Joint Ventures can be a great thing for just about any internet marketer to do at one time or another. They can be a great way to boost your internet business to a higher level in a shorter amount of time with less work. Basically, joint ventures bring you success more quickly than you could do on your own if all parties involved hold up their end. The following post is a quick look at what joint ventures are and how they can benefit you.
First, let’s look at what are joint ventures (JV’s) are. They come in various forms but traditionally they are an agreement between 2 or more people or businesses. All the parties involved agree to work on a project together, or help each other out in one way or another. Usually part of the agreement is that the profits from the project will be shared equally by all parties. Of course, this means that all parties equally contribute to the project too.
JV’s can be something very simple such as promoting each other’s products on their websites or to their lists. They can also get more complicated such as building a whole business together. Therefore, JV’s are also all about forming and building relationships.
Now that you know what a JV is, I will explain why you should use them. Hopefully, you can already see the power of JV’s just from reading what they are and are beginning to see why they might be a good idea for you. With them you are able to take what you’re great at and combine it with what other people are great at. By combining your talents and resources you are be able to be even more productive and become more successful than you ever could on your own.
Even though you have to share the profits with all your partners you still end up making even more money when it’s all said and done. At least that’s the idea. Plus, you will be laying down the groundwork for future partnerships that will also make you even more successful.
One of the most important parts of joint ventures is to have parties who are all really good at something that the other people in the party aren’t so good at. Or at least have all parties with different resources that can be combined. For example, you might have a JV between 5 internet marketers; One that writes really well, one that is a great copywriter, one that knows how to market using social media, one that has a large email list you can market to, and one that specializes in search engine optimization. This covers most of the main tasks that must be completed in order for an online business to be successful. Therefore, this venture should be a success.
Are you starting to see how powerful they can be yet? By joining together you can achieve greater success in less time than you would ever be able to achieve on your own. There’s strength in numbers!
Posted in Internet Marketing
Whether you make money blogging or just do it to share your thoughts with the world, you will be much more likely to stay committed to your blog if it doesn’t seem like a job or chore. Your blog should be updated regularly, considering that is the point of blogging, but you might eventually reach the point where you feel like you have nothing left to say. If you’re not careful, your blog may end up joining the millions of other blogs that have already been abandoned.
I have a LOT of blogs about all sorts of different topics and many of them are even on the same (or similar) topics. I don’t update all of them frequently but several of them I do, so I know a thing or two about trying to keep the blogging juices flowing. Keeping your blog alive while continuing to have fun doing it doesn’t have to be difficult. Below I have discussed a few good ways to make sure you have fun with your blog while updating it regularly:
1) Be enthusiastic about your topic
The more inspired and passionate you are about the subject of your blog, the more that enthusiasm is going to shine through to infect your readers. It doesn’t matter if you’re blogging about internet marketing strategies, amusement park rides, weight loss tips, or whatever else – if you find it interesting, your readers probably will too and you will have fun blogging about it.
It’s also helpful if you have strong writing skills so you can properly express your enthusiasm rather than writing flat, uninteresting posts. Blogging is writing so you should like to write if you are going to stay enthused about your blog.
2) Always be looking for new information
When you first start your blog you’ll probably have a ton of tips and information to share, but as time goes on you may feel like you’re running out of things to say. A good way to overcome this problem is to stay active in finding more information relating to your blog topic. Visit bookstores and skim through magazines and books related to your blog niche. Do the same with your local library. Sign up for newsletters on your topic, and participate in online discussion forums. Watch TV, read other blogs, browse through article directories, etc… All of these resources offer plenty of information to keep your blogging ideas fresh.
3) Challenge yourself
One of the most common reasons bloggers get bored and abandon their blogs is because they stop challenging themselves to create interesting posts. Try playing an association game each day to liven things up. Let’s say your blog topic is digital cameras. Take any book (a dictionary or thesaurus works well) and open to a random entry. If you opened to the word “counterfeit” you could research and write a post about how to avoid getting burned by buying a counterfeit camera. If you opened to the word “lopsided” you could write a post about how to properly frame a shot, and so on. You can come up with thousands of great post ideas this way.
You could also start at the beginning of each week with a list of topics and push yourself to write at least one post per day to cover one of the topics – even if you may be tempted to procrastinate. Challenge yourself to be more disciplined, and eventually you’ll enjoy the feeling of satisfaction you get from accomplishing your blogging goals.
There are plenty of ways to keep your blog fresh and fun forever. Just think outside the box and use the things that are all around you. Blogging is a great way to make money, build a business, share your thoughts, have fun, and so much more!
Posted in Blogging
A basic definition of a “web 2.0 site” is as a website that is not static and allows users to interact with each other as well as contribute to the website’s content instead of passively viewing the information. Some examples include; social bookmarking sites, social networking sites, web based communities, wikis, blogs, video sharing sites, and more.
These Web 2.0 sites offer great opportunities to use them as part of your link building strategy for your own website or blog. It’s well known in the internet marketing world that building links to your site will help with your search engine rankings and bring you a lot more traffic. It’s also no secret that you should diversify your backlinks instead of using just one or two strategies. That’s where these web 2.0 properties can come into play.
There are virtually endless ways to use these sites to help boost the rankings of your own site, and below are a few good ideas to get you started:
1) Squidoo Lenses
Squidoo.com is a very popular place for sharing information through the creation of mini-sites called “lenses” and it is one of the most popular web 2.0 sites. A lens is a one-page website on a specific topic. On that page you can add relevant articles, embed videos, photos, products, and all sorts of other things. Of course, you can also post links back to your own website or blog.
They don’t allow all topics so check to be sure your topic is allowed before you get too far into creating a lens. If it is, create as many lenses as you like, each of them sharing good information along with links back to your website and/or blog.
2) Hubpages
Hubpages.com is another extremely popular web 2.0 site that allows you to create one-page websites but they are called “hubs” instead of lenses, and they aren’t as flexible as Squidoo. Hubpages requires you to use 100% unique content – you can’t use previously published articles or PLR content. What you can do is rewrite your articles so they are basically brand new, or pay a writer to do it for you if you don’t have the time. You are allowed to put links back to your own sites but do it in moderation.
3) Blogs
You might already have a blog but there are many different blogging platforms where you can create more of them to use in your link building efforts. Blogs are typically considered to be web 2.0 properties and you can use them for creating plenty of backlinks to your main website/blog. Some free platforms you can use are wordpress.com, blogger.com, livejournal.com, blog.com, xanga.com, and many others. The most common approach for this type of web 2.0 property is to regularly keep adding fresh content, and have relevant links leading back to your own website or main blog.
Private label rights (PLR) content also works well to help keep these blogs active. You can either modify the content to make it more unique, or simply use it as-is. But I do recommend re-writing it at least a little bit. If the content includes keyword phrases that go along with your topic, turn them into anchor text and link them back to your main sites.
You can also use free reprint articles by other people. Simply go to an article directory like ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, or articlecity.com and pick a few articles that go along with your topic. Post one or more articles a day, including a link back to your site in the post. Be sure to keep the original author’s bio box with a live link to their site – you aren’t trying to steal the content, only use it to keep your blogs active, which is perfectly fine.
Okay, now you have 3 ways to use web 2.0 sites in your link building strategy. Start with those above and then expand into some of the countless other web 2.0 properties that are out there just waiting for you to use them.
Posted in SEO
The term “backlinks” is used in internet marketing to mean links from other websites pointing back to your own, or incoming links. They are also often called “inlinks” or “inbound links” but they are all the same thing. Why are backlinks important? Because the more incoming links you have pointing to your website, the higher relevancy the search engines give to your site in relation to the keywords that people use for searches.
For example, if your site features information about internet marketing (as this one does) and people search online for “internet marketing strategies” then you want your website to be listed in the first spot – or at least one of the top ten spots, if possible (hopefully mine will in the near future). One good way to accomplish that is to build plenty of incoming links using the anchor text “internet marketing strategies” and similar phrases. Anchor text means turning the keyword phrase into a live link so it looks like this – Internet Marketing Strategies – as opposed to using a standard URL format like this – https://intmktr.com – or whatever your domain is.
The HTML code used to create an anchor text link would look like this:
<a href=”https://intmktr.com”>Internet Marketing Strategies</a>
If your website features high-quality information, it’s possible that people will link to your site naturally, but you’ll still want to do plenty of link building yourself too. There are plenty of ways to do this, and below are three popular way to build backlinks to your website:
1) Article Marketing
There are hundreds of article directories online that are happy to allow a link back to your website in exchange for a quality article on your topic. Using the example above, you could write articles sharing tips on all sorts of various internet marketing topics, and in your author bio box include an anchor text link back to your website. If you write and submit plenty of articles, you’ll be building plenty of quality backlinks.
2) Social Bookmarking
Bookmarking sites like Digg.com, Delicious.com, Stumbleupon.com, Mixx.com, and others allow you to post links to your favorite sites, and your own can be one of them. Many of these are nofollow but some of they are dofollow, and they all help to an extent. Even better, if other people like your site they can bookmark it too. If you offer high quality information, you could even enjoy a bit of viral linking as people pass your link around.
3) Satellite Blogs
Beyond your main website or blog, you can also create smaller, niche-focused blogs that feature your articles and several anchor links back to your main site. Some of the better known blogging platforms like Blogger and WordPress are easy to use for this purpose.
When possible, try to create backlinks on websites that rank well in the search engines. A link from a site with a Google PageRank 6 (PR6) will carry MUCH more weight than a link from a site with a PR0. The more popular and older the sites you can get a link from, the better.
Posted in SEO
Social media can be a great marketing tool for your internet business if used correctly to build a following of people who know and trust you as well as a way for you to engage your followers. This is actually something I have only recently realized and started to learn myself. Up until a few months ago I had always written social media marketing off as a fad and a waste of time. But I started testing it out a bit more and little by little it grew on me until I finally found that it does have several benefits and can be a great addition to other internet marketing strategies. I still don’t have a huge following or a bunch of friends on any one social site but I am working to build them up right now.
Social networking and social bookmarking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, Digg, Delicious, LinkedIn, Stumbleupon, Mixx, FriendFeed, and a bunch of others give you the opportunity to interact with an incredible amount of people that can be a huge potential market for your business. Plus, they are all free and easy to use. Not to mention the fact that they are very popular and used by just about everyone nowadays.
The most important part of social media marketing is to NOT treat it solely as an internet marketing tool. You must build a following, build trust, build relationships, interact with your friends/followers, give more than you take, and become someone they listen to and recommend to others. Then, you will be able to promote things to them every so often. Create value first and market later.
Too many people use whatever means possible to try and get as many followers/friends as they can so they can blast out links to their sites/offers and hope someone clicks them. That doesn’t work. It’s called “social” media or social “networking” for a reason! You must be social and truly network with others for this marketing strategy to work.
Marketing on social networks can be a very difficult path to take, but it can be very rewarding in the end if you do it correctly. You definitely shouldn’t tweet more than one marketing message per day on your main Twitter account or post more than one per day on your Facebook profile, or whatever other social networking site you use.
Social bookmarking sites are a little different because it is expected that you will “bookmark” links on them. However, you should still build up friendships and followings on them wherever possible so they will help you to vote up your content. And you should definitely not only post your own content to them. Bookmarking links to your own sites should be done sparingly or you won’t get far with the majority of users. Also, social bookmarking sites such as Delicious are typically much better to use than Twitter or Facebook for getting backlinks to your site.
The basis of social media marketing is to create value for your friends and followers on your social networks — give them an incentive of useful information, tips, giveaways, help, support, friendship, and general entertainment value in order to secure their trust and keep them as followers to which you can market (lightly) to in the future. This is one internet marketing strategy that must be handled with care and can’t be abused at all, or it won’t help you a bit.
Posted in Social Networking
