Power Ideaz

By Pinaki Ghosh
In the early January,1996 two 24 year PhD, Stanford University students, Larry page and Sergey Brin, spent long hours on a research that they believed would change the way people searched information on the internet. In order to develop and showcase the existing techniques of unscientific way of ranking websites in search engine listings these two spent most of their time researching. Their subject of the thesis was based on the search-engine listings in order of the importance of a website. Page and Brin started their very own search engine as a part of the Website of Stanford University, with the domain name: www.google.standord.edu. The name www.google.com was registered on Sep 15, 1997.
After almost a year, on Sep 7, 1998, the duo got own company working which was known as Google Inc. The company kick started from a friend’s garage which had very little space in Menlo Park, California. The general audience that the Google had maintained required just the page to be simple and which would not distract which was majorly due to the unwanted text and the graphics. After much development and the improvement, Google shifted their office to 165 University Avenue, in Palo Alto in 1999, the area which was already inhabited by the Silicon Valley giants. Again in no time, Google shifted to their present address, Googleplex, Mountain View, California.
Mainly focused towards increasing the revenue from advertisements, Goggle took over the 54% of the search engine market, ranking world number one. To this date, Google faces more than 1 billion search requests daily and is predicted to have over 450,000 servers. Google has also announced a long-term research partnership with NASA which involves the Google building a 1-million square foot R&D center at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Together NASA and Google are deciding on working in various areas. The motto of Google has always been (from the beginning)—‘Don’t Be Evil’. The entire Google team has its growing number of offices worldwide which proves their success. Hence, the Google story has indeed a motivating past and a brighter future.

By Pinaki Ghosh

Yahoo success story
In the year1994 when Internet was in its early days, two good Electrical Engineering students and also friends from the Stanford University, who were great buddies and loved surfing the net, from their campus trailer, pursued their liking of adding names of websites to the list of their favorite sites that they had come across. The list never stopped and kept growing. When the list grew very long, they made headings and subheadings to manage it. This list was soon made available on the internet for other people who had the interest and their site started off with the name, Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web. Jerry Yang and David Filo loved the name Yahoo which had a dictionary meaning as ‘rude, unsophisticated, uncouth’ as it went with their mood. Yahoo is also an acronym for ‘Yet another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.’ David and Jerry favorites’ list became a big success, and by November 1994 they had already more than 1 million viewers visiting their site!
Filo and Yang soon understood the huge potential business waiting for them, and went forward and approached several Venture Capitalists in order to expand their business.  It never was an easy task for these two students who had with no business experience in order to arrange for finance. Ultimately they succeeded in convincing Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Sequoia Capital (Venture Capitalist of Apple, Atari, Cisco and Oracle) who agreed to finance them with $2 million in April 1995 and Yahoo.com took off to an amazing start The two friends were extremely quick witted to hire a proper management team with Tim Koogle, a veteran of Motorola and an alumnus of the Stanford engineering department, as chief executive officer and Jeffrey Mallett, founder of Novell’s WordPerfect consumer division, as chief operating officer. Yahoo then started with the new high profile work force in April 1996 comprising of a total of 49 employees. Yahoo then had its initial public offering on April 12, 1996, raising $33.8 million, by selling 2.6 million shares at US$13 each.
Today “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web” is the top global internet communications, commerce and media company serving over 345 million users every month across the globe. Now it offers the multiple solutions like instant messaging, free email service, search engine, news, advertising, gaming, streaming audio-video, hosting solutions, social connection building (Yahoo 360 degrees) and lots more. It too has different sites according to the different countries. Yahoo has offices in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia, Canada and US; with headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.

By Pinaki Ghosh

To go out and hire your manpower after settling your finances in setting up your office is the big question! Where would you find manpower?

The first step: chalk out
1. Your wants of the exact number of employees and what are the various types of employees for the suitable designations needed for setting up a small office.
2. Write down the duties to be given to each employee which is extremely essential for setting up a small office.
3. The mode of training is also extremely necessary! It is essential even if you are setting up a small office.
4. Decide upon the justified returns for your workers.

Next step: how to get employees
1. Placement agencies–these are private agencies that are skilled in the job of finding the right candidates and at times charge a minimal fee to do so.
2. Online job sites– pretty effective and also a quick way of finding the right employees.
3. Interns— are the college students who will do your work to gain some professional knowledge. You must get in touch with college authorities for this. They will help you out to get interns.
4. Window poster—pretty simple but effective technique of getting employees for a small office.
5. Hiring freelancers– Hiring freelancers is common in the world of internet marketing. You can keep projects low cost, and compare prices and work of several freelancers.

You also have to decide how you want to keep your employees.

1. Service contract— When you hire your employee for a limited or fixed period of time. After the period is over, you may say goodbye to them. You can get fresh faces and new talents at regular intervals by this system. Also you can keep low on the salary part by this arrangement. You can also go in for this system of getting an employee if the nature of your duties is temporary. The drawback is that the employees may lack motivation and attachment for the office; since they know they will be there for just a few days.
2. Permanent employees– These will be under your payroll. Then you will have to face with all HR related and union related issues. But since there is no middleman between you and your employee, you may save on the payments you will be making for compensation/wages/salary. Employees give their best in this system. A raise that is given regularly is what the biggest drawback is in this case!
3. Professional Employer Organizations— You can take the help of these organizations that can supply you with employees. The organization will deal with the HR related headaches and you can be much relieved in these issues. Employees will be under their payroll and will be actually the employees of that organization. The drawback here is that the organization will eventually control your office.

By Pinaki Ghosh

The smart people think about the years to come! You can definitely start your internet marketing business from home, but what if the business starts expanding rapidly? Here are some helpful guidelines that will take you through the process of setting up your office:

(A) Before setting up your small office, you should consider the following questions:

1. How far have you thought about the convenience of the customers and the clients that are related to you?
2. Do people visit the place your office is located in? In short, are there people visiting the area?
3. Is it an area that is suitable for offices (with more offices around)? Or is it more suitable as a retail market, or something else?
4. Is there extra space in your house? Can you possibly run your office from your home? This way you can save a lot of cost and time; like your transportation time and rent of office space.
5. Does the location offer regular public transport, and parking facilities?
6. Do you think the space-hiring and electricity costs are being charged reasonably?
7. Is the space available enough for setting up a small office?
8. Does the office space offer you scope for expansion in future?
9. What will be the expenses for remodeling the office space available to suit your purpose? Does it seem too high? If remodeling cost is too high, maybe you should consider seeing other locations.
10. Find out if any office closed down from this location and why.
11. What is the income level of your customers/clients? How frequently are your customers/clients likely to do business with you?
12. Find out who your competitors are and where they are likely to be ahead of you in the race. Where will you be ahead of them?
13. Which categories of your possible clients/customers go to your competitors? Why are they going to your competitors?
14. What are the pricings of your competitors? Are you offering lower prices initially?
15. How do your competitors advertise?
16. What technological advantage do your competitors have?
17. Do your competitors have the advantage of a big brand backing them? Should you consider coming under a big brand?

By Pinaki Ghsoh 

Once your Internet Marketing Business starts working, you will definitely need an accountant within the few initial months itself. The use of the accountant is that he is a key-advisor in your business; his presence will help you stay relaxed. Lack of a good accountant in your business can make you feel restless. Thus it’s imperative that you appoint one. You feel it less tiresome when you know when your money goes or about your savings.
(i) Try appointing an accountant before you stat your business.
(ii) You must get the qualifications of this person verified which is important, you must make sure that he is well-qualified.
(iii) While choosing an accountant, make sure your accountant has experience of dealing with the accounts of small business, if your business is small in nature. Even better, if she/he has experience of working with organizations of your type/sector.
(iv) Try getting the cross checking done with other firms how much their accountants are charging. It is a good idea to compare rates before choosing an accountant, to make sure he/she is charging the right rate.
(v) Meet up with the concerned person as you would trust the person for dealing with your money.  This is an important step in choosing an accountant for your business.
(vi) Try and know the additional services and advices can she/he offer.
(vii) The best accountants for the small business are the ones who are used to dealing with the small time business—they know how to manage and utilize the small funds. It would be a very silly mistake to choose an accountant and to bring one who has experiences of dealing with big firms and big funds.
(viii) In the process of selecting an accountant, make sure your accounts person does not keep the work reserved till the year end.
(ix) Your accountant should be able to minimize your taxes; for that get in touch with his/her former clients to find out how far she/he has been successful in doing this.
(x) You must question the person how he or she can guide you when the company will be dissolved.

By Pinaki Ghosh

Once you take the plunge into the internet marketing business, mostly your mode of payment would be via the credit cards to make the online payments. It’s not always secure to make online payments through the credit card.

You can follow some of the tips from experts on online credit card safety:

• Truly, encryption technology means online transactions can be much safer than using your card over the phone or by fax.

• But the buying must be done from the secure sites only. A small closed lock symbol towards the lower, right side of the site (Internet Explorer), or an unbroken key on a dark blue background at the bottom of a site (Netscape Navigator assures that the site is protected. It also means that your credit card, and purchase information is scrambled over the net; which means your credit card information is safe. But the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) reports that these symbols can be duped also.

• It’s not safe to pass on your credit or debit card info out via email, nor use it as proof of who you are.

• In case of getting any deals do the needful with only known companies. If it is a little known company, ask for their printed documents for your records.

• Mostly you must pay through a third party between you and the merchant, like Pay Pal, rather than directly giving away your credit/debit card information to the merchant.

• In case of doubts, take strict and swift action. You must not ignore to report to the bank immediately.

• Go through your statements and be sure that the amounts shown are yours. At times it may happen that the business name is different from the brand name, and what looks like an unauthorized transaction, may really be your transaction! Be careful!

• If you’re assured that the amount was not transacted by you report the card as stolen to the company, and also to your bank. Even if you still have the piece of plastic, someone else has the numbers. So it’s stolen, anyway.

• Use complex, alphanumeric (combination of letters and numbers) passwords for online accounts. Do not use your personal information like wife’s name, son or daughter’s name, your own nickname, your car number, your phone number etc. for such accounts. There are chances that whoever is using your account is acquainted to these details too.

• Try using just one card for the transactions.

By Pinaki Ghosh

Nochex.com is the name of UK’s leading independent service provider of the secure online card payments. Presently based in 103 Clarendon Road, Leeds, LS2 9DF; it gives you a secure and reliable online payment service lots of petty businesses like maybe yours. The aim of the company is to leave you with a professional and flexible service at an assuring rate. The most impressive features are: competitive transaction rates, no customer sign up necessary, instant availability of funds, no monthly charges, easy to integrate and manage, professional, helpful and flexible. Hence, you can open a Personal Account, a Seller Account, or a Merchant Account but only if you’re monthly transactions are above £1,000.
Nochex Personal Account
The Nochex Personal Account is the best for sending in and receiving the money between the individuals for bidding and the classified adverts and also the online buy.

The main areas are:

(a) FREE to send money

(b) ability to send up to £300 per day (and also receive money)

(c) account balance limit of up to £90 at any time

(d) just 2.9% + 20 pence processing costs per received transaction (no set up charges).
Nochex Seller Account
The ideal payment solution for any new businessmen and small time vendors who are likely to be processing up to £30,000 a year (£2,500 a month) is the Nochex Seller account. You are not charged with the basic setup charges, processing charges are 2.9% + 20 pence processing costs per received transaction, you can receive instant card payments of up to £100 from any non-member of Nochex and £300 a day from any full member. With Nochex, you can easily acknowledge the UK issued MasterCard, Switch, Solo, Maestro, Visa Debit, and Visa Electron credit and debit cards. You also get the benefit of chargeback protection and guarantee.
Nochex Merchant Account
The Nochex Merchant Account mostly suits the merchants who are likely to be processing over £12,000 a year (£1,000 a month), or also for the vendors who give in the way of greater value transactions (over £100 each). The benefit of this account type is the instant cash that you receive. Once you receive the money into your Nochex account you can withdraw the money immediately. The minimal charges for the setup are £50. All the other features are similar to the Seller Account, and the rates too are the same for receiving the costs. The other benefit of this account type is that you can agree to the global payments only with this type of account.

  By Pinaki Ghosh 
The Idea:
Most of us would want to agree that Paypal is one of the best things that developed in the e-commerce zone. Paypal has a heavy ranking among the most popular sites, and also is an assured form of sending and withdrawing payments between you and the customer. If you do not wish to give your credit card details to the merchant as it may prove to be a risky affair, send your payments through Paypal! Isn’t that beneficial? Paypal stays between you and the vendor and your details remain a secret. People with an email address can easily, and without hassles and on a faster mode receive and send payments online, using the Paypal system. Paypal works on the existing network of bank accounts and the credit cards, to create a global payment solution. Paypal also is a brand acquired by Ebay.
To open an account:
You really do not have to shell out money to open a Paypal account or even send money via Paypal. A person with an email id and a valid credit/debit card can open a Paypal account and from then start receiving and sending money. However, to withdraw or transfer money you need to get verified, which will cost US$1.95, that will be charged on your credit or debit card account.  In your card statement you will receive a 4 digit expanded use number, which you have to use, to get the expanded use process completed. Once you get verified by Paypal, you can use the seal ‘Paypal verifier’ in your site; which gives more confidence to those who will deal with you.
To get the payments done: Paypal is extremely easy and instant. After getting registered for a PayPal account, you need to get the payments done, and also add your credit or debit card to your account, click on the “Send Money” tab, and then enter the email address of the person who will be receiving the payment. Also you may use your PayPal balance or your checking account to fund your payment.
Is it safe?
Paypal takes the help from the SSL technology to keep the information safe. When you complete the payment through the Paypal system, the much risky information like the credit card number, bank account number, is not revealed. Even the receiver does not know about the payments. However as I mentioned earlier about the phishing mails, which get your information and eventually hack your account are a scary thought! You must be careful with such mails and scamsters. The actual Paypal site would never ask for your password etc by sending you mails.

By Pinaki Ghosh
The Blackhat SEOs are the search engine optimizers who repel the illegal means and practices in order to encourage and boost the website rankings in the search engines. It involves methods that break the TOS of all reputed search engines. Cloaking, spamming, keyword & link stuffing, using doorway pages and site hijacking are some of the methods used by black hat SEOs.
The term black hat SEO is exactly the opposite of the White hat SEOs, who then use legal, ethical means for the search optimization. These terms have evolved from the classic western movies, where the cowboy hero is seen wearing a white hat, and the villains, wear on the black hat. Most take the witches from the tales wearing a tall, wide brimmed black hat. Thus, the black hat symbolizes the evil.
To save money employs the Blackhat SEO’s which are also economical. Most take their help to pull them out from some sort of trouble they have stepped into. Blackhat SEOs are known to solve some of the toughest problems with ease. But still, the Blackhat SEOs are never employed by any famous organizations. Blackhat SEOs do not believe in ethics and follow no ethical guidelines. They will give a high rank to a site by methods that are fair or foul. It is however debated that many SEOs who pose to be white hats, are really black hats in disguise. This theory differentiates that the black hats and the white hats live in the same body. Some white hat SEOs who copy paste content of one site into another, and thus create 50 or 100sites, are really Blackhat SEOs; lacking in ethics. A true writer white hat will never create a second site with content of another site.
The sufferers are the search engines, who are deceived and made to list bogus sites above good sites. Next to suffer are the surfers, who have to make up to choose the better sites from the list containing the bad, ugly and the spammer sites.

Pinaki Ghosh

When one adds the website to any of the search engine, it automatically uses a scanning software called ‘spider’ to go through the content of web pages. The so called spider then adds the links to the other pages to read all information on the different pages and join them in a larger database of the search engine. If then there is any need of the information on certain keywords from the search engine, it would help in searching its database and look out for sites offering information on the keywords that are needed. Most search engine have there own crawlers which vary in code from each other, but at the same time, have a similar set of rules which one can then apply to look on the web.
The simplest forms that are used by these crawlers are the HTML codes that are used by the sites and come free from errors. Why make a face if one does not find his site cached by the search engines; the mistake lies in the poor coding of that particular site. It also can mean that the menu system design restricts the technological spiders to follow it. In such a case your site will not be indexed by the search engines.

You can correct by following the ways given below:

(a) Change the menu system to CSS type, text based menu system.
(b) Add a text menu below the web page (as a second menu system).
(c) Update the latest code to a search engine friendly version.
You can also optimize your web page by keeping the following advices in mind:
(i) When it comes to understanding pictures the search engines are useless. They really understand nothing much but only the text names of the pictures. Thus, using the ‘alt tags’ which are text equivalent of the pictures on the site helps.
(ii) Try and make up a site map away connecting from the main page, to let the search engines find out the other pages of your site.
(iii) Never use the same kind of color of the text and background. Also, making the text appear transparent can get you penalized by any of the search engines for using irrelevant ways.
(iv) Try not to use the ‘hidden text’ in your CSS files.
Make use of the traditional techniques like the title, description, metatags, and at the same time some good content in your site; and then be convinced that your page will be cached.

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

After MySpace, Orkut (www.orkut.com) has gained immense popularity! Orkut, till Feb 07 had 44 million people who had signed in and the figure is growing every day. People from the USA, Brazil and India are in majority on Orkut. It’s not only for meeting friends, and discovering lost friends, but a very powerful tool for making your site popular as well.

The first three steps are similar to that with MySpace:

1. Start blogging: Become a blogger

2. Signup with a PPC (pay per click) advertisement distribution program like Google AdSense (http://google.com/adsense), and start your account. To know more you can refer to some of the earlier pages.

3. Signup with some affiliate program like Commission Junction (http://cj.com) or Clickbank (http://clickbank.com) and become an affiliate. You can carry advertisements of other companies and earn your commission.

4. Join Orkut (http://orkut.com). Earlier, to join Orkut, one had to accept an invitation which could be sent only by someone who already was a part of the community. But now, anyone who has a Google account can be a part of the community. Like people know, Orkut is a part of Google. You can use the same password and username. You can start adding friends in large numbers. The more friends you add, the better is your prospect of informing more people about your site/blog.

5. Join the ‘communities’ of Orkut. There are innumerable communities on Orkut; where you can find a lot of interested members. This will widen your access to a larger number of people. You can get in touch with these people at one click!

6. Post messages to the members of large communities. Write interesting messages with a link to your site/blog. Describe the purpose of your blog, and its utility; and send them to hundreds of members of various communities.

7. Send messages to all your Orkut friends and update them about your blog. At a single click of your mouse you can select all friends and reach them and also pass on your message. Try not to appear like a spamster. Your message should appear like an interesting story, or as if you are trying to pass some helpful advice to your friends; which has also benefited you. Add the link to your site/blog.

8. Make forum postings. Some of the communities do not allow messaging. Use forum postings in those communities. Orkut communities have forums where you can post your message, so that the members can see and if interested can email you.

If this is successfully carried out from time to time, the traffic is bound to increase!

By Pinaki Ghosh

MySpace (www.myspace.com) and Orkut (www.orkut.com) are the two main gigantic and massively popular social community sites. MySpace statistical facts like 80 million users, 240,000 new sign-ups each day, 30 billion page views ever month, may give you an idea of how popular MySpace.. If you are a MySpace user, you are wasting your time if you don’t know the secrets of how to use MySpace for earning a fortune. Here are the stepwise tips of your way to success using MySpace as a ladder.

1. Make your personal blog or website which gives information on subjects of general interest, like jobs. Also, you can get a free website from http://bravehost.com, and an easy to use (that even your kids / little sister can operate) blog from http://blogger.com, or http://bravejournal.com, or any of the hundreds of other options available.

2. Signup with a PPC (pay per click) advertisement distribution program like Google AdSense (http://google.com/adsense), and get your own account started. Get the java code that you have to paste into the HTML codes of your site/blog. Click advertisements will start appearing in the site/blog. You earn each time someone clicks on these advertisements.

3. Signup with some affiliate program like Commission Junction (http://cj.com) or Clickbank (http://clickbank.com). This means that your blog/site will be displaying their advertisements, and if the visitors to your site hit on these tabs and become paid members to the linking site, you earn a good percentage of what he or she has paid. An account is maintained in your name and time-to-time payments are dispatched.

4. Join MySpace (http://myspace.com) if you still have not registered. This step is the most important step in this chain, because this is the main source where you will build your relations. Everyone knows that visitors mean business! Start adding friends in large numbers. The more friends you add, the better is your prospect of making big money. There are some programs available in the market that can add some 500 friends in a day!

5. Join ‘groups’ in MySpace. This will widen your access to a larger number of people. Many of these ‘groups’ have thousands of members. Your one message can now penetrate to all these members at a time.
6. Post bulletins to the members of large groups. Write good notes that do not feel like advertisements. If other members think you are merely spamming them, you will get flagged. Therefore, describe the main purpose of your blog, and its utility; i.e. what others can gain out of it.
7. Send mails to all your friends informing about your blog. At the click of a mouse you can select all friends and pass them your message. Again, be careful, not to appear like a spam star! Your message should look like a story, or as if you are trying to pass some helpful advice to your friends; which has also benefited you.
By this totally free of cost campaign, you will attract a large number of interested visitors and make them visit your site/blog, and click the advertisements. Keep repeating the process every week and not every week, as this may irritate some people. Send completely new messages. Writing the messages (mails, bulletins) is an art in itself, and you will develop the art, through the process. At the end of the month, the paycheck will make you feel it was all worth the effort.

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:
X
XX
XXXX
XXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
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 

GetResponse (outsourced auto responder) http://www.getresponse.com/

Features
 Unlimited email marketing campaigns, auto responders, follow-ups, lists and broadcasts.
 150+ professionally designed HTML templates.
 Powerful, cost-effective newsletter hosting.
 Incomparable email deliverability.
 Click-through, sales and revenue tracking.
 Excellent support and training.

Pricing
 1 month  $17.95
 3 months  $47.85
 6 months  $87.70
 1 year  $145.40

b. JVListPro (outsourced auto responder) http://www.jvlistpro.com/

Features
 Experts state it often takes 7 or more messages before prospective customers make a purchase.
  Unlimited campaigns, lists, follow up messages, and newsletters.
  Reliable, >99.34% email deliverability, fast.
  51+ Templates for newsletter and follow up design.
  Easily create and add opt-in web forms to your website.
  Free training guides and videos.
  Expert unlimited free customer support.

Pricing
 1 Month $19.95n/aPaid
 3 Months $53.85
 6 Months $101.70
 1 Year  $179.40
c. Email-Auto responder-Free (Software type) http://www.email-autoresponder-free.com/

Features:
 Unlimited follow ups.
 Create systems ranging from the simplest “I’m out of office!” auto responders to automatically sending out messages to your contacts at regular time intervals.
 One can subscribe easily! The email address in any emails can be extracted and included into marketing database for further email marketing. 
 It provides support looping protection. Email Auto responder can find the closed loops.
 Powerful Contacts Management. Import contacts, export, adding, updating, deleting and perform many other operations.

Pricing
 Fast Email Auto responder  $139
 Fast E-Delivery Engine  $149
 Fast Email Verifier   $139
 Opt Out Manager   $99

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

This kind of a site allows the webmasters the ability to promote their sites or the associates, marketing campaign absolutely free of cost. This is just like the Click bank site, except that the exchanging is free. Without paying any charges to the traffic trading site, one can opt to surf and browse through the hundreds of affiliate programs which are offered.

The advantages of using free traffic sites are:

•  Saving; It is free!
• These sites get lots of visitors and members. You will get the attention of these visitors.
• Search engines give a lot of attention to traffic trading sites for:
  o Their heavy traffic.
  o Rapidly changing content.
  o Have several outgoing links.

By Pinaki Ghosh

First used in 1992, the web banners have evolved rapidly in the most innovative ways as a form of advertising since then. They come in several sizes and forms, like static banner, and flash banner which is animated. Banners serve much the same purpose as print ads with the added advantage of being linked to the advertiser’s site.
Banners are the main form of advertising for click ads, and affiliate programs.

Text links are not renowned but related to the banner ads, with no graphics, and serving pretty much the same purpose such as the banners.
A typical banner ad

Common sizes for banner ads are:

i. Full Banner: 468 by 60
ii. Half Banner: 234 by 60
iii. Micro Button: 80 by 15
iv. Micro Bar: 88 by 31
v. Button 1: 120 by 90
vi. Button 2: 120 by 60
vii. Vertical Banner: 120 by 240
viii. Square Button: 125 square
ix. Leader board: 728 by 90
x. Wide Skyscraper: 160 by 600
xi. Skyscraper: 120 by 600
xii. Half Page Ad: 300 by 600

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.