Writing for the Web

If you're a writer looking for work maybe writing content, for the Web is the job for you. There's lots of work. A search of the Web will cough up several possibilities. But here's the main thing to remember. There's a way to write for the Web and there's a way not to.

What Readers are Looking for

Most Web readers scan quickly to find what they are looking for. Start with an attention-grabbing first line or so. Use plenty of action verbs. Be descriptive. Short paragraphs using keywords work best. You can find websites that will help you key words such as "content site web writing," and "content web writing" for the topic "Writing Content for the Web." You can enter keywords for the subject of each Web page.

It takes time to read from a computer screen. Some experts advise using about half the word count you would normally use for the topic. Web readers quickly become impatient if you don't deliver within the first few sentences. Web readers aren't interested in slogging through laborious articles. They want simple sentence structures. An informal style often works best. However, avoid cute headings, metaphors, puns, too much humor and other writing devices that detract from the topic.

Graphics

You may not have much control over the graphics on the web page you're writing for, but if you do, remember that your reader won't like waiting for too many graphics to load. Graphics and well-written text does go hand in hand so keep graphics in mind when you write.

Links

If at all possible, provide related links within your text. Web readers are in the habit of trawling the Internet for information. They like to follow links to other related topics. Web links also enhance your credibility as a writer. When you provide links, this is the same as providing different points of view.

Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation

All good writing relies on accurate grammar, spelling and punctuation. If your writing is you're writing, it's time to hone up on your basic writing skills.

Writing for the Web

Writing for the Web can be rewarding. There's plenty of work to go around for good writers. Just keep in mind the above points. In no time you should be reaping the rewards as a Web writer. (Say that three times fast!)

List Building – Easier to Compete When You Build a List

List building takes away so much of the competition – you see, when you are not list building, when you are just sending traffic to your pages, you have to compete with everyone else who puts up a website. That is stiff competition!

But with list building, you are getting the people off of the internet search engine and getting them to engage directly with you. This is a huge difference.

Now, you are not competing with the other 99 sales pages – you are simply communicating with this customer one on one. Perhaps he will send you an email, asking a question. Perhaps he knows he needed the product, but didn't feel like making a decision today when he was presented with so many different choices. But now he can make an intelligent, unrushed decision to purchase your product.

Because he is no longer flipping through different web sites looking for the answer – you are creating a relationship with him and now he wants to buy it – whatever he buys – from you.

Now that we have established that it is actually beneficial to create an email relationship with this online shopper, think about something else.

When you list build, as long as you build a good relationship with the buyer, you effectively take away all the competition. To me, this is huge, because once again, I am becoming my only competition. All I have to do is create the relationship – they just have to want to open my emails when they see my name.

Free Advertising Tips - Three Free Advertising Tips

Many small business have a shoestring operating budget and
can't afford to spend thousands of dollars on advertising.
So here is a few free advertising tips to help you save a
bit of cash.

You can use these free advertising as much and as often as
you need to.

#1 - Submit a press release.

One of the best free advertising tips is to write a press
release for your business.

A press release can be a story about how you got started
with your business or about a unique product or service
you offer.

Make your release interesting and not a blatant ad for
your business.

People love success stories and that is a good way of
writing your press lease.

Then once it is finished, you can submit it to local
news outlets or you can publish it online.

The best place to release your story is by using the
website at http://prweb.com

This is a very method of all the different free advertising
tips to choose from.

#2 - Write a magazine article.

This is one of the more commonly used free advertising
tips because it simply works.

There are hundreds of magazines on a variety of topics.

All you have to do is find a few that deal with your what
your business is about.

Then you simply write up a 500-700 word article and submit
it to the editors of your chosen magazines.

You will be able to put an authors resource box at the end
of your article.

This is where you will put your contact information for
your business.

This is a favorite of the free advertising tips and has
been used for years.

#3 - Use your vehicle.

One of the most unused free advertising tips is by using
your car, van or truck to advertise your business.

Just think about how often you use your vehicle and the
places you drive to.

All you need to do is put your company logo on a license
plate.

Or you can put your logo on your doors, hood, or just about
anywhere it can clearly be seen.

One of the benefits from using this method is you can also
make it tax deductible.

So there you go.

You have at your disposal some of the best free advertising
tips.

Put them to good use and save some money.

List Building 202 - You Must Use a Squeeze Page to Build a List I

All successful internet marketers understand the importance of a list, and if you are to succeed like them you must use a squeeze page to build your list.

The reason for this is simple. When visitors come to your web site, they will look immediately for what they clicked to see. If you include an opt-in list on your landing page, they may or may not notice it, let alone fill it in. They will first notice the information they seek, then will likely click away without having a look at what you are offering in exchange for their email address.

A squeeze page, on the other hand, gives them no option. That's why it's called a squeeze page, it squeezes the email address from them. They either fill in the form or leave. The secret of a good squeeze page is to make it virtually impossible for them to refuse to opt in. If designed properly, you can achieve an exceptionally high conversion rate of subscribers.

First, the heading. This should be directly addressed to the reader and offer them a benefit that is directly associated with the advert or URL link that led them to your page. If the subject of your site is golf, and the link that took them to your squeeze page was connected with their driving distance, your heading could be something along the lines of "Do You Want a Really Easy Way to put 40 Yards on Your Drive?" Then continue with "You will find this in my 7 part course entitled 'How to Improve Your Swing'. All you need do is provide your first name and email address on the form so I can send it to you - FREE!".

How To Start Making Money With Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is an great way to earn money online. However, if you are just starting out, you should know there are a good number of pitfalls you absolutely need to be aware of. Many people like you are looking for a way earn money online as an affiliate marketer. Many of them have tried to figure out ways to earn more money by doing little or no work.

To get a real view of what I talking about here, all you need to do is a perform quick online search for "easy money making" or "make money fast". You will quickly find that there are thousands of websites listed. If you click on a few of them you will notice that they all begin pretty much the same way. There will be a guy with a big house or fabulous sports car and a pile of money saying that if you sign up, this could be you. Please don't believe the hype!

Here's a fact, no matter what you have heard about affiliate marketing, it's absolutely impossible for everyone to make thousands of dollars monthly. The problem is, there is simply too much competition for this to be possible. Please remember this one thing, money will not fall into your hands without you doing something for it. And that something may be a lot more than you thought.

There is really only one way you can earn a nice, stable online income and that is to put in all the hard work that is necessary for you to succeed. Before you join any affiliate marketing program, you will have to do the needed research. Search for the name of the affiliate marketing program that you are interested in and add the word scam at the end to see what shows up in the list. Another excellent way to get information is to join various work from home forums and ask right questions about the affiliate marketing program you are interested in.

There are several ways that you can determine if a program is likely to be a scam. First, if the program you are interested in doesn't inform you about their compensation until you sign up, don't join. Many programs refuse to tell you what you will be doing until you purchase an expensive program or kit first.

Make sure the affiliate program you want to join provides you with complete disclosure up front. It makes sense to know exactly what you will be doing before you start. If a program doesn't tell before you pay your money, you should avoid it like the plague.

With all that in mind, here are a few high level tips that will help you make money with the affiliate marketing programs you have chosen.

Create You Own Web Site

The best thing you can do for your affiliate marketing business is to have your own web site. You can use your site to build an email list, and to point to the various affiliate programs you want to promote.

Pay Per Click

Good free traffic sources do still exist but, they are more difficult to find these days. You can choose to work hard creating optimized web pages that score high in the search engines. This however takes a lot of time and can be extremely hard to do.

By using the pay per click engines of Google and Overture, you can start to generate immediate traffic to your web site. You will need to do some keyword research but that research will pay off with highly targeted traffic. Remember, the more targeted the traffic the more likely you will make money.

Create A Product And Start Your Own Affiliate Marketing Program

If you knew that each filled out form on your site generated .50 cent in revenue, would you still be willing to pay someone else .25 cents to generate that same traffic? Even better than making money from affiliate programs is to have a product of your own. You can set up your own affiliate web site and have a built in email list from your own affiliates. If you don't have a product of your own, you can use a product you have resale rights to.

Build Your Own Opt-in Email List

It has been said by many of the top marketers online today that "the money is in the list." Sending offers to your own email list is the very best way to build freedom and residual income. Instead of sending traffic away then hoping for the best, you should instead have your own email list to which you are able to send out multiple offers too.

When it all comes down to it, everything involves paying for traffic in one way or another. To make more income, you will need to invest very wisely in advertising.

If you use the right methods for advertising and letting customers know about your affiliate programs, you will be well on your way to making a very nice income. Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money on the internet but it does take a lot of dedication and commitment to succeed.

Affiliate Marketing for the Beginner

My not-so-long term goal is to write and publish two e-books: One, a cookbook with my unique recipes, and two, a step-by-step guide to internet marketing. Actually, my desire to do the cookbook is what got me into internet marketing.

When I began to look into how to be a successful internet marketer, there was a common caveat which kept popping up from the "gurus" of internet marketing: "Don't put all of your eggs in one basket." In other words, don't depend totally on your own product or service for a profitable internet business. Diversify.

One of the most lucrative (and one of the easiest) ways to diversify in internet marketing is through affiliate marketing. In fact, affiliate marketing programs may be the very best means of earning an excellent income online.

What is affiliate marketing? For the internet marketer, affiliate marketing is simply earning commissions by marketing other peoples' products or services from your website, blog, or email publication. Commissions vary in percentage. Commissions for the products I market as an affiliate range from 6% to 75%. There are many products available to market at commissions in the 40-50% range.

What are the steps necessary to become an affiliate marketer? The most logical first step is to start your own website or blog. I am of the minority who prefers a blog to a website, probably because I love to write. If you're not a writer you will probably be better off with a website from which to market your affiliate products or services. There are some great blog hosts who offer easy to use templates and don't charge a thing. Free websites are available as well—just do a search on Google using the words "free website."

The next step is to search for products to market as an affiliate. (There are many, many available!) Obviously, the best products to market are the ones related to the things you like to write about on your blog or feature on your website. Your editorial and your products can go hand-in-hand quite nicely together. Do searches on Google, using key words that describe your areas of interest along with the word "affiliate" (for example, "guitar lessons affiliate" or "cookbook affiliate"). Many products will have a link for affiliates at the side or bottom of their seller's sales letter. Each will show you how to sign up and then how to create and use the affiliate link that will identify you when you bring people to their site.

Next, and of the utmost importance, you must direct traffic to your sites. There are a number of ways to do this: search engine ads, write and submit e-zine articles, advertise in various e-zines, do joint ventures, etc. These are all explained in detail in many books and e-books.

The most effective way to market on the internet, including affiliate marketing, is to build a list of prospects. The best way to do this is to offer a weekly email newsletter and capture contact information from targeted prospects who will subscribe to your newsletter via an opt-in form. Email your personalized newsletters automatically through an autoresponder. An autoresponder is basically an online robot that sends out predetermined email messages to everyone who has contacted it. An autoresponder will send out your e-zine, newsletter, or sales pitch every day, 24 hours a day, automatically, without fail. But a sequential autoresponder is a must for the internet marketer who seeks to build up relationships with his subscribers. With a sequential autoresponder you can upload a sequence of follow-up messages so that each one will be automatically sent at the time you have directed. A prospect could get your first sales letter immediately, then another one three days later, another one seven days later, and so on. This is valuable because it often takes seven or more messages before a prospect decides to buy your product or service. It is also valuable because the people who are interested in your initial product may well be interested in other products you sell. A sequential autoresponder allows you to have everything set up to keep informing your subscribers of the different things they may have a need for. The messages go out to them at the times you have predetermined. Talk about making money while doing nothing!

Next you'll want to just make sure your mail box is big enough to handle all of the commission checks. Just kidding, but give it time and it really does grow and grow! There are no short cuts, and it does require work—but the results can be phenomenal!

Keep adding affiliate products. Keep adding interesting content to your website(s) or blog(s). Diversify. Then when you are ready with your own product—your own creation, your own system of some kind, your own e-book, whatever—you will have a long list of prospects with whom you have built a relationship, ready to purchase your very own product from you. On the other hand, don't put yourself under any pressure to even come up with your own product, if it is not something you desire to do. Many people prosper on the internet by merely finding niche markets through which they sell the products of others, as affiliates.

Copyright © 2007 Lee Griffith. All rights reserved.

Coreg Leads - How To Find And Use Coreg Leads To Boost Your Business

Permission marketing is one of the most important and arguable the most effective strategies for any online business. The concept is very simple, but highly effective and it all boils down to a simple principle: it's a lot easier to sell something to an interested person than to just sell to a random stranger. Permission marketing is all about finding interested prospects and focusing your marketing efforts on them, instead of just stuffing your hand in a bag of m&m's hoping you will pick a green one. When it comes to permission marketing, coreg leads is the answer to many a online marketer's prayers.

Before we get to coreg leads and why it is so effective, let's briefly look at why lead capturing is such an important strategy. At first glance the idea of building leads directly translates to an increase in sales and making more money. Although true, this is a very short sighted approach. Building leads is just so much more. With a single lead you can make multiple offers which often results in multiple sales. When you start building a database of interested prospects you can greatly increase your credibility and through constant contact with them you can start to develop a relationship. Once you gain their trust and respect your online business will soar.

The more experienced marketers online, focus their efforts on building leads, instead of making sales. The challenge then becomes one of building leads instead of making sales - which is an entire shift of focus. Since you can automate the 'selling process' through your auto-responder and follow-up emails, you really can shift all your attention to gaining more leads and building a relationship with them. This is then where coreg leads come in.

Co-registration, or coreg (for short) is a very powerful strategy for increasing your leads and consequently your customer base and your eventual sales. With coreg you are able to tap into high traffic website and place your offers in front of millions of interested prospects. Websites that get huge amounts of traffic (Yahoo, MSN, NY Times ec.) all do a lot of lead capturing and they almost exclusively use it for the purposes of selling or renting out these details. Coreg leads are leads that are captured from these high traffic sites and with the help of a 3rd party service you can get access to this traffic and the best part is that you only pay for the leads that actually sign up to your offer.

Coreg leads are not cheap, but they are not expensive either. As with all things online, you have to know exactly how much a customer is worth to you. With most coreg services you can expect to pay anything from $0.15 to $1 per lead. Although this might sound quite expensive, it really isn't as most CPC campaigns can cost you that much just for a single click – regardless of whether you get the sign up or not. With Coreg, you only pay for a sign-up.

Coreg leads can be highly targeted and very cheap once you learn how to refine your coreg campaigns. The best way to use co-registration is to start a small campaign and to keep refining it until you are happy with your results. All you have to do then is to up the numbers and leave it to build your list on autopilot. Not only can you determine your exact budget, but you can also determine the exact amount of leads you want to buy and exactly whom you want to target with your campaign.

Co-registration is probably the most underused method for capturing leads online. It really is a vast untapped market and just because it falls outside of the 'mainstream' ideas very few people ever explore it. Virtually all of the so-called online 'gurus' rely heavily on coreg leads to build their businesses.

There are quite a few companies that provide coreg services online. Unfortunately not all coreg services are created equal. There are only a handful that actually provide genuine coreg leads. It's important to read the fine print to make sure that the leads are actually captured through co-registration and that it's not just some 'spam' service. Coreg leads can be very good leads, but start small and refine your campaigns. When it works it really works and you will grow your 'list' faster than any other way out there.