My 2¢ Worth

id any of you notice a major decrease in spam over the holiday weekend? I receive thousands of spam E-mail messages each day. I had only a couple thousand spam mails over the weekend.

t was truly a wonder. Of course they more than made up for it beginning Tuesday morning. And now the spam has leveled off to normal levels.

ther than that, I've nothing much to report. I didn't do anything special over the holiday. One day is much the same as the next to me. Our weather was rainy and dreary during the weekend anyway.

owever, Tuesday and Wednesday were absolutely perfect weather wise! Sunshine, temps to the mid 80s and low humidity. More of the same in store today.

Feature Article

Quick and Easy Steps To Build Your Website's Revenue

by: Mark Nenadic FifteenDegrees-North

The ideal for many people is to have a website that creates its own revenue, building a substantial income for its owner while he or she lies on a beach somewhere on a tropical island. Though that has happened for a very limited few, the rest of us need to take certain important steps to make sure that we earn enough money from our websites to maintain a comfortable lifestyle.

Among these steps, there are five that have proven to be the most effective for generating additional revenue on a website. These steps are:

1. Creating superior content

2. Measuring the actual potential for income held by your website

3. Preparing your site in a way so that banner ads fit attractively and practically

4. Study the demographics of your visitors

5. Register with all of the major directories, and any of the smaller ones that deal specifically with the subject of your website

Superior content should be considered the most basic necessity of any website that is to become successful. Content is the main source of value for a website from the point of view of the visitors. Therefore, your content needs to be so great that it creates tremendous value for your site. This will make certain that people talk about it, spreading the word verbally, and you may even be written up by the media.

A content-rich website will include such items as (for example):

• Information - this can include articles, product reviews, website reviews, detailed and descriptive links to other sites
• Free downloads this can include software, ebooks, reports, and other digital items.
• Entertainment - this may include such elements as music, pictures, videos, games, quizzes, and other fun items.
• Services - anything that can be provided online can be included here, such as site monitors, calculators, submitters, and other online services.

Good quality, unique content can be quite challenging to create. If you have the time and the skill, you can write it yourself, but you may need to hire an expert to write it for you. This is, however, much more effective than using free content from elsewhere, because it makes certain that your site content is unique.

Your site’s income potential should be determined very early in the process of its creation. Consider the amount of traffic you have already developed, how much you realistically believe that you can build, and how much you would need to make your advertising’s compensation worthwhile.

When you design your website, do it in a way that banner ads will fit well in the appearance and functionality. This way, when you include banner ads that will pay for their click-through and click-through rates, you’ll be able to fit them in without having to reconstruct your overall website design.

The more quickly you can introduce new banner ads that will provide you with income for your website, the better your revenue will flow. Once the site is easily displaying banners, you should join as many promising affiliate programs as possible, and display their banner ads in all of the suitable places. It is important that you create as many impressions as you can so that you will create a direct line of traffic through your affiliate links and build your income.

To be able to properly gear your site to send people through your links, you will need to know your demographic. Of course, we can’t all afford to do extensive demographic studies, however there are some things that you can do to become familiar with who your primary market includes. You can study what your successful competition is doing, and who they are gearing their marketing toward. You can also offer free newsletters or other free features through registration where certain general demographic information is shared with you.

Once your site is all set up, it’s time to register with as many of the large directories as you can. Then, find out about smaller directories that focus on the topic of your website, and register with them as well. This will not only help your inbound links so that you’ll achieve more effective search engine optimization, but you’ll also create more ways in which your site can be found.

Your last step is simply to pick the beach where you want to relax as your revenue flows in from your successful website.

**************

Mark Nenadic is the director and face behind FifteenDegrees-North www.15dn.com , where you will find articles and resources to help with SEO, marketing and Web design.

Custom text in the status bar of the browser

Display your own custom text in the browser window's status bar by adding the following JavaScript to your source code. This can be placed in either the <head> or <body> section of your page, however, I suggest putting it in the <body> as close to the bottom as possible for faster page load times.

Replace the text in red with your own custom message.

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/JavaScript">
<!-- ;//
function SB_MESS()
{ status="Your_Status_Bar_Message"
setTimeout('SB_MESS()',1); }SB_MESS();
// -->
</script>

* Get these syndicated tip feeds for yourweb site, free. *

Second Article

Event Marketing

by: Scott Geld Blaster

Event marketing is one of the more popular forms of subtle but successful marketing. These days, events are a large part of the marketing mix for some companies. Companies are successfully using events for marketing and promotion, as they would use any of the more traditional forms of advertising to promote their products and services.

Events offer a more personalized and customized message to the audience. Events bring the actual product to the customer and consciously and little subtly it gives a message about the product to the audience. Events tend to bring the products to the customer directly, though it targets a much smaller audience than other tools of advertising. Events like trade shows, sporting events, concerts etc which allow the customer to try and feel the products is a good way to make the customer aware of your products, because there is a clutter of brands today and unless special effort is made your brand could get lost in this clutter.

A company's main aim is to increase its sales and it does this by bringing its services directly to the customers. In a store, you might sell some products incidentally to people looking for something else. But it makes a lot of difference when the person gets to try out the product or even receive a sample of it at various events. This is because experiential marketing has lot of scope in today's society as it gives the customer a direct opportunity to try out something new and accept it only when he likes it.

Events are also important tools to maintain relationship with old customers and pitch in to new prospective customers. The existing customers are often given free entry to such events, and probably given some incentive to attend the event. The presence of the old customers is beneficial for the company because they are likely to give testimonial about your products in the presence of other audience. And of course in any event the number of people attending the event is crucial and the existing customers even though may not buy still add to the number of people attending the event.

Event marketing is based on the premise that a customer is most likely to remember what he has experienced himself. Therefore, to achieve this, you need to make your demonstrations interactive so that people will remember them and indirectly your product, even after they have gone home. This is the most effective way of marketing.

Popularity of event marketing is increasing by the day and more companies are adopting it as a favored marketing tool that it is taken up as a specialist career profession. Courses are being offered at universities and colleges where candidates learn skills to host and execute events of all sizes and types. Because of this increasing popularity of event marketing, many companies and big businesses are employing professionals with formal education in the field.

**************

Scott Geld is the owner and operator of Marketing Blaster which is a premier resource for marketing information. For questions go to www.MarketingBlaster.com

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