One particular contest that caught my eye was the one for the coolest guy on the planet. This caught my eye for two reasons. Not only was it a chance to go up against some big names in the internet marketing arena, but it will also do wonders for my already healthy ego.

Imagine being able to knock off guys like Filsaime and Fallon? That would make me feel pretty good about my SEO ability, even if it was for something silly like “coolest guy on the planet“.

So what are some tips for people wanting to compete in these silly ego fests? Well, if you really have to do this, work out what you need to knock the top dogs off their pedestals.

Do a simple back link check to see what sort of link firepower you’re going to need. A handful of links with the desired anchor text is nothing to worry about, you should be able to smoke someone like that.

However, if you do a backlink check and find that the top dogs have a ton of high PR backlinks, you may want to reconsider your efforts. Is it really worth your time to try and rank for a silly term like the coolest guy on the planet?

If it is, then go nuts. Pull out your big guns. Submit your articles to the article directories, submit the site to website directories, post some comments on blogs, plant some links on your already existing sites. Do whatever you have to do to cement your spot in the top echelons of the first page in google.

Of course, if you think it’s going to take a lot of work and you don’t think it’s worth it at all, then I don’t need to tell you to not even bother. You are better off building links to your sites that will actually give you some sort of tangible result.

So there you have it, a few handy tips to take on board if you intend on taking on some other SEOers in an SEo competition.

Motivate Your Customer : It sounds so basic, yet, so many people miss this and as a result, miss out on converting their website visitors into sales. In the rush to get the product out there as far and as wide as possible, many internet marketers use a shotgun approach to reaching their audience, only to end up shooting themselves in the foot instead.

If you know your demographic, you stand a much better chance of converting. Why? Simple: you learn to understand what the customer needs, what the customers is most interested in, and most importantly, what the customer truly wants. Find out what motivates your customer and you will find out what you need to target in order to make that sale. You could have the best widget ever. If your customer doesn’t want, or need a widget, you wont make the sale. Your product must address, at the very least at a basic level, what products will make their life easier, and more productive. Why are they interested in their chosen hobby or interest? What keeps them curious?

Its key to sell to your customer’s needs. That is the secret to internet marketing success. You don’t need to spend $197 for an ebook to learn the secrets - you just learned for free.

Small business is changing the face of business. Small business is also well suited to internet marketing because it can be very manageable to serve a niche, something that would have been more difficult prior to the internet revolution which began in the late 1990’s. Small Business is also the major job provider in most economies. And if your small business is forced to compete with other, larger businesses, good customer service can give you the winning hand. The first step is to examine whether or not starting a small business is right for you — not your neighbor, friend, coworker, or whoever else is trying to tell you that you should start your own business. Getting into your own business should be a burning desire for you.

Test this out for yourself by doing a search on “dog toilet training”. When people scan search results, the very first thing they do is to look for the keywords they entered. Searched keywords highlighted in bold grab their attention. Because of this, ads with searched keywords usually do better than ones without.

write emotional ads that really grab people – admittedly, this gets tricky. This is what the big boys get the big bucks for. But you can do it. First, start your headline with an attention-grabbing word. Then use loaded words or phrases that make people want to get up and take action. Make them laugh, make ‘em cry, make ‘em mad…but make ‘em feel something.

But don’t get carried away—if your ad isn’t specific to the site you’re promoting, Google may reject that ad. (That is, don’t scream, “XXX!” if you’re selling shoes, OK?) Google has strict guidelines about unacceptable language and punctuation, so some attention-grabbing ideas you have may be outside Google guidelines and therefore disallowed.

2. Set whatever you sell apart – this is called a ‘differentiator’. What’s special about what you sell? Does it do something unique? Come in an unusual color? Is it rare? Or are you offering a discount? You need something to set it apart.

3. Make sure to link to relevant landing pages – if your ad is for a specific product affilorama mark ling, take time to create a unique landing page for the ad. Include relevant and useful information to really sell the item or service. Garner the user’s e-mail for further marketing. A good landing page will almost always convert more visitors than if you simply sent them over to the home page. Remember: There’s no point having a great “selling” Google ad leading to a mundane, uninspiring landing page. And vice versa, there’s no point having a riveting, energetic landing page that will never be viewed because of a non-inspiring search engine ad.

4. Qualify visitors – you don’t want a bunch of freebie hunters clicking on your ad in the hopes of getting something for nothing. You can deter freebie seekers by including the price of the product or service at the end of the ad. Doing this beefs up your overall conversion ratio and lowers your average customer acquisition cost. Sure, you reduce your CTR, but they weren’t going to buy anything anyway! Another valuable technique is using negative keywords. If I add “-free” to my “review of affilorama” keyword list, and someone searches for “free dog training guide” my ad will never appear.

5. Carry out simultaneous split testing - always test 2 (or more) ads at the same time. This is called “split testing”. Determine which one has the best CTR then redo the other ad with new copy. After a week or so, see which ad has been most profitable, or generates the most clicks. Delete the inferior ad and create a new ad to test against the successful ad.

6. Track ROI Constantly – “it ain’t worth a thing if it don’t make the cash register sing.” Google offers a conversion tracking option to see which keywords are making you money and which bid prices are most valuable. To set up conversion tracking, go to the “mark ling review” tool in your Adwords account. Adwords will generate a unique tracking code. Contact the vendor you are affiliating to and request that they insert your tracking code on their “after purchase” page. Whenever a sale is made through your Adwords affiliate link, conversion stats will show up in your Adwords account.

The old style model of the managers,supervisors taking the role of authority, giving out instructions and expecting loyalty and compliance no longer is an effective style. Typically the model that is the most effective today is that of a team coach. This management style is similar to that of the coach of a sports team. Using this analogy, this article will discuss some of the key skills involved in building an effective team .There are some important teambuilding skills required for getting results. These include the ability to:

Analyze the Players

Before building a team the manager needs to take a close look at the players he has to work with. Take each player plot and analyze their performance by identifying their skills and attitudes. Look at the strengths and weaknesses of the individual players.

Create a Game Plan

Look at the results that the team needs to be able to achieve, and determine which players have the best strengths required to complete the job effectively. Strategically position the players, balancing strengths and weaknesses using as many of the players strengths as possible.

Do you ever dream of home based business opportunities? Are you tired of the 40-40 plan where you work for someone 40 hours per week for 40 years to get a gold watch and a hand shake?

Welcome to the world of home based business.

Many people think of this as a pipe dream but it’s a reality that you could be part of if you’re serious, hard working and self motivated. There are many businesses that you can run from the comfort of your own home while enjoying quality time with your family.

You see advertisements touting the ease of sitting at home in your underwear, feet on your desk raking in huge volumes of cash. While there is some truth to that, it’s really more likely that you’ll spend some time, initially, working as hard or harder than you do at your present job. The difference is that you’re developing equity in a business that can propel you into the things that you’ve always dreamed of but never could attain as an employee.

Font Face, Color & Size: There is one thing that I hate, and that is 4-5 different fonts that clutter up the landscape of the page. Different Fonts for headlines is fine. Different fonts in your body text is not original, it is distracting. Don’t do it. Keep it to one font in your body text.

Testing shows that the best ‘off line’ (print) font is Times New Roman. This is why it is the default font on the internet. However, testing also shows that Times New Roman is one of the worst fonts online. Why? It causes rapid eye fatigue due to how it appears on the screen.

The best fonts? Verdana and Arial. I standardize on Verdana as it consistently outperforms every font out there in terms of reducing eye strain and increasing readability. You may not have known that, and it is key information.

I have seen some website landing pages that use an unusual font and when I look at it on a system that is limited in fonts, the formatting looks ‘off’ and unprofessional. Use standard fonts in your body, if you want an usual font for a headline, create it as a graphic so it will look the same on every computer.

The text should be readable. The standard size is ‘2′. Text should always be dark on a white background. Landing Pages aren’t designed to allow you to show off how ‘cute’ you can be. This is serious stuff, you are selling a product or a service. Act like it by putting on your ‘best face’.

There is a reason that the top companies choose dark text on a light background. It isn’t by accident, it is by design. Follow their lead.

Don’t Let Search Engines Crawl Your website landing pages - Many marketers want as many pages in the search engine indexes as possible. Don’t do this as I mentioned above.

Place your website landing pages in separate folders and exclude those folders in your robots.txt file. If you don’t want to display those to competitors, you can instead put a placeholder file for the index.html page for the folder, or exclude the directory list from showing to a visitor. Another option are to put the exclusion in your .htaccess file or in your IIS control. The reason that you don’t want these pages indexed is because the text is often a mirror of your sales pages and you don’t want to have a duplicate content penalty in Google.

Make the Links Easy to Find - Now, having a cool CSS file that makes the links change colors, add or remove underlines is fine on your site. Knock yourself out. However, they have no business on your landing pages. You want everything standard on your landing pages. Why? Because confusing a visitor is not your priority. Wowing your visitor is not your priority. Getting them to buy and making it as easy as possible is. That is what you do.

So, use standard linking practices so there isn’t confusion. If a potential customer can’t distinguish between text and a link you are going to lose.

Standard colors are:
Unvisited Link - Underline in Blue
Active Link (when the mouse ‘hovers’ over the link - Red
Visited Link - Purple

The above information is from the W3C.

I recommend not messing around with the visited link - just have the standard unvisited and hover for your website landing pages so the visitor has some interactivity and the link will ‘catch’ their eye. I have done a ton of testing on landing pages, and the standard linking practices always have better conversion ratios.

Make sure you are always using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to do your formatting. If you don’t know how to do CSS, you need to learn or find a webmaster who does. It will pay off with less time changing all of your pages individually instead of just changing one file.

Get more Proven Marketing Advice at Web Marketing Now and the SEO Research Blog

Small business startup capital is one of the most essential ingredients needed when deciding to start a new business. Unfortunately, the demands of business startup cost is often hard to overcome for aspiring entrepreneurs. These costs also prevent many with brilliant business ideas from ever getting their own business off the ground. Fortunately, many organizations, including government agencies, have services that can help people find a small business startup grant or other financing needed to be successful.

Small business startup costs not only get in the way an entrepreneur from starting a business but also can impede growth of a new enterprise. On top of being an obstacle at the outset, having limited startup capital can also make it difficult to hire employees or acquire sufficient inventory inventory. Entrepreneurs can resolve these issues by utilizing into a variety of sources to find enough startup funding to be able to implement their plans.

While banks do offer loans to help clients raise small business startup money, their requirements are often so strict that inexperienced entrepreneurs cannot get bank loans. Routinely, banks want proof of previous success in business and they require a well-formulated business plan to see that you have carefully thought out your business endeavor. Even with such requirements met, it can still be problematic to secure a bank loan in order to raise business startup money. On the other hand, determined entrepreneurs do have other options at their disposal to help them achieve their goals.

Some entrepreneurs seek out partners to help them with their small business startup costs. An investment partner can provide various forms of needed assistance for a part time small business startups. They can operate as silent partners where they simply contribute investment money and then receive repayments based on the partnership arrangement. Other investment partners are more involved and might help in the operation of the business in order to ensure that their investment is well managed and profitable.

New business owners can also choose to access several companies that offer small business loans to help them get the startup capital they need. One such company is American One (www.amone.com), offers unsecured loans to help with legitimate small business startup costs. They employ specialists who understand the stress and frustrations of trying to raise startup capital and they endeavor to make the process simple and low-stress. Collateral is not require, but the decision is based on your current credit rating. As a company, their mission is to help you realize success with your new small business venture.

Many new business owners have been able to utilize small business startup money that can be obtained through a variety of avenues. Banks can be a source of startup money, but they often have too many strict regulations. Other resources, such as businesses that specialize in helping start-up businesses, have proven to be a blessing to many aspiring entrepreneurs. With these companies, many new enterprises get the part time small business start up money they need to reach the success they started out to find.

One of the most difficult parts about flipping houses is learning the ropes when you first start. Because it’s something new that you have little experience doing, it can be intimidating. What follows are three of the most important tips for beginners to learn when they start out with the goal of flipping houses to make money.

Know *Exactly* How Much You Can Sell The House for After It’s Fixed Up

This sounds like common sense, but many beginners make the mistake of just guessing how much they’re going to be able to sell the house for after they fix it up. Knowing the selling price ahead of time is the surest way to guarantee that you’ll make money by house flipping. On the other hand, misjudging how much you can sell the house for after the fix up is the quickest way to lose a ton of money. Often people are too optimistic about the selling price and don’t factor in all the variables that determine how much a house will sell for.

How much is it going to cost? Well, that depends on you — how much you are willing to fork over to Google and how well you know your target customers. In a nutshell, you need to have a clear idea of where you’re headed and be able to communicate that to Google and affilorama.

They will charge you a one-time activation fee for Google AdWords but it’s pretty low. Then all you have to do is tell Google how much you’re willing to pay per click and per day.

It’s pretty sweet because the way they have it set up, you only pay for clicks on your AdWords ads and you can set a limit so you don’t get a huge bill from Google that you didn’t see coming, affilorama with Mark Ling.

If you live in the USA, you can activate a new AdWords account for 5 bucks and set your maximum cost-per-click (CPC) to be anything from $0.05 - US$100. The higher “cost-per-click” you bid on a certain keyword, the higher your Google ad will rate.

For example, go to Google.com and type “dog aggression” into the “search” box. To the right of the page you will see “Sponsored Links”. These are Google Adwords PPC advertisements. The number one and two ranked advertisements are in prime position at the top of the page. Advertisement ranking is based on advertisement CTR (click through rate) and highest CPC bid price.

As you can see, the two top ranked advertisements are located at the top of the search results and the following six advertisements are to the right of the page. The top two will be the ads with the highest CPC bid price and the highest CTR. affilorama review.

Content Targeting
What’s really cool about AdWords is Contextual Advertising (also know as Content Targeting). This is where Google places highly-targeted AdWords ads on content pages within their own proprietary network of high-quality partner sites and products. In other words, you’d be getting in with Google’s business partners.
The biggest benefits to Contextual Advertising are:
1. Return On Investment (ROI) Performance: You set up your CPC and then keyword-targeted contextual ads bring you unique, pre-qualified leads.
2. Get more traffic: More people can potentially see your ads and hit your site than you could ever hope for with search advertising alone.
3. Efficiency: Your ads get on the most relevant sites, and you only pay for clicks that you receive.

Google Adwords “Content” ads appear on related websites, e.g if your advertisements relate to “learn guitar”, Google will find web pages relating to “learn guitar” and display your ads. “Content” ads are ranked in the same way as “search” ads, meaning ads with a higher CPC bid price will be shown more frequently.

Google allows you to have separate campaigns for different products or topics your advertisements relate to. Inside your Google account you can have up to 25 separate active campaigns.

Within each campaign are your ad groups. Ad groups are used to further refine the products or topics relating to your ads.
E.g. If you are selling a dog training product you would have an Ad Campaign titled “Dog Training”. Within this campaign you may have sub topics (Ad Groups) such as
• Dog Toilet Training
• Dog Aggression
• Dog Eating Habits
• Etc…