That’s what John Reese famously said. Banner ads are the most overlooked goldmine on the internet when it comes to traffic generation.

So what are banner ads?

Banner ads are are basically those images you see on websites. They use to be very popular during the dot-com boom. During the dot-com boom, whenever you go to a website, you’ll always see a lot of flashy banners over the place. But after the dot-com boom busted, banner ads became really ineffective. It was said to have a very low click-through-rate, when in fact, it is quite effective.

Most advertisers stay away from banner ads because of its poor reputation and poor effectiveness. But actually, it’s one of the best way of getting dirt cheap visitors - ideal for those on a budget. I still remember during dot-com boom where banner ads soared as high as 100 per 1000 impressions (CPM), but since the dot-com boom busted, a lot of people left behind the idea of using banner advertisements.

And now you can get banner ads dirt cheap, dirt dirt cheap, as low as just $0.2 per 1000 impressions. Some excellent banner advertisement sites you can go to are:

• http://www.valueclickmedia.com
• http://www.hahapaymenowptc.com
• http://adwords.google.com
• http://www.1800banners.com

You can also use banner networks, which are quite effective as well. You are just basically swapping banner impressions with another banner advertisers. So if you display 1000 impressions on your website, then your banner ads will be displayed on other people’s website for 1000 impressions. It is like swapping in a network.

Unlike pay-per-click marketing, banner ads are paid dependent om impressions, in other words, the number of times it is displayed. So the higher the click-through-rate, the less money you need to pay per visitor. So how can you get a high click-through-rate?

Interestingly enough, the most effective banners actually use words. They are images as file, but the images has words on it. Some words you can use to boost your click-through-rate:

• views
• how to
• discover
• secrets
• new

Reverse psychology also works quite good. For example, “Don’t click on here unless you want to make money.”

Lets talk about where you can banners designed and made for you. You can get it outsourced at places like:

• http://www.rentacoder.com
• http://www.guru.com
• http://www.scriptlance.com

I’ll talk more about outsourcing in another post - if I get enough comments or requests

You can also use photoshop or flash and make it yourself. Since it is just words, it should be quite simple to make it.

Let’s recap on what banners ads are: banner ads are just image advertisements that were once really popular during dot com boom, and now has been left behind and forgotten.

Post your comments and let me know what YOU think about banner advertising

Stanley Tang

Technorati Tags: internet marketing strategies, banner advertising, banner ads, traffic generation, internet marketing, make money online

Whether you are new to internet marketing and SEO, or someone who understands a bit about how the internet works, the content you put onto your website is extremely important. This content consists of words necessary to convey important messages to your site visitors. By creating quality content pages, you will be naturally using your keywords and showing the search engines how important your site is.

You are an expert in your field. You know how to get the most out of your products. Why don’t you explain that information to your customers? By telling your customers how to choose the right size, or pick the right color is something you should have no trouble doing. You should set a goal of adding at least one new page to your website every week. I am not talking about adding products, but actual words. Explain why you are the best at what you do, explain how to choose the right item for you, explain why blue is better than green and whatever else you can do to help your customers.

The content of your site is extremely important to your search engine rankings. You will find that it is extremely easy to use your main keywords in content you write for your website. It is also very convenient that you are writing this content, because I will show you how to make it into one way links in a few chapters!

The key to having the best content lies in your competitor’s websites!

Put in your main keywords in Google and take a close look at the top 10 websites. In this case (content generation) take a look at the text they have chosen to include in their web pages. Now take a step back and think about how you can write something better for your site. Take the content you’ve found and put it into your own words (copyright infringement is asking for a lawsuit). While writing this content, improve upon everything your competitors stated. This will give you the type of content that search engines and customers are looking for.

If you end up getting stuck and having difficulty finding ideas for content, search article databases and take the opportunity to read information from other experts in your field. I guarantee you will find many ideas and different articles that you didn’t even think of. You can find many article databases in the Resource Section of this course. This is the best part about business on the internet, there is always someone thinking of something that you haven’t thought of yet!

Technorati Tags: internet marketing, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, content

Something weird has been going on with the Internet…

Just 3 years ago, Myspace was bought out for only $580 million dollars yet they had 200 million members.

Then a year later, YouTube gets bought out for a massive $1.65 billion dollars by Google.

And now, rumors has it that Facebook is valued at $15 billion dollars. But it only has 70 million members - three times less members than MySpace yet worth 25 times more.

Now let’s do some maths…

Myspace - $580 million dollars for 200 million members =  $2.9 per member

Facebook - $15 billion dollars  for 70 million members = $214 per member

That’s a 7300% inflation rate in just the past three years!

OK, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit since at the time Myspace was bought out, it did not have 200 million members. But still, there’s clearly a big inflation going on with the value of internet start-up companies. Doesn’t this remind you of the 1999/2000 dot-com crash? Remember how advertisement rates, especially for banner ads, soared crazily high to as much as $100 per 1000 impressions? And now, it’s only $0.01 per 1000 impressions?

Is this a sign of a dot-com crash? What is your view?

Anyways, I’ll say for NewsCorp (the company which bought out MySpace), a 7300% return on investment in just three years is not bad

Technorati Tags: internet marketing, internet start-up, myspace, facebook, youtube, newscorp, dot-com crash

Out in the brick and mortar world of commerce, reputation and credibility matter, of course. They are pretty apparent. In your own neighborhood you know which merchants are considered honest and which merchants don’t have a good reputation.

You trade with the merchants who are considered honest and trustworthy and who have credibility within the community. The internet is really no different that any community or small town in America. Reputation and credibility are everything. Without them you have a very small (if any) chance of success.

Building credibility in the brick and mortar world is done one customer at a time. A merchant depends a lot on what his customers tell others about him.

If the merchant is helpful and aids his customers in solving their problems and if he gives out free advice that is good, his credibility increases and so does his business. Building credibility on the internet is basically done exactly the same way.

As an internet marketer, you must ‘prove’ yourself to be reliable and knowledgeable about the niche in which you do business. This is the way that you build credibility and when you build credibility, sales just naturally follow. Sales do not come first. Credibility comes first.

There are many ways in which you can build your credibility in the world of internet marketing. You can write and market articles and E-Books that provide good and correct information. You can post to blogs and forums and prove to the other members that you know what you are talking about.

You can start our own forum or blog on your own website. You can advertise and when people come to your website they find help that solves their problems then you are building credibility.

The fact is, your business will never be any bigger than your credibility factor. Build credibility and success will come to you.

Technorati Tags: credibility, success, internet marketing strategies

The first step in doing internet marketing is to choose your URL. The URL is the web address that someone types in when going to a website. The URL you use for your internet marketing business is very important and must be chosen carefully. The URL you use must have your most important keywords in the URL whenever possible. If you are offering televisions, you should absolutely have the word “television” in your URL. Unless your business is already established, you have the ultimate freedom in what your business will be called. If your business already exists, you are more limited as to what URL you choose.You have specific goals to consider when deciding on a domain name (URL):

1. Is it easy for your customers to remember?
2. Are any of your keywords in it?
3. Does it properly reflect your business?

As you develop (or have developed) your website, make sure you name the pages accordingly. If you have a page dedicated to Phillips televisions, the pages URL should be something like PhillipsTelevisions.com. Take special care when creating pages to ensure that your keywords are in the URL. Search engines look at individual page URLs and use that as one of the many factors in ranking a page for keywords.

The most important aspect of your domain name: You must check to see if your domain has ever been used by someone else. If your brand new domain name was used for spam or unethical internet practices, it will be extremely difficult to get it indexed in the major search engines. This is not an issue you want to deal with. Check out your potential domain name at http://www.archive.org and see if it has ever been owned. If it has been owned, take a look at the archives to see if someone was breaking any rules with this domain. Trust me; you will thank me if you find out that it has been abused in the past. There is no reason to make search engine optimization harder on us if we can avoid it!

Technorati Tags: domain name, web address, url, search engine optimization, internet marketing

There are many viral marketing strategies. Some items lend themselves better to being viral content than others.Articles are one of the easiest and most reliable methods. Basically, you offer free information regarding the use, history, or other information of interest surrounding your product. Not only will this boost your search engine ranking, you will be able to include some vital viral pieces on the page. The first is the link to your store, or other contact information. The second is permission for the reader to use the information on the page for their purpose, as long as they leave your contact information intact.

Free eBooks are another valuable tool to viral marketers. Ideally, the free eBook contains solid information that readers will want to pass along to others. Within the ebook, there will also be links to related products. These can be from your own store, or from the stores of others. One of the most satisfying aspects of viral eBooks is you can form an affiliate network that will make money for you.

Finally, free softwares can also be a valuable promotional aid. You may want to include a demo version of software, along with links where the reader can purchase the full version. Some other software related items include free screensavers, skins, cellphone ring tones, and desktop wallpaper.

Your choice of transmission method is critical. Because you want to reach large numbers of people, there is the potential that your viral sales literature will become as useless as spam to the recipients. As an example, the foolish viral marketer might try to bombard guestbooks with links to their information. Not only will his/her links be deleted, the webmaster may well make a point to never buy the spammers product!

With a little bit of care in the choice of transmission methods, the issue of being a spammer is easy to avoid. Making effective use of groups, message boards, and other communication structures is vital to the success of any viral marketing campaign. While you can make your own message boards and groups, it is easier, cheaper, and faster to place your literature within the established groups of others. Since all people that might be interested in your product don’t belong to all groups, posting on many forums gives you the opportunity to reach new people.

Your objective is to induce others to pass your information along. Thus, an understanding of human motivation and behavior is also important. While rewards and incentives are helpful, you need to see what else you can use as leverage. As an example, you might look at the current news items, and see if there is something there that can be turned into a joke or comical image.

When carrying out a viral traffic marketing campaign, you will also need to make sure that your server can accommodate the increased traffic. Together with that, if you are selling a product that needs to be manufactured and shipped, that each member in the chain of delivery can handle the increase in orders.

While there are a number of items you need to keep in mind before launching a viral traffic marketing campaign, the rewards of a successful venture are limitless. In addition to the basic design of the viral sales literature, you will also need to make sure that your business, and that of your suppliers, can handle all of the new orders that will come as the result of your viral marketing efforts.

Technorati Tags: viral marketing, internet marketing strategies, make money online

1. Pay-Per-Click
2. Banner Advertising
3. Ezine Advertising
4. Text Links
5. Leads (co-registration)
6. Offline Marketing
7. TV, Radio & Podcasts Advertising
8. Newspaper Advertising
9. Word of Mouth Referrals
10. Paid Inclusion
11. Traffic Packages
12. Classified Ads
13. Cost-Per-Action
14. Search Engine Optimization
15. Article Marketing
16. Affiliate Programs
17. Press Release
18. Directories
19. Forum Marketing
20. Email Signature
21. Shopping Sites
22. Shareware-Download Sites
24. Traffic Exchange
25. Banner Exchange
26. Link Exchange
27. CPA Networks
28. Affiliate Networks
29. Desktop Messaging
30. Contests & Races
31. Tele Seminars & Conferences
32. Write Testimonials
33. Surveys
34. Create a Product
35. Expired Domains
36. Exit Traffic
37. Myspace
38. Google, Yahoo & AOL Groups
39. Facebook
40. Social Bookmarking
41. Blogging
42. Video Sites
43. Podcasting
44. Content Sites
45. Wikipedia & Wikihow
46. Yahoo Answers
47. Return traffic
48. List Building
49. Viral Traffic
50. Joint Ventures
51. Product Launches
52. Cross Promotion (Integration Marketing)
53. Giveaway Events & Bonuses
54. Freebies For List Owners

Technorati Tags: internet marketing strategies, traffic generation strategies, increase website traffic, website traffic, traffic generation

Here are several ways to maximize your traffic for your pay-per-click marketing campaign:

Keyword Research - The first key is to do your keyword research. This may sound obvious, but not many people do this. Keyword research is the core of PPC advertising, because PPC is all about targeting keywords. You need to find out what people are looking for and the best phrases to use for your campaign. You cannot just go in blind, thinking you can earn thousands of dollars, because you are just going to end up being eaten alive. So you have to do keyword research if you are serious about PPC advertising.

Below are the keyword research websites I use:

http://www.spyfu.com - It gives you:
• Average Cost Per Click
• Current Adwords Ads
• Organic Results
• Related Terms and Concepts
• Terms Others Buy With Your Main Term
• Categories
This is a great tool used for serious competitor research.

Keyword Elite – This is a paid keyword research tool that I highly recommend. I personally use it and found it very useful. It is much better than the free keyword research sites:

http://www.stanleytang.com/recommends/keywordelite

Split Testing - You should always create at least two ads for any particular campaign so that you can run one ad against the other and test to see which performs best and which one has a higher return on investments and click through rates. Google rewards ads with good click through rate by giving you a higher ad placement, so a higher CTR means less cost per click. Once you have created two ads and see which one performs best, the one that performs best becomes the new control and you create a new ad and so on. So you are constantly tracking, testing and improving your ads.

Creating Winning Headlines – If you have a good headline, people will click on it, even if your ad is crap. By split testing, you should be able to create winning headlines.

Global Negatives – By having global negatives, or negative qualifiers, you are able to qualify the traffic and filter out the rubbish traffic. For example, you do not want freebie seekers clicking on your ad when you are selling something. So you can have a price tag in your ad to stop freebie seekers from clicking on your ad, so that you can decrease your cost. You can also filter out the rubbish traffic by telling people what your product: is it a downloadable product? Is it a physical product? Some people prefer downloadable products over physical products.

Benefits - Write the benefits in your ad since benefits can improve your return on investment and click through rates. Use the word “you”, like “you can get…”, “you will discover…”, “you will make more money with this…” etc.

Targeted - Keep your ad targeted, not broad. Do not use general keywords such as “shoes”. You should narrow it down by using terms such as “tennis shoes”. Broad match is usually used by lazy advertisers or advertisers with a huge budget. The problem with broad match is that it decreases your click through rate and return on investment, so you should always try and target and narrow down your keyword market. This may mean that you will have to create one ad per keyword.

Capitalization - Another tip is to capitalize the beginning of every single word so it looks more professional. Would you rather click on an ad that looks like this:

Or like this:

The first one right? So make sure your ad copy looks professional. By the way, capitalization also includes capitalizing your URL.

Ask Questions - Another tip to increase your ad performance is by asking questions. Asking questions creates curiosity.

Avoid Top Paying Slots – By creating great ads using the techniques I have mentioned, you should be able to work your way to the top, rather than stumping up the cash.

Do Not Go Into Bidding Wars – You want to be No.1, but your competitors also wants to be No.1. Do not fight for the first place. The best thing you should do is to take a step back, take a deep breath and consider is it really just that important to be No.1? If you have a better product and a better ad copy, your click through rate and relevancy will help you get to No.1, even though you are still paying the same amount.

Conversion Rates - Track your conversion rates and return on investment. That way, you will be able to work out how much each of your visitors work, and what price you should bid for your keyword. You can work out your conversion rate by calculating how much visitors it take to make a sale.

For example, your website sells video games for $10. And your conversion rate is 1%, in other words it takes 100 visitors to make a sale. Then your maximum click price should be 10 cents. Get it? You can calculate your maximum click price using this formula:

Profit per Sale / Conversion Rate = Maximum Click Price

By using this formula, you will be able to work out how much your visitor worth and what your maximum click price should be.

Call-To-Action - By having call-to-action phrases in your ad copy, it allows the visitor what to expect, meaning your click through rate and return on investment will increase.

Learn From The Experts - My final piece of advice is to learn from the experts. Just follow what the Adwords and PPC experts do. You can get a free ebook which goes into more detail on Google Adwords here:

http://www.stanleytang.com/recommends/beatingadwords

Technorati Tags: google adwords, pay-per-click marketing, ppc advertising

Because of the fierce competition in the industry, some search engine optimization firms began using tactics that the search engines have labeled as “black-hat”, or “illegal”, in the search engine world. Every major search engine (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) has issued rules and guidelines listing several of these black-hat tactics. Failure to comply with these guidelines will most likely get you de-indexed, or worse, banned from the search engines.

Black hat SEO is the intentional misleading of search engines and their spiders. Nothing is worth the risk of being booted out of a search engine index. This is an article on what NOT to do for search engine optimization on your website.

DO NOT DO ANY OF THESE THINGS TO YOUR WEBSITE!

1. Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is the intentional overuse of a particular term or phrase in hopes of achieving higher search engine rankings for that term or phrase. The best way to avoid this is to fill your page with text that was written naturally and do not over use your target phrase. Often keyword stuffing leads to sentences sounding funny or awkward. Not only is this deceptive, but your customers will see it and run.

2. Hidden Text

Hidden text is setting the color of text the same as the background of a webpage. By having your text and background the same color, the text or repeating phrases is invisible to human visitors but not search engine bots. Search engines now look for the color of the text and compare it to the color of the background. Some webmasters create a colored image and set it as the background to the page to avoid being detected; this tactic does circumvent the search engines, as they are not able to tell the color of an image, however, your competitors will be quick to report you to the search engines if they find you are using this strategy.

3. Cloaking

Clocking, in short, is intentionally displaying different information to human visitors than to search engines. There are numerous ways of cloaking content, and not all have been determined “black-hat”. Would you be willing to share you tactics with the search engines themselves? Black-hat cloaking will work for a short time, however, you run a high risk of having your domain banned permanently. There are ethical reasons for cloaking and they are not bad if used properly.

4. Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are “landing” pages added to a website to specifically target a keyword or phrase. Often these doorway pages have no value to visitors and only exist to capture the attention of search engines. Doorway pages are added specifically to mislead search engine spiders and will get you removed from an index faster than you can blink.

5. Redirects

Redirect pages have several white-hat (usable) purposes, however, when used as a black-hat tactic – often combined with doorway pages – they serve as a red flag to search engines. Sneaky Redirect pages take a visitor from one page to another automatically and normally are used to guide search engines to page they will like better than the one you send your customer to.

6. Duplicate Site

This is not often used but, when affiliate programs were first gaining in popularity, webmasters would create several copies of the same sales page in hopes that quantity over quality would prevail and they would make a sale from one of their many websites selling a product. With the advancement of search engines, they are able to find excessive duplicate content and will penalize you heavily for it.

Technorati Tags: seo, search engine optimization, black hat seo

Finally, this is the longly awaited “How To Overcome Information Overload - Part 2″! After the last post on information overload, many subscribers have requested if I could go into more details as it was rather brief.
So here we go. The KEY to overcoming information overload is…

Focus.

That’s it. Even if you get bombarded with emails after emails from those gurus promoting their latest internet marketing products, you’ve got to keep yourself focused. You’ve got to stay on track on what you’re doing right now, and not get distracted.

Rather than buying every single product that comes down the pipe every week, look at the big picture. Look at what you’re doing right now in internet marketing. Are you doing affiliate marketing? List building? Traffic generation? Copywriting? Blogging? Pick, focus and specialize in one of those methods.

Now that whenever a new internet marketing product comes out, all you have to do is see if it fits within your big picture of what you’re currently doing. It really boils down to looking at your internet marketing business as a whole. If you’re doing list building right now, then purchase only list building products. If an Adsense product comes out, ignore it. Even if it claims that it’s the “latest, revolutionary tactic to generating instant $100,000 paychecks”, ignore it, because it doesn’t fit in with what you’re doing. Don’t get distracted. Focus on what you’re doing.

In terms of overcoming information overload on a day-to-day basis is to write down your purpose for the day on a sticky note and put it on your monitor. That way, whenever you start going off track and reading other things, you’ll remind yourself by looking at the note and get back to what you’re doing. If you feel you’ve gone off track, force yourself to ask this question: “Does this really fit with my purpose for being online right now?”

Stanley Tang

Technorati Tags: internet marketing, information overload, focus, time management