particularly expensive. Both paid placement and paid inclusion typically involve a flat fee.

While there is a cost involved in either search engine optimization or paid search, both can be very cost effective compared to other means of advertising and marketing. It is generally wise for anyone with a website to consider pursuing some form of search engine marketing.

For more information, tips, tricks, and strategies, visit: Improve Your Internet Marketing

KeywordSpy - Even Better Competitive Intelligence!

KeywordSpy, with a database of over 1 billion keywords, has been a mainstay for our Internet Marketing efforts since it's release.

The newest version builds on this comprehensive database and provides some of the best competitive intelligence tools for Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing available.

Not only will KeywordSpy give you keyword phrases that matter, you can finally get them in context! KeywordSpy Pro will show you who is advertising for the keywords you enter, AND show you their ads!

Find out who is advertising Clickbank products, what keywords they're using, what they're paying, etc.

Most astonishing of all, you can 'reverse engineer' your SEM competitors by seeing ALL the keywords they are using for a campaign!

Imaging being able to enter a keyword, see who is advertising for that keyword, what they are paying, view their ad, AND see what other keywords they are using in those campaigns???

If you are doing any Search Engine Marketing - PPC - you absolutely MUST use KeywordSpy! Compared to a competitor who is using this amazing tool, you are flying blind without it, at a serious competitive disadvantage.

KeywordSpy offers a free trial 'test-spin'. Check it out, you will be thoroughly amazed!

Guaranteed Traffic Formula

Traffic is the lifeblood of Internet marketing, ecommerce, and all online business.

There are many ways to generate traffic, from Pay per Click (ppc), to Free-for-All sites (FFA's). But one of the most popular methods being used today is Article Marketing.

Article marketing is done by submitting articles to article directories. The articles contain backlinks to your site by way of a "resource box". Someone reads the article, and hopefully clicks through to your site.

One of the best things about Article Marketing is that it is free (it is often referred to as "bum marketing", though this term encompasses much more).

There is a great article on generating traffic at the Improve Your Internet Marketing, the in-house blog of Analogy Marketing.

Follow their 'guaranteed' formula, and you can generate as much traffic to your sites as you like!

Gauranteed Formula for Free Traffic Generation!

We all know the success of Internet Marketing rests on our ability to generate traffic. Regardless of what you do online, if it involves Internet marketing, you need traffic. Conversions are necessary of course, but without traffic, there isn’t anything to convert.

In order to improve internet marketing results, we must improve our traffic generating techniques and methods.

After many years online, after many failures and some successes, I have refined my “formula” for generating traffic. It revolves around article marketing, works, it’s repeatable, and it’s sustainable.

I posted a complete step-by-step "formula" to my blog at Analogy Marketing. Read it. Memorize it. Act on it. Live it!

Pay per click (PPC) is a wonderful thing - after all, I am a Google Adwords Certified Professional and manage over $100,000 in Adwords spending, but the bread and butter for most internet marketers revolves around free traffic methods.

Go ahead and read this, print it out, and begin improve internet marketing for yourself:

http://www.improveyourinternetmarketing.com/free-guaranteed-traffic-formula/

The Truth about Hype and Internet Marketing

To be successful in Internet marketing, you have to have high-quality advertising. This means you have to present your product in the best light. However there is a difference between putting your best foot forward and hyping your product to the moon. In this article I will discuss how to use hype appropriately to positively help your sales argument. I will show you what to avoid when using hype so you don't get high refunds or tell flat-out lies which can get you in trouble with the law. After reading this article, you should be able to identify what is okay to write your advertisement and what will get you higher sales, and what you should avoid.

In order to sell something, your advertisement has to be believable. Too much hype means very little believability. If people believe your message, they will perceive you as an credible. If they don't, they will think you're con man. Hype doesn't sell products. Learning how to color your product or service and favorable lights, while still being believable, is what sells products.

Hype does have its place in advertising on the Internet, especially in certain markets. Some markets are so saturated that people won't respond to your message, unless you make it outrageous. This doesn't mean you make outrageous claims. This just means you put an interesting spin on your advertising. For example, a one legged golfer who can hit a drive 250 yards is more interesting than a two legged golfer who can hit a drive 300 yards when you're selling a golf instruction video. It's outrageous, and it probably has nothing to do with the product, but it's effective at getting attention. And if your ads don't get attention, they don't get read and you lose sales.

Techniques like these don't work on markets who have been over exposed to them. After awhile, these markets will become immune to tactics that they know are often manufactured to create urgency or interest. Use these wisely, and always know the state of awareness of your marketplace. What works well in one market will fail in another.

Affiliate Radar Keyword Tracking and so much more!

Affiliate Radar is perhaps the greatest asset an affiliate marketer can have. Not just keyword tracking - which Affiliate Radar does incredibly well, but features found nowhere else that will lift your Internet Marketing efforts into the Stratosphere! Read all about it at Improve Your Internet Marketing!

Campaign Launcher allows you to easily move and copy campaigns from Google to Yahoo to MSN Adcenter, from any to any. This feature will boost your income just by copying your profitable campaigns from one search engine to all three.

Affiliate Radar's hot new feature, the Offer Vault, allows you to search for CPA offers across affiliate networks just by inputting keywords and phrases!

Improve Your Internet Marketing with SpeedPPC

Improve your internet marketing with SpeedPPC, a revolutionary new system that can generate incredibly optimized, high volume Google Adwords PPC campaigns using vendor datafeeds, keyword lists, or "expansion" lists - unique qualifiers like city names, artists, animal breeds, etc.

In a recent Melanies Tips affiliate marketing newsletter, I was pointed to a blog post on her site at http://improveyourinternetmarketing.com illustrating the astonishing power of SpeedPPC.

If you are an affiliate marketer and are serious about success, you need to consider SpeedPPC.

Best of all, if you purchase through the link on her blog, she will send you not only a 'traditional' bonus package, but provide email consulting to insure you are able to take full advantage of this amazing product!

Improve Your Internet Marketing

Improve Your Internet Marketing is a new blog managed by Melanie of "Melanies Tips". It's a terrific resource for affiliate marketing, PPC, ad spying, and the like.

The site includes an archive of Melanies Tips email newsletter, reviews and info on programs such as SpeedPPC, Affiliate Radar, KeywordSpy, and helpful tips, tricks, and strategies for the beginning and seasoned Internet Marketer.

Free Download from the "Google Cash" Guy

Chris Carpenter, the guy behind Google Cash, has come out with a new product. As with any good Internet Marketer, he is giving away an ebook and video.

I just read through it, and it is on par with his other stuff. Even if you don't buy his product, there is terrific information in his free download. Do yourself a favor: Download and read it. It's free.

If you are doing anything with pay-per-click, or plan to, this pdf has some excellent information.

BTW, if you never read through Google Cash, this is THE book that defined the affiliate PPC market. Incredibly valuable, well written, and still timely.

You don't want to miss out on this one. It will certainly help you become more profitable than ever, however, if you are unaware of these concepts it will be harder than ever to make a profit as an affiliate marketer.

This is a must read.

UPDATE: Cam Studio, the screen capture video program, has re-done their sales page. If you're looking for a wide-open affiliate marketing opportunity, take a look.