My First Internet Business

In my earlier blog post, I mentioned that I have set up my first internet business online.  If you want to have a look at the website that I have created,   go there now -  it's called Cash Critical - Inbox Millionaire Blueprint.  

Setting up a website has always been the challenge faced by many new internet newbies.  Now that my internet business is open to the public,  I have to learn and master how to send traffic to my site.  I won't get any sales if nobody sees my cash critical website. 

Do you want someone to help you set up your first internet business for you, and so be on the same level playing field as all other internet gurus? 

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Beginner's guide to starting a high-income business on the internet

Are you skeptical about free offers on the Internet? Don't be with this one. If you are a beginner to the Internet business, you might want to download this free guide on how beginners can start a high-income business on the Internet.

This manual lays down in simple words what pitfalls to avoid when you want to start in the internet business.

I am trying to supplement my service based-income with an internet based income, which can give me more freedom of time, so this manual is very helpful.

The report can be downloaded here
Good stuff.

P/S. Use the Gold Key at the bottom of the site to bypass the order form and save $97

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How much is your website worth?

To check the worth of any website, its daily pageviews and the ads revenue, go to the site aptly named website outlook

Just enter the address of the site, hit enter, and you get your information.

Nothing is personal any more on the net.

Websiteoutlook is good for any initial research or just because you're curious

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Building Multiple Streams of Income

Want to start a small business but don't have any ideas what business to go in?

You may want to read this free ebook titled 10 Free Business Ideas. Example of ideas that are mentioned in the book, which are all do-able :

1. Start a follow up service
2. Start a welcome service - good idea here!

Download the book 10 Free Business Ideas

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Success University

I've just discovered a large learning university using internet as the medium of instruction. As a start you may want to visit the site to learn more. Will be posting snippets of the learnings in subsequent posts. Likes of Jay Abraham and Brian Tracy.

Success University

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UYMG 2007 Malaysia

A profound message presented by Stephen Pierce at the UYMG 2007 Malaysia.

Stephen Pierce and the team at Success Resources have have just concluded staging the internet marketing workshop "Unleash Your Marketing Genius, UYMG 2007" at Kuala Lumpur Convention centre in KL, Malaysia. The event was held over the weekend - Friday Sep 28 - Monday October 1, 2007. What a weekend it was!

If you didn't had the good fortune to attend this event, here is a rundown of what and who you missed listening to :

1. Mike Filsaime (of the butterfly Marketing fame)
2. Greg Cesar (Taking control of your marketing)
3. Dave Lakhani (Influence & Persuasion)
4. Chris Guerriero ("Instant Author")
5. Inanna Lawton ( Making profound changes at an Unconscious level)
6. Melissa Heweton ( Endless abundance)
7. Patric Chan ( Niche Marketing 2.0)
8. Ken Shimizu (Business Management)
9. Sandhan (Success Navigation System)
10.Jaz Lai (List Building)
11. Jason Tan (Blogging for Profit)

and of course, the star Stephen Pierce.

P/s, in order to become an "instant" success on the internet, become an instant author, or an instant marketing consultant, or an instant traffic generator, or earn your first USD1000 online, you will have to

1. DIY - take your own time to learn from the heap of information available. (slow results), or
2. invest in coaching and mentoring from the gurus and be prepared to invest in total approximately RM 80,000 for all the packages.

Take your pick. Your comments?

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UYMG Unleash Your Marketing Genius

UYMG 2007 Singapore, Stephen Pierce , Genius University ,
Stephen Pierce did it again! His UYMG 2007 in Singapore (March 23- 26 Friday to Monday) was worth every dollar I paid. To get an idea of the event, click on the video.




I car-pooled with a group of friends and drove from KL Malaysia to Singapore on Friday morning itself arriving in time for registration. After registration, it was straight to work. Exciting 4 days of money making ideas.

I am still digesting the many strategies that Stephen Pierce and his guest speakers have taught us. Most of the strategies are FREE, and which can be easily applied.

I have experienced an increase in my adsense income after applying one of his many strategies. More to come!

Some of the great takeaways from the UYMG event:

1. "Know your brain" - is the first of many games that we played; we learnt to identify our "colours" an dour personality - creative, activators, evaluators, or investigative.

2. 3 things to have to be successful in Internet marketing : Focus, consistence, and patience.

Do keep a lookout for my thoughts on :
1. PPC Pay per click
2. Blogging
3. Sales funnel
4. Publishing your own book
5. Forum marketing
6. E Bay

Till then

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Pixelotto and Sudoku?

Alex Tew Pixelotto Sudoku Traffic

What does Pixelotto and Sudoku have in common?

I found this website offering online sudoku, while clicking on the Pixelotto pixel ads.

A few days ago, I signed up to play the Pixelotto ad-game. First read about Pixelotto on LiewCF blog

Pixelotto allows advertisers to buy minimum ad space of US$200 (100 pixels at US$2 per pixel). If used properly, the ad space can become "a premium internet real estate viewable and clickable by potentially millions of people".

To attract the millions of people to view the ads, the creator organise a contest which offers surfers to the site a chance to win US$1 mil by clicking on the ads. For every $1.00 the advertisers pay, $0.50 goes to the lucky clicker /potential customer. Clickers register for Free at the website. You are allowed to click 10 ads per day.

This site is the follow-up site by Alex Tew, the creator of the Million Dollar Homepage.

If not for the lure of the million dollars, I will not come across the Sudoku site! However not all the sites advertised on Pixelotto are "premium" sites, in my opinion.
But it is a good way to drive traffic to a site, albeit for a short while. If the sales page is attractive enough, the visitors will stay longer. I myself have bookmarked a few sites for a re-visit later.

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News feed - RSS and Atom

RSS RSS White Paper

According to this white paper by MediaThink,

RSS will be the next big thing on the web. As consumers take more active control of the messaging and content they consume, reaching them gets tougher.

So what is RSS? I've always seen the orange-coloured icon, followed by the characters 'RSS' on some of the Web sites and blogs that I visit. I decided to find out more about RSS, and more importantly, how I can use it.

Before we define RSS, we need to familiarise ourselves with the term Web Feeds.

Web Feeds
In simple terms, Web feeds are just a special kind of web page, designed to be read by computers rather than people.

Some content providers (website and blog owners) who provide news of any kind - articles, essays, images, music, video, weather, stock quotes etc - provide a feed link on their site. This allows end users to subscribe to the latest news once its published online.

Because there are many websites and blogs which might interest the end user, there is a need to "aggregrate" the news. Aggregators or feed readers, combine the contents of multiple web feeds for display on a single screen or series of screens. To subscribe to a news feed is quite simple : just drag the link from the web browser to the aggregator. Subscribing to web feeds is also known as ’syndication’

When websites provide web feeds to notify users of content updates, they only include summaries (headlines) in the web feed rather than the full content itself.

Feed reader (or aggregator)
There are more than 2,000 different feed reading applications (for text, mostly) or “podcatchers” (for podcasts). There are even readers that work exclusively on mobile devices. (Source : FeedBurner)

A typical interface for a feed reader will display your feeds and the number of new (unread) entries within each of those feeds. You can also organize your feeds into categories and even clip and save your favorite entries (with certain applications).

Some feed readers are free, and some require you to purchase for a small fee.

1. Web-based feed readers which allow you to access your feed updates anywhere you can find a web browser.

For example, MyYahoo or MyMSN which also allow you to personalise your home page, and add the contents.

Other Free web-based feed readers are Bloglines

2. Desktop-based feed readers require you to download the program onto your machines. Examples are : Newsgator, Feed Demon

3. Users of Firefox browsers can use Live Bookmarks function as their web feeds.

How to add the websites to the News readers.
First, look for the subscription or feed options. Many websites have links labelled ‘XML’, ‘RSS’ or ‘Atom’; or they may have an orange button on their site.

Then, you can either click the relevant links (e.g. the ‘add to my Yahoo!’ button, if you’re using My Yahoo!) or copy-paste the link in to your feed reader. Sometimes there will be a button for your particular feed reader on the blog that will take you to the appropriate subscription page.

Advantages of web feeds over websites surfing
Compared to websites, web feeds have a few advantages for the user : (source: Wikipedia)

Users can be notified of new content without having to actively check for it.

You don't have to click from site to site.

The information presented to users (in an aggregator) is typically much simpler than most websites.

Media files can be automatically downloaded without user intervention.

Advantages of web feed subscription over email subscriptions
Compared to receiving updates via the email, subscribing to web feed has these important advantages :

When subscribing to a feed, the user does not disclose their email address, so the user is not increasing their exposure to threats associated with email: spam, viruses, phishing, and identity theft.

If the user wants to stop receiving news, they do not have to send an 'unsubscribe' request; the user can simply remove the feed from their aggregator.

Your inbox will be uncluttered with news updates
(source: Wikipedia)

RSS and ATOM
RSS and Atoms are the two main web feed formats widely used. Some websites let people choose between RSS or Atom formatted web feeds; others offer only RSS or only Atom. The RSS formats stands for Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0), Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0) and RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0).

The development of Atom formats was motivated by the existence of many incompatible versions of the RSS syndication format.

Whatever the formats that will eventually be accepted as a syndication standard by Internet Engineering Task Force, news feed has the following advantages for the reader, publisher and the advertiser.

Advantages to the different users of website:

Consumer : Subscribing to feeds makes it possible to review a large amount of online content in a very short time.

Publisher : Feeds permit instant distribution of content and the ability to make it "subscribable."

Advertiser: Advertising in feeds overcomes many of the shortcomings that traditional marketing channels encounter including spam filters, delayed distribution, search engine rankings and general “in-box” noise.

I've just subscribed to Bloglines for this blog.

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Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing Home Based Business Rosalind Gardner

Affiliate marketing is one phrase and one activity which you cannot ignore if you want to build a business over the internet.

This article which I chance upon while doing a search on affiliate marketing sums up the subject well : what, why, how. Excerpts below.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is kind of like being an independent sales representative in the online world - sans the telemarketing!

An affiliate marketer puts links and ads on their web site that are encoded with a specific tracking URL and Cookie. When a surfer clicks on that link and the click results in a purchase, a commission is paid to the affiliate marketer. The commission paid does not change the amount the customer is charged - the commission is paid by the merchant or advertiser.

Affiliate Marketing is different than pure advertising. Advertising is typically sold on a Cost Per Impression (CPM) basis. For every 1000 impressions (views), an advertiser pays a certain amount of money whether or not an actual sale is made. With affiliate marketing, the advertiser only pays when an actual sale is made.

Typically a unique URL is used to track when visitor has originated from an affiliate marketer’s site. Additionally, most advertisers also offer an “action period” - for a certain number of days after the first click, a cookie is placed on a surfer’s computer to continue to track the origination of the referral source. Affiliate marketers like long cookies - which means they will get credit for up to 4 months (sometimes even longer!) after the first click.

Affiliate links can be banner ads or text links. You can add them anywhere on your site you feel appropriate. Of course, if your page is covered with ads with no other compelling content, a surfer will have little reason to want to click on any of your ads. Affiliate Marketing works best when you offer resources for customers to make an informed buying decision.

Success Tips
Most successful affiliate marketing sites are review and content based. As an affiliate marketer, it’s up to you to educate and inform YOUR surfers/readers to help them determine what products and services are right for them. Here are a few good examples of very successful affiliate sites:

Rosalind Gardner got her start in affiliate marketing by finding a need and filling it. She entered the online dating scene in 1997, and didn’t really know which sites were the best, and which were ones to avoid at all costs. She learned by trial and tribulation which sites were the best and most reputable on the net. Then, realizing there were many other people who would want to know about what she learned, she launched Sage-Hearts.com - one of the first dating site review portals on the internet.

Sage-Hearts is a GREAT example of simplicity paired with great content, and her results prove it - based on her success in affiliate marketing, she wrote an eBook called How I Made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other People’s Stuff Online.

Another good example is Brad’s Deals - a coupon site with over 2500 Handpicked Deals & Coupons. Brad originally started the site to help his friends save time and money shopping online. Currently consumers using BradsDeals have spent over $100M at over 700 retailers - because he works constantly to update his site and he has a loyal customer base of his own that visit regularly to use his coupons (affiliate links with a built-in discount).

Affiliate Marketing works best on a site dedicated to affiliate marketing. It is less effective on blogs for a couple of reasons - most blogs offer free content (which predisposes our readers to expecting things for free), and most good blogs have what’s called a lot of “Leaky Links” - meaning links that send traffic away from your site without the potential to earn you $$ (non-affiliate links). This is a generalization, of course, so note that there will always be exceptions to this.

Skills Needed
To be successful in affiliate marketing, the following skills are needed - though you can rest assured you don’t need them all right now - some of them will simply come with time and experience…

Search Engine Optimization

Paid Search Engine Marketing

Sales Copywriting Skills (for reviews, informative articles, newsletters and other marketing materials. Head over to CopyBlogger to learn from The Guru on this subject)

Webmaster/html knowledge

A mailing list building strategy (very important!)

Working knowledge of spreadsheet programs and the ability to analyze costs vs. commissions

Ability to analyze web statistics on a basic level

Pros and Cons
Affiliate marketing can be extremely lucrative. It also can be built to the point where much of the business can run on autopilot, giving you a lot more time with the family. It can also be quite rewarding, knowing you are providing a valuable service to people who need the information you offer.

Affiliate marketing also requires patience. This is not an instant-get rich quick business. It takes time to learn what works and what doesn’t work - and to learn how to build up your own traffic (in order to send it elsewhere!). Time is the best teacher for affiliate marketing, as you can study what links your readers are most interested in (by tracking their clicks), where your traffic comes from (what keywords they use to find you), and what affiliate links convert to the most sales.

Income Potential
Don’t expect to earn much in your first few months in affiliate marketing, especially if you are only doing it part time. After the first year of persistent work, you can expect to see a steady revenue stream. I can’t say for certain, but from my past experience and that of others I know personally, I would say the low end of income potential is $10 K a year and at the high end the sky is the limit!

As with many businesses - you get out of it what you put into it. A six figure income from affiliate marketing is absolutely possible - and is also not the norm. In fact, there are a few seven figure affiliate marketers out there - so it certainly pays to learn the business!

Training or Certifications Necessary
No formal training or certification is necessary. Kids have made big bucks in affiliate marketing.

Sales Skills Necessary
You don’t need to do any in person presentations or make any sales calls. But you do have to write compelling sales copy, present product information in a clear to read and understandable format, make site navigation easy and intuitive, and handle customer service emails (sometimes your audience will have questions or problems with a merchant - while you can’t control what happens, you can yank links from your site, or add more based on what your readers like and dislike).

Remember – you are PRE-Selling for your advertisers – keep this in mind and your results will always be better than if you just throw links up on your site.

Initial $ Investment Range
It doesn’t take much $ to invest into creating an affiliate site. You have to pay for web hosting, and a solid email marketing/autoresponder tool (unless you know the CAN-Spam laws like the back of your hand are are willing to risk your email marketing business based on what you know). If this is your only source of income, then you need to plan for the time it will take to get your business up and running to a point that it will make you actual income (plan at least 4-6 months).

Also, PPC (Pay Per Click) traffic is quite critical to the success of an affiliate marketing site, so plan on opening an AdWords account and paying for some traffic.

Read more from http://www.emomsathome.com/blog/

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Internet Marketing Newswatch

Resources
Get the latest news in internet marketing from, where else, but the Internet Marketing Newswatch

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Thank you friends!

This is the first time I have participated in any referral program over the internet. Since the very first day I started in this new online business, I vowed to myself that I am not going to be a product-pusher. I will only recommend a product to my list if I have tried it and genuinely believe that another person will benefit from the product.

100percentMalaysian has just sent me an email to notify me that at least 5 of my friends have registered for the free materials from the site. To these first 5, I thank you for making my 'first affiliate program' a success. To the newbies, do listen to the audios. Seriously. I am now quite excited about this new business!

This is the email I received. Feels like a kindergarten kid receiving his first book prize.

============================================================
You have successfully referred enough members to qualify for VIP membership at 100PpercentMalaysian.com, Please login now and you'll be able to access your VIP members area.
============================================================

Elaine,

This is an automated email.

Thank you for your efforts in referring new members to 100 Percent Malaysian.

I want you to know that you've achieved your minimum referral requirement. And this has UNLOCKED EXTRA DOWNLOAD in the VIP Members area.

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100 percent Malaysian Internet Marketers?

100PercentMalaysian Gobala Krishnan PayPal Get MP3 file

Do these topics interest you?

Why I quit my job to become an internet marketer

Why I tried MLM and decided never to do it again

A simple 5-step plan I used to discover what I really want to do

How I fell into the Get-rich Quick trap

The 5 biggest mistakes I made in internet marketing

I came across these free MP3 audio files here

Listen to the MP3 recordings made by the website owner, Gobala Krishnan, a Malaysian guy who shocked Malaysia a few months back with his secret ebook about Paypal and Clickbank.

I have listened to all 5 audio recordings and also the other recordings on how he created and marketed a product that made over RM28,000 in less than 120 days.

I am still learning about internet marketing and when I find something newbies like us can learn from, I like to share it. Forget about the Astro Max and the cash prizes he is offering for new members, just listen to the audio recordings.

This is real Malaysian experience. Do register and download the audios or transcript for free.

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Death of Internet Marketing

I have not even started, and now the talk in the internet is that "Internet Marketing is dying!" I received many emails persuading me to download a free report "Death Of Internet Marketing".

My first reaction? I ignored all the emails, but in the end, temptation got the better of me, and I clicked on one of the link to download the free report.

Apparently over 17 popular internet marketers launched new products in October 2006 -too many for the 'small' internet marketing market. Good products got ignored because of the influx of new product launches.

So what do we do in this situation?

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Information Overload!

According to one Guru whom I just discovered, I am becoming an Information Junkie. I may have to entirely agree with him.

His definition of Information junkies : "they just want to learn, absorb… absorb… absorb and they simply don’t have the power to turn off this constant craving for more".

I have many unopened emails, each offering a product "that I may need" in order to make massive money. However, since I have not started my online business yet, these tools will not be of any use to me.

So the advice given by this Guru, Rich Schefren for information junkies to go on an information diet is wise indeed. It's time to

stop studying, stop analyzing and start creating

don't allow any information to come in whatsoever for the next week.

realise that you can't read everything, nor cross off every item on the to-do list

realise that I must decide which information I must read

live with only the information I have created

develop urgency in everything I do for the next week

increase the level of output

Rich Schefren

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Same product, different approach

Almost every other mail that I receive this week has been promoting a certain marketer's new product-membership riches. I find it very amusing to read the same sales pitch from unconnected people promoting the same product.

Being very new to Internet marketing, I subscribe to many Internet Gurus' lists, just to get a feeling about the business.

This is how I notice that many of the other Internet marketers have signed up as affiliates for that new product, and I become the recipient of the same offer.

What are some of the lessons that we can learn from this situation?

Need to differentiate oneself from the pack : there is only one marketer that gave additional offers. If I wanted to buy-in to the membership riches ebook, I will buy from that marketer.

There is one marketer who uses an entirely different sales letter, which when clicked on, led me to the same product.

Either the commissions are great, or the product is excellent that makes almost everybody wanting to promote it

As for me, I will not buy-in to this offer yet, because I am still doing my research on the business model.

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Top 100 website

Want to know what are the

top 100 websites in the world?

top websites for your country?

most searched website for a particular category?

Go to Alexa.com

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Internet : Human Network

What is the Internet?

The technical definition of the internet is that it is a collection of interconnected computer networks that transmit data. Source

However, the internet can also be described as a network of people. The internet has become more people-centric. It is ingrained in our everyday lives. We email coworkers, friends, and loved ones. Our lives are captured by digital cameras and shared online. We read blogs for their personalities and unique take on the world. Even dry data like bank balances and weather forecasts have become ways to accentuate and improve your daily life. Sure it's an interconnected set of computers following simple machine instructions, but the driving force behind it all is people connecting with other people. Source

The world is becoming smaller, day by day.

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4 steps to successful internet business

Presented by Derek Gehl - in a preview at a leading hotel in Subang Jaya

This blog is my online diary. In the process of doing indepth research on internet marketing, I take every opportunity to attend the free seminar or previews in town, so the least I can do is to pen down the important notes that the presenter dish out - so that I can refer to it again and again. One more thing, I made this blog my default homepage, so I will see it whenever I switched on the laptop

Actually if you have attended enough seminars, the information dished out is "about the same". What differs is the RESULTS from the ACTIONS taken.

Readers, have you attended (paid or unpaid) seminars and religiously taken notes, only to stash the notes (written on the hotel's stationery) in the drawer, or briefcase? I have been guilty of it so many times. When I discovered blogging I found my answer!

1. Use your existing hobbies or experience to find a lucrative business or product to sell online.

Before you plunge into the online business (for that matter, it also applies to offline business), you need to do a research on the supply and demand for your chosen product or service.

In the online business, demand can be defined as the number of people keying in a particular word, or groups of words (called keywords) onto the search engines like Google, MSN, Yahoo and many more. Supply is the number of websites that have already been created to meet the demand.

When you find that the demand exceeds the supply (pure economic terms) for the product or service that you have in mind, then you are in business! It is time to find a creative solution to the problems that people have.

2. Design a website to convert visitors to lifetime customers.

The website is your storefront. It must be easy to navigate. It must give the visitors the information he/she wants when they entered the keywords in the search engine, and is redirected to your website. You have 10 seconds to impress the visitor. It must have a compellng headline and credible reasons why they should buy your advice or product.


3. Drive a flood of qualified buyers to your website

Vistors to your website (storefront) are either referred by others - friends, associates or affiliates, or they may have accidentally stumbled onto your website when they do a search. In order to sustain your business, you must promote the website - by driving qualified visitors to it. Blogging, banner ads and newsletters and ezines are some of the methods. There are many!


4. Put it on Auto pilot!

Use the right technology to automate the sales (ordering and delivery) process. Spend your time to promote and market your website. Just like the traditional offline business. Work ON the business, not IN the business.


That's it. Simple Isn't it?

Now to put in action.

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Article Marketing - What and Why

Article marketing has always been hailed as online advertising’s greatest strategy.

Writing your own articles is inexpensive. Submission to the many articles directories wouldn’t cost a single penny. You’d be planting seeds that you could benefit from for many years. For as long as the article directories exist, your article/s would be stored, and with them would be your links.

Article marketing does seem like the greatest promotional technique invented for the internet utilised by novice and veteran online businessman. Whether their enterprises are mere startups, or whether they have established a profitable brand for themselves, article marketing is always at the forefront of their advertising campaigns.


Concerns about Article Marketing

If you submit an article to 100 directories, and publish the very same article in your website, will your website be penalized?

The short answer: no.

What will be penalized would be the pages housed in the article directories. Your website will be spared. This is the reason why most article directories, with the notable exception of www.isnare.com when it comes to MSN results (which can be attributed to alternative SEO techniques that website is pursuing specifically for MSN’s search engine), fare quite poorly in SERPs. Run a search for any keyword. Will article directory pages appear in the first hundred or so pages? Most probably, they won’t.


What good is article marketing for?

Article marketing should not be used for direct traffic generation - the traffic will by no means be substantial for any form of online business.

Article marketing is great for building your link popularity, and link popularity is great for increasing your website’s page rank.

The higher your website’s page rank, the higher its position will be in the search engine results pages.

With your article submissions, you’d be able to increase your website’s number of back links on the internet. This would make it easy for search engine spiders, especially Google’s, to find, index and fetch your website for relevant search queries.

Additionally, article directories like www.ezinearticles.com , are favorites of webmasters and eZine publishers. If they will pick up your article/s for publication in their own channels, you’d be able to expose your website to whole new audience, and more importantly, you’d be able to increase the number of your back links even more.

This is the true power of article marketing.

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