I Digg Blogs of all Types and Styles

Yesterday I was reading Jennifer Sleggs blog post on Search Engine Land, 25 Tips To Optimize Your Blog For Readers & Search Engines, and after reading the post I clicked on the Digg This link on the bottom and was brought to the Digg.com comments page for this post.

The first comment had a message that read blah blah blah blah blog. For some reason this comment really got to me. Why would someone share a negative comment like this when Jennifers blog post was very good and sharing some valuable information?

Here is my list of reasons why - if youre interested:

1. The commenter probably does not even know what a blog is and what its purpose is. Blogs provide a great way for people to voice their opinions, market their business, help others on certain topics, and simply have fun. Anyone who would post a unintelligent comment like this is just uneducated.


2. This commenter probably did not even read Jennifers post, which was very good and informative for anyone looking for help on marketing their blog online. Jennifer provided 25 basic ways for the average person to optimize their blog for search engines and their target audience. Again, anyone who would comment with blah, blah, blah, blog is just being impolite for no apparent reason at all.


3. Because I am a blogger myself. I enjoy blogging and appreciate every chance I get to write a new entry and post it to my blog. I digg blogs of all types and styles. Everyone has a blogging purpose in this world; you just have to find yours. Blogging can be used for anything imaginable - to post pictures of your family, keep a daily diary, write about your business, share your knowledge, and much more. Thats why this persons comment got to me so much. If they had pictures of their family, would I ever comment with, blah, blah, blah no of course not!


4. Blogs are the future. As big as they are today, they will grow into something more advanced in the future and continue to help drive the growth of the Internet in the years ahead. A comment like this is almost as silly as me saying, blah, blah, blah when someone told me about the World Wide Web over 13 years ago.

Here are my messages:

To the commenter: If you happen to come across my post, please realize how silly your comment was. I am not trying to bash you but understand that a professional post, such as Jennifers, is very helpful to millions of people and a comment such as, blah, blah, blah, blog was unnecessary. Like the next commenter said, Grow Up! Look at blogs as something positive and not negative.

To Jennifer Slegg: Great post! Your information is accurate and very helpful to us fellow bloggers.

To anyone that has a negative outlook on blogs: I challenge you to think about creating your own blog one day. Use it to express yourself or to share your knowledge on a subject you may be experienced in.

Whatever it is, have fun with it

My Success with EzineArticles

Over the past few months I have established a new inspiration in my life " and that is to write. I never really enjoyed writing all that much when I was younger and going to college but lately, I have found writing about my professional knowledge and experience to be extremely rewarding and generating new business for my company.

How did this all come about? Well, several months ago I came across this website called EzineArticles. Its a website that brings together authors and publishers and allows Expert Authors and Writers to post articles about their experiences, knowledge, opinions, and much more within the EzineArticles community. Once approved, content ezine publishers can pick up and distribute the articles to their various streams of publishers and email contacts, all for free. Doesnt this sound like a great opportunity for any business? Well I though so too and thats why I decided to give it a shot.

Ok, so its been about seven months and in those seven months I have written 53 articles, received 11,000 views to those articles, and have witnessed my articles popping up all over the Internet on various ezine and content publishing websites. I also receive contacts directly regarding my articles asking if other website owners could use them on their website. I say of course you can, just as long as you provide me with credit for the article and include a link back to my EzineArticles portfolio. Why wouldnt I allow this? - Its just more exposure!

Also, in the past seven months since I started writing about specific topics in my industry, I have received phone calls from potential customers interested in my topics, knowledge and how I can help their business succeed online. Because of these phone calls, my company has landed a few new clients and I totally contribute this success to the opportunity EzineArticles has provided for me and my business.

Now not everyone can post an unlimited number of articles. The standard Expert Author can only post 10 articles. After you reach your 10 articles, the EzineArticles Team must then evaluate and approve you to become a Platinum Expert Author of EzineArticles. If and when they approve you, you are then granted the capability to upload an unlimited number of articles, all for free.

What I am also fond of about EzineArticles is the fact that they have a team of publishers who actually approve each article before it gets published to the live site. Now at first, I must admit, this was a little annoying because I would add several links into my articles and they would get rejected over and over again. I couldnt figure out why they would do that - what couldnt I include links in my articles?

But over the course of a month or two, I realized that in order to get accepted, you can only use three links in the body of your article and cannot include links in approximately the first three paragraphs of any article. I began to respect this rule because this actually controls spam and keeps their content clean and allows us authors to continually take advantage of the opportunity that EzineArticles is providing. But dont get me wrong, they DO allow you to include a little shameless self-promotion. On the bottom of every article, you can include a Resource section where you can do a little shameless self-promotion to let people know who you are and why you are knowledgeable in the topic you are writing about.

And to top it all off, a few days ago I received a package from them in the mail. I asked myself, what could EzineArticles possibly be sending me? So I opened the package and there it was - a nice large white coffee mug with the EzineArticles logo on it " very cool! The package also included a letter, on behalf of the EzineArticles Team, which was actually hand-signed by Christopher Knight, the manager of EzineArticles, along with the EmailUniverse.com Team.

So overall I truly believe EzineArticles has helped contribute to the success of my business. I also bestow credit of my new found inspiration in writing to EzineArticles. So heres to the EzineArticles Team " thumbs up - great job guys! Keep up the great work and Ill continue to contribute to your website on a weekly basis.

And to all you business owners out there, I highly recommend Ezine Articles - it may just increase the success of your business and also help you uncover a new pursuit in life, as it has done so for me.

Capitalize on the Upcoming Holiday Season by offering Website Promotions

With the holidays vastly approaching, now is the perfect time to offer website promotions that will increase online sales guaranteed! According to data supplied by Coremetrics, the upcoming holiday season is when most online retailers generate 20% - 40% of their annual eCommerce revenues and profits and historically, analysts have publicized "Cyber Monday," (the Monday after Thanksgiving) as the highest traffic day for online retailers.

However, based on actual 2005data fromits LIVEmark benchmarking service, Coremetrics advises its clients to expect their highest traffic day to actually be the following Monday, December 4, 2006. Coremetrics predicts that sales on this date, which it has coined "eDay," will be 19% higher than "Cyber Monday," and that 2006 overall holiday retail sales will increase 16% over last year's holiday season.

Now is the time of year when online shoppers are looking for the best bargain and many shoppers are doing most of their shopping online rather than offline. According to the above data, now is a perfect opportunity for us online retailers to capitalize on the upcoming holiday season by offering website promotions that will increase our online profits. Whether its to offer free shipping, reduced prices or website coupon promotion codes, there are various ways to promote to your customers to intrigue them to purchase from your website vs. from your online retail competition.

The following outlines my three favorite website promotions and if you apply these to your business, Im confident you will greatly increase your holiday online sales:

Free Shipping

With eDay vastly approaching, offering Free Shipping to your customers would be a great way to capture your audiences interest. If a buyer recognizes that they will receive free shipping by purchasing from your website and the cost of your product is competitive, then they will be more inclined to make a purchase from your site, rather than spending additional time to search for the same product from one of your competitors.

Website Coupon or Promotion Codes

Your repeat customers should be your pride and joy. If you have customers that continually come back to purchase from your website, then you should provide them with website coupon code discounts to thank them for being a loyal customer. This will make them feel all warm and fuzzy inside and they will greatly appreciate you recognizing them as a valuable customer.

A common website coupon code is one that offers them a 10% - 30% discount off their next order. Setting up a website Coupon Discount Code Program requires some modifications to your website. I also recommend setting up a system that will automatically send the website coupon code by email along with their order receipt. The email could say something like the following:

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for your recent purchase. Weve noticed you have purchased from our site before. To show our thanks for being a repeat customer we want to offer you with the following coupon code for your next order. Simply enter the coupon code 20OffOrder when checking out on your next online order from our website and you will receive a 20% discount off your total order price.

Customers who Bought this Item also Bought

A great way to up-sell products is to let your customers know about them. Amazon.com does this to perfection. When browsing and making a purchase off Amazons website, you will notice, underneath the product, an area that says Customers who bought this item also bought. This is a great way to let you customers know about other products that are similar and were of interest to your other customers. By doing this, you offer the opportunity to up-sell some products that maybe your customer did not see or were not thinking about when they were browsing your site.

These three website promotions will provide your business with the ability to capitalize on additional sales this holiday season. Like I said before, considering the fact that your customers will be purchasing many gifts this holiday season, they will be sure to look for a bargain, so you need to intrigue them and capture their attention any way you can.

Some of these changes may be simple, yet others will require some back-end modifications to your existing online retail website. If youre looking for some assistance, a Web development company such as Hudson Horizons will be able to help you implement these changes to your online retail website before the upcoming holiday season passes you by.

A Guaranteed Strategy to successfully launch a Product Online

An Olympic champion, a successful salesperson and two exceptional parents " What does it take to achieve greatness in life, no matter what youre trying to accomplish? In my opinion, it all comes down to perfecting the fundamentals. Without being able to perform the basics it will literally be impossible for you to succeed in whatever it may be.

Launching a product on the Internet can be a daunting task if youre not educated on the basics of how to successfully generate an online buzz. Today Im going to provide you with a basic strategy to follow when launching your product online. There are many additional ways to get your product out there but these are the basics, so lets start here first. Are you ready? Ok, great, lets get down to the basics of how to generate that buzz and successfully launch your product online.

Fundamental #1: Update your Website

Before launching your product online, you should update your existing website with information about your new product. This may be in the form of a news entry, a new sales page, or an additional section to your website. Updating your site before you launch will allow you to provide additional information to potential buyers on how to purchase your product. If you launch a product, begin to market, but never update your website then it will be impossible for you to seal the deal and make the sale.

My recommendation is to add both a news item as well as a few new pages to your site, explaining to your customers about the launch of your new product, with information on how to make a purchase. This new content will eventually be indexed in the major search engines. I recommend using the HH Sitemap Manager to speed up this process.

Fundamental #2: Submit a Press Release

Getting your message to media professionals, onto the desks of the journalists and to the top of news sites and search engines should be one of primary importance. Successfully submitting an online press release will do just this. A press release is a public relations announcement issued to the news media and other targeted publications to draw attention to a specific event or product launch.

If submitted and distributed correctly, your press release will find its way into some of the top news websites such as Google News and Yahoo News as well as inclusion to some of the major web portals such as Yahoo, AltaVista, AlltheWeb and more. The exposure you will receive by effectively submitting and online press release will be essential to the success of your product launch.

Fundamental #3: Utilize Email Marketing

Email marketing is the process of sending sales letters or newsletters via email to your list of potential or existing customers. While some individuals think it can be annoying, I find it to be a highly cost effective way to market a product or service. Email marketing campaigns are proven to be more effective and less expensive than printed direct mail campaigns because the reader can easily click on a link and go straight to your website.

Interested in submitting customized newsletters to your customers? Hudson Horizons can implement a customized newsletter system for your business. Click here to learn more.

Fundamental #4: Submit your Products to Froogle

It costs nothing to reach thousands of online shoppers by listing your items with Froogle, Google's free shopping search engine. You can link each one of your products in the Froogle search directly with your website.

By submitting your products to Froogle you will be opening the doors to a whole new way to sell your products. Since Froogle is 100% FREE, there should be absolutely no reason why you would not want to list your products.

Froogle provides you with the opportunity to have your companys products indexed and accessible to thousands of buyers looking for products like yours. The Internet is a numbers game; the more content you have indexed, the greater chance you have to be discovered.

If you are an online product company then listing your items in Froogle should be one of the first priorities to help increase the exposure of your products on the Internet and offer the opportunity to be discovered by new consumers.

Fundamental #5: Setup an Affiliate Program

An Affiliate Program is an advertising program offering a monetary incentive for webmasters to drive traffic to your website or for directing business to you.

I recommend setting up some type of online Affiliate or Joint Venture Program to allow others to resell your products online. This will provide more exposure and will lead to increased sales revenue.

Fundamental #6: Advertise

The last but certainly not least step to successfully launch your product is to market and advertise your website to increase your sites traffic. Without a good amount of traffic, it will be difficult to generate sales on your newly launched product. There are hundreds of different ways to advertise your site, whether its setting up an automated Google Sitemap, signing up for Google AdWords or posting articles to an article distribution website.

One of the most successful and cost effective ways to increase your sites traffic and generate sales is through Google AdWords. Google AdWords ads connect you with new customers at the precise moment when they're looking for your products or services. With Google AdWords you create your own ads, choose keywords to help match your ads to your target audience and pay only when someone clicks on them - this is what is referred to as pay-per-click advertising.

Google AdWords is a perfect way to advertise, if done correctly. Many companies waste hundreds or thousands of dollars every month on unwanted clicks that are not truly generating targeted clicks for their business.

If setup correctly, Google AdWords can be a great resource to reach hundreds or possibly thousands of users looking for your exact product or service, which will lead to increased sales. The key word here is exact. I have found that through my experience of setting up Google AdWords campaigns for my clients, the best successes have been generated by the campaigns that use very specific keywords rather than generic or broad keywords when describing a product or service.

I hope you find the above six fundamentals to greatly benefit your next product launch. As I said before, the key to success with anything is to understand and perfect the basics. If you can learn to do this, you will be sure to accomplish anything for your business.

I wish you much success with your next product launch!

Some Great things happening at Hudson Horizons

And we wanted to share them with you.

I just wanted to take a few minutes of your time to let you know about all the great things that have been happening over here at Hudson Horizons. Over the last few months we have been hard at work and want to share our most recent accomplishments with you.

HH Sitemap Manager " As some of you know, we launched our HH Sitemap Manager a few months back, which is an automated service that submits a Sitemap file of your website URLs to Google and Yahoo three times a week. We have received such great exposure from this product that weve even launched a Reseller Program for Web companies to offer this service to their clients as well. We see this product growing rapidly over the next 12 months and are continually working to enhance the service for our clients " http://sitemap.hudsonhorizons.com

HH Froogle Manager " Very similar to our HH Sitemap Manager, this product submits our clients products that are for sale on the Internet to Froogle, Googles shopping search engine, three times a week.Our HH Froogle Manager was launched just one month ago and were beginning to receive some good exposure. Were planning to integrate with other shopping engines in the very near future to submit their products to as well. Again, this is an automated service, which completely eliminates the headache for our clients to submit their products on their own and on a frequent basis " http://froogle.hudsonhorizons.com

HH Blogging Software " There are currently 75,000 new blogs launching on the Internet everyday. Companies are beginning to realize the importance to add a blog to their website to help increase their content exposure online. As blogging has become extremely popular in todays online world, we thought it would be a great service to offer to our clients. We have developed a blogging system that we can integrate with our clients websites to allow them to add articles, categories and post on a daily basis. Click here for an example " http://blog.number1artist.com

HH Newsletter System " We have developed a newsletter system that allows our clients the ability to submit HTML newsletters to their customers and list of recipients with ease. We integrate this system with the back-end of their website so they can easily login and create newsletter campaigns. We create a custom design for the newsletter that matches the look and feel of their website. Our system also provides detailed statistics of each newsletter submission so you can track the success rate of each campaign.

The e-Business Resource Blog " We started our very own blog, which offers some great e-business and e-marketing articles, information, news and provides insight to help increase your exposure on the Internet. Our goal is to make The e-Business Resource " your one-stop-shop for information relating to e-business and e-marketing. Please stop by to visit our blog when you have a chance - http://www.theebusinessresource.com

Thank you for taking a few minutes of your time to read about Hudson Horizons most recent accomplishments. We could not have done this without our clients, so to all of our clients - thank you for being our valued customer and for your continued support.

If you have any questions or would like to drop us a message to let us know what has been happening at your company, you can either call our number below or reply to this message. We are very interested to hear how youre doing!

With warmest regards,

Hudson Horizons Team
1-888-DMD-4WEB (367-4932)
info@hudsonhorizons.com

The New Light for e-Business

To Froogle or Not to Froogle

Selling on the Internet is no different then traditional selling. Every business must remember the 4 Ps: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. However the internet is a little more complicated because with the click of a mouse a potential consumer could obtain several different prices for the same product. Therefore price and product become almost irrelevant tosome degree; because no matter how good your price is on a product someonemight be able to undercut you. However, promotion is a very valuable asset, but we will save that for another article. Today we will discuss product placement better known as product distribution.

Free Online Product Distribution

Every question I have with a website owner is always the same, How do I get my website higher rankedin the search engines? If the company is trying to drive traffic to increase product sales or drive traffic to its paid sponsorships theanswer is always the same. I recommend blogs and content distribution. However, if the individual has a tangible product I recommend three free options.

1. Froogle " Googles free product search engine thatallows anyone to submit their products for free. The Froogle search engine will list your products image, description and price based on relevant searches. The only two requirements are that the products are shippableto the United States and are for sale online.


2. Free Product Listing Sites " if you organization is in a specific niche market there is a good chance there is an online community that might offer a place for you to list your products for free. Spend a few minutes searching Google to see if any suchcommunities exist. A good example is No. 1 Artist " an online community for artist that allows artists to sell their artworkfor free. The organization takes a small transaction fee for each sale, but it creates free exposure for artists products.


3. Press Releases " if your company has something to talk about then create a press release to let the world know about it. There are several free press release companies, I recommend PR Web. Most of these press release organizations also offer paid inclusions that enhance your visibility. For example PR News Wire offers a middle level package that will automatically add your press release to both Yahoo! and Google News.

Why use these free resources?

Why not, they are free. The more places your products are listed the better chance that someone will find what they are searching for andat the right price. In addition, joining a community or product sale website helps to see what others are doing to sell their products. As good as you think you are at selling your products online, there is someone outa competitor is.

Who uses Froogle?

Overstock.com, Buy.com, No.1 Artist, Barnes & Noble. Why not have your products listed next to theirs?

Help!!! Froogle Setup Seems too Difficult!

I agree, to the average Joe the Froogle process is comprehensive. However the benefits go on, Based on relevance, your item may appear on Google properties like Froogle, and Google Maps and the main Google web search (Google Base FAQ). Meaning if you submit good data there is a strong likelihood that your Froogle submission could actually land in various places within the Google platform.

I personally use a third party vendor to automate my Froogle Feeds three times a week. The company is Hudson Horizons. Their support is fantastic and the price is affordable. Here is an actual Froogle listing done by Hudson Horizons for No. 1 Artist.

If you have products for sale online and theyare not listed in Froogle thenyou are missing out on a huge opportunity to increase your sales with FREE product placement!

Directories, Communities and Forums - Utilizing your Free Resources

What better way to market your company then for free? Youre probably saying, Yeah right! You can't market for free. Well today Im here to tell you how you can. Now dont get too excited, this is not groundbreaking information. Its actually an extremely simple idea but it truly works.

The method of marketing that Im referring to is to utilize free online directories, communities and forums to help increase the exposure of your company. There are probably literally thousands of directories, communities and forums that relate to your business. Some are free and some are paid sites. The key is to research the Internet and locate five to ten quality communities or forums that you could post to on a daily or weekly basis. Depending on the type of directory, forum or community, you may have to register and become a member. However, other types may not require you to register and are completely free of charge.So what types of directories, communities and forums are out there? Thats a great question and Im glad you asked. To help clarify heres a definition of each:Directory

A topical lists of Internet resources, arranged hierarchically. Directories are meant to be browsed, but they can also be searched. Directories differ from search engines in one major way - the human element involved in collecting and updating the information. Click for an example of a directory.Community

A group sharing common interests on the Internet... aka Virtual Communities. Communities exist in the form of discussion groups, chat rooms and newsgroups. Click for an example of a community.Forum

An online message board where users can post questions, answers or comments to other members posts. Click for an example of a forum.So depending on your needs, you may want to find a directory, such as Craigslist.org, where you do not have to interact with other members. You can simply locate the category that best suits your business and make a post without registration. However, if youd rather post questions and interact with other users, then youre best bet is to locate a community or forum, such as No.1 Artist, that relates to your industry. Some communities and forums even provide an area in the forum called Shameless Website Promotion so you can post a description of your company with a link to your website.Through my experiences I have found all three means to be beneficial. Directories offer you a simple way to advertise your company, with minimal time needed, but it lacks the whole human interaction piece to the puzzle. On the other side of the fence, communities and forums take a bit more of your time to post and interact with the other members. However, the great part about communities and forums is the fact that you can communicate with these people and build solid relationships that could bring you new business.To get started, go to Google and search for directories, communities and forums relating to your industry. Remember, some may require a membership registration and some may require a membership fee. At first, try to find ones that are free. This way you can see if this form of marketing is right for you and fits into your schedule.Give it a shot... it really works!

Affiliate Programs - 3 Simple Steps to Get Started

The Internet has made is easier than ever for webmasters to earn money on the side with part-time effort. Sometimes all you have to do is help drive traffic to another site and other times you simply need to help other companies make sales from their site, almost acting as a sales representative for the company. You earn a fee for the traffic you provide or make a commission for the sale you help the company make. The way to make money that I am referring to is called an Affiliate Program.

An Affiliate Program is an advertising program offering a monetary incentive for webmasters to drive traffic to the publishers website or to help them make sales. This eliminates the necessity for the publisher to find websites with related content to list their banners. It also increases the response rate by giving the "affiliate" websites a stake in the response rate.

Thousands of companies are offering different types of Affiliate Programs, whether it is to simply drive traffic to their site or to help them make sales. Either way, the great part about becoming an affiliate is you can easily create a website that targets the publishers content and not have to worry about shipping products, following up with customer service calls or focusing to grow a business. You can simply add a few banner ads to your site, and if your content is intriguing enough, can probably acquire a few sales for doing minimal work.

This article is going to explain three simple steps to get you started. The ways I describe below are not the only method, but they will help you gain an understanding and set you in the right direction, which will help you to figure out what type of Affiliate Program is right for you.

Find an Affiliate Program that Interests You

The first step is to find an affiliate program that interests you. A great website to start looking through is Commission Junction. CJ Access, their self-service solution, provides small to medium-sized advertisers, access to their global network of publishers, educational resources, and sophisticated reporting tools. CJ Access delivers all the functionality needed for the general management and administration of your performance-based marketing program " all on demand.

Upon registration, you will gain access to Commission Junctions large database of publishers. Once you signup for your account, you can pick and choose which publishers you would like to advertise with. CJ will provide you with all the tools necessary to get you started advertising almost immediately.

Build your Site and Develop Content that Relates to the Publishers Business

After youve selected the type of Affiliate Program thats right for you and youve chosen the Publisher(s) that you would like to target, the second steps is to build your site and develop content that targets and relates to the Publishers type of business. If youre targeting Dell as your Publisher, then you would need to develop a site that targets Dell products and has topics that relates to Dells business. After your content gets indexed in the search engines, people will be looking for topics that relate to Dell and happen to come across your site. As they read through your site, they will come across the banner ads, which you have strategically placed within the site and hopefully, click them to be directed to Dells website.

Now because you signed up with Commission Junction and lets say Dell signed up as a publisher, Dell will know when someone is coming from your site to theirs because you receive an Advertisers Affiliate ID and this will be passed to Dell when someone clicks on the banner ads within your site. So when someone visits the Dell site from your site and they purchase something, then you will receive the commission that was agreed upon by Commission Junction and Dell.

Market your Site and Increase your Traffic

The third and final step is to market and advertise your site to increase your traffic. Without a good amount of traffic, it will be difficult to earn money through an Affiliate Program. There are hundreds of different ways to advertise your site, whether its setting up an Automated Google Sitemap, signing up for Google AdWords or posting articles to an article distribution website, be sure to start with something.

Also, make sure to continue and add more content on a frequent basis to keep your site up-to-date with your publishers site. This will also help tremendously in the search engines. Remember, traffic is the key to be successful in an Affiliate Program and with good quality and quantity of content, you will be sure to increase your traffic.

You may also want to add Google AdSense to your website. Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads on their website's content pages and earn money. Because the ads are related to what your visitors are looking for on your site or matched to the characteristics and interests of the visitors your content attracts, you'll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance your content pages.

This article is an introduction to Affiliate Programs to help you get started. As you learn more and educate yourself about Affiliate Programs, you will sure to increase your knowledge and begin to realize the various ways that you can earn money as an Affiliate with part time effort. I wish you much success.

Free Article Distribution = Free Targeted Traffic

What is the Internet? Well in terms of the World Wide Web, it is billions of pages of information. Information is what will drive the Internet for years to come. When someone searches Google, what are they looking for? Most likely they are looking for information on a specific topic, whether it is to help their business, research a person or find information about a vacation destination, they are looking to learn more.

As the Internet continues to expand, more and more information will be provided by people like you and me. Articles are a great way to boost credibility, increase traffic to your website, build a brand, market your business, and the list of benefits goes on.

There are some good, free article distribution websites out there. My favorite is ezine Articles. They are an article marketing, publicity generating, traffic building, and article distribution service designed to get your expert articles in front of a content-hungry ezine publisher audience. According to ezine Articles, your articles may be picked up by hundreds of highly-targeted content-hungry Ezine publishers who EACH have thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of email list members of their own. That means your article and expertise may be exposed to hundreds of thousands or potentially even millions of people.

Its all about the data. The people who start today to begin producing articles that help target and promote their business, will be way ahead of the game. This is why you should highly consider finding a good article distribution service and start writing articles that help promote your business. According to ezine Articles, you will receive the following benefits of using their article distribution service:

1. Boosts Your Credibility:
   Getting published in the EzineArticles.com directory can boost your credibility and begin the trust cycle with your readership. For many authors, being listed with EzineArticles.com is an excellent way to get started, especially if you are a published author or hope to be published soon. There is a book inside each of us waiting to come out.
   
   


2. Surges in Traffic to Your Website:
   This is caused by the ezine publishers who come to our site throughout the year to pick up quality articles for their email newsletter or website. When your articles get picked up for reprints, you will often get a surge of traffic as your articles are introduced to their email list members or audience.
   
   


3. Receive Quality and Relevant Leads to Your Website:
   People who read your articles and click on your link(s) found in your Resource Box at the end of each of your articles are highly-qualified prospects by the very nature of how they found your website.
   
   


4. 7-10 Times More Effective Than Regular Advertising:
   You become known as the expert by your article and this endears potential customers to you before they even visit your website. There is no better way to "pre-sell" your prospects than article marketing.
   
   


5. You've Got A Head-Start on The Reciprocation & Trust Cycle:
   Your prospects are pre-sold as you have already begun the reciprocation cycle by giving first, through your expertise in your articles. When they visit your site, your qualified prospects will already know something about you and feel endeared to reciprocate, or at least check out your products.
   
   


6. High-Quality Back Links To Your Website Helps Build Search Engine Relevancy & Traffic:
   The links that you receive from the Resource Box at the footer of your articles give your website a continuous trickle of traffic. More importantly they help build search engine relevance because EzineArticles.com is already a highly popular website as viewed by the major search engines. Having links in our directory may transfer some of our quality standings with the search engines to your website.
   
   


7. Builds Link Popularity:
   By now you may have heard of "Link Pop" as an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy. It means that the more links your website has by other sites, the greater importance bestowed upon your website when major search engines rank your site. Having articles in the EzineArticles.com directory helps you build link popularity; link popularity builds traffic to your website.
   
   


8. Builds Brand Equity & The Brand Called You:
   Having your articles featured in EzineArticles.com builds brand equity for you, your business, and your expertise. It begins or reinforces in your customers and prospects mind what you can do for them.
   
   


9. Massive Exposure To The 40,000+ Unique Visitors That Come To EzineArticles.com Daily:
   Your articles may be viewed by the (1,250,000+ visitors) that use our article directory every month!
   
   


10. Market Your Business With No Face-To-Face Selling:
    Your articles in the EzineArticles.com directory allows them to pre-sell and sell your ideal target prospects without you having to make any cold calls or face-to-face sales appointments to sell your products or services.
    
    


11. You May Receive Free Ads in Targeted Ezines:
    Your author Resource Box at the end of the body of each of your articles acts as an advertisement for your business. When ezine publishers come to our site to pick up and reprint your articles to their newsletter base, you essentially get free ads in their newsletter. The better quality you put in your article, the higher your chances are of increased distribution by the ezine publishers who use our site to find quality content to send to their thousands or perhaps even tens of thousands of permission-based members.
    
    


12. To Be Recognized as an Expert Author:
    When we accept your article in our directory, you become recognized as an expert author. This adds prestige and perceived value by others when they view your articles, especially when you have more than 1 article to share with them.
    
    


13. Editorial Integrity - Your Articles Share Expert Company:
    Every single article submitted (over 100,000+) by the 17,000+ authors who call our directory home for their articles have been reviewed by our human editors who double check each article for quality (grammar, spelling, no dead links, etc). This ensures the company your articles keep has integrity.
    
    


14. Improve Your Sales: (even if you're only selling an "idea")
    While this is not the only reason you should submit your articles to our directory, it is a great one. It does not matter if you are selling products, services, or an even an "idea". EzineArticles.com can help improve your sales by bringing your business quality traffic and leads via the links in your resource box below the body of your article. Article visitors often turn into customers.
    
    


15. Get on Top of The Major Search Engines For Your Name:
    Many of our authors have been unable to get to the top of the search engine results until they got their articles listed in our directory. Once listed - as soon as only a week later, many found their names in the top 1st-page results of the major search engines. Do some "exact match" searches in your favorite search engine for some of the authors in our directory and you'll see what we mean.
    
    


16. Optimize The Promotional Mileage Out of Your Existing Article Archive:
    If you have already produced a series of quality articles, why not submit them to our directory to get even more ROI from your efforts?
    
    


17. Find Customers That You May Have Not Been Able To Reach Before:
    Every article you submit to our directory is like casting a wider net to reach new customers and traffic that would have never found your articles or website before.
    
    


18. Get Continual Traffic To Your Website For Many Years To Follow For Free:
    Your articles will be in the EzineArticles.com directory for at least 180 days (6 months); however, many ezine publishers and webmasters who pick up your articles for reprints, including your resource box, will display your articles and links for many years. This means surges of traffic this year and many random spikes and continual traffic over the next decade. We have no intentions at this time to remove any articles after the 180 guaranteed-inclusion days, but reserve the right to keep our directory fresh by removing articles that are no longer current.
    
    


19. Your Articles In EzineArticles.com Reaches Other Article Directory Websites:
    We are not listing them publicly yet, but many extremely high profile publishers are currently syndicating articles from our directory into their high-traffic website. That means you not only get a high chance of your articles being picked up by ezine publishers for reprints, but you also get a high chance of having your articles picked up by niche publishers who have high traffic websites to deliver your articles even more exposure.

Can MySpace.com Help My Website?

What is MySpace?

MySpace.com started out as an online community for members to share music and communicate with friends. Within a two year span the companys membership grew from a few thousand to a few million. Currently the website has over 92 million registered users and is one of the most trafficked sites on the Internet. MySpace allows its members the ability to customize their portfolios using CSS, which gives each member the flexibility to make their portfolio look different from the rest.

So what can I do with MySpace?
The first thing to do is create an account. Try to get a username that reflects your business. Here is an example of an e-business that has created its own online portfolio for MySpace. The company is No. 1 Talent, their MySpace portfolio is http://www.myspace.com/number1talent. When creating a handle for MySpace the most important thing is to try to get a handle that reflects your business. As in this example, No.1Talent was able to use its full domain, number1talent.

So I created my account now what?
Start small. Add your company logo. Add aparagraph about your company with a link to your companys website. Then spend a few minutes on it every day, adding a little here and there. The next thing you need to do is customize the design. If you know and understand CSS then great! Start plugging away, change the fonts, background, colors and links. If your not well versed on CSS,thenyou better wait for my next article.

My portfolio looks great, but I have no friends!
The purpose of an online community is to be a go getter, SO! Go outand meet people. Start with people you already know, find their portfolio and click the Add Friend button. Just like most small businesses, your portfolio will growthrough word-of-mouth.The more friends you request and the more time you spend on it, the more people will come across your portfolio.

Posting to friend Portfolios
After you have gained a few friends you will be able to post comments on their portfolio. I recommend posting your company logo and link to your company's website. Now every time someone views your friends portfolio they will see your company logo and thelink, and possible visit your website. The point here is to be seen!

Last but not least
Have fun, MySpace is a great opportunity to meet and connect with people online. It has opened the door for many and will for years to come. If this is your first time to MySpace and you think that it will not fit your business, then take a look at these famous MySpace Portfolios:Comedian Dane Cook - www.myspace.com/danecook

Musical BandGuns N' Roses - www.myspace.com/gunsnroses

Actress Pamela Anderson www.myspace.com/therealpamelaandersonhere

Fast Food Chain MacDonalds www.myspace.com/mcdonalds

Corona Beer www.myspace.com/corona1925