The world of Internet traffic revolves around two separate entities: the search engines and the social networks. It used to be that the only way to capture traffic was through search engine placement, however, now there is a great deal of debate in this area as social networking becomes the new strategy for increasing the traffic to sites. Here we will discuss the different skills you need for either strategy and some different places to research this highly important aspect of Internet marketing.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization deals with how search engines determine the ranking in search results when people go to search for a site based on particular words or phrases. There are a number of search engines and each of them has their own SEO algorithms. A great deal of research is carried out to determine what those algorithms might be by trial and error, even though the companies don’t necessarily disclose how they are ranking web pages. It’s become quite a science and businesses will pay big bucks if they think they can get their pages served first to a customer before their competitor’s in a search result. The reason is simple: most people using a search engine only look at the first two pages of results.

So, it stands to reason that the higher you place in the ranking, the more likelihood you will be found through random searches by people using search engines like Yahoo! or Google. How will you be able to compete with people who are shelling out tons of money on outwitting the search engines?

While you probably can learn some of the same strategies they are using like placing keywords in your web pages, you will find that search engines have gotten far more egalitarian in recent years. They’ve recognized that large companies have learned how to program their pages to cheat the algorithms so now the search engines are using other requirements. One of these is the scanning for original content on sites. Although you want to keep your content fresh, you don’t want to update your site every hour, as too frequent updating can also be penalized in the search engines.

To learn how some of the different SEO factors affect your page ranking, check out: http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm . Appropriate keywords are still a very important part of Internet marketing, but where you place them in your HTML coding also affects how you rank. You can get your own list of keywords by looking at the most popular searches for a typical keyword or phrase and finding out what people have searched in the last month through Overture. This is a free SEO tool that can be viewed here: http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-suggestions-overture/ .

Another Strategy – Social Networking

This strategy relies on the social networks which house millions of users and which can be mined for traffic. Examples of powerful social networks are Myspace.com and StumbleUpon (a search engine based on social ranking). Bulletin boards, web log (blog) communities, and other types of online communities are great places to establish a web presence and market your website URL. The idea is to develop a fan base in these areas that already have huge traffic and then pull those fans into your website via links.

This strategy requires time devoted to being a known contributor of social networking sites. It doesn’t work to just add a profile and leave. You have to engage discussions, set yourself up as an expert in your field, and then market your URL in such a way so as not to be perceived that you are spamming a site. Spamming a site with your web address and no actual feedback or community participation will only get you banned. So, you have to be willing to give of yourself and to market yourself in a discreet, but effective manner.

What’s all the fuss about free viral reports and what can they do for you?

If you’ve been involved in internet marketing for any length of time, then you will probably have heard about viral marketing.

Viral marketing is a method that has helped a lot of people make their first real money online.

Basically viral marketing involves producing something very topical, funny, interesting or useful that can be given away for free.

You would give it away for free and the recipients would pass it on to their friends, who would pass it on to their friends and so on and so on.

One popular way of doing this is by producing a free report that helps people in some way. Ideally the free report will solve some sort of problem for the potential reader.

Most people involved in internet marketing will have heard the phrase “The money is in the list”. But how do you go about building your own list of subscribers to your newsletter or e-zine?

Well one way is to give away valuable free content in the form of a free report. This encourages people to sign up for your newsletter, thus building you a list of subscribers that you can market products to in the future.

The difficulty for most people is that creating these free reports can be very laborious and time consuming. It would normally involve researching the subject thoroughly and then sitting down and actually compiling and writing the report.

You would then have to turn the report into a pdf format etc etc, all of which takes a great deal of time and effort.

But now all this has changed. You can now combine the power of viral marketing with killer content and have all the work done for you.

There are now services available on the internet where free reports are written by staff writers as well as other subscribers just like you. New reports are produced each month which you can give away in order to build your own list.

The clever part is that these reports can have affiliate links embedded in the content and because you can rebrand these reports, you can have your own affiliate links embedded before you give them away.

So as well as pleasing your subscribers with good quality content, you also have the chance to make some cash if they go ahead and buy a product from your affiliate link within the report!

It’s a real ‘win-win’ situation.

In addition to all that, there is often the option for you to create your own reports that promote your own product or perhaps an affiliate product.

You can then submit your report so that other subscribers can give it away free. In which case you could quickly find that your report is distributed all over the internet, thus promoting your product or affiliate product and making you some serious extra income! Voila! You have your own viral marketing system working for you.

Viral marketing in this way is making a lot of people just like you a lot of money.

I have already downloaded some excellent free reports from services like this and rebranded them with my own affiliate links. The whole process is very easy and straightforward and i’ll be giving away the reports to help me build my own list whist making money at the same time!

I have also written a report of my own and submitted it to one of these services. That was also very simple to do and it has already been downloaded by a good number of other subscribers, who will in turn be giving it away and so promoting my own product.

As I say, a very clever viral marketing idea. Wish i’d thought of it first!

Every webmaster is concerned today about free internet traffic or low cost internet traffic to their websites. This is understandable given the hurdles they have to go through in order to get it.

People are writing articles, participating in forums, creating signatures, doing thousands of things that they are not supposed to, just to get free internet traffic. Let’s think about it for a moment.

First of all, search engines are the ones who give the assessment of the web sites and let them have free internet traffic by positioning them in accordance with their content usefulness. The site could have been created recently and have perfect content, but because of luck of links and their ages, they are stored in some ’sandboxes’ until they obtain ‘maturity’ from the search engines prospective. This can take a while and is not right. A good search engine should be able to quickly get the real weight of content no matter how old the site is. The search engines do not have a lot of competition and sometimes there are not a lot of differences in results because the search algorithms used are similar. From the other hand, sometimes sites that held leading positions before disappear unexpectedly from the top of the search engines lists and this makes their webmasters start writing articles, creating links and doing tons of other things, instead of improving their site’s content. In conclusion, web search engines need to improve their service quality and allow people to do whatever they can do the best: writers to write, webmaster to work on content and technical issues and not to eat into each other’s bread. We need more versatile search engines, in quantity and quality, than we have now.

But right now all we have is one dominating search engine ‘ Google, another one – Yahoo – gradually loosing it’s share to Google, and MSN, desperately trying to obtain a leading role in internet marketing. The share of other search engines is insignificant and is not rising. All three represent the US. Under these conditions, obtaining free internet traffic is getting increasingly difficult for small companies without big resources. It would be ideal to have 5 – 6 search engines with approximately equal market share , competing and having different ways of calculating the web sites hierarchy in their organic part. This would increase chances for the small companies of getting free internet traffic and make it more stable. In the worst case, if a website gets “slapped” by one search engine, it would sustain their positions against other engines. As I said, all the major search engines represent the US right now. What about the other countries?

Recently France was permitted by EU to invest in elaboration of the new European search engine Quaero (The Google Assassin). The French Government plans to invest 99 million Euros ($154 million) in JV, where 23 companies will participate, including Thomson Financial. The Whole project will cost 199 million Euros ($310 million). The goal is to provide not only excellent search capabilities, but also recognition of speech, images, texts translation, video segmentation, texts indexation and many more. This project was originally planned in 2004 as a French ‘ German JV and devoted to the creation of the competitor of the American leading search engines ‘ Google and Yahoo. But later this project was divided by two independent projects: Quaero and Theseus. Their main goal is still the same: the creation of a powerful search engine. The EU law prohibits Governments of the countries ‘ members of the EU from investing in any private companies if it threatens a fair competition between them, but this particular case is presented as an exception, where prospective results would far outpace the consequences of the antimonopoly law. Let’s hope that this will increase the competition and make free internet traffic easier to get.

Interested in making your own money? Money which comes easy and with little effort, so that you can enjoy the fruits of your labour right away as well as save for that rainy day. You have finally hit the right place.

Money is as essential as the air we breathe in today. Even more so as it ensures that we lead the life we have always craved for – without having to worry about the pressures of everyday mundane details like grocery bills, credit card purchases, your children’s expenses and expectations, all of which you have to live up to.

This article will spell out 5 secrets to making good honest money right from your home. No strings attached. Work from home and get all the rewards associated with earning your own money. In short, financial freedom, forever.

Work from home secrets are a simple yet effective means for you to keep yourself occupied and build up your home entrepreneur skills. Here is how you can set yourself up to work from home to get that money:

1) Creating blogs for people – This is a fairly easy method to work from home and make your money. It only requires your skills and innovativeness in creating the blog that your employer desires. If you feel that you are capable of understanding your employer needs and can give the right suggestions, you are the person for the job. Creating blogs does not consume too much of your time as a result of which you can work from home on more than one assignment, resulting in all that extra income. All you need to do is browse various employer websites and check out if they need a blog. You can contact them with a sample of what you can create or alternatively offer your services without a sample and wait for the employer to get back.

The returns in this work from home venture are rewarding letting you earn anywhere from a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand dollars a month, all depending on the speed and quality of work you turn out.

2) Become a mystery shopper – This is probably one of the best, easiest, and relaxing ways to work from home. If you enjoy shopping, you just need to check on the internet, details about various companies who offer to pay you for shopping for their products. This is actually a survey you take part in on behalf of the manufacturer, wherein you go to the market, check out the availability, response and attractiveness of that manufacturer’s product vis a vie other brands.

You then get to work from home by writing a detailed analytical report on what you could gather about the product and its response in the market by retailers, consumers, and wholesalers. The manufacturer in turn uses this report to fine tune his product, his marketing activities, or address relevant issues to make his product more popular and saleable in the market. You in turn are rewarded with a free shopping spree, a payout by the manufacturer and the feeling of having made a difference to the marketability of a product.

3) Selling Private label software’s – What if you cannot create your own software programs. You can be a part of the software industry innovations by selling these programs. Your work from home would just require that you get in touch with software programmers who do not have time to market their products on their own. You can approach these individuals, check out their products and services and offer to sell it for them. They can either offer you the selling rights of their new software, in which case you get to earn a lot. They can alternatively ask you to market their old software programs and offer you the resell rights to these software’s.

You just need to understand the importance of the software and can make relevant online contacts to market these, keeping in mind any limitations that the programmer may have kept on the sale of their software. These software’s can also be marketed through your own website which will ensure continuity and the genuineness of your venture. Your investment here will be a few hundred dollars for placing of classified ads or developing your website to bring success to your work from home venture.

4) Appointment scheduler – If you are good at planning, scheduling, and in general can keep track of what goes on in people’s lives, then this is the perfect work from home venture for you. As the name suggests, an appointment scheduler is needed to keep track of a busy person’s routine so that all his commitments for the day are met.  You can ensure that this is done through various technology options available in the market today. The Internet, telephone, short messaging service, fax, or other new methods of communication can be adopted to keep your client updated on his day to day activities.

This work from home option is a great way to connect with people, build your social network, and get work from all corners of the globe regardless of the time zone your client is in. It is just your efficiency which will help you earn all that easy money. To get a client, be on the lookout for classified advertisements or busy people who will appreciate and reward you for the value of your services.

5) Buying and selling domain names – A work from home option which requires some amount of your investment and time, but pays handsomely for your patience and diligence in selecting that right domain name to sell. All that is needed is that you keep your eyes peeled for the most happening trends in the world. Chances are someone will surely want to begin a website on that trend.

Your job here will be to purchase a domain name or names related to that trend or topic and then offer it for sale in the market to the highest bidder. Chances are people will be willing to pay you your asking amount quick enough so that they can use that domain name for the furtherance of their economic gains. You will get plenty of data on the internet on how to cash in on the domain name craze. Go ahead, browse, and make the most of this opportunity.

So be a smart home entrepreneur, work from home on any of these ideas and keep the money rolling.

Your financial liberation is in your hands. Make it happen.

Since its inception, viral marketing techniques have long been accepted as one of the best ways in generating good, targeted traffic to your site.

In fact, it has already established its footing in the business since the hotmail epidemic and the dancing baby was first disseminated. With the success of these two primary concepts of viral marketing, most businesses have already devised some ways on how to make the most out of viral marketing.

For this reason, various viral marketing techniques have been created that can be used to economically distribute their promotions and marketing messages to possible customers in a global perspective.

Today, there are as many forms of viral marketing techniques as there are consumers getting access to the Internet, all of them seeking for information worthy of sharing to their friends. Hence, for those who are not yet quite familiar with the other viral marketing techniques that can be twice as good and effective as the usual forms of viral marketing techniques, here is a list of the additional techniques that you can make use of:

1. Providing free email account

Getting a free item is an absolute gift. This is because it is not everyday that people get to hook up in the Internet and get something for free, right? But the idea of getting a free email account is doubly fun.

For so many years now, emails have always proven its viability to both the consumers and the businesses. In viral marketing, emails have been one of the most feasible and effective tools especially to those who are still new in the business, those who have small business, or any ventures that cannot simply afford to have big budgets for their promotions or marketing.

The concept behind the wonders of providing free email account is that people, who would like to be connected in today’s wired world, would find the free email account as an absolute solution to their Internet needs. This is especially true for those who cannot afford the high costs of email providers nowadays.

2. Create an award

In viral marketing, generating awards or loyalty points are very effective in creating a marketing epidemic. The concept behind this viral marketing technique is that by creating an award to a webmaster, who has painstakingly established and created good graphic designs on your site, you are actually creating a name for your business.

This happens when the receiver of the award would try to brag about his achievements and tell other people about the idea. In turn, you get to attract other people to visit your website. Not only that, with the backlinks that you have provided on their awards that are being displayed on their own sites, you can effortlessly lure other people to try what you have to offer on your website.

Besides, creating awards could only mean one thing, your optimum exposure in the Internet. The more exposed your website is, the more people will get to know that your business exist.

3. Distributing a free software gift

If your viral facts are out of date, how will that affect your actions and decisions? Make certain you do not let important viral information slip by you.

One of the best techniques in generating good traffic through viral marketing is by means of distributing free software.

By offering a free tryout form of your software to your potential customers, you can easily instigate the probability of having them avail of the full version.

Besides, allowing your potential customers to try your software would compel them to share the good news to others if they are satisfied with your product. Hence, you get to market your product without employing expensive means.

4. Free screensavers

Screensavers are one of the most popular tools in the Internet nowadays. Thos who wanted to customize the look of their PC’s would love to use different styles of screensavers.

Therefore, by simply giving away free screensavers, you can automatically generate traffic to your site without the hassle of marketing your website the hard way. Once an individual is satisfied with your screensaver, he will most likely share it with his friends, and the rest as they say is history.

The good thing about it is that you get to reach hundred of people with just one click. Just keep in mind to place your business name and the web address in the screensaver that you will make.

You can have them easily made available on your own website or distribute them to some screensaver sites or software sites that would gladly display your craft.

5. Write articles and distribute them for reprint

With all the other viral techniques, this is probably the most common and at the same time, the most neglected technique.

It has been accepted that articles are one of the most viable means of generating sales and traffic in the Internet. The only problem with some Internet marketers is that they fail to do the process correctly. What they do not realize is that making an article is useless if the resource box is not present.

If you wish to make your site known and you would like others to reprint your articles, it is extremely important to always include your resource box. Otherwise, people who will read the articles will tend to miss the fact that you are an expert in that field, and that you could offer more information, by merely visiting your website.

All of these things boil down to the fact that viral marketing, in whatever technique you use, can absolutely generate more traffic to your site, boost your sales, and promote your website without the hassle of doing really hard work. It is the best that you can do for your site and for yourself, so grab one technique and start the ball rolling.

So now you know a little bit about viral. Even if you don’t know everything, you’ve done something worthwhile: you’ve expanded your knowledge.

By.- http://www.MomentumStockTrading.com 

The stock market should present you with a wide variety of NEW hot stocks in 2009. Many of them are going to be new technology stocks that come from the nanotech, biotech, financial, energy, healthcare & communications sectors.

Most of them might seem promising, but the truth is that a good number of these trading & investing opportunities could be extremely risky, while others are simply not as good as they look. That’s why it’s very important to know how to choose among the best especially if you want to day trade them.

When you know how to pick and approach the best hot stock trading opportunities, you are able to generate a consistent and respectable amount of money in a very short period of time.

Experienced day traders recognize that trading hot stocks on momentum can be the fastest way to make money in the stock market, especially on uncertain times like these.

You don’t necessarily have to trade momentum hot stocks all the time. But you can learn how to take advantage of them when you encounter the best opportunities for going long or for shorting them to make money when they are poised to fall down.

If You decide to day trade stocks just keep always in mind that for a trader to survive and be consistently profitable, its necessary to keep things as simple as possible. To much confusion and technical indicators will most of the time make you slow in your decisions and froze you up when a good opportunity is right in front of your screen.

In the end, stock market day trading is all about picking the best daily stock opportunities and following your buy and sell signals with ease and simplicity. Once you learn to master your trading decisions, you can aspire to produce consistent profitable results.

As a marketing coach, I’ve probably heard every excuse in the book why people can’t market their businesses. You wouldn’t believe some of the whoppers people tell when they’re trying to justify their failure to attract clients.

Now don’t get me wrong; it’s not that failing to attract clients makes one a bad person. Not at all. It’s just that when I hear the following excuses I feel compelled to call ‘em as I see ‘em: Baloney!

If you have the mistaken notion that any of these lame excuses are the reason that your business isn’t successful, get a clue. These are just EXCUSES for people who fail, not reasons not to succeed (a subtle, yet important, difference).

1. “I’m too honest to market.” OK, this little gem is at the top of my list because it is both a lie AND an insult! I am a marketer by trade, and I am honest, so I know for a fact that marketing is not a dishonest process or practice, nor does it have to be dishonest to be effective. What’s dishonest is when you overstate your results, or if you truly don’t believe that your product or service is worth what you charge, or if you deliberately intend to defraud people. In that case, the problem is with you, not marketing, so stop insulting the rest of us.

2. “I’m too modest to market myself.” Listen up, princess, every word out of your mouth doesn’t have to be about YOU. Think about what your clients want, need and actually get, and that’ll keep the conversation going for as long as you need it to go. Hey, if you’re not comfortable saying great things about yourself, start saying great things about what your clients get out of working with you. Or better yet, let them say it for you in the form of testimonials. But don’t think that you have to be the subject of every fascinating conversation you have with prospects.

3. “I’m too shy to market myself.” As a highly sensitive person myself, you’d think I’d have more sympathy for this excuse, but I don’t. If you want to be successful, know right now that it may not always be comfortable, and you have to be willing to do what it takes to succeed, even if that means going outside your comfort zone. Shyness is a habit that can be overcome with practice, so join Toastmasters, or see a therapist if that’s what it is going to take, but get over yourself. I promise you will be glad you did.

4. “I’m too creative to market myself.” This excuse is really lame! Marketing is a very creative process, and since you have literally thousands of options when structuring your marketing plans, creativity is an asset, not a liability. Unless you’re one of those I-am-a-self-indulgent-whiner-who-refuses-to-accept-any-responsibility-for-my-actions-and-masks-that-character-flaw-with-claims-of-misunderstood-or-excessive-creativity kinds of people, in which case I say, grow up, and while you’re at it, think up a more creative excuse.

5. “I don’t have enough time to market my business.” OK, this excuse sounds good at first, but in reality it doesn’t wash. Either you are already marketing but not acknowledging your marketing activities as such, or your business is so busy that you don’t need to market at all, which makes this excuse unnecessary. So if you haven’t got all the business you want but you don’t have time to market, you need to reevaluate how you’re spending your time, and make some tough decisions about when you are going to do what you need to do to get those clients.

6. “I don’t have enough money to market my business.” Again, you get points for trying, but this is still just an excuse, because good marketing isn’t about money, it’s about relationships. You can start very modestly with your marketing plans, and spend nothing but your time. And let me tell you, if you can’t get some traction spending 40 hours a week trying to build your business relationships, maybe you should rethink your decision to be an entrepreneur.

7. “I have no personal network to market to.” Oh please, you’ve got to have a better excuse than this! If you truly have no family, no friends, no colleagues, no acquaintances or no former co-workers, then start meeting some. I don’t care if you’ve been on a desert island for the past 20 years, you can always meet people through networking meetings, trade associations, classes, social clubs, or at the gym! Just pick up the phone and call the people you want to know, get out there and mingle, and your personal network will grow quickly.

8. “My product or service is too hard to explain to people.” Fine. Quit explaining what you do, and start talking about what your customers GET from working with you. Do you help your customers get thinner, smarter, married, fitter, their first home, or what? Seriously, nobody cares about what you do, really; people care about what they get. Get it?

9. “My product or service is so good that it should sell itself.” Sure, that’s probably true if your product is a talking monkey, or your clients are all telepaths, but other than that, it’s going to take a little effort on your part, bucko, so start creating some momentum in the marketplace and you’ll find that your product needs less and less of your efforts to sell, until one day it almost seems like it DOES sell itself!

10. “My niche is too narrow and I can’t find my customers.” Hogwash. What this usually means is that you haven’t yet defined your customer, because you can’t find what you haven’t identified (and don’t give me that you’ll-know-them-when-you-see-them line). Start with a matrix of situation and need to identify that client. For example, let’s say you’re a financial planner, and you think your clients are “people who want to get their financial affairs in order.” Think instead about who needs to get their financial affairs in order, and you’ll probably come up with something like “married couples with children who have $X in assets and need to protect those assets with planning.” And you can certainly find those people, can’t you?

So we’ve blasted all these lousy excuses, but we haven’t yet addressed the biggest excuse of all: fear. Most of the time I’ve found that the more excuses my clients offer for not moving forward with their businesses, the more fearful they are.

Hey, I understand, and I’ve been there myself. But what it comes down to is this: Are you more afraid of succeeding (or failing) than you are of going back to work for that idiot boss you always end up working for? If the answer is that you’re more afraid of facing the personal responsibility of entrepreneurship than of any garbage your boss could throw at you, then good-bye entrepreneur, and hello wage-slave.

But if you think that the worst possible scenario is working for some moron again, and that you’ll happily work like a dog if that’s what it takes just so you don’t have to slink back into that stinking office with your tail between your legs, good for you. It’s time to forget about excuses, and start figuring out how to make this whole self-employed thing work for you.

The first thing to understand is that fear is OK. Yes, we’ve all been fearful (and yes, I include myself in that “we” statement). It can be scary picking up the phone. It can be scary going to a sales meeting.

But at the end of the day, isn’t your product or service of value to someone? Aren’t people glad (or going to be glad) that you’ve solved a problem for them? So stop worrying and fearing the marketing process, and remember this: Marketing is really nothing more than the process of developing relationships, and you, my friend, can do that in your sleep.

Veronika (Ronnie) Noize, the Marketing Coach, is a successful Vancouver, WA-based entrepreneur, author, speaker, and Certified Professional Coach.  Through coaching, classes and workshops, Ronnie helps small businesses attract more clients. For free marketing resources including articles and valuable marketing tools, visit her web site at http://www.sohomarketingguru.com/