How To Draw Visitors To Your Web Site By Holding An Online Contest Or Sweepstakes
May 23, 2008
Holding a contest or sweepstakes can draw a lot of traffic to your Web site. You can announce your site to hundreds of Web sites that list free contests and sweepstakes. Send out a press releases about your contest or sweepstakes. Ask entrants to your contest or sweepstakes if they would accept offers from your business in the future by e-mail.
The prizes should be something your target audience would need or want. Try to be as original as possible with the prizes you are offering. Always offer more than one prize, a grand prize and runner-up prizes. Use your products or services to give away as prizes. Make sure your prizes have some value, nothing cheap. Give enough information about all the prizes, so people will be interested in entering.
Make it easy for people to enter your contest or sweeps- takes. I feel the easiest ways online are from an entry form on your Web site or by e-mail. Capture as much info. as you can when they enter your contest or sweepstakes like: Company Name First/Last Name Street Address City, State, Zip Day/Evening Phone Number E-mail Address Web Site Address Purchasing History Survey Questions
Back To Home Business
May 22, 2008
Back To Home Business
by: Michael Wooller
Being of a perverse nature and having a tendency to question things, I decided to do some research on the derogatory term ‘luddite’ (as in ” what do you mean you’re not going to upgrade to XP, you luddite!”). A luddite in conventional language these days is someone who is opposed to new technology. Using this definition, a dedicated luddite would presumably do mathematical calculations using a stick and wet sand on the beach. Provided the stick wasn’t manufactured, of course! Seems far fetched, doesn’t it?
As it turns out my natural instinct for smelling injustice was accurate. The Luddites were a group of English cottage industry craftsmen of the early 1800’s who were fighting to retain their way of life. As we know, history is written by the victors, which in this case was not the Luddites. As a result the smear campaign of the time, promoted by the government and factory owners, stuck and they were painted as idiots afraid of change. It is this dis-information that gave rise to the modern definition of a luddite as a technophobe. What they were actually protesting was the destruction of their way of life by the introduction of large-scale textile factories.
Internet Marketing: 10 Motivational Insiders Tricks To Attract Thousands Of Visitors
May 21, 2008
If you have a website but not attracting many visitors, it may be because you’ve not known the insiders secrets that I have.
By just making a couple of changes at your website, you can attract an avalanche of visitors and sky rocket your sales.
Below are the internet marketing secrets.
1. Write your ad copy like you’re talking directly to your visitors. Use the words “you”, “your”, and “you’re” a lot in your ad copy.
2. Visit business discussion boards regularly. You could discover helpful advice, online resources and give your own two cents worth.
3. Gain free advertising by listing your business info in your chat room profile. Most chat rooms allow this, but check their rules to be sure.
4. Let people know about your affiliate program. Submit it to numerous affiliate program directories, announce it in your e-zine, put it in your sig file, etc.
5. Tell your visitors exactly what you want them to do at your web site. You may want them to order products, subscribe to your ezine, etc.
6. Focus your site on your visitor’s desires, not on yourself. They want to know what’s in it for them, not that you won an award for your business.
Using Blogs for SEO
May 20, 2008
Why Start A Blog?
I knew about blogging and blogs for years before I actually started my first blog… So this begs the question… “Why did it take me over 4 years to start my 1st blog?”
Well, why would I want a blog? After all, blogs are just for geeks, self opinionated left or right wing zealots pushing some obscure political agenda, teenage school kids waffling on about their zits and boyfriends or technical journals full of terms and jargon only a rocket scientist could understand.
And I never bothered with blogs or the development of the “blogosphere” again.
Then something changed the way I viewed blogging about July 2004. I was introduced to using a blog as a tool for SEO - Search Engine Optimization. In the crudest form it was almost spamming, but done properly, it will get your website pages spidered almost immediately and indexed in less than a week.
Blog and Ping
The crude method involved first setting up both a blogger (.blogspot) blog and a free myYahoo page. You add the RSS or Atom link from your blog to your myYahoo page, so that your blog feeds into your myYahoo website.
Benefits Of An Accessible Website: Part 1 - Increase In Reach
May 19, 2008
The DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) states that service providers must not discriminate against disabled people. A website is regarded as a service and therefore falls under this law, and as such must be made accessible to everyone.
Some organisations are making accessibility improvements to their websites, but many are seemingly not making the accessibility adjustments. Disabled people don’t access their website, they say, so why should they care?
Why you should care about disabled Internet users
The statistics on the number of users who may face difficulties due to your website’s accessibility are quite startling:
* There are 8.6 million registered disabled people in the UK - 14% of the population (source: DRC)
* One in 12 men and one in 200 women have some form of colour blindness - 9% of the UK population (source: Institution of Electrical Engineers)
* Two million UK residents have a sight problem - 4% of the population (source: RNIB)
* There are 12 million people aged 60 or over - 21% of the UK population (source: UK government)
Marketing Your Business: Our Top Eight Tips
May 19, 2008
How to market your business? It needs your continual effort. You need keep learning and practicing to find out where your real customers are and how to target them effectively. How in other words, how can let other people find your business? It should be a long term plan and investment. You should consider it as your job, your business. You need take care of it. If you respect your business and work on it with your effort, you will be rewarded eventually.
So where to begin? Here are some tried and true tips that will help you market your website with confidence. You can begin marketing your website when:
- Your website content is complete. This includes your website text, products you want to sell, the correct title, descriptions, and hidden keywords.
- You are ready for your first customer. You need test it by yourself before send your website to public. Make sure all links are working, the order form is ready. Testing everything you can think of. - You have a clear knowledge of the product(s) or service(s) you want to sell online. You need understand your product very well. Please remember: content is the King. When most people think about marketing, they think of advertising.
Hard Drive Crash Prevention And Recovery Tips
May 18, 2008
Hard Drive Crash Prevention And Recovery Tips
by: Michael Cottier
The hard drive in our computers right now stores all of our data, and our computer could not function without it. There would be no World Wide Web, email or even an operating system without hard drives. Since hard drives are so important, a hard drive crash is without a doubt the biggest problem that someone could face on their computer.
Hard drive crashes can happen for many reasons, and usually the owner is not to blame. One reason your hard drive can crash is because of a hard ware problem. See your hard drive is a magnetic disc that spins and has an extended arm hovering over it, to access any area, and collect the data. If the motor overheats and stops spinning or the arm fails to function, then your hard drive will crash and not be accessible at all.
Another way for your hard drive to crash is from corrupt system files, registry files and viruses. Viruses come in many forms as spy ware, ad ware, in emails and many other places all over the web. I recommend a good virus protection program from McAfee or Norton to stop those viruses and prevent your hard drive from crashing.
Increase Your Credibility With Web Site Awards
May 17, 2008
Web Site Awards are given from other sites to reward your site for a specific reason. They will usually give you an award graphic or text link to include on your site if you win. Awards are great to display on your Web site because they will give your business more credibility to your visitors and customers.
Some things your Web site could be awarded for are:
Web Design Content Load Time Web Features Ease of use Originality
If you think you have a chance to win one of these awards submit your Web site to the sites that give out web awards. Visit other peoples Web sites and see what awards they have won. Only register for awards that are related to the content of your Web site; this helps promote your site to your targeted audience.
Before you register to win an award, make sure your Web site is ready. Your sites content spelling and grammar should be correct. It should be easy to navigate through your Web site. Graphics should be related to the content on your page.
Web Marketing: Unusual Tricks Of Internet Marketing Gurus To Attract More Visibility
May 16, 2008
Do you post to message boards, e-mail discussion lists, classified ads sites, FFA sites or newsgroups?
People will usually read the subject line before they read your ad or message, so it’s important they get noticed.
Below are ten simple, but powerful web marketing tips to get your ads or messages noticed.
1. Use extra white space creatively in your subject line. You can add extra blank spaces between your words or letters.
2. Combine capital letters with lower case letters. Use all capital letters in every other word or use a capital letter between every other lower case letter.
3. Add text symbols in your subject line. You could use them between words and letters. Start and end your subject with a text symbol. ( *, $, >,{,] )
4. Begin your subject line with the word “STOP!”. People have been trained their whole life to stop what they are doing when they see that word.
5. Ask people a question in your subject line. We all went to school and were repetitively branded to answer questions.
6. Use the word “FREE” in your subject line. Your offer should be attractive to your target audience. It could be free information, software, trials, etc.
The First Search Engine Marketing Method: Content That Meets Customers Needs
May 15, 2008
For your business web site, good search engine rankings and high user traffic depend on relevant content. More user traffic will mean more sales leads and then more sales. Beyond any technical tricks, content that meets the users’ need for three types of information is the best guarantee that search engines and users will find your site. The Google and Yahoo page rankings favor sites that have articles of about 1000 words and that use keywords relevant to the user’s search.
Once they find your site with a search engine, web users spend more time on sites where their needs are met. To understand why users come back to content rich sites, lets look at the ways that a successful website, like DVInfo, fills the three most important information needs of the website user.
The DVInfo.net online community boasts over thirteen thousand members and a quarter million posts. What makes users of DVInfo Community come back to the site on a regular basis? The users come back for relevant content that meets their needs.
