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There are many programs on the net, all claiming to be the best. Some will take you forward and some will take your money. How do you decide which is the best online program for you?

Here are 12 tips to finding the right one:

1. Longevity. Just like the offline world, programs come and go. You will invest a lot to promote your new online program. You need to be sure they will be still be in business in the years to come. Some of the best have been around 20 years or more. There is a reason why they are still there. Look for a program, which has been in business for at least 2 years.

2. Safety in numbers. If many other people have joined of this program, it means a good cross section of the community feels there is something there for them. The larger the member base, the better the chance that you too will be successful.

3. Product Line: A broad product line is very important. Partly because the larger the product range the more people you will be able to sell something to. Secondly, because you will want to grow the number of products you sell over time. Having a broad product range means you don’t have to join another program to add a product to your line.

4. Pricing: The pricing of the program’s products must be in line with its competitors. It is easy to check pricing on the net. Potential customers will do the same before buying your product.

5. Training. The Internet is constantly evolving and we must all constantly retrain to survive. A program with a comprehensive training program will ensure you keep up with the play with a minimum of effort.

6. Induction program. When starting with a new program you have lots of questions about the products, the compensation plan and marketing support. Its important the program has a good induction system to get you up to speed as quickly as possible. It’s also very important that the people you introduce to the organisation are trained quickly and with minimal effort from you. This allows you to focus on growing your downline.

7. Marketing tools. If the program provides you with tools like web pages, auto responders, hit tracking counters, banners, sample promotional copy, downline management systems etc you obviously don’t need to provide your own. This means two things. Firstly it minimises your costs and secondly saves you a lot of time setting them up.

8. Reputation. It’s more profitable to promote a program with a good reputation. Make sure the program is viewed as reputable in the marketplace. One way to do this is to conduct a search using the program’s name and the word “scam”. Do the same for a number of programs and you’ll soon get a feel for their reputation.

9. Profitability. The best online programs make money for their owners and for the people who work in them. Satisfy yourself that the program provides a profit for all.

10. Sales commission. Beware programs that pay very high affiliate commissions. If a program pays very high commissions the product may be over priced (a problem) or the program may not have a viable business model (also a problem)

11. Compensation plan. Ensure there is provision in the compensation plan for you to benefit from your direct sales and from the efforts of those you introduce to the business. Also look for a program, which pays residual income (sell it once, get paid forever) as well some up front payment.

12. Free look. The best online programs will allow you to join for free before signing up. These programs have nothing to hide.

With these 12 tips you can now determine the best online program for you.

Good hunting and here’s to your success!]]>

1. Have a Strong Call to Action. Decide what is it that you want your prospect to do when reading your sales letter. Are you asking your prospect to subscribe to your mailing list? Or is it to make a purchase? Lead your prospect to the conclusion you want by making your offer sound really attractive (eg. give valuable bonuses) and making it easy for him or her to take action.

2. Get help in spotting Errors. It’s tough to have a 100 percent perfect ad copy. Solve this problem by giving a reward to your readers who spot more than five errors in your ad copy. Alternatively, ask your personal friends to help you to check for errors and buy them lunch!

3. Give a percentage of your sales to a charity. Mention this in your ad copy. This is a good strategy because your company gives back to society plus it also “propels” your prospect to act charitably (and hence make a purchase).

4. Include a good, solid guarantee or x-days-money-back period in your offer. In all respects, you are likely to improve your website sales conversion if you offer a lifetime guarantee.

5. Use the checkmark or a bulleted point against each benefit of the product or service that you are selling. You want to have as long a list as possible! And present features of your product or service as benefits or solutions to your prospect’s problems.

6. Include P.S., P.S.S. and P.S.S.S. at the foot of your sales letter. It has been shown that many busy website visitors do not have the time to read your entire sales copy. They are likely to scroll to the bottom of your sales letter to check out the conclusion, summary and how much your product is selling for. As such, in your concluding paragraph, including post scripts is a good idea. Here, you can summarise the main points of what you are selling, repeat your bonus offers and once again, your call for action.

7. Include your contact information prominently. The feeling of security is important to prospects who do not know or have met you. If they do not feel secure, they are not likely to do business with you. Including your contact information helps in that they know that you are reachable, that you are a REAL person and you are running a genuine business.]]>

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In addition to Google’s Froogle shopping service (still in beta), which features a searchable database of online merchants, Google is also beta-testing their Google Catalog service. Google Catalogs provides a searchable central repository of hundreds of mail-order catalogs.

The service includes the full scanned contents of the catalogs, not just a photo and subscription information. And these aren’t database entries, but real high-quality images of the catalog images themselves. When you are browsing Google Catalog search results, you will see user interface controls at the top and bottom of each page. These are reminiscent of Acrobat and many other browser plug-in controls or common Windows print preview controls, and you can page through each catalog, zoom in/out, switch between one, two, and thumbnail views, jump to a specific page, and search within the current catalog. As with other Google searches, an advanced search feature is also available.

Available catalogs cover a full range of goods from business to consumer, from household names like Harriet Carter to obscure supply catalogs for specialty manufacturers. For easy online shopping, even the order forms, toll-free numbers, and vendor web sites are easily accessible. While beta testing, many of the catalogs are from one to three years old, but that’s to be expected. When fully released, this service will almost surely feature not only current catalogs, but a lot more of them, as merchants become aware of the service.

Google recommends using a broadband internet connection to search their Google Catalog service. This is because all search results include images of the catalog pages themselves, and download speed over dialup will be too slow for most users. Google states that they aren’t associated with the catalog merchants in any way, and receive no compensation when you buy something from an included catalog.]]>

It all starts with somebody noticing the PR update in progress. This event will find its way into forums and newsgroups fast. Within minutes and hours the Internet community becomes aware of a Page Rank update. As Google.com uses several different data centers for its search engine services and also updates them in different intervals webmasters all over the world will see different results when looking for Page Rank results. A Page Rank update will also not complete within an hour or a day. For several days results will fluctuate.

With that in mind it is a funny event watching the hype surrounding a PR update. Webmasters get nervous if the PR of their website suddenly changes. A change can mean that the PR completely disappears or that the webmaster sees different (conflicting) results. As a high Page Rank can mean higher amounts of traffic and eventually higher income from a website this event often feels like a rollercoaster ride for the people who depend on having a successful website. Imagine the website you worked for so hard suddenly going up and down in Page Rank during a PR update. Now the same people start posting questions and comments in forums and newsgroups. The more experienced webmasters know the game and react professionally. They know that the publicly visible Page Rank is just a moment in time to display a snapshot of what is in Google’s database. They know that PR actually updates daily or weekly internally, but that these more frequent updates do not show up as publicly visible PR updates. But no matter how often it is pointed out that the publicly visible PR is not important - the hype around this topic by a large group of webmasters does not quiet down. “How many links does it take to get a PR 5?” - “Why does my PR suddenly went down? I added x number of back links to my site.” - “I hate Google for doing this.” - These and many other comments or questions will show up. But in the end it all comes down to: Public PR is just a snapshot in time of what is in Google.com’s database. PR changes much more often than what is showing up in the Google Toolbar.

And so it comes as no surprise that about every 3 months the tensions go high up in newsgroups and online forums when it comes to discussing Google Page Rank. If you are on the hunt for a high Page Rank for you site - don’t waste time looking for the publicly visible PR. Use the time the others need to discuss PR to actually work on the Page Rank for your site. Establish high quality back links to your site. Grow these numbers slowly. A large increase in a short amount of time is not natural. Back links grow slowly and that is what Google is looking for. Be smart - be in it for the long run and not some short-term PR gain that won’t last.]]>

I was recently struck by the fact that the top-ranking web pages on Google are consistently much better written than the vast majority of what one reads on the web. Yet traditional SEO wisdom has little to say about good writing. Does Google, the world’s wealthiest media company, really only display web pages that meet arcane technical criteria? Does Google, like so many website owners, really get so caught up in the process of the algorithm that it misses the whole point?

Apparently not.
Most Common On-the-Page Website Content Success Factors
Whatever the technical mechanism, Google is doing a pretty good job of identifying websites with good content and rewarding them with high rankings.

I looked at Google’s top five pages for the five most searched-on keywords, as identified by WordTracker on June 27, 2024. Typically, the top five pages receive an overwhelming majority of the traffic delivered by Google.

The web pages that contained written content (a small but significant portion were image galleries) all shared the following features:

Updating: frequent updating of content, at least once every few weeks, and more often, once a week or more.

Spelling and grammar: few or no errors. No page had more than three misspelled words or four grammatical errors. Note: spelling and grammar errors were identified by using Microsoft Word’s check feature, and then ruling out words marked as misspellings that are either proper names or new words that are simply not in the dictionary. Does Google use SpellCheck? I can already hear the scoffing on the other side of this computer screen. Before you dismiss the idea completely, keep in mind that no one really does know what the 100 factors in Google’s algorithm are. But whether the mechanism is SpellCheck or a better shot at link popularity thanks to great credibility, or something else entirely, the results remain the same.

Paragraphs: primarily brief (1-4 sentences). Few or no long blocks of text.
Lists: both bulleted and numbered, form a large part of the text.

Sentence length: mostly brief (10 words or fewer). Medium-length and long sentences are sprinkled throughout the text rather than clumped together.

Contextual relevance: text contains numerous terms related to the keyword, as well as stem variations of the keyword. The page may contain the keyword itself few times or not at all.

SEO “Do’s” and “Don’ts”

A hard look at the results slaughters a number of SEO bugbears and sacred cows.

PageRank. The median PageRank was 4. One page had a PageRank of 0. Of course, this might simply be yet another demonstration that the little PageRank number you get in your browser window is not what Google’s algo is using. But if you’re one of those people who attaches an overriding value to that little number, this is food for thought.

Frames. The top two web pages listed for the most searched-on keyword employ frames. Frames may still be a bad web design idea from a usability standpoint, and they may ruin your search engine rankings if your site’s linking system depends on them. But there are worse ways you could shoot yourself in the foot.

JavaScript-formatted internal links. Most of the websites use JavaScript for their internal page links. Again, that’s not the best web design practice, but there are worse things you could do.
Keyword optimization. Except for two pages, keyword optimization was conspicuous by its absence. In more than half the web pages, the keyword did not appear more than three times, meaning a very low density. Many of the pages did not contain the keyword at all. That may just demonstrate the power of anchor text in inbound links. It also may demonstrate that Google takes a site’s entire content into account when categorizing it and deciding what page to display.

Sub-headings. On most pages, sub-headings were either absent or in the form of images rather than text. That’s a very bad design practice, and particularly cruel to blind users. But again, Google is more forgiving.

Links: Most of the web pages contained ten or more links; many contain over 30, in defiance of the SEO bugbears about “link popularity bleeding.” Moreover, nearly all the pages contained a significant number of non-relevant links. On many pages, non-relevant links outnumbered relevant ones. Of course, it’s not clear what benefit the website owners hope to get from placing irrelevant links on pages. It has been a proven way of lowering conversion rates and losing visitors. But Google doesn’t seem to care if your website makes money.

Originality: a significant number of pages contained content copied from other websites. In all cases, the content was professionally written content apparently distributed on a free-reprint basis. Note: the reprint content did not consist of content feeds. However, no website consisted solely of free-reprint content. There was always at least a significant portion of original content, usually the majority of the page.
Recommendations

Make sure a professional writer, or at least someone who can tell good writing from bad, is creating your site’s content, particularly in the case of a search-engine optimization campaign. If you are an SEO, make sure you get a pro to do the content. A shocking number of SEOs write incredibly badly. I’ve even had clients whose websites got fewer conversions or page views after their SEOs got through with them, even when they got a sharp uptick in unique visitors. Most visitors simply hit the “back” button when confronted with the unpalatable text, so the increased traffic is just wasted bandwidth.

If you write your own content, make sure that it passes through the hands of a skilled copyeditor or writer before going online.

Update your content often. It’s important both to add new pages and update existing pages. If you can’t afford original content, use free-reprint content.

Distribute your content to other websites on a free-reprint basis. This will help your website get links in exchange for the right to publish the content. It will also help spread your message and enhance your visibility. Fears of a “duplicate content penalty” for free-reprint content (as opposed to duplication of content within a single website) are unjustified.

In short, if you have a mature website that is already indexed and getting traffic, you should consider making sure the bulk of your investment in your website is devoted to its content, rather than graphic design, old-school search-engine optimization, or linking campaigns.]]>

While it is true that a vast majority of blogs are hosted free, it is also true that many blogs are gaining high traffic so quickly that they are forced to quickly find paid web hosting as they exceed their allocated bandwidth.

The other fact to bear in mind is that virtually all successful bloggers own several blogs. This is significant because it is not easy to own several websites since lots of technical know-how and time are required to maintain a single website, let alone several. This is not the case with a blog that mainly requires content and very little technical knowledge to run very successfully. In terms of business volumes this simply means that a web hosting business that targets blogs is bound to grow a lot faster than the one that only seeks clients from the ranks of traditional websites.

The other significant factor in blogs that should be of great benefit to any web hosting business is the huge traffic that blogs seem to enjoy almost effortlessly.

All a web host entrepreneur needs to do, is to find a way to advertise their web hosting services to this blog traffic. There are several ways of doing this. You can for example look for acceptable ways of creating as many links from the blogs to your web hosting sites as possible. You can even start your very own blog on the subject.]]>

We hear your cries for cyber attention. Here are five ways to get people clicking on to your site.

1.)Make sure it’s professional looking.
No one likes looking at website that reminds them of a book report they wrote back in school. Invest in learning a good web design program (Dreamweaver MX and Microsoft Frontpage are good picks), and let your creative juices flow. Make sure it’s compelling, well-designed, and organized. People don’t exactly find it fun to weed through haystacks of cyberfiles to get the information that they want.
On that note, don’t make it a heavy site. Putting up some flash intros may be great eye candy, but the average internet surfer only waits 10 seconds for a page to load, and then they’re off to the next.

2.)Put your URL on every search engine possible.
Putting your URL on business cards and bugging your family and friends to check out your site won’t exactly increase traffic. Submitting it to search engines will make it easier for people to find you, provided that your webpage carries the topics they’re looking for. To understand how a search engine works, think of it as a “spider”: it crawls through your website, picking up words and information which would later be indexed in the search engine’s database. So make sure you pepper your site with keywords you think are relevant to what people are looking for. Web directories, like Yahoo!, are operated by humans who actually categorize the websites themselves.
If you don’t feel like submitting your website to numerous directories, consider subscribing to sites like www.submit-it.com, who, for a fee, will automatically submit your site to search engines and directories for you.

3.)Link everywhere.
Find other sites that carry similar content as yours and ask to exchange links. Create banners to be placed on other peoples’ websites, and offer to the same for them on your site. Add your URL on your e-mail signature. Join webrings if you must—there’s nothing like strength in numbers.

4.)Advertise offline.
The world of cyberspace isn’t enough to get you noticed. Write up press releases and send them to local newspapers and magazines. Print out fliers to be distributed. Just make sure that your site is already up and running to avoid giving people a bad impression (no one likes getting pumped up for something only to get disappointed).

5.)Interact with your readers.
Put up forums or message boards for your visitors to interact with each other. Chat rooms are often time-consuming for some, while message boards allows them to check back every so often for replies. Create an e-mail list so you can update your visitors about new developments, and always be open to feedback—that’s what will make your site even better.]]>

There are dozens of porgams available for fighting spam. The major problem is that most of these programs cost money.

What I’m going to do is show you 5 different ways of combating spam - all free.

1. Don’t give out your personal email address.

This is stating the obvious but it’s the first big mistake people make. DO NOT use your personal email address for

sign up forms, competitions, surveys or any other nonsense that may result in you being spammed. It’s much easier to prevent spam, by never giving out your personal email address, than it is to cure the problem once you’re on 100’s of junk email lists.

2. Use a free email account

Set yourself up with a Hotmail, Yahoo or any other free email account and use it as a spam holder account i.e. use it on all those popups or sign up forms that you *suspect* may try to spam you. You can then periodically check your free email account for both legitimate and spam email and

delete the rubbish you don’t want. This single step can save you countless spam related headaches.

3. Use a disposable email address

You could also try a disposable e-mail address from www.spamgourmet.com. This is a brilliant idea. Once you’ve registered your forwarding email address (your personal

email address) with them you can then create

self-destructing email addresses that stop working after receiving a specific number of emails.

4. Use a free spam filter.

Unfortunately even when you follow all the correct steps you can still wind up getting junk email. There’s only solution at that point - install a spam filter on your PC.

The best free spam filter I’ve come across so far is Mailwasher. An excellent

program that won’t cost you a penny.

5. Newsgroups and forums

Spammers love newsgroups and forums. They especially love the way people post their personal email addresses there. It doesn’t matter if it’s a paid, private or free forum spammers have their harvester programs hunting for email addresses every minute of every day. If you have to post

your email address then use the following format:

username AT domain.com. If that doesn’t make sense then what I mean is instead of posting as test@spam-site.com you’d

post as test AT spam-site.com.

Spammers can harvest 35,000 email addresses per hour from newsgroups and forums - don’t let your email address become one of those.

There you have 5 simple, free solutions to drastically reduce the amount of spam you receive every single day. If you want to learn more about fighting spam then

drop by spam-site.com.]]>

DVD duplication can be difficult. First of all, if you do not have the right equipment, it will also be costly. Many computers can duplicate a DVD for you, but there are special components within a computer that need to be purchased separately. If you have this equipment on your computer, and you only need to duplicate a few home made DVD’s, there is no problem with doing it yourself. Simply learn how by following the tutorials or the instruction manual.

But, what if you have created a movie or a play and you want to mass produce it? In this case, you obviously need to hire a DVD duplication company. These companies can produce the DVD’s you need and normally you can find the ones that will keep it within your budget. If you are planning to market the DVD’s, you’ll need help with all aspects of the design and marketing. DVD duplication companies can do just this for you.

No matter what your need is in DVD duplication, there is a way to get it filled. The answers you need lie right here, online. Companies can provide you with all aspects that you feel are necessary, provide you with guidance and if you get a good one, they won’t cost you more than you can afford! You’ll find outstanding satisfaction in knowing that your product is being carefully manufactured by individuals who pride themselves in quality.]]>

Identify and cater to your audience. Satellite TV service is relatively inexpensive, and there are few Americans that seem to be able to go without a television blaring somewhere nearby. The result is a huge, very diverse market for you to target, including people with different socioeconomic statuses, geographic locations, and programming desires. If you try to cater your affiliate website to everyone, you risk not effectively targeting anyone. Choose one demographic to target and provide them with the type of information and content about satellite TV you expect hem to ask about. If you can resolve some of their doubts before they click through to he sponsoring website, you will have increased your likelihood of receiving a check.Mask your affiliate links. This may seem like a no-brainer to some of yo, but don’t risk losing a potential sale simply because you forgot to mask or camouflage your links. Some people shopping around online for satellite TV service may not be wary of affiliate links, but others may, so it is best to be overly cautious. Searching in Google for “mask affiliate links” will yield several tutorials of how to do this important task.Publish quality content. Do you subscribe to a satellite TV provider? Perhaps you know more about one service than you do about the other. Put that experience you already have to good use by writing quality content about the service you use. As potential customers find your website and have many of their questions answered by you, they will be more likely to click through the link and make a purchase. Without copying and pasting from the sponsoring company’s pages about their products, you can use their information to create quality content of your own. Remember, for every dollar they pay you in commission, they are earning several themselves. It is in their best interest that you succeed.Stay up-to-date on sales and specials. The satellite TV market is so big and so lucrative that companies are constantly offering reduced rates, different equipment deals, and other special offers. Don’t lose commissions to a competitor just because you don’t have the most recent deal or best offer available to your visitors. Check with your affiliate manager often to make sure you’re staying current and on top of the game. Give people a reason to come back. No matter how good of a deal you are able to offer on your affiliate website, subscribing to satellite TV service represents a big investment that people may not be ready to commit to after just one visit to your website. Don’t give up on them. Give people a reason to come back to your site - maybe you can blog or offer a news feed, or perhaps you can promise and deliver new content published weekly. No matter what it is you do to keep people coming to your site, a few of the repeat visits will translate into commissions for you in the long run.Affiliate websites are still a great way to make money, and there are few other markets that offer the generous payouts that the satellite TV industry does. Work hard and be patient and the success will come.]]>