Power Ideaz

Pinaki Ghosh

Google allots a value to almost all the web-pages in the Google index which is based on a complex formula. The search that Google performs has the results based on algorithm, which includes the Page Rank value. The higher is the Google Page Rank of your site, the more are your chances of getting a top listing, when someone performs a search Larry Page) and Sergey Brin   using keywords from your site.
Larry Page bought in and developed the Page Ranks System (The name Page rank comes from his surname) and Sergey Brin at Stanford University, while researching on a new search engine project. Together, Page and Brin gave birth to Google Inc.
You can easily download and install the Google toolbar (which is pretty simple). Then by choosing the ‘advanced’ option and you can view the Page Rank of any site on the toolbar.
The way Page rank works is best understood by the mathematicians as it’s complicated and involves a lot of calculations. For you to understand, let me put it in a simpler form:
PRA = 1-d + dPRt1/Ct1 + … + PRtn/Ctn
To understand the above Google PageRank formula, here’s the English meaning: The more links that point to your site, the higher is your rank. The higher is the Google PageRank of the sites, pointing (linking) to your site, the higher will be your Google PageRank.
Supposing, a site with PageRank 10, and 5 other sites link to your site it will give you more value, than any site with PageRank 20, and 100 other sites linking to your site. Besides, your PageRank goes on increasing if other sites with content similar to your site point to your site. Thus you see the formula has a lot of variables, and complications.

Your Google PageRank can be increased by:
(a) Getting the higher number of incoming links i.e. links to your site. The PageRank for your site falls by the increasing number of outgoing links.

(b) By getting the incoming links to your site from good sites with high PageRank, will increase your Google PageRank!

(c) To increase your PageRank you can increase the number of pages of your site.

(d) Your PageRank also increases if other sites with similar web content point to your site.
Every month your Google PageRank changes once, as Google updates the rankings once a month.

The world of online business through cyberspace has provided people from all over the world the opportunity of connecting and communicating.. www.focusonprosperity.com.au, is an Australia based company offering home based business opportunity. www.focusonprosperity.com.au.  is the business segment of ‘Life path Unlimited’, a company offering products in the personal development and personal growth industry.
As you log in, the company offers an individual-
1) A home based business opportunity with a unique team support.
2) Personal and prosperity development products that are claimed to be the best in the   industry that transforms life.
3) An opportunity to create an executive-level income within 4 months or so, without being involved in selling, convincing, monthly product purchase, any inventory or product delivery.
4) Secrets of business success from leaders in the online marketing industry.
5) Personal one-on-one training that will help the entrepreneurs to establish and grow their Home Based business.
6) A home based business that is positioned for explosive growth over the next 12 months, transforming the life of the individual as well as the people with whom they work with.
The most unique feature that I came across while going through the business plans of the company is the compensation plan that it offers in the direct sales industry. Even after retirement, individuals will still be receiving a residual income. Apart from the aspect of self development, this is one reason why I would recommend this home based business opportunity.

Good Points
The website has a unique page layout. After logging in to the site, a visitor need not wonder where to go and look for the required information for setting up a business. Every bit of necessary information is laid out in the most simple and unsophisticated way, so that even the most ordinary person can avail of all the information that he/she is looking for. The site has been built up in the most user friendly way as possible. It consists of all the top features that a good website should have.
1)      The site has easy readability, with background colors that make the text attractive and pleasing to the eye.
2)      In terms of navigability, the site is unique as the visitors do not have to look for information and be frustrated .Neither do they face any hassles, as everything is laid out before them in the simplest form. They do not have to click here and there for any information or query that they have. The division on Citizen Corps provides the visitors provides all research based information on home based business, which will guide the individual in the decision making process.
3)      The site loads quickly and the visitors do not have to wait for a long time.
4)      There is no dead link on any page, and the layout ensures that if a visitor visits that page he/she should get all the relevant information regarding the business. It also gives the visitor a very clear picture at the first instance whether this is actually what he/she is looking for.
5)      The content is apt, precise and to the point and interesting for the visitors, and provides a vivid description to the visitor what the website is about. It also contains the contact details of entrepreneurs Brad and Sonya, so that apart from the general information that the site presents, visitors can also personally contact them with any other queries related to the home based business that individuals might have.
6)      The site has been created aptly keeping the target audience of prospective home based business owners in mind. It is simple and bold, expressing what the visitors can expect from the site, an exposure to the business by Robert Kiyosaki, a contact page at the bottom for visitors to fill up to get a glimpse into the reviews that would help them to make a choice, and information about the entrepreneurs themselves.
Suggestions for improvement
1.    After you have glanced the home page, you discover that you cannot locate any other link and wonder where to go from there. There is a form below where you have to leave your name, email address and that is the gate pass to the other pages. Here I had two questions that came up in my mind. This form will discourage a majority of visitors to visit the other pages, because nowadays people do not want to leave their email addresses in order to avoid receiving spam. This is why I left a fake name and email address and while I was wondering whether it will block my way; it allowed me inside! Thus you can fool the system and enter the internal pages leaving a bogus name and email identity.

2.    Though there is an excellent support team provided by ‘Life Path Unlimited’, which truly leads individuals to a wide range of options to choose from, a website that contains all information in a comprehensive manner will always be a better choice for individuals who are venturing out for a home based business setup. When a visitor will get all relevant information from a single site, he/she will remain a permanent visitor and customer to that site.

By Pinaki Ghosh

If you have still not heard of Alexa; don’t feel shy, beauause many internet users still are not aware of Alexa. So, what’s Alexa?

It helps in giving rankings to the sites, and is therefore an extremely powerful tool which can compare the traffic of a site to the rest of the web. Alexa a brand owned by the very famous www.Amazon.com, gives ranking to any site with the help of the users participation. It also includes the webmaster services and data services.
To see the ranking of your site you can either log on to http://www.alexa.com, and then type in the name of any site, whose rank you would want to see, or else install the Alexa toolbar on your browser which is much more convenient. After you have installed the Alexa toolbar, you can view the various numbers on the toolbar, as you visit the sites. These numbers are basically the rankings of the sites. The lowest the number, the more visited site it is. Like Yahoo ranks no1, Google no5 and Amazon.com no 14; it means Yahoo is the most visited site on the internet.
Want to know how it works? As you install the Alexa toolbar on the browser, it starts scrutinizing all the sites that you visit; at the same time using the data to rank the sites. Then Alexa casts a vote to that site for the day. However you do not get more votes if you visit the same site several times during the same day. Soon after, It monitors the number of pages of the site you visit, and then adds up the number of pages you visit during the day (again, it does not count the same page twice, if you have visited it twice). The reach is the counting of each view, and the counting of page visits is called page views. Alexa combines these figures and uses the same data for three months to calculate the traffic visiting a site.

By Pinaki Ghosh

To know the importance of the keyword density, we must know the importance of the keywords first. It is a word used to find the similar web pages. It was popularized during the early days of Internet search, as it was not possible to ask natural language questions and find the desired sites. Searches gave the best results if only a few keywords were chosen and searched for. These “keywords” capture the essence of the topic in a question and were likely to be present on all sites listed by the search engine. Many modern search engines have methods for determining which words in a search string are important and are ought to be treated as keywords. Words like articles (a, an, the) and the conjunctions (and, or, but) are not keywords as almost every English-language site on the internet. Searching for these words is a mere waste of time!

Most of the websites present themselves high on the list of the search results by increasing the keyword density. Which means, if the keywords appear frequently on the website, there are chances that the search engines would find your site several times and list them high.

The term keyword density mathematically means the number of times the main keyword would appear in any passage, which can be divided by the total number of words in the passage and then multiplied by 100. Like a 5% keyword density means that the keyword appears 5 times for every 100 words of the passage. 4% - 7% is normally the best ratio of keyword appearance. The keywords should not at one place, and must be spaced out throughout the content. The search engines fine the artificial and unjustified ways in which the search engine optimization takes place, like by increasing keyword density, like repeating keywords one after another spacing them out by commas. Some of the black hats SEOs use techniques like hidden keywords by making the keyword color same as the background color, and increasing keyword density. The search engines penalize anyone using text color very close to the background color. Penalized sites therefore, get a poor ranking.

You can take the professional help of www.writer4me.com for your site in this regard.

By Pinaki Ghosh 

In internet marketing, a ‘link’ has a lot of weightage. The successful links can make a site rise high to unbelievable popularity. Most importantly you need to know about the Links which are the other sites pointing to your site and the Back-links which is your site pointing to other sites.

1. Good content earns natural links
A site can get linked if it serves good content. Just like visitors, the search engines love good content. It may be slow but is an effective way of link-baiting.

2. Make directory submissions
The directories are mere sites which give you the names and links of hundreds of sites categorically arranged.
There are 4 types of directories:
• Pay-for-inclusion directories,
• Reciprocal required directories,
• Free directories,
• Niche directories
Give in your site to the most popular directories or just hire a professional SEO to complete the job with a professional attitude. To get the names of hundreds of directories you can refer to the following site:
• Strongest Links, http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php
• SEOCompany,http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/web-directories.html

3. Link exchange
Exchange links with other webmasters works in your favor too. Your sites will back-link to their sites, and their sites in exchange will link to your sites. If you have some 25 sites it will work even better.

4. Interlink your own sites
To make your less popular sites prosper with the help of your popular sites you should not link up all your sites, especially the ones that have no relevance.

5. Go slow with adding links in the beginning
Google can ban your site if you rapidly place hundreds and thousands of links to your site within the first few days of starting. Add the links after starting your site. It also includes the links which you place in the forum-posts, bulletin forums, or social networking sites like Orkut.

6. Avoid links from gambling or adult sites
The gambling sites, poker sites, or adult sites are banned on Google. Hence, Google will ban your site if it is linked with gambling or adult sites. Also, these sites are known to send harmful viruses, adware and spam.

7. Mix and match
Google prefers that your links come from absolutely different sites (different C class IPs). A good advice is, mix up links from trusted, old sites as well as new sites. Not more than 15% - 20% of your back-links to a site should be from PR 5+ pages.

Your site will get additional importance with Google and other search engines, if links to your site come of sites with related or similar content. Besides you should also remember to link not only the home page, but other pages as well. With these tips in mind going wrong is next to impossible.

By Pinaki Ghosh 

The Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns work the best in comparison of the other ad campaigns. By using the keyword search, the Google, Yahoo and MSN search engines have worked in benefit of the people. But they also give the special benefits to the sites which pay them. If you shell out some money with the Google AdWords, your site’s name will flash on a good ranking on the search results. If you pay the ‘Yahoo Search Marketing’ then even Yahoo will list you in the 3 major positions on their search engine. This means they control the natural listings and pull up the names of sites that pay them.
Discover the 7 secrets to improve the performance of your PPC ads. To know more, read the following:

1. Optimize
‘Optimize’ has two meanings:
(a) Make the advertisement copy or banner perfect, professional-looking, and target oriented. As you pay heavily to run the ad campaigns, you must understand which phrase or copy will attract the maximum number of visitors. Use a professional and get the banners and the copy done, rather than trying them yourself. (b) Make your site optimized with a high keyword density for the keywords which you will be paying to run the PPC ad-campaign. Most of the people make the mistake of paying for the PPC keywords, but not optimizing them in their own sites, which means their sites have a low keyword density, resulting in poor campaign-result and wasted funds.

2. Consider increasing your budget if you want your PPC ads to appear more frequently
If some organizations which lie in the same category bid for the same keyword; the highest bidder, will appear on position no. 1 in the search engine listings, followed by the second highest bidder and then the third. When the ads appear in any other websites, the advertisements of the highest bidder (and the payer) will appear most frequently followed by the others. If you want your ads to appear on position number 1, or more frequently, you have to consider paying more.

3. Go with the giants
There are a lot many organizations which provide the PPC ad service, but it is always the best to go with the biggies like the Google (AdWords), Yahoo (Yahoo Search Marketing) or MSN (MSN AdCentre). The others like LookSmart, Kanoodle, Findwhat, BlowSearch are good but cannot be compared and their tools for preventing click fraud are not so well developed.

4. Avoid Flash and flashy pages
The Flash landing pages and pages with music take a long time to load, resulting in visitors pressing the ‘back’ button and moving away from your website. This will be a heavy loss for you. Not only will you lose your customers and still have to pay for their visit. Colorful pages do not look good or professional. The light pages in combination with the formal colors look best to the visitors.

5. Make the correct judgment about landing pages
Most of the sites make their guests land on their home page from the PPC ads. The home page is not always the best page for the business purposes. Try and understand which of the pages are the most convenient to give the maximum business, and link the ads to that particular page. The page should have the ‘buy now’ tabs which can be located conveniently.

6. Run campaigns seasonally
Since these campaigns are not a minor cost, it is advisable to run them seasonally, mostly during your high seasons.

7. Narrow down on keywords
Try and avoid adding many keywords or keywords that are not specific, as that would result in increasing your budget unnecessarily. Mostly try to target the specific interest groups rather than the entire world. Like, ‘vintage car tyres’ will cost much less than just ‘tyres’, as there will be people bidding for the keyword ‘tyres’.
If you’re bidding for $40 PPC, you will have to pay $40 in advance, and the entire sum will be deducted from your account when 100 people click their mouse on your name in the list. Thus, when your PPC balance reaches zero, you will have to pay in advance again.

By Pinaki Ghosh 

To fulfill your dream of earning money over the internet at a very low budget is better known as drop shipping. You can sell the items over the net, and at the same time stay out of the hassles and the costs of buying, storing and shipping them to the customer. You can be the seller and not have your own infrastructure nor worry about shipping the items. All you need to do is advertise a product (or a number of products) on your website, or on Ebay and get orders from interested buyers. You can charge the rate from the buyers and then arrange for a shipper who can transport the product to the buyer. You need to pay the drop shipper his cost though. The difference between the price you pay to the drop shipper and the price you receive from your buyer is your profit. Isn’t that wonderful? You can actually look out for profits for yourself here. In other words, you’re the middle person. The most important stage of this business is your personal website and of course, eBay. The business on eBay isn’t free. It does have a small cost. It’s very much advisable that you shouldn’t be selling too many items on eBay as the start up cost will equal your profits. You must go in for a limited number of items. You must get on with a little research just so to understand the price of each and every item. If you observe there’s a lot of competition at eBay for the drop shipping. Try and be different from your competitors. Also, try not to use the same images of a particular product that the others are using. Give your own write up of the item, instead of using the same material. This makes you stand apart from the others.
To find a good drop shipper can be a difficult job altogether. One may find a lot of drop shippers over the net, they end up confusing you. They claim to handle too many products.  You must think in such cases. They must have thousands of square feet of store space and also a warehouse to stock those ‘thousands of items’. What these drop shippers actually do is store a few items themselves, and get the rest from other drop shippers, or whole-sellers. Go for actual whole-sellers, who will act as drop shippers, with proven track record, who can be trusted upon for prompt delivery. Otherwise you might have to draw a line to your business, for negative feedback from your buyers who did not receive items on time.

By Pinaki Ghosh

The Internet marketing Gurus like Rand Fishkin promote that an internet-based business depends 60% on the sales page and 40% on the product itself. The 1 page mini websites mostly rely on the sales page. The total business rests on the same. A bad sales page is more of less like a death knell for your site, though it sells good.

Here are the 7 golden rules for writing golden sales letters that can bring you good business:

1. Shocking start
Begin your sales copy by saying something that sounds negative but creates certain amount of excitement. The market experts claim that a negative heading can be much more effective than a positive one. Suppose you read something like, “Throw your computer out of the window!” you will be curious to read further, and it continues in smaller letters, “Because you are going to get frustrated with the insane traffic flow that is going to hit you”. It does sound effective right?

2. Tell your own success story
Try writing a story in your own words, which is spicy and at the same time talks about your success. It does not have to be entirely true! Write in a very personalized form which is much appealing to the reader. Boast about the possessions! Most of us need a leader to follow.

3. Use testimonials
Post the testimonials of the buyers who have been satisfied alongside the main body of the sales letter. To make the testimonials look more genuine, paste photographs of people who have given the testimonials and the links to their sites.

4. Give free gifts
This trick works well! Give away e-books for free if someone buys one product. This way they feel satisfied as at the price of one, they get a number of things.
5. Use bullets
When one uses the bulleted points, it helps the content look better than the paragraph text – this is what the expert copywriters like Tom Johnson of the American University in Cairo believe. Not only are they readable, they also carry a point much more effectively into the mind of the reader. Log on to http://www.prc.dk/user-friendly-manuals/ufm/tip-9810.htm#WhyBullets to know more.

6. Buy it today
Most of the readers almost always forget to come back to the site, unless of course that is his requirement. Thus, you have to make the visitor take out the credit card as soon as he visits; if he decides to think over the offer later, he is never going to do so. Thus, it is important to show urgency or a deadline for any offer.

7. Increase the price and give a discount
Although is sounds funny, it works miracles. If you have decided to sell your product for $29.95, make the price $79.95 and then give a $50 discount. This heavy discount will make the real price of $29.95 sound very reasonable.
On a better side, it is always good to give an iron strong word of guarantee. The guarantees work well to convince your buyer. Your guarantee is even stronger if you can offer a 30 day money back trial offer. If your sales copy for the internet-based business is based on the 7 secret tips, you’re going to be very happy about your profits!

By Pinaki Ghosh

One can never sell a car at the original price that he got, but in the case e-books, one can benefit over the same. E-books have a re sale value also, there aren’t any chances that anyone would sue you for doing that as you aren’t breaking the law. Although you must change the information like the name of the publisher and the writer etc i.e., you must customize them.  Most of the e-books come with the master resell rights which means after the resale you are permitted to keep the full profits. You do not have to share the royalty with anyone. Ebooks on success, stress-management, travel and leisure, understanding human psychology, relationship development sell extremely well on eBay. Prices of books range from $9.95 (books on magic tricks or cooking recipes) to $79.95 (real good books on making huge money). The prices of most e-books are around $29.95 (travel, success formula, stress management, relationship-development, understanding human psychology and technical).

To find out a better way to keep your profits high on eBay, read on: 

1. Do your research before you start selling
Even before you become an eBay seller, do some amount of research about eBay, and how things go about on eBay. In a matter of days you will be able to identify your potential competitors and at what cost they are offering their e-books. There are 2 ways to sell:
(a) Selling to the highest bidder
(b) fixed price selling (advisable for selling e-books).  

2. Write a strong sales copy
The second step would be to write a strong, creative sales copy which can be used for eBay listings and that would work. If you are not very good with copywriting, hire a freelancer for this purpose, because, you will constantly need the help of this person for various e-books that you would work on. A convincing copy will always attract your potential buyers’ attention towards your product. Not only should the sales copy be attractive, but it should be SEO friendly; which means that it should be rich in keywords. That will also make your product search-engine-friendly.

3. Invest on a good e-book cover
If you want to step into business, why hamper the quality by not working or spending too much on the e-book cover! Experts like Brent Turner (CEO of eCover Frog, http://ecoverfrog.com) say that almost 40% buyers are attracted towards e-books by the image i.e. the e-book cover. Place an order with a professional designer to get a first grade e-book cover design. You can use this image (or images) in the eBay listings of your e-book.

4. Offer multiple payment options
Give the buyers as well as the bidders multiple options to clear the payments. In fact, offer them as many options as possible. This will also increase your chances of selling more.

5. Add shipping costs
Shipping costs do not come into consideration if you offer an option of direct download on payment, but if you opt to send your e-books in compact discs by snail mail; you must calculate and include the shipping cost which would be fair enough.

6. Maintain professionalism
Keeping the attitude and the relation completely professional right from the start, would help in the future. You must be extremely prompt and at the same time provide good service; you can change the taxes wherever necessary, and also register the business with the government.

7. Feedback
The system of the exchange of feedback with the buyer on eBay is extremely good. This helps in building a good relation with the buyer. There’s a lot of comfort in the picture. The feedback is you certificate which will motivate the other buyers. There are namely 3 types of feedback that can be given: (a) positive (b) neutral, and (c) negative. You must stay in the good books of your buyer! Just be frank, if the buyer has been rather nasty, give him the same kind of feedback. It is advisable sometimes not to leave a feedback at all, instead of leaving a neutral feedback for your buyer, as that can attract a negative for you.
Ultimately, you must be wondering how good is business on eBay? Effortless and slow in the beginning, picks up gradually and finally shoots up like a rocket. In a matter of days or weeks you can regain the money you invested on the e-book and for selling on eBay.

    ByPinaki Ghosh 

Step 1: How to register, who can register
By logging on to www.ebaystores.com you can easily start your very own Ebay store! All you have to do is click on ‘Open Your Store Now’ tab and go on to the form that is to be filled in. To open up your store, you must be a registered eBay user with a seller’s account. You must also meet any one of the following requirements:
  Feedback score of 20 or higher, or
  ID Verified ($5 charge), or 
  Pay Pal account in good standing
The rules are pretty simple. For example, your store name must be up to 35 characters. So, if a store name like ‘Jerry Christopher’s Candies, Gifts and Goodies’ is in your mind, I think you drop that plan and think for a smaller and smarter name. 

 Step 2: Subscription options

You can choose from three subscription options:

1. Basic @ $15.95/month
To experiment this is the best and the smallest account. It gives you a store platform which you can easily customize, access reports, brand your business on eBay, get free phone support, access the Selling Manager which also is an online sales management tool.

2. Featured @ $49.95/month
If the volume of your sales is expected to be medium, this is a better option for you. Additionally you also get the benefits of reporting and marketing choices.
3. Anchor @ $499.95/month
This is the most expensive but at the same time the best plan for large, hardcore business houses that needs maximum opening. It can be easily located while searching a certain category. It’s more like setting up a huge store at a prime location on a main street.
Besides the monthly subscription charges, at a price of only $0.02 per listing per month, you can gain access to the store inventory listing too. Ebay charges a very small commission on every sale which is a percentage on the price of every item sold.
How to list items
Once you open your store, you are automatically allowed to add store items to be listed for 30 days, or till they are sold out. All you have to do is mention that you want the items to stay enlisted for 30 days, or ‘Till Cancelled’, which means, that they can be kept till they are sold out. But the older items will keep showing in the list until you edit your list and delete them.
Ebay and Ebay Store: the difference
The buyers have blind trust on Ebay stores compared to Ebay. They expect more skill and professionalism from those selling in the Ebay stores. Thus, the buyers do not mind paying a little extra at Ebay stores. Setting up your eBay store can open a new horizon for you in internet marketing, and you can even expect to get better prices than normal from online sales. According to most internet marketing gurus, “Even slow moving items move fast here!”

By Pinaki Ghosh 

Viral Marketing is the most inexpensive and at the same time widely studied strategy of the internet marketing today. The name too, as it sounds, has been derived from the study of the multiplication of the virus which is also the growth. The Virus divides from 1 to 2, 2 to 4, 4 to 8, 8 to 16 and so on. The figure below would help you understand the viral marketing campaign:
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The central idea is; give out interesting things to people free of cost, with the name of your site inscribed in it, and people will happily pass them to others. The name of your site will spread like wildfire.
1. Give some laughing gas to people
People love to laugh no matter what age group they belong to. But however, the strain of modern lifestyle increases the hunger for laughter in people all the more. Giving out funny stuff, free of cost, from your site, and mainly via mails to your friends in and outside MySpace will work positive. It may include very funny pictures and videos. And, not to forget; the funny stuff must carry the name of your site written on them, or your effort is a waste. The people, who receive them, will love them, and pass them to a number of other friends, and the stuff will automatically keep passing as a chain-mail.

2. Give out free e-books, exploiting people’s greed
Most of the people are greedy by nature. If you give them some free e-book which promises success, they will be happy. Do pass your friends some free e-books and they will in turn pass the same to many other friends. This will go on for 6 to 7 stages, and within 2 weeks, the free e-book will reach a huge number of people. People must exhibit a burning interest for the book that will be an outcome of their greed. This will make you successful. Needless to say, the e-book must have a link to your site.

3. Exploit social networks
The viral marketing exploits social networks. Most of the people keep regular contact with 12 people on an average, who are the inner circle of friends and associates. If people love something, they almost invariably share it with these 12 people of the innermost circle. This is one of the secret of viral marketing success.

4. Keep it easy to transfer
The stuff you will give out for free must be essential. That means; it must be something which is transferable and downloadable over the internet. It should be easy and quick to transfer. If it is difficult to transfer or takes a very long time to download, you will fail to achieve the best result.
5. Campaigns must be repeated with new stuff in 2 – 3 weeks
The effect of a viral marketing campaign lasts for at least 2 – 3 weeks, after which it dies out. You have to repeat the process with a new campaign every 2 – 3 weeks, with new free stuff to give away.

6. Allow others to use your stuff
Make your stuff copyright free, so that they can be freely used and transferred to others.

7. Be ready for a magical growth
As people say, the virus that you create can kill you. This kind of viral marketing can lead to unbelievable rapid growth. If you are not ready to grow with it, it’s your business that will suffer. You must be ready to handle 10 times the order within a given time, or a bigger bandwidth for your website, to handle the additional traffic-load. You must be ready to hire people whenever necessary. If you can’t supply at par with the growing demand, you die!

 By Pinaki Ghosh

 Viral Marketing was the first which was used by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, the venture capitalist behind Hotmail, before it was sold to MSN in 1997 while describing Hotmail’s email practice of attaching their own advertisements with outgoing mail from their users. The infamous media critic Douglas Rushkoff wrote about Viral marketing in his book named Media Virus (1994); and that was the very first article on this special way of marketing.

In this book he wrote that Viral Marketing works. Even if we presume that many people who receive your free gifts will not share with others, still there will be 80% others who will share, and go ahead to pass them down to friends and acquaintances. He has written, that this network continues to seven or eight levels before the campaign fades out.

World famous examples of Viral Marketing 

   • Hotmail promotion campaign
• Gmail promotion campaign
• Microsoft’s Origami Project campaign
• Tupperware popularization
• Popularization of text massaging
• Popularization of chat
• BMW’s Mini Cooper campaign
• Ford Motor’s Evil Twin campaign
• Jami Kane game (BBC sponsored)
 

    By Pinaki Ghosh

The affiliate marketing is the name of one of the oldest systems of carrying on business and getting clients by referral in exchange of commission. For example if I refer a positive client to you, you will not mind paying me a percentage of the payment that you get from the client.  This is widely practiced in the web-world and such programs are called affiliate marketing programs. When you sign up with a merchant, you get a java code for their banner, and all you have to do is paste the code with the HTML code of your site. Soon after, the banners will appear on your site. An account will be maintained in your name with the merchant, and you will get a percentage of the payment that come to them from your referrals.

1. Keep it neat
Of course the first thought of a novice webmaster is that, the more affiliate banners that one plant in someone’s website, more are his chances of getting higher returns. Their main aim is to fill up the pages with banners and more banners. Wherever you look, there are affiliate banners. In reality, visitors hate visiting pages with lots of banners. You have to restrain yourself to make your site look decent which does not repel visitors.

2. Affiliate programs work in different ways for different webmasters
This kind of a program does not keep any room for returns for you but definitely gives the site owners high returns. These programs show different results on the different sites. If you are keen and keep your vision focused in the affiliate market forums, you will find at least one member complaining that his returns for a particular program have been very dull, while another member saying exactly the opposite words for the same affiliate program. Commission Junction (www.cj.com) or Clickbank (www.clickbank.com), eAds (www.eads.com), Teknosurf (www.teknosurf.com), ValueClick (www.valueclick.com), Safe Audit (www.safe-audit.com) and Demoz (www.dmoz) are some of the biggest affiliate program exchanges.

3. Go for multiple merchant affiliate marketing for the same niche
At all cost you can place affiliate banners of 3 – 4 merchants who fall under the same category, or niche. This is not unethical; rather it is helpful for visitors who have a choice. Let earnings come from several sources rather than one.

4. Check out the commission offered
50% or even more commission is offered for each referral again which is quite good! You shouldn’t settle for a program that offers les than 20% commission.

5. Give importance to the status and look of the site
 You must go in for a site that has a high status and also looks good. If you refer your visitors to a shabby site which is full of advertisements and has nothing more to offer, you are unlikely to get much business from the site.

6. How is their support?
Go through the areas like support that the merchant-site is going to provide you with. The Online support for your queries or live telephone support is extremely good. Online replies that come after more than 3 days does not work in your favor and you should not settle for such a site. The reports and automated statistics that are provided should be up to the mark.

7. Run newsletter campaigns for the merchant
Keeping the active newsletter campaigns running from your website with the banners of the merchant site, instead of just placing the cold banners on your site increases the conversion ratio, and also boosts your earnings from the affiliate marketing.
Almost all the small websites with a 400+ hits every day make $100 - $300 with affiliate marketing from a single website every month. If you run newsletter campaigns this return can be in the area of $450 to $600. Isn’t that simply great!

By Pinaki Ghosh

What is an auto responder?
Does the swiftness of the other companies to revert your mails impress you? Does it make you feel that the customer care agent is the one who responds? On the other hand, there are chances that you are answered by their auto responder. It is software that responds to your mail instantly. This software plays a major role in carrying out an email campaign. These auto responders are divided into two main categories.

i. Outsourced auto responders:
The auto responders operate on the provider’s infrastructure and are usually configurable via a web-based control panel. The customer pays a monthly usage fee which is easy to implement for the end-user.

ii. Server-side auto responder:
This server enables users to install the auto responder system on their own server which also requires technical skills.

What is the need for one?

• Helps you save your time. The pain of replying all the mails that you receive is not necessary.
• It looks extremely professional. All the visitors and clients receive a reply immediately.
• In sending newsletters and running email campaigns, this technique works miracles.

By Pinaki Ghosh

1. Give away freebies: The most common methods that work is to forcefully make people sign up and give their details so as to give out free gifts. These free gifts should preferably be digitally downloadable. It should be automatically downloadable, to cut off any hassle.

Such free gifts are generally:
E-books on subjects like:
o Self help
o ‘How to’ topics
o ‘7 Secret tips’ type topics
o Business/career tips
o Internet business related
o Stress management
o Relationship development
o Health/fitness
o Travel
o Child care

• Software products of small niche utility, like mail management.
• Games
• Video
• Music

2. Disable some features for non members: While making your website, make an option for signing in. This means visitors have to become members to use all the features i.e. they will have to sign in to use the features. Non members should be allowed to see everything, but should not be allowed to use all features. If your website has appealing material, visitors will view everything and ultimately sign up.
This way you can get paid members too!

3. Allow a trial, create an addiction: Most of the times give a 30 day trial period to your users. After 30 days if they want to use all the features, or the software, they will have to sign up, may it be with payment. This will definitely work.

4. Offer discounts to members: You must showcase two types of rates for your products and services. One should be for the members; and the other for non members. This difference of rate will automatically make your visitors sign up.

NEW DELHI: Not just the economy even the US newspaper industry is going through tough times these days. Shrinking circulation, dwindling

advertising revenues, growth of the internet edition and rising newsprint prices have together put pressure on their margins. Even the best and most established US newspapers are feeling the heat.

To cope with the pressure, most newspapers have adopted various cost cutting measures. From reducing global coverage, cutting down the number of pages, streamlining resources and cutting excess jobs, they are trying out all kind of combinations to stay ahead. Now, the industry is also contemplating outsourcing some work outside the country to reduce costs.
The trend started a few years ago, as some US-based newspapers offshored their editorial work to India. In the next five years, offshoring is expected to gain traction.

According to a study done by Pune-based research firm ValueNotes, the offshore opportunity from newspaper publishers (including both the US and UK) is estimated to be around $3.5 billion.

It’s expected to reach $12 billion by 2012. The number of people employed in this industry is also likely to cross 5,500. Interestingly, the overall publishing outsourcing industry too has been growing fast in India for some years now.

There are over 100 vendors in this space. What’s more, revenues from Indian publishing offshoring is slated to grow from $444 million in 2006 to reach $1.46 billion in 2010. An estimated 26,000 people work in this space and the number is likely to grow to 74,000 by 2010. Most (96%) of the India-based vendors have capabilities to service the academic publishing segment. But newspaper outsourcing is different. And its this space that’s gaining ground now. As of now, only the top Tier 1 newspapers from the US are offshoring. Their work is largely limited to ad production services.

However, as the space matures, Tier 2 and Tier 3 publishers too are expected send a wide range of work to India. Since its still in the early stages, only a few service providers are active in India. According to ValueNotes research, the total number of people employed in the newspaper outsourcing industry is around 2,300, as of July 2008. However, there is a scarcity of ‘end-to-end’ service providers. And as the space grows vendors are expected to build complementary capabilities to achieve this objective.

However, as the space matures, Tier 2 and Tier 3 publishers too are expected send a wide range of work to India. Since its still in the early stages, only a few service providers are active in India. According to ValueNotes research, the total number of people employed in the newspaper outsourcing industry is around 2,300, as of July 2008. However, there is a scarcity of ‘end-to-end’ service providers. And as the space grows vendors are expected to build complementary capabilities to achieve this objective.

Source: Times of India News, 23 Sept, 2008 

By Pinaki Ghosh

1. Co-registration leads
Co-registration leads are better known as the commercial leads that are available on sale from leads traders. There are plenty of leads sellers who deal in such co-registration leads. They sell leads in several packages and at the same time promise to deliver general or targeted leads on demand, and in packages of 10,000, 100,000 or 500,000 leads.
They usually get these leads from the other small traders, or websites who sell them their own list. These sites build lists using various methods, like offering free e-books if visitors sign up the squeeze page. The list of hundreds of such sites are purchased by commercial leads traders, and compiled into general or categorical lists, which are sold to buyers on payment.

Here are some of the vendors of commercial leads, or co-registration leads:

 http://www.coregleadsource.com/
 http://www.leadsales.net/coregistration_leads.htm
 http://www.national-leads.com/bulkemailleads.html
 https://www.incentaclick.com/coregistration.php
 http://www.multiplestreammktg.com/buy_leads.html

Although, it is a good idea to be cautious while purchasing the co-registration leads, as sometimes unknowingly you might be drawn into a scam. Understand the 3 points that you should be careful about:

Scams with co-registration leads you should be careful about
o You paid good money to buy leads, you are getting visits, but not sales: The leads are fake, which means, they are not names and addresses of genuine people. Some times, children over the age of 13 are hired by the leads sellers to click on your email and visit your site. Needless to say these fake visitors will not generate any sales.

o Your hosting service provider has shut down your site: Most of the people unknowingly pay the spammers for illegal spam lists, thinking them to be genuine lists. The spam lists include email addresses of people who have opted out of the list; meaning, they prefer not to be mailed. If you mail these people, your site may get flagged and shut down. If your e-mailer cannot produce the IP address along with date and time stamp for each name he mails to, he does not have an opt in list. And this is how you can be on the safer side!

o You sent 2 million emails, but did not get a single response: If you outsource your email campaigns to the service providers, it may often happen that they do not carry out your campaign, even after receiving the payment from you. Due to which you do not get a single response. It is better to (a) go for a deal with the outsourcing company, where you want a fixed number of guaranteed conversion sales rather than a fixed number of emails sent out; (b) send the emails yourself, after creating your own list.

2. Website opt in box
It is the most simple, clean, and honest way to generate your own leads. There is no reason or any doubt about if whether you are being sold illegal leads or whether the leads will land you in trouble. These are your very own leads that your visitors have voluntarily offered you, by opting in to your newsletter list.
In all the sites which are of 5 pages, there is an option where you can subscribe to the site or even become a member. The members get the privileges over the non members; like to post in the forum one has to be a member. Non members can read the forum but cannot interact. This encourages the visitors to become opt in members by giving their details. This allows them to sign in, and allows you to legally send them newsletters announcing your very tempting offers.
It may be time consuming, but is a good way of list building.

3. Squeeze pages
The squeeze pages are better known as the landing pages, which are there for people to just collect the names and email addresses of visitors, in exchange of giving a free gift like an e-book which is essential. This is quite common in small websites. Some small websites have nothing except just a squeeze page. The content is kept to the least for avoiding distraction.
Here is an example of a squeeze page to understand it more:http://www.adsense-secrets.com/ .
Although the content is less, still people gather on these sites and even provide with their email addresses in the greed of getting the much hyped free e-book. The email addresses collected in this method is compiled into a sizeable list.
Squeeze pages are a simple method of list building than website opts in box, just because of the minimum content and the free gift exchange.

Ways to get visitors
1. Writing articles: The search engines and human visitors like the unique content. Articles are a splendid way to draw visitors. Articles on interesting topics like self help, or self development can be the way to go about, or you might try specific topics.

2. Posting in Ezines: Posting the content or articles in popular ezines is one of the good ways to get visitors. People come to popular ezines like http://ezinearticles.com in search of information and knowledge. Your info-rich article that also highlights your site and links to it is a sure success formula for drawing the attention from the crowd.

3. SEO: Hiring a professional SEO person can be a good investment which is worth making to attract the crowd. They have several legal and at times illegal ways of pulling the crowd.

4. Newsletters: The Newsletters and email campaigns can bring in the visitors if carried out successfully and in an innovative manner.

5. Affiliate programs: Means giving commission to the associates for every paid signup which is an excellent option to see visitors coming in.

6. Click advertising: (PPC) maybe expensive, but the programs such as Google Ad Words, can get in visitors within minutes of making your payments.

7. Free gifts: Most of the visitors are in search for items that are free. Giving out free digital gifts will not cost you much, yet can change the visitors scene for your site. Such digital gifts can be e-books or downloadable software’s.

By Pinaki Ghosh

An amusing line says that an internet marketer would first try to save his backup disks containing his lists, before anything else, if his house catches fire. Here are some of the facts about the importance of list building, to understand it better:

List building is an integral part of email marketing and also that of e-business. This business cannot prosper if you decide not to build your own lists.
The larger your list, the more are your chances of profit. It is like simple logic! If you have 10,000 people in your list, and run an email campaign, you are likely to get response from 100 – 400. If your list consists of 20,000 names and addresses, your response is likely to be between 200 and 800.

 You possibly cannot grow your e-business without the help of list building. It will always remain static and there will be no growth curve.
 List building helps you majorly to run email campaigns, to inform about new products and services, new schemes, new offers, discounts, etc.
 It helps in mailing newsletters, which is nothing but an email campaign in a more creative, concealed and helpful manner. The more the creative and helpful newsletters are, the better are the prospects of winning buyers.
 List building is a must for running viral marketing campaigns. Do go through the chapter on viral marketing in this book for additional information on the same.
 It helps you to get back your old visitors; it helps in sending a reminder to the visitors that they had once visited this site. It is said that in any business, the old customers are the best customers that one can get. Therefore, the list of your old customers is the best leads to get repeat business.
 The longer lists help in saving a lot of money on advertising. If most of your visitors come in revert to your email campaign which is obviously dependent on the list, what is the need of running expensive email campaigns?
 List building is legally safe and hence you will not be recognized as a spammer if you send emails to people in your list, since these people had by themselves given you their names and email addresses.

 By Pinaki Ghosh

Most of the people know by now that YPN is the biggest competitor of Google AdSense. From various blogs (eg. http://www.lithman.net/2007/02/making-money-with-ypn) it seems true that Yahoo is paying three times more to YPN (Yahoo Publishing Network) members than Google is paying to AdSense members. 

#How your income comes from YPN
As people have advertised through the program of Yahoo called ‘Search Marketing’, you can earn from YPN. The Ads that are under the Yahoo Search Marketing appear on your websites, and every time some visitor clicks on the Ads, you earn! Experts like Anthony Yap, [http://www.anthony-yap.com] State that Yahoo keeps a total of 32 % of the revenue from the advertisers, giving away 68% to the website owners who advertise.

  Step 1: Setup your website/blog
Get you website or blog ready and complete. It should be professional looking to get approved at the first instance.

Step 2: Apply for YPN membership
Only then, one can apply for the YPN membership (http://ypn.yahoo.com). Hit the ‘apply now’ button. You will have to fill up the following information, so make sure you are ready to answer the following:
 Email 
 First Name 
 Last Name 
 Phone Number 
 Company Name 
 Web Site URL 
 Monthly Page views
 Primary Type of Content
 Primary Purpose of Your Site (Blog/Content/Directory/Ecommerce/Social Networking/Other)
 Are you currently Displaying 3rd Party Ads? (Are you showing Google or other ads?)
 Do you have a Valid U.S. Social Security or Tax ID Number?You must agree to the terms and the conditions of Yahoo.

Step 3: Get feedback from Yahoo
You will have to wait for 7 days for a reply from YPN customer care. Presently YPN is offered to only members or the websites in the USA. Interested non US members have to wait a longer for this excellent opportunity to be opened to publishers or websites all over the world.  If you are approved, you will receive a mail and an YPN account with Yahoo.

Step 4: Design your advertisements
Try and customize the way you want the advertisement to appear in your website. You can customize the shape, size and color of ads to suit the color and available space of your website/blog.

Step 5: Copy and paste code
When you’re done with the customization, you will get a java code (see sample) that you have to copy and paste among the HTML code of your website, at suitable places, where you want the ads to appear. You can perhaps ask your technical friend to help you out with placing the code in your site, if you are not so comfortable with technical and HTML stuff.

Step 6: Advertisements start appearing
The Advertisements appear almost immediately. You can earn a lot from these advertisements every time a visitor on your site clicks on them. This means there are a lot higher the number of visitors and a lot more are your chances of earning. So, go ahead and make you presence felt, popularize your website; get a steady traffic flow. You are not allowed to click on these advertisements, or your membership will be terminated.

Step 7: Receiving payment
How much would a person earn from a single website with 1-3 pages? If SEO expert David Lithman is to be taken seriously, you are likely to earn $10 - $12 each day from it, with an average daily traffic flow of 400, amounting to a monthly $300 - $360 from 1 website. You can use these codes for all your websites thereafter. Multiply your earnings accordingly. You will receive your payment 45 days after the end of a month, for that accounting month.  The best advantage YPN has over Google AdSense is that you can transfer your earnings from YPN to place your own advertisements with Yahoo Search Marketing. So, what are you waiting for? Get spoilt with YPN! 

By Pinaki Ghosh

Google AdSense has come like a boon for the small businessman wanting to make their mark in the internet world and make some money. It has opened the magical doors for the small website owners who want some extra income. Then why should you stay out?

1. Make you own site or a blog. This is just the first step. First decide about the main category that your site will deal with. Start with a website for a club or an educational institution so you will get some visitors from that particular institution. If you are thinking on a larger perspective, do something that offers real good tips on the success. Maybe purchasing a good dot com name would help but at the same time choose a dependable web-hosting company.

2. Log on to http://google.com/adsense and click the apply button and sign up for the Google AdSense. The same way, you can log on to Yahoo Publishing Network. Yahoo does pay you more, but at the same time they are choosier and take a longer time to accept you into their network. Just recently, Microsoft has introduced their version of a similar program.

3. Herein you will have to submit the name of your own website while filling this form. Keep in mind that your website should be complete and uploaded when you apply. Google takes a few days to assess your website. If they feel your website is not fit or has adult content, your application will not be accepted. You will receive a mail from them in 2 – 3 working days which will inform you of their decision.

4. If you do not get selected on the grounds of incomplete website, do not think that it ends there. Keep updating your website and if it is incomplete, do not take time in completing it. There will be no chance of you getting de selected!

5. An account will be opened in your name that can be checked out by clicking on the following link: http://google.com/adsense. Then, you will get a java code, which will enable the advertisements that will appear on your site. The colors of the advertisements can be modified to match the color of your website which will work positive in case of presentation. You then have to paste the java code or ask a professional who understands the internet better. Then with the HTML codes of your site, and Google advertisements will start appearing at places where you have placed the java codes.

6. Make your site popular, but be sure that people do not identify you as a spammer. You must have a steady traffic flow for your site.

7. You earn every time someone clicks on the advertisements. If you want an Idea of how much you can earn, I’ll give you a fair idea: suppose you want to earn $1 each day per page, which is not a bad idea, for doing nothing! What you need for every page is:

• 400 visitors a day at 5% click-through rate (CTR) and average 5cent payout rate.
• Or, 200 visitors a day at 10% CTR and an average 5cent payout rate.
• Or, 100 visitors a day at 10% CTR, and an average 10cent payout rate.

8. Never click on your own advertisements. This is called click-fraud, and is illegal. Google has a check on the same, and can also cancel your agreement with them.

9. In case you want to check your account reports log in to your AdSense account, and know how much you are earning.

10. Google does not pay by Pay Pal. They send the cheque to your address, roughly 45 days after an accounting month.

If you have consistency, and do not quit midway, no one can stop you from being a successful internet-businessman that is for sure.

Pinaki Ghosh

Are you planning to get your personalized blog on the internet? If that is the thought, you would love to know more about blogging and how to divert and attract people to your blog. Generally blogs provide really useful information and have a certain thought, or not many would want to waste their time on the same. Promotion of a product, or servicing and partnering a site is what a blog is mostly known for. To get a good and crowded blog, here are some seven tips you would not want to miss out on:

1. Unique content
Do not put the same kind of content on your blog that means similar to what is already available. This way you will face the toughest competition on the internet. To get the most attention, select a good category that people would love to know about.

2. Keyword rich
The articles must contain the keywords to get the attention from the audience. The keywords are what the people usually search for on the various search engines. Therefore, more the keywords, the higher your blog will flash. It does give your content a little mechanical look, but is extremely beneficial.

3. Make your choice of blog software
The audience or the number of visitors by and large depends on the way you present your site, also on how fast one can locate your site or maybe how one can get a refined search on the specific topic. Thus, to get a Blogger.com good result what one needs is a good blog program. You may choose from a lot of blog software’s but the best are namely, Wordpress (http://wordpress.com), Blogger (http://blogger.com), TypePad (http://typepad), MovableType (http://movabletype.com), BraveJournal (http://bravejournal.com). Before zeroing down on one, you must understand the features of every program.

4. Submit to web-directories
Get your blog flashed on a number of good and popular web directories which will link to your blog. Most of us depend on such useful sites. For example:
• Strongest Links, http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php
• SEOCompany, http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/web-directories.html

5. Make forum posts
You must publish your blog in a forum which is popular or known by people. This way you can inform people about your blog and attract a number of people too. To benefit more, you may hire a freelancer to make some thousands of forum post and at the end; you will see a result too.

6. Make the best posts on busy days
You may notice that the blogs have irregular traffic. If your post is appealing you may find your blog flooded with visitors. Don’t waste the opportunities that you get. Try and use the traffic and make the best from these posts. Not only will it boost your traffic flow but also get overnight popularity to your blog.

7. Blog comments
You may not see a lot of people commenting early on your blog. When your blog does not receive comments, it ends up looking quite dull and un interesting also incomplete. When one faces such a situation, creating your id in some other name and commenting will also help to attract people. Automatically you may see that people view your blog and later, you can have 500+ visitors everyday.

These steps have been proved essential for the commercial success of a blog. You never tend to go wrong when you follow all the steps. When you have a fixed number of visitors on your blog, you can earn from other sites such as Google ads, the affiliate programs or even by promoting your own site which can sell of something.

Given below is a typical agreement which you can sign with your ghostwriter.

CO-WRITER/GHOSTWRITER-AUTHOR AGREEMENT OVER A BOOK

By this memorandum of understanding, signed this _____________ 2008; both the parties described herein under as PARTY A, represented by ______________, address, _____________________________________ also described as the ‘author’; and PARTY B, represented by ___________, address ____________________________________________________________________________________, also described as ‘ghostwriter’, do hereby agree to all the terms described and given below:

1. Party A is commissioning Party B to begin the project of writing a book on the subject: _______________________________________________________.
2. The tentative working title of the book shall be _______________________________________________________’. This title is subject to change subject to mutual consent of both the parties.
3. The deadline for completion of this book is _______ days after the signing of this agreement.
4. Party A agrees to pay Party B a consolidated sum of $_________ for the project that will include the following:
   1. Writing the content of the book on the guidelines of Party A.
   2. Getting it edited by a pro-editor before submission.
5. The fees of the co-writer/ghostwriter will be paid as follows:
   1. 50% advance to get the project started.
   2. 50% within 10 days of complete work submission (irrespective of whether Party A found time to go through it in 10 days or not).
6. Party B (ghostwriter) is subject to NO royalty or commission on the sales of the book. He is only entitled to the one time fees of $_________.
7. Party B (ghostwriter) will maintain full confidentiality about this project.
8. The book will be __________ pages long.
9. Party B agrees that he will not take the help of any plagiarism, meaning he will avoid using borrowed material in this book exactly as they are found elsewhere.
10. Party A will own all copyrights for this book, including sale and distribution rights.
11. Party A will have full freedom to set the retail price of this book, deal with any publisher, and may even distribute it free of cost if she wishes. Party B will have no say on setting the price of this book.
12. Party A can request party B to make a reasonable number of changes and edits during the period of production of this book and within 7 days of completion of the book.

Both the parties do hereby agree to the terms laid and set above.

Signature

Party A (author)

————————————————————————————-

Signature

Party B (ghostwriter)

Date:

By Pinaki Ghosh

A. Setting up an account with a domain name registrar
When you feel the urge to drink coffee, you can make a cup of coffee in a jiffy. Setting an account with a domain name registrar; or in simpler words, registering a domain name of your site is as simple as making yourself a cup of coffee.

For your help, here is a list of accredited companies that do the needful for you:
http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html

Here are some well known registrars for you:

• GoDaddy.com
• behosting.com/register.html
• DomainInvestigator.com
• InexpensiveDomains.com
• NameCow.net
• NamesAreCheap.com

As we enter the process of registration, you must know the various extensions which are:
• Companies have the Dot Com.
• The non profit organizations use the Dot Org.
• Network providers use the Dot Net.
• The government owned websites go with Dot Gov.
• Television channels have the Dot Tv.

Leaving these aside there are more extensions for various countries and continents such as Dot uk for the sites in UK, Dot in for the Indian sites, etc.

Study the steps to follow while registering the domain name:
1. log on to the site of the online domain name registrar
2. Type in the name of the phrase for the domain name which you want to register in the box that has been assigned. Follow the rules as per the name format and the length of the word. Then you can choose the necessary extension.
3. It does not take a lot of time to search. The registrar then informs you about the availability of the domain name.

In case it has been already taken:
(a) Try using some other extension like, like in place of Dot Com use Dot Net, Dot Biz or Dot au etc
(b) Choose another name
(c) If you really want to have the same name try getting in touch with the one who already owns it and buy it from him at a reasonable price.

4. Get yourself registered when you actually are happy with the name.
5. You can pay the registration fees which may vary but is around 10$ for one year, online or by mail.

The domain name now belongs to you. By default you get the domain name for two years. Here’s an advice: Do not go in for the common names as they are already taken, try the uncommon names.

By Pinaki Ghosh 

Who is a ghostwriter and why are they hired?

People who pen down the articles on behalf of any other person are known as Ghostwriters. He generally does not get his name published in those writings. Most of the time, the celebrities get their autobiographies done from these Ghostwriters. The rich people too, hire these ghostwriters for the same. To name a few, Hillary Clinton, JF Kennedy and also the pop diva Madonna have hired their writers for the books. As these celebrities cannot find time to write themselves, but have the money to hire a ghost writer, they go in for one. The politicians too have their own Ghostwriters who are the people who write the speeches and the other correspondences.  As the Ghostwriters do not get any name or recognition for the service, they take heavy one time fees.

Recognition
Not always do the ghostwriters go unnoticed. Most of the times, the names of these writers are given on the acknowledgements page or sometimes as the co- writers. Thus, here they aren’t called the Ghostwriters, but collaborators.

Varieties of Ghostwriters
Not always do the people who hire these Ghostwriters lack the talent of writing. Sometimes established professional writers hire ghostwriters due to their lack of time, and also for refinement of their work. Just like, the Star Wars Novel, which was mainly a ghostwriter’s work, anmd also the Hardy Boys series that had the main author as Franklin W Dixon.

Why do you need a Ghostwriter?
It is definitely a good idea to get professional writers, especially a Ghostwriter for your articles. The best reasons are:

• They can give you the best content for your site
• They can write a blog everyday according to your requirement
• They can prepare you tailor-made, refined and good e-books

You can get some good writers and ghostwriters from the following sites:
• www.writerpinaki.com.com (bestseller ghostwriter hire)

• www.writer4me.com (affordable ghostwriter hire)

• www.123writer.com

These sites charge you somewhere in between $ 9.99 to $20 for every web-content piece/page that you order. For e-books the rate is about $400 to $1000 for every 100 pages.

Okay, now for some laugh… here are some common office phrases compiled by us, with what these phrases mean. Whether you agree is up to you. Cheers!

1.”We will do it” means “You will do it.”

2.”You have done a great job” means “More work to be given to you.”

3.”We are working on it” means “We have not yet started working on the same.”

4.”Tomorrow first thing in the morning” means “Its not getting done “At least not tomorrow!”

5.”After discussion we will decide-I am very open to views” means “I have already decided, I will tell you what to do.”

6.”There was a slight miscommunication” means “We had actually lied.”

7.”Lets call a meeting and discuss” means “I have no time now, will talk later.”

8.”We can always do it” means “We actually cannot do the same on time.”

9.”We are on the right track but there needs to be a slight extension of the deadline” means “The project is screwed up, we cannot deliver on time.”

10.”We had slight differences of opinion “means “We had actually fought.”

11.”Make a list of the work that you do and let’s see how I can help you” means “Anyway you have to find a way out… no help from me.”

12.”You should have told me earlier” means “Well even if you told me earlier that would have made hardly any difference!”

13.”We need to find out the real reason” means “Well I will tell you where your fault is.”

14.”Well Family is important; your leave is always granted. Just ensure that the work is not affected,” means, “Well you know…”

15.”We are a team,” means, “I am not the only one to be blamed.”

16.”That’s actually a good question” means “I do not know anything about it.”

17.”All the Best” means “You are in trouble”

By Pinaki Ghosh

The content and the websites actually are much related to each other, and the popularity is much based on the quality especially that of the content. No site can make it up to the top in case they have a site put up on the net.
You may taste the difference between the recipes made by you and the ones made by a professional chef, or maybe between the paintings which is painted by you or the one by any other professional painter. There is a lot of difference in the articles that you would pen down and the ones by a writer who is professional. There are a few advantages of actually hiring a content writer, reasons to hire them:
The experience of a professional has weight
When someone wants to hire a content writer, the best reason would be as the writer has a value. A person with experience can actually be trusted without hesitation. Years of experience has developed his/her skill to an extent that makes him/her a specialist of the job.
Improved language
The conversational skills of every person differ from the writing skills. When it comes to the creative content writers, the writing becomes a lot creative and also professional. Most of the time, the writers do not commit any mistakes in the language. Not everyone can be as fluent as the professionals.
Content attracts or repels visitors and search engines
This content attracts the humans and the search engine robots from any of the sites. The site has more chances of being popular if the site has good and informative content.  When the site has bad content, instantly people are less attracted towards to it. The content matters, and thus, people must not actually take a risk regarding that.
Time Saver
You can save your time at a cost…the choice is yours! Once you hire a good creative content writer, you instantly become free. It also helps keep some time for you. You will have to pay the writer for his/her time, and skill, enabling you to save yours’.

Search Engine Optimization
When you get a professional content writer for you, you instantly get a higher rating for your site, as the professionals are experts in the same. Their style of writing with high keyword density helps in high search engine ranking.

By Pinaki Ghosh.

A. Finding a hot product
Once you make your decision about the e business, you would want to think about the product that you would want to sell. Therefore the questions that would pester you would be the questions like WHAT and also as to WHO the customers would be. The most common mistake which the entrepreneurs commit is when they cater to everyone in making the most profits, but at the end make absolutely no profits. Instead of taking the plunge in the bigger e-business focus on the smaller but the more powerful market. Do not try to capture the entire market at once. The niche for you is the smaller market. Like, while trying to sell off the electronic goods, try to aim at one like the personal stereo. When the audience knows that your site deals with the personal stereos, the people who want to know or purchase the personal stereo would be the first to check out your site. To find your niche or the most wanted products is the most important take in your e-business.
B. Places to look
How can one actually look out for the hot products? How and from whom can one actually know about the products that are in demand? You really can’t rely on the mere guess work. What you can do is relax and look out for the pros and the cons. You can look out for some of the keywords on the places mentioned below:

Ebay: (www.ebay.com).
You can go through the pages of e-bay to get a random idea of the items and the products that are available on the net. The other PDF resource of some of the eBay hottest products they may be of some use:
http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/hotitems.pdf

Clickbank:
You can browse through the following site to get an update on the 100 top Clickbank products.
http://www.cbengine.com/res/cb_movers.cfm
You can also log on to the following site to get the best top clickbank selling products under numerous categories:
http://www.clickbank.com/buy_products.htm
The other sites that can provide you with such information are listed below:

• Commission Junction
• Linkshare.com
• Modernclick.com
• Aazoogle.com
• Cpaempire.com
•  Maxbounty.com

C. How to choose your product
You must choose the product that you want to sell. If you make a mistake here, that means your efforts go into vain. All the hard earned money and the enthusiasm which is invested in the business goes in vain. Here are some points you must keep in mind while making the ultimate choice of the product:

1. Do not be where the crowd is; stay away from the crowd
It is a tiring and a difficult job to sell shoes in a place wherein you have another 20 stores. You must avoid the kind of products that almost everyone would opt for. This may be on a higher demand due to the competition in the market. The prices vary and thus it is very difficult to get all the attention. As one would want it, better to be a very important person in a very small town than to be a small guy in a large town!

2. Prefer products that are digital and easily downloadable
The products which have digital downloads on the net have a high selling rate as they are easily available to the customer as soon as they complete the payment procedure. People are extremely impatient in taking over the product that is purchased. They are doubtful about the not so known business’s which ‘ship’ them the product. The items that are digital include:

• E-books
• Software products
• Music
• Videos

3. Keep it easy to ship
You must take care that the item is not very difficult to ship. You must try and keep it easy to port, small and light.
4. Not fragile, neither perishable
Make sure that your item is not really delicate or easily breakable. It gets really difficult to ship such items. Very big organizations have the advanced technologies and can easily transport perishable or fragile items. If you do not posses such transportation and the kind of infrastructure, then do not even think of such an initiative.
5. Niche must be small, yet it must be in demand
Niche marketing means narrowing down to a smaller market rather than the general market, is true enough; yet the market shouldn’t be so tiny that you hardly come across any buyers. The niche you are choosing should be in high demand. You can check the demand of these items from the various sites like eBay, Dmoz and Amazon. If you browse through the sites, you can look out in the different categories for the items that are in demand. To know more or see an example simply log on to the following site:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
6. Submit your niche to directories
After your ecommerce site is ready, submit the site to a number of directories so that there are enough back-links pointing towards your niche.
You can refer to http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php and http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/web-directories.html for the most popular web directories that you can use.

By Pinaki Ghosh

Confused about which niche you must choose to start off with your own website? But in this process don’t forget the correct choice of the niche. This is the main pillar in success and failure. Let’s browse some of the main points that you would have to keep in your mind, when you zero down to choose your niche and even before putting in you own money on the website.
1. Don’t be in the crowd
You must try and avoid the areas wherein people gather the most. These places do not have a lot of chance for profits. If in case, people are more interested in the e-books, you should look at the other aspect maybe, travel, home improvements and relations.
2. Be specific
Target just one market; do not get into a bigger one at first. Example: If the subject of your site is music then stick to it. You may notice that there are innumerous sites on music, and your site will take a lot of time to actually get on the same level. Instead, target yourself to the smaller category in music such as the 70’s music, and this will help you get a position and recognition from the people who would love the music.
3. Niche must be in demand
When you get into the smaller market, make sure it isn’t that small that you have absolutely no buyers. There should be enough demand and recognition for the product. You may first research and the demand for the items on the general sites like Ebay, Amazon and Dmoz. If the specific items and the sub’s are on a rise, your own website too would get instant recognition. You may get a fair idea of the key words by visiting https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.
4. Have a passion about the niche
Do not go into any market that does not interest you at all. Because if in case you lose the liking about your site, it may result in a break down. If you’re a person who would like the mobiles and bikes, you can opt for some similar accessories.
5. Do your research…gather knowledge
If you are already prepared about the market that you choose to step in, you are doing the right thing. If you are not prepared and do not have any knowledge about the same, you must research and know a lot more as your knowledge is going to be applicable.

6. Many sources of earning
Make sure you can make profit from a number of sources like (a) selling your stuff, (b) Google ads and (c) affiliate programs. Check out whether you get profitable affiliate programs for your niche, from affiliate exchange giants like Commission Junction (http://cj.com) or ClickBank (http://clickbank.com). If earnings do not come from these 3 sources, your niche is probably not worth your effort and investment.
7. Submit your niche to directories
Make your site ready and then submit it to as many directories as possible so that there are plenty of back-links pointing towards your niche. Here are two lists of several popular web-directories that you can use: http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php , and http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/web-directories.html .
Keep all this in mind and you shall emerge a winner!! Go ahead, and your strategies and your plans will make you benefit the profits.

By Pinaki Ghosh

You can see a lot of products flooding the internet sites and also the ecommerce sites. But as one may see, not all products get to do the equal business. Some rules go in without consideration and need to be known by the people. The following are a few rules that you may have to follow develop if in case you want to sell your product and in turn earn profits.
1. Go for high profit margin products
The maximum number of people that went on to become millionaires was due to the internet business. Online business is the only business wherein one can expect around 100% profit. The margin of the profit that one can get during the other business is merely 20% to 33%. The original cost price of the product is around 67% - 80% is covered by the cost price. But if the product is a virtual one, there isn’t much of a cost-price or production cost (except the early investments), and as such you can expect to make a 100% profit from every sale. You can take the example of the software giants who gain 100% profit from every sale that they make. It is just the same for e-books.
2. Target niche market rather than the general market
Whenever we experience a heart pain, we take the initiative to visit the cardiologist rather than the normal physician. The same way, it’s a not a bad idea to select a position a niche market than targeting the general market, which is often over-saturated. As you go into the niche market, which deals with just a specific range of products, the chances of you getting noticed are much higher. You must try and develop the product which is aimed at specific interest groups.
3.  High quality
While selling your product, one thing that is utmost necessary is that you never compromise on the quality of the product. Remember, the old or the existing customers and clients are your best clients. Keeping them happy with the quality would compel them to remain satisfied with the product that they receive from you. If you have around 300 customers who are satisfied with the service and the quality, you will get a steady sale from them all the year round. Therefore keep them updated with the newsletters especially while announcing your new products.
“
Remember, the old or the existing customers and clients are your best clients… If you have around 300 customers who
are satisfied with the service and the quality, you will get a steady sale from them all the year round.
”
4. Quick delivery
One might observe that the humans are highly impatient. They would want quick service. Thus, your products must be easily accessible and auto downloadable, preferably quickly downloadable…something that the customers would be able to get their hands on immediately after payment.
5. Trial version
When you deliver a trail version of the product which is absolutely of no cost to access, sometimes, there are 40 % chances that the people who get to access this, would want to purchase the original full version. Therefore, in such cases, the trial version that is, when the product has a time limit, the item needs to be downloadable then may it be a software, e-book or a mere courseware.
6. Research
Look out and find more about the products that you need to sell online. Better if you can get the copies of the product and study them. If they sell well, then you can be assured of the plan and the product. You must try and do something related to the subject or may be the same in a different fashion. To start with, your product must be better than that product and at the same time, at a lower price than that product.

7. Keep upgrading
If the item that you are promoting and dealing with is the one related to the software field like the e-books, constant up gradations and improvements are necessary. At any level when you stop you tend to stall your business which is the untimely death. Thus, you must upgrade the same at least every 6 months. Even a minor up gradation would work.
As you may notice, the 7 tips are neither costly nor very difficult to keep in mind. The lower versions of the software’s and the games or even the e-books can be rated around $30 for every time that one downloads.  If you have around 200 visitors every day, one can expect 3% - 5% conversions which may increase later on after the trail versions have been tried and used, which also means approximately $250 of the daily sales which sums upto about $7500 every month. If you go on at this rate, this figure would be achieved along the 4th month. Therefore, why wait, put along your best foot forward!

By Pinaki Ghosh

If you are planning to start up with your own ecommerce site or already own one, you must get your updates and facts revised. Here are 7 main strategies which would help you instantly to gain profits. These policies are tested and confirmed.
1. Solid product description
While advertising your product online you must be able to make some good descriptions about the product which can create an interest among your customers. The products (in case of 50 plus articles) must be described in around 125 -150 words in length. For quality sake, getting the articles done from a professional person is imperative.  In case you are on the look out for professionals or freelancers, you may log on to sites like Writer4me (www.writer4me.com), 123writer (www.123writer.com), Guru (www.guru.com) and Elance (www.elance.com) to hire copywriters/content-writers who will work on your descriptions and give an amazing outcome or even help sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo.  In the case that you are selling an e-book or some course through your site, you can get the sales copy made, which may comprise of 3000-5000 words in length. Also, you can add in the feedbacks from your clients.
2. Accompanied by picture
Sometimes pictures provide the best explanations ever. Until and unless you put pictures on the products for the net, you really would not be able to create the interest on the customers. People like to see the products that they would want to buy, as said by Mark Luetke the marketing guru. But messy images are not really appealing. In case of really small products you can give them the satin background or maybe give it a cropped look and can even replace it with maybe a plain background. When the products such as car and bikes are promoted, you may get the shots outdoors. The cover pages of the e-books must be of high quality, cost of which is $30 upwards. You can visit the sites such as Writer4me (www.writer4me.com), if your budget is around $50, to get the best and the most professional e-book covers in the market.
3. Cross selling
Chain your other items just below the description of the products of each item so that people who want to purchase the product can also look out for other related products.  This way you can increase your sales upto 30%.
4. Free gifts to visitors to get their email address
Give out free gifts like ebooks from your squeeze page to any visitor who gives his/her email address. This way you can create your own database of your visitors whom you can keep updated with your newsletters.
5. Newsletters
Spam mails differ from newsletters. I would be surprised if anyone says he/she likes spam mails. They are advertisement-mails that go directly to the folder that has been assigned in your email account for ‘spam’. But newsletters give some really useful information to the customers and thus, most people mark the mails as ‘not spam’. This may be one of the powerful tools in keeping the update on the new products and schemes. Newsletters are far better than spam mails as promotional tools.
6. Discount
Giving various discounts throughout the year such as ‘winter bonanza: 25% off’ or maybe the ‘Spring Festival-up to 50% discount’ can boost up your sales. Keeping a track of your old customers and the ones that rely on you and then complementing them by giving some additional benefits can help.
7. Show professionalism with your affiliates
In case you are heading an affiliate program, you must act professionally. Clearing off the payment of your affiliates on time, and giving them codes for your banners can help in keeping good relations with them. Do not keep the affiliates hanging for a lot of time to get their commission.
Also, you can work on increasing your sources of getting some extra income by tying with the other service providers as an affiliate (and get commission) and also Google YPN (contextual pay per click). You can earn several hundred or even thousands of dollars every month from this.