Author: Mark Schmukler

5 Reasons to Use Paid Search Engine Marketing   ©2009 SAGEFROG MARKETING GROUP, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED By Ashlee Finan, Sagefrog Marketing Group, LLC For more information, please contact us: (215) 230.9024 ” info@sagefrog.com ” www.sagefrog.com  92% of people begin their search for new products and services on search engines such as Google, MSN andYahoo!¹.

Surprisingly, many businesses fail to take advantage of paid search engine marketing as an easy and effective way to reach those users. According to a Microsoft adCenter survey, released in December of 2008, 59%of small businesses do not currently use paid search engine marketing; 90%of those companies have never attempted to use it.

Although businesses are hesitant to implement search engine marketing programs, 72% of companies reported an increase in sales inquiries from pay per click advertising. Respondents from the 2008 Sagefrog Marketing Mix Survey rated search engine marketing in the top eight ROI programs.

Here are 5 reasons to use paid search engine marketing:  User Driven – Internet users are proactively seeking products and services on the web – do they find your company? Search engine marketing is an easy and effective way to reach your customers at the time they are searching for your offerings.

Measurable – Paid search engine marketing enables you to directly correlate your cost per click to sales leads. Every click provides valuable answers to your performance questions. What keywords lead users to your website? What ads interest potential customers?

How many visitors from those clicks become sales leads? Based in the results of your search engine marketing program, keywords and ad messaging can constantly be adjusted to maximize your ROI.  Cost Effective – You establish your pay per click budget and only pay for clicks made to your ads.

For most programs there is no minimum budget and you can modify it at any time. In addition to managing your overall budget, individual keyword bids are set to ensure your ads will show for your most relevant keywords.

Messaging – Due to the measurable results of search engine marketing, keywords and ad messages can constantly be tested and improved. The most successful words and messages can be included in your other marketing tools and programs such as marketing materials, your website and direct marketing.

Results – 68% of small businesses consider their paid search marketing programs successful. In the competitive realm of search engine optimization and search engine marketing, pay per click advertising is a powerful way to get in front of customers seeking your products and services.

The search engine marketing professionals at Sagefrog Marketing Group, LLC can integrate a pay per click advertising campaign into your business’s marketing mix. Sagefrog is a full service marketing, interactive, and public relations marketing company.

We specialize in health, technology and business services marketing for companies based in the greater Philadelphia and New Jersey area. Sagefrog’s services include marketing strategy and research, brand identity, marketing materials, websites, web marketing, public relations, advertising, tradeshow support, direct marketing and email marketing.

For more information, please contact Sagefrog Marketing Group at (215) 230-9024 or info@sagefrog.com  Sign up with Sagefrog today and receive a $100 Google Credit to jump start your SEM campaign  REFERENCES:

1. SEO vs PPC. 16 April 2008. Bureau 24.

2. Microsoft adCenter Study Reveals Small Businesses Build Online Presence, but Fail to Invest in Search Marketing. 16 Dec. 2008.Microsoft.

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Author: Joel Postman

I’ve always thought I knew what a mommy blogger was. I’ve heard the term, I know a couple of mommy bloggers, and I read all kinds of blogs, so I am familiar with mommy blogging in general.

I try to keep an open-mind about all blogs, and there are some great writers out there writing on mommy blogs, and I enjoy and respect that. I write a blog, but I don’t consider myself a blogger, and I certainly don’t call myself a daddy blogger, though there are hundreds of men who do think of themselves that way.

There are several things about mommy blogging that intrigue me, so I decided to do some research. I wanted to know how deep the mommy blogger “movement” ran, whether it was about more than cloth vs.

Disposable diapers, why women become mommy bloggers, and whether the phenomenon had run its course.

I think there’s a subtle contradiction in the term “mommy blogger.” In a career context, the words “mom,” “mother,” and “mommy” traditionally have had an almost apologetic element to them, or have served as qualifiers. A “working mom” was someone who balanced career and family life.

An underlying implication is that this involved tradeoffs, or sacrifices, in the quality of both family life and career. The term “stay at home mom,” came into use as a way of saying “I don’t work for a company, but I do an equally or more important job than my husband.”

“I think mommy blogger can be demeaning because you don’t see the word daddy blogger being bandied about,” freelance journalist  Kimber Schmahl , who does not consider herself a mommy blogger told me. “I certainly don’t feel my blog is any less worthwhile because I am a mother.”

Whether it’s politically correct to say so or not, the mommy blogging field is an offshoot of blogging in general. The very early days of blogging were generally dominated by male bloggers. When women started blogging it was initially (though no longer) a novelty, and the notion of a mommy blogger was all the more unusual.

Even today, mommy bloggers remain a minority, albeit a large one. According to one study, 57% of the total female population in the U.S. is online regularly, but only 20% of online users are moms. And in the last three years, Internet use by moms has tripled. In other words, the market for mommy bloggers should be growing.

“The mom blogger field is an over saturated one right now,” says Mae Mason, creator of Mutha Mae’s  “Word to Your Mutha”  blog. “There aren’t enough hours in the day to get through all of your favorite blogs/mom networking sites/mom forums.” Mae says she blogs because she likes the attention, enjoys the outlet, and draws strength and confidence from her readers.

Mommy blogger  Kristen Munson  thinks “mom blogs are going to remain very influential, whether they are personal or for business,” adding, “Most women have an inherent need to interact with other women, and the Internet makes this possible in so many unique ways.”

From a thematic standpoint, the idea of a mommy blog does not generally appeal to me, because I have always assumed mommies blog about mommy stuff, like choosing a private school or day care provider.

I have children, and my wife and I have a circle of married friends with whom we get together socially, and these topics are constants, so I have no need for an online forum for this.

I prefer to spend my online time on my career and on personal interests like antiques, vintage motorcycles, music, rhetoric and persuasion, etc.

Zoe Siskos, a blogger and Social Media Analyst who often helps clients interact with mommy bloggers, says “I always keep in mind that a person is not their blog…Being a ‘mommy blogger’ may be a piece of that, but I also enjoy diving into their blogs to find out what other ways they like to define themselves.”

Still, even the most popular mommy blogs often focus on the minutiae of being a mommy. This can be very appealing to advertisers who want to promote car seats, children’s clothing, baby formula, etc., as well as fashion and women’s lifestyle products.

If you’ll pardon the mangled metaphor, perhaps the mother of all mommy blogs is Dooce, written by Heather Armstrong of Salt Lake City. According to ABC News, “Armstrong says she prefers to chronicle ‘the mundane and boring details of the life we all live.’” While this holds no interest for me, apparently I am alone.

Dooce boasts 1 million monthly readers, and receives “$40,000 per month in revenue from advertisers like Wal-Mart, Hewlett-Packard and, most recently, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.” Mommy blogging is big business, though Mason “doubt(s) there will ever be another Dooce phenomenon.”

Dooce was also the winner of the 2008 Blogger’s Choice Awards for “Hottest Mommy Blogger”, which brings me back to this notion of mommy blogging’s potentially confusing messages: mommy bloggers often take stands on social and political issues, and actively support mothers and families as important institutions, while at the same time, writing openly about sex, and in some cases, porn and sex toys.

I can understand how people are receiving mixed messages from some mommy bloggers, and this could make it difficult for some of them to take a clear, firm moral stand on gender and sexual issues.

I think mommy blogging, like blogging in general, is a very useful and healthy pursuit for most people.

Mommy blogging is surrounded by complex social and gender issues, and both perceptions and misconceptions. There is both tremendous opportunity to do good, and potential to deliver mixed messages and demean women.

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Author: Jaennie Hulme

Now you’re wondering what an autoresponder is, what it does and why are you in need of such a thing?  The main explanation of an autoresponder in one sentence is that it is a web based email marketing software system that delivers your welcome emails, newsletters, campaigns, offers and follow-ups in an easy and effective way that can change the way you look at email marketing forever.

The benefits of having a smart personalized autoresponder are endless just look at the following luxuries that an autoresponder provides for you:  You are assured of unlimited email marketing campaigns; you can have more than 100+ professionally designed HTML templates for total uniqueness every time.

Affordable and powerful newsletter hosting. Wouldn’t it be better to have a newsletter send out automatically to each of your subscribers every week? Easy and fast click-through sales and revenue tracking for your convenience. You also receive a free daily digest containing a report of your autoresponder’s activity for that day.

Excellent support and training almost at your feet, just as you need it. This type of software will make your business more effective than ever and just as enjoyable.    One of the first things one should do when deciding on an autoresponder is to ask oneself a few questions:

1. Is this the best value for my money?

2. Will my data be secure?

3. Will my email be delivered successfully to my customers, or instead blocked by spam filters?

4. Will I experience the customer support that I expect, via email, toll-free phone and fax?   If you an answer yes to at least 3 of these questions you are on the path of successful email marketing.

One of the most important reasons for having an autoresponder is increased sales and the prevention of charge backs.

With something as amazing as an autoresponder you have endless capabilities and flexibility concerning your email marketing campaign.  You are now allowed to put all your attention to what you do best and let the autoresponder do the rest; it produces the best results and value of any investment.

You now have more time to be creative and produce other products to market and even have more time for yourself and your customer satisfaction is guaranteed to take a permanent boost when you have the help of an autoresponder.

Autoresponders are the future of email marketing, and with it, that future is in your hands to change and shape your business just as you want it.

No more negative thoughts or failures of any kind concerning your online business, because with the help of an autoresponder your are guaranteed to change the way you look at email marketing forever and sky rocket your business to maximum success!

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Author: kroyip

Just observe and you’ll find people walking around trade shows with their hands full of giveaways. However many of the giveaways didn’t really do a good job of promoting the company. More often than not, these freebies won’t survive much longer before people sending them to the trash bin.

Promotional items have their values and certainly can be very useful - if you know how to pick and use them correctly.

1. Promotional items should be designed to communicate your brand, to motivate people to order from you, and to increase your brand’s recognition and memorability. In other words don’t just pick something, pick one that is ralevent to you and works with your campaign!

2. Select the items that can meet your objective(s). Are you trying to educate your audience? Are you trying to convey a specific message? Are you trying to compliment other promotional activities?

3. Select the items that match your brand/product. Nothing can be more embarrassing if your giveaways contradict with your brand/product.

4. Who are your target audience? Are you giving away these items to anyone just passing by your booth at a trade show? Or are you giving to your premium clients as a thank you gift?

5. Do the math and set the budget. If an item costs you $10 a piece, you’ll probably have to spend thousands of dollars if you are giving them away to anyone who attend the trade show. Likewise if you are only giving them to your premium clients, then perhaps you can pick something more expensive/interesting to show your appreciation.

6. How to qualify to receive the freebies? To make good use of your promotional items, you should at least ask for their business cards or contact info in return (this is a good way to get confirmed leads especially during a trade show).

The same is also true even if you are giving only to premium clients (i.e. who do you qualify as “premium” - by the dollar amount they ordered in the past 24 months? Or perhaps by the number of years they’ve been doing business with you?)

7. Remember, a well selected freebie can draw visitors to your booth at a trade show.

8. Capitalize on the freebies. To max out the effectiveness it could be as simple as conducting follow-up calls while your giveaways are still sitting on the desk of your audience.

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Author: David Parmet

Defining the job or typical workday for a public relations person in the good old days was pretty easy. We showed up in the morning, gathered a pile of lists and got on the phone. Later email came along and made our jobs easier but it was still pretty cut and dry - get the attention of journalists who can get attention for our clients.

These days you’d be forgiven if you can’t figure out exactly what it is we are all supposed to do. The days of hammering our message home to journalists and then to our clients’ customers is (of course) long over. And hopefully you realize that. So it’s worth taking a moment to figure out what is it exactly that we are now supposed to be doing.

For one thing, we are connectors. Remember, it’s public RELATIONS. Most of the really good PR people I’ve known over the course of my career were chronic networkers, always working one or more branch of their personal grapevines.

These are the people who have exactly the skill set to survive in the world of social media. Social media is about connections – between friends who are linked on IM or Twitter, between blog authors and their readers, between families sharing pictures on Flickr.

So you’ve spent your career connecting clients to journalists, clients to potential partners and customers and potential clients to your agency. Now your job includes connecting your clients to their customers through web forums, blogs, podcasts, review sites and other online resources.

It’s your job now to know not only the journalists who cover your client’s space, but the bloggers and online communities who have a stake in what your client is doing.

Remember that bloggers are not insignificant players in the media game; a bad experience recorded on a blog can end up on the first page of results on Google or Yahoo! for your client. You need to be on top of what’s going on in social media so your client can be kept current.

On the brighter side, bloggers are engaged and motivated individuals who are doing what they do out of a labor of love, unlike journalists who might take a jaundiced eye towards your clients. Building relationships with these folks is vital for your client. On the positive side, they will be happy to get news from your client. On the other hand you many need to lean on them when a crisis occurs.

Your job today is to immerse yourself into social media; to get to know the players in your client’s market who have an interest in what your client is doing. You need to keep the channels of communication open in so many ways than you did in the good old days.

No longer is it sufficient to make a call when a client has something to say. Now you have to keep your ears open to hear what others are saying to your client.   The PR people who can make it in the world of social media will have to combine the skill of networking with the skill of listening. Do that and you will do just fine.

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Author: Anil

1.Make Connections! - You can have the best product or website imagined but unless you know where to promote, How to promote and sometimes even what to promote it seems pretty demanding.Making connections online can be very easy and a very effective way to get to where you want to be, it’s also affordable because your talking to people for free.

2.Market Someone Else’s Product! - There is a way to make cash on the net through using affiliate marketers for their sales. This new job market is exploding. For more details www.82-money-pocket.com This way you don’t need your own website so it cuts the cost of you having to own one and you don’t have the worry about selling your own product, you don’t even have to deal with customers!

3.People Like Free Things! - If people come across ANYTHING that is free, they are more likely to be drawn to that product than a competing product that is of full cost.So if your selling a product or another companies product than to have something like (First Trial Free) in a product is great and a major advantage!

4.People Love Photo’s! - People love video’s and photo’s and it’s an easy way to get yourself out there. Just a few clicks of a button and your face could be making all the difference of people being attracted or not and not only is it a great marketing strategy, it’s very affordable!

5.Online Life Coaching! - Who has time to meet a personal coach at an office? It is needed when you work and is much easier if you can find someone where you work, in your case online is much easier and you can get as much help as you need again through the click of a button like through Email,

Telephone etc. You can go through coaching certificates, but on the web reputation is far more important than a piece of paper that states your qualified!

6.Write Blogs! - Write blogs that have humor and are easy to learn stuff. Again photo’s work well and they don’t even have to be of yourself. Silly, fun photo’s can work well if they are put in together with the right headline. Another method is if you add in stuff about yourself or your experiences, or even just whats going on in your life. People love to hear gossip and whats going on in other people’s lives.

7. Receive Comments! - This is very powerful and is great when you are wanting inspiration. For more details www.workplace-warriors.com Receiving comments is also a great way to get insight in what people really want in society and with today’s times, It’s also a great way to gain knowledge on your topics because people could add on more knowledge!

8.YouTube! - Everyone knows YouTube and along with that comes MySpace. This is an awesome way to get your stuff out there and millions of people are gonna see it and once again it is an extremely effective way to make connections. More reasons why this method is useful is because it is an ONGOING advantage over other marketers because allot of marketers don’t even realise this is so effective and usually chase the things that cost them big bucks to do but this is an easy way to do this and it’s completely FREE! A freebie but a goodie!

9.Sell Space On Your Site! - This is AWESOME because your promoting and selling your stuff online and at the very same time you earn money by promoting other people’s stuff on your sight. This is a great way to earn easy money and not have to do anything for it, not only that if you can link it up to benefit your sight than that’s even better!

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Author: Brian Solis

I’ve been on a recent whirlwind speaking tour recently, sharing and learning all things related to the socialization of marketing and service as well as how to measure these new strategies and tactics.

From San Diego to New York to SF back to New York and then Vegas and SF again, I was reminded that no matter how grand an expert one purports to be, the truth is that we’re all still trying to figure this out as it continually changes - together.

I’m not talking about what to do or how, but what must be done in order to ensure that this global renaissance paves the way for permanent residence in every media property and business through value, education, and reform.

The world of Socialized Media is maturing and along with it, our knowledge, expertise, reach, and personal and represented brands are only flourishing. It will continue as long as we realize that these new social tools and networks require an entirely new commitment and embodiment of what we personify and how we can be a genuine resource to the people who define the communities that are important to us.

In Technorati’s 2008 State of the Blogosphere report, the company observed that blogging is becoming mainstream, leading the way for an Active Blogosphere - defined as the ecosystem of interconnected communities of bloggers and readers at the convergence of journalism and conversation.

I’d also add that as the Active Blogosphere further permeates our daily information consumption and distribution processes, that the Social Web equally becomes pervasive. But, it’s so much more than an Active SocialMediaSphere.

As networks become densely populated and new communities arise and thrive, we’re experiencing a fundamental shift in content creation, distribution, and consumption, thus creating an Active and Participatory Media society that is inspiring and seeding a more literate and enlightened generation.

Blogs and social networks are now part of our daily lives.   * comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008)   - Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US   - Facebook: 41.0 million | MySpace 75.1 million   - Total internet audience 188.9 million

* eMarketer (May 2008)   - 94.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of Internet users)   - 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12%)       * Universal McCann (March 2008)   - 184 million WW have started a blog | 26.4 US   - 346 million WW read blogs | 60.3 US   - 77% of active Internet users read blogs.

YouTube = 10 percent of all internet traffic (source: Ellacoya Networks)    YouTube & Wikipedia among top brands (source: brandchannel.com)    Five of the top 10 websites are social (source: Alexa)   Over 100 million blogs exist (source: Technorati)   120,000 new blogs launched every day (source: Technorati)   1.5 million posts per day (17 per second) (source: Technorati)

Everyone is a Social Media Expert      You’re a purveyor of new media, but then again, so is everyone else it seems. So what are you going to do to rise above the fray while also delivering true, incontestable value to those you’re helping?     Are you an evangelist or a consultant?     Are you an extension of your company brand or are you an employee?

Are you a leader, follower, or are you meandering through your profession? Are you confined to the role of a social marketer or do you represent something with longer-term value? At the end of the day, everything that’s transpiring around us is actually improving the existing foundation for our business, from service to marketing to product development to sales to executive management, and everything in between.

Social marketing revitalizes and empowers every facet of our workflow and its supporting ecosystem. Seeing the bigger picture and tying our knowledge to the valuable feedback from our communities will help us guide businesses towards visibility, profitability, relevance and ultimately customer loyalty.

In every single case, it doesn’t just take an expert; it requires a champion to make an impact.   You are that champion.

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Author: Joshua R. Conklin

WHAT IS A TRIGGER LEAD?   A trigger lead is a hard inquiry into a persons credit for the purposes of a mortgage. These are the best leads in the business.   A trigger lead is a hard inquiry into a potential borrowers’ credit for the purposes of a mortgage evaluation. These leads are not generated by auto loan applications, insurance inquiries, or applying for a credit card.

The credit bureau specifically codes the type of inquiry by industry and credit evaluation type.   All mortgage trigger leads are not alike. We only utilize the credit bureaus who analyze the mortgage inquiries from the previous day and can update and deliver the file on your behalf the next business morning. There are some bureaus who “batch” mortgage inquiries a couple of times a week.

Some brokers sell this data as a daily trigger lead. We only sell leads that are batched daily and delivered on a daily basis. Everything else is a waste of your time, energy, effort, and money.Accept no substitutes. Weekly batched files are much cheaper for a reason - they don’t work. Don’t be pennywise and dollar foolish. Insist on getting the best quality.

All trigger data records are scrubbed against the “do not call list” prior to purchase. Federal law requires that you obtain and maintain a valid subscriber account number (SAN #) from the FTC for all the area codes in which you receive leads. As with all live credit data, a pre-approved firm offer of credit is required. We provide our clients with FCRA compliant telemarketing scripts at no additional charge.

WHO CREATES TRIGGER LEADS?    The national credit bureaus!   All of our trigger data is exactly what the bureau’s have on file for each borrower. They are in the business of recording credit scores, loan balances, repayment histories and countless other pieces of information that empower you to select the exact borrowers that fit your existing portfolio of loan products.

Take the guess work out of your marketing. Utilizing the leads gives you a unique and powerful insight that no other mortgage marketing product can offer.  This type of information is unmatched in showing you only those prospective borrowers who have already identified. This is information provided by the credit bureau’s database system and is flagged by the borrowers “credit pull”.

All the leads you will receive are from consumers that are in the market NOW. These people are looking for a mortgage and have filled out paperwork to have their credit pulled.  This info is not obtained by offering them an incentive, a gift with purchase, or any other form of compensation.

Trigger lead information is only created generated when someone has filled out an authorization to have their credit pulled for the purposes of a mortgage evaluation such as a signed  form 1003. There simply is no better leads service than this. The source and integrity of this data is unparalleled by any other mortgage data source.

HOW DO I USE TRIGGER LEADS TO BOOST MY PIPELINE & CLOSE MORE LOANS?    Trigger Leads work best when called immediately!    Trigger leads provide you with name, address and phone number of the prospective borrower that fits ALL the demographic criteria you have preselected. When searching for a mortgage, prospective borrowers like choices.

Asking them about their situation gives you the opportunity to help borrowers who may have thought they had limited options. Every borrower is motivated by something…credit card debt, a ballooning ARM loan about to reset, cash out…and a hundred other good reasons. Take the time to find out their needs, wants, and desires with the loan they are pursuing.

Doing this will allow you to find the best mortgage product available to fit their needs   Remember as with all live credit data, a firm offer of commitment is required. SmartLeadz gladly provides all of our clients with a copy of an FCRA compliant telemarketing script with the appropriate OPT-OUT info as required by law.

Stop cold calling on lists of people who may or may not have an interest to talk to you. With trigger leads, they’re in the market for a mortgage right now. Capitalize on the power of this data.       WHAT FILTERS CAN I ADJUST TO TARGET MY DESIRED BORROWER?

You chose the filters, we’ll never charge extra. credit score revolving debt loan balance amount    any mortgage on file    number of open mortgage trades    number of home equity trades    most recent mortgage number of months    aggregate balance/open mortgage tradeshighest balance for mortgage trades    mortgage monthly payment (total all mortgages) aggregate balance for all open trades.

FHA mortgage highest balance    VA mortgage highest balance    conventional mortgage highest balance    total number of trades on file    current delinquencies    aggregate balance for open department store trades number of major derogatories in past 24 months number of minor derogatories in past 24 months    bankruptcy eliminator    hispanic ethnicity indicator persons age first name gender.H

ome/property value    home purchase year    home purchase month    home purchase price    loan to value (LTV) ratio    eliminate mobile homes    property indicator    length of residence    estimated income    homeowner code    bankruptcy status    bankruptcy filing date    bankruptcy discharge date

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Author: Gen Wright

You know it is funny in a way. Webmasters have learned that the most important thing that they can do to improve the traffic to their website and to attract attention from the search engines is to build links to their website. But when it comes time to actually start building links to one’’s website, people typically pick out the hardest way to accomplish the task and then they get to work.

Working Hard People have been told about various ways to build links to one’’s website, and they go through the process of picking out the method that they would prefer to use. It is kind of ironic that most people pick the method that they believe will be the easiest and least expensive to achieve, and when all is said and done, they will have picked out the hardest, least effective method of building links.

For example, most newcomers to online business choose:  * Reciprocal links;  * Directory submissions.    With Reciprocal Links, people buy a software package that helps them to search out websites that are supposedly “related” to theirs and then they send an email to the person who owns that website, proclaiming the benefits of trading links and asking for the link.

With directory submissions, webmasters can get software that is supposed to help with the process, but it takes hours just to submit one’’s website to a few dozen directories. Fortunately, there are service providers who also provide submissions to web directories.Regardless of how you get links submitted to web directories, you generally have to pray that those web directories are approving submissions, since most owners have abandoned their directories.

Beyond the time required setting up links in this fashion, and the frustration of getting very few links for the amount of time spent, the worst part of the equation is that the search engines tend to ignore links gained through these methods, and few humans find and follow those links.

Internet newcomers using these methods frequently spend a lot of time trying to promote their websites, and in the end, they have accomplished nothing more than wasting a lot of their limited time and energy.     Working Smart What if I could show you a better way? Would you be intrigued enough by my methods to try them for yourself?

My point in sharing this with you is not to annoy you, but to help you get better results in much less time.    When we launch new websites, we ignore reciprocal links and web directories altogether. We consider both to be a complete waste of time, effort and money.    Let me put this into perspective for you by giving you a real life example.

On November 18th, 2008, we bought and built a new niche domain: http://www.shoppingtraveldeals.com/blog/    Today is December 27th, so this site has only been active for just under six weeks.    We purchased the domain on the 18th, had it set up with content on the 19th, and then on the 20th, we started promoting this website.

We released our first and second reprint articles, promoting this site on the 20th of November. We released our third article on the 24th and the fourth on the 25th. Then we released our fifth article promoting the website on December 15th.    We also set up bookmarks for the main page of the website in Stumbleupon, Digg and Propeller.

In the 39 days since we bought this domain, our website has seen 520 unique visitors. The site received 86 visitors in November and 434 so far in December.    Now here is where it gets interesting.    We have received traffic from 66 unique web pages, and we have received click-through traffic from Google and Windows Live, with 86% of our search traffic coming from Google.

On our search engine traffic, we have received traffic on 171 unique keyword phrases. In order to better understand this search engine traffic, we ran the top 25 search terms through Google to see where our website ranked in the search results, and this is what we came up with: * Two #1 listings;* Ten listings that were ranked from #2 to #4;

* Ten listings that were ranked from #5 to #10; * Two listings on page two of Google’’s search results (#11 to #20);  * One listing on page three of Google’’s results (#21 to #30).    We built this website with the express intent of earning affiliate commissions in the travel industry. The prognosis is good, as we have already started earning money from this website, and in terms of our current earnings, we expect to be in the black against our initial investment into this website, within about three months.

More About Reprint Articles     The concept of the reprint article is to write an article and give it to other webmasters to use in their websites and newsletters, in exchange for a link back to your website.    Those articles that seek to teach something of value typically get published more frequently than those articles geared to sell a product or service.

It is our fervent belief that the Author’’s resource box - the paragraph that follows the article - is the only place where a writer should try to sell his or her wares. The goal of the resource box is to get a reader to your website, and your website is where the real selling should take place.

Reprint articles offer good value to the people who use them wisely. But the online marketer must first be willing to invest the required time or money to have appropriate articles written and/or distributed.

While it is true that I work for an article distribution company, it is important to note that our guiding principle is that each article distribution company will reach a different and unique audience.

As such, we always use our own service to distribute articles and occasionally we use our competitors” article distribution companies as well.

We distribute ALL of our own articles through our own company, because we know that our service does provide real value. But for some articles, we do go to some of our competitors to increase our reach and to reach new audiences.

We actually learned to do this from some of our more successful customers, who suggest that there are certain publishers that only we can reach, while my competitors also have certain publishers that only they are able to reach. As a result, many of our customers use two or three article distribution companies, and we do too.

Working Smarter     While reprint articles is a tool that we consistently utilize to build links and to grow traffic to our websites, there remains a more long-term, yet more valuable approach to building links for our websites.

Link Bait is an idea where you create a resource that people find so useful that they feel compelled to link to it from their own websites.    Look at it this way. With reprint articles, we have to write the article, and then distribute it through the sources we choose to use to get it into circulation. All told, we will invest several hours into writing, and then we will invest another hour to distribute the article.

All told, we will have spent four to five hours to write and distribute this article. In turn, we will receive dozens or hundreds of links from related web pages (the links are from “related web pages”, because we designed the article content to look like what we are trying to promote). Writing and distributing articles typically creates a great return of value for our businesses.

But consider this. Last week, we created a resource page on one of our websites (http://www.techcentralpublishing.com/more-article-directories.php). This page is a list of the +1200 article directories we know to exist on the Internet.

We were not the first website to offer such a list, but we may be the first to give the Internet community an easy method to add new sites and to flag bad sites, automatically from the page where the list is displayed.

If you are able to create a page such as this that people find extremely useful, then people are more inclined to link to your page, without you even asking them to do so. The beauty about building pages like this on the Internet is that all you have to do is to let people know it is there, and then the links will roll in steadily.

One Link Bait page we built on May 1st, 2004 has been used by the public more than 38,000 times according to its built-in counter. And according to a Yahoo search, it has more than 10,000 inbound links from third-party websites.

We built the page (http://www.thephantomwriters.com/link-builder.pl) in a day, wrote one article to let people know it was there, and then we left the page alone for more than four-and-a-half years.    Another link bait we built recently that you may be interested in viewing can be seen here (http://tools.linksandtraffic.com/datacenters.php). This page has been designed to help webmasters see where their website ranks over ten Google Data Centers simultaneously.

Do you see how it is much easier to build one link bait, notify the world, and then to let people link to your web page for you? The time invested in our Text To Hyperlink Converter was less than 12 hours, yet it has attracted +10,000 links with almost no promotion on our part. And this article will generate +100 links in exchange for five hours of our time.

In Conclusion     We are working smart when we write and distribute articles to promote a website. The Shopping Travel Deals site attests to the value of reprint articles to build links and traffic to a new website quickly.

But we are working smarter, when we invest the additional time to build a link bait web page that people will appreciate and link to for us, without any additional effort on our part.

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Author: Michael John Arnold

When most of us think about aerial advertising, or plane banners, we often think about special occasions. Often, aerial billboards are proposing marriage or wishing someone a happy birthday on a milestone birthday.

Those conditions still exist as people seek new and different ways to surprise each other. It’s a fun and unique way to make someone else feel special. But these days, more and more businesses are using aerial advertising to get a message out. These days, it’s nearly 75 percent business advertising to only 25 percent personal ads. In the past, those numbers were nearly reversed.   Why?

Novelty t could be because as advertisers seek more ways to separate themselves from the competition, they seek more novel ways to advertise their business, their product or their service.   Let’s consider it this way. Imagine the average consumer heading to work on the train. He or she reads the newspaper each day and glances at the ads.

Because most ads are black and white, often those get overlooked completely in favor of the ads that are in color. But even then those only get a cursory glance.  They are often for the same products and services and the newspaper reader assumes that those ads are the same day after day so pays little attention.

But put that same consumer on Miami Beach during spring break or at summertime. He or she is resting in the sun, enjoying some rare rest and relaxation. Perhaps there’s some consideration to where to eat dinner later, or where to find a local T shirt shop in which to buy a souvenir T shirt.

When that flying banner appears overhead, this consumer sits up and pays attention. Literally. Often, people stand up and stare at the airplane banner until it’s out of sight or at the very least, they remove their hat and stare skyward as they read the plane banner as it flies overhead.

In this case, then, the novelty of the advertising method is what gets attention. The consumer, who is likely a bit jaded when it comes to advertising, has suddenly noticed an ad and paid attention.

This person has internalized the message they’ve been given and are much more likely to pay attention to it than they might a radio ad, a newspaper ad or even a television ad. In this case, unusual works.

Results    No company manager is going to spend their advertising dollar on something that won’t work. Instead, they are going to spend that dollar on something that brings results. While many forms of advertising can claim good success rates, airplane advertising can claim results that the others often can’t match.

Studies have shown that people pay attention to banner advertising. They will look at the banner as soon as it comes into the sky (or even before if they hear the plane on its way) and they will continue to watch the banner until it flies out of sight.

Advertising results have backed this up. When the state of Maine launched its state lottery, only 8 percent of the advertising budget was allotted to aerial advertising. A study looking at the impact of the media advertising discovered that more than 70 percent of respondents knew Maine was launching a new state lottery.

Although aerial advertising was given 8 percent of the budget, it accounted for 18 percent of the education among respondents. This was eclipsed only by billboard and radio advertising, but those mediums also received a much higher percentage of the advertising dollar.

End result? Aerial advertising works and that’s why, although individuals might still use a flying banner to send a message, or share feelings, it is business that knows the monetary benefit of using aerial advertising well.

Arnold Aerial Advertising is one of the many companies that provide such services. Located in New York,  Arnold Aerial Advertising  provides nationwide service with affordable rates.

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