Traffic Overdrive

“TOP Traffic Building Strategies That Can Put Your Web Site On The High Traffics Of Internet Highway!”




Table of Contents

Increasing Your Web Traffic Starting NOW
How To Generate Traffic Using Only Free Methods
Search Engine Optimization And Why You Got to Use It
How To Use A Tell-A-Friend Script To Drive Traffic Today
Top 5 Ways To Generate Low Cost Website Traffic
Using Google Adwords To Drive Laser Targeted Traffic
Viral Marketing 101
How To Monetize Your Traffic So You Get The Most Out Of It
In Closing
Resource Guide and Bonuses



Increasing Your Web Traffic Starting NOW

Internet. Business. Profit.

To fully integrate all of these words into a successful merging you will need another word. Traffic. Every article and reading material you will find about making your site or company successful would always include the importance of generating traffic.

So, we all know that in the core of it all, traffic is the most essential thing to a successful Internet based business company. Aside from ensuring that you have a great product to sell, and you have your company’s internal organization well taken core of, it would be time to get to the nitty-gritty of things, generating traffic.

If you already have a site and you want think that you're not getting the traffic that you're supposed to be getting, then its time to reconsider. If you are contending in these very competitive business, you should always be a step ahead of your competition, increasing your traffic flow should have been done starting yesterday.

Timing is essential, that’s an old adage known to everyone. But with generating traffic, you should always be on your toes and be a day ahead of everyone. Never think of today and tomorrow as a starting point for making your site traffic laden, it should always have been yesterday.

To help you out in generating more traffic for your site, here are some seven surefire ways in a nutshell to increase your traffic starting from yesterday.

(We’ll cover them and more in detail in the later parts of this book)

1) Invest in good advertising with Search Engines.

Google’s Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture provide great advertising schemes that are very truly popular and assures great traffic. Although with this surefire way to increase your traffic would cost some money. While some would shy away from spending money to increase traffic, it is imperative in this case to do so because Adwords and Overture is the top surefire way to increase your traffic.

You could see for yourself the success this Search Engine advertising methods have reaped rewards for so many companies. Lots of site feature these advertising system and many have signed on to reap the benefits. Do not be left behind. Every penny is worth it with using Google and Yahoo’s advertising.

2) Exchange or Trade Links with other sites.

With exchanging links with other sites, both of you will benefit from the efforts both of you do to enhance your sites traffic. When one site features another sites link, they could provide one another with the traffic one site generates. The efforts are doubly beneficial because it would seem like both of you are working to generate more traffic. The more links traded with more sites the more traffic could be expected.

3) Use Viral Marketing.

Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product without any costs or if ever low costs only. This is a marketing method that can be quite sneaky; you can attach your company’s name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting article or a gossip or buzz. With this method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they will pass it on to many people.

We will cover this in detail in a specific chapter later.

4) Search and use proper keywords or keyword phrases for your sites content.

Search Engines look for certain keywords that they would show in their results page. In doing so, having the right keyword and keyword phrase is a high requirement in ranking in high in Search Engine results. You could write your own content or you could hire someone to do it for you.

5) Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site.

Submit articles to sites that would contain the same subject that your site deals in. If you sell car parts write press releases and articles about cars and car parts. Attach your sites description and services at the end of the article as well as the link.

6) Join forums and form online communities.

Capture a market and show your expertise and credibility. When you found a good foundation for your site, people will trust you and your site and will pass on to many people their trust. Traffic will certainly increase because they know that you can provide what they need.

7) Lastly, Offer newsletters or e-zines.

If many people know what you are about and your existence is shared with many others, you will find a loyal traffic that can provide you with more traffic by recommendation. If you arouse the curiosity of your customers they would be pushed to help you with your traffic.








How To Generate Traffic Using Only Free Methods

Putting up a company would of course require a lot of things, to get straight to the point, you need a capital. To make money requires money as well. But of course, with the versatility the Internet offers, there are many ways you could find that could help optimize the potential of your site or business in generating traffic.

While there are ways to jumpstart your traffic flows, many sites don’t have the resources that others have to generate more traffic for your site. Well, you don’t have to spend a cent; all you need is the proper mindset and a lot of eagerness. You also must have the drive and perseverance to do hard work and research to generate more traffic for your site.

How sweet it is to have more traffic for your site without spending a single cent. Now it’s a sure thing that many sites have articles that offer tips and guidelines in how to generate traffic using only free methods. Because it is possible, you don’t need to speed a single cent, it may take time, to say honestly, I’m not going to beat around the bush with you. You get better chances by paying for your advertisements, but at least you get a fighting chance with some of these free methods I’m about to tell you.

Take advantage of online forums and online communities. The great thing about forums and online communities is that you can target a certain group that fits the certain demographic that you are looking for. You can discuss about lots of things about the niche that you represent or offer. Another great advantage is that you know what you are getting into and you will be prepared.

With online communities and forums you can build a reputation for your company. Show them what you are made of and wow them with your range of expertise about the subject, with that you can build a reputation and build trust with the people in your expertise and knowledge.

You can also make use of newsletters. Provide people with a catalog of your products and interesting and entertaining articles. If you make it really interesting and entertaining, more people will sign up for your newsletter and recommend it to other people. The more people who signs up for your newsletter, the more people there will be that will go to your site increasing your traffic.

While the first two methods above have been discussed briefly earlier, here’s another:

Another great idea is trading links with other sites. You don’t have to spend a cent. All you have to do is reach an agreement with another webmaster. With exchanging links, the efforts both sites do will benefit both sites. Every traffic that goes to the site could potentially click on the link of your site and visit your site as well. This works well especially when both sites feature the same niche.

Write articles that could pique the attention of people that have interest in your product. Try writing articles that will provide tips and guides to other aficionados. Writing articles that provide good service and knowledge to other people would provide the necessary mileage your traffic flow needs.

Many sites offer free submission and posting of your articles. When people find interest in your articles they have a good chance of following the track by finding out where the article originated. Include a link or a brief description of your company with the article and there’s a great probability that they will go to your site.

Write good content for your site. Many Search Engines track down the keywords and keyword phrases your site uses and how they are used. It is not a requirement that a content should be done by a professional content writer. You could do your on but you have to make content for your site that is entertaining as well as informational. It should provide certain requirements as well as great quality.

(More on Search Engines and Search Engine Optimization in the next chapter)

Generally, Internet users use Search Engines to find what they are looking for. Search Engines in return use keyword searching in aiding their search results. With the right keywords, you could get high rankings in Search Engine results without the costs.
All of these methods and more will drive more traffic to your site for free. All it takes is a bit of effort and extended man-hours. Learn all you can about the methods depicted here and you will soon have a site with a great traffic flow without the usual costs that come with it.








Search Engine Optimization And Why You Got to Use It


E-commerce is a cutthroat business. You have to arm yourself with the proper know-how and the tools to make your site a cut above the rest. Each day, more and more sites are clambering to optimize their rankings in websites and if you lose your guard, you may just get trampled on and be left in the abyss filled with so many failed e-commerce sites.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so, Search Engines would be the most widely used Internet tool to find the sites that they need to go to or the product or information they need.

Most people that use Search Engines use only the ten top search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a barometer of a sites success in Search Engine optimization. You will get a higher ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more business you rake in.

But, it is essential to grab a hold of that spot or make your ranking even better. As I aforementioned, each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites to make them selves rank higher using Search Engine optimization. It is imperative to make your site better and better everyday.

So just what is Search Engine optimization and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need Search Engine optimization to be number one, or maybe at least make your site income generating. Period.

With Search Engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a high traffic volume. Let’s just say you get only a turn out of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turn out of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two if not any at all.

So once again, what is Search Engine optimization? Search Engine optimization is utilizing tools and methods in making your site top ranking in the results of Search Engines. Getting yourself in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will ensure that your site will generate public awareness of your site’s existence and subsequently generate more traffic, traffic that could lead to potential income and business.

Search Engine optimization requires a lot of work to be fully realized. There are many aspects you have to change in your site or add as well to get Search Engine optimization. These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your sites niche or theme.

You may also need to rewrite your sites contents so that you could get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial but light and informative. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your site’s content applicable and conducive to Search Engine optimization.

You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges and page transfers. The more inbound and outbound traffics generated by sites among others are one of the components Search Engines uses to rank sites.

Try to search the Internet for many useful help. Tips, guidelines and methods for Search Engine optimization are plenty to be found. Read many articles that can help you optimize your site in Search Engine results. The more knowledge and information you gather the better. This will all help you in getting those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort in your part but the benefits will be astounding.

If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the Internet that can help you in Search Engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your site. There are also some content writers that have lots of experience in making good keyword laden content for your sites that have good quality.






How To Use A Tell-A-Friend Script To Drive Traffic Today

Here’s a rarely used leverage in Internet Marketing community today but is often used in commercial sites with tons of effective results!

More and more webmasters have the recurring dilemma on how to increase the flow of traffic in the websites. During the past few years many methods that been developed to solve this predicament. While most of them would work there are those that would not make even a small impact.

One of the methods that have spawned many success stories in driving traffic into websites is viral marketing (there is a separate chapter on this topic alone towards the end of this book). Viral marketing makes use of the tendency of a person to share something to find informative, entertaining or amazing.

Many companies bank on this behavior to spread their products and increase the popularity of their company or their website. Viral marketing makes use of many mediums in enticing this behavior. It might be in the form of an interesting story, an addicting flash game, an amusing video and many others that may catch a person’s fancy.

This ingenious form of marketing is typically low cost and is a wonderful tool for any company to utilize. The benefit greatly overshadows the cost or efforts to initialize this marketing scheme. Any website would greatly benefit that viral marketing.

Tell-A-Friend Script

One of the easiest methods in viral marketing is using a Tell-A-Friend script. This is a simple programming script that you can attach to the programming of your website. Generally, Tell-A-Friends scripts are installed in pages where a media is placed so that a person can easily send the media to any of his friends or his family members.

The basic concept of a Tell-A-Friend script is a script wherein a person may input his name, e-mail address, the recipient’s e-mail address and send the media to the intended recipient much like an e-mail with an attachment. As the recipient receives the e-mail he wouldn’t think of the mail a spam mail because he would see the sender’s name as someone he or she knows and trust.

Tell-A-Friend script eliminates greatly the chances of being blocked because they use the information inputted by the sender. This allows for wider spreading of this marketing method. It can be quite sneaky but it is very effective.

With the e-mail sent and opened the sent media will either be read, viewed or played. Also along with the mail would be a brief description of the company or site that sponsors the media sent. This allows for the introduction of either the site, company name or its products. The along with it is another Tell-A-Friend script.

Then the process begins and REPEATS again. As more people use the tell-a- friend script, more and more people will know of the existence of the sponsoring company or site. People who read the ads inside the mail who liked what they see would go and click on the link and visit the site. This drives traffic into the site resulting to great number of potential customers.

Tell-A-Friend Script Availability

A Tell-A-Friend script is very simple and does not require a complicated method of programming. In fact, you can copy paste a script and simply put it on an intended page. Finding one is even simpler. All you have to do is go to a Search Engine and type in the search box “Tell-A-Friend script” then press enter or click go.

In the search results page you will see many links that will direct you to a site where you can get a Tell-A-Friend script. It would just be a simple matter of looking and searching for the script and copying it to your intended web page.

With a Tell-A-Friend script viral marketing strategy you can drive traffic into your site which could potentially spell profits. This is a simple harmless script that offers great benefits for low cost paired with great creativity and foresight.

It is imperative that you have patience in using a Tell-A-Friend script. If your chosen media doesn’t get the mileage that is expected of it, it may take some time before it gets spread or shared. But surely many people will see your ads and there is great probability that they will visit your site increasing your traffic flow.

Now that we’ve covered the free methods, we’ll talk about investing shoe-string budgets for maximum results in traffic generation.







Top 5 Ways To Generate Low Cost Website Traffic

There is one hard and fast rule in generating income for your website: A steady flow of website traffic. If no one goes to your site, it hardly bares a chance of generating an income. Many sites have tried and failed in doing so, and these results to the sites demise. It takes money to maintain an income-generating site; it also takes money to make money.

BUT, it doesn’t take a whole caboodle of cash to generate website traffic for your site, either!

Ever wonder how does big hit sites drive traffic top their site? Most of them are spending tons of money to drive the traffic to their sites, investing in many advertising campaigns and different forms of marketing schemes and gimmickries. This is all worthwhile because, well, they are what they are now, high earning, big-hitting websites.

You don’t have to do this if you don’t really have their resources. There are many ways to generate low cost website traffic without having to spend what you don’t have or can’t afford. Many people have banked on high cost methods and have ended up losing their shirt over it.

Here I present to you the Top five ways to generate low cost website traffic that could help your site a whole lot. Even if you only get a small percentage of successful visitors in to client ratio it still works especially if you get a high number of website traffic.

Exchange Links

This is a sure and proven method. Rarely would you see a site where there is no link to another site. Many webmasters are willing to exchange links with one another so that they could produce more public awareness about their sites. You’ll soon see and feel the sudden upsurge of the traffic coming in to your site from other sites.

A major prerequisite in exchanging links with other sites is having the same niche or content as the other site. They should share a common subject so that there is continuity in the providing of service and information to what interests your target traffic.

Exchanging links also boosts your chances of getting a high ranking in Search Engine results. It is common knowledge that Search Engines ranks high sites that have inbound and outbound theme-related links. With a good ranking position in the Search Engines, you will generate more traffic in your website without the high costs.

Traffic Exchange

This is like exchanging links but on a different higher level. This may cost a bit more than exchanging or trading links but could be made cheaper because you get to earn credits. You can use those credits when viewing others traffic, while you earn credits when someone views yours.

Traffic exchange services are the viewing of another’s site or page. This is done vice versa where a site can use your sites contents and so can you to his or her site. You both benefit from each others efforts to generate traffic. The other sites visitors can go to your pages and know more about your site as well as theirs. Once again the public awareness of your sites existence is boosted.

Write and Submit Articles

There are many e-zines and online encyclopedias in the Internet which provides free space for articles to be submitted. If you want to save costs, you can do the articles yourself. There are many freelance writers who are willing to write for you for a small fee, but to save money, it is wise to do those articles yourself.

Write articles that are themed along with the niche of your site. Write something that you have expertise on so that when they read it, they can feel your knowledge about the subject and will be eager to go to your site. Write articles that produce tips and guidelines to the subject or niche your site has.

Include a resource box at the end of your article that can link them to your site. Write a little about yourself and your site. If you provide a light, information-laden and interesting article, they will go to your site for more.

If you want to leverage on article submission, you can try paid services like http://www.articlemarketer.com/.


Using Google Adwords To Drive Laser Targeted Traffic

This is a reason why e-commerce site laser target certain groups of people and drive them to their site to showcase their sites and products. Precision marketing is essential so that you could count on all the traffic on your site as potential customers.

Using Money to Make Money

It’s a common business notion that if you want to make money, you have to spend money. One good way of spending money for business gain is through advertising. Advertising brings in the people because through advertising, they know that there is such a company or product in existence. With the right type of advertising, you can see the spurt of traffic growth to your site. With a high volume of traffic, even if only a small portion or percentage turns out to be buying customers it is still a good average of profit generating income.

Right now, there is no other advertising scheme that would be worth every cent than using Google’s Adwords (http://www.adwords.com/). The surge in popularity of Google’s Adwords is very evident as you can see so many sites sporting this ad scheme.

In using Google's Adwords, you pay a certain fee depending on the number of keywords your ad is keyword sensitive to. Each time a person does a search in Google, the keyword or keywords use generate ads in the side of Google which are generated by the keywords they have assigned for their ads.

This method laser targets the traffic a site wants for their site. This also ensures that you are readily visible in the first page of a search result. Paying Google for this ad scheme ensures that your target group of people sees your ads. You drive your laser targeted traffic to your site which provides for their needs and wants. You can also be sure that you can meet their demands and needs.

Aside from Google, you can also be featured in their other search networks, these includes sites like, AskJeeves, AOL Search and Netscape. These sites also show Adwords ads that react to searches done by visitors. There are also content networks, non-Search Engine sites that feature Google Adwords, which will also carry your ads. But this is subjected to the niche the site features. Your chosen keywords will determine which content network shall feature your ad. The frequency of your ad shall also be determined by your allowed budget.

Laser Targeting your Traffic

To get a good number or estimate of the traffic to buying customer ratio it is good to laser target your traffic. Knowing that your traffic are all potential customers and are interested in your products and company provides you with a more accurate statistics. This will show you how effective your utilizing of Google Adwords is.

Drive laser targeted traffic to your site by using keywords or keyword phrases for your Goggle Adwords that pertains to your company and to your products. There are many online Internet tools that can help you in choosing keywords and keyword phrases that are currently in demand that could help drive laser targeted traffic to your site.

With your Google Adwords ad, you are ensured that every click to your ad is a potential customer that is precisely looking pr interested in what you have to offer. Make sure that your Google Adwords ad has the right keywords so that you can drive you're laser targeted traffic to your site.

Using Google Adwords to help boost the drive to increase laser targeted traffic will prove to be very beneficial as many other companies can attest to. The benefits are high with the cost relatively justifiable.







Viral Marketing 101

Creativity.

This is one virtue a site must possess to lead the race in the ruthless competition in the Internet based business. With so many competition and rivalry going on, every method of marketing must be employed and utilized.

It doesn’t matter if you have a killer product or a fantastically designed website, if people don’t know that you exist, it doesn’t matter, and you are not going to make it big. Worse of all, you business could just get killed.

While there are so many methods and schemes used by so many e-commerce sites today, there are still some of those that can help you with an extra boost in the popularity ratings. One of these is the so called Viral Marketing.

While the term Viral easily depicts a virus, a word very much dreaded by all computer owners, it is not what it seems. You do not actually use a computer virus to spread your business; on the contrary it just might kill you. Everyone has had enough of all those pop up ads and spywares.
Viral Marketing Overview

Viral Marketing also known otherwise as Viral Advertising is a marketing technique used to build the public awareness of one’s product or company. They use many forms of media to reach out to the public without actually promoting the product by riding on in other forms of addictive means that could get a person hooked and be obliged or amused to actually pass it on, with the product or company advertisement along with it.

In a nutshell, companies ride on the idea that if people like the content of a media they will pass it on to their friends and family. They sponsor the certain media, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story and such, which one may pass on to another with the company brand or logo or the products description or any other content to help promote the company or its product.

Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because they are relatively low cost. To avoid being tagged as spam mail, viral marketing counts on the eagerness of one person to pas on the product. If a person sees the name of the person they know as the sender, they won’t block it and open it as well.

Many companies offer incentives such as discounts and rebates when they help in spreading their viral marketing. They rely on the number of recipients a viral marketing gets from one person in determining the amount or number of incentive they can be attributed with.

Using Viral Marketing to your advantage

The main and foremost advantage of viral marketing is that you get a lot of publicity and public awareness about your site and your company. You get to generate a flow of traffic that are potential customers. With a little ingenuity and imagination, plus some incentives or prizes, you can reach out to a great number of people and announce your existence.

Most every site and companies are catching on to the effectivity of Viral Marketing and Advertising. Not using it could kill your business. Along with other schemes and methods in promoting your site, like Search Engine Optimization and such, viral marketing could easily push you ahead in the rating games.

Viral Marketing could be a sneaky way to get people to know about you and your company. You get them to pass your advertisement along. They are also very low cost that not investing in it could be downright a business suicide. All it takes is a great idea, a good addicting game, a funny story many ideas are still out there. Create a gossip or a buzz, many movies are promoted by using scandals and gossips to make them moiré popular. Remember the movie “The Blair Witch Project”?

Many big companies have tried viral marketing and have had many success stories with it. A classic example is Microsoft’s Hotmail. They were the first known big company to utilize the scheme and it has worked wonders for them.

Now it’s your turn to use viral marketing to work wonders for you. Act now and reap the benefits Viral Marketing will provide for you and your sales figures.






How To Monetize Your Traffic So You Get The Most Out Of It

As the book draws to a near end, I’ll show you how to maximize and get the most out of the traffic you make using the methods we have discussed earlier.

Establishing your own E-commerce site is not like what it used to be. There are thousands of competition that is all too willing to get a bigger share of the pie. Every scheme and method you can find to augment your sales would be very beneficial.

We have got to admit to ourselves. Most of us are into it for the money. We are not going to waste our time and effort just for the fun of it. Many sites would not wait until hell freezes over just to see their profits. While there are some who takes things lightly there are always those who would rather see profit any given day.

It is common knowledge that without traffic we have no business. Like any business, without any customers you don’t get sales. Traffic represents all the people that gets a chance to see what you have to offer. The more people who see your products the more people there would be to buy them.

Nobody puts up an E-commerce site that doesn’t expect profit. We have a startup capital that needs to be regained. With a consistent traffic, we at least have a fighting chance to achieve that probability. Monetizing your traffic would optimize your chances of making the best out of it.

Making Money out of your Traffic

The best and most proven method of making a profit out of your traffic is using advertising. The Internet generates hundreds of thousands upon hundred of thousands of traffic everyday. Most of them are searching for something. While some are just looking for information there is also a good percentage that is looking for something that they need.

The Internet has proven to be a very reliable source in finding what was deemed to be a very unsearchable product. The Internet has made the world a smaller place; you can advertise a product from the depths of Istanbul and still find a buyer from the center of Philadelphia.

Generating traffic is not an easy task. You have to contend with a great number of sites to generate a good number of traffic flow. But if done successfully this could open up a Pandora’s Box of possibilities. One of the benefits is monetizing your traffic flow.

So, to get to the core of it the more traffic you generate the more likely you are considered as a desirable, desirable, in a sense that a good traffic flowing site is easily convertible to profit. Basically traffic equals profit. Advertising is the name of the game; with the good advertising scheme you can use your traffic flow to your advantage.

When you have good traffic you have a good number of potential customers, customers that are willing to pour money into your coffers. Other than that these are also traffic that can be redirected to sponsored links that are willing to pay you for a sizeable portion of the traffic that you have generated.

This scheme is called “pay-per-click”. With every click a visitor of your site makes on an advertised link you will be paid. The more traffic you generate and the more clicks that happens would spell to more profits.

Affiliate Programs

Another method of monetizing your traffic are affiliate programs. You can link up with other tried and tested sites and online companies and monetize your traffic by having a percentage of sales generated by traffic coming from your site.

The basic idea is, traffic generated from your site will go to another site that can offer a product that you do not carry. Many programs can keep track and make records of transactions that was made possible because of site linkage.

When purchases are made by customers that was led by your site to their site you get a percentage of that sale. Affiliate programs would give you the benefit of monetizing your traffic without the actual need of carrying or promoting a certain product.


In Closing

There are so many ways and methods to monetize your traffic. All it takes is a bit of hard work and the desire to successfully launch a profit-earning site. The Internet is a veritable source of information, many tips and guides are offered everywhere in how to monetize your traffic and make your site a good profit earner.
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Search Engine Manifesto

“Rank Your Web Pages HIGH in TOP Search Engine Popular Results For Maximum Exposure!”
Learn About Search Engines and How They Work

Search Engines are special sites on the Web that are designed to help people find information stored on other sites. There are differences in the ways various Search Engines work, but they all perform three basic tasks:

- They search the Internet - or select pieces of the Internet - based on important words,

- They keep an index of the words they find, and where they find them, and

- They allow users to look for words or combinations of words found in that index.

Early Search Engines held an index of a few hundred thousand pages and documents, and received maybe one or two thousand inquiries each day. Today, a top Search Engine will index hundreds of millions of pages, and respond to tens of millions of queries per day.

Before a Search Engine can tell you where a file or document is, it must be found. To find information on the hundreds of millions of Web pages that exist, a Search Engine employs special software robots, called spiders, to build lists of the words found on Web sites.

When a spider is building its lists, the process is called web crawling.

In order to build and maintain a useful list of words, a Search Engine's spiders have to look at a lot of pages. How does any spider start its travels over the Web? The usual starting points are lists of heavily used servers and very popular pages. The spider will begin with a popular site, indexing the words on its pages and following every link found within the site. In this way, the spidering system quickly begins to travel, spreading out across the most widely used portions of the Web.

Once the spiders have completed the task of finding information on Web pages, the Search Engine must store the information in a way that makes it useful. There are two key components involved in making the gathered data accessible to users:

- The information stored with the data, and

- The method by which the information is indexed.

In the simplest case, a Search Engine could just store the word and the URL where it was found. In reality, this would make for an engine of limited use, since there would be no way of telling whether the word was used in an important or a trivial way on the page, whether the word was used once or many times or whether the page contained links to other pages containing the word. In other words, there would be no way of building the ranking list that tries to present the most useful pages at the top of the list of search results.

To make for more useful results, most Search Engines store more than just the word and URL. A Search Engine might store the number of times that the word appears on a page. The engine might assign a weight to each entry, with increasing values assigned to words as they appear near the top of the document, in sub-headings, in links, in the META tags or in the title of the page. Each commercial Search Engine has a different formula for assigning weight to the words in its index. This is one of the reasons that a search for the same word on different Search Engines will produce different lists, with the pages presented in different orders.

An index has a single purpose: it allows information to be found as quickly as possible. There are quite a few ways for an index to be built, but one of the most effective ways is to build a hash table. In hashing, a formula is applied to attach a numerical value to each word.

The formula is designed to evenly distribute the entries across a predetermined number of divisions. This numerical distribution is different from the distribution of words across the alphabet, and that is the key to a hash table's effectiveness.

When a person requests a search on a keyword or phrase, the Search Engine software searches the index for relevant information. The software then provides a report back to the searcher with the most relevant web pages listed first.

Choosing a SEO Company

A Search Engine Optimization Company can be an invaluable asset in your Internet marketing campaign. They specialize in knowing how to raise your Search Engine positions, monitoring those positions on the regular basis, and adjusting their strategies to account for undesirable results in any given month. Since this takes a lot of time, effort, and specialized knowledge, it can be in your best interest to go to an outside source rather than try to maintain high Search Engine positions on your own.

However, like every business, there are good companies and there are lemons. Knowing the right questions to ask and the criteria to look for will help you in choosing an affordable, effective Search Engine optimization company.

When looking at different companies, begin by considering the approach they employ to raise your Search Engine positions. Steer clear of companies that use cloaked, doorway, or bridge pages to raise your positions. These techniques violate most Search Engine policy, and in the worst case scenario, will only get your website severely penalized, if not removed entirely from a Search Engine's index.

A cloaked page is a page that is created which is invisible to the regular visitor to your website. The cloaked page is coded to detect a Search Engine spider and divert them to this special page, which is set-up to artificially boost your Search Engine position. Doorway or bridge pages utilize the same concept, but often reside on an entirely different server. Google, the largest and most important Search Engine on the Internet, will remove your website from their index if they detect you have cloaked pages. So never, never employ any company that uses this technique!

Another important element is to get a guarantee that the company you hire will not work with your competitors while they are working for you. Obviously, this would seriously compromise the effectiveness of the Search Engine optimization campaign. Be aware that some companies will use the success they achieve for your website to sell their services to your competitors. So get your guarantee in writing, and make sure it is legally binding.

Of course, one of the most important factors you want to check out is the company's track record of results. However, don't take the company's word for it. They will undoubtedly be slanting their results in order to sell their services to you. To go beyond their simple statement of success, ask them a few pertinent questions, and verify their answers.

Ask them which engines they have achieved the best results on. The ones that are important are the most popular engines, and these are the ones you want to see good results on. Since the popularity of Search Engines can change with the landscape of the overall Internet, check out the Nielsen Netratings page at Search Engine Watch.

You can access this at
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/article.php/2156451

Next, find out what keywords and phrases they are claiming great results with. It's easy to get high rankings with unpopular words. For instance, the keyword "cat leashes" will get high popularity ranking because no one else would think of using it. What you are looking for is good results using popular keywords.

Check out the software Wordtracker, available at http://www.wordtracker.com. You can order a free trial, or a subscription ranging from 1 day to 1 year. This software rates the popularity of keywords and phrases based on actual Search Engine use.

Next, look for good results over an entire site that the company claims to have successfully worked for. You want to see a wide range of positions over a number of different Search Engines using different keywords or phrases for the entire site. Request a report for any client the company claims to have done well for. This report should show good positions on a number of the most popular Search Engines for a variety of different, popular keywords and phrases.

When you are checking out Search Engine optimization companies, make sure they have actually done the work they are claiming to have done. Some companies will use other company's results in order to get you to sign on with them. If you are in doubt, call the company they are showing you results for, and ask for the name of their Search Engine optimization company.

It's important to keep in mind that a successful Search Engine optimization campaign will result in maximum exposure across a wide range of popular Search Engines using a variety of keywords and phrases. This is the formula for a successful campaign, and you should keep it always in the forefront of your marketing strategy.

Ask the Search Engine optimization company you are considering for a report that shows you rankings across a number of popular Search Engines for a period of at least six months. Remember: Search Engine marketing is a process that is continual, and you need a company that not only understands this, but keeps constant tabs on your Search Engine positions. That company must also be able to adjust its strategy in the event that Search Engine rankings drop.

Since Search Engine marketing is an on-going process, your positions must be constantly monitored. If you want your Search Engine optimization company to do this for you, request a sample of a monthly report. It is essential that this report should show rankings for the most popular Search Engines. Don't be impressed by a report that only shows great results for a limited number of small Search Engines. These are fairly easy results to acquire. Also confirm that the popular Search Engine results they are showing you are indeed the popular Search Engines currently.

Be sure the sample report the company shows you is in a format that you can easily understand. For example, it could be in the form of a chart that covers a period of at least six months and presents data such as the top 50 positions broken down on a monthly basis or the top 5 pages each month. Then, ascertain that the company you are considering actually monitors these positions or pages every month, and that the sample report they show you includes findings and recommendations for the specific site. This insures that the company will actively monitor and make adjustments to their strategy on a continual basis rather than simply gather statistics on your positions. You need a company that is actively participant in your Search Engine marketing campaign, not just an information gatherer.

Obviously, your finances have to figure into your choice of company, but bear in mind that a Search Engine optimization company is crucial the success of your marketing campaign. It is not just a casual accessory. If you cannot afford a company that will do a thorough and reliable job for your website, you might consider waiting until you do have the finances in place.

If you have to find a company and can't wait for your finances to catch up, you may be able to find an affordable company that will also be able to supply quality, reliable work, such as a fairly new company. Just remember that there are risks involved with using a company without a proven track record - and that risk is your money! Don't take that leap unless the company can supply you with a least a few references.

References are the most reliable indicator of a good company. Don't use a company that won't show your references because of any reason, confidentiality included. Remember - even doctors will provide references! The firm you choose should provide you with a minimum of two references, one that is from the past, and one that is current.

When you contact these references, be prepared to ask precise, specific questions so that neither of your time is wasted. Ask them what their experience was like with the company, such as their availability to answer questions and deal with problems and their ability to meet deadlines. Ask the reference to rate the overall performance of the company.

Find out if the company requested that the reference make significant changes to their web pages that affected the visitors coming to their site. You are looking for a Search Engine optimization company that can balance the needs of both Search Engines and site visitors without compromising either.

The most essential question to ask is whether the work of the Search Engine optimization company resulted in higher profits for the reference. Without profits, it doesn't matter whether your positions are at the top of the list or not.

Selecting Search Engine Keywords

Search Engines are the vehicles that drive potential customers to your websites. But in order for visitors to reach their destination - your website - you need to provide them with specific and effective signs that will direct them right to your site. You do this by creating carefully chosen keywords.

Think of the right keywords as the “Open Sesame!” of the Internet. Find the exactly right words or phrases, and presto! Hoards of traffic will be pulling up to your front door. But if your keywords are too general or too over-used, the possibility of visitors actually making it all the way to your site - or of seeing any real profits from the visitors that do arrive - decreases dramatically.

Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. If they are not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, the right people may never get the chance to find out about it. So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and phrases.

You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words for your search phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven't followed certain specific steps, you are probably WRONG.

It's hard to be objective when you are right in the center of your business network, which is the reason that you may not be able to choose the most efficient keywords from the inside. You need to be able to think like your customers. And since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is to go directly to the source.

Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of potential search words and phrases yourself, ask for words from as many potential customers as you can. You will most likely find out that your understanding of your business and your customers' understanding is significantly different.

The consumer is an invaluable resource. You will find the words you accumulate from them are words and phrases you probably never would have considered from deep inside the trenches of your business.

Only after you have gathered as many words and phrases from outside resources should you add your own keyword to the list. Once you have this list in hand, you are ready for the next step: evaluation.

The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a small number of words and phrases that will direct the highest number of quality visitors to your website. By "quality visitors" I mean those consumers who are most likely to make a purchase rather than just cruise around your site and take off for greener pastures. In evaluating the effectiveness of keywords, bear in mind three elements: popularity, specificity, and motivation.

Popularity is the easiest to evaluate because it is an objective quality. The more popular your keyword is, the more likely the chances are that it will be typed into a Search Engine which will then bring up your URL.

You can now purchase software that will rate the popularity of keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating based on real Search Engine activity. Software such as WordTracker will even suggest variations of your words and phrases. The higher the number this software assigns to a given keyword, the more traffic you can logically expect to be directed to your site. The only fallacy with this concept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the Search Engine position you will need to obtain. If you are down at the bottom of the search results, the consumer will probably never scroll down to find you.

Popularity isn't enough to declare a keyword a good choice. You must move on to the next criteria, which is specificity. The more specific your keyword is, the greater the likelihood that the consumer who is ready to purchase your goods or services will find you.

Let's look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you have obtained popularity rankings for the keyword "automobile companies." However, you company specializes in bodywork only. The keyword "automobile body shops" would rank lower on the popularity scale than "automobile companies," but it would nevertheless serve you much better. Instead of getting a slew of people interested in everything from buying a car to changing their oil filters, you will get only those consumers with trashed front ends or crumpled fenders being directed to your site. In other words, consumers ready to buy your services are the ones who will immediately find you. Not only that, but the greater the specificity of your keyword is, the less competition you will face.

The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again, this requires putting yourself inside the mind of the customer rather than the seller to figure out what motivation prompts a person looking for a service or product to type in a particular word or phrase. Let's look at another example, such as a consumer who is searching for a job as an IT manager in a new city. If you have to choose between "Seattle job listings" and "Seattle IT recruiters" which do you think will benefit the consumer more? If you were looking for this type of specific job, which keyword would you type in? The second one, of course! Using the second keyword targets people who have decided on their career, have the necessary experience, and are ready to enlist you as their recruiter, rather than someone just out of school who is casually trying to figure out what to do with his or her life in between beer parties. You want to find people who are ready to act or make a purchase, and this requires subtle tinkering of your keywords until your find the most specific and directly targeted phrases to bring the most motivated traffic to you site.

Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done. You must continually evaluate performance across a variety of Search Engines, bearing in mind that times and trends change, as does popular lingo. You cannot rely on your log traffic analysis alone because it will not tell you how many of your visitors actually made a purchase.

Luckily, some new tools have been invented to help you judge the effectiveness of your keywords in individual Search Engines. There is now software available that analyzes consumer behavior in relation to consumer traffic. This allows you to discern which keywords are bringing you the most valuable customers.

This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a good keyword; profits per visitor do. You need to find keywords that direct consumers to your site who actually buy your product, fill out your forms, or download your product. This is the most important factor in evaluating the efficacy of a keyword or phrase, and should be the sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective or inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better profits.

Ongoing analysis of tested keywords is the formula for Search Engine success. This may sound like a lot of work - and it is! But the amount of informed effort you put into your keyword campaign is what will ultimately generate your business' rewards.

Increasing Your Search Engine Ranking

The methods employed to increase your Search Engine rankings may seem like rocket science to you, so you have probably avoided dealing with this issue. I am here to tell you - the time has come to face your website! A high Search Engine ranking for your website is so essential that if you have the slightest desire to actually succeed in your business, there is no way you can continue to avoid this issue.

At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find websites through Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages for high Search Engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes up in Search Engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website. That's what Search Engine optimization is about.

You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online to figure out how to optimize your web pages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a few simple items on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the title bar on your homepage.

The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the words that appear there when you access your home page. To increase Search Engine rankings, the words on your homepage's title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your company name.

Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the title bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each other.

The next item to put under your microscope is your website content. Search Engines generally list sites that contain quality content rather than scintillating graphics. The text on your site must contain the most important keywords - the words that potential customers will be typing into Search Engines to find your site.

Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on Search Engines, this text is essential. However, the Search Engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.

To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you are able to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In this case, ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML format in order to increase your Search Engine rankings.

Next we come to what is called META tags. I know this sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code. Many people believe that META tags are the key to high Search Engine rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still, it's worth adding them in the event that a Search Engine will use META tags in their ranking formula.

To find out if your page is set up with META tags, you must access the code. To do this, click the "view" button on the browser menu bar, and select "source." This will pull up a window revealing the underlying code that created the page. If there are META tags, they usually appear near the top of the window. For example, a META tag would read: META name="keywords" content=. If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This may not do much for your Search Engine rankings, but any little boost helps.

Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a factor that is extremely important in terms of Search Engine rankings. Almost all Search Engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page.

If you type in "free link popularity check" in a popular Search Engine, the Search Engine will then show you what sites are linked to your site. In the case that there aren't many sites linked up to yours, or that the sites that are linked up have low Search Engine rankings, consider launching a link popularity campaign.

Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and requesting that they exchange links with your site. Of course, this requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your Search Engine ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.

Search Engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a Search Engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can't boost your rankings yourself. Don't ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the higher your Search Engine ranking, the more quality customers will be directed your way.

Building Your Link Popularity

Search Engines are the gateway to the Internet; they are the first tool that potential customers use to find the products and services they need. This is why link popularity is so imperative. If the customers do not find your website, you have no possibilities of making any sales.

You're probably wondering what the blazes are popular about a link! Well, in a word - plenty! Link popularity refers to the ranking assigned to your website by the Search Engines, and it determines the ranking your page gets when keywords are entered into a Search Engine. So, you're probably wondering, how do I make my link popular?

Search Engines are discretionary, giving status and ranking to sites that have links to their pages from related, quality sites. It's a simple formula, but a very important one. Google created the system, and now virtually all the most popular Search Engines employ it to rank your web pages in their indexes.

The more commonly used your keyword is, the harder it will be to achieve link popularity, but without achieving this step, it is almost certain your site will never rank highly on any Search Engine. But don't be discouraged; there are tried and true ways of achieving link popularity using the most competitive keywords.

There are a few things you should be aware of. The first is that just linking up with a large number of other websites will not achieve link popularity. In fact, it may have quite the opposite effect. This is particularly true when pertaining to websites that are nothing more than "link farms" - pages containing line after line of indiscriminate links. Search Engines may aggressively discriminate against your website if you are associated with a link farm, so steer clear of them!

The next thing to bear in mind is the quality of the site you are linking to. Never link to a page you have reservations about your visitors seeing. The last thing you want your website to appear as is indiscriminate and cheap. Linking to sites of poor quality will only lessen your link popularity, if not completely destroy it.

So let's get to what you need to do to achieve supreme link popularity and improve your rankings to stellar status on all the popular Search Engines.

The first step, and the fastest way to get your foot in the door, is to get a listing in a popular directory, such as Open Directory Project and Yahoo. If your site is business-related, you will want to be listed on Yahoo, and despite the fact that it will cost you around $300 a year, it will be money well spent. If your site is non-commercial, the listing will be free, but it will take time and follow-up to actually get it listed. Open Directory is gives you a free listing whether you are business-related or non-commercial, but be prepared to make a lot of follow-up inquiries before you see your site listed.

You are aiming to get listed in the highest level of appropriate category, and this just takes some common sense. For example, if your company ships Alpaca wool from an Alpaca farm located in the middle of Nowhere, Tiny State, do NOT submit your listing to "Retailers from Nowhere, Tiny State."

BIG MISTAKE! All you have to do is look a little deeper - and submit your listing to the "Fine Alpaca Wool" category. You will not only associate yourself with culture and quality, but you will be listed in a national category.

The next step after you have attained directory listings is to locate other quality sites that will increase your link popularity. Try to find sites that are in some way related to yours, so not only will your link popularity increase, but your customer base may also be expanded. You want to avoid your competitors and look for sites that are useful to your site's visitors. Let's look at the Alpaca Wool site example. Linking up to a site that sells knitting supplies would be helpful to your visitors, and the chances of the knitting supply site wanting to link up to your site are also greater. By linking to a related site that will be relevant to your website's traffic, you are increasing both of your site's business prospects - and both of your sites' link popularity.

Not all sites want to link to other sites, so you will have to do some research when you are looking for possible linking partners. Google is an excellent starting place for your search. Make sure you enter keywords that you think quality customers will also enter to find your own site. Remember, your criteria are quality, highly ranked, non-competing websites that have a links or resources page. Go to these sites and objectively assess them. Look at the quality of the product, the graphics, and the ease of use. Then check out the other sites they are linked to, and determine if your own site would fit in with the crowd.

When you decide you have found a good prospect, you must set out to woo them. The first thing to do is to add a link on your own links page to their site. This is an essential first step; it shows good faith, and ups your chances significantly of their reciprocity. After you have added their link, you must contact the webmaster of their site. Since this is almost always done by email, you want to make sure it is immediately clear that your message is not junk mail. This requires that you tell them right off the bat that you have added a link to their page on your site. A hook like this almost always insures the reader will read
on.

Next, be sure to be flattering and let them know how much you appreciate their website. Make sure you emphasize that you have actually visited their site, and that their site is not just a random pick. Give them the address of your links page, and ask them to check out the link for themselves. It's a good idea to mention that they will not only benefit from the increased traffic your website will direct their way, but you will also increase their link popularity. Briefly, explain why link popularity is so essential, but do this in a sentence or two so you don't sound like a professor! Finally, tell them you would greatly appreciate if they would reciprocally add a link on their own links page to your website.

Go through this process with as many appropriate sites as you can find, bearing in mind the criteria of quality and non-competitiveness. After you have emailed all relevant sites, be sure to check these website frequently to see if they have added a link to your page. Give it about a month, and if no link appears, try another charming email. Then give it another month, and if your site is still absent from their links page, it's time to remove their link from your own links page. The only time you want to pursue a link further than this is if you believe a site is crucial to your link popularity and your business needs. Just remember to keep all your communications complimentary and cordial.

Then set up a schedule to check your ranking in Search Engines frequently to see if your link popularity has improved. This is not achievable in the blink of an eye. It will take some time and a good deal of work. There is no way around the labor-intensive quality of improving your link popularity, which is why Search Engines regard it with such importance.

By the way - make sure you have a beautiful, streamlined site or you will never persuade anyone to link up to you. Be prepared to keep plugging away at this process, as long as it takes, until you achieve link popularity stardom!

Protecting Your Search Engine Rankings

Your website's ranking on Search Engines is a vital element of your overall marketing campaign, and there are ways to improve your link popularity through legitimate methods. Unfortunately, the Internet is populated by bands of dishonest webmasters seeking to improve their link popularity by faking out Search Engines.

The good news is that Search Engines have figured this out, and are now on guard for "spam" pages and sites that have increased their rankings by artificial methods. When a Search Engines tracks down such a site, that site is demoted in ranking or completely removed from the Search Engine's index.

The bad news is that some high quality, completely above-board sites are being mistaken for these web page criminals. Your page may be in danger of being caught up in the "spam" net and tossed from a Search Engine's index, even though you have done nothing to deserve such harsh treatment. But there are things you can do - and things you should be sure NOT to do - which will prevent this kind of misperception.

Link popularity is mostly based on the quality of sites you are linked to. Google pioneered this criteria for assigning website ranking, and virtually all Search Engines on the Internet now use it. There are legitimate ways to go about increasing your link popularity, but at the same time, you must be scrupulously careful about which sites you choose to link to. Google frequently imposes penalties on sites that have linked to other sites solely for the purpose of artificially boosting their link popularity. They have actually labeled these links "bad neighborhoods."

You can raise a toast to the fact that you cannot be penalized when a bad neighborhood links to your site; penalty happens only when you are the one sending out the link to a bad neighborhood. But you must check, and double-check, all the links that are active on your links page to make sure you haven't linked to a bad neighborhood.

The first thing to check out is whether or not the pages you have linked to have been penalized. The most direct way to do this is to download the Google toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com.

You will then see that most pages are given a "Pagerank" which is represented by a sliding green scale on the Google toolbar.

Do not link to any site that shows no green at all on the scale. This is especially important when the scale is completely gray. It is more than likely that these pages have been penalized. If you are linked to these pages, you may catch their penalty, and like the flu, it may be difficult to recover from the infection.

There is no need to be afraid of linking to sites whose scale shows only a tiny sliver of green on their scale. These sites have not been penalized, and their links may grow in value and popularity. However, do make sure that you closely monitor these kind of links to ascertain that at some point they do not sustain a penalty once you have linked up to them from your links page.

Another evil trick that illicit webmasters use to artificially boost their link popularity is the use of hidden text. Search Engines usually use the words on web pages as a factor in forming their rankings, which means that if the text on your page contains your keywords, you have more of an opportunity to increase your Search Engine ranking than a page that does not contain text inclusive of keywords.

Some webmasters have gotten around this formula by hiding their keywords in such a way so that they are invisible to any visitors to their site. For example, they have used the keywords but made them the same color as the background color of the page, such as a plethora of white keywords on a white background. You cannot see these words with the human eye - but the eye of Search Engine spider can spot them easily! A spider is the program Search Engines use to index web pages, and when it sees these invisible words, it goes back and boosts that page's link ranking.

Webmasters may be brilliant and sometimes devious, but Search Engines have figured these tricks out. As soon as a Search Engine perceive the use of hidden text - splat! The page is penalized.

The downside of this is that sometimes the spider is a bit overzealous and will penalize a page by mistake. For example, if the background color of your page is gray, and you have placed gray text inside a black box, the spider will only take note of the gray text and assume you are employing hidden text. To avoid any risk of false penalty, simply direct your webmaster not to assign the same color to text as the background color of the page - ever!

Another potential problem that can result in a penalty is called "keyword stuffing." It is important to have your keywords appear in the text on your page, but sometimes you can go a little overboard in your enthusiasm to please those spiders. A Search Engine uses what is called "Key Phrase Density" to determine if a site is trying to artificially boost their ranking. This is the ratio of keywords to the rest of the words on the page. Search Engines assign a limit to the number of times you can use a keyword before it decides you have overdone it and penalizes your site.

This ratio is quite high, so it is difficult to surpass without sounding as if you are stuttering - unless your keyword is part of your company name. If this is the case, it is easy for keyword density to soar. So, if your keyword is "renters insurance," be sure you don't use this phrase in every sentence. Carefully edit the text on your site so that the copy flows naturally and the keyword is not repeated incessantly. A good rule of thumb is your keyword should never appear in more than half the sentences on the page.

The final potential risk factor is known as cloaking. To those of you who are diligent Trekkies, this concept should be easy to understand. For the rest of you? Cloaking is when the server directs a visitor to one page and a Search Engine spider to a different page. The page the spider sees is "cloaked" because it is invisible to regular traffic, and deliberately set-up to raise the site's Search Engine ranking. A cloaked page tries to feed the spider everything it needs to rocket that page's ranking to the top of the list.

It is natural that Search Engines have responded to this act of deception with extreme enmity, imposing steep penalties on these sites. The problem on your end is that sometimes pages are cloaked for legitimate reasons, such as prevention against the theft of code, often referred to as "page jacking." This kind of shielding is unnecessary these days due to the use of "off page" elements, such as link popularity, that cannot be stolen.

To be on the safe side, be sure that your webmaster is aware that absolutely no cloaking is acceptable. Make sure the webmaster understands that cloaking of any kind will put your website at great risk.

Just as you must be diligent in increasing your link popularity and your ranking, you must be equally diligent to avoid being unfairly penalized. So be sure to monitor your site closely and avoid any appearance of artificially boosting your rankings.


Top Search Engines

Ok, so you may know how the Search Engines work and you may know that you need to be listed by them, but do you know which engines get you more bang for the buck? We will review the top Search Engines on the Internet today.

Google
http://www.google.com/

Google has increased in popularity tenfold the past several years. They have gone from beta testing, to becoming the Internet's largest index of web pages in a very short time. Their spider, affectionately named "Googlebot", crawls the web and provides updates to Google's index about once a month.

Google.com began as an academic Search Engine. Google, by far, has a very good algorithm of ranking pages returned from a result, probably one of the main reasons it has become so popular over the years. Google has several methods which determine page rank in returned searches.

Yahoo
http://www.yahoo.com/

Yahoo! is one of the oldest web directories and portals on the Internet today, and the site went live in August of 1994. Yahoo! is a 100% human edited directory, and provides secondary search results using Google.

Yahoo! is also one of the largest traffic generators around, as far as web directories and Search Engines go. Unfortunately, however, it is also one of the most difficult to get listed in, unless of course you pay to submit your site. Even if you pay it doesn't guarantee you will get listed.

Either way, if you suggest a URL, it is "reviewed" by a Yahoo! editor, and if approved will appear in the next index update.

AltaVista
http://www.altavista.com/

Many who have access to web logs may have seen a spider named 'scooter' accessing their pages. Scooter used to be a newer form of Scooter is now crawling the web. Whichever spider AltaVista uses, it is one of the largest Search Engines on the net today, next to Google.

It will usually take several months for AltaVista to index your entire site, although the past few months scooter hasn't been deep crawling too well. Unlike Google, AltaVista will only crawl and index 1 link deep, so it takes a good amount of time to index your site depending on how large your site is.

AltaVista gets most of its results from its own index, however they do pull the top 5 results of each search from Overture.

Inktomi
http://ww.inktomi.com/

Inktomi's popularity grew several years ago as they powered the secondary search database that had driven Yahoo. Since then, Yahoo as switched to using Google as their secondary search and backend database, however Inktomi is just as popular now, as they were several years ago, if not more so. Their spiders are named "Slurp", and different versions of Slurp crawls the web many different times throughout the month, as Inktomi powers many sites search results. There isn't much more to Inktomi then that. Slurp puts heavy weight on Title and description tags, and will rarely deep crawl a site. Slurp usually only spider’s pages that are submitted to its index.

Inktomi provides results to a number of sites. Some of these are America Online, MSN, Hotbot, Looksmart, About, Goto, CNet, Geocities, NBCi, ICQ and many more.

Lycos
http://www.lycos.com/

Lycos is one of the oldest Search Engines on the Internet today, next to Altavista and Yahoo. Their spider, named "T-Rex", crawls the web and provides updates to the Lycos index from time to time. The FAST crawler provides results for Lycos in addition to its own database.

The Lycos crawler does not weigh META tags to heavily, instead it relies on its own ranking algorithm to rank pages returned in results. The URL, META title, text headings, and word frequency are just a few of the methods Lycos uses to rank pages. Lycos does support pages with Frame content. However, any page that isn't at least 75 words in content is not indexed.

AOL Search
http://www.aol.com/

America Online signed a multiyear pact with Google for Web search results and accompanying ad-sponsored links, ending relationships with pay-for-performance service Overture Services and Inktomi, its algorithmic search provider of nearly three years


Take some time to register with these Search Engines as soon as possible and watch the traffic grow!





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Recurring Income Secrets

Recurring Income Explained

Recurring Income is another term for residual income. In a nutshell, there are three (3) types of income streams that you may have coming into your business.

1. If you do a one-time job, sale or perform a contract, you get paid once and the income stops there.

2. If you do a normal 9 to 5 job, you will continue to get paid as long you continue to work for your employer—often called a linear income. This is the type of income that the majority of workers “enjoy.” Even if you are a neurosurgeon, lawyer or engineer, you are only paid as long as you continue working. You stop working and the bank account dwindles.

3. The third type of income is the recurring income where you are paid even after you have stopped working. For example, you wrote a book and as long as your book continues to sell, you will continue to receive royalty income for a work done once.

Majority of rich and affluent people created wealth through a form of recurring income stream. Take singer Michael Jackson for example; he still continues to receive royalty from the sales of his records made decades ago. He can even repackage the same oldies and sell them to generate new income. He doesn’t have to spend time in the studio to record new songs in order to have the cash keep flowing in! This is the most ideal situation of the three. We would all like to work once and get paid over and over again. That is the power of recurring income!

The majority of professionals that enjoy this type of income belong to the creative fields such as actors, writers, singers, and inventors.

Unfortunately, not many of us are blessed with the talents Michael Jackson has, let alone the opportunities to be in the lucrative industries. However, there is one budding opportunity for any ordinary individual today to enjoy residual income today in the 21st century.

You’ve guessed it: it’s none other than Network Marketing.

Network Marketing Reviewed

The field of Network Marketing or Multi-level Marketing (MLM) has also been instrumental over the past 60 years or so to make the recurring income concept very popular and attractive.

Here, you can build a network of distributors, referred to as your down line, and generate income outside of your own immediate effort. Working for Network Marketing company is one of the most feasible places where you can generate recurring wealth, and so we will now take a look at the secrets to being a successful network marketer.


Choosing a Network Marketing Company

According to a respected journalist, Richard Poe, in his book Wave4 – Network Marketing in the 21st Century, Network Marketing is responsible for moving over a whopping **$100 billion** of goods and services yearly on the global front. It is therefore very likely that you have already come in contact with some type of Network Marketing product or service. The concept of moving goods through an army of independent distributors has earned its place in the marketing world despite the negative publicity suffered by the industry. Network Marketing is here to stay; the question that remains is, “How do I choose a company?”

Here are some very important pointers that would guide you in the right direction. Any company that you can find passing these criteria will be a great company to line up with.

1. A company that has been in business for at least 5 years and has great financial backing, excellent management and a ‘distributor first’ philosophy. The company should also have a long-term development goal and not just be out for the quick cash.

This may be a pretty tall order to reach but considering that the great majority of start-up Network Marketing companies fail within their first three years you don’t want your income stream to suddenly dry up! It’s no picnic to discover that after you’ve spent time, effort and money to build a solid organization the company closes down because one of those essential elements was missing.

There is the prevalent myth that the best time to join a company is at start-up—the so called ‘ground floor opportunity’—, but if the truth be told, the ground often caves in leaving many people very unhappy. This does not mean that you should wait for five years to see if a company would do well, because logically, this would mean that no Network Marketing company will ever get started. The point here is that you should assess your risk and know that the chance of losing your money is higher with a new company than with a company having a proven track record.

You know the saying that the proof of the pudding is in the eating; just so the proof of the stability of a Network Marketing company is in the duration of survival. In fact, in over 60 years of Network Marketing history and after tens of thousands of Network Marketing start up companies, only around 42 companies have made it to their 5th birthday.

Any business owner would admit that the first years are the toughest. This is the period when the company is just establishing a footing and income is most likely low. If the company does not have the proper financial backing it is not likely to survive these years. You would not want to join a company that is depending too much on the distributors for survival. A Network Marketing company takes time to build momentum by the very nature of the business - word of mouth advertising, people telling people. Before it reaches top momentum it must have the financial backing to survive the early hurdles.

Customer support for the distributors is also a critical part of the company. If their distributors feel neglected then they will simply not stick around. Especially in today’s market where there are thousands of Network Marketing companies beckoning. The distributors are the consumers and salespeople, and to neglect them is to commit certain suicide.

A sad reality of the Network Marketing industry is that there are many scam artists that come along just for the quick cash just before they close shop and disappear. This would require that you do your due diligence such as checking consumer alert websites as FTC.gov and WorldWideScam.com among others. These scam artists will normally emphasize the compensation plan over the actual product—if there really is a product—and apply high pressure sales tactics to persuade you to join the “ground-floor opportunity”. These criminals prey on human greed and have little sympathy for the naïve.

2. High quality (unique if possible), reasonably priced products or services that should be, ideally, consumable so users will have to buy over and over again.

Traditionally, Network Marketing companies are able to produce higher quality products simply because they don’t have to pay outrageous prices for advertisement. Just think about the millions of dollar paid per year by companies such as Nike to sports stars for a 30 second commercial. This money, if Nike followed the Network Marketing model, could go into developing better quality products and paying their workers better salaries. Because a large part of a normal company’s budget goes towards advertising, Network Marketing companies will deliver a higher quality product, all things being equal, per dollar spent.

Also remember that you want to be paid continually so you need a product or service that is consumable so the customer has to keep refilling his supply. Nutritional and telecommunication companies fit this requirement very well.

Apart from being consumable, another important factor is how ‘needed’ this product or service is. The negative side of pushing nutritional products is that most people are only concerned about their health after it is already failing! (You’ll do well recruiting at the local hospital). If you are marketing a service such as web hosting, medical coverage or legal services you are more likely to have less attrition in your down line.

If the company is selling a product that you can pick up at your local department store, then you’re not likely to do very well. A unique or proprietary product will do better since you’ll have less competition—you learn very early that there is no such thing as zero competition although some companies will want to make this claim.

The “acid test” question to apply to the price of the product or service is, “Would I purchase at this price if there wasn’t a compensation plan attached to it?” If your answer is “No,” then you are looking at a potential pyramid scheme where a product is just attached to the compensation plan to make the opportunity appear legitimate. In these cases you will always find that the compensation plan becomes the selling point and the product or service rarely mentioned.

Here is an informational article on the subject of recognizing and avoiding such schemes:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/invest/Network Marketing.htm

3. A Compensation Plan that is fair to both fulltime and part-time distributors alike with leadership bonuses for those who build large and productive teams.

We have already mentioned that a successful Network Marketing company will have a “distributor first” philosophy. In no other place should this be exhibited more than in the compensation plan. It takes only some simple arithmetic to see how many sales or distributors you need in your organization in order to be in profit. Most people don’t take the time to do the math and sometimes are “deceived” by the fancy potential income charts that are put out by the company.

The point here is that you need to read between the lines and the fine print to be sure what you are paid for your effort. Most people will skim this section because it may read like a tax code and who likes to do their taxes? That’s why we hire accountants.

Compensation plans fall into basically four types:

(a) The Break Away Plan. This is the oldest and most traditional plan and allows distributors to build and be paid on an unlimited number of frontline associates. When the frontline associates reach a certain predetermined volume they can “break away” from their up line and form their own organization. In this break away plan the leaders are paid on all their frontline and also certain levels down in their break away groups. In this model if you don’t work you don’t eat. You have to recruit in order to be compensated.

(b) The Unilevel Plan. Here you are only paid on a certain number of levels determined by the company. In this case there are no ‘break away’ groups. The larger your frontline the larger will be your total group size. The lower levels would therefore be much larger than the upper ones. Again if you don’t recruit you don’t get a check.

(c) The Matrix Plan. In this plan you are limited to the number of recruits you could have on your frontline. So in a 3 X 5 matrix you’ll have 3 on your front line then 9 on the second level, then 27 on the next and so on. Compared to the two other plans we’ve looked at the matrix plan limits your success to a certain level. What’s so appealing about this plan though is that recruits are told they only need to get 3 and are even promised “spill-over” from a “heavy hitter” in their up line. The results are that everyone joins looking for spillover and never makes any personal effort. Results? Certain failure. A matrix, though limited, can work but the distributors must depend on their personal efforts and allow the spillover (if any) to be just an added bonus. One prime example is SOLOBIS.

(d) The Binary Plan. This plan is a special case of the matrix where you can only have two on your frontline, hence ‘binary’. The only caveat here is that many such plans require you to balance both sides of your organization before you can get paid. This is really a trick so that the company can keep your money as long as possible and sometimes forever. Some dishonest companies will start off by opening only one side of the binary—called a ‘power leg’—as there is no possibility of you getting paid until the other side is opened. By the time the other side is opened many people may have left the company leaving their commission checks behind as well. You are forever left, not only with recruiting, but trying to balance the sides of your team. Beware of such plans!

There are variations of these plans that have come along such as the straight-line plan where you are paid on every one that comes in after you.
Companies that follow these plans don’t seem to survive very long since most people just join and stand by waiting on their checks. There is no real incentive to work the plan.

Warning: You should always be particularly suspicious of compensation plans that pay out over 60%. This normally means that the product is overpriced, qualification quotas or volumes are almost unreachable or the breakaway structure can rob you of your investment and hard work. If the company uses the breakaway plan you may find your down line disappearing just as you are about to hit the big numbers. If a company intends to be deceptive it will be in the compensation plan; so study it well!

4. Training and solid up line support for your team.

Many companies provide training and promotional materials for their distributors but it is often difficult to strike a balance between product promotion and distributor training. And distributor training normally takes a backseat. You should be wary of companies that charge exorbitant prices for their promotional materials. You are investing your advertising dollars so the company should not seek to make a profit from you here—although many do.

You should seek to align yourself with an experienced leader and learn as much as possible from his or her recruiting methods. Be sure to investigate your up line because that can be the one factor that determines success or failure for you. Study the company literature to see who the ‘big hitters’ are and join their group. It is said that misery loves company; so does success.

5. A wide and even global market if possible.

You may find a company with all the great characteristics that we have looked at so far and then discover that it is not available in your area—ouch! With the advent of the Internet you find that many more companies are going global. This means that your market reach will be wider and chances of building a solid team greatly improved.

Apart from the sheer geography of the company’s market reach, is the potential customer base as well. For example, many American nutritional companies are aiming for the ‘baby boomers’ who are now in their midlife years and make up a good percentage of the buying public—in means and numbers. This demographic of customers want to look younger and are very health conscious. Any product that caters to their needs will most likely have a ready market.

Another big “bubble” when looking at population demographics is the children of the baby boomers. Look at what they are spending money on!

Choosing a company that has a product or service for which there is no ready market will make it very difficult on the distributor. And in this industry one needs a lot of encouragement.


Network Marketer’s Survival Guide

In the Network Marketing industry attrition rate can run as high as over 70%. This means that the majority of people who try a Network Marketing company don’t survive the first few months! The upside of this is that 9 out of 10 of those who survive through ten years become very wealthy. This industry has produced more self-made millionaires than any other single industry in America. What a recommendation for Network Marketing!

So if this industry has produced so many self-made millionaires, how is it that more people aren’t staying for the long haul? First we would look at some of the major reasons for failure and then some tips to help you escape these traps.

5 Main Reasons Network Marketers Fail

Human beings are complex creatures and so it is always a little risky to make general statements. Over time, however, a pattern emerges and we can get a very good idea why so many people start this business and then drop out.

1. Mishandling of rejection from close family members and their warm market.

When someone is first introduced to the concept of Network Marketing they become very motivated—mainly by the income possibilities—to start recruiting right away. Most companies will teach you to start with a list of your warm market and work from there. Even though this is a logical route, rejection from this group can be very discouraging and most people stop there. This means that the majority of recruits will give up after speaking with their spouses for example.

Only lately has Network Marketing become recognized as a viable and respected profession and many are still quick to cry, “Oh! You mean a pyramid scheme”. This comes because of the negative press that many famous companies have received and the general misunderstanding of the public.

2. False expectations for too early results with too little effort.

Depending on the way in which the business is presented, one can get the impression that there is not much effort involved. I mean, just get two who gets two and you can become rich. When early recruits realize that considerable networking and marketing is involved in Network Marketing, disappointment quickly sets in. There is work involved, and any business that presents a plan to you and says that you don’t have to do anything is peddling a lie. All successful network marketers worked for their success.

Many marketers do not factor into their planning the cost of advertising their business. This cost can eat up a good chunk of your investment especially when you are just launching. The idea here is that you have to regard this as a normal business and not just a trial run venture.

3. Lack of focus.

Network marketers have gained a reputation of jumping around and changing companies like they change clothing. At least this applies to those who flirt with success but never reach it.

As I mentioned before, those who survive the early years normally go on to do very well. However, there are many people who are looking for the ‘next big thing’ and keep jumping from opportunity to opportunity. This normally describes the behavior of those in search of the ever evasive ‘ground-floor opportunity’. The rule of thumb here is that you should establish yourself in one solid company before venturing off into other companies. And if you do work more than one opportunity, make them complementary to each other. A perfect example is working a leads company which you’ll need anyway to feed your primary Network Marketing company. In fact, if you find any tools that enhances your business, why not purchase from a company that has a compensation plan attached?

4. Failure to work an easy to duplicate recruiting plan.

With the advent of the Internet and all the new communication means that it affords, Network Marketing has come a long way from the home meetings and house to house presentations. Doing these presentations was very intimidating to many people and so the recruiting chain often broke along the way. The key here is that if the recruiting machine does not have a system that anyone can comfortably do, it will come to a screeching halt. Good trainers know that a simple system must be in place or the trainer’s efforts will not be properly duplicated. If the impression is given that a recruit must be turned into an instant public speaker, giving motivational speeches at the local Hilton, they can be easily scared off.

At the same time, you must take the time to learn the system and become familiar enough with the products that you can tell a friend about its benefit. As a user yourself, this should not be difficult. A caution here is to work the system that has been field tested, rather than trying to invent your own methods. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be innovative, but there is no use to reinvent the wheel either, so be teachable.

5. Baby-sitting of down line members.

Teaching is surely a part of the game of building a strong team. Some marketers make the mistake of doing too much for their down line members thinking that if they didn’t their recruits will leave. This often backfires, however, because the down line members become comfortable and depend too heavily on their up line and never grow strong enough to build their own teams. There is only so much you can do for someone and no more. These spoiled over-dependent down line members can become a liability instead of an asset to your team. So avoid the temptation to micromanage your team; you’ll get burnt out. Teach your team members to fish instead of fishing for them.


Secrets of the “Heavy Hitters”

Now we come to the positive side of the equation. Ninety percent of conquering a problem is to identify the problem. Even addicts have to first agree that they have a problem before they can be helped. So if we can quickly review the major reasons why people fail we can just avoid those pitfalls. Let us take a look at these pointers:

1. Be prepared to handle rejection. Who said that any kind of selling was easy? But it all comes down to attitude. If you can understand that a rejection of the opportunity that you are so excited about is not a rejection of you as a person, then you are on your way. “No” must be interpreted as “next”. This is easier said than done but it’s the price of success. The Internet and other new technologies now allow some rejection proof approaches, such as using lead capture pages and autoresponder messages. These methods serve to “pre-qualify” your prospects. There still must come a time when you will have to be in personal contact with your down line members however.

Part of preparing your mind for these ‘negative’ people is to fill your mind with positive messages. There are many Network Marketing and “positive thinking” speakers that will help you keep your spirits up. You will be surprised to discover the boost that motivational tapes and books can give to your attitude in general. This is one of the benefits of being in this industry—it teaches you to have a brighter outlook on life.

2. Be realistic in your expectations. To expect too much too soon will only set you up for a possible let down. Accept that this is a legitimate business that requires investment of time and effort and you must be prepared to sow the seeds for the harvest you expect to reap. Who builds a house without first considering the cost?

When you are quoted the salaries of the big recruiters, be sure to ask how much time and money they spent to get to that level. This information will give you a clearer picture.

3. Once you find a reputable company be prepared to stay for the long haul.

This goes without saying but if you expect to succeed you must stay the course. The most successful people in life have gone through very trying times but they stuck with it and left a legacy behind. It is often said that tough times don’t last but tough people do. The same is true for those seeking to build a solid recurring income. You should commit yourself to at least 3 years before making a decision either way.

Jumping from one opportunity to the next only shows a lack of decision and stability in you planning. Teenagers are expected to fall in and out of love every few months, but married couples have committed for life. Be prepared for a marriage not a fling!

4. Do not make the business more complicated than it needs to be. Stick with what works.

There is always the temptation to improve on the methods that experienced networkers have shown to work. Go with what works, not with what should work. If you find a system that has been working just plug into it and squeeze the last drop of success you can get from this. This means that you must show yourself teachable to your up line and be willing to teach your down line members the same system. Success normally comes from doing what works over and over again until it becomes second nature.

Another note of caution is that you should not expect from your recruits what you are not doing yourself. There a many networkers who will give advice that they are not willing to follow. In other word they get their team members to “do the dirty work” for them. This practice takes away from the real meaning of duplication—I’m doing the same thing that I’m teaching you to do.

5. Train and then let loose!

The real power of Network Marketing is the power of leverage. Rather than using 100% of your own effort, you are using 1% of the effort of a hundred. If your down line members become too dependent upon you then they will be using 110% of your effort. This can easily lead to rapid burnout.

So the key here is to train your frontline members, then train them to train their frontline members. As you gain leadership experience in the business then you can occasionally pick up the slack for a colleague. The important thing here is that your team members understand that effort is required on their part or they cannot expect your support.


Here are some additional insider tips on really hitting the ground running. These ‘secrets’ are learned from the study of those who have made millions in this industry.

6. Talk to many at the same time instead of one at a time.

We just mentioned that the real power of Network Marketing is leveraging your efforts. Did you ever notice that the real successful people in this industry never talk to one person at a time? Just think about it. Your recruiting message or script will be the same for each prospect. You are introducing them to a business opportunity. If you were to use the telephone to do your presentations, how many prospects can you talk to in one day? So here is what the serious marketers do:

(a) Set up a toll free number with a recorded message and invite callers to leave their number and other contact information.

(b) Advertise conference calls where many people can join and listen to your presentation at the same time.

(c) Run a message board on your website where people can ask questions and discuss the business.

(d) Host an online conference chat room.

(e) Buy leads and load them into an auto responder with your prospecting message. Be careful of here to avoid SPAM complaints. Also confirm that the auto responder company that you use allows you to use purchased leads.

7. Target other network marketers.

This may seem to go against the issue of not jumping from opportunity to opportunity, but it is much easier to work with someone who has already worked in the industry than a totally new person. There are list brokers who specialize in mailing list of distributors from companies that have closed down. For these individuals you don’t have to teach them to fish, they already know, and that can be a plus.

In addition to this, you can expect that if they join forces with you they can bring their entire down line from the old company. Of course, one challenge is that these seasoned marketers will also be more difficult to recruit since they will take a more critical stance of your opportunity.

8. Target business-minded people and entrepreneurs.

Here again you are targeting people who are already motivated and understand what it takes to run a successful business. These individuals would also already be networking in their businesses and therefore would be in a position of influence. Such people include chiropractors, real estate agents, sales people and internet marketers. These professionals come in contact with a large number of people and could be the boost that the organization needs. The more ‘business minded’ your prospects are the more likely you will recruit them.

9. Make a written plan with all your goals and steps to get there.

Psychologists tell us that when we write something down we are more likely to commit to it. That’s why you are required in a contract to place your signature on the dotted line—helps you keep your end of the bargain.

Every business owner should have a goal to which they are aspiring. If you aim for nothing you are likely to strike it. If your plan is to get to a recurring income of $10,000 per month then you should set smaller goals on your way there. Say, $3,000 per month after the first year, then $7,000 per month after the second year and finally $10,000 per month by the third year.

A very important part of writing out this plan is to calculate what is required to get to your goal. So if you must call 20 people to get 1 ‘yes’, and that prospect is worth $50 per month to you, you will know how many calls you have to make per month to get to $3,000 per month in one year. Looks simple, but most people don’t do this kind of calculation and so they run their businesses with blind expectations.

Knowing where you are going is one of the easiest ways to get there!

10. Continually work to improve your people skills, especially your listening skills.

At its core, Network Marketing is really people management. If you don’t like dealing with people then this is not for you. You are always going to be in direct or indirect contact with people and so you should brush up on your people skills.

One of those skills that you’ll need to primarily focus on is your listening skills. One of the most common downfalls of Network Marketingers is that they talk too much and don’t listen enough. This applies to the majority of salespersons. You have to always take time to listen to the customer because if you do - they will tell you what they are looking for! Here are some quick tips to improve your listening skills (particularly on the telephone):

(a) Well ... just stop talking and listen. That’s the toughest part.

(b) Learn to view things from the prospect’s position. Is your prospect a single mom struggling to make ends meet? Empathize and provide the solution.

(c) Restate what the person tells you to be sure that you understand what they are saying. This also makes the other person feel “heard.”

(d) Try not to interrupt them while they are talking—another hard one.

(e) Ask a lot of questions for clarification but not to be confrontational.

(f) Avoid jumping to unnecessary conclusions and learn to “listen between the lines.”

(g) Smile! You’ll be surprised to see what this does to your tone of voice.


11. Stay informed in what’s happening in the industry by subscribing to at least one professional Network Marketing journal.

There are many magazines to choose from and many books written on the subject of Network Marketing. As an “expert” in the field you should be able to speak of it in a professional way and be aware of the latest trends and technologies available to you. Think of how impressed your prospects will be when you can quote them the latest statistics. This helps you to build immediate credibility with your prospects. If you expect to make $20,000 per month, think about what other professionals with similar salaries had to endure before they reached that level, a doctor for example—years of medical schools, educational loans and internships! Don’t be skimpy on your education.

12. Write your own book or produce Network Marketing tapes and CD’s.

This may appear to be a tall order but it is not as difficult as it first appears. First you can publish an E-book even if you have this book written by a professional ghostwriter. You can place a bid at a website such as Elance.com and have writers bid on your job. This book will have your name on the cover and no one has to know that you never wrote one word!

Audiotapes and CD’s can be produced at home using a stereo recorder or in a local sound studio. You can also use your computer with the appropriate software and hardware to do this. There are many companies that will reproduce these recordings for you at minimum cost. Having your name on these products can be a real income booster. People want to know that they are following a leader and that is the way you are presenting yourself.


About Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has been made very popular on the Internet by companies such as Amazon.com, ComissionJunction.com and ClickBank.com.

Strictly speaking, because you are getting a one-time commission for most of your sales in an affiliate program this income is not really recurring. The trick here is to join affiliate programs that offer a monthly service such as a web hosting, or membership websites. Remember the key is that the product should be consumable or requires renewal. Also affiliate or associate programs don’t normally pay you beyond the second level so you cannot really build large organizations as in a Network Marketing company, therefore your income is a bit restricted. In this case you will have to spread wide—create a large frontline.

Most affiliate programs don’t require you to train or support your customers, so this all balances out. In life it’s hard to break the “you get what you pay for” rule. It’s the sowing / reaping principle.


In Closing

You should take a look at your income sources and evaluate them to see how many are recurring and how many are linear. The key here is that you may want to “balance you portfolio” so you can have income coming in even if for some reason you are not able to work. Especially as a small business owner this can be critical to your survival.

Even one of your fat monthly checks tucked away on a fixed deposit account will provide you with recurring income—accrued interest.

How long do you think it will take Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, to make his first billion if all his bank accounts were presently frozen and taken away? That’s the power of recurring income!



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