Writing articles is one of the best ways that you can do for your Internet promotion. Writing articles can be put in PR activities section because in most cases you won’t pay that your article appear in some magazine, web site or email newsletter. That’s why articles are usually more useful than ads. People believe more in what they read than when they read something and they know that it is an ad.

Benefits of writing articles

1) Building your web site content and getting repeat visits

On of the most known rules on the Internet is “Content Is King!” People are constantly looking for quality content and if they won’t find it on your web site they will leave to your competitor’s site and probably never come back on your site again. With writing articles that are relevant to your business you will create a web site full of useful information and when people see how much you offer on your web site they will most likely subscribe to your email newsletter, as well. To increase sign-up process for your email newsletter you can put some of your articles in “teaser” format and write that if people want to read the whole article they have to be members of your email newsletter.

2) Branding yourself or your company as an expert

Whether you write articles mainly for purpose of publishing on your places like web site and email newsletter, or you want that they be re-published on many other places, you will have a branding benefit. If your articles offer quality information to your readers they will view you or your company as an expert in your area of business. For example, if you are a company that sells email marketing software, you can write articles that will help email marketers to get the maximum from their email marketing campaigns.

3) Search engines and link popularity

As you probably already know, link popularity is very important factor for better ranking on major search engines like Google. The more sites link back to yours you will have a better page rank. Writing articles is ideal way for having a better placement on search engines. If your web site offers quality content many people will link back to your web site if they know that your web site will be useful for their readers, too. Also, if your articles get re-published on many places like web sites, article submission directories they will also link to your web site because you can (and definitely you should) include a resource box at the end of your articles where you will include your web site URL, as well. Also, you will include several relevant keywords in your articles that will help in your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

4) Targeted subscribers

Like in above mentioned example, if you are an email marketing software company you will write articles about email marketing. Your articles will appear on places that focus on email marketing and readers of those articles are also interested in email marketing when they read that topic. If they like your articles and want to find more about your company it is most likely that they will visit your web site URL in your resource box. This way you will get targeted visitors and subscribers. Did I mention free?

How to write your articles

1) Don’t write your article like a sales pitch – you should offer quality and useful information in your articles and to focus on ”selling” in your resource box. Also, never include affiliate links in your articles. You should include a max. 5-line resource box at the end of your articles. There you can write something about yourself, your company, and to include your web site url and phone number.

Resource box example:

______________________________

Dejan Bizinger is web manager at B92 and Internet marketing consultant. B92 is media house in Serbia with national TV and radio coverage and most visited web site. For more information about Dejan Bizinger please visit http://www.bizinger.biz

______________________________

2) Catchy title – it is very important that your articles have catchy titles and first two paragraphs because it is usual the only thing visitors will see on article search engines. Then they will decide whether to read your article or not.

3) Clickable links – it is good that links in your articles be “live” or clickable. You have to see from place to place if it is enough to include a usual http://www.yourname.com link or you have to put in HTML tag like http://www.yourname.com

Where to promote your articles

If you are interested that many people use your articles for publishing on their web sites or email newsletters you have to promote your articles. Best way to do it is to submit your articles to specialized article submission web sites and email newsletters.

There are many article submission resources, but some of the most useful are:

Web sites

Go Articles

Ezine Articles

Idea Marketers

Article Depot

Article City

WebProNews

New technologies like the Internet offer countless business opportunities like finding information fast, work from home, real-time communication… One of those advantages is e-publishing with special aspect on e-books.

E-book is file or application that can be downloaded from the Internet and which enables that users can read and learn about different topics using computers, Pocket PC or even mobile phones! Many people read e-books while they are waiting someone or something or while they are traveling.

E-book can be made with different extensions. The most used extensions are in .pdf and .exe extensions, depending on the software that is used.

How to make an e-book

There are several ways how you can make an e-book. You can make an e-book using the simplest html or pdf editor or using specialized software which will compile, for example, several html files in one exe file.

Useful software for making e-books

Any text editor or html editor like Macromedia Dreamweaver http://www.macromedia.com

Adobe Acrobat for books in pdf format http://www.adobe.com

In case you want an e-book with exe extension

Web Compiler http://www.webcompiler.com

Ebook Compiler http://www.ebookcompiler.com

Ebooks Writer http://www.ebookswriter.com

Ebook Gold http://www.ebookgold.com

Exebook http://www.exebook.com

Making an e-book using above mentioned compilers have several advantages. When you make an e-book using an e-book compiler you will have a user interface similar like Internet Explorer. So, comparing with pdf documents people who download your e-book won’t need additional software for reading it.

More quality e-book compilers offer more opportunities for e-book protection which enable you to protect the whole book or only some parts with 128-bit protection. Opportunity to assign different password to different users, disabling printing, copying and right-click. Also, you can set an “expiration date” that is common thing with shareware programs. When we are speaking about protection we have to say that some e-book software offer a so called “lock to PC” feature, protection with a personal key that disables using your e-book on some other computer. Some software offers Digital Signatures feature and a search feature.

Why you should make an e-book

If you think that you have what it takes to write a good e-book – good knowledge, something interesting to write about and talent for writing you should consider writing your e-book.

Read carefuly: e-book, like every other book or business project, if it is done right offers many benefits for the author that can be material or non-material. Please be aware that non-material benefits often can be much bigger than material benefits. Under non-material benefits we mean goodwill and branding of the author. Depending on e-book critics it will influence on your image in your business. You can be considered as an expert in your industry. We don’t have to mention that successful e-book can get you benefits like invitations to seminars and conferences as a speaker, writing for well-known magazines, consultant jobs…

One more reason is that e-books are cost-effective. Simply, it is cheaper and there are much less risk involved than in writing a so caled “real book”. In case that you don’t have a publishing house that will finance your book, you will have to pay for your book publishing without knowing what will be your return-on-investment (ROI).

Free or fee-based

This is important decision that can influence on your e-book success. When you make a free e-book it is most likely that many more people will read it than if it is fee-based. That’s why you can make a revenue with selling ads. Beside selling your ad inventory, you can make partnerships with web sites or email newsletters that focus on similar topics like your e-book. You will place their ads and they will place your ad. For this purpose there is useful feature that every quality ebook software has and that is a so called re-branding or ability that the site that promote your e-book customize your e-book look for their needs. They can make it like if they are your general sponsors of your e-book and give it away to their readers and clients as a value-added service. You can do the same. You can use your e-book as a way to say “Thank You!“ to people who have subscribed to your email newsletter or bought your products. Many authors use e-books to syndicate first several chapters of their “real books” and use them as free trials for their books in order to have better sales.

Choosing your web hosting provider is the next logical step after you have registered your domain name. However, it is not easy to find the right web hosting deal. There are many companies that offer web hosting services. If you make a search on Google for the keyword web hosting you will get more than 130 million results!

If you want to have a successful online presence you need to have reliable web hosting. Your web site has to be always online and accessible. Otherwise, you will loose clients and prospects. Let’s compare this with a traditional business. If you have a shop in “offline” business name of the shop is your domain name and business space and infrastructure is your web hosting. Imagine a cafe that don’t have electricity once a day for one hour or a fast food service where there is only one employee instead of four!

WEB HOSTING TYPES

You have to choose your web hosting deal depending on type of your site. You won’t choose the same web hosting deal if you have a personal web site, web site for email newsletter subscription and archives, e-commerce site or web forum. There are 4 main web hosting: virtual (shared) hosting, dedicated server, collocation server and reseller hosting. The two most used are virtual (shared) hosting and dedicated server.

Virtual (shared) hosting is the situation where many web sites reside on one web server. This is the cheapest web hosting because many users split the cost for web server. You can find quality virtual hosting from $100 per year.

Dedicated server represents a hosting where company lease the whole web server from web hosting company. That web server is located in the web hosting company. Dedicated server is the right choice for company that doesn’t want to share there server with other users. Dedicated server can be managed and un-managed. In the first case web hosting company will take care about setting up and constant updates and upgrades of your web server while you will have to do that in the second case. Advantage of this type of web hosting is that you can completely accommodate your web hosting to your needs. Also, dedicated server is the only logical choice for web sites with lots of visitors. Because of costs for a dedicated server that start from $100 per month, usually this hosting is chosen only by companies which take their Internet business very seriously.

Collocation server is similar to dedicated server. Difference is that company doesn’t lease a web server. They place their own web server in the web hosting company. Also, company has physical access to their web server while it is not the case in using a dedicated server.

Reseller hosting is targeted to companies that want to start their own web hosting business.

Useful web site where you can find a web hosting that will fit your needs is http://www.webhost.thelist.com

FACTORS YOU HAVE TO CONSIDER

You have to take several factors in consideration in order to be satisfied with your web hosting.

Web space

Web space is determined by the type of your site. Certainly, if you want to have a web site with basic information about yourself and your work without using web applications that 50 MB of web space will be enough. On the other hand, if you want to have complex e-commerce site with several thousand products in your database or web site with members, you don’t have to take anything less than 1 GB.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth represents data that has been transferred from your web site and that include graphic details, images, banners, files for download etc. Content is very important for planning your bandwidth. For most sites, 10 GB monthly bandwidth is more than enough while for some other sites like desktop wallpapers sites bandwidth can be often even several hundred GB per month.

Up-time or visibility

Up-time or visibility represents time expressed in percents that show how much is one site online. Don’t be fooled because someone guarantees for example 98% up-time because it is not enough. You don’t have to take anything les than 99.7%. Believe us, that difference is very big. Useful site checking your up-time is http://www.netmechanic.com

Email accounts

It is important to know what you will get in your web hosting package regarding email accounts. Will you get only a so called catch –all forwarding which means that all emails sent to anything@yourdomain.com will arrive to your email address or you can set-up email accounts for several users? For how many? Is it for 5, 10, 100 or unlimited email accounts? Also, it doesn’t hurt to check do you get a so called POP3 email address (“real” email address), web mail or both? Having a POP3 email address you will be able to check your emails using your favourite email client and web mail enables you to check your emails at any place that has computer and Internet connection.

Server type, tools and control panel

The two most often used hosting are on Unix-based or Windows platform. That fact has for the result program languages, databases and scripts that you will be able to use. On Unix-based platform, usual choice is PHP language in combination with MySQL while on Windows platform ASP or ASP.NET language in combination with SQL Server. You have to check do you get a database in your package and how many. Today, modern web site has to be database-driven.

Also, it is recommended to be informed about tools that you get in your web hosting package, no matter if they are applications for web statistics, file manager and things like that. Best solution is if you get a cPanel along with Fantastico. Using Fantastico, marketers without technical knowledge can install most popular web applications within 2-3 clicks.

Technical support

Technical support is one of the most important things in choosing your web hosting, especially if you are a marketer without technical knowledge. You have to be sure that your technical support will answer your emails within 24 hours. This is not only important for choosing your web hosting company, it is important to literally any company that sells products and services, for example software company.

Some companies are so well organized that you will receive response from them within 1 hour! You can get an image about your future technical support about the way they can be contacted. Is it only via email or they have a support phone, too? Do they have a toll-free number? Do they have trouble-ticket system? Also, very important thing is their working hours. Do they provide technical support only during their working hours from 9 to 17 or they offer 24×7 technical support? The best way to see how professional they are is to make a list of questions, contact them and – wait to get the answer.

Testimonials

It is a common practice that web hosting and software companies have Testimonials section where you can read recommendations from their happy customers. Don’t rely only on that section. Many web hosting companies offer you to see their portfolio of web sites that they host. Contact several webmasters and ask them about what they think about their web hosting provider. Very useful thing in finding best web hosting deals and recommendations is to visit popular web forums like http://www.webhostingtalk.com and http://www.sitepointforums.com

You see that there are several factors that influence in choosing your web hosting package. You have to be aware that like with everything else, when we come to web hosting you usually get what you pay for.

Search engines are hot topic. Google has great financial reports every quarter. Google is the most used search engine and if you want to use the power of search engines and to have success on the Internet you have to do your search engine optimization (SEO) wisely. We will give you several tips that will help you in making better SEO campaigns.

Rule #1 – Quality content

You probably know about that “Content Is King” rule. It is especially true for SEO. Try to have relevant and quality content, at least 400 words per page. Search engines love lengthy articles. You web site should be up-to-date, articles and news have to be added on a regular basis, at least once a week. This will show to search engines that your web site is an ongoing project and not some “let’s make a web site for Adsense” schemes. Make your content relevant to your target audience, use appropriate keywords but don’t make a mistake and do keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is when someone intentionally includes many keywords and repeats them many times in the article hoping to achieve better search engine placement. Search engines are machines but they are not naïve, and they are getting “smarter” every day. Your keywords need to have the most appropriate keyword density. You won’t be able to know the right keyword density because search engines often change their rules. Several great resources and software can help you to choose the right keyword density and to be up-to-date with search engine trends.

http://www.searchenginewatch.com

http://www.searchengineguide.com

http://www.webceo.com

http://www.webposition.com

Rule #2 – Link popularity

Links are the next most important rule in making a successful search engine optimization. Many search engines give very much weight to number of web sites that have links to your web site. It is especially case with Google, the most important search engine, that use their proprietary technology called PageRank that ranks web sites by counting number of links it has on other web sites. However, quantity is not the most important thing. You should have quality links. So, Google will give you better PageRank (PR) if you have links on web sites with higher PR. They assume that if quality sites link to your web site that your site is quality, as well. That’s why you should make ad swaps with quality web sites that focus on similar audience like your web site. Please be aware that linking between sites that are on the same server (IP address) won’t bring you benefit in increasing your PR. To check your link popularity type site:www.yourdomainname.com in Google search bar and you will get list of sites that have links to your web site. Also you can use a free service at:

http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/

Also, you should have a good internal navigation on your web site. It is recommended that you design your web site that every page can be accessed within 3 clicks.

Rule #3 – Meta Tags

Meta tags give different information about your web site. The most used Meta tags are for title, keywords and description. Meta tags are placed between tag in your HTML document. It is very important to give good page titles, description and keywords for every page on your web site. It doesn’t have to be too short, but also it doesn’t have to be too lengthy. Between tag you will write title of your HTML document. Title shouldn’t be longer than 70 characters. Choose it very wisely. After that you can include different Meta tags. We will give you several most used Meta tags:

There are several useful free services that will help you in finding the best keywords for your web site. We can recommend you these services:

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox

Keyword Suggestion Tool

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Also, there are other Meta tags that you can use in your web site.

This Meta tags give info to search engines when they should come back to your web site and re-index it.

The following Meta tag gives info to search engines what to index. In this case they will index all pages. However, you can also make some restrictions and to deny that some pages be indexed by search engines with making a so called robot.txt file.

Also, you can place a Meta tag that will give info about you or the author of your web site.

Those 3 rules are the most important rules in search engine optimization. Also there are other rules that we will only mention like to use a so called ALT tags to give description to your images, don’t use database-driven links (make them search engine friendly) and don’t use frames in designing your web site. Also, it is highly recommended to submit your web site to Open Directory Project web site (http://www.dmoz.org). It takes time to be indexed there but it is useful because it will help you in better search engine placement and many sites use Open Directory Project database on their web sites.

After you have completed your SEO campaign you will have to check your rankings on search engines for different keywords. Beside above mentioned SEO software, we can recommend you these free services for checking keyword/ranking placement:

Free Search Engine Ranking & Keyword Tracker

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/

Search Engine Placement Check

http://www.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm

We wish you to achieve the first results page!

What women want? Old question, many think it is too hard to give an answer. Well, it isn’t. In this article we will write about principles in marketing to women.

Marketing is all about fulfilling needs. That’s why marketers have to know the answer on what women want. The most important thing that every woman wants is security. They want to have a man they can lean on; to be secure in their love relationship; to be secure that they will make the right decision in buying a certain product. You have to persuade them in your offer, whether it is a traditional or online business. This doesn’t mean that you will hire some person who will be over-enthusiastic in describing new products like in teleshop ads. It is a fast selling processing, and women like thorough selling processes. They like marketing and persuading in a subtle way. They want to hear everything about your product. So, tell them all and educate them. Don’t sell them a product, sell them a dream, so they can imagine how your product will make their lives easier or happier.

Example for good marketing can be seen in Avon Cosmetics catalogues. They are experts in describing lipsticks, perfumes and everything else that they have to offer. They select every sentence very well. Even if you are a man, when you read those descriptions you start imaging that you already have that new perfume or shower-gel. They even put a fragrance scent on pages so woman can test them even before they order it. Other cosmetic companies like Nivea or Johnson & Johnson also have great ads targeted to women. Do you remember that beautiful J&J ad for the shampoo with a guy and his baby? Girls watching this ad start dreaming about her prince and their baby. Advertising that is women-centric has themes like family, couple in love, joy, laugh, successful woman that can handle everything…

Marketing to women is very important because women have the biggest influence in the buying process. On the Women’s Business Research Centre web site (http://www.womensbusinessresearch.org/) you can find out that 10.6 million firms are at least 50% owned by a woman or women and that nearly half of all privately-held companies are at least 50% owned by woman or women. Studies show that more than 80% women are the primary shoppers for their families.

It can be direct purchasing or “only” influencing. Even in buying cars, women are key player. They don’t have to buy a car, but usually they will give the final word that will prevail in the buying process. Men like cars, but normal men like their wives more that their cars so the most important thing will be that her wives be happy with the choice, too. That’s why many automobile makers design cars that are categorized as “woman cars”. Ads for “woman cars” are focused on safety and not on the speed, not to be too big but to have enough space for all family members, family aspect is very important.

Forrester Research called their research about marketing to women “Men Are From CNET, Women Are From iVillage”. This is similar comparison like in that bestseller book about Mars and Venus. They made a good choice, CNET is more focused to men because of their technology reviews and iVillage is the real women oriented web site. If you visit www.ivillage.com you will see what we are talking about. Excellent colour combination, mild colours that evoke the feeling in their childhood and make you enjoy in your stay there. Just look on the content. It is mostly content related to beauty, love & sex, family and parenting. There are women that like business and career more than above mentioned topics but I think that they are in minority. It is in the woman to be a good mother, wife and to focus on her beauty.

We have already said that it is very important to give details about your products when marketing to women. Women want to be sure that they made a good choice. They are very cautious in buying especially if they are not familiar with your company. That’s why it is good to offer free samples, to enable them to try before they buy. This is often used by cosmetic companies but it can be used almost in every business. If you sell software it is highly recommended to offer a free trial version. It is harder to make the first sale to women, but after that if they are satisfied they will be your loyal customers.

They are usually much better with money than men and they can spend hours in shopping and comparing prices on different places. That’s why price comparison sites like Shopping.com and Epinions.com are very popular among women. It is not only the case in buying goods for households it is similar like when they are running a business. Usually, women spend less and growing their companies slow but steadily. Remember, safety is much more important to women than speed.

In order to persuade them it is highly recommended to make a testimonial section for your products from your happy customers. We already said that they like to read opinions of other people. It is not only that they like to read, they like to talk – a lot. They are excellent in spreading a good (but also a bad) thing about your company and products. That’s why it is good to have an email newsletter that will offer them value-added content and to ask them to forward it to people who might be interested in it.

You can see that with the right marketing to women you can improve your business results and it doesn’t take much time to do that. Just a different approach. Just put yourself in their shoes. Make sure to choose the right one, because you know how much they like shoes and how many they have ones.