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Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Why Forums Are a Great Marketing Platform

There are thousands of forums on the internet. Do you know that forums are the best place for marketing. Imagine thousands of people hanging out in the forums everyday and they are simply waiting for you to feed them with information.

No, I am just kidding, they are not waiting for anyone. They just love to hang out in forums but then again, why would you want to let go such a great opportunity to promote your product to thousands of people?

Some of the best forums include Digital Point and Warrior Forum. Of course, you can search for forums in your niche. You can also search for forums out of your niche for more exposure but always start within your niche.

The best way to start is by promoting through your signature. Most forums allowed signatures after your sign up while other will have to reach a certain number of posts before you are allowed to have signature to prevent abuse.

So, once you have reached the requirement, you can put up your own signature with a link to your landing page, blog, website or affiliate links although it is advisable not to put in affiliate links. It is best to include landing page link in your signature to promote your product.
Of course putting up signature is not enough. You need to participate in the forum so that people can see your signature. One rule of posting is no spamming. Therefore you should only reply to threads that interest you.

By using Google Analytics to assess your urls, you will be able to track the referring sites to your pages. This way you will be able to judge which forums bring in more traffic so you can focus your marketing on those forums that bring in the most visits and sales.
This is why forum marketing is never dead. In fact, you can always use this way to promote any products you have created.

Stay Updated With Twitter Search

I am sure you use Twitter. If you are not using Twitter, you should register and start using it. After all, this is what most online networkers would have done. People use Twitter as a medium for marketing, communication and promotion.

These days, you can even use Twitter to search for things you want to know. From elections to deaths and gossips, there is a little something you can find in Twitter, almost as if Twitter is the new Google Search Engine.

Twitter is also inspiring many people to develop new applications related to Twitter in a way to benefit more people on the internet. From searching for similar interests people in Twitter to checking active and inactive users on Twitter.

How do you keep up with the topics that interest you? For example, you want to know what is going on in the writing industry. You can search for the keyword 'writing' and Twitter will compile a list of all 'writing' related twits so you can look for something new every day. The best thing is you can save your search so the next time you want to look for the same thing, just click on the sidebar.

If you have a blog, Twitter is the best platform to promote or market your blog to a wider audience. Why? It is because you can arrange to have Twitter automatically twit about your new blog posts whenever you update your blog. This way, you will get a few fast clicks to your blog throughout the day. If someone likes your posts, they might retweet your twit so that their readers can read about it too.

The point of Twitter is to meet new people and communicate. Surely you have a few followers. Why not send a message to them or reply to their twits? It is easy to spark a conversation by replying with the normal @twitteruser format. I am sure you have seen it in action.

Twitter is indeed the latest marketing tool you need for your business. Even if you are not using it for business purpose, you can still keep in touch with your friends and family easily.

Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder

Join Sophie and enter a world of philosophy. You will be joining the philosophy's teacher, Alberto Knox on this ride. Sophie's World will open up your mind to many things that you never thought about before. You won't be learning these in most schools unless if you are in a philosophy school.

You are bound to learn everything you need to know about philosophy in one journey. Sophie is the main character in this story, along with Alberto Knox. Occasionally her mother, her best friend and her pets make appearances in the story. Her father is a captain of an oil tanker and therefore, rarely stays at home.

In this book, you will get to learn about medieval philosophy, meet Socrates, Plato and many more. Often you will be asked questions in this book to stimulate your philosophy thinking. Just how many of us are interested in philosophy if not because of this book. At least I know, I won't be interested if I didn't read this book at all.

You have to read this book to believe it. You will meet Hermes, Alberto's dog. It is also the delivery dog as it delivers the many packages to Sophie. The first two questions you will have to answer would be "who are you?" and "where does the world come from?".

This is the book for general. After all normal people like us will never thought about learning philosophy. Philosophy is seen as a boring topic. The truth is you will like philosophy once you have read this book. Enjoy it.

Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder

Join Sophie and enter a world of philosophy. You will be joining the philosophy's teacher, Alberto Knox on this ride. Sophie's World will open up your mind to many things that you never thought about before. You won't be learning these in most schools unless if you are in a philosophy school.

You are bound to learn everything you need to know about philosophy in one journey. Sophie is the main character in this story, along with Alberto Knox. Occasionally her mother, her best friend and her pets make appearances in the story. Her father is a captain of an oil tanker and therefore, rarely stays at home.

In this book, you will get to learn about medieval philosophy, meet Socrates, Plato and many more. Often you will be asked questions in this book to stimulate your philosophy thinking. Just how many of us are interested in philosophy if not because of this book. At least I know, I won't be interested if I didn't read this book at all.

You have to read this book to believe it. You will meet Hermes, Alberto's dog. It is also the delivery dog as it delivers the many packages to Sophie. The first two questions you will have to answer would be "who are you?" and "where does the world come from?".

This is the book for general. After all normal people like us will never thought about learning philosophy. Philosophy is seen as a boring topic. The truth is you will like philosophy once you have read this book. Enjoy it.

Writing - 2 Simple Steps to Stay Focused

Writing is never an easy task if you have many distractions around you. The only way you can write is to learn how to turn off all those distractions around you before you start writing. What are the distractions around you? Look around. What are you doing right now? Who is around you when you work? Is there a child or a pet that needs your attention? What other things that you need to do?

The truth is there are way too many distractions. Even if you don't have a kid or a pet, you might be surprised to learn that there are many distractions that will stop you from finishing your work. Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Friendster, Tagged and YouTube are examples of distractions especially when you work using the internet, which most of us do. Emails would be the next, since there might be a new email coming in every minute - if you are one of the busy social networkers.

How do you get rid of these distractions? Simple. You just need to shut them off. Even better, you can shut off the browsers and just open up whatever applications you use for work. Since we are talking about writing, you will need a word processor, obviously.

Apart from social networks, some applications can be a distraction too. For example, Winamp or Windows Media Player. I am sure you know what these applications do and which is also why you need to minimise using them while working.

Just close the applications and keep your hands to yourself from opening them again. Sometimes, it is difficult to do but this is the discipline you need if you want to get things done on time. Would you want to have someone chasing your work all the time? No. So, get started.

Writing Ten Articles a Day

It is not easy to be a writer. It is not easy to write articles. However, there are so many people who aim to be a writer. Why? It is simply because they want to work at home while earning a handsome income. However, this is not going to happen unless you have the writing skills and the ideas to write about. Still, don't give up just yet.

You can practice writing if you are not good at writing so that you can learn to write better. Yes, practice makes perfect. Everyone knows this. However, you have to make it work for you. Try to write ten articles a day, five days a week. This is an exercise for you to be in tune with writing.
How you can write ten articles a day?

It is easy. You just need to follow these steps.
  1. Gather all your writing ideas. Yes, you need to have ideas before you can write. Choose your topic wisely, research about it and gather as many information as you can.
  2. Work on your articles one at a time. Don't rush into all ten articles at one time.
  3. Take your time to write the articles. You cannot set a time to write an article since some of the articles might take a longer time to write than the others.
  4. Once you have written your articles, it is time to check for spelling errors and grammar mistakes. If you are not good at writing, you are bound to make mistakes. Use the grammar and spell checker to help you out. You will get to learn something.
  5. Once you have checked through the articles, it is time to polish the articles. You can read the articles again and edit any part that you feel should not be there at all. Editing is helpful as you are reading your own work again and again. You are bound to get better at writing and reading thanks to this exercise.

Why You Need to Learn English

English is universal language. This is perhaps the mother of all languages. Everywhere you go, people are speaking the language. Can you imagine what would happen if you cannot speak English? You will be having communication problem since you can talk to people, especially when you are traveling to European countries.

That is not just the problem. If you are doing business, you will have problems expanding your business beyond your local market. If you are unemployed, you will have problems finding a job since you don't know English.

Of course, there are many reasons why you need to learn the language.
  1. It is used in education.
  2. It's very important in business and trading.
  3. It is used in marketing.
  4. It is used on the internet.
  5. It's the Universal language around the world.
  6. It helps you to communicate with more people.
  7. It helps you to develop self learning.
  8. Not knowing English is definitely a shame.
  9. It is used in daily life (especially if you work in shopping malls).
  10. Know that it is useful in every way.
With so many reasons to learn a new language that is so useful for everyone, how can you say no? Most schools are offering lessons, but if you 'missed' learning English in school, it is never too late to learn. Even old people can learn a new language or anything they want. Who says we are too old for learning?

There are many classes you can sign up in order to learn a new language. Learning a new language will never hurt you. If you are doing business, a new language can expand your business to a bigger market. It is also helpful when you are looking for a job. Without the English language, we can barely live in this world. Therefore, take some time and learn for your own good. You will appreciate that you have finally taken the first step towards improving your life through education.

Travel Writing to Breakthrough in Your Writing Career

You always travel to new places, discover new cultures and meet new people around the world. At the same time, you need to earn extra money to fund your travel. The truth is you already have the ideas and you just have to write it down and sell it to travel publishing company or travel sites that buy articles from a travel writer.

This is a gold mine. Since you have been traveling, surely you have learned about the new places and cultures. However, other people don't know what you have experienced. By telling your stories, you can earn extra money for your travel and at the same time, build up your own writing career. The earnings depend on your clients but overall, you can make good money if you can constantly contribute good content for your clients. You might contribute once a week or a few times a week if you have more information to share.

Travel writing is indeed a blooming industry. More and more people are jumping into the bandwagon. However, you need to know which locations can really make more money for you since not all locations are interesting. Do your research and check out some of the really interesting cities, beaches or mountains to explore.

You never know what the readers are expecting because you are feeding the readers with stories that only you know. They are getting more excited to read whatever you have to offer. Therefore, finding the right locations is really important. From time to time, your editors might tell you what the feedback from readers. From there, you can craft your next articles to suit the readers. Being a travel writer is indeed interesting. You get to see the world and tell people about it while earning a handsome income. Be sure to enjoy what you do and you will be able to expand your career.

Writing For SEO - Search Engine Optimization

Writing for SEO can be a pain in the butt sometimes. When you write for SEO or Search Engine Optimization, there are a few things you need to remember. Search Engine Optimization is all about having the right keywords at the right place. Content is very important. Quality is also very important. You must make sure that the content written is fully SEO optimized to fully function on the web. Otherwise, it is a waste of your energy and time to write the article. However, let us review what you can do in order to write better for SEO.
  1. Make sure you do your keyword research thoroughly. Keywords are very important. Keywords are the source of your success in writing for SEO.
  2. Once you have identified the keywords, choose the top three keywords to use in your articles. The best way is to divide the keywords into groups. You can have three keywords in one group. One group represents one article for SEO.
  3. The number of words in the articles is not important but you must make sure that the density of keywords in the articles is not excessive. The best density is around 3% to 5%.
  4. Make sure the articles you have written with the use of keywords are readable. Apart from that, you need to make sure that the articles are also useful for the readers. No one wants to read garbage, that's for sure.
  5. Bold your keywords when you are writing so you can see where the keywords are and how scattered are them across the article. The keywords cannot pile up at one place. You need to spread them everywhere in the article.
  6. Sometimes you need to write about something you totally have no idea about. This is when researching is helpful. You need to research about the topic in order to write about it. When you are researching, be sure to take only the important points. Get straight to the point when you write your articles. Once again, no one wants to read garbage.
If you can follow these steps, I am sure you can be a great SEO writer. It is not difficult to write for SEO. You just need to know the right skills. Good luck in your writing.

Make Money Writing Ebooks the Easy Way

Check the internet and you will be able to find many ebooks available for sale. Yes, ebooks help to save papers as we download and read it on the PC or laptop. Therefore, there is a trend where people write ebooks and market it online for online audience. You have no idea how many people prefer to download rather than buying a paperback these days.

With the intention to save papers and trees, we all look forward towards a new way to read, and that is to read online or offline on the PC or laptop. Ebooks are in the form of PDF document so all we need is Adobe Reader to read the PDF document.

Most of the ebooks are about making money online or writing but you can find many types of ebooks on the internet. Fiction is also available for you to download if you know where to find the sources. There are sites offering free downloads as they are offering free ebooks.

How can one write an ebook and sell it online? Basically if you have a PC or laptop, you can write an ebook about anything, especially if you know something that will benefit the public. You can write an ebook teaching people how to start an online business and sell it for a small amount of money since you don't have to print the books.

The most important about writing ebooks is to have an idea of what to write about. Without an idea, you cannot write an ebook. You might want to write about your business, how you start your own business, what kind of business that is flourishing or any how-to guide ebooks for the public.

If you are an expert in your industry, consider writing something that will educate the public about your industry. I am sure there are people who would love to have a peek at what's hot and what's not in your industry, regardless of what industry you are in.

Then again, the best type of ebooks is teaching people how to make money online or start an online business. If you have a well written ebook with elaboration, this niche will draw you more money than you ever imagine. Everyone wants to learn new ways to make money. We can never live without money, that's for sure.

Most ebooks are between $10-$30 depending on the amount of pages and the quality, of course. The best thing about ebooks is that you get to decide on the pricing as you own the ebooks. However, you will need to set the copyright, according to your own rules. Once you have written the ebook, convert it into PDF document and upload it on your own site or other selling sites to begin your sale.

Blogging and Business

Do you blog? If you have a business, you should blog. I am sure you are well aware of how blogging and business are related. When you have a blog, you would be able to gain more readers, which in turn might convert to being your clients. This a wish for many internet marketers. When you have an online business, you are an internet marketer. Your job is to make sure you earn as much money as possible online whether through your services or ads.

No matter what type of business you have, a blog is to help you spread a word about your business. I am sure you have seen most websites have a 'blog' link that helps to connect with potential clients. It is also a platform for your clients to express their opinions about your services. If you provide great services, they will offer praises but if you need to buck up your performance and services, they will offer advices.

That is not all. When you have a blog, you can make use of the blog to generate more money. Ads such as Google AdSense will be able to add some extra income to your earnings. It is easy to start your own blog. The easiest way is to get a free blog account. However, for safety reasons, it is recommended that you get a self hosted blog, meaning you will have to purchase a domain and hosting for your blog. This will cost an average 20 dollars for the cheapest services but you own the blog and therefore, you are free to do anything to your blog, unlike free blogs.

If you have a writing business, a blog will serves as your portfolio. Whenever your clients are requesting for samples, direct them to your blog and they will be able to evaluate the quality of your services. A blog is really important. Let us look at blog as a business card. You give out business cards whenever you meet new people. This time around, you give out your blog URL for networking.