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HOME BUSINESS & MARKETING OPTIONS
Bryan Thorby
Publisher
webmaster@home-business-and-marketing.com
http://www.home-business-and-marketing.com
Date: August 8, 2006
Welcome to This Edition
In This Issue:
Thoughts of the Day
Article 1: RSS Feed Tips to Help Search Engine Optimization
Article 2: 7 Things To Consider Before Joining A Network Marketing
Program
Article 3: Making your affiliate marketing business a success
Resources
Disclaimer & Privacy Statement
I trust all is well with you.
An Internet Business is a lot more affordable to start for
individuals like you and me as opposed to starting a
conventional business, which is obviously more risky and it
would take you a longer time to save your money or better
financial intelligence to even begin one. And if you make a
financial mistake that ultimately closes your conventional
business down, it would be a question as to when you can start
again.
If you still think that starting an Internet Business is
expensive, then you are probably trading your souls for cents.
Is that how much you think you are REALLY worth?
Internet Marketing is, in a nutshell, marketing and selling
products and/or services using the Internet as a medium.
More often than not, Internet Marketing is often perceived as
"selling another Internet Marketing or Internet Business"
product to another person. This could not be any further from
the truth!
There are more untapped niches and hungrier demands you can
cater to outside the "Internet Marketing" niche itself.
Do your research at the likes of:
www.nichebot.com
searchmarketing.yahoo.com
adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
To your Home Business Success,
Bryan
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Neil Shearing of scamfreezone.com blog link
scamfreezone.com blog
There's a ton of great content at the blog that Neil has been
working heavily on for the past three months.
Also details of a new product will be announced soon.
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If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths
rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.
-- John D. Rockefeller
"Success in life is a matter not so much of talent and
opportunity as of concentration and perseverance."
-- C.W. Wendte
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RSS Feed Tips to Help Search Engine Optimization
by Sharon Housley
RSS feeds are a great communication medium, and when
properly managed, web feeds can bring in significant
Internet traffic. RSS feeds should contain compelling themed
content with episodic titles that are united in common broad
theme. Use RSS feeds as an online marketing and search
engine optimization tool. Just as optimizing an HTML web
page will increase exposure, so too will an RSS feed that is
properly optimized and promoted. Use these simple tips to
improve your web feed exposure.
Channel Title
The channel title in your RSS feed is one of the most
important aspect. The channel title should be keyword rich
and contain information related to the general theme of the
RSS feed. In order to maximize compatibility with RSS
readers, it is best not to include any HTML in the channel
title. The channel title is a website visitors first glimpse
at the RSS feed, so its important to make an impression and
attract the interest of casual browsers. Additionally, many
of the RSS feed directories and search engines use the
information contained in the RSS feed's channel title and
description to index the feed. In order for the feed to be
properly categorized, it is important that the information
contained in these fields be relevant to the contents
contained in the feed. If included at all, the blog, brand,
or company name should be at the end not the beginning of
the RSS feed channel title.
Channel Description
The channel description field provides an opportunity to
expand on the broad theme of the RSS feed. The channel
description should contain related keywords and phrases, but
it should be written to capture the interest of readers not
search engine spiders. HTML can be used to decorate and
emphasize specific text in the description field. In
summation the channel description should provide a
compelling overview of the RSS feed's contents.
RSS Feed Item Titles
The item titles should be 50-75 characters with spaces. In
order to increase readability and compatibility with news
readers, the RSS feed item titles should not be encoded with
any HTML. Think of an RSS feed item title in the same way
that you would a webpage title. The RSS feed item title is
your opportunity to capture the interest of your reader.
Really an RSS feed item title is nothing more than a
headline. The most effective item titles are calls to action
that grab the readers attention. Include pertinent keywords
or keyword phrases in the items title and this will help any
individuals doing deep feed searches for specific content.
Optimize RSS
Optimize all aspects of the web feed. While the feed should
be optimized for search engines, using the same techniques a
webmaster uses on a website, the optimization should not be
at the readers expense. The content in an RSS feed is often
what leads readers to click or not click through. Readers
will judge RSS feeds on the quality of the content. This
means that grammar and punctuation do matter. Consistent
grammatical errors will reduce the writers credibility and
the number of subscribers.
Anchor Text
Using RSS feeds, publishers have the unique opportunity to
determine the anchor text that will be used to link to
internal website pages. RSS feeds are often syndicated, and
even more often compelling feed items will often be re
posted by other publishers. With that in mind, when
including links back to a website in the item description
field, use anchor text that is a relevant keyword or phrase.
Anchor text is one factor that search engines use in
determining a website's ranking for specific keywords and
phrases.
Number of Feed Items
Routinely prune the old items in an RSS feeds and archive
the content contained in the feed to ensure that feeds load
quickly in RSS readers. If you are using a third party
service to host your feeds, keep in mind that FeedBurner
will truncate or not display RSS feeds that it finds to be
too large.
Heading Tags
If you are displaying an RSS feed as an HTML web page it
makes sense to use H1 or H2 tags to display the RSS feed's
item titles. If the RSS feed is optimized, the website will
benefit from the keyword emphasis by using the header tags.
RSS Feed URLs
As with HTML web pages, the URLs contained in an RSS feed
should contain keywords if possible. Use hyphens not
underscores, to separate the keywords in the RSS feed's URL.
Add an Image
Consider adding an image to your RSS feed to enhance its
appearance in an RSS reader. The image should be no large
144x400 and it is recommended that the image be 88x31. Most
RSS readers will display the feed image above the feed
contents, this is a great way to reinforce brand and
establish brand recognition. Additionally you can add images
to the RSS feed's description field. In all cases, it is
important that the full URL to the image be referenced,
because if the feed is syndicated it will report a broken
image if its attempting to retrieve it locally.
Some of the RSS feed directories use the feed's website
favorite icons to flag the RSS feed. The RSS feeds
containing a favorite icon stand out from others in the
directories so be sure to include a favicon in the domain's
root directory. RSS feeds are a great marketing tool, but
like web pages, they must be optimized so that you can reap
the full marketing benefits. Taking the time to implement
some basic optimization tips will steadily increase your RSS
feeds exposure.
About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll
software for creating, editing,
publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon
manages marketing for NotePage a
wireless text messaging software company
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7 Things To Consider Before Joining A Network Marketing
Program
Network marketing programs, also commonly referred to as MLM
or downline programs, can bring huge financial rewards if
marketed well. They provide a way of working at home and
building your own monthly income through your efforts to
introduce and sell the network marketing company's products
or services to other people, who then introduce them to
other people, and so on. It sounds simple enough but how do
you know if a company is legitimate and will pay you on time
or even at all, and will they be around in the long term?
In this article I have listed seven factors that I
personally take into consideration before choosing to join
an MLM company:
1. Are the products offered good enough to be sold on their
own without the downline incentive?
The first thing you should look at is the products or
services that the company is offering. If you don't believe
they represent value for money, or you simply aren't
impressed with them, then the likelihood is that other
people won't be either. Therefore you will probably have
difficulty selling the products to other people, and so your
potential profits could be limited.
2. Has the company already established itself?
It's important to find out how long the company you're
considering joining has been operating. Although there's no
guarantees on whether a company will be around in the
long-term, I still favour companies that are at least a year
old. Yes some of these may subsequently go out of business
at some point in the future, but at least you know they're
not a fly-by-night outfit.
3. Does the company offer a good compensation plan?
Let's be honest, this is the factor that most of us are
primarily interested in. Time is a very valuable commodity,
so we don't want to spend it promoting a network marketing
company's products unless we are being well rewarded
financially for our efforts.
4. Does it offer spillover?
Spillover occurs when say for example, if the company uses a
5x5 matrix then when you refer 6 people, the first 5 will
fill the top level, and the 6th person will go under one of
your initial referrals creating an incentive for them to
continue with the program because they are benefiting from
your efforts as well as their own.
5. Does the company have a reputable owner or management
team in place?
This information can be slightly difficult to find out, but
in this internet age it is becoming much easier to carry out
independent research. If you can't find sufficient
information yourself you can almost guarantee that there
will be a forum somewhere which discusses the company, and
where someone has already done a background check on the
owner or management team.
6. Is it strongly endorsed by other members of the company?
Forums and discussion groups are great places to obtain this
information. Although most people will obviously praise the
company that they are promoting in order to get more
signups, you will inevitably find a few negative comments
from disgruntled recruiters. It's these comments that you
should read carefully. Most of the time they will be minor
issues or faults, but sometimes you can come across red flag
signals such as the company suddenly starting to delay
payments, for example.
7. Does the company still have plenty of room to grow, or
has it already reached saturation point?
This is the final point I want to mention, but nevertheless
a very important one. You don't want to join a company that
everyone is seemingly already a member of, and one that is
already promoted heavily. For optimum results you want a
company that has already established itself yet still has
plenty of scope to grow and attract new members, therefore
being relatively easy to promote.
James Woolley is a full-time marketer and a heavy promoter
of network marketing programs. To find out which programs he
is currently promoting click here:
jimsmarketing.com/MLM_Downline_Programs
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Making your affiliate marketing business a success
One of the most important things for any budding affiliate is to know his or her target audience. Understanding what each segment of the market wants, and does not want, is a crucial element to the success of any affiliate marketing business.
Many affiliate marketers have found success by identifying a particular segment, or niche, of the market, and catering to it aggressively and exclusively. There are many opportunities in all segments of the internet; the key is to identify those sectors and to understand what they are looking for in web site content, and in products.
Knowing your target audience, and understanding what they want, will allow you to make important decisions on everything from the layout of your web site, to the content you provide, to the affiliate programs you choose to partner with.
For example, if you have determined that your market segment is consists mostly of older teens and young adults, your page will look quite different than if you were targeting a segment made up mostly of senior citizens. Markets can be segmented in many different ways, and demographic, and geographic criteria are only a few market segmentation strategies. In order to be useful, market segments must be easy to understand, and they must also provide valuable insight into the buying habits of the market segment. It is important that demographic information be used to target marketing campaigns and choose better affiliates, and not simply be collected for the sake of collecting it. In other words, collecting market segmentation data should be done with a purpose or a marketing goal in mind.
It is also important not to make unwarranted or inaccurate generalizations when deciding which affiliates to use with which subscriber lists. For instance, many participants in affiliate programs for fishing and hunting supplies target their marketing campaigns to only the men on their subscriber list, when there are in fact a large number of women who both fish and hunt. When you add the number of women who buy gifts, gear and gadgets for their boyfriends, husbands and fathers, it is easy to see why ignoring the female segment of the market is such a big mistake,
There are of course hundreds of different examples of similar target marketing missteps, and the key to avoiding them is to do your research, and not make assumptions. Before you make an assumption about one segment of the market, be sure that you do some basic demographic research to see if that assumption is true.
In the world of affiliate marketing, a little research, insight and planning can go a long way, and those who have the best ability to plan and research their target audience are often the ones running the largest and most successful affiliate marketing campaigns.
Here For Your Success
Cody Moya
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Cody Moya writes about How to Earn As Affiliate
in his Free Courses on Internet Marketing. You can sign up
for his free Courses and get additional information at his
website: FreeInternetMarketingCourses.com
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DISCLAIMER & PRIVACY STATEMENT |
I accept no responsibility whatsoever for the content,
profitability or legality of any published articles or
advertisements contained within the
Home Business & Marketing Options ezine.
And, although all of the articles have been selected for
their content, the publishing of such articles within
this newsletter does NOT constitute a recommendation of
the products or services mentioned or advertised within
those articles.
Be responsible! Always do your own Due Diligence before
responding to any offer.
I respect the privacy of my readers.
I will NEVER supply or sell your personal
information to any Third Party!
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